Daggerfall Unity 0.4.x - "Fighters" Update

For all talk about quest development - creation, testing, and quest system.
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CM August
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Re: Daggerfall Unity 0.4.x - "Fighters" Update

Post by CM August »

Thank you for the welcome. It's a great little community you have here.
Interkarma wrote: I haven't been able to reproduce this one. I will say that "tele2qspawn" will drop you right on top of the target creature, and you'll need to move forward a bit and turn around to see them. Not sure if that was the problem in this case or not, since you found it OK on the second attempt. If you can reproduce, please email me a copy of your output log to review.
I can say that I did not spawn on top of the monster, and walked around the surrounding area (which I had visited previously) entering the tele2qspawn a few more times to be sure. It's as if everything was present and correct except for the monster itself.
Not sure on this one. If you received the reward, this should have ended the quest. Sounds like a quest engine bug on my side. If you can reproduce this again, please email me a copy of the output log, it might have more information for me.
Fortunately I had considered the fact you may need them and saved the output log in question. It covers both cases here as they were encountered on the one playthrough. I'm sending it to your dfworkshop email as we speak. :)

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Interkarma
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Re: Daggerfall Unity 0.4.x - "Fighters" Update

Post by Interkarma »

CM August wrote: Fortunately I had considered the fact you may need them and saved the output log in question. It covers both cases here as they were encountered on the one playthrough. I'm sending it to your dfworkshop email as we speak. :)
Awesome, thanks for sending through. :)

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Interkarma
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Re: Daggerfall Unity 0.4.x - "Fighters" Update

Post by Interkarma »

New Live Builds are up now. Key fixes in builds 72/72/69 are:
  • Quest resources assigned using "place foe", "place npc", "place item" can now be hot-placed while player inside the target building or dungeon. This will fix M0B30Y08 where zombie needs to spawn after player enters building.
  • Enhanced sky mod should now be able to run correctly.
  • Days remaining on a quest are now displayed rounded up so it shows correct days remaining after accepting quest.
  • Fixed generation of display name for certain temple names.
  • Linux build should now be generated with a "Mods" folder containing a readme.txt.

CM August
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Re: Daggerfall Unity 0.4.x - "Fighters" Update

Post by CM August »

Awesome. I'll have to download and check out Whitefort, Betony. I remember seeing some misnamed temples there.

I've had no further issues with the quest system as yet that aren't already accounted for, but here's some of my observations during playtesting. Apologies in advance since it's kind of all over the place, lol. Spoilered in case it's off-topic.
Spoiler!
  • Is it just me, or is it harder to hit enemies in doorways than in vanilla Daggerfall? Fighting from doorways tends to happen an awful lot in Daggerfall, so I'm especially interested whether or not that's the case. My results so far have been inconsistent; the enemies seemed to have no trouble hitting me though. :P
  • On the fast travel map, a location's clickable area can sometimes be way off from its pixel. From my testing in vanilla every part of a location pixel can be clicked when zoomed in, along with a generous margin around it. I tried to include comparison screenshots, but it turned out my usual method of alt+print screen in Unity doesn't display the cursor. Oops.
  • The automap in towns doesn't always center itself on the player as intended when opened. It will do so however if it's closed and immediately re-opened.
  • I can identify people and buildings from a much greater distance in vanilla. Thankfully that's not strictly an issue yet anyways, thanks to the automap and quest debug.
  • The work you've done on ladders was immediately noticeable and much appreciated. I do still have a bit of trouble sometimes activating them though especially from the top, which seemed strange. The only thing I could think of was activation range, so I decided to compare between vanilla and Unity. It was difficult to account for the difference in FOV (though I had turned Unity down to 60) I could activate the ladder in vanilla (aiming as closely as I could to where the reticule is placed in Unity) whereas in Unity I could not. But maybe I lined myself up wrong; at any rate you'd know better what the true activation range is intended to be.

    It might also be helpful if there was a "you are too far away" text message like in vanilla Daggerfall, so there is at least some immediate feedback. As an aside, it's interesting how these things evolved; in subsequent Elder Scrolls titles you knew immediately when an object or NPC was within activation range without having to click a thing.
  • I suspect this is a problem in the original game files, but I'll mention it anyway: a dungeon piece I encountered in The Nest of Vojgon in the Daggerfall region appears to have no collision at all. The passage was necessary to reach the quest objective. Attempting to traverse it from either end made me fall right through into the void. Praise Talos for the map_teleportmode command. :P Here's two screens from the top and bottom of the passage in question in case you want to check it out.
  • Incidentally, teleport-clicking close to where a dungeon incline begins may result in getting stuck in the floor, which I could reproduce. Teleporting elsewhere on the map fixed it up.
  • About the console: on my end, a freshly-opened Daggerfall Unity takes around 7 seconds to open the console window after the tilde key has been pressed, long enough for Windows to suggest it's not responding. I suppose this is just down to how the console has been incorporated into Unity. Perhaps Bethesda have spoiled us with their immediately responsive console windows, lol. Still, if it's not too much to ask, I'd love if that delay could at some point be improved or eliminated altogether in future builds. After all, those commands are basically a must for playtesting. ;)
Thanks for reading. :)

