Chocolate Daggerfall?

[MrFlibble]

I've only sporadically followed the DF Unity project's development but it is my understanding (please correct me if I'm wrong here) that at some point it transitioned from observation-based reconstruction of the game's original mechanics to some rather heavy reverse engineering of the DOS binary executable to establish how things work, and recreate them as accurately as possible.

I wonder if the results of this analysis could be used to create a "Chocolate Daggerfall" (by analogy with Chocolate Doom) - an engine recreation/"port" that would allow to play the game on modern systems as closely as possible to the original DOS experience, but without having to resort to DOSBox, and with as many bugs ironed out as possible? I had hoped that DaggerXL would become this, considering that it was announced that all the necessary reverse engineering had been completed, but the project stalled, as you well know.

[King of Worms]

I dont understand you. DFU is what you looking for. Its made for new systems to play as close to vanilla as possible.

[Hazelnut]

I've only sporadically followed the DF Unity project's development but it is my understanding (please correct me if I'm wrong here) that at some point it transitioned from observation-based reconstruction of the game's original mechanics to some rather heavy reverse engineering of the DOS binary executable to establish how things work, and recreate them as accurately as possible.

It's a mix, honestly. If anyone points out a difference that we've missed then it usually gets sorted at some point.

[mikeprichard]

an engine recreation/"port" that would allow to play the game on modern systems as closely as possible to the original DOS experience, but without having to resort to DOSBox, and with as many bugs ironed out as possible

This is DFU. Your wait is over!

[Ferital]

I wonder if the results of this analysis could be used to create a "Chocolate Daggerfall" (by analogy with Chocolate Doom) -an engine recreation/"port" that would allow to play the game on modern systems as closely as possible to the original DOS experience, but without having to resort to DOSBox, and with as many bugs ironed out as possible?

The simple answer is no, because we only reversed what we needed. This was primarily done by R.D./Allofich and a little by me, but it is still far from covering the entire original game. For example, apart from some information on some file formats, we didn't need anything of the original 3D engine so we reversed almost nothing from it, and we will never do it.

To be honest, even if there was some Windows 1:1 port of the original DOS game, I wouldn't see the point in playing it now that Daggerfall Unity offers a very close but much smoother and richer experience. Well, except if one prefers to fall into the void

[King of Worms]

This...

[numidium3rd]

Unfortunately I think DFU is the closest you're going to get to a Chocolate Daggerfall. Doom's publicly available source code makes it practical to code a near-1:1 port to modern day OSes but we have no such advantage with Daggerfall. I'm not even sure if the Daggerfall source even exists anymore.

Unless some mad genius reverses the entire executable to a high-level language we're going to be stuck with a rough approximation.

[MrFlibble]

The simple answer is no, because we only reversed what we needed. This was primarily done by R.D./Allofich and a little by me, but it is still far from covering the entire original game. For example, apart from some information on some file formats, we didn't need anything of the original 3D engine so we reversed almost nothing from it, and we will never do it.

Thank you for clarifying this! I guessed this much concerning the 3D engine part.

To be honest, even if there was some Windows 1:1 port of the original DOS game, I wouldn't see the point in playing it now that Daggerfall Unity offers a very close but much smoother and richer experience. Well, except if one prefers to fall into the void

Well, there is a reason why ports like Chocolate Doom or Crispy Doom exist, because some people prefer the vanilla experience - besides I implied that the hypothetical Chocolate Daggerfall would have the bugs fixed while keeping the rest intact. Otherwise there's no reason not to simply play the original DOS version through DOSBox.

I would still ask another question though: how easy would it be to separate DFUs reconstructed game mechanics from the engine proper? Suppose someone wanted to take let's say the Quake engine and use it for rendering instead of Unity? (again, purely theoretical interest here)

[afritz1]

In DF Unity's case I think the retro rendering 320x200 option is enough for me.

Like others have said, it's less practical to consider a Chocolate Daggerfall given that it doesn't have the same documentation and source available like Chocolate Doom. And to go through all that work just to have something potentially less maintainable and moddable than DF Unity? What would the end product be? Would it have its own small community and set of exclusive mods? Maybe there would be some amazing DF Unity mod that wouldn't be practical to implement in Chocolate Daggerfall, and then fewer people would be interested in Chocolate Daggerfall.

There are pros and cons with using Unity for an open-source remake and I'm still at the point that I'm just happy DF Unity exists.

I can kind of understand the people asking for something other than DF Unity, though. Around 7 or 8 years ago people were excited about DaggerXL filling that void, but then the project went silent and DF Unity grew in size and eventually became the best available way to play Daggerfall, but those people's itches still aren't being scratched because DF Unity is non-ideal to them in some form or another.

With regards to extracting "Daggerfall" from DF Unity, I don't really know the codebase but given that it's Unity, there are probably several dependencies on MonoBehaviour functions and Unity's features (rendering, shaders, collision detection, prefabs, asset management, audio, scripting, modding, ...). From my experience it's easy for a project using Unity to become tightly coupled with Unity's systems, but it depends completely on the project.

[Hazelnut]

I gotta say guys, I really don't get this topic at all? DFU is configurable to be almost identical (as far as we have been able to achieve) to classic. What is missing exactly? Interkarma even made the retro render mode for the classic look.