ULTIMA8: Stacked sorcery reagents do not display number

[bliznik]

This is for ScummVM v. 2.7.0, with the time stamp of Feb 14, 2023.

In Ultima 8, you may stack certain items, like coins and reagents.

When you stack Necromancy reagents, if you look at the reagent, you can see the number of reagents.

When you stack Sorcery reagents, if you look at the reagent, you can just see...a single reagent. You only know that there are multiple reagents if you try to move the reagent to a different location...whereupon you get the pop-up slider that allows you to select how many reagents to move.

In addition, this pop-up slider only pops up in certain situations. For example, if you move a reagent from the ground into a bag in your inventory, you will get the pop-up slider allowing you to select how many reagents you're moving. But if you move a reagent from the bag in your inventory to the ground, you will move the ENTIRE stack of reagents. This leads to the situation where, in order for me to place a single reagent on the ground from my inventory, I need to move the entire stack of reagents to the ground, then move the stack from the ground into my inventory, selecting all but one reagent to move.

Not a game-breaking bug, but just annoying.

I attach here a savegame where there are two stacks of Brimstone on the ground next to one another. A stack of 1 and a stack of 10. Both look the same, but you can only figure out the difference if you move them to a location that allows you to select how many reagents you are moving.

[OMGPizzaGuy]

This is unfortunately how the original game works as well. The usecode look command doesn't show numbers for sorcery reagents. I've attached an original game save at Malchir's Chambers with a bag full of stacked reagents.

I agree this is bad behavior, especially as the slider gump does not currently appear when pulling a stack out of a container to the world. We will address that bug with #14045

I will change this ticket to a feature request as I also assumed it was our bug.

[wjp]

The situation in the original U8 for this is a bit weird. This seems to be something that was changed between 2.12 (patched or ultima collection version) and 2.13 (GOG version) by changing the shape family for sorcery reagent from generic to reagent.

I'm not sure if making these stackable actually improves the user experience...