How many finished ACK games are there?

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Apologies if this is in a sticky thread.

How many finished ACK games exist, and in what genres? I may take a winter's evening and try to play around with this. It just looks like so much damn fun. :)

I just want to see what came before.

Also, will any computer graphics program (like Photoshop) work in terms of custom graphics and tiles?

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I know there is the Ultima parody. Any others?

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Chris made several different complete adventures to show off ACK before he crafted his Ultima masterpiece. They all come with ACK.

Dreams of Deep Space:
The space game is a pretty awesome start for anyone wanting to do a star trek or star wars or firefly or battlestar galactica theme. It is playable it just needs filled in more to make it really complete. I think it gets overlooked because it isn't listed among the other demos in the manual.

The official demos:

Brigands - Your typical fantasy demo game with wands, scrolls, demons, evil priests, castles, etc. Very short combat driven game.

Caravan - A nice demo of a historical themed game set in Roman times. Its a longer game than Brigands. It also has very little combat as it is mostly story/dialog driven.

TUTORIAL - This is actually the latest demo game Chris made since he updated it shortly after he updated ACK itself. It is my personal favorite example/demo of ACK as it packs the most fun into the smallest package possible. Full of 80's gaming references to entertain you while you become familiarized with ACK basics. Play it through completely, perhaps taking notes on things you want to remember to check out later, then when you've played enough open up the editors and find the things you thought were coolest and see how it was done under the hood.

His full length Ultima game is obviously the latest completed game made in ACK but for getting your feet wet as a game developer in ACK I would recommend looking under the hood of these much shorter and simpler demos before delving into the twisty-little-passages of that Ultima inspired mega-beast. ;)

I'm sure I would have finished at least one of my many ACK projects by now if I would have just kept it simple for my first game and not try to bite off more than i could chew. Instead i bite off more than I could chew on the first one, got burned out after a while and started a new one, bite off more than I could chew on that one and got burned out again, and so on. But I keep chipping away at each over time. Don't worry when I finish one you will know it. ;)

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

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.

[ishtenos]

It's too easy to desire 'huge and epic' for a first project. I suspect that's what trips up most would-be creators (certainly my bane). My old ACK project from a year ago I'm taking another look at, to scale it back to something small and easy to plan out and build. The original idea was a huge open world inspired by Wasteland; definitely want to keep that setting, but instead of a large area maybe aim for a single town and the surrounding areas.

Interesting to note that at least a few of the WIPs mentioned on this board have been inspired by/nods to Wasteland... hmm...

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Wise decision to scale back for your initial release. You can always expand it later. I am doing the same for my wasteland inspired project. I'm thinking along the lines of chapters that all take advantage of the same world map and many of the same locations, npcs, item and tile sets and so on. Similar to modules designed for a specific AD&D campaign.

Would be nice if there were built in support for importing characters from previous adventures with their level, stats and items intact but since there isn't I'll settle for story building around one character and have the player always play that character.

I'll still be able to carry over some things to the next adventure that way. For example anything I know the player had to have obtained or earned in a previous module, like special abilities and items that were required to get through the previous chapter can be part of the player-character's starting equipment and abilities in the new one.

And if there were items or abilities I don't want carried over because they would make the player too OP for the new chapter I'd just include something in the new chapter's intro that would explain why the character lost them between the time of the last chapter and the new one.

You are welcome to use any of the wasteland related ACK resources I've uploaded in your own project. If you were planning on using the map from the original wasteland that much alteast is already done. There is a way to copy the world map over from my project to your own.

[ishtenos]

Those are good ideas. I downloaded your Wasteland WIP and it looks great. It visually reflects a possible Wasteland 2 from the late 80s/early 90s.

I appreciate your permission to use the resources, just might take you up on that. The rework of my old project is coming along nicely now, I'll start a WIP thread for it once I have something substantial to show off.

[Chris H]

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.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

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.

[Chris H]

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

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

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. :)

[elvisT]

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.

[rld]

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.

[elvisT]

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.

[rld]

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).

[elvisT]

I was sending both zips at once.

I'll email them now.

[elvisT]

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.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

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

[elvisT]

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

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

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