Unleveled World: Current Status

Talk about the mods you'd like to see in Daggerfall Unity. Give mod creators some ideas!
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Ralzar
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Unleveled World: Current Status

Post by Ralzar »

A few of us have for quite some time been hacking away at the suggestions posted in this discussion thread:
Unleveled World

During the last months I feel there has finally been subtantial progress towards reaching this goal. So I decided to make this sepereate thread as a place to go to see what parts are partially or fully solved. Both to see what mods to install to get as close to Unleveled World as possible and to see what areas to concentrate mod effort on to get closer to the goal:



Shop merchandise based on shops quality
Shop shelves base stock on the quality level of the shop, not the level of the player character.
Status: Fixed -
Unleveled Loot (add Roleplay&Realism: Items for more orcish gear used by orcs.)


Enemy level depends on location
What kind of monsters spawn depends on where you are, not who you are.
Status: Fixed - Unleveled Mobs or MUDEX (if using DEX)
Possible improvements: Wider spawn list variety. Clearer warning about difficulty level of dungeons. More enemy types would also help.


Humanoid Class Level Unscaled
The human enemies have their level set randomly instead of matching player level.
Status: No Fix


Loot Quality depends on the level of the enemies
The type of loot an enemy drops depends on the enemy, not the player.
Status: Partial Fix - Roleplay&Realism: Items + Unleveled Loot
Possible Improvements: Need mod for humanoid class level.


Quest spawned enemies depends on the quest
When taking quests, the enemies involved is based on what the quest is, not the level of the player.
Status: Fixed - Unleveled Quests


Treasure found in dungeon depends on dungeon
Status: Fixed - Roleplay&Realism: Items + Unleveled Loot


Spell mechanics based on skill
When casting spells, your skill in the spells school matters much more than your level.
Status: Fixed - Unleveled Spells



ToHit Calculation based on skill
When attacking, who you are matters more than what you wield.
Status: Fixed - Physical Combat And Armor Overhaul



Feel free to suggest any other categories that should be included. Both fixed and not fixed.
Last edited by Ralzar on Sat Feb 24, 2024 9:09 am, edited 23 times in total.

meritamas
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Re: Unleveled World: Current Status

Post by meritamas »

I am positively thrilled that I am not alone with this one. I will write in more detail in a few days, here I am just quoting one of my ideas from a couple of months ago which I was intending to implement once in the distant future. I have also asked Interkarma on the subject and it seems doable.
Ralzar wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 12:04 pm A few of us have for quite some time been hacking away at the suggestions posted in this discussion thread:
Unleveled World

During the last months I feel there has finally been subtantial progress towards reaching this goal. So I decided to make this sepereate thread as a place to go to see what parts are partially or fully solved. Both to see what mods to install to get as close to Unleveled World as possible and to see what areas to concentrate mod effort on to get closer to the goal:


Spell mechanics based on skill
When casting spells, your skill in the spells school matters much more than your level.
Status: No Fix
meritamas wrote: Mon Apr 29, 2019 2:55 pm
  • Unleveled spells
Idea: the magnitude and duration of a spell should not depend on character level. It doesn't make any sense that a warrior character would cast stronger spells at higher character levels.
Spell level (SL) could be introduced like SL = Floor((Skill + (Willpower-50) + (Luck-50)/5) / 5)
Spell level could function in the game mechanics in an identical way to how character level works currently.
Next thing will be to perform some calculations with the aim of refining the above formula.
Feel free to use and further develop this idea. Would also be happy to discuss the related matters, might even be able to help with the implementation if you decided to go ahead with it.
Interest in expanding and improving the Magic system, Capitalism and an Unleveled World.

My main quest in the DFU community is my (Mostly) Magic Mod.

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Ralzar
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Re: Unleveled World: Current Status

Post by Ralzar »

meritamas wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 9:51 pm Feel free to use and further develop this idea. Would also be happy to discuss the related matters, might even be able to help with the implementation if you decided to go ahead with it.
Modding of the magic system is a bit outside my current limited skill set, but I'm hoping someone will pick up the torch on this one. Having Player Level as the most important part of the spell calculation is just straight up screwy.

