Vapourware Daggerfall Unity isnt Vaporware

[Lonely Vazdru]

Very nice !

Also, thanks to Luzur for bumping the only TES thread worth something.

 

[betamin]

This looks awesome and if it gets released I will play it for sure, but call me a fag or whatever... those 2D elements can be replaced? They break my inmershun *covers*

Anyways, fingers crossed.

 

[villain of the story]

Those models look actually ok, faithful to the originals though I don't agree with Sentinel's palace towers being shit on at all.

Still, the texture voxelisation project looks far more interesting to me:
http://xlengine.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=203

 

[Nael]

also, dont know if this been posted before.

http://youtu.be/JJQ0rYjIaro

One little niggle i have is the sky texture seems out of place with the increase in draw distance. Other than that it looks like a sexy bitch.

 

[DraQ]

also, dont know if this been posted before.

http://youtu.be/JJQ0rYjIaro

One little niggle i have is the sky texture seems out of place with the increase in draw distance. Other than that it looks like a sexy bitch.

True, they could use replacement. Preferably more or less the same thing except scaled down, with more repetitions along the horizon, so that they'd look more distant while preserving the look and feel.

Sky has always been wonky in Daggerfall, BTW, it doesn't rotate properly when you turn around, even in the original.
I'm also curious how the landscape transitions will work. Changes of textures were often abrupt in DF and while I can see obvious solution when it comes to the terrain, I don't think there is one for the skybox.

 

[Xi]

If you ever have done large modding projects before, you would know sometimes you just need to take a break or you will get burned out entirely. Like I switch back and forth between modding projects to avoid that.

All his updates just get better and better. SO looking forward to playing this.

I'm just hoping he has the endurance to finish. So far, he's come a long way, but he may burn out at any moment. I see your point, but adding even more stuff to do seems like a possible detractor to the completion of the over all project.

I'm also curious how the landscape transitions will work. Changes of textures were often abrupt in DF and while I can see obvious solution when it comes to the terrain, I don't think there is one for the skybox.

The biggest issue with the terrain is that it serves almost no gameplay function. It might be fun to walk for long distances, but there will be practically noting in-between towns/cities/dungeons. The land is good for the occasional random encounter, and maybe as a staging area after a heist as a thief, but other than that it's entirely worthless to the game.

I suppose mods will fix this by adding more content (lord knows, they won't fill it all), but ultimately the game was built around fast travel.

 

[villain of the story]

Perhaps heaps of flat ground could be used to put hundreds of NPCs going at each to simulate wars? That was in the original design doc which got cut.

 

[Luzur]

well on the old forums Lucien talked about making roads between cities and stuff + open up modding for people to put stuff out there.

also, shit that was taken out before release but still exist in the files will be added.

 

[Wunderpurps]

well on the old forums Lucien talked about making roads between cities and stuff + open up modding for people to put stuff out there.

also, shit that was taken out before release but still exist in the files will be added.

That would be great. Any idea how close to a real release it is?

 

[MMXI]

well on the old forums Lucien talked about making roads between cities and stuff + open up modding for people to put stuff out there.

also, shit that was taken out before release but still exist in the files will be added.

Imagine linking up all the cities by road and having Darklands style encounters between cities.

 

[Luzur]

well on the old forums Lucien talked about making roads between cities and stuff + open up modding for people to put stuff out there.

also, shit that was taken out before release but still exist in the files will be added.

That would be great. Any idea how close to a real release it is?

DaggerXL Status – Version 0.199, Pre-Alpha. 98% towards Alpha.

well on the old forums Lucien talked about making roads between cities and stuff + open up modding for people to put stuff out there.

also, shit that was taken out before release but still exist in the files will be added.

Imagine linking up all the cities by road and having Darklands style encounters between cities.

not sure how that is going to work though, with all those 6 million cities/towns in some 20+ provinces.

