Vapourware Daggerfall Unity isnt Vaporware

[Russia is over. The end.]

Spoiler

Eroded and Enhanced Terrain

• Quote

Post by Freak2121 » Wed Jan 06, 2021 12:35 am

Nexus link.

Screenshots:
Spoiler!

Hello! It has always been on my mind (since 2011 at least) that a remake/upgrade for Daggerfall would look stunning and beautiful if the primitive heightmap were replaced with a much more detailed and realistic one instead.

For years I toyed around with lots of different software, different methods, different ideas, etc trying to make a good heightmap but I never had the opportunity to test it out. That is, until recently when chtujo contacted me and told me Daggerfall Unity actually draws its height information from WOODS.WLD, rather than a simple heightmap image. I still had FiryWoods around, a tool that lets you edit WOODS.WLD, although chtujo made his own tool which I haven't had the chance to try yet. I also had World Machine installed, as well as my old files for editing the heightmaps. So everything was in place to make this happen.

The process is detailed in short on the Nexus page's description.

The terrain has very natural transitions between areas, is decently interesting without being cartoony, and is fairly faithful to the original. It is also tweaked for and intended to be used with Nystul's Distant Terrain mod. There are some issues, however.

Issues:
1. The terrain is very noisy/bumpy pretty much everywhere. It just doesn't look good.
2. There's a lot of missing detail. I've replaced the noise map with a high quality version of the heightmap, however, I have no idea how to make it actually reflect on the terrain as extra details. There's a pretty significant difference in quality between the heightmap (800m/px) and the noise map (160m/px) and a lot of details such as river valleys are lost.
3. There are no more lakes. I'm sorry for killing them off.

Daggerfall and Daggerfall Unity use sea-level heights to form lakes, water doesn't form on any other height. If I kept it as is, there would be a bunch of massive pits all over the landscape and not only would it look ugly, it would throw the erosion and river simulations off. So I just leveled them with their surrounding terrain.


Github.

I hope this interests some of you, I'd love some feedback. If not, at least there's some pretty pictures.

Many thanks to chtujo.

"3. There are no more lakes."

Are there a lot of lakes or is it like just one in the entire game? Are any of them important? I was afraid to install it.

 

[agris]

Yeah, reads like another case of Classic Modder. Wow-amazing features... except it deletes all the lakes in the game.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Installed 47 mods and the game launched just fine. Stupid mod makers didn't pack half of the mods right, Vortex places them in the wrong directory. It's easy enough to spot and fix though.
Only a handful of mods require a certain load order, most of them don't need anything.
The game freezes up sometimes for a sec, but not often enough to be annoying. Reached Daggerfall. So far so good.

 

[deem]

What's the state of this game now? Is it fully playable? I never played Daggerfall. Can I play this already, wait or play the original?

 

[perfectslumbers]

What's the state of this game now? Is it fully playable? I never played Daggerfall. Can I play this already, wait or play the original?

It's complete. Go ahead and play it, turn on retro mode for sick pixelated graphics.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

What's the state of this game now? Is it fully playable? I never played Daggerfall. Can I play this already, wait or play the original?

whynotplayboth.gif

 

[V_K]

What's the state of this game now? Is it fully playable? I never played Daggerfall. Can I play this already, wait or play the original?

whynotplayboth.gif

Because you only got one lifetime to do that.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Because you only got one lifetime to do that.

Reported for anti-Hinduism.

 

[perfectslumbers]

whynotplayboth.gif

Because in Daggerfall Unity you can use the dodge skill!

 

[index.php]

 

[mastroego]

don't plants need light or something?

 

[Bloodeyes]

I fear the Daggerfall Unity team have fallen into that rabbit hole of tinkering with graphics minutiae and tweaking minor lighting effects, instead of working on really important, engine stuff.

The former is fun and gives immediate gratification. The latter is hard.

I actually complained to them about the color palette in retro mode on their forums ages ago. I'm glad they are paying attention to it. The game looks much better now. I might not need to use reshade filters when I play it again.

 

[JBro]

Anyone else getting floating items?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Daggerfall Unity is truly a faithful recreation of the original game!

 

[Fowyr]

What's the state of this game now? Is it fully playable? I never played Daggerfall. Can I play this already, wait or play the original?

I was fully playable year or two ago already, I took my old original saves and completed it.

 

[index.php]

Daggerfall Unity 0.13.5 Beta


Getting Started
If this is your first time installing Daggerfall Unity, please visit Installing Daggerfall Unity and Other Information for help getting started.

Summary
This release is an improvement update for Daggerfall Unity with bug fixes and new modding support. Version 0.13.5 is intended to be a stable version for general play. If you experience new issues with this version, please report to Help & Support on the Workshop Forums.