I haven't looked at the magic code, but I imagine one easy way to fix this would be to simply change the PlayerLevel value in the magic mechanic to use (Magic School Skill / 10).
So if you have 100% in Destruction, your Fireball acts as a lvl10 characters fireball.
If you have 10% or less in Destruction, your Fireball acts like a lvl1 characters fireball.
This might be a very light touch change that completely flips how spells are calculated.

Edit:
Some might respond to this with: "But then you'll never cast spells like you are over level 10."
My answer: "Yes."
Last edited by Ralzar on Thu Feb 27, 2020 12:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Ralzar
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Re: Unleveled World: Current Status

Post by Ralzar »

Ralzar wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 12:04 pm Shop merchandise based on shops quality
Shop shelves base stock on the quality level of the shop, not the level of the player character.
Status: No Fix
Possible Improvements: A mod that changes how shops generate equipment. Another way to reach something close to the goal, is to have a mod that makes material generation not be based on player level.
Reccommended addition: A Thievery mod that stops players from just emptying stores.
Some thoughts I've had on possible ways to handle this:

(These are different options, not a package)

Shops Redone
Like Taverns Redone, re-model all shops. However, deck them out with a large amount of shelves, then flag the shelves with diffrent quality levels. They will only be visible/loaded if the shop has the correct quality level or above.
This will not actually FIX the item generation, but it will make it so high quality shops has a much larger stock, letting the RNG have a lot more chances to generate good loot.

Shop Stock
A mod that changes the mechanic for stocking shop shelves. At the moment the shelves are stocked using hex code that I assume gets items from the original DF files. Have a mod change this mechanic to use a pure DFU item generation code (same that is used for loot/equipment) which scews odds of equipment based on shop level.

Material Generation
The mechanic that lies at the foundation of the loot level scaling is how weapon/armor material is generated. This needs to be modded out in favour of a pure random mechanic that has a really low chance of Daedric and a really high chance of Leather/Chain/Iron/Steel.
This mechanic should also have some way to take a "level" value from whatever is generating the material. So a high quality shop or a high level enemy will increase the chance of high material type.
It should also take some kind of "source" value, to let you tailor material based on source, since you could then limit shops to never produce anything above Mithril (for example), give Orcs a higher chance of having Orcish items and Daedras a higher chance of dropping a Daedric item.

meritamas
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Re: Unleveled World: Current Status

Post by meritamas »

Ralzar wrote: Thu Feb 27, 2020 10:27 am
meritamas wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 9:51 pm Feel free to use and further develop this idea. Would also be happy to discuss the related matters, might even be able to help with the implementation if you decided to go ahead with it.
I haven't looked at the magic code, but I imagine one easy way to fix this would be to simply change the PlayerLevel value in the magic mechanic to use (Magic School Skill / 10).
So if you have 100% in Destruction, your Fireball acts as a lvl10 characters fireball.
If you have 10% or less in Destruction, your Fireball acts like a lvl1 characters fireball.
This might be a very light touch change that completely flips how spells are calculated.

Edit:
Some might respond to this with: "But then you'll never cast spells like you are over level 10."
My answer: "Yes."
This level 10 limit only stands if the skill limit remains at 100. I would like some changes in this regard, though, but we'll see.

I expect a substantial amount of difficulty to be caused by the fact that all spell effects are implemented separately. I don't think there is a single place to make the modification... it needs to be made for all effects separately. If I recollect right, Interkarma also gave some reasons for this being the case while also addressing why it would be a challenge to integrate the spell effects into one mechanic.

Another challenge is that while player level is one and the same statistic for all spells, relevant skill can be one of 6 different skills - this shouldn't be a big extra challenge though since all effects are implemented separately anyway.

As I see it now, if somebody can implement the skill/10 formula, he can - without much additional effort - implement the Floor((Skill + (Willpower-50) + (Luck-50)/5) / 5) formula as well. I like the second one better.

