Longstanding, undocumented BIOG/skill bugs in DOS Daggerfall

[Sporky]

Hello all. I'm on a mini-quest across the internet since I noticed some discrepancies during character creation in classic (DOS) Daggerfall. I debated on whether this topic might be better received in a different subforum, but guidance states that topics related to classic Daggerfall belong in community.

There are two issues:

1. It doesn't look like skill points are properly granted by answers to Background questions. From testing, I would guess that only one skill is allowed to gain a bonus, but behavior may be even stranger than that.
2. Under rare circumstances, it's possible to start with lower skill points than was previously documented.

I have tested both the most recent Steam release of Daggerfall (version 1.07.213) and an archive I had of Bethesda's original free release (patched to 1.07.213). Both seem to have the same issues.

The first issue is easily tested. Create any custom character you like, and answer Background questions such that a variety of skill bonuses should be granted. You may find this easiest as an acrobat-skilled character (running, jumping, swimming, climbing, dodging, backstabbling, critical strike, stealth, etc.) as there are many questions that add to these skills.

When you reach the "Add Bonus Points" screen of character creation, it's been documented that primary skills range from 28 to 31, major skills range from 18 to 21, and minor skills range from 13 to 16. You will notice that most of the skills you should have bonuses in based on your Background answers are still just within these default ranges, but there may be one that did receive a bonus. In particular, if you gamed the questions to get four +6 boosts to climbing, you may see that it received about +18 points (still less than expected).

For the second issue I mentioned, it may be difficult to trigger. As I was messing around with various builds trying to figure out how this bug works, several times I ended up with skills below what's said to be the minimum values. Look at this example, where running, dodging and jumping are all 1 point less than they should be able to be:



I don't know if this is just exceedingly rare behavior, or certain skill configurations can trigger this, or what. I assume the original minimums and maximums were collected experimentally, since it's quite easy to end up in those ranges (28 to 31 etc.).

Daggerfall Unity has none of these issues, as far as I can tell from testing. BIOG files are parsed properly (so good job team ).

All of this has strong implications for long-term gameplay, since the lower your skills at character creation, the more points you're able to gain, which can mean a higher level cap. Every 15 points gained in character creation among the three primary/two highest major/highest minor skills means one fewer level you can gain. In fact it's likely that most characters made in Daggerfall Unity have a one-level-lower cap due to properly increasing these values.

It is very possible that in development of Daggerfall Unity, no one even needed to observe the underlying code of classic to determine how it worked, since the base skill values and contents of the BIOG files are well-documented.

I know this is beyond the scope of your project, but I am here to humbly ask if you code experts would be able to take a look at what's happening in character creation and see if you can replicate my issues, find out what causes this in classic Daggerfall, and how a fix might be implemented. This could even have implications for base skill point rolls in Unity as well.

[Interkarma]

Hey there, welcome to the forums.

Yeah, classic has lots of bugs and inconsistencies in the BIOG files. There are some community patches out there which correct most, if not all of these. Most notable is DFBIOGFIX fix by Frank 'Deepfighter' Schwalb.

Deepfighter is also a contributor to Daggerfall Unity, and we've integrated their BIOG fixes directly into the source project here. As you noted, DFU has fewer problems with pre-patched BIOG files thanks to these fixes. If any further problems are found later, the open source nature of DFU means they can be corrected in the future.

If you prefer to play classic, you can still install DFBIOGFIX linked above and those fixes should be in parity with DFU. It's also worth checking out DaggerfallSetup by Ancestral Ghost and Daneel53. This fan-packaged version of classic Daggerfall comes with several fixes to the gamedata including those BIOG fixes. It's hands-down the best way to play the DOS version in 2023.

[Sporky]

I think you misunderstand me, I believe I've identified a new issue that no one has noticed or looked into what's causing it.

BIOGFIX is awesome, but it only deals with repairing the intent of these files, correcting obvious errors like questions that were meant to increase jumping but raise orcish instead.

I'm saying that in practice, these files don't work anyway.

