ULTIMA8: New Journal Interface creates a few issues

[bliznik]

This is for the latest development build, compiled 1/28/2021

In Ultima VIII: Pagan, the journal interface has now changed.

While an improvement, this introduces a few issues:
(1) Because Reading and Writing to the Journal now brings up the F5 and F7 Save/Restore game menus, we can no longer create a new Savegame. In the original version of Pagan, the first Savegame always defaulted to "The Beginning." This allowed a player to start a new game by "Reading" the first savegame. Now, with the new UI, we can no longer read that first default savegame, which means there is now no way to start a new game without deleting all previous savegames
(2) The F5 and F7 savegame menus look nice in the default resolution (320 x 240), but look extremely tiny with any other resolution (I know some players prefer 640 x 480). Maybe this can be scaled with an increased resolution?
(3) The Options now brings up the ScummVM Edit Game Volume and Keymaps menus. While it's nice to have this in the game, this now prevents us from accessing other volume features that were in the original Journal, like turning on and off Avatar Steps and turning on and off Animations.
(4) Regarding default Keymaps, maybe the default "Show Touching Items" key should be changed to be different from "h," as this key now brings up the ScummVM debug help menu instead of showing me what the "Touching Items" are.

[mduggan]

There's a few different things here, but as a workaround for save/load issues you can revert to the original journal by adding "originalsaveload=true" to the ultima8 section of your scummvm.ini.

The Options screen has been like that ever since Pentagram was imported into scummvm though, so that's a different issue - I agree it would be nice to add back options like avatar steps, it's a work in progress to add back some options like that to the ScummVM options screen (they are all still supported in the code)

[mduggan]

Thanks to the work of OMGPizzaGuy, the options menu now includes the footsteps option, and the option to use the original save/load screens. I hope that fixes these problems mostly. The appearance in high res may also be nicer now that the high DPI mode has been added, but I haven't checked that.

[OMGPizzaGuy]

Just noticed "Touching Items" / "Show Touching Items" key binds. Neither are meant to be in the normal controls category and are for debug purposes. I'll move them to the debug category and they'll be excluded from the release builds.

[i30817]

This is out of topic OMGPizzaGuy but did you notice my other feature request in U8? Not pressuring or anything, just afraid the active u8 dev wouldn't notice the 'feature request' tab instead of the 'bugs' tab.

[OMGPizzaGuy]

Replying to i30817:

This is out of topic OMGPizzaGuy but did you notice my other feature request in U8? Not pressuring or anything, just afraid the active u8 dev wouldn't notice the 'feature request' tab instead of the 'bugs' tab.

Yes, I did see the feature request, but I do not plan on implementing at this point. This can be evaluated in the future, but I am currently attempting to fix bugs for the upcoming release.

[OMGPizzaGuy]

I'm going to close this as I believe all concerns are now handled.
I think there is a valid feature request for an easier way to start a new game, but that can be handled separately.

For the list:
1) Enabling the "Use original save/load screens" option allow selecting "The Beginning..." for a new game.
2) Default ScummVM save/load dialogs do now work well in higher resolution.
3) Options dialog now include many of the same options as original game.
4) Highlight Items defaults to 'h' but does not bring up help or the debug console, which I suspect is what was showing before.