 

[MMXI]

not sure how that is going to work though, with all those 6 million cities/towns in some 20+ provinces.

There's far less than 6 million towns. But even still, you can generate them procedurally just like the cities. I don't quite see your point.

 

[Luzur]

not sure how that is going to work though, with all those 6 million cities/towns in some 20+ provinces.

There's far less than 6 million towns. But even still, you can generate them procedurally just like the cities. I don't quite see your point.

it was figuratively speaking, i know it not that many, but still a shitload to pave road for.

but maybe some algoritm can be made to calculate roads between every town,hamlet,inn etc. and add it in the random generator engine.

 

[Wunderpurps]

I meant a more subjective estimate. I mean does it feel like you are playing a game yet even or what?

 

[Luzur]

well, i have not tried out the beta, but i do know NPC's are not present from what ive seen from the builds.

but things are smoother, yes.

try it for yourself and judge.

 

[Tel Velothi]

Simply incredible. I admire authors of this project. They are putting so much time, effort and heart to it.

 

[Wunderpurps]

well, i have not tried out the beta, but i do know NPC's are not present from what ive seen from the builds.

but things are smoother, yes.

try it for yourself and judge.

Thanks, I was hoping it was closer but I guesstimate it's over half done poking around a bit.

 

[Xi]

It's in alpha stage, meaning the game lacks full implementation. When it hits Beta it will be full game with bugs. It's got a ways to go, but hes done quite a bit so far.

 

[Luzur]

update:

As you know this project has suffered through a long hiatus, see Returning from Beyond for more information. In order to get back into the swing of things quicker, I’m changing the next release into a “Tiered Release.”

To put it simply, I will be releasing an update for one game at a time. They will still use the new refactored XL Engine that I’ve been working on and the updated Launcher.

Here is a tentative plan:
* Release 1: XL Engine Core, Launcher, DaggerXL game DLL. Windows only.
* Release 2: Updated XL Engine Core (fixing some issues that are still present and issues found from Release 1), DarkXL game DLL.
* Release 3: More engine updates, BloodXL game DLL. BloodXL will initially support only muliplayer, with proper single player support coming in future builds.
* Release 4: Finally OutlawsXL game DLL. OutlawsXL will initially support only muliplayer, with proper single player support coming in future builds.
* Release 5: Complete Builds for Linux and OS X.

After these 5 releases, we’ll move into the iterative build schedule I talked about a long time ago. The plan is to have one build every week, so I will set aside time to work on smaller items for the weekly builds and larger items will just go into the next available build that is ready. To make this work, I’ll spend some time after these next 5 releases making sure I have a source control system that supports branching – allowing new larger features to be worked on in their own branch and merged back when ready. The idea is to keep the momentum going and make this part of my regular schedule again.

http://xlengine.com/?page_id=24

 

[Jaesun]

Does the original MIDI work in this? Specifically the Roland MT-32 as well as the Roland Sound Canvas.

 

[Luzur]

Does the original MIDI work in this? Specifically the Roland MT-32 as well as the Roland Sound Canvas.

dunno, ask at the forums.

 

[Wyrmlord]

2 years later and DaggerXL is still coming closer...

Even if it is done by this year, the result will be an extensive mod just to make a 16 year old game look fancier and nicer. But anyone with an interest in such an ancient game would already be okay with Daggerfall's graphics.

All this said, I will still try out this mod, and I still admire the very good quality of work they are doing.

 

[crazyirish]

Theoretically capable of adding much more than graphics. Full mod support could be very interesting. I'm still hoping for multiplayer coop.