As proof, I just downloaded a clean DaggerfallSetup at the provided link, and during installation I also chose DFQFIX and BIOGFIX. I created a goofy Acrobat-like class with a lot of physical skills like running and jumping. During Background questions, I chose answers that should have given +6 to blunt weapon, climbing, jumping, pickpocket, and streetwise. This was the result:



Every skill within the default ranges except for streetwise, which seems to have gotten its 6 point boost.

I just wondered if someone here has experience looking at the Daggerfall code and could see what's causing the issue...or if something else is happening entirely? For example, are those questions really meant to give direct boosts to the skills, or are they meant to provide permanent passive improvements to skill rolls? There could be a mechanic we don't even know about at play, which could be incorporated into Daggerfall Unity.

[Jay_H]

For example, are those questions really meant to give direct boosts to the skills, or are they meant to provide permanent passive improvements to skill rolls? There could be a mechanic we don't even know about at play, which could be incorporated into Daggerfall Unity.

If anyone wants to, they're free to. We don't have anyone like that on development right now. We had someone about 5 years ago, but they have moved on to other projects.

This is more of modder territory at this point, and if someone wants to alter these kinds of benefits as mods, that's fine. The DFU team really isn't going to come back every 3, 5, or 10 years and change the code base when new discoveries are made. People are free to fork the project, make new versions, or whatever seems best to them. But DFU itself is pretty much "done" as it currently stands, barring urgent bug fixes.

[Sporky]

Last night I was looking over what I was observing and I think I had an epiphany.  I think I know what's going on under the hood, and it's possibly not even a bug.

If you notice my latest screenshot, all the skills I mentioned getting boosts to are on the high end of default values, i.e. primary skills can be 28 to 31, and all three are 31, because I boosted them.  The piece I was missing was to realize that those skills have already got their bonus points.  Streetwise is higher than expected at 19 because one question I answered ("what motivates you," "fun") gives +3 to etiquette and streetwise, and then a second question ("one of the most important survival skills," "boss people around") gave +6.

Here's how skills actually work at character creation:

• Primary skills begin with 25 points, Major with 15 points, Minor with 10 points, and Miscellaneous with 0 points.
• If a skill is modified by Background, those bonus points are tallied up over the course of the questions and added to the skill. It is not randomized at all.
• If a skill is not modified by Background, it is increased by a random roll of 3 to 6 points.

This makes a lot of sense as 25/15/10/0 are nice round starting numbers that I could easily see the devs choosing.

This also explains why in my first post example, three skills were lower than what's normally the minimum: one question only adds 2 points to those particular three skills ("Whenever you had a chance growing up you liked to spend time ___" "practicing acrobatics").

You could view this as a bug -- maybe skills should start at a random value and then get boosted by Backgrounds on top of that -- or you could see this as an intentional decision to keep skills from starting out too high. Someone with +6 to a skill is still receiving some benefit, in that its value is not random but maximized among the defaults. And further questions can increase it higher. The main reason this could be intended behavior is that the more skills you start with, the lower your potential level cap, and doing it this way keeps just about everyone in that level 29 to 32 range.

People are free to fork the project, make new versions, or whatever seems best to them. But DFU itself is pretty much "done" as it currently stands, barring urgent bug fixes.

Apologies, I was uninformed as to how complete the project is actually considered at this point. I think I was misled by seeing that it's sill version 0.15.

[Jay_H]

Apologies, I was uninformed as to how complete the project is actually considered at this point. I think I was misled by seeing that it's sill version 0.15.

No worries. This kind of change may not enter into core DFU, but modding is always a possibility -- we get new interested modders all the time, and more resources are being written on how to make them.

[MrFlibble]

That's very interesting! I, too, at some point had the impression in vanilla DF that skills sometimes don't get a boost even after picking the relevant answer in the biography questionnaire. But I was assuming that a boosted skill is first rolled to its random value, and only then the bonus is added, because I remembered that sometimes I could get a Minor skill of 19, which I thought was its "default" of 13 plus a 6 points bonus.