ExultF.A.Q. (frequently asked questions)
last changed: 13 March 2002(GMT)

The latest version of this document can be found at http://exult.sourceforge.net/faq.php


0. Changes to the FAQ
0.1. - 12 March 2002
0.2. - 7 March 2002
0.3. - 10 January 2002
0.4. - 07 January 2002

1. Introduction
1.1. Why is it called Exult - what is the meaning of this name?
1.2. Is Exult free ?
1.3. Does Origin support Exult?
1.4. Will Exult support other Ultimas?
1.5. But isn't Pentagram some kind of Exult for U8?
1.6. Will there be a multiplayer Exult?
1.7. Where do I find Exult?
1.8. What is a snapshot? Are these screenshots or what?
1.9. How do I compile a source code snapshot for my OS?
1.10. What is the latest version of Exult?
1.11. On what platform does Exult run?

2. Exult and Ultima 7
2.1. Do I need Ultima 7?
2.2. Does Exult work on all versions of the game?
2.3. Can you play through U7 yet?
2.4. How about Serpent Isle?
2.5. Do the Add-ons work?
2.6. Do savegames from the original work in Exult?
2.7. Where do I find Ultima 7 on the net to download?

3. Miscellaneous
3.1. Where do I find a walkthrough?
3.2. Do the carriages, ships and the magic carpet work?
3.3. Will you implement the extended intro for SI?
3.4. Why is the party formation different?
3.5. What should I do when Exult keeps crashing when I try to save?
3.6. Why does the game run so choppy?
3.7. Why can't I hear the Sound Effects?
3.8. Why is the music so much louder/softer than the sfx/speech?
3.9. Why does Exult freeze when I board Hawk's ship on SI?
3.10. Why can't I cast mark/recall on the Virtue Runes?
3.11. What are the improvements in Exult over the original Ultima 7?
3.12. Are there issues with the SI style pardoll in BG?
3.13. How do I disable all improvements?
3.14. I heard that Exult is meant to be a game engine. Can I make my own game with Exult?

4. Exult Studio
4.1. What is it?
4.2. Who came up with the cool name?
4.3. What do you need to run it?
4.4. When will it be ported to other platforms?
4.5. How do you run it?
4.6. What can you do at the moment?
4.7. What's next?
4.8. What's with this client/server stuff?
4.9. What's with this 'terrain-editing' stuff? Why can't I just drag objects to where I want?

5. Bugs, known issues and not yet implemented features
5.1. Bugs
5.2. How do I submit a proper bug report?
5.3. Broken by Design
5.4. Known Issues
5.5. Known Compile Issues
5.6. Not yet implemented

6. Questions and Answers
6.1. How can I get answers concerning Ultima 7/Exult?
6.2. How do I contact the author of this FAQ?

7. Links and Thanks
7.1. Important Links
7.2. Thanks


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0. Changes to the FAQ
0.1. - 12 March 2002
* 1.10. What is the latest version of Exult? leveled up to v0.98 RC 1.
* 3.5. What should I do when Exult keeps crashing when I try to save? restore an earlier savegame.
* 3.9. Why does Exult freeze when I board Hawk's ship on SI? a user could run into this bug.
* 5.6. Not yet implemented All spells should work now, right?



0.2. - 7 March 2002
* 1.5. But isn't Pentagram some kind of Exult for U8? rewritten a bit.
* 3.10. Why can't I cast mark/recall on the Virtue Runes? this comes up from time to time.
* 3.12. Are there issues with the SI style pardoll in BG? Why Sparks Paperdoll looks odd.
* 4.3. What do you need to run it? runs on Win32 now.
* 4.4. When will it be ported to other platforms? also noted that it runs on Win32.
* 4.5. How do you run it? some notes on Win32 mode.
* 5.2. How do I submit a proper bug report? Cookies need to be enabled to attach savegames.
* 5.3. Broken by Design combat difficulty option mentioned and linked.
* 5.4. Known Issues Alternate SI intro is fully working now and force_waveout is now default.