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Interkarma
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Re: Daggerfall Unity 0.4.x - "Fighters" Update

Post by Interkarma »

Awesome, thanks for the feedback! :)
CM August wrote:Is it just me, or is it harder to hit enemies in doorways than in vanilla Daggerfall?
Agreed. Combat uses a spherecast to give player some extra aiming leniency, which can be blocked by static geometry right now. It's something I've been meaning to tune up, I just haven't gotten to it yet.

CM August wrote:On the fast travel map, a location's clickable area can sometimes be way off from its pixel.
I've noticed this too. Also something on my low priority list of stuff to polish.

CM August wrote:The automap in towns doesn't always center itself on the player as intended when opened. It will do so however if it's closed and immediately re-opened.
I'll leave this one for Nystul to take a look at. He's the high priest of all things automap. :)

CM August wrote:I can identify people and buildings from a much greater distance in vanilla. Thankfully that's not strictly an issue yet anyways, thanks to the automap and quest debug.

The work you've done on ladders was immediately noticeable and much appreciated. I do still have a bit of trouble sometimes activating them though especially from the top, which seemed strange.
These both sound related to activation distance. I'll take another look at this soon, it's easy enough to extend distance a little.

CM August wrote:I suspect this is a problem in the original game files, but I'll mention it anyway: a dungeon piece I encountered in The Nest of Vojgon in the Daggerfall region appears to have no collision at all.
I'm not sure, but this sounds a lot like a random Unity bug I've been dealing with for a while. Sometimes the colliders on static geometry just don't apply properly. If you go back in a different play sessions, it might be OK. I'll check it out all the same in case something else if going on, cheers.

CM August wrote: Incidentally, teleport-clicking close to where a dungeon incline begins may result in getting stuck in the floor, which I could reproduce. Teleporting elsewhere on the map fixed it up.
Teleporting can be a perilous business. :)

CM August wrote:About the console: on my end, a freshly-opened Daggerfall Unity takes around 7 seconds to open the console window after the tilde key has been pressed
I don't experience this, it's instant for me. The only time I experience any delay is when I'm testing on Linux from a Live CD, and for some reason the Live CD needs to spin up before showing the console. But the log you sent me earlier tells me you're on Windows 7, is that right?

Does anyone else experience this? I've not heard of this before now.

I didn't implement the console, it's the Wenzil Console, which Lypyl added some time back. Could be some unusual behaviour that needs to be tracked down, so thanks for letting me know.

Cheers! :)

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Jay_H
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Re: Daggerfall Unity 0.4.x - "Fighters" Update

Post by Jay_H »

Interkarma wrote:Does anyone else experience this? I've not heard of this before now.
Yeah, I have some delay on my console, though I'd put it about 4 seconds. I'm pretty sure it's at its worst when I first open it in a DFU session, maybe by a second or two.

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Nystul
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Re: Daggerfall Unity 0.4.x - "Fighters" Update

Post by Nystul »

Interkarma wrote:
CM August wrote:The automap in towns doesn't always center itself on the player as intended when opened. It will do so however if it's closed and immediately re-opened.
I'll leave this one for Nystul to take a look at. He's the high priest of all things automap. :)
Yeah this is a bug - I am already aware of this after watching Interkarma's latest youtube videos some weeks ago - just did not spend time on it till now, will fix this soon! Thanks for reporting it and reminding me ;)
Interkarma wrote:
CM August wrote: Incidentally, teleport-clicking close to where a dungeon incline begins may result in getting stuck in the floor, which I could reproduce. Teleporting elsewhere on the map fixed it up.
Teleporting can be a perilous business. :)
Teleport-clicking was implemented for testing purposes only but it always was a bit buggy and I am fine with it in its current state. Another bug for example is when there is hidden geometry in front of the segment you clicked you will get teleported there instead of the segment you clicked. This is a raycast issue, but since it works most of the time as intended I am also fine with it.

Interkarma wrote:
CM August wrote:About the console: on my end, a freshly-opened Daggerfall Unity takes around 7 seconds to open the console window after the tilde key has been pressed
I don't experience this, it's instant for me. The only time I experience any delay is when I'm testing on Linux from a Live CD, and for some reason the Live CD needs to spin up before showing the console. But the log you sent me earlier tells me you're on Windows 7, is that right?