General Fixes & Improvements
JohnDoom

• Option to change interaction mode without notification #2290

extract

• Add toggle noclip console command - use "tcl" from console to toggle noclip on/off #2277

Cliffworms

• Update/world data editor object data #2272

Macadaynu

• Fix for switching back to original enemy Team #2271

AsesinoBlade

• Fix Loop for FactionsAndBuildings to include Gem Stores #2273
• Add Pawn Shop to the Regional Topic #2285

KABoissonneault

• Fixed calendar showing "23th of Sun's Dusk" #2287
• Classic parity - Don't show armor values on Character Sheet paperdoll #2293
• PR #2284 mod compilation issue workaround #2300

Pango

• Only warn about non-optional missing dependencies #2292

Magicono43

• Add Support For Jewelry Type Items To Be Rendered On Paper-doll if They Have Their Equip Slot Set To The Body, Mod Support #2274

TheLacus

• Fix missing sound and StaticNPC for imported RMB gameobjects #2248

Hazelnut

• Prevent shops being treated like FG #2276
• Make preset button in mod settings more obvious #2279
• Update GetGroupIndex to simply return input for new items from mods #2280
• Allow setting some TravelPopup properties from override classes #2281
• World Data Editor - Fix truncation of water level in start markers #2282
• Extract abstract class from DaggerfallBillboard and move summary struct into MobileUnit base class #2284
• Fix bug where ally/enemy propagation is not performed for Knightly Orders #2297
• Fix 2 usages of Clamp() that were not assigning the result #2298
• Fix bug with promptmulti action #2299
• Don't override faction id if the replacement id is zero #2302

Interkarma

• Fix improper quest resource cast f4d1668
• Disable non-classic feature option Advanced Climbing by default fe3c0a2
• Add CustomDisplayName property for PotionRecipe 887366d

 

[Late Bloomer]

Like dressing up a crackhead hooker in a princess outfit

 

[Tweed]

Well, I've seen worse, lots worse. At least it doesn't have eyeraping levels of bloom everywhere.

 

[agris]

Truly prosperian, I’m impressed. Ai upscaled 2D sprite billboard NPCs that turn to face you from all angles should be a mechanic introduced in a Redaxium update. Add several animal models rendered in full 3D for the full aesthetic dissonance experience.

 

[Tweed]

Truly prosperian, I’m impressed. Ai upscaled 2D sprite billboard NPCs that turn to face you from all angles should be a mechanic introduced in a Redaxium update. Add several animal models rendered in full 3D for the full aesthetic dissonance experience.

Need raytracing for the full effect.

 

[Funposter]

I think AI upscaling is neat, but D.R.E.A.M ruins the charm of the original sprites and a lot of the additions in that video such as the 3D skeletons just end up making the already mix-and-match art style of Daggerfall look unbelievably schizophrenic. The game already has a mixture of traditional, hand-drawn sprites and pre-rendered 3D models converted into sprites, so why you would want to confuse the matter even further is beyond me. The environmental/landscape/architectural textures are less terrible and combined with the ~cool lighting~ look pretty decent, I think. Of course it's all in service of nothing, because Daggerfall is a game where you spend 90% of your time running dungeons and so making the towns look really pretty or the landscapes more varied doesn't actually serve a functional purpose. I for one would much rather play the game using the Retro Rendering mode which preserves the look and feel of the original, while making the overall experience less clunky.

Also mods that get rid of the original skyboxes are

 

[Butter]

I just finished an unmodded playthrough of Daggerfall Unity, and I very much doubt the experience could've been improved by any of the mods. This game suffers from almost Oblivion-tier level scaling, and it becomes tremendously immersion-breaking after about 5 hours. You can leave a dungeon mid-quest to sell off junk, and when you get back the dungeon is repopulated with the next tier of enemies. By around level 12, generic enemies are dropping daedric weapons. There's also the problem every procgen game runs into, where it has to reuse the same prefab components over and over (even in main quest dungeons). Again, after about 5 hours it becomes really distracting. Unless there are mods to address these two issues, I don't see why anyone would bother.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

This game suffers from almost Oblivion-tier level scaling,

*ahem*

Oblivion... i just hate the scaling of mobs like DS2.

Daggerfall has aggressive level scaling, yet it's not something I ever see it criticized for. I wonder if people just don't notice it if it's not pointed out to them or something

How aggressive can it really be if no one notices it?

 

[Butter]

This game suffers from almost Oblivion-tier level scaling,

*ahem*

Oblivion... i just hate the scaling of mobs like DS2.

Daggerfall has aggressive level scaling, yet it's not something I ever see it criticized for. I wonder if people just don't notice it if it's not pointed out to them or something

How aggressive can it really be if no one notices it?

Mea culpa. I had never played more than 5 hours on one character before.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I just finished an unmodded playthrough of Daggerfall Unity, and I very much doubt the experience could've been improved by any of the mods. This game suffers from almost Oblivion-tier level scaling, and it becomes tremendously immersion-breaking after about 5 hours. You can leave a dungeon mid-quest to sell off junk, and when you get back the dungeon is repopulated with the next tier of enemies. By around level 12, generic enemies are dropping daedric weapons. There's also the problem every procgen game runs into, where it has to reuse the same prefab components over and over (even in main quest dungeons). Again, after about 5 hours it becomes really distracting. Unless there are mods to address these two issues, I don't see why anyone would bother.

Daggerfall is the only game where level scaling not only makes sense but is actually mandatory because the content is literally made for you out of thin air.

Oblivion was retarded because it carried this mechanic without understanding why it was there. Level scaling in an hand crafted game makes no sense but when all the content is procedurally generated it's all literally scaled because it's being made out of nothing. That would still be the case even if they limited how far the scaler could go for certain zones because it wouldn't take you long before realizing what the limit is.