Daggerfall Workshop Forums

So a thing that bugs me is how, when I visit Sentinel, the villagers are all Bretons with Redguard names. I recently came across this thread which explained how to fix it by tweaking some stuff in Fall.exe and changing the Climate.pak in Arena2 with their own which I did and it worked fine in classic. The author, Ferital, managed to also fix it in DFU but I have no idea how. Can someone explain it please?

Welcome to the forum slayer32!

The fix I provided in the thread you mentioned was mainly intended for classic Daggerfall. The fixed version of CLIMATE.PAK can be used in DFU but it will only fix NPCs from the southern parts of Dragontail Mountains. I could have easily replicated my FALL.EXE hack into DFU but never did it because we were not entirely sure at that time what was intended by Daggerfall original developpers. My guess is they wanted to put other kinds of folks in Sentinel and nearby kindgoms, maybe with more Arabic features, much like what was done for the Wrothgarian mountains with people looking like a mix of Breton and Nords. The question could be asked to either Julian LeFay or Ted Petterson...

However, if all other DFU devs agree, I can port my fix to DFU. After all, I recently discovered that Hammerfell shops had been incorrectly assigned Breton names in classic, and fixed it in DFU. The same shoud probably be done for NPCs.

Ferital wrote: ↑Sat May 29, 2021 3:36 pm Welcome to the forum slayer32!

The fix I provided in the thread you mentioned was mainly intended for classic Daggerfall. The fixed version of CLIMATE.PAK can be used in DFU but it will only fix NPCs from the southern parts of Dragontail Mountains.

First off all, thank you!

Second, do I need to put the CLIMATE.PAK somewhere in my DFU directory?

Hi Ferital, I'd be very grateful if you'd port your fix to DF Unity. I'm a big Hammer fell fan and it annoys me to no end to have Sentinel populated by Bretons.

Sounds like a reasonable fix to me, are there any hidden issues comming with that? If not, than it would be nice to include it ingame.

Ferital wrote: ↑Sat May 29, 2021 3:36 pm I could have easily replicated my FALL.EXE hack into DFU but never did it because we were not entirely sure at that time what was intended by Daggerfall original developpers. My guess is they wanted to put other kinds of folks in Sentinel and nearby kindgoms, maybe with more Arabic features, much like what was done for the Wrothgarian mountains with people looking like a mix of Breton and Nords. The question could be asked to either Julian LeFay or Ted Petterson...

When I first saw the Breton sprites for Sentinel commoners, I was also puzzled and thought it was an outright mistake, but later on I started having doubts because surely this would have been noticed by playtesters, since Sentinel is a major main quest location?

You can also see Breton-looking commoners in desert climate towns on some official preview screenshots:


There's another thing. I can't vouch for this, but I think that (in vanilla DOS DF) if you travel to towns in the south, but still within the Sentinel province, you'll see proper Redguard commoners, just like in even more southern areas like the Alik'r Desert. If so, then the commoner appearance is seemingly defined by the climate area settings, not provincial settings. After all, Sentinel the province is located on the northern border of Hammerfell, and Sentinel City lies in the northern part of the province. Maybe that would account for the lighter skin tone of northern Redguards living there, from the lore perspective?

MrFlibble wrote: ↑Thu Jun 17, 2021 1:51 pm There's another thing. I can't vouch for this, but I think that (in vanilla DOS DF) if you travel to towns in the south, but still within the Sentinel province, you'll see proper Redguard commoners, just like in even more southern areas like the Alik'r Desert. If so, then the commoner appearance is seemingly defined by the climate area settings, not provincial settings. After all, Sentinel the province is located on the northern border of Hammerfell, and Sentinel City lies in the northern part of the province. Maybe that would account for the lighter skin tone of northern Redguards living there, from the lore perspective?

Yes, that's the case, mobile NPCs flats are tied to climate. I explained this in this thread. And indeed, if the Iliac Bay political borders map is superimposed on the climate one, we can see that southern Sentinel uses another climate type. What was probably intended was to have a fourth set of flats, with a lighter skin as you're guessing, like the Arab people of northern Africa, as I supposed. But as usual, the lack of time prevented this to be done and many Hammerfell flats ended up looking like Bretons.

This seems reasonable. Another thing I might add is that larger towns, being cosmopolitan trade hubs, are likely to have at least some mixed population. For example you might see some non-Breton types in the city of Daggerfall.

Bumping this, because I'd still really like to see Redguards in Sentinel -- and the Dragontail Mountains.

Don't worry I didn't forget about it, in fact I already had a branch dedicated to this feature but it is based on a very old commit from DFU master branch.