Nerf the run skill

[Wysardry]

I don't remember ever having a problem with the running skill increasing too quickly, as buying a horse and cart was usually a priority for me and I rarely ran indoors. Running is also optional, like sneaking. You have a choice to use it or not, unlike automatic skills, such as dodging.

Everyone plays the game differently, so people aren't all going to agree on what is a bug and what is a feature, other than obvious things like falling into the void and quest objects/enemies spawning somewhere inaccessible.

[Ferital]

The problem is as said Allofich, if running increase rate is tied to FPS and that DOSBox is not accurate, we have to find a correct value here. The first computer I played DF with was an AMD K6 200, so probably already too fast. But indeed, I did some tests in DOSBox recently and the increase rate is even greater from what I remember.

[Wysardry]

If the problem is that the running skill is increasing faster than in classic, then yes it should be adjusted so that it is as close as possible to the original game.

If people want running skill increases to differ from classic, then it should be an optional change that is disabled by default.

The simplest solution would be to allow the increase rate to be adjusted from a settings panel, so that it isn't just an on/off option, but a numeric value or slider.

I have an old Windows 98 Pentium II 400 laptop kicking around somewhere that I could install classic DF on, but I wouldn't have a clue how to measure the running skill increase rate in any meaningful way.

[R.D.]

As far as the right computer speed, official system requirements (from "The Daggerfall Chronicles" play guide), list the CPU required as:

CPU: 486DX2/66 required minimum

and I used DOSBox (I think I used DOSBox ECE) at cycles=26700, which according to a speed test tool I ran (forgot the name), is about the speed of a typical 486DX2/66, to get the rate that has been used in Daggerfall Unity. Even though 486DX2/66 is "minimum", it runs the game fine in DOSBox. The rate gotten from this, that was being used in Daggerfall Unity, is 16 per second. After the recent change the running tally rate is 1/4 of that, or 4 tallies per second.

I've noticed, though, that The Elder Scrolls: Arena seems to have timing issues in DOSBox (and DOSBox-X, which I'm now using and is supposed to be more accurate), where animations, blinking cursors, etc. play too fast on certain screens, which adds to me wondering about the timing.

Maybe if I can get Daggerfall running on PCEm or 86Box, I can get more accurate results from that. I might add a toggle for the current "nerf" in the meantime.

A Pentium II might still be too fast, so I wouldn't bother testing with that. You can see how many tallies you have for a skill by using DAGHEX, from https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Files. You could save your game, run a set distance, save again, and check how many tallies you got, over how many seconds. For accuracy it would be best to capture the video somehow, so you know exactly how many seconds passed. That would be inconvenient for an actual old computer, though... The most accurate emulator we can find is probably the best option.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

For what it's worth, I played Daggerfall back in its era (on a Pentium 120, IIRC) and I distinctly remember that the running skill was much easier to raise than the rest. I never saw it as a problem - at most an oddity, but I was quite happy about it as cities were large and I ran a lot in them.

By the way, minimum requirements of games in that era had a tendency to be quite optimistic. Many games claimed to require a 486 but were barely playable on those machines (not that I actually tried Daggerfall on a 486).

[Jay_H]

(not that I actually tried Daggerfall on a 486).

I did. When night would fall there'd be a pause of about 30 legitimate seconds for the outdoor night resources to load. Entering Daggerfall Castle would take about a minute.

We complain about modern computers but we totally forget the problems the old ones gave us!

[Hazelnut]

The way running works in classic is that it you get a running skill use tallied every game update if you are running and you're not on a horse or cart (after enough tallies, the skill will rise when you rest/travel). When recreating this for Daggerfall Unity, I measured how many running skill tallies were done when I ran from one point to another, and discovered that the number differed depending on how fast the game had been running (how high the FPS were). Higher FPS = tally happens faster. I tried to use a DOSBox cycles setting that reflected a typical computer of the time, in typical game scenes, and used the tally rate I got for Daggerfall Unity.

As others have said, though, running seems to rise very fast in classic. I had a character that I played through classic with in DOSBox, and running advanced way ahead of everything else, all the way to 100, even though I hadn't been trying to make it do that.

As I understand, DOSBox is not perfectly accurate in its emulation of computer timing, but I don't have an old 90-s era computer to test with. I did take a look at 2 old save games I found online that were supposedly from 1997 and 1998, and the running skills had been raised higher than other skills in them as well, but nothing conclusive.

If anyone has an old computer from that time, or is running Daggerfall on PCEm or 86Box (I think these emulators are supposed to have cycle-accurate timing), I'd be interested if they have anything to add.

I suspect, though, that the core problem is what Ferital mentioned. Probably most players these days, myself included, use a WASD-style control scheme in the original game, with "Run" set to something accessible. VIEWPLYR.DAT sets it to the space bar. The defaults of arrows keys for movement and P key for running make it so that you can't really do anything else while running, and running is less accessible. I wouldn't be surprised if just changing to VIEWPLYR.DAT or another WASD-style scheme increases how much a player uses running by a lot, maybe even 2 or 3 times as much. In this case I suspect the main issue is that the original running advancement rate was set based on the default control scheme.

Anyway, we could have it back as it was, or a setting for it or something. I just felt that adding a setting for this might be excessive, and I think it was probably not intended to rise so fast compared to the other skills, hence the change.

I agree completely with this approach. The skill progression should be tuned to progress like other skills for those that use it a lot, and for players who don't it's not really an issue. Avoiding running being a characters highest skill even when only a misc. skill because they run around a bit is reasonable.

[jayhova]

In the original game in order to get my running skill jacked, I would jam the keys on my keyboard down with toothpicks and let my guy run in a direction until he dropped of exhaustion, get up and run some more. he would occasionally run into dragonlings etc but would just outrun them. Run Forest.