How many finished ACK games are there?

by **elvisT** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 12:15 pm

Lol! I'm glad you got it working, I'm also glad to hear that there was no suspicion of my motives. (I'll even look into doing some tutorials!) I just remember thinking, "what a way to start off introducing yourself!"

Yeah, I think game balance is going to be a serious issue for these: ridiculously hard at first and then somewhat easy at the higher levels. There'll be other stuff that'll need my attention, but hopefully it'll be playable. :P

Thanks for helping me feel welcome. I'll start a new thread and post my Ultima I redesign once its ready.

by **Garth's Equipment Shop** » Fri Jul 19, 2013 12:31 am

Probably a random encounter but there was a wizard nearby when i had just started playing and he seemed rather OP if you ask me. He had ranged magic attacks that did up to 9 dmg per shot and ofcourse every move i made gave him another attack while all i had was a dagger so had to get close. I used up my healing pot on the way to him, and was down to a few hp when i was finally able to fight back at close range. The dagger wasnt very effective against him either.

I didn't let that get me down though. I respawned at the castle and found the magic shop where i bought a magic missile and then set out to find an armory or weapon smith. I didn't find them but I did run across some funny locations like the "Weds While You Wait" chapel and McDonalds lol. Now im too sleepy to continue, so ill comment more tomarrow.

by **Garth's Equipment Shop** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 11:56 pm

You shall be accepted into the hallowed innermost chamber of castle ACK when you complete this quest. You must create a video tutorial demonstrating the basic steps of creating your first simple ACK adventure! :D (sorry couldnt resist a bit of trolling myself lol)

Honestly though I think you underestimate just how absurdly laid back this community really is. I seriously doubt anyone suspected you of trolling. I actually would be happy to learn that our little obscure nook of cyberspace frozen in a time of nearly forgotten gaming history actually garnered enough attention out there to be troll-worthy. ;)

Though i was only teasing in that first paragraph and you have nothing to prove in order to be welcome here it would indeed be epic if you actually did create a video tut for ACK. Even with out of sync sound and rapid mumbling for narration I would lay a year's worth of gold coin on a Bard's bar tab for him to sing your praises throughout the land.

EDIT: I was in a rush when I tried them the other day, as well as being exausted. Just found out what was wrong now that I had time to take a closer look. When I unpacked the archives 7zip put the folder within a folder so that the folder ACK was trying to load was actually empty since it only looks one folder deep for the game. Its fixed now. Sorry to worry you.

by **elvisT** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 1:14 pm

You might find this helpful as well. I don't want to leave this video up for too long, but I've recorded a screengrab video of me downloading ACK 3.2 onto my dad's laptop at his house and then downloading the files I supplied earlier into ACK and running them. It worked, but he and I are both running macs.

Here is the vid:

I hope to become a member of this community as I love working with the tool, and don't want anyone to think I'm wasting their time or up to no good. I am also genuinely curious as to what people will think. So hopefully the vid helps and I'll just pull it down after I know you've seen it.

by **elvisT** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 7:31 am

Okay, I don't know that it'll make a difference, but I opened the games in the launcher and using IMPORT/EXPORT I deleted the save games. I then opened my ACK folder and navigated to the GAMES folder and manually copied the two game folders out and onto my desktop. This resulted in having 2 folders, ULTIMA2 and ULTIMAEX, on my desktop. I zipped each of these individually and uploaded them to my work website ovewriting the previous 2 zips. I then dragged the folders ULTIMA2 and ULTIMAEX out of my GAMES folder and put them into another location on my hard drive. I then downloaded the zips (I had just uploaded) to my hard drive from the website and unzipped them. I then dragged these newly created folders into the GAMES folder within ACK. Using the launcher I selected the adventure(s) and then hit 'Run Adventure' and each one worked.

So, hopefully they're okay to go. Otherwise I am at a loss, unless someone else can help explain what I am doing wrong.