0.3. - 10 January 2002
* 3.1. Where do I find a walkthrough? updated changed links.
* 3.3. Will you implement the extended intro for SI? this gets asked from time to time.
* 4.3. What do you need to run it? libglade needed as well.
* 4.5. How do you run it? You need to have cheats enabled.
* 5.2. How do I submit a proper bug report? Added a screenshot of the upload checkbox.



0.4. - 07 January 2002
* 1.5. But isn't Pentagram some kind of Exult for U8? some information on the U8 shapes/map viewer.
* 1.7. Where do I find Exult? added link to AmigaOS/MorphOS port.
* 1.11. On what platform does Exult run? updated with AmigaOS/MorphOS port.
* 2.2. Does Exult work on all versions of the game? Spanish SI version.
* 3.6. Why does the game run so choppy? some help for people that have choppy gameplay.
* 3.7. Why can't I hear the Sound Effects? people still ask so this should be in the FAQ.
* 3.8. Why is the music so much louder/softer than the sfx/speech? added.
* 3.12. Are there issues with the SI style pardoll in BG? some issues with the Paperdolls.
* 4. Exult Studio too many changes to list. A must read.
* 5.3. Broken by Design looping music explained.
* 5.4. Known Issues Neither speech nor subtitles in SI-Endgame. Also possible workaround for sound issues on Windows.
* 5.5. Known Compile Issues Max is working to make Exult compile on OSX. Don't forget the exult*.flx files




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1. Introduction
1.1. Why is it called Exult - what is the meaning of this name?
Jeff wrote on the Boards:
I originally wrote it [Exult] solely for X-windows, so that's where the 'X' comes from. The "ult", of course, comes from Ultima. It was only about 6 months ago [02/29/2000] that I replaced the X code with SDL, which is multiplatform. Then Arthuris ported it to Win32 (and to BeOS). He had also ported the earlier version, but it was much harder to maintain that way.

Ibrahim Holtzmann:
I'd like to point out that "exult" is also an English verb that means "to rejoice, to exhibit great happiness".


1.2. Is Exult free ?
Exult is more than free: it's Free (notice the caps). Exult is released under the GNU GPL (General Public License). This means that the source code for Exult is freely available and you can do whatever you want with it. However, if you make modifications to any of Exult's components and publicly redistribute your work you are required to make the source freely available in turn. Obviously the Exult team would be very grateful if any modifications you make are contributed back to the main code, so that everyone can benefit from them. If you want to work on Exult just send an e-mail to the team. More information on the GNU GPL at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.


1.3. Does Origin support Exult?
First of all, Origin has been owned by EA for a long time now and from recent developments it seems that Origin only exists now to maintain Ultima Online. Furthermore, Origin and/or people that worked for Origin claim that the source code for Ultima 7 (BG/SI) has been lost for some time. So there is no chance for the Exult team to have a look at the actual code.
Also the team tried to contact some people from Origin earlier but got no positive or negative response on the Exult project. So far it seems that both Origin and EA have decided to ignore Exult.
On the other hand former Origin employees contacted the team and congratulated the team on their effort. Most noticeable are Lord British himself and Ken Demarest (Programming Manager of Ultima 7)(hint:spell his name backwards).


1.4. Will Exult support other Ultimas?
Exult supports only Ultima 7 (BG/SI and the add-ons). It will never support any other Ultima nor do members of the team plan to develop something similar. The reasons for this are that no other Ultima is similar to Ultima 7 in the internal workings and also the team used to be quite sick of reverse engineering a game already.


1.5. But isn't Pentagram some kind of Exult for U8?
Pentagram is a pet project by some members of the Exultteam (currently mostly Willem, Colourless, Fingolfin and Darke). It is a map and shapes viewer and nothing more (although the team does indeed invest some time to disassemble the Usecode of U8). It isn't meant to be something similar to Exult. It is rather a clever plan to stir up interest in other coders to carry this basic work further. Any developer is welcome to take a look and contact us.


1.6. Will there be a multiplayer Exult?
No.

Jeff on the Forum:
The question is 'why?'. I continue working on Exult, in large part, because nobody makes games like Ultima7 anymore. While I think a multiplayer game would be technically interesting, I don't see the need. There are lots of them already, and many experienced people working on new ones.
Note however that Exult is open source. If you want a multiplayer U7 no one holds you back to code it in.


