Experimental Smaller Dungeons

Discuss Daggerfall Unity and Daggerfall Tools for Unity.
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Magicono43
Posts: 1139
Joined: Tue Nov 06, 2018 7:06 am

Re: Experimental Smaller Dungeons

Post by Magicono43 »

Magicono43 wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2020 6:43 am After reading about this "hidden" experimental feature. I tried it out by putting "True" the "Defaults.ini" text file inside of the resources folder. Tried it out after refreshing Unity (using the Unity editor, btw) with a new character. Went to the nearest dungeons and they were all the same size in terms of blocks and after doing "map_revealall" seeing they were the same as their classic counter-parts. What am I doing wrong here? Is it because I am playing the game through the Unity Editor? Or am I changing the wrong file settings?

Edit: Also, what exactly does the setting "AlternateRandomEnemySelection" do if enabled? Any post I can read about these enhancement settings in more detail? Thanks.
Alright, I found out why the settings were not updating. I was changing the wrong file, which was inside a for some reason hidden Appdata folder. Now that I changed the proper file it is working, really quite impressive how well this seems to work. I think as others have said, this "WIP" enhancement should be something that shows up on the settings UI instead of being hidden away in the .ini file, if you ask me at least.

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Orbarth
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Joined: Wed Aug 07, 2019 10:37 pm

Re: Experimental Smaller Dungeons

Post by Orbarth »

It's been +/- a year since my last post in this thread on the subject of the hidden Smaller Dungeon option and i must say this experimental hidden option has just improved Daggerfall so vastly for me.

In my early Daggerfall days, so many years ago, my playthrough was going this way :
- have a new character and get him to escape Privateer Hold
- fast travel to a random town
- get a quest from a guild pointing me to random dungeon
- find it on map then fast travel to random dungeon
- enter said dungeon after finding where is the actual entrance of it.
- wander nearly endlessly in what seemed to be near endless repeated configurations of corridors/rooms
- find the quest target
- have a headache trying to remember where the hell was the entrance, trying to decode this nightmarish 3D map.

after leveling a few times :
- learn the Mark/Recall spell regardless of my character original class and purpose
- put a Mark (well the Anchor from the Recall) at the entrance of every single random dungeon i'm entering
- wander for so long on corridors and rooms that seemed to be repeated until i finally managed to find the quest target
- use Recall once , as there's no way i'm going to search for the entrance again.

After a few more quests :
- enough is enough
- add CHEATMODE 1 in the Z.cfg
- enter dungeon
- put a Mark
- press [ or ] until it finally bring me to the quest target (funny if it's a monster as you're spawned inside of it, still your strikes worked)
- use Recall

And that was it for every further (non-mainquest) dungeons, basically those very repeated configuration of each random dungeon were defeating the fun and interest the game should have been for me exploring them.

But since i tried Smaller Dungeon in Daggerfall unity, i have been roaming and exploring -every- single random dungeons i have been questing in, i don't even use Mark / Recall.
... and i am not bored of them, because while noticably (and fortunately) smaller, they're still big enough to get lost in and are still big enough to have the dungeon features (teleporters, traps, etc...)

So yes, Smaller Dungeon has definitively been a game changer to my dungeoneering and should certainly be added in the official option instead of being hidden so people unaware this option exist could finally start to have fun in exploring random dungeons instead of fall into the boring cycle after a while.
Thank you so much for creating this option.

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haloterm
Posts: 391
Joined: Sat Feb 16, 2019 5:21 am

Re: Experimental Smaller Dungeons

Post by haloterm »

Orbarth wrote: Fri Oct 02, 2020 5:24 pm So yes, Smaller Dungeon has definitively been a game changer to my dungeoneering and should certainly be added in the official option instead of being hidden so people unaware this option exist could finally start to have fun in exploring random dungeons instead of fall into the boring cycle after a while.
Thank you so much for creating this option.
I completely agree to this statement! Should become an official option.

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Seferoth
Posts: 665
Joined: Fri Nov 22, 2019 5:45 pm
Location: Finland

Re: Experimental Smaller Dungeons

Post by Seferoth »

+1 for making Smaller Dungeons an official optional option. Makes dungeon crawling 10 times more fun in Daggerfall.

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joshcamas
Posts: 87
Joined: Mon Sep 21, 2020 7:01 am

Re: Experimental Smaller Dungeons

Post by joshcamas »

Smaller Dungeons is fantastic, and I haven't found issues with it so far!! +1 on making it an official feature

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Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Experimental Smaller Dungeons

Post by Interkarma »

Smaller Dungeons will definitely be part of core before Beta. :)

Feedback on this has been almost universally positive, so no chance that I'd remove it now. I just need to complete feature so that it's not so fragile when changing setting with quests already active. I have this solution in mind, but not finalised yet.

Lokkrin Zhataros
Posts: 256
Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2019 9:27 pm

Re: Experimental Smaller Dungeons

Post by Lokkrin Zhataros »

Curious how the Smaller Dungeon option is coming along?

Though I generally prefer the complex and labyrinthine dungeons, small versions would be nice for certain characters I'm planning.

Definitely approve of this feature! :)

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Interkarma
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Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Experimental Smaller Dungeons

Post by Interkarma »

I'm still working on mitigation pathways for user toggling setting while inside a dungeon or with a quest active to dungeon. Here's how smaller dungeons will handle this from 0.10.28.
  • If a dungeon is targeted by a quest, it will always use whatever setting was configured at time quest compiled. This means dungeons might be large when smaller dungeons are enabled, and vice versa. This will only affect users that toggle SmallerDungeons setting with active dungeon quests.
  • If user loads a dungeon save and SmallerDungeons setting is different to when that save was taken, they will be repositioned to dungeon entrance. This will only affect users toggling SmallerDungeons then loading a save inside a non-quest dungeon.
  • Teleport spell currently has no mitigation for teleporting into a dungeon where Anchor was set with an opposing SmallerDungeons setting. This is still todo.
I'm still working towards graduating this setting from experimental before beta release, but there are higher priorities just for the moment. This one isn't far behind however.

Lokkrin Zhataros
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Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2019 9:27 pm

Re: Experimental Smaller Dungeons

Post by Lokkrin Zhataros »

Thank you Interkarma for the reply! That looks reallygood! I'll look at the new version of DFU and try this feature out.

Sorry I didn't respond here right away. Been a bit distracted recently.

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Interkarma
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Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Experimental Smaller Dungeons

Post by Interkarma »

That's no worries. :) I'll keep on tuning this one into beta until I'm happy with it. I would have liked it fully ready before now, but just too much on my plate getting to beta.

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