The only other thing I can think of, is that since I am on a mac (and assuming you're on a PC) you might try opening the folders and deleting anyfile that begins with a "." in the filename. Like ".DS_STORE" or ".RECYCLE" These are hidden files on my system and tend to get created whenever I create or access a volume, I can't see them to delete them, but on a PC they would stand out like a sore thumb at the top of the directory. The existence of those shouldn't matter but they could be screwing things up for all I know.

Please let me know if any of this works out for you, and I'll keep searching for a solution provided I get more info as to what could be happening.

@rld Did the this happen to you as well?

by **elvisT** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 7:08 am

That's odd. Those zips are of the adventure folder which are located in the folder marked games in ACK resources. I'm not sure what file(s) could be missing as I made no attempt to package those as standalones other than manually deleting my save game files. I'll use the importer menu to delete my save and rezip the files then upload this afternoon. They should be available after 11am cst at the same download location as before.

If anyone else has a suggestion I'd be glad to hear it.

I'm sorry these aren't working. When you looked in the folders did you see the game files? Maybe the zip was corrupt? I use a Mac running OS x 10.5 but that shouldn't matter.

by **Garth's Equipment Shop** » Thu Jul 18, 2013 1:43 am

I get message Adventure cannot be found when I try to launch these from the launcher.

by **Garth's Equipment Shop** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 10:34 pm

Received thank you. I work next couple of days but plan to begin playtesting these first thing Wednesday!

by **elvisT** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 9:46 pm

Hey Garth,

I sent them your way, but my Yahoo webmail client had a stroke and sent you two "empty" emails first. I apoplogize for that. The third one has the content of the mail as well as the game files as attachments. Let me know what you think, any problems you find etc.

Hope you enjoy,
ElvisT

by **Garth's Equipment Shop** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 5:48 pm

Would love to playtest this! Email: garthsequipmentshop@gmail.com

by **elvisT** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 12:58 pm

I've sent the game files. I haven't gotten a mailerdamon response so I think I got the address right. Let me know if I need to resend them or anything.

I've almost completed the U1 rebuild. Playtesting and tweaking random encounters now. So I can probably send that your way as well if anybody wants to help with the playtesting on that one too.

Thanks again, for your help and your interest in these things.

by **elvisT** » Tue Jul 09, 2013 3:36 pm

I was sending both zips at once.

I'll email them now.

by **rld** » Tue Jul 09, 2013 8:46 am

elvisT wrote: I did get access to the repository but my attempts at upload failed several times due to a "create folder failed" error. I did not package these as stand alone apps. I created a mac compatible app with jjsonicks help for the U2 game but subsequent attempts with my U3 failed and for compatibility reasons I figured I would just upload the game folder for each game. So in short, I was attempting to upload 2 zip files.

Sorry that wasn't working for you. Did you try uploading a single zip file at a time, or were you trying to do multiple files at once. Anyway, I will look into it.

You can send the files to me at rld999.333ack (at) gmx888.333com (remove numbers for correct email address).

by **elvisT** » Mon Jul 08, 2013 11:55 am

Thanks for replying.

I did get access to the repository but my attempts at upload failed several times due to a "create folder failed" error. I did not package these as stand alone apps. I created a mac compatible app with jjsonicks help for the U2 game but subsequent attempts with my U3 failed and for compatibility reasons I figured I would just upload the game folder for each game. So in short, I was attempting to upload 2 zip files.

Each of these is only a couple of meg each so I can try to send these to you in a different way as well.

by **rld** » Mon Jul 08, 2013 9:33 am

elvisT wrote: I have 2 completed Ultima reconstructions that if anybody wanted to check out I don't mind sharing.

I built an alternate universe version of Ultima 3 with expanded locations and story as a first attempt to learn the engine.

I then built an Ultima 2 to lead into it.

...

Without a working login I'm not sure how to get these to the dropbox, but if anybody wants to check these out; let me know and I'll see what I can do.