1.7. Where do I find Exult?
The latest official version is found on http://exult.sourceforge.net/ Daily snapshots (by Travis Howell) of the Win32 binary and of the CVS source tree can be found at http://exult.sourceforge.net/download.php. A BeOS binary snapshot can be found at http://digilander.iol.it/burton666/exult-beos.zip. Jack Burton provides this weekly or whenever it compiles for him. Thanks! There is also a version available for AmigaOS/MorphOS at http://www.muenster.de/~tomjoad/exult.html. Please see 1.11. for some more information on this port.


1.8. What is a snapshot? Are these screenshots or what?
Bugs and not yet implemented features in Exult get fixed almost daily in the code. A release is very time consuming that's why there are so few.
The snapshot is the newest source code of the program. It is updated almost daily, sometimes twice a day. There is information on how to build your own binary in the source but there is also the newest pre-compiled Windows executable. If you there is no new one this means that either there were no changes to the code or the source failed to compile.
Also this FAQ mainly addresses the snapshots as people use them and ask question. And all the new features and improvements are found in those!


1.9. How do I compile a source code snapshot for my OS?
The source code snapshots contain a file called "README.OS" (like Readme.win32, Readme.MacOS) that explains everything.


1.10. What is the latest version of Exult?
The current official release is V0.98 RC 1 (Release Candidate 1). See also 1.7. to learn where to get the latest version.
To find out which version you are running, press 'v' while in game.


1.11. On what platform does Exult run?
Exult should be able to be compiled (with minor modifications) on any platform that SDL supports. Right now the source can be compiled in Linux/i386, Linux/Alpha, MacOS, OSX, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, BeOS and Win32 (Windows 9x/ME/NT4/2000/XP).
Recently we discovered that there is also a working port of Exult for MorphOS and AmigaOS. You can find that version at Ruediger Hanke's homepage http://www.muenster.de/~tomjoad/exult.html. We are currently working on integrating his changes into the main code and making those versions available on our homepage.



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2. Exult and Ultima 7
2.1. Do I need Ultima 7?
Yes. Exult won't work without the original files.


2.2. Does Exult work on all versions of the game?
It seems to run most of the available versions of the game. The most common ones nowadays with the included Add-ons (Forge of Virtue and Silver Seed) runs for sure.
However there are reported problems with the localized versions of the game (French, German and Spanish). Conversation threads don't seem to skip to the next line in the proper places and therefore are unreadable in some cases. SI was published in English and Spanish (as we recently discovered to our surprise) but we seem to have fixed the main problem with the Spanish version.
V0.91 Alpha2 adds fixes for the French version, which should work now. If you are running a Spanish or German version Black Gate and you notice problems please contact us.


2.3. Can you play through U7 yet?
You can play through the Black Gate/Forge of Virtue without cheating and plotholes. And since Beta1 the same is true for Serpent Isle/Silver Seed.


2.4. How about Serpent Isle?
Serpent Isle is now playable without cheating and plotholes. Two members of the team have already finished the game with Exult.
Old quotes on this topic from the time when SI wasn't playable at all in Exult.

Colourless:
I can't say much about the what will happen except that a completely working Serpent Isle will be an annoying task to complete. It is close to BG in some ways, but very different in others.

Jeff:
My feelings about SI are the same as Colourless, who has done all the work so far on it. I'd much prefer to add enhancements to BG (which would apply to SI as well), and perhaps write a new RPG. Now, if EA would provide us with information about SI's internals, that would change things. And also, since Exult is open-source, it would be fine if anyone wants to volunteer to work on SI.


2.5. Do the Add-ons work?
"Forge of Virtue" (Add-on to Black Gate) and the "The Silver Seed" (Add-on to Serpent Isle) are bug-free now.


2.6. Do savegames from the original work in Exult?
Savegames that were made with the original Ultima 7 or U7Run don't work with Exult. You have to start a new game when you begin playing with Exult. Sorry!


