"Implement Jump skill formula, refine movement speed, and tune gravity to better match classic"

[Interkarma]

I wanted to discuss this item on the roadmap for a minute. If you've played a lot of classic Daggerfall, you'll know that Daggerfall Unity has a seemingly higher base movement speed and jump force than classic. There has been an item on the roadmap for some time to make pass over this.

The challenge of matching classic is that movement and jumping in classic Daggerfall was heavily tied to CPU speed. Players who started on a Pentium 75 learned a completely different "feel" to those who started on a Pentium 2. And this will likely be different to those who only played in DOSBox with 50k cycles. There was a brief discussion in this topic about CPU speeds and how we remembered slightly different idiosyncrasies depending on our hardware at the time.

Firstly, something we all need to accept is there's no perfect answer here. We all experienced something slightly different and all of our memories are equally valid. The goal instead is to work out what was intended based on common hardware at the time (486s and early Pentiums).

I'd like to survey everyone's experiences and expectations around this to try and dial in the "feel" that we should be aiming for. But I want to make it clear than I intend movement and jumping to remain functional even at lowest levels. I expect all players to be able to run from trouble and jump smaller obstacles (such as leaping onto the throne elevator in PH) at a bare minimum.

I'm open to hearing everyone's feedback, but I'm mainly interested in stuff I can measure somehow. If you played Daggerfall back in the day (96-99) what hardware did you have and what are your memories of the movement "feel".

Did you find that you were able to leap easily from the ground onto lower rooftops with a high-jump, high-agility athletic character? Were you able to outrun everything else in the game or did it catch up to you? Do you remember a moderate jump skill character being able to jump easily onto the fences and hedges found commonly in towns or graveyards, or did you have to climb them first? Those kinds of memories are most helpful as it's all stuff I can check against classic in DOSBox and in Daggerfall Unity.

Something I absolutely plan on doing is adding an INI setting where player can tune their movement speed and jump force slightly up or down to dial in their own preferences. Because we all have slightly different memories of this "feel", it's important the user has some control over this. These settings won't be for creating supermen (that's what the console is for), just to tune the feel a bit in either direction from the baseline.

I look forward to hearing your memories.

[Dalebvr]

Hmm....

If the junk bin is correct, I initially ran DF Classic on an AMD 486 DOS 6.1 amd Win 3.1, for a couple of weeks, then went to the brand new K6 on a Socket 7 motherboard and Win 95 original. Jumping seemed to be high enough for the elevator in PH, but there were the clipping issues, and I tended to somehow always slide between polys and get stuck in the pedestal. Aside from the second or so pause passing between exterior cells, movement was smooth and stutter free. Of course the stutter only happened when on foot; I rode that damned horse from one end of the map to the other with no problems I can recall.

Going to the K6 required a bit of tweaking of the ini, as movement increased enough that you could clip through the stairs once every 15 or 16 times. And of course memory requirements went from 384 meg on the Am486 to 1024meg on the K6. And I would up with 2048 megs before everything grew stable. The K6 also had better response in swimming and climbing out of the water than the 486 did.

I currently have an Athlon II dosbox running games that won't function on the current os's. That one runs a full 98Lite install on 98SE-2, and travel speed and jumping in DF is way overpowered.

[Ferital]

Back in the days, from 1998 to early 2000s, I played DF on an AMD6 K6 200. This CPU FPU was not very good compared to its Intel counterpart, especially Pentium II, but overall it was roughly similar(and much cheaper) than an equivalent Pentium MMX of that time.

What I remember is that I used jumping skill mostly to leap above dungeon holes. This would require to run for some distance for the jump to be successful, and I would often fall into the void when failing (damn DF void).

I think I never used jumping for anything else as I thought it was mostly ineffective or hard to control. Current DFU implementation is much better in my opinion, maybe a little too powerful but actually usable, which is the most important.

[King of Worms]

Ive played Daggerfall on something hardly being able to run it in 96.

Movement was slow. Jumping... incredibly unresponsive, was hard to jump the dungeon hole.

I jumped all the time while running in the cities, because it speed up the movement. Something which is not happening in dfu.

Untimately

Movement in DFU feels much better and free and I would not go back to the slow unresponsive movement of 1996.

Only thing strange in dfu is how super easy is to climb.

