Daggerfall Unity Test Build 2

[Interkarma]

Good to know! Thanks mate. Obviously more work required then to support these saves.

Alas, it makes my job doubly tough. Not only do I have to support and reverse engineer's Daggerfall's save format, I may have to do the same for changes made by old DOS editors that might not have been particularly rigorous with their handling.

Oh well. If Daggerfall can open those files, it's probably not all bad.

[ifkopifko]

Honestly, I am not sure it is all that important to support all kinds of old saves (edited and stuff). Most people, including me, will probably play it anew anyway. Not saying it's not useful, but I would consider lowering its priority for the moment.

BTW: Thanks for the test Build (didn't have time to try the latest version yet, but 0.0.3 was fine), it's just awesome. One thing I noticed was that lighting could be tuned a bit. During night hours, as you exit a house (a well lit environment), the light intensity smoothly lowers to match night time outside... this transition is a bit too slow to my liking, and it sort of breaks immersion.

[Interkarma]

Honestly, I am not sure it is all that important to support all kinds of old saves (edited and stuff). Most people, including me, will probably play it anew anyway. Not saying it's not useful, but I would consider lowering its priority for the moment.

True that! I should be able to get classic saves importing reasonably well over time, but I do agree priority should be on implementing game systems.

I'm keen to start work on inventory soon, the player will start to feel a lot more "real" then. And pants. They can totally wear pants.

[LypyL]

Good to know! Thanks mate. Obviously more work required then to support these saves.

Alas, it makes my job doubly tough. Not only do I have to support and reverse engineer's Daggerfall's save format, I may have to do the same for changes made by old DOS editors that might not have been particularly rigorous with their handling.

I think you should consider that a very, very low priority to be honest. I think it would be enough to put a disclaimer for now that edited saves aren't compatible.

I just wanted to bring it to your attention so you weren't wondering why Daggerfall would produce saves with those values and going extra crazy

I'm going to play around with it some more and see if the changes are consistent.

[Reath]

Good to know! Thanks mate. Obviously more work required then to support these saves.

Alas, it makes my job doubly tough. Not only do I have to support and reverse engineer's Daggerfall's save format, I may have to do the same for changes made by old DOS editors that might not have been particularly rigorous with their handling.

Oh well. If Daggerfall can open those files, it's probably not all bad.

This might be the reason why my saves weren't appearing. I accidentally sold the scarab item used to complete the Lich's Soul quest, which made it impossible to finish. I used Daggerfall's included fixsave program to add the item back to my inventory, maybe this caused it to be edited in a way that version 0.0.3 couldn't read.

I did also try to fix it with the third party tools before I found fixsave, though those saves shouldn't be in the directory anymore. I couldn't add the scarab item with them, so I restored the unedited saves from a backup before using fixsave.

[BansheeXYZ]

That happened to me once. You really shouldn't be able to drop or sell quest items. Hopefully this doesn't fall victim to the "original charm" argument and gets fixed. I'm all for making visual replacements and new content optional, but fundamental oversights and control issues should be fixed.

Once climbing gets implemented, I'm hoping it's done better than the original method of rubbing up against a wall for 5 minutes. Left-click-and-hold while against a ladder or wall to activate climb mode would make a lot more sense. It almost seems like the original was designed to support keyboard-only gameplay, so all the mechanics suffered massively and don't make full use of the mouse.

[Arl]

It's funny that every time a new build is up it's very late in this part of the world, and I'm always struggling for not passing out, but here I am so I guess I survived last night.

Now my saves are shown, can't load any, but there are there.

I noticed that turning off vsync makes rats go real slow, and apparently human npcs (like thieves or archers) moving even slower. Also, I was unable to swing my weapon around, until I re enable vsync.

I also noticed that spellswords/nightblades/thieves/archers aren't able to harm the player, or at least not me. I see the red flash so I know I'm being hit, but I get no damage from them.

On an unrelated side note, I know this is like my other observation of the buildings not snapping to the ground, but I wonder if this can bring some kind of performance issue, because you can see a big part of the dungeon through this model in Castle Daggerfall:

Spoiler!

[Interkarma]

It's funny that every time a new build is up it's very late in this part of the world, and I'm always struggling for not passing out, but here I am so I guess I survived last night.

Now my saves are shown, can't load any, but there are there.

Haha yeah. Australia is at opposite ends of the world to pretty much everyone but the rest of SE Asia.

I'll work on compatibility with saves as I go. Lypyl has confirmed at least some of the non-working saves were edited in some way. Something for me to work through over time.

I noticed that turning off vsync makes rats go real slow, and apparently human npcs (like thieves or archers) moving even slower. Also, I was unable to swing my weapon around, until I re enable vsync.

Cheers. Adzul brought this up before and I think it should be fixed now. Changes will make it into build 0.0.6 or later. This won't be until next week after I return from leave though.

I also noticed that spellswords/nightblades/thieves/archers aren't able to harm the player, or at least not me. I see the red flash so I know I'm being hit, but I get no damage from them.

I'll check it out, cheers. I've noticed humanoid enemies are much weaker than they should be. Not such a big deal now as I've only stubbed out the combat system for the test build. Once inventory and spells are in, this will get revised in a big way.

On an unrelated side note, I know this is like my other observation of the buildings not snapping to the ground, but I wonder if this can bring some kind of performance issue, because you can see a big part of the dungeon though this model in Castle Daggerfall:

This one is just plain old bad Daggerfall geometry. It's like that in the game as well. Also not so obvious with the coarse resolution. It won't change the performance much (if at all) as Daggerfall doesn't use precomputed lighting and visibility. So no need to worry about "sealing the hull".

[Interkarma]

That happened to me once. You really shouldn't be able to drop or sell quest items. Hopefully this doesn't fall victim to the "original charm" argument and gets fixed. I'm all for making visual replacements and new content optional, but fundamental oversights and control issues should be fixed.

True that mate. It makes sense for quest items not able to be dropped.

Once climbing gets implemented, I'm hoping it's done better than the original method of rubbing up against a wall for 5 minutes.

Summed up perfectly. Lypyl implemented some pretty good climbing in his multiplayer demo. It's likely some version of that will be what's used.

[Reath]

In 0.0.5, the saves appear in the menu, but it gives an error with "could not open classic save index" and the save's number. Other than that, everything works the same as in the earlier version.

By the way, I agree that old save compatibility shouldn't be a high priority. I don't mind if my old saves can't be loaded, I want to play new characters too. I'm mentioning my saves just in case it's useful information.