Vapourware Daggerfall Unity isnt Vaporware

[agris]

It gets really jarring when your view is directed over to the sea.

This isn’t fixed by a mod yet? Something that analyzes the terrain around the player and selects an appropriate skybox?

 

[Cologno]

It gets really jarring when your view is directed over to the sea.

This isn’t fixed by a mod yet? Something that analyzes the terrain around the player and selects an appropriate skybox?

Maybe it's Distant Terrain you're looking for?

 

[agris]

It gets really jarring when your view is directed over to the sea.

This isn’t fixed by a mod yet? Something that analyzes the terrain around the player and selects an appropriate skybox?

Maybe it's Distant Terrain you're looking for?

That's cool, but doesn't address the issue we're discussing: a skybox with mountains, for example, appearing when you're looking out over the ocean.

 

[Cologno]

It gets really jarring when your view is directed over to the sea.

This isn’t fixed by a mod yet? Something that analyzes the terrain around the player and selects an appropriate skybox?

Maybe it's Distant Terrain you're looking for?

That's cool, but doesn't address the issue we're discussing: an skybox with mountains, for example, appearing when you're looking out over the ocean.

Yeah, that's true, my bad. How about this one? Or is the "issue" limited to vanilla skyboxes. Google-fu'ing around the net is indicating that, if yes, you seek purity, you're not getting the happy ending and need to compromise with a mod...just sayin', you're gonna have to likely live with enhanced graphics in one part of the game (oh noes, but the happy ending with a bit of drip is you don't have to go full retard to maintain consistent aesthetics).

 

[Fink]

Is this pretty much the way to play daggerfall now?

I'm not interested in mods or graphical enhancements, btw, just bug/engine fixes.

 

[Lemming42]

Yeah, there's no real reason to pick the DOS version.

The only thing you'll need to decide for a fresh, unmodded DF Unity install is whether or not you want to play with DF Unity's smaller dungeons feature enabled. Most people agree it improves the game, but it's a personal choice.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The large dungeons is the only reason i even liked the game lmao.

 

[Funposter]

Yeah, there's no real reason to pick the DOS version.

The only thing you'll need to decide for a fresh, unmodded DF Unity install is whether or not you want to play with DF Unity's smaller dungeons feature enabled. Most people agree it improves the game, but it's a personal choice.

The large dungeons is the only reason i even liked the game lmao.

The problem with shorter dungeon crawls is that they mess up the progression of factions. You end up getting too much reputation at too low of a level, and all of a sudden you're being sent out to kill Ancient Liches by your Knightly Order at Level 6. Something twice as big as the current 'Smaller Dungeons' option would probably be ideal. Not completely labyrinthine like vanilla, but definitely not the brevity of Smaller Dungeons.

 

[Luzur]

 

[Lyric Suite]

Yeah, there's no real reason to pick the DOS version.

The only thing you'll need to decide for a fresh, unmodded DF Unity install is whether or not you want to play with DF Unity's smaller dungeons feature enabled. Most people agree it improves the game, but it's a personal choice.

The large dungeons is the only reason i even liked the game lmao.

The problem with shorter dungeon crawls is that they mess up the progression of factions. You end up getting too much reputation at too low of a level, and all of a sudden you're being sent out to kill Ancient Liches by your Knightly Order at Level 6. Something twice as big as the current 'Smaller Dungeons' option would probably be ideal. Not completely labyrinthine like vanilla, but definitely not the brevity of Smaller Dungeons.

I would say the problem is that there's nothing else in this game BUT the dungeons.

Daggerfall was a dungeon crawler. The outside world is just fluff. It was never a walking simulator like Morrowind. It's just so typical of modern gaymers to focus on all the wrong shit.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Case in point to what i just said.

 

[SharkClub]

I never play with smaller dungeons on. The large dungeons are a true test of your navigational ability in video games and I think that's what makes them fun to me despite them being procedurally generated and made up of premade blocks, even though handcrafted level design and the art (make no mistake, it is an art, one that modern game developers often fail at and add yellow paint to everything offset their total lack of talent) of guiding the player naturally are usually some of the things I value most in a video game.

 

[Lemming42]

The thing that puts me off is that the blocks repeat so much after a short time. With smaller dungeons, the game has a bit more longevity since it'll take more time for you to see everything.