(will try and get back to the rest of the topics raised soon)

EDIT:
Ralzar wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 12:04 pm
Shop merchandise based on shops quality
Shop shelves base stock on the quality level of the shop, not the level of the player character.
Status: No Fix
Possible Improvements: A mod that changes how shops generate equipment. Another way to reach something close to the goal, is to have a mod that makes material generation not be based on player level.
Reccommended addition: A Thievery mod that stops players from just emptying stores.
I think the thing to aim for here would be the following.
Shops are nice things but, just as in real life, you can't get the best things from public shops.

The best things should generally only be obtainable from dungeons, from enemies and through quests - perhaps trough the PC's own creation.
For all the rest, one possibility should be shops. There should be one specific - very high quality - shop. Perhaps one of the highest quality shops in regional capitals. These should sometimes sell the best of stuff, too, if you are charming enough. As a general rule, you should only get some of the best stuff in any shop of you are charming enough. As a side-effect, should also increase the atractivity of Personality + Illusion.
Ralzar wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 12:04 pm
ToHit Calculation based on skill
When attacking, who you are matters more than what you wield.
Status: No Fix
Possible Improvements: Need mod for combat calculations that downgrades how much weapon material counts for tohit and possibly upgrades skill and agility.

ToHit calculation should be based on skill. If you take an unskilled fencer, you can give him the best sword there is, he won't hit anyway.
Not very familiar with how this works currently in the game. Skill, then general Agility, then Luck should matter, perhaps to some small degree the type of weapon. Relative proportions of these factors like in my Spell Level formula as stated above.

4 MARCH 2020 edit:
I forgot to mention that the stats influencing the probability of the target evading a hit also need to be taken into account.
Having thought about it a little, I am under the impression that this part of the game works quite well - when playing with a character with a short blade skill superior to its long blade skill, I tend to get a hit more frequently with a short blade, just as you would expect it.
Interest in expanding and improving the Magic system, Capitalism and an Unleveled World.

My main quest in the DFU community is my (Mostly) Magic Mod.

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Magicono43
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Re: Unleveled World: Current Status

Post by Magicono43 »

Ralzar wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 12:04 pm ToHit Calculation based on skill
When attacking, who you are matters more than what you wield.
Status: No Fix
Possible Improvements: Need mod for combat calculations that downgrades how much weapon material counts for tohit and possibly upgrades skill and agility.

Feel free to suggest any other categories that should be included. Bot fixed and not fixed.
Just realized that the mod I just released sort of "fixes" this one, this was not exactly what I was trying to aim for, but it seems to do as your "possible improvements" describes, lol. viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3557

meritamas
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Re: Unleveled World: Current Status

Post by meritamas »

Just reseased Unleveled Spells. Please add to the summary. Will be open to suggestions on what other formulas would work better but the one I am using is a start, I think a good one.
Ralzar wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 12:04 pm
Spell mechanics based on skill
When casting spells, your skill in the spells school matters much more than your level.
Status: No Fix
Interest in expanding and improving the Magic system, Capitalism and an Unleveled World.

My main quest in the DFU community is my (Mostly) Magic Mod.

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Ralzar
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Location: Norway

Re: Unleveled World: Current Status

Post by Ralzar »

Updated OP


Awsome work guys! This is progressing faster than expected :)


One thing that I haven't had time to check yet though, is if all these mods are compatible?

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NikitaTheTanner
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Re: Unleveled World: Current Status

Post by NikitaTheTanner »

Man, it's been quite some time since the original post. Glad to see that so much has been implemented, this is awesome, guys! Happy to have started the discussion some time ago :D All the credit obviously goes to you, Ralzar, meritamas, and others, who have done so much to make Daggerfall that much more enjoyable for me and others. Thank you!

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Ralzar
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Re: Unleveled World: Current Status

Post by Ralzar »

NikitaTheTanner wrote: Wed May 27, 2020 5:20 pm Man, it's been quite some time since the original post. Glad to see that so much has been implemented, this is awesome, guys! Happy to have started the discussion some time ago :D All the credit obviously goes to you, Ralzar, meritamas, and others, who have done so much to make Daggerfall that much more enjoyable for me and others. Thank you!
Thank you as well for making a proper comprehensive vision of what to aim for. And welcome back :)

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