Running_Wild on 28/8/2013 at 23:19
Quote Posted by Al_B
Not sure where Running_Wild actually got the screenshot from (but would be interested to know)
I just happened upon it one day while searching for some Ultima Underworld or Ultima 7 stuff. I had always wanted an Ultima Underworld editor (and, yes, I know of yours. Thanks for that awesome work!) so I was astounded when I found a picture of their editor. I figured if anyone would appreciate it, it would be the members of this forum.
This is the site where I got it from :
(
http://web.archive.org/web/20080421192907/http://owo.com/archive/ftp/graphics/)
Ghrul on 13/5/2014 at 16:22
Quote Posted by Shadowcat
As for remakes, I've long held that the only practical way of creating a remake of these games is to actually be running the original code.
I simply don't believe that a small number of people are going to accurately recreate all of the game logic from scratch in their spare time, without any source code.
OTOH, something which executed the original code and functioned as a layer between that and the modern code (to translate user input, audio, and rendering) might have a hope of resulting in a complete game. That would still be
extremely difficult and complex, but I think it reduces the scope of the original code that needs to be understood for a full recreation of the game. People would effectively still be playing the original game.
It also puts the focus firmly on "making the game work". If that was actually achieved, well
then you could start to think about making it prettier. (I think that the projects which start out with fancy graphics and no concept of how to implement the
game are always going to be doomed.)
Not that I believe that anyone is going to do this, mind; I'm just not convinced that other approaches are worth pursuing in the long run (although presumably some of the existing attempts could be used to provide the modern rendering solution).
Why not use DOSBox as a base, and then add a 3D-engine?
The 3D-engine could just be scanning/reading the tile-map/data directly from DOS memory.
Almost all necessary info could be found this way, including the player position and direction.
(The map is stored the same way as on disk, at around 80000h)
Shadowcat on 15/5/2014 at 23:56
I don't think we need spoiler tags for memory locations :)
All the necessary data is certainly available in memory -- that much is guaranteed. But knowing the player position and direction of view is just one aspect. At minimum you also need to know the status and position of all NPCs and other objects in the scene, and you need to be able to handle user interactions (with on-screen objects in the game world, as well as with the UI outside of the 3D scene).
ZylonBane on 16/5/2014 at 00:53
I love it ever so much when the first thing a new member does is resurrect a year-old thread.
GodzillaX8 on 16/5/2014 at 04:52
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
I love it ever so much when the first thing a new member does is resurrect a year-old thread.
Considering there's only 3 other threads in this sub-forum with posts more recent than this thread had before their post, I'd hardly think it's something worth caring about.
PS: It's a 6 year old thread.
Renault on 16/5/2014 at 22:22
By "year-old' he meant it had been a year since someone had replied. The fact that the thread was started 6 years ago is irrelevant.
It is pretty strange when someone replies to a comment made a year ago, as if it had just been made recently. Do they think that person is checking the thread daily for new responses?
Al_B on 16/5/2014 at 22:46
Probably not but I've worn out the F5 key on six keyboards so far in anticipation.
GodzillaX8 on 17/5/2014 at 07:20
Quote Posted by Brethren
By "year-old' he meant it had been a year since someone had replied. The fact that the thread was started 6 years ago is irrelevant.
It
is pretty strange when someone replies to a comment made a year ago, as if it had just been made recently. Do they think that person is checking the thread daily for new responses?
Let me dumb it down for you.
NO ONE POSTS HERE. EVER. ANY REPLY MADE TO ALMOST ANY THREAD WOULD BE IN REPLY TO A POST THAT IS 6 MONTHS OLD OR MORE.
Also, the person he replied to immediately replied back to his post. So, clearly, the intended recipient saw the message.
I hope you understand the entire point of my last post now.
PS: The post prior to the new member's post was less than 9 months old, and at the time of posting would quite literally have been the fourth post from the top of the forum.
Shadowcat on 18/5/2014 at 00:57
There's no need to discourage people from making on-topic responses to old posts.
These days, conversations tend to happen on a pretty slow time scale in the classics forums, and I don't have a problem with this. I'm generally in favour of resurrecting an old thread to continue an established discussion, rather than fragmenting the discussion by creating new threads; and I also think that approach is more necessary as time goes on and the discussion dries up -- after all, if people didn't continue old threads then we'd just have a string of single-post threads with no connection to anything else.
Of course I'd be very happy to see more traffic here (and please feel free to post), but in reality most people have said most of the things they're going to say about these games, so this is just the way things are.
