Questions about town layouts.

Post here if you need help getting started with Daggerfall Unity or just want to clarify a potential bug. Questions about playing or modding classic Daggerfall should be posted to Community.
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Daschluba
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Questions about town layouts.

Post by Daschluba »

I cant add any features to DTFU cause i got nearly no coding skills but i had a idea of something that "could" be easy to do for me and add some immersion. That would be to change town layouts in the way of moving/adding/removing objects to make cities look more realistic, not like squares.
But for that i would need to know:
1. Is the world everytime playing the same?(i remember daggerfall made it somewhat random) and if yes:
2. Is it possibly to change and save the layout of towns? And if this is also possible:
3. How much work would that be, would it be basically just moving things around or would it need more complex things to do? And if it would need complex things to do are that things i could easily learn or would i need to be very skilled to do them?

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Interkarma
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Re: Questions about town layouts.

Post by Interkarma »

You've already made some great contributions through testing and the quick key reference. I really appreciate your passion towards the project. :)

Yep, cities always have the same layout. It's a bit like lego where *.RMB blocks are the bricks. Here's a rough outline of how it all fits together.

ARCH3D.BSA defines 3D models (the individual vertices, UV coordinates, base texture indices, etc.)
BLOCKS.BSA defines a model layout for every block. The ground tile layout and foliage layout are here also.
MAPS.BSA defines how these blocks are assembled into a city or dungeon. A full city like Daggerfall is 8x8 blocks.
CLIMATE.PAK defines information about the biome each location is inside of (desert, swamp, etc.) and texture indices are changed based on climate and season.

There are a total of 920 RMB blocks that are used over and over again to layout every city. Some of these are totally unique, like the big castle blocks for Sentinel, Daggerfall, and Wayrest. But on the whole, it's just the same limited number of pieces laid out over and over again. The concept is identical to Dungeon Geormorphs.

A really good resource for understanding the layouts is Daggerfall Modelling. It lets you drill-down from city to block to model. Even right down to the texture on each face of a model.

At the moment, DFTFU reads these layouts directly from an Arena2 folder and stamps them down just like Daggerfall. Changing them would involve either modifying the source data (messy) or providing a means to use custom content in place of, or complementary to, the standard layouts.

Uncanny_Valley has already made some great progress to the complementary method. He's created a tool that lets you compose layout data at runtime that is saved to a definition file. When that block is next loaded, the saved object layout will be repeated for that block. This is a great approach for the additive technique.

What we also need is the ability to setup entirely custom block prefabs and define where they should be stamped down at runtime. These two methods together would give non-coders the ability to create more detailed environments inside the Unity editor. I think we'll get to this point before too long, especially with the likes of Uncanny_Valley making such an amazing head-start on solutions.

I hope that answers your query. Just let me know if any follow-up questions and I'd be more than happy to help. :)

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Daschluba
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Re: Questions about town layouts.

Post by Daschluba »

Thank you for that big explanation, what Uncanny_Valley made could work for what i had in mind. I will play around with the things you told me and look if i get something to work.

EDIT: Ok now i have a problem, i got DFTFU in unity running but can't download Uncanny_Valley's work (the link isnt working correctly). Is it only for me not working or do you have the same problem?

EDIT2: There would be one thing i would need to know, can you say me how i can view the world in the editor? Would be hard to edit something without seeing anything.Oh and one other is it normal to get some error messages when playing from the editor?

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Interkarma
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Re: Questions about town layouts.

Post by Interkarma »

Try the download link in this post instead, it should still be working.

The way Uncanny_Valley's mod works is to add objects in Play mode (while the procedural world is running) and save changes to a config file. The next time you go into Play mode those changes will be applied automatically to procedural world based on saved config.

You shouldn't have any errors when playing from the editor. Check that you've set your Arena2 path in the Daggerfall Unity singleton to a valid file path. Also, if you're using Unity5, be sure you've downloaded the latest DFTFU Developer Preview build (currently 1.3.8). The 1.2 release isn't compatible with Unity5.

If you haven't already, it's worth working through the tutorials on this page. They go step-by-step through setting up scenes and cover most of the basics you'll need for both Unity and DFTFU. If you just want to jump straight into the streaming world, this PDF should get you started. However, it doesn't go into detail on how everything fits together.

Unfortunately tutorials still need updating for 1.3 and Unity5, so let me know if you get stuck and I'll do what I can to help. :)

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Daschluba
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Re: Questions about town layouts.

Post by Daschluba »

Again thanks for helping me :) So the errors didn't come from DFTFU they where something else(nothing importend). Sadly im still stuck, the link works but it says that it cant read the archiv or something, could you try it out? Other than that, could the map actually be saved as a normal map like in morrowind or so, with support of landscape-editing? That would be the easiest way of editing the world, as far as i can imagine. Oh and one other thing i wanted to ask, are localistion's possibly? Often when i have old games and i don't know what to do i just translate them(it's actually really funny), beginning to translate DFTFU even in this early state where there is nearly nothing to translate would still be big joy.

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Interkarma
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Re: Questions about town layouts.

Post by Interkarma »

No problems. :) Thanks for pointing that out, archive seems to be corrupt. I'll PM Uncanny_Valley and see if he can send me another link to the file.

I'm working on some localisation tools for 1.3. They'll be able to import existing translations (such as those done by the German and French teams) for you guys to build on. It's definitely important to me this is done early. Once I get these features in, you're most welcome to get stuck in and help expand on the translations. I think this will be fun to watch come together.

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Daschluba
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Re: Questions about town layouts.

Post by Daschluba »

Can't wait :D

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