Exult

Exult is a Free Software reimplementation of the Ultima VII game engine. It enables play of Ultima VII: The Black Gate and Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, and their corresponding expansion disks Forge of Virtue and Silver Seed, on modern machines. In order to play these games, data files from the original games are needed. Exult itself is distributed under GNU General Public License.

Exult originally started as Ultima VII map viewer for the X Window System, but later, as the reverse engineering efforts became more fruitful in finding explanation on the Ultima VII scripting files, the project expanded to become a complete reimplementation of the Ultima VII runtime engine.

Before the project came to fruition, there was a demand for a implementation of Ultima VII. Original Ultima VII executables started to show their age: they were rather difficult to get working on the systems of even their own era due to their memory management configuration, and nowadays, the MS-DOS support in general is getting less and less viable. Reportedly, Origin Systems has also lost the source code to the games, and is not planning on any kinds of rewrites for modern systems. Yet, even today, the game has many fans who would like to play the game on their current systems.

Exult has, over time, grown to be almost exact reimplementation of Ultima VII engine, with some notable improvements. The system has been written in C++ with 32-bit architectures in mind. The graphics code these days uses SDL library, which has led to Exult being ported for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Sharp Zaurus and other operating systems aside from the original "free *NIX" platforms (such as GNU/Linux and FreeBSD). Formerly, Exult was also supported on BeOS. An unofficial port exists for Xbox.

Aside of portability and ability to run on modern operating systems, there are also number of enhancements over original games, such as

• unlimited number of savegame slots,
• many usability fixes, including numerous new key shortcuts,
• ability to use Serpent Isle "paperdolls" in Black Gate,
• optional statusbar that displays party member health, and
• ability to use digital samples instead of MIDI sounds, and digital music in Ogg Vorbis format instead of MIDI music.

Exult also includes a comprehensive cheat system, similar to the original Ultima VII.

Recently, there has also been an effort to turn Exult into a 3D game. This code fork is called Exult 3D, and is currently alpha quality software - the code isn't likely to be merged to main Exult for a long time. Exult 3D primarily uses the actual data from the game. All objects in Ultima VII, while generally having a 2D appearance, actually also include height data from which it's possible to create bounding box. Additionally, this version also uses custom 3D models for many things, such as all living things - since these are small and the sprites lack the details - and mountain ranges.

Exult Studio

Exult also optionally includes Exult Studio, which is slowly growing into a very complete and complex tool for modifying the game - even while the game is running. Also included are many command-line tools for manipulating game files.

The editor is built as a separate program that can interface with a running instance of Exult. Changing data files is done in Exult Studio window, while the game world - everything from terrain to objects, creatures and their schedules - can be changed directly through game view.

Also included are compiler and decompiler (the latter is not built by default) for the "usecode" script file. This file drives the actual game logic. There are also tools that can be used to 'rip' data sections from the file; this is particularly of interest for people who wish to change the name and dialogue sections of the game. There are, for example, projects to translate Ultima VII to other languages (A Spanish fan translation of Black Gate is underway, as is a fan translation project to translate Serpent Isle to French).

In theory, it would be possible to create, from scratch, a new game based on Exult engine; however, it is not entirely practical yet. It is quite possible, however, to create a game that is at least in large part based on original Ultima VII data files.

See also

• Pentagram, similar reimplementation effort for Ultima VIII

External links

• Exult home page (http://exult.sourceforge.net/)
• Exult Documentation Project wiki (http://www.crpgn.org/exult/)