[Overhaul Project] Daggerfall Unity Re-imagined

Show off your mod creations or just a work in progress.
Post Reply
User avatar
Magicono43
Posts: 1137
Joined: Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:06 am

[Overhaul Project] Daggerfall Unity Re-imagined

Post by Magicono43 »

So since i'm currently working on this, I figure I may as well start a thread for those that might be interested, and to have a place to post any of my progress in a somewhat organized fashion. In a similar fashion to l3lessed's "Combat Overhaul Alpha" Project, I recently started working on my own project in this way, that being I have forked the main DFU github repo and am working on an overhaul project of my own. The main reason I did this was that of impatience and laziness on my part to be honest, I was getting tired of trying to wrestle with things I have no clue how to work on myself, that being lots of the back-end work required to make more complex mods that don't already have support framework made by the many amazing contributors to the DFU project. These things I am sure will come with time, but clearly not in short enough order for my personal creative fervor to wait for. So that's why I started this personal fork, so I can edit the code directly without having to wait on PR commits to go through and constantly wrestle with the back-end coding that I have very little experience and confidence doing myself.

Now with that introduction context out of the way, i'll try and explain what my general plan is with this project. It's fairly vague and very broad, as I don't really have a specific end-goal in mind for this overhaul, as I pretty much would like to use this as the playground that I can hopefully make Daggerfall to be the game I always wanted it to be, as well as a place to hopefully hone my own skills along the way as well. But as of right now, i'm currently working on the base combat mechanics, which are basically going to be a more detailed extension of the ideas that my "Physical Combat And Armor Overhaul" had added through the proper modding system. I still plan on keeping the dice rolling system and skill checks and such, but much more detailed and hopefully more logical to my own rational.

One of the basic designs I am working toward is to make all the materials currently in the game to have some unique purpose or function, instead of just a straight linear equipment progression like the base Daggerfall has. After some discussion with Ralzar who has more actual Table-top RPG experience than I have by a wide margin, for now I have decided to go with a system that is not completely non-linear, but is much more open than the vanilla system.

The current system I have in mind has most of the damage dealt broken down into different "damage types" for the physical aspect it is currently Bludgeoning, Slashing, Piercing, and based on a bunch of other factors that I have not yet 100% worked out yet, this will all culminate into a system where some materials are best at dealing one damage type, and weak to other damage types in terms of the materials of armors as well. With this I added six new properties to weapons and armors.

Density = Blunt
Shear = Slashing/Cutting
Fracture = Piercing
Melting Point = Extra condition/damage from fire if low
Conductivity = Extra damage from electrical attacks if high
Brittleness = Extra condition/damage from ice attacks when high

With these, I can hopefully make all the materials in the game fill a different purpose to some degree and feel different from one another, instead of one just being a straight upgrade from another in every way. With this added emphasis on materials being different, I also wanted to make these various materials feel more "real" in the world like these is some supply and demand sort of thing going on. So I will likely add new items that will serve this purpose, likely ingots or chunks of material of some kind that will be necessary to repair equipment at black-smiths and the like. So maybe it will take 3 orcish ingots to repair that orcish chest-plate of yours, and 1 to repair that orcish dagger. But, if you can't supply the material yourself, perhaps the black-smith can pull from their "emergency supply" at a cost premium, something around those lines.

Also with this, I will try and do something similar with the magic damage types as well, basically giving each enemy unique damage resistances/weaknesses to different types of magic and damage types and such, which is something I have already played around with in my PCO mod with Iron Atronachs and Gargoyles for example being weak to certain weapons, but very resistant to others, but in this case I can hopefully also tack this onto the magic system, not just the physical combat part.

Now, there are obviously hundreds of other ideas and "improvements" that I will be adding to this project, such as my currently WIP skills and training improvements, something I can only currently do by editing the base code in this way, or even changing how the AI functions to hopefully be more challenging and add more spells to their pools and such, lots and lots of potential things I will be working on here.

As I said, i'll be updating this thread periodically, as well as occasionally making commits to the github fork itself which you can find here, Magicono's DFU Overhaul Project. So if you are interested in this, feel free to give any input or questions, as I plan to eventually release this to the public as well for use for those interested in this sort of Daggerfall Overhaul, thanks for reading!