It's also just a bit much when you're doing low-level guild quests and someone's like "oh hey, can you find the ring I dropped when I was visiting this place earlier" and it turns out to be the hardest dungeon ever in a videogame. Combine that with quest objectives often spawning behind secret doors and it's just not fun - the secret doors are tolerable in the smaller dungeons since there's less ground to cover, but in a huge dungeon it means that unless you check several miles of walls then you're just going to miss the objective since there's often no visual indicator of a secret door.

I'm surprised people haven't done more to mod the dungeons, though I dunno what it'd involve or how easy it'd be. Even adding, say, ten new dungeon blocks to the game would make it a totally fresh experience. Maybe it'd also be cool to have dungeons somehow scale with quest level - so beginner quests will send you to a three-block dungeon, while master quests would send you to a vanilla-size dungeon.

 

[catfood]

Big dungeons are great. Big random dungeons aren't.

 

[SharkClub]

I'm surprised people haven't done more to mod the dungeons, though I dunno what it'd involve or how easy it'd be. Even adding, say, ten new dungeon blocks to the game would make it a totally fresh experience.

I was thinking about this recently. It probably wouldn't be too hard to replace dungeon blocks entirely as long as the entrances and exits from them line up with the old version of the block, they should slot in okay.

Making brand new ones and somehow injecting them into existing dungeons is another story though, I think you'd have to regenerate the seed that handles the procedural generation for the dungeons with instructions to add the new blocks, which in effect would change every non-story dungeon in the game entirely.

So yeah, replacing some of the more redundant maze ones with some new level design would probably be the best way to go about it (people already edit town blocks and add a bunch of detail without any real complication). In dungeons I'd like to see more of the large open rooms, water-filled areas, etc. since those are the ones that let you take advantage of your movement-based spells and skills such as levitate, water walking or climbing.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Well, you'd think if they were going to improve on a game like this, they'd try to make the randomization better. Instead, they are putting grass in areas of the game you'll never see (honestly who is going to actually travel from town to town?).

 

[SharkClub]

I think people look at the empty wilderness with nothing in it and think since that's where the game is most lacking that's where they should try to add stuff. I don't see the point in adding grass and trees and stuff when there's no point in it except for taking a screenshot, but some of the random encounter mods do expand the wilderness gameplay a little, and they tend to work better with the manual fast forward first-person fast travel system mod thing.

 

[Cliffworms]

I'm surprised people haven't done more to mod the dungeons, though I dunno what it'd involve or how easy it'd be. Even adding, say, ten new dungeon blocks to the game would make it a totally fresh experience.

I was thinking about this recently. It probably wouldn't be too hard to replace dungeon blocks entirely as long as the entrances and exits from them line up with the old version of the block, they should slot in okay.

Making brand new ones and somehow injecting them into existing dungeons is another story though, I think you'd have to regenerate the seed that handles the procedural generation for the dungeons with instructions to add the new blocks, which in effect would change every non-story dungeon in the game entirely.

So yeah, replacing some of the more redundant maze ones with some new level design would probably be the best way to go about it (people already edit town blocks and add a bunch of detail without any real complication). In dungeons I'd like to see more of the large open rooms, water-filled areas, etc. since those are the ones that let you take advantage of your movement-based spells and skills such as levitate, water walking or climbing.

I'd love to touch the dungeons at one point, but it's one hell of a beast to mod in because it's easy to fall into a "feature creep" way of editing them. Daggerfall has dungeon types (Harpy Nest, Crypt, Volcanic Cave, Giant Stronghold, etc.) that are essentially used for quests to find a location and for the encounter tables. Then you also have dungeons named like "Ruins of Yeomstom Farmstead" or "The Stronghold of Faarht". Both are mixed together.

If I had enough time, I'd do new blocks or retouch existing ones that take into account the dungeon type so that a Prison dungeon type has a layout that looks like a prison. But then, I must also consider the dungeon's name. The Stronghold of Faarht could be a Harpy Nest dungeon type, so I have to consider the blocks to look like a stronghold that has been taken over by harpies. Rooms could be a dining area filled with harpy droppings and nests, for example. That adds a lot of block variants to make.

I was thinking that, at the very least, a first edit would be blocks that make sense according to the dungeon's name (Stronghold, Mine, Tower, Cave) then use those as templates to make variants according to the dungeon type.

The dungeon actions used for traps or doors must also be considered. I feel the vanilla dungeons don't have enough and when they do, they're badly implemented. A trap that's never used in dungeons is squishing the player with moving walls or ceilings.

