Daggerfall Unity 0.3 General Discussion

[Jay_H]

The new rest distance is fantastic, and very close to what I've seen in vanilla. I found a minor inconsistency in one instance, but vanilla itself would be impossible to duplicate in that given aspect. I think the fidelity is extremely high right now.

[Jay_H]

During testing, I've found a few pieces of silver armor. Was there silver armor in vanilla? I don't have recollection of it.

[Interkarma]

There was, but it was vanishingly rare. I use a bit more even-handed approach to selecting material types to ensure player has around an equal chance of building a full suit of any armor type eventually. Likely to be tweaked over time.

The way I handle materials also makes it possible to have custom dyes. I'd love to see that in a mod someday.

[Jay_H]

There's one very, very small detail I wanted to mention, that I think is more preference than bug. I have two characters who I'll call One and Two for simplicity. Last night I was testing on One, and I saved a game with it. Today I loaded up Two and tried the death black screen bug to ensure it wasn't reproducing any longer. When Two died and I wanted to load a save game, the default load character was One. So it's the saving that determines the default character and not the loading.

One suggestion would be to make Load the determinant for who the default character is. If you decide otherwise, that's completely fine.

[Interkarma]

It depends on where you hit Load. The intended behaviour is:

When loading a game from title menu, the most recently saved character will be displayed. When starting up a play session, the majority of users will want to resume their game for whichever character they are actively playing.

When loading from within an existing game, the saves for that character will be displayed.

After death, if you hit Esc and Load before the screen fades out (before dropping back to title menu) you would have been presented with saves for character Two. The reason you saw One on the title menu was only because you forgot to save Two during that play session.

This will become a little smoother once Quicksaves and Autosaves are displayed in the load menu. The ease of saving your active play will increase, and you're more likely to be presented with a more recent save.

[Jay_H]

I agree with you. As I started to think about it, I saw three possibilities:

1. Deciding on Save: Ensures the active character will always be the one most recently played in.
2. Deciding on Load: Prevents the player from setting a new character to active, since loading won't occur until after death. Fairly inconvenient.
3. Deciding on more recent of either: Trying some minor tests or just revisiting a character for a few short minutes would trigger a Load determinant, which may not always be desirable.

I think you've chosen the right one. The minor benefit I spoke of above wouldn't really compensate for what the Save determinant can do.

[Interkarma]

One idea that occurred to me. I was planning on triggering autosaves when player initiates rest or transitions through a interior-exterior door. If I also trigger an autosave when player loads a game, then that character will become the most recently listed. It might give us the best of both worlds.

Of course the downside is user might want that autosave, but I think a lot of games do this (trigger an autosave shortly after loading).

What are your thoughts?

[Xaphir]

One idea that occurred to me. I was planning on triggering autosaves when player initiates rest or transitions through a interior-exterior door. If I also trigger an autosave when player loads a game, then that character will become the most recently listed. It might give us the best of both worlds.

Of course the downside is user might want that autosave, but I think a lot of games do this (trigger an autosave shortly after loading).

What are your thoughts?

I've seen autosaves in other games whenever you rest, I remember it being very convenient.

[Jay_H]

I think it's a good idea, though I still wonder about some points first. One is save/load times; if DFU continues to be near-instantaneous like now, there wouldn't be any stalling with an additional save at each load, but if saving and loading times increase in the future, it may become noticeable. This could be repeated any time a character is cornered by an enemy and dies and loads again, and again. I think that in concept what you've proposed would settle the question, but I think a leaner approach may be best for the future of DFU. If anyone else wants to give feedback, I know my own viewpoint isn't comprehensive on this.

[Interkarma]

I'll keep it lean for now and see how save/load times are in future. I'll still autosave on rest and transition as originally intended.