I just tested out the file drop link and it appears to be working ok. Go to:

https://www.drivehq.com/DropBox/DropBox ... D=71795046

and at the login for 'Inbox' screen, enter the three character password as capital 'A', capital 'C', capital 'K'. If you still can't upload the files with this, let me know.

I'm behind on getting the submitted files posted to an actual download location, but everything so far (I think) has been stuff that was already available for download somewhere else. This would be the first actual new ACK item on the dropbox.

by **elvisT** » Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:34 pm

Hey all. I've had trouble registering for the forums and wasn't until today that I was made aware that I could post as a guest.

I have 2 completed Ultima reconstructions that if anybody wanted to check out I don't mind sharing.

I built an alternate universe version of Ultima 3 with expanded locations and story as a first attempt to learn the engine.

I then built an Ultima 2 to lead into it.

I'm currently finishing a rebuild/expansion of Ultima I so that I'll have the entire trilogy of darkness done as ACK in my expanded Ultimaverse.

I did the U3 rebuild using the Ultima Kit, but then did the next 2 from scratch to better understand the program. These do use the megapatch, but only to fix the touch macro bug for evil NPCs. I also built a ton of custom graphics for these. New tiles were built in the ACK tile editor and full screen stuff was built in Photoshop. I wanted the new U3 to look like Ultima 5 and U2 and U1 to both look like the U4 VGA expansion that everybody uses now. I took a few tiles in that style from the TUTORIAL folder as a basis and just got going.

I also haven't played with custom skins for dialogue or anything, but I've planned on it for the U1 rebuild just not sure if I'm actually going to do it. Also these haven't been playtested much as I don't really know anybody who shares my hobby of ripping apart and messing with the Ultima games, so quality isn't guaranteed and YMMV.

Without a working login I'm not sure how to get these to the dropbox, but if anybody wants to check these out; let me know and I'll see what I can do.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Mar 11, 2013 1:10 am

Garth's Equipment Shop wrote:Sorry I missed the question about custom tiles/graphics. Yes you can use any graphics program. The specific format related requirements are covered in the manual and in old threads here. If you have any trouble importing stuff or using custom images in your game/experiments I can help out in that department. I also have an extensive collection of tiles if you have any requests. Request specific individual tiles or whole themed sets. Either way I'll help out as best I can. If I dont have a specific tile I can probably make one.

Thanks, Garth. I think making a fun little adventure to test things out is in my plans, so I appreciate your offer here! I'll see how far I get with it. :)

by **Chris H** » Thu Mar 07, 2013 8:48 pm

Cool! Useful stuff there for anyone here, and I may have to look into having some custom work done later in the project. Thanks!

by **Garth's Equipment Shop** » Thu Mar 07, 2013 8:29 pm

Check it out. Your gonna love this find Chris. ;)

The guy does mostly royalty free stuff and even takes requests.

http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-fr ... ection=046

that should be all the stuff he classified as "Middle East Inspired" if the link works.

by **Chris H** » Sat Mar 02, 2013 10:18 pm

Ultima IV Part 2 is the biggest completed one that I know of. Caravan is kind of campy, but it's complete and reasonably big. Brigands is also complete (it was the first game I ever made with ACK) but it's not particularly large.

There were a couple of barely-started adventures that were just proof-of-concept experiments, like Space, and of course the tutorial, but I wouldn't call any of those really particularly playable adventures.

To answer the original question: Yes, you can use Photoshop to make graphics. It's pretty much a must for making custom BMPs, but you can use it for making tiles too. It's what I'm using now to make the tiles for Rivers of Light 2. I would say build up a critical mass of what you'll plan to use as tiles before converting to 8-bit color. Save that palette (in Photoshop, a .ACT file) and then create a new BMP, load that palette. Tweak it a little to move the closest color to black to be color 0, and the closest color to white to be color 15. Save THAT palette, and paste in your art. Save that as a BMP and use it for your custom palette, as well as for the BMP you use to import tiles in the graphics editor.

I hope that all makes sense - I should add something like that to the manual.

How many finished ACK games are there?

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