Daggerfall Workshop Forums

Hello all, I released version 0.7.0 of OpenTESArena today! Here's the release video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKk18KLYU8k

City generation and dungeon generation are now in! All cities and main quest dungeons can be fast traveled to as well. You can also search for locations on province maps (it's a little bit better implemented than in the original game). Wilderness generation is still in its early stages, but for now the player can walk around a fixed 128x128 grid.

Clicking in the game world isn't implemented yet, so you can't enter or exit buildings, but you can go through transition voxels in interior locations. Also, dungeons and the wilderness can only be accessed from the test options on the main menu at the moment, but I'd like to have that fully implemented before long.

Awesome!

I never really figured how wilderness worked in Arena (except I remember that it is nicely done), is it really procedurally generated ad infinitum every time you play?

BTW, is your implementation based purely on observation (plus stuff from the manual and Codex Scientia I guess), or do you do some reverse-engineering as well?

Yes, it is infinite... At least until your game crashes.

MrFlibble wrote: ↑Tue May 01, