Daggerfall - Real Ocean Water

Talk about the mods you'd like to see in Daggerfall Unity. Give mod creators some ideas!
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Tuaam
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Daggerfall - Real Ocean Water

Post by Tuaam »

Since water in Daggerfall is realistically just a flat textured "water" plane, wouldn't it be entirely possible to add a water mesh just a few feet above the textured water and then call it off as ocean? I know you wouldn't be able to "swim" in it, per say, but it's just like real Daggerfall water and probably looks nice.

The only problem would be making it opaque so nobody is able to see under it, or else they would see the fake textured water...

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Jay_H
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Re: Daggerfall - Real Ocean Water

Post by Jay_H »

This was something Interkarma polled on Twitter awhile ago. From what I remember, the responses were very positive. It's one of the many side projects he likes to look at when he's tired of working on the main project, IIRC :) So no guarantee if/when it'll ever enter the project.

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Interkarma
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Re: Daggerfall - Real Ocean Water

Post by Interkarma »

I've got to tell you guys, I'm absolutely mad for underwater in games. When my wife and I are playing WoW, I'll jump in and explore every last puddle of water we come across. She becomes so frustrated with me the words "ffs are you swimming again?" are heard often. :lol: I've played so much Subnautica I'm practically waterlogged.

My own personal self would love to add deep, deep oceans to Daggerfall Unity. But I literally force myself not to get into that yet because it's not part of classic gameplay and I have so many other systems to build that are more important overall. I made a poll on Twitter a while ago to get a feel for how others felt about this and the general consensus was very positive (provided it was something optional of course). So once the main gameplay is done, this is very much something I'd like to look at. No promises as to features or quality, but I'll probably take a run at it.

For shallow oceans like Tuaam mentioned, this might even be something possible with the modding system right now. I like the idea of overlaying a non-diveable water plane just to add to the oceans so they don't feel quite so much like a marble slab.

Tuaam
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Re: Daggerfall - Real Ocean Water

Post by Tuaam »

Interkarma wrote: Thu May 03, 2018 6:24 am I've got to tell you guys, I'm absolutely mad for underwater in games. When my wife and I are playing WoW, I'll jump in and explore every last puddle of water we come across. She becomes so frustrated with me the words "ffs are you swimming again?" are heard often. :lol: I've played so much Subnautica I'm practically waterlogged.

My own personal self would love to add deep, deep oceans to Daggerfall Unity. But I literally force myself not to get into that yet because it's not part of classic gameplay and I have so many other systems to build that are more important overall. I made a poll on Twitter a while ago to get a feel for how others felt about this and the general consensus was very positive (provided it was something optional of course). So once the main gameplay is done, this is very much something I'd like to look at. No promises as to features or quality, but I'll probably take a run at it.

For shallow oceans like Tuaam mentioned, this might even be something possible with the modding system right now. I like the idea of overlaying a non-diveable water plane just to add to the oceans so they don't feel quite so much like a marble slab.
If someone made a mod that adds real grass in the wilderness, then I wholeheartedly believe that it's possible to add an actual ocean mesh.

My only concern is that if you were to extend a low lying water plane that starts from the bottom right corner and extends to the end of the world, then would performance be an issue? And what type of water mesh would we use, and would it look good?

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Jay_H
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Re: Daggerfall - Real Ocean Water

Post by Jay_H »

Several games have a native water level that extends across the game world, as a sort of fallback in case the player falls through. Morrowind uses it. You can toggle collision in Mournhold to fly outside it, for example, and find yourself surrounded by fallback water.

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Interkarma
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Re: Daggerfall - Real Ocean Water

Post by Interkarma »

Should be fairly cheap to render a large water plane around player at sea level. Might be interesting to add that sometime soon, just to see how it looks.

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Nystul
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Re: Daggerfall - Real Ocean Water

Post by Nystul »

Tried this when I was implementing sea reflections for the reflections mod. The plane did look ugly because waves were either so small that you could not see them at all or so big that they broke the illusion of distance
I just used a planar reflection in the end on the water texture as compromise

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Hazelnut
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Re: Daggerfall - Real Ocean Water

Post by Hazelnut »

Looking forward to a Daggernautica mod now! :D
See my mod code for examples of how to change various aspects of DFU: https://github.com/ajrb/dfunity-mods

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Interkarma
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Re: Daggerfall - Real Ocean Water

Post by Interkarma »

I also have a thing for mobile bases in games, and the Cyclops just rocked my world. It's like they built that damned game with all my little buttons in mind.

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Hazelnut
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Re: Daggerfall - Real Ocean Water

Post by Hazelnut »

Yeah, I loved all three of the machines for different reasons. My only issue with my Subnautica experience is that the endgame is so brief and there's really no reason to build bases. I still had four of them: shallows, reef, river and dunes. Each one was bigger and better than the last, but what a missed opportunity that the synthesis of the thingy you need (trying for no spoilers) near the end doesn't require bases set up in different biomes for research or something like that.
See my mod code for examples of how to change various aspects of DFU: https://github.com/ajrb/dfunity-mods

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