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Ultima seriesU3 Upgrade v3.1(11 posts)(11 posts)
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Posted July 23, 2014
Just released v3.1 of the Exodus Project U3 Upgrade - http://exodus.voyd.net/index.html

Feel free to send comments/feedback. Thanks!
Posted July 23, 2014
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mcmagi: Just released v3.1 of the Exodus Project U3 Upgrade - http://exodus.voyd.net/index.html

Feel free to send comments/feedback. Thanks!
Sweet, i'll go install U3 and give your new version a test run.

Does Pix know about your updated upgrade so that he can make a new version of his patcher pack?
Posted July 24, 2014
Don't worry about having no native Mac installer. As long as the upgrade can be installed from DOSBox (or Boxer for that matter) it's OK. The process is really dead-simple for anyone who knows how to read the readme. I had actually given up on Ultima III because of its insane food grind and no boats spawning. Might give it another try at some point now.
Posted July 24, 2014
I noticed a small problem with the intro screen, the one with the four heroes fighting the dragon: In version 3.0 the dragon when animated had a nice modern shading that showed scales while it was animated. The static dragon (as seen while the Exodus title is building up) is still flat-shaded. Also, while the dragon is spitting fire its tail and wing are only partially scaly.

In 3.1 the dragon is flat-shaded all the time. The flat-shaded dragon and its flame look really out of place compared to the nice new hero sprites. If artistic commitment is the issue, I could draw a shaded dragon and send you the PNGs. I did the same thing for the Nuvie team when I made the custom sprites for the Avatar's companions:
http://ultimacodex.com/2014/03/nuvie-iolo-plays-music-now-also-custom-companion-sprites/

I've attached an image pointing out the difference.
Attachments:
screen_shot_2014.png (252 Kb)
Post edited July 24, 2014 by HiPhish
Posted July 24, 2014
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HiPhish: I noticed a small problem with the intro screen, the one with the four heroes fighting the dragon: In version 3.0 the dragon when animated had a nice modern shading that showed scales while it was animated. The static dragon (as seen while the Exodus title is building up) is still flat-shaded. Also, while the dragon is spitting fire its tail and wing are only partially scaly.

In 3.1 the dragon is flat-shaded all the time. The flat-shaded dragon and its flame look really out of place compared to the nice new hero sprites. If artistic commitment is the issue, I could draw a shaded dragon and send you the PNGs. I did the same thing for the Nuvie team when I made the custom sprites for the Avatar's companions:
http://ultimacodex.com/2014/03/nuvie-iolo-plays-music-now-also-custom-companion-sprites/

I've attached an image pointing out the difference.
Actually the "scales" were a bug. ;-) When I had migrated the old images to the new VGA palette in photoshop, I didn't save it correctly and it dithered the old colors into the new palette rather than remapping them. Interesting that you thought it was intended though, that means other folks probably did too!

I do intend to replace the dragon and flame with VGA-quality images though. That will likely come in the next patch.
Posted July 24, 2014
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mcmagi: Just released v3.1 of the Exodus Project U3 Upgrade - http://exodus.voyd.net/index.html

Feel free to send comments/feedback. Thanks!
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haydenaurion: Sweet, i'll go install U3 and give your new version a test run.

Does Pix know about your updated upgrade so that he can make a new version of his patcher pack?
I didn't message him directly but I'll let him know now, thanks!
Posted July 24, 2014
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mcmagi: ...
That's quite an awesome bug then. I mean look at it, it totally does look like you intentionally lightened some pixels to make it look scaly. Looking forward to the next version then :) Thanks for improving the food consumption and monster rate, those two parts were really dragging this game down.
Posted July 24, 2014
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mcmagi: ...
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HiPhish: That's quite an awesome bug then. I mean look at it, it totally does look like you intentionally lightened some pixels to make it look scaly. Looking forward to the next version then :) Thanks for improving the food consumption and monster rate, those two parts were really dragging this game down.
Oh, I just realized you offered to draw new sprites. ;-) (I guess I got stuck on the scales comment and didn't read further.) I'm not much of a graphic designer so I'm definitely interested to see what your drawings for the dragon and flame breath would look like.
Posted July 24, 2014
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mcmagi: ...
OK, but please don't expect anything for the next two weeks, I will be busy with other stuff. I'll PM you when I have something to show. Since the sprites of the heroes are different from the originals I guess it's OK if the dragon sprite is different from the original one as well, right?
Posted July 24, 2014
One small thing I noticed is that in the readme you sometimes used spaces instead of tabs. One tab is not four spaces for everyone, sometimes it's more and sometimes less. For example in the installation part the first and fourth step are indented using tabs and aligned using spaces, but their a) and b) points are indented with spaces, breaking the format for me. I don't know if this a standard or just convention, but on Unix a tab is usually displayed as eight spaces rather than four.

I swear if I ever get in charge of a software development department, then using spaced for indentation will be a reason to get fired. Tabs are for indentation, spaces for aligning. I know for most people this is trivial but, but this sort of thing drives me more crazy than seeing people write an opening curly brace on its own line.

Rather than just being a whiny bitch I went ahead and fixed the readme. You'll have to use the raw paste data, because pastebin converts each tab to eight spaces as well.
http://pastebin.com/cxE4TrpT
Posted July 24, 2014
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HiPhish: One small thing I noticed is that in the readme you sometimes used spaces instead of tabs. One tab is not four spaces for everyone, sometimes it's more and sometimes less. For example in the installation part the first and fourth step are indented using tabs and aligned using spaces, but their a) and b) points are indented with spaces, breaking the format for me. I don't know if this a standard or just convention, but on Unix a tab is usually displayed as eight spaces rather than four.

I swear if I ever get in charge of a software development department, then using spaced for indentation will be a reason to get fired. Tabs are for indentation, spaces for aligning. I know for most people this is trivial but, but this sort of thing drives me more crazy than seeing people write an opening curly brace on its own line.

Rather than just being a whiny bitch I went ahead and fixed the readme. You'll have to use the raw paste data, because pastebin converts each tab to eight spaces as well.
http://pastebin.com/cxE4TrpT
LOL, I realized that shortly after release. The tool I used to edit had tabstop=4, so the alignment issues weren't apparent until I viewed it in notepad.
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mcmagi: ...
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HiPhish: OK, but please don't expect anything for the next two weeks, I will be busy with other stuff. I'll PM you when I have something to show. Since the sprites of the heroes are different from the originals I guess it's OK if the dragon sprite is different from the original one as well, right?
That's fine, I won't be ready for a 3.2 release for any time soon and I really appreciate the offer. And yes, I expected it would be different from the EGA version; even different from the dragon sprite in the VGA tileset since the latter is of a smaller scale, though matching the same 8-bit artistic style.
Post edited July 24, 2014 by mcmagi
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Ultima seriesU3 Upgrade v3.1(11 posts)(11 posts)
(11 posts)