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I am new to DBPro,
I am very new to graphical programing.
But sorta old hat as a coder.
Well in all honesty a script-kiddie more than a programmer.

So anyway, I been disecting the Ultima VII
data files with the help of numerous online
documents, and the open source project Exult.

I've managed to code a none-interactive
map viewer. All tiles, and stationary objects
visible. It reads the data from the original
Ultima VII data files. Constructs new data
files in memory, and you can surf the map at
fairly high speeds.

The point of doing this, is not to recreate
a well loved game ( go play Exult if you
want to play Ultima VII on your modern machine ).
The point is to learn the capabilities of DBPro,
and also learn something about graphical programming.
( yeah coding pong or breakout is normally the first
step, but I am a road-less-traveled sorta guy )

Anyway, I am at the end of the first stage. And
now intend to put all the dozen-or-so pieces
together into one application. Hopefully learning
to optimize the code as I go.

If you are an Ultima VII fan, and have your own
legitamte original copy. And if you have any interest
in a ( function-limited ) DBPro mapviewer...
Please let me know, and I'll package it up
for distribution.

It currently displays all the terrain tiles,
static walls of buildings, caves, etc... And the
immobile objects like statues, columns, trees,
rocks, etc... Along with a very poor implementation
of the animated tiles : shore line surf,
swamp gas bubbles and hot water bubbles.

Terrain grid alignment is 100%, and sprite alignment
is 70% to 85% ( meaning a tree or other object maybe
off its exact location by a few pixels north and
a few pixels west ). You can clearly tell what is
not properly aligned as there are target markers in
the terrain, if any portion of the target marker is
visible, then the object is off its mark by that amount.

Also the draw order is not optimized, and some objects
may be over-lapped by other objects. Such errors are
infrequent and obvious.

There are no implict goals to this project, other than
learning the DBPro langauge, and basics of graphical
programming ( as described above ). However as this is
a learning project, any Veterans or Noobs wanting to
contribute are welcome to contact me. The basic assumption
being: I can learn from Veterans, and I can better learn
( what I think I know ) by teaching Noobs.

Stage two, will consist of ( but will not be limited to )
repair of the object placement, better implementaion of
animated sprites, and a toggle-able dynamic collision map.

Thoughts and comments are always welcome.

That sounds awsome, can we see some screens?

um, sure...
I dont have a URL, but I think I can post them
in the attachment function of the form, meaning
you download a RAR and view them from within a
the compressed file.

I am coding the mapviewer in the original display
format of 320x200, which means the shots will be
very small viewed on modern systems...

( of course in practice DBPro will scale the viewer to any size )

I'll make something up...

Thanks for your interest...

I love Ultima 7. I have the original U7 disks but a friend of mine that smokes borrowed it and ruined every disk. So now I have the Ultima 7 box on the shelf right next to me with useless 5 1/4 disks. :-(

Because of my love for Ultima I played Ultima Online for 5 years (Pacific Shard).

Ok, here are some screen caps...
They are small, very small, the original game wasn't even VESA.
It ran at 320x200... Thus the caps are at 320x200...
Running DBPro in Exclusive 320x200 looks good none the less.

Anyway, you can see that the object placement isn't perfect.
there is a target tile in the terrain which is
a reddish square with a bright green "F" in it...
You can't miss it.

I took multiple caps of the shoreline ( 01 - 03 ) to show
the animation is working. Same with some waves out at sea.

Any comments are welcome.

@Grog : you can snag a CD of the Complete U7 off ebay for apx $5...
or even the complete series 1-8 plus Alkabeth( aka Ultima 0 ) for
about $20. I personally have all the original games, boxes, floppies,
maps, trinkets, manuals, clue books... But then again I am a geek.

I discovered Ultima starting at 7 so i've got all of them from there including all the add-ons. For years and years we've had an Ultima cloth map on our wall in the computer room. I introduced Ultima 7 to my mom and she's been hooked on Ultima ever since too. In fact her and I both played Ultima Online for 5 years.

Looking at those pictures bring back SO many good memories.

Just an Update...

Object placement is 100%...

**EDIT**
Animated tiles are now implemented much better.
Using a routine to delete and recreate the sprite.

I just got into Ultima after I saw Ultima IV in DarkBASIC.

Cool! Everything is a sprite?... and it's not super slow? I'm doing experiments with my own Ultima 7 like game but i'm just pasting images.

The ZERO level tiles that comprise the actual terrrain,
are all one sprite ( animated ), between pastings the frame
is changed as necessary. It is MUCH faster than paste image.
Everything else at this point is also sprites, just because
the functions are in place. It runs fairly speedy.

Cool! I wonder if it's fast just because your resolution is like the original 320x200. I'm using 640x480. Right now i'm trying to figure out how to layer all the data properly. I've got 17 layers of potential space for objects/tiles (I was shocked at how fast it worked with that much data). How many layers of data is in Ultima 7?