2.7. Where do I find Ultima 7 on the net to download?
Don't! You may be able to find it on the net but it would be pirating the game and the Exult team doesn't support pirates. Look for the Ultima Collection in stores or on Ebay (http://www.ebay.com).
Don't ask the team for copies. Don't ask on the forum for copies, your post and the entire thread will be deleted. And please don't ask for the answers to the copyright questions.



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3. Miscellaneous
3.1. Where do I find a walkthrough?
If you need help with the game itself, like walktrhoughs, hints, location of Npcs items take a look at the following sites:
* http://members.aol.com/UltimaWrld/ultima07.html The Ultima 7 section of Excalibur's World of Ultima site.
* http://www.ultimainfo.net/Codex/Ultima7.htm Paulon Dragons selection of notes and information on Ultima 7.
* http://www.ultimainfo.net/Codex/FAQ2.htm#U7 The Ultima 7 section of Paulon Dragons Ultima games FAQ.
* http://www.ultimainfo.net/FAQ/ultimafaqs.htm#11 The U7 section of the more detailed Ultima Gameplay FAQ.



3.2. Do the carriages, ships and the magic carpet work?
Yes. The sail of ships look odd sometimes but otherwise these means of transportation work quite well.


3.3. Will you implement the extended intro for SI?
The extended intro for Serpent Isle can be found at http://www.io.com/~dloubet/. At this moment we don't even think about implementing this extended intro. Why not? It sure would be nice to use it. But you may have noticed some effects missing from the intro. You may have noticed that there is no sound. You may have noticed that there is neither speech nor subtitles. All that would have to be addressed and add to that the longer running time and that you have to synchronize the music with it. Then what about the size of it? You would need to compress it and make sure all our supported platforms make use of it.
Everyone volunteering to do it is welcome to.


3.4. Why is the party formation different?
In Exult the party (the Avatar and his companions) move quite differently than they do in the original. This is actually not a bug but a disliking of the old style.

Jeff:
It's not a bug, it's a feature! I like it that way. Everyone is sensitive to different things, and I always though the formation-walking in the original U7 looked really stupid. Eventually, someone may add the original type of walking to Exult, probably as an option.


3.5. What should I do when Exult keeps crashing when I try to save?
This is not normal behavior for Exult. Normally when you restart and "Journey Onward" Exult will actually restore to the point you saved.
Please do not play further at this point. You should restore to an earlier savegame, no matter how much game time you loose. Your game must have gotten corrupted and when you play on with it you will most likely experience even more serious problems.


3.6. Why does the game run so choppy?
Well, every Ultima required a fast computer. Even though Exult is just an engine that runs the ancient Ultima 7 it still requires a fast computer.
Seriously, if the game runs choppy for you, try the speed seeting in the Gameoptions menu and if that doesn't help also play with the original resolution (320x200), try a different scaler or disable scaling alltogether.


3.7. Why can't I hear the Sound Effects?
Please read the Audio section of our ReadMe.txt.


3.8. Why is the music so much louder/softer than the sfx/speech?
Music is played via midi but the sfx (sound effects) and speech are played via wave. Midi and Wave volume are set up seperately in the settings of your Operating System and not by Exult.


3.9. Why does Exult freeze when I board Hawk's ship on SI?
Exult doesn't really freeze as you can still access the options and savegame menu. You have run into a bug that only happens when you try to sail with Hawk late at night (game time). Please restore to a savegame before you boarded the ship and make sure you board the ship during daytime.
Currently we are not sure if that is not a bug in the original as well.


3.10. Why can't I cast mark/recall on the Virtue Runes?
You never could do this in the original as well. You have to use the Virtue Stones that you find in the same building as the runes.