 

[Luzur]

forgot to post some of the news on DaggerXL:

http://xlengine.com/

I’ve been working on refactoring the terrain and “location” code for the XL Engine. There were several deficiencies with the original DaggerXL system that I was seeking to rectify, which I’ll talk about below. Everything I show in this post was rendered with the software renderer, running in 8 bit mode. As I’ve talked about before, GPU support has also been expanded – Shader Model 2.0 support will no longer be required. The new requirement for GPU rendering is OpenGL fixed function support.
The sky in Daggerfall is basically a flat plane that is scrolled as the camera is rotated, very much like the backgrounds in psuedo-3D games such as the original Mario Kart. The result is that the scrolling of the background doesn’t match the rotation in the foreground. In vanilla Daggerfall this looked strange but when running at smoother framerates an higher resolutions it looks rather disturbing. The XL Engine now uses a “tapered cylinder” to map the 2D sky textures onto 3D geometry in the scene. The result is proper scrolling and perspective while maintaining the appearance of “infinite” distance.
One visual problem in DaggerXL were the “rounded cliffs” that showed up in the terrain, especially around locations. The terrain generation has been improved, changes in elevation in the base heightmap are visualized in a much nicer way now. In addition medium detail data has been added/generated, resulting in more variety. Terrain textures are handled properly now as well, without the seams and hardlines that were in DaggerXL. There are still the occasional seams, when a combination of terrain types isn’t support by the art, but these are rare and were present in vanilla Daggerfall as well. Finally coastlines look much better now then in the last release of DaggerXL.

In DaggerXL transitions between cells caused hiccups that were very noticeable, as new terrain tiles were generated and locations loaded. Due to the terrain refactoring, these pauses are very rarely long enough to be noticeable now. Only parts of the terrain that need updating are regenerated, the area that stays the same is simply “moved” into the correct place for the new view. This means that only a fraction of the visible terrain needs to be touched, instead of all of it like before.
Object positioning is handled using two sets of coordinates – “local world space” and “global.” The global coordinates point to the “cell” the where the objects exist in the world. The “local world space” coordinates are the objects fine grain position within that cell. To position objects relative to the camera, they are converted into “relative” coordinates – basically centered around the cell that the player or camera currently occupies. In the previous release, objects were responsible for updating these relative coordinates in their game logic code. This was obviously a very bad idea, something easy to miss or fail to update. Now these relative coordinates are no longer explicitly stored, only the local world space and global coordinates are actually stored and handled by the objects. The conversion to relative coordinates is done, as needed, at a low level. All code goes through this path, freeing the game logic from having to worry about it at all. This fixes a variety of issues, including the “phantom collisions” and other collision related issues.
Foliage updates and rendering speed has also improved, resulting in much improved exterior rendering performance even on low end hardware or using software rendering. The flats are also scaled properly, fixing scaling issues that the previous release had with several flats.

This post only scratches the surface, a lot of work has been completed since the last update. Below I show a movie of some of this stuff in action.
For the movie the in-game UI has been disabled (just like all the screenshots) and enemies are not loaded. However the release will have all the UI elements, monsters and so forth that the previous release had. Also animated sprites have not been fully reincorporated yet, but they will be in the final release too.
There are more features that I didn’t talk about above that will also be in the release as well. This release will be more complete in terms of gameplay as well as visuals. Features include: waves in the ocean (as shown in the video), NPCs that walk around the locations, improved UI – fixing a variety of issues such as click-through, mouse offset, etc. and implementing missing features such as unequipping items, getting item info, scroll bars and more. So this release is not just about the refactoring and engine merger but improving and fixing existing features, improving performance, improving hardware support – with fixed function support and the software renderer, paving the way for cross platform support, adding networking support (though no actual multiplayer in this release), implementing new features for both gameplay and visuals, merging all projects under one engine and more.

 

[bhlaab]

2 years later and DaggerXL is still coming closer...

Even if it is done by this year, the result will be an extensive mod just to make a 16 year old game look fancier and nicer. But anyone with an interest in such an ancient game would already be okay with Daggerfall's graphics.

All this said, I will still try out this mod, and I still admire the very good quality of work they are doing.

No, I've been holding out. I don't mind antique graphics but that low resolution just makes it so chunky you can barely tell what anything is