Do seasons actually affect anything?

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MrFlibble
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Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2018 10:43 am

Do seasons actually affect anything?

Post by MrFlibble »

During development Daggerfall promised climate and wilderness effects that would affect the player, as hinted at in the beta demo, but these were never implemented. For these I've always assumed that it would be a mechanic that forced the player to wear warmer clothes in cold conditions, and lighter attire during warm seasons and/or when in warmer climate zones.

However recently it occurred to me that the change of seasons, from a realistic standpoint, could affect other aspects of gameplay:

a. Travel/fast travel times and cost: in a mediaeval setting, land travel during winter would likely be more restricted and take longer due to several factors. Shorter daylight times leading to less time that can be spent travelling => less distance covered each day. This would be exacerbated by snow covering the roads and the possible need to use sleds instead of wheeled carts. Same goes for travel by sea with more likelihood of adverse weather (strong winds and snow, or heavy rains in other seasons) and possible icing in ports.

In the context of Daggerfall questing specifically, thick snow could make it harder to find dungeon entrances in wilderness, especially of the mound type. And generally travelling in the wilderness, away from established routes (if the game had any roads by default that is) would be even more complicated than travel in general.

Quite possibly, the "camp out" option could be unavailable during winter. (I know this is not the case in the game but it could be.)

b. Food: supplies may be much more scarce during winter times, leading to higher prices, e.g. at inns. Conversely, during harvest food should be plentiful.

c. Heating: inns could possibly charge more for a warm room for the need to keep it warm in winter or autumn.

d. General supply of goods: with travel restricted during cold seasons, tight supply of any imports or even locally produced goods within a province may result in higher prices. One can imagine a higher use of candles in winter times etc.

e. NPC moods: this might be played differently. From a general perspective, in warmer seasons people should be more cheerful, but some might resort to more alcohol in colder times to keep warm. Anyway, seasons could translate in how well locals react to the player in conversations etc.

I wonder if anything of this kind was actually implemented or taken into account in the vanilla game? (as possibly hinted at by binary executable analysis) I remember that the manual or the hintbook referred to effects from political situation changes, like wars between provinces or city-states, e.g. prices for weapons going up, but I'm not sure if I ever noticed anything like this myself. This is of course made a bit more complex because prices ultimately also depend on the player's Mercantile skill. But if the developers at least thought about the political situation affecting the game it could be for seasons too. I never paid enough attention to fast travel costs or times to notice any possible effect of the current season either.

I'm not even sure if daylight times vary according to season in the vanilla game.

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Ralzar
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Re: Do seasons actually affect anything?

Post by Ralzar »

Climates & Calories got developed in a large part exactly because of this. The seasons and climates are just window dressing. As far as I know they have no ingame effect, although it seem very likely that they were intended to matter in some way. But like many features of Daggerfall, the devs never had the time.

pekkape
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Re: Do seasons actually affect anything?

Post by pekkape »

It does effect some enchants, like extra spellpoints during either winter, spring, summer and fall and there is 11 such different enchants all together and I use 8 of them

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