3.11. What are the improvements in Exult over the original Ultima 7?
* Many more keyboard shortcuts than the original had. Including in BG the 'k' key that checks if you have the right key for a lock in your inventory. The list of keys can be found in the Documentation.
* A new worked over Game menu. This menu is explained in detail in the Documentation and many of the following improvements and Video/Audio options can be accessed via this menu. Open this Game Menu by pressing 'Esc' in the game.
* SI style paperdoll (inventory screen) in BG. Very impressive. For this you need to have Serpent Isle installed on your hard drive and you must set the path to it in exult.cfg (see the Documentation) and activate it in the Gameplay Options This new inventory screen acts sometimes a little buggy, so if an item seems to have disappeared disable the paperdolls in the Game Options.
* A beautiful new savegame box. This allows you much more savegames than the original (you should run out of disc space before you run out of savegame slots), shows a screenshot of the location you saved at, the members of your party, your stats, game time and the date you actually saved. The save game box is opened either via the game menu or the 's' key.
* Face status bars at the bottom of the screen that show your health (and that of your party members) as well as your mana. Doubleclicking on the face opens the inventory and doubleclicking on the bars shows the status screen.
* Middle mouse button support. In the normal game, the middle mouse button activates the target-function (which could also be accomplished by pressing 't'). for modal gumps, the middle mouse acts as 'return', the right button as 'escape', so you can now for example accept the default slider value by just pressing the middle button. The escape function is also available during most other actions like selecting a target or conversations.
* Wheelmouse support. If you have a wheelmouse some features are auto-enabled in Exult. In slider gumps (e.g. how much gold you want to drop), scrolling the mouse up/down, moves the slider either left or right. Holding down 'Alt' while using the wheel scrolls 10 steps. The savegame menu scrolls one line, while pressing 'Alt' it scrolls pages. You can also scroll the map of the game up or down and while pressing 'Alt' you scroll left or right.
* Fast Mouse which makes the mouse cursor move faster in fullscreen mode.
* Multiracial Avatar in BG. As with the paperdoll support you need to have SI installed and the path set in exult.cfg.
* Higher resolutions than the original. You can set the resolution as high as your computer supports. But there are some issues with it and it is considered cheating.
* Compressed savegames. Since Beta1 Exult compresses savegames by default as zip files. They are still labeled *.sav and have the savegame name in the zip comment.



3.12. Are there issues with the SI style pardoll in BG?
There are some issues. The paperdoll in BG is still limited to the slots it had originally. That means:
* You can either equip a pair of gauntlets or one/two rings.
* The 'shield behind back', 'weapon behind back' and 'belt' slots are one and the same in BG. (So if you have a weapon on your back, you can't use your belt slot)
* If an item seems to have disappeared disable the paperdolls in the Game Options, retrieve the item and enable the paperdolls again.

Sparks paperdoll looks very odd (Spark on steroids) as there is no paperdoll for kids in SI and we have to use the adult paperdoll. Unless someone draws heaps of art we can't do anything.


3.13. How do I disable all improvements?
To get an Ultima 7 that looks and behaves as close to the original as possible there are several things to do (though I wonder why you'd want to do that):
* make custom keybindings files (see Documentation) in which you disable all the keys that were not in the original for Black Gate and Serpents Isle. Since the Alpha 4 release you have to assign 's' to old_file_gump to enable the old savegame menu (the line in your custom keybindings file should look like: S old_file_gump)
* Edit the exult.cfg file to point to those custom keys.
* Disable SI-style paperdolls for BG in exult.cfg (see the documentation for that).
* Alternatively click on the disk icon and disable the paperdolls in the Gameplay Options.
* Edit the exult.cfg to use the resolution of 320x200, to run in full screen and disable scalers.
* The disc icon in the Avatar paperdoll opens the new game menu. As of now this cannot be altered. Sorry!



3.14. I heard that Exult is meant to be a game engine. Can I make my own game with Exult?
Work has begun on "Exult Studio" which is aimed to be an editor for all kinds of files that are used by Ultima 7. As of now there is already a Gimp plug-in to edit shapes.
For much more information "Exult Studio" see 4. Exult Studio.

Jeff:
As for the future, my main plan is to add editing capabilities, with the long-range goal of writing an original RPG.



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4. Exult Studio
4.1. What is it?
Exult Studio is a map-editor for Exult, allowing you to modify the map of a game and, eventually, to create a completely new landscape for a new game.


4.2. Who came up with the cool name?
Tristan


4.3. What do you need to run it?
Currently, you need to be running Exult on X (Linux, UNIX, etc.), with Exult set to run in a window (not fullscreen). You also need the GTK+ library installed as well as libglade
Recently Colourless, Kirben and Mark Siewert made Exult Studio run on Win32 platforms.