User avatar
Magicono43
Posts: 1137
Joined: Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:06 am

Re: [Overhaul Project] Daggerfall Unity Re-imagined

Post by Magicono43 »

Here is some of the testing I had done to show I added the six mentioned properties to weapons and armor:
Capture (5).JPG
Capture (5).JPG (30.27 KiB) Viewed 6573 times
Also, here is the spreadsheet I finished just a few hours ago that I will be using as a main reference for the various damage resistances/weakness of the various enemies currently in the game.
Daggerfall-Enemy-Dam-Type-Resists.rar
(11.54 KiB) Downloaded 207 times

imsobadatnicknames
Posts: 371
Joined: Sun Jun 02, 2019 4:28 pm
Location: Colombia

Re: [Overhaul Project] Daggerfall Unity Re-imagined

Post by imsobadatnicknames »

Magicono43 wrote: Fri Oct 16, 2020 11:49 pm The current system I have in mind has most of the damage dealt broken down into different "damage types" for the physical aspect it is currently Bludgeoning, Slashing, Piercing, and based on a bunch of other factors that I have not yet 100% worked out yet, this will all culminate into a system where some materials are best at dealing one damage type, and weak to other damage types in terms of the materials of armors as well. With this I added six new properties to weapons and armors.

Density = Blunt
Shear = Slashing/Cutting
Fracture = Piercing
Melting Point = Extra condition/damage from fire if low
Conductivity = Extra damage from electrical attacks if high
Brittleness = Extra condition/damage from ice attacks when high
I love this idea. It's one of the reasons why Dwarf Fortress is my favorite RPG. E.g. adamantine is a very sharp material, but it's near-weightless. An adamantine sword is an ideal weapon because it's ridiculously sharp and weights almost nothing. An adamantine warhammer on the other hand? It might as well be made of styrofoam :lol: Would definitely love to see something like that in DaggerFall.
Released mods: https://www.nexusmods.com/users/5141135 ... files&BH=0
Daggerfall isn't the only ridiculously intrincate fantasy world simulator with the initials DF that I make mods for: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177071.0

User avatar
Magicono43
Posts: 1137
Joined: Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:06 am

Re: [Overhaul Project] Daggerfall Unity Re-imagined

Post by Magicono43 »

imsobadatnicknames wrote: Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:04 am I love this idea. It's one of the reasons why Dwarf Fortress is my favorite RPG. E.g. adamantine is a very sharp material, but it's near-weightless. An adamantine sword is an ideal weapon because it's ridiculously sharp and weights almost nothing. An adamantine warhammer on the other hand? It might as well be made of styrofoam :lol: Would definitely love to see something like that in DaggerFall.
Yes, Dwarf Fortress was one of the main inspirations for this specific idea actually, I also really like the idea of materials having physical characteristics that can make them better or worse at different things. I'm not going to go as crazy into detail with it like Dwarf Fortress does like proper units of measurements and such, basically a simple system to understand as well as work with that can hopefully also make it easier to balance overall. But yeah, Dwarf Fortress is a huge inspiration for this particular system, glad to hear you are interested!

User avatar
Magicono43
Posts: 1137
Joined: Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:06 am

Re: [Overhaul Project] Daggerfall Unity Re-imagined

Post by Magicono43 »

Made some good progress today, am nearly done fully importing my PCO mod code over to this project, which will be heavily modified in order to Incorporated the new material and damage type mechanics, but gives a very good frame-work in order to add these systems in. Still a lot of design things that need to be planned out more and balanced, but that will happen as the code gets created and starts to form a more "whole" image.

User avatar
Magicono43
Posts: 1137
Joined: Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:06 am

Re: [Overhaul Project] Daggerfall Unity Re-imagined

Post by Magicono43 »

So after getting to a point where I needed to make a decision, I now have a better general idea of how I think i'm going to do this, at least number-wise. Here is a first go draft for the values I plan on using for the various weapons in the game, these are all base values, so without any modifiers. With that in mind, i'm likely going to want to reduce these somewhat since they might become a bit too high with added modifiers and such.