In the end, I think that editing dungeons is what requires the most preparation and planning as a modding project.

 

[SharkClub]

The dungeon traps in the game do tend to be quite lazy. The worst one is the damaging floors that look exactly like every other floor but they drain your health in a matter of seconds, so you have to rely on prior map knowledge of the blocks they are found in or quickloading. Ideally the trapped floors would be telegraphed in some way, maybe marked with a rune or some slight coloration to differentiate them. The game might even benefit from a Detect Trap spell. I think crushing ceilings and walls are a good idea, something that gives you time to react and clear the area before it can get you. Trap doors actually used for traps (rather than just being floordoors you open from clicking a torch three rooms away) that drop you into a pit with enemies or a watery room below can also be an effective trap.

 

[Luzur]

I'm surprised people haven't done more to mod the dungeons, though I dunno what it'd involve or how easy it'd be. Even adding, say, ten new dungeon blocks to the game would make it a totally fresh experience.

I was thinking about this recently. It probably wouldn't be too hard to replace dungeon blocks entirely as long as the entrances and exits from them line up with the old version of the block, they should slot in okay.

Making brand new ones and somehow injecting them into existing dungeons is another story though, I think you'd have to regenerate the seed that handles the procedural generation for the dungeons with instructions to add the new blocks, which in effect would change every non-story dungeon in the game entirely.

So yeah, replacing some of the more redundant maze ones with some new level design would probably be the best way to go about it (people already edit town blocks and add a bunch of detail without any real complication). In dungeons I'd like to see more of the large open rooms, water-filled areas, etc. since those are the ones that let you take advantage of your movement-based spells and skills such as levitate, water walking or climbing.

IIRC someone on Interkarma forums where looking into that

 

[Luzur]

I think people look at the empty wilderness with nothing in it and think since that's where the game is most lacking that's where they should try to add stuff. I don't see the point in adding grass and trees and stuff when there's no point in it except for taking a screenshot, but some of the random encounter mods do expand the wilderness gameplay a little, and they tend to work better with the manual fast forward first-person fast travel system mod thing.

Dont forget World of Tamriel is trying to make the wilderness contain stuff to find

 

[Funposter]

I would say the problem is that there's nothing else in this game BUT the dungeons.

Daggerfall was a dungeon crawler. The outside world is just fluff. It was never a walking simulator like Morrowind. It's just so typical of modern gaymers to focus on all the wrong shit.

To be fair, this isn't a "modern gamer" problem. People have been focusing on the non-dungeon crawler aspects of Daggerfall since the day it was released.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I would say the problem is that there's nothing else in this game BUT the dungeons.

Daggerfall was a dungeon crawler. The outside world is just fluff. It was never a walking simulator like Morrowind. It's just so typical of modern gaymers to focus on all the wrong shit.

To be fair, this isn't a "modern gamer" problem. People have been focusing on the non-dungeon crawler aspects of Daggerfall since the day it was released.

But how? There's nothing top side except for the towns.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I think people look at the empty wilderness with nothing in it and think since that's where the game is most lacking that's where they should try to add stuff. I don't see the point in adding grass and trees and stuff when there's no point in it except for taking a screenshot, but some of the random encounter mods do expand the wilderness gameplay a little, and they tend to work better with the manual fast forward first-person fast travel system mod thing.

Well, the other problem is that the map in this game is lifesized. If you start walking across the wild, wouldn't that take literal hours of gameplay before getting anywhere.

 

[SharkClub]

I think people look at the empty wilderness with nothing in it and think since that's where the game is most lacking that's where they should try to add stuff. I don't see the point in adding grass and trees and stuff when there's no point in it except for taking a screenshot, but some of the random encounter mods do expand the wilderness gameplay a little, and they tend to work better with the manual fast forward first-person fast travel system mod thing.

Well, the other problem is that the map in this game is lifesized. If you start walking across the wild, wouldn't that take literal hours of gameplay before getting anywhere.

Yep. The mod people use for fast travel keeps you in first person and has fast forwarding options. I've tried it a little and it's a bit buggy (if you fast forward too much you can fall through the map, and it doesn't know how to route around things like large rocks in the landscape automatically so you'll just wedge into them until you cancel the fast travel and move around them manually), it's really best used for short trips but I still don't entirely see the point aside from the random encounter mechanics it adds and objectively making the world feel more contiguous (along with extended view distance mods). https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/122