4.4. When will it be ported to other platforms?
That depends on when someone volunteers to do the work :-) Colourless, Kirben and Mark Siewert already did this for Win32. There are three issues:
* GTK has to be ported to the platform. This is already true for Win32.
* Exult Studio uses sockets to communicate with Exult. This also shouldn't be a problem for Win32.
* X drag-n-drop is used to put new objects on the landscape. The 'drop' part of this had to be rewritten for Win32 Exult, OR, drag-n-drop could be an enhancement to SDL someday. As an alternative to dragging objects, you can now select a shape, then insert it into the game window by left-clicking while holding the Shift key down.



4.5. How do you run it?
You can run Exult Studio all by itself, but it isn't useful that way, as it uses Exult as a server. What you really want to do is:
* Put 'exult_studio.glade' in the Exult 'data' directory.
* Be sure 'exult_studio' is in your path. (on Win32 'exult_studio.exe' needs to be in the same directory as exult.exe)
* Run Exult in windowed mode (not fullscreen).
* Press 'alt-ctrl-m' to go into 'map-editor' mode. If all is set up correctly, exult_studio will start up, and will have a list of files on the left side of its window (you need to have cheats enabled in Exult, see the ReadMe.txt).

Starting up one or the other separately will reconnect them:
* If Exult isn't running, start it up. Then, in Exult Studio, use the 'File' menu to choose the static directory (for the game you're playing).
* If Exult Studio isn't running start it up with: exult_studio -x (path to dir containing exult_studio.glade) -d (path to game directory)

You can also reconnect by selecting File-Connect in Exult Studio's menus.


4.6. What can you do at the moment?
With the latest source you can
* browse shapes in the main window.
* drag a shape from the shape browser to Exult, and that object will be placed in the game.
* edit an 'egg' by double-clicking on it. An edit box should appear.
* create a new 'egg' using the pull-down menu in Exult Studio. In the Egg edit box, after you hit 'Apply', you'll be prompted to click in Exult where you want the egg to appear.
* If editing a 'monster' egg, you can set the monster by dragging the shape from the browser to the area that displays the monster.
* edit an NPC by double-clicking on it, and also create a new NPC using the pull-down menu. Attributes, flags, and schedules can all be viewed and modified.
* can edit other objects' position and quality by double-clicking on them.
* browse the 'u7chunks' file, and drag them into Exult to change the terrain. In this browser, you can also create new terrains and modify their order.
* edit a 'terrain' (stored in 'u7chunks') by clicking the "Edit terrain" checkbox in Exult Studio. This is a special mode where dragging with the left mouse button 'paints' the currently-selected shape (generally one of the flat tiles near the top of the shapes browser). Note that a 'terrain' is generally used in multiple places in the map.
* save the map using ExultStudio's "File-Save map" pulldown. In order to avoid writing over files inadvertantly, the files that would normally go into the 'static' directory, will, instead, go into a 'patch' directory that you specify in your 'exult.cfg' file. Here's mine:

<game>
<blackgate>
<path>
./blackgate
</path>
<patch>
/home/jeff/exult/data/bg/static
</patch>
<title>
blackgate
</title>
.
</blackgate>
Exult will also read files from 'patch' if it exists.


4.7. What's next?
The next things to be implemented are:
* A 'barge' editor for creating things like ships and carts.
* A 'flags' editor for viewing and editing the global Usecode flags by name.
* A way to to create an entirely new game. This is a fairly big issue, since it involves having Exult run when many of its files don't yet exist.
* It will also be very nice to have a Usecode debugger someday as well.