Does anyone else experience this? I've not heard of this before now.
Cheers! :)
Never experienced a lag on my systems.

CM August
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Re: Daggerfall Unity 0.4.x - "Fighters" Update

Post by CM August »

Thanks to both of you for the comprehensive answers. :)
Interkarma wrote:I'm not sure, but this sounds a lot like a random Unity bug I've been dealing with for a while. Sometimes the colliders on static geometry just don't apply properly. If you go back in a different play sessions, it might be OK. I'll check it out all the same in case something else if going on, cheers.
Looks like you're right on the money. I went through the dungeon again after re-opening the game, and could get through that same corridor just fine. I know now that I needn't have bothered, but I took the trouble to load vanilla Daggerfall and travel to the same dungeon from a nearby town. Sure enough, the collision in that spot was just fine. I took some screenshots while I was there however, because I noticed some other oddities.

Vanilla, Map
Unity, Map

For some reason the same dungeon's textures in Daggerfall Unity are different from vanilla. Admittedly I'm not intimately familiar with Dagerfall's systems. Do textures inside dungeons change depending on the season? The only difference that I could think of was that I entered the dungeon in Winter, and for vanilla I entered it in Spring.

Another difference is that some of the dungeon textures on the map in Unity are different from the dungeon itself. Vanilla textures seem to be consistent between the dungeon and the map. But I see that Nystul's here; I suppose this is his department. :D
Nystul' wrote:Teleport-clicking was implemented for testing purposes only but it always was a bit buggy and I am fine with it in its current state. Another bug for example is when there is hidden geometry in front of the segment you clicked you will get teleported there instead of the segment you clicked. This is a raycast issue, but since it works most of the time as intended I am also fine with it.
No worries, for a testing tool it's more than good enough. It's super helpful and great fun. :)
Interkarma wrote:I don't experience this, it's instant for me. The only time I experience any delay is when I'm testing on Linux from a Live CD, and for some reason the Live CD needs to spin up before showing the console. But the log you sent me earlier tells me you're on Windows 7, is that right?
You got it. It's certainly not a slow computer by any means, and while I have Unity installed to my HDD rather than SSD it shouldn't make that much difference. I've since closed and reopened Daggerfall Unity a few times to test it. While there is still a slight hitch on its first load every new session, it's no more than half a second, as if something was cached for subsequent loads. But that's just speculation on my part.

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Interkarma
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Re: Daggerfall Unity 0.4.x - "Fighters" Update

Post by Interkarma »

CM August wrote: Looks like you're right on the money. I went through the dungeon again after re-opening the game, and could get through that same corridor just fine.
There's a good chance this issue is related to a CharacterController bug fixed in Unity 5.5.4p2. I'll do some tests and bump the cloud build agent up to this version when I can. We'll see if that solves the problem (although it's random and very hard to reproduce).

CM August wrote: For some reason the same dungeon's textures in Daggerfall Unity are different from vanilla. Admittedly I'm not intimately familiar with Dagerfall's systems. Do textures inside dungeons change depending on the season? The only difference that I could think of was that I entered the dungeon in Winter, and for vanilla I entered it in Spring.
I can confirm not season related. Daggerall uses a rather abstract method of generating a set of values determining textures used inside a dungeon. I don't have all the information I need to complete this right now, and have not had time to research further. There's an open issue here in Work Requests if you'd like more reading.

For special/quest dungeons, I have manually set the correct texture tables. For everything else, I use the location ID as a seed. This doesn't generate the exact same texture roll as classic - but it's all just random textures anyway. I just have different random textures to Daggerfall's random textures. :)

CM August wrote: Another difference is that some of the dungeon textures on the map in Unity are different from the dungeon itself. Vanilla textures seem to be consistent between the dungeon and the map. But I see that Nystul's here; I suppose this is his department. :D
Yep, he's the specialist on those interfaces. I know he uses a customised version of my RDB layout code, so it's surprising they return different results. No doubt something that can be fixed eventually.

Thanks for the detailed testing!

CM August
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Re: Daggerfall Unity 0.4.x - "Fighters" Update

Post by CM August »

Thanks for the link. Times like this I wish I had the coding know-how to chip in. Still, there have been so many new discoveries about Daggerfall's inner workings that I'm sure it's only a matter of time. :)

One quirk I forgot to mention: I've been unable to remap the run key. Or rather it lets me, but the new key does nothing and I must still hold shift to run. The handful of other actions I tested seemed to remap fine.

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