[Hazelnut]

I think getting the DF feel but not necessarily exactly the same is the right approach. It should feel natural, and distinct for fast agile chars to slow not agile ones.

The only part I really do want to change from classic is the gravity which seemed floaty and unrealistic in the original. Not saying it should be 100% realistic, but it should feel real.

[Gadel]

I jumped all the time while running in the cities, because it speed up the movement. Something which is not happening in dfu.

From my memory i was doing that too... and still do it in DFU somewhat by reflex somewhat to raise jumping skill...

Movement in DFU feels much better and free and I would not go back to the slow unresponsive movement of 1996.
Only thing strange in dfu is how super easy is to climb.

Totally agree... Movement in dfu are great, but i remember much falling while climbing in daggerfall vanilla... In DFU i just never fall.

[Dalebvr]

Put me on that list too, I'd forgotten about the jump and run in the cities until Ferital mentioned it! And while void rangering was fun (if you had your levitate and teleport spells active) since it was unavoidable, too much retro might not be the best. I mean back then you didn't just toss your CRT across the room in frustration, a thing I've seen kiddies doing with the current cheap LCDs.

Of course playing DF is definitely putting on the big boy pants considering its size. Since you could take the game spaces of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, drop them into DF and shake it like a maraca (did I just insult the 'you have to walk all the way around this mountain range to get to this spot that is 50 paces away' methodology ?), I think it would be fun to have the ways of old as options, but you can get that with DOSbox and classic if you really have to have it.

And no, I haven't forgiven Bethsoft for promising Morrowind and giving us a mobius folded Vvarnenfell instead.

[Taemos]

I played Daggerfall on a Pentium 166 MMX and 24MB of RAM when I was growing up. Daggerfall's gravity definitely felt very "off"; I remember feeling very floaty at all times, like I did actually have weight but there was a delay in gravity's reaction to my moving (if that makes any sense). Movement in the game was awkward and not fluid at all, although the sounds of my characters footsteps across the ground, the sound of crickets chirping and just a little suspension of disbelief filled in the gaps.

Jumping always felt like I was moving through peanut butter but at a fixed velocity and angle. Unfortunately my old computer is long gone, but if I had to make a vague guess based on memory alone, I'd say a Jumping skill level of 25 should be roughly enough to clear the throne elevator (depending on Agility as well of course).

To be perfectly honest, I think Daggerfall Unity's current gravity/jumping feels more natural. I can understand the desire to emulate classic, but personally I am fine without "the air is made of peanut butter" mode. I would also agree with Ferital that DFU's Jumping is maybe a little too powerful starting off, but it's cool to imagine the possibilities based on what has been seen so far.

[BansheeXYZ]

Jumping in classic feels floaty, like it's taking too long for gravity to start pulling you down. Like attacking, you also cannot look around while jumping, which is awful. DFU feels normal.

I just tested classic jumping at both 20 and 100 skill, max STR. I noticed no difference at all. Jumping height was always the same, and jumping length was always determined by momentum, so only running/SPD affected it.

So it appears to be the most useless skill in the game. As I've said in mod threads, the only way to make it useful is some kind of fall damage immunity and a charge mechanic. Otherwise, really high jumps will be uncontrollable and suicidal, and raising the skill will be purely negative.

[Aleryn]

I played Daggerfall mostly on an original Pentium at 150mhz [I was very fortunate.] The operating system was Windows 95 restarted in MS-DOS 7.0. mode. I recall some minor physics things being a bit off when played in Windows 95. I will also add that when later played on a Pentium 2, NPCs walk paths were ruined. The enemies couldn't close the gap between me and them to fight effectively, and the villagers wouldn't walk human-like paths in towns. Any way...

Did you find that you were able to leap easily from the ground onto lower rooftops with a high-jump, high-agility athletic character?
I think I was able to jump onto the lower rooftops from ground level once I hit around 80 jumping.

Were you able to outrun everything else in the game or did it catch up to you?
I recall being able to outrun most things early in the game with a run skill of around 20. I strongly suspect Bethesda wanted players to be able to outrun a fight going bad. Especially early on.

Do you remember a moderate jump skill character being able to jump easily onto the fences and hedges found commonly in towns or graveyards, or did you have to climb them first?
Yes, a character with around 40ish jumping could just get over the hedges with a jump, I seem to recall. There was an art to maximize the height of the jump arc over the hedge but it worked.