Roads of Daggerfall

Show off your mod creations or just a work in progress.
communityus
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by communityus »

Good link.

slaapliedje
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by slaapliedje »

Sorry for skipping through this thread, so most of this has possibly been covered...

I just started playing the game again after many years of not playing (I still have my original CD, and ended up re-buying The Daggerfall Chronicles!) I decided to jump in again!

But the very first thing I thought when getting out of Privateer's hold... where are the roads??? There are even little texts that pop up saying 'you see a path nearby,' but it passes by so quickly you've already moved on toward some other area and you have no idea where that path was! I'm hoping for the immersion junkie in me... (yeah I'm one that would be ALL over this game in VR) that the roads would be tied to these little snippets of information.

For that matter, there are places that pop up 'there is cut firewood nearby', and such. Awesome little touches, but graphically they aren't anywhere to be seen. I'm not sure if these are just randomly generated bits of descriptive fluff, or they are placed in specific places.

Anyhow, I really look forward to this being released, as it is something that is sorely lacking in the game.

I mean let's be honest, you think ANY of the larger cities in the game would actually exist without roads going to them? They're practically the foundation of any decent civilization that knows about trading and building on a large scale.

N_Molson
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by N_Molson »

Hello, I'm new to Daggerfall Unity and I find your road project fantastic ! Would be great to be able to go from place to place following roads, and would make all that vast wilderness much more "civilized". ;)

imsobadatnicknames
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by imsobadatnicknames »

N_Molson wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 11:19 pm Hello, I'm new to Daggerfall Unity and I find your road project fantastic ! Would be great to be able to go from place to place following roads, and would make all that vast wilderness much more "civilized". ;)
Hello! Welcome to the forums!

As fas as I know this project has been mostly replaced by a similar one (Basic Roads by Hazelnut) which has made a significant ammount of progress as of lately

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4009
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

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Hazelnut
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by Hazelnut »

Not replaced exactly, I still hope that in the long run a refined roads of daggerfall materialises that has more natural and complex roads. In the meantime, basic roads will do and will also run on anything that can run DFU, whereas a more complex roads implementation may not run well on low end hardware during time accelerated travel. That's why I called my mod basic roads. :)
See my mod code for examples of how to change various aspects of DFU: https://github.com/ajrb/dfunity-mods

imsobadatnicknames
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by imsobadatnicknames »

Ooooh alright. I've just seen a lot more hype surrounding your mod lately, and of the two of them it seems like the most likely to become a reality at least for now :p
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

N_Molson
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by N_Molson »

Excellent thanks for the info ! :)

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jayhova
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by jayhova »

Why do roads wind around hills rather than go over them? To pull a load up a 10% grade takes nearly 6 times as much work as on level ground. A horse or other draft animal can generate up to 15HP over a short period of time. However, 1 horse generates about 1HP over a full day. Let's say that for half the day you would need to climb a 5% incline and were on level ground the rest of the time, If you could travel 20 miles on level ground you could only travel 10. Unless the 5% route is less than half as long it simply is not worth it.

You must bear in mind the breakdown of wagons due to increased wear and tear. The 10% grade creates 6 times the stress on the hitch & harness equipment.
horsepower on an incline.png
horsepower on an incline.png (384.71 KiB) Viewed 3005 times
Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

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jayhova
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by jayhova »

Another illustration (generated independently) showing the economic costs of road grades.

Image
Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

meritamas
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by meritamas »

Hazelnut wrote: Sun Sep 06, 2020 11:43 am Not replaced exactly, I still hope that in the long run a refined roads of daggerfall materialises that has more natural and complex roads.
I am back to this thread too, at least for the next couple of months I hope...
There is a good chance that I will have some time in the next period to invest in implementing Roads-related stuff for DFU.
My first choice would be to re-use the way you managed to put roads into the game in Basic Roads, if it is alright, I would ask for your help in doing this in the coming months (provided I don't get distracted from this again).

jayhova wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2023 6:07 pm Another illustration (generated independently) showing the economic costs of road grades.
Thank you for attaching figures to the phenomenon. That really will help to design the algorithm to implement it.

---

It occurred to me that transporting stuff is only one role a road plays. Roads are also frequently followed by travelers (like the player in Daggerfall). So, there is more than one calculation to the cost of a road...
- the cost one needs to bear when transporting goods on it (as illustrated above, here, the incline is very important)
- the time it takes to traverse it (postal carriers, scouts, smaller military detachments etc. - keeping in mind that grade is not negligible - I would say length is more important)

The next thought is that not everyone needs to go the same way. There might be a twisting and turning (but relatively level) wide road between two locations (cities, let's say) for freight and there could also be narrower trails (shortcuts) here and there (that are shorter at the price of involving steeper inclines). In our world, some of these trails would be narrow and rarely tread to the point of undetectability. In the world of Daggerfall, we will need to invent categories of routes.

Imperial Roads
I would imagine that the widest, best roads would be along the path drawn into the parts of Tamriel's maps from Arena corresponding to Daggerall. Let's call these imperial roads (or, more legalistically, 'roads of imperial significance').
Maybe a few more shorter roads like that could be where an algorithm finds it economically justifiable (where there are a lot of economically powerful cities clamped together in a relatively small area with little variation in hight above sea level)

Inter-city Roads
Then there could be a kind of road that is slightly narrower but still a good route to transport freight along. Place them to connect significant locations to a seaport or the network of (imperial) roads.

Well-trodden Trails
These could be a kind of path easily traversible on a horse or on foot, easy to follow, but not too wide. Such paths should connect locations that are close to each other and middle-sized settlements to a seaport or the road network (imperial+inter-city roads).

Barely Used Trails
Rarely used, these are hard to follow and even narrower than the well-trodden ones. Still, it doesn't require special skill to see and follow one. These are present where some travalling can be expected between the two locations, but not enough for the emergence of a well-trodden trail or a wider road.

Hidden Trails
Even narrower and, perhaps, some skill or attribute is required to even detect such a trail. These could lead to interesting places (bandit's hideouts, dungeons etc).


Some questions of implementation.
How many kinds of road/route/path/etc should I aim to implement?
How wide should each kind be? What other important characteristics should they have?

Open and grateful for any piece of constructive input.
Even though any code I release would be published as part of MMM, if some progress is made, I plan to post it in this thread (or this thread too) for easier reference.
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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