4.8. What's with this client/server stuff?
A map-editor needs to provide the ability to display the game, place objects on the map, and move objects around. That functionality is already in Exult, and it makes sense to reuse it. So we could have made Exult a part of Exult Studio. However, Exult is already a huge program, and is getting unwieldy to work on.
With this architecture, Exult Studio can have all the messy code for displaying/editing dialog boxes, while Exult only needs a little bit of work to handle requests.
Also, I (Jeff) wanted to get a little experience programming with sockets:-)


4.9. What's with this 'terrain-editing' stuff? Why can't I just drag objects to where I want?
This confused me too, and I originally planned on doing away with it. But do a little arithmetic: U7's world has 3072x3072 tiles; that's over 9 million that need to be set. My guess is that they came up with the idea behind 'u7chunks' to save artists time and to give the map a consistent look.
The basic idea is that each 'chunk' of flat terrain, 16x16 tiles, is stored in 'u7chunks', and is indexed by its position in this file (0, 1, 2, .... The 'u7map' file specifies, for each 'chunk' in the U7 map, which of the terrains is to be used. Since the entire map has 192x192 chunks, or a total of 36,864, and since 'u7chunks' has 3072 entries, each terrain is shared an average of over 10 times. When you go into map-editing mode in Exult, the numbers displayed are the indices from 'u7chunks'.
So here are the three sorts of scenery that you can see and edit:
1. The 'terrain' (flat landscape, rocks, shrubs, and first-story buildings) specified in 'u7chunks' and 'u7map'.
2. Other non-moveable objects (second-floor structures, trees) specified in the 'ifixnn' files.
3. Moveable and changeable objects specified in the 'iregnn' files.

The challenge of writing a map-editor is keeping the above straight, and reading/storing from/to the correct files. It's sorta-kinda working now :-)
For a more detailed explanation, see Gary Thompson's paper, 'u7edit.txt' in our 'docs' directory.



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5. Bugs, known issues and not yet implemented features
5.1. Bugs
To see a list of open bugs and bugreports go to http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=2335


5.2. How do I submit a proper bug report?
1. Read the Documentation and this FAQ to see if that is not already covered and you have all set up correctly.
2. Before you report a bug to the bug tracker please try the latest snapshot. If the bug still occurs make sure that no one else already reported the bug (in the bug tracker).
3. If you are not a Sourceforge member please include your e-mail address. This is important so we can get back to you. If you are a Sourceforge member please log in before submitting a bug. If you are a member of Sourceforge you will also get notified of follow ups on your bug automatically by E-mail.
4. Make sense in the topic! For example, if the problem is with Rowenna in Skara Brae don't just choose "Skara Brae" in the topic. "BG: Rowenna crashes game" makes more sense. Sadly the space for the topics is limited. Explain the topic in "Detailed Description".
5. Include information on what version of Exult you are using. You should have used the latest snapshot but please tell us the date of the snapshot.
6. State which Operating System you use (Windows 9X, Linux, ...).
7. Please include a savegame (use common sense if it is really needed). You will find those in the game directories you put in the exult.cfg. They are called exult**bg.sav (** is a number) for BG and exult**si.sav for SI. You can look up the filename int the savegame dialog as well (to the right, above the party members). As some parts of the game may require you to complete other quests or stuff before you get to the bug you want to report it's much easier for the team to look at the problem (speeds the process up a bit as they are much more likely you take a look at the problem this way). You need to check the box saying "Check to upload and Attach file".. See this screenshot for an example: http://exult.sourceforge.net/images/sfbug.jpg
8. One bug per subject please.

Note that SourceForge requires users to enable cookies to attach files. If you use Internet Explorer 6.0 your Cookies Security needs to be at medium or below.
You can also use our forum to report bugs. But if you do please follow the guidelines mentioned above (you can't include a savegame of course). Though be aware that bugs submitted to the bug tracker are more likely to get attention than bugs submitted to the forum.
So if you want to have a bug fixed follow these steps!


5.3. Broken by Design
Exult often behaves and works differently than the original Ultima 7. These behaviors are sometimes features that just differ from the way the original worked. Some are bugs that the development team consider to have almost no detrimental effect to the enjoyment/running of the game, but would require a large amount of time and effort to fix. Please don't bother the team about those as some of these will be fixed in the future, others will only be fixed when someone who thinks it should be done differently sits down and codes it. The following are such 'features' of Exult:
* Birds and animals open doors and such, like the human and sentient creatures of Britannia do.
* Party members don't walk lockstep with the Avatar like they do in BG/SI. Please see 3.4. Why is the party formation different?.
* The way the Avatar and the companions walk. Is it 2 frames or 3 frames? This has been changed a lot as this is disputed almost every four weeks. Currently Exult is coded using 2 frames.
* Combat works differently. We don't have any hard data or formulae that tell us how combat worked in BG/SI, so DrCode put something together. If you have any information you've worked out related to this, please tell either the forum or the exult-general mailing list. Recently Jeff added an option to change the combat difficulty in exult.cfg. See the ReadMe.txt.
* Negative health and unconsciousness. Yes, it may look weird to have people walking around with negative health, but that's the way it currently works.
* Some music loops endlessly in Exult. This is actually a correction of a bug in the original. We respects the midi looping flag as set by U7's original data files but the original didn't. Users who prefer the original (broken) are able to choose so in the Game menu.