Edit 1: So I did a quick re-evaluation of the base damage values I drafted and decided to reduce them across the board as to allow for more room for additional modifiers later that will hopefully not make the damage off the charts. Here is the new draft:
Capture.JPG
Capture.JPG (80.56 KiB) Viewed 6248 times
Attachments
Daggerfall-Base-Damage-Values-Draft-1.rar
(9.24 KiB) Downloaded 193 times

User avatar
Magicono43
Posts: 1137
Joined: Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:06 am

Re: [Overhaul Project] Daggerfall Unity Re-imagined

Post by Magicono43 »

I made some more progress today, nothing too significant code-wise, mostly tedious stuff involving adding the different types that will be displayed as in my previous post with the use of MCP data/string codes given, mostly boring but important. The main thing I made progress on today was the actual planning out of the values that will be used with all the different weapons and armors with their respective material modifiers added in as well. Basically just a lot of work and number experimenting and tweaking in an Excel Spreadsheet to try and get the values to a place that seems right for now.

Once i'm done with the first draft of the spreadsheet and these values, i'll upload it here for those interested to view, as well as obviously start using those values to actually get them into the code in a useful way.

User avatar
NikitaTheTanner
Posts: 366
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2015 7:57 pm

Re: [Overhaul Project] Daggerfall Unity Re-imagined

Post by NikitaTheTanner »

It's definitely a very cool idea, would love to see how it goes! It always bothered me that the difference in materials was simply quality, so you're always better just sticking to a higher grade weapon - if there was more variety, you might be choosing which material to use. Different types of damage seem like a great idea, but I think it could also further be expanded later on - giving each material more unique properties.

Some examples could be:
Iron could be brittle, but very cheap to repair, while still offering okayish damage/resistance.
Steel could be less brittle and offer better stats, but be a bit more expensive to repair.
Silver could be also brittle, but deal extra damage to undead and werewolves.
Mithril could be very light, but very durable.
Dwarven armor could offer extra shock resistance, and dwarven weapons could be enchanted with more powerful shock damage.
Adamantium could be not the highest damaging/protecting material, but almost unbreakable, saving you lots of money on the repair.
Ebony armor could offer higher magic resistance, and ebony weapons could do extra damage to magical creatures (such as golems).
Orcish items could offer great stats in terms of damage and resistance, but be very hard to repair properly (very expensive).
Daedric armor could offer extra fire resistance, and daedric items could offer more powerful enchantments overall.

Just some ideas. It would also be great to expand on more leather types of armor and more chain types of armor. If it were possible to upgrade items, for example, to have an Iron Longsword +10, maybe it would be better for some adventurers than to have a Daedric Longsword (though this would require loosening the material type requirement on enemies, which is a bit ridiculous at times that you can't even hit them).

User avatar
Magicono43
Posts: 1137
Joined: Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:06 am

Re: [Overhaul Project] Daggerfall Unity Re-imagined

Post by Magicono43 »

Yeah, my current system basically does have much of what you mentioned baked in concept-wise already, not all exactly as you mentioned but mostly similar idea.

I'll just link this draft that I mentioned in my last post if interested. This is just the values i'll be using for now to fill in the gaps of the code, some of it seems fairly solid, but i'm sure many numbers will need to be adjusted as the "image" of the project becomes more whole as I mentioned, so this is just the first draft of some of those numbers.
Edit 1: Oh yeah, and later on i'll likely attempt to add improved versions of stuff like leather and such, similar to how the Roleplay Realism: Items mod did with the different chain materials, but i'll have to dive deeper into actually adding items like that before I make any promises that this will be a initial release feature or anything.

User avatar
NikitaTheTanner
Posts: 366
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2015 7:57 pm

Re: [Overhaul Project] Daggerfall Unity Re-imagined

Post by NikitaTheTanner »

Cool, great to hear! And yeah, these were just examples, I didn't put too much though into it, but just wanted to showcase how materials can have different properties other than their protection or damage...

Regarding leather-ish types of armor, there are actually many options to add, for example, TEST: Shadowkey had quite a few - https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Shadowkey:Armor
Also, other TEST games, such as TEST Stormhold - https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Stormhold:Armor

Some options for the leather-y types could be:
Fur armor
Padded armor (very common IRL, such as gambesons, and very protective)
Nightleather
Newtscale
Trollskin
Shadoweave
Dragonscale (could be from dragonlings' scale)

Morrowind inspired options (not really leather, but could be attached to leather):
Chitin
Glass

Post Reply