5.4. Known Issues
* Stealing and killing innocent NPCs doesn't work yet like it does in the original
* Movement is sometimes jerky or slow.
* We don't know what all the data in 'weapons.dat' and 'ammo.dat' means, so hit points and damage don't work as well as in the original game.
* If you run a resolution higher than the original (320x200) some NPCs that are further away from the Avatar may seem to disappear and reappear when you get away or closer to them.
* With scalers enabled you might encounter slow downs of the game. The team is working on this right now and it is already a lot faster.
* The speech in the intro is out of synch with the lips animation. But now it matches the speed of the text.
* There are reported problems with digital sound effects or speech when using Vortex series sound cards (like the Diamond MX 300) under Win9x/ME. Exult is triggering a bug in the drivers.
* There is also a problem involving Win9x/ME, C-Media soundcard chipsets and MIDI music. We suggest you first upgrade your drivers to the newest ones. Get them at http://www.cmedia.com.tw/. If that doesn't help, please contact us.

Possible workaround for the above mentioned audio issues: We added a config file option for Windows "config/audio/force_waveout" that when set to "yes" will force SDL to use waveout rather than attempting to use DirectSound. Using this option may fix problems some people have with sound in Exult under Windows. Additionally it seems to fix the popping sound when starting Exult in Win9x/ME/2k. This setting is now the default setting so downloading the latest snapshot is the only thing you need to do.


5.5. Known Compile Issues
* Max is working to make Exult compile on OSX like it does on all UNIX systems but that requires SDL 1.2.3 or newer.
* There is a bug/incompatibility with the flex bundled Linux distributions (RH7.0, for example) that breaks compilation. Upgrading to a more recent version of flex should fix it.
* Ater compiling yourself remember to copy the exult*.flx files from the data dir in the source to the Exult data dir you chose in exult.cfg. This applies only if you don't use "make install"



5.6. Not yet implemented
* Stealing, killing innocent NPCs doesn't work yet correctly




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6. Questions and Answers
6.1. How can I get answers concerning Ultima 7/Exult?
The best way to get answers to questions is to go to the Online discussion forum at: http://exult.sourceforge.net/forum/
To get answers concerning Ultima 7 in general go to the Ultima newsgroup: news://rec.games.computer.ultima.series
Or go to the Ultima Dragons homepage http://www.udic.org and find your way from there (this is an online Ultima fanclub)
Some Exult developers like to hang out on IRC on irc.openprojects.net, channel #exult. The logs of #exult can be found at http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/~wpalenst/exultlog.php3.


6.2. How do I contact the author of this FAQ?
This FAQ is maintained by Dominus Dragon of the UDIC AKA Dominik Reichardt. Feel free to contact me with improvements or complaints regarding the FAQ. I am part of the Exult Team though I only write the FAQ and Documentation and don't code at all.



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7. Links and Thanks
7.1. Important Links
* Exult homepage at http://exult.sourceforge.net/
* Daily code snapshot at http://exult.sourceforge.net/download.php
* Message board at http://exult.sourceforge.net/forum/
* Bugreports to http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=2335



7.2. Thanks
Of course big thanks go to the Exult Team for breathing life back into this jewel of a game.
Max Horn deserves my gratitude for making the FAQ easier to maintain via XML/XSL.
Thanks to all those I stole comments from without quoting them, those that sent me improvements and don't get quoted and so on. If you helped me in some way feel my gratitude without being mentioned.
Thanks go to Matt0 who really got me thinking about doing this FAQ (though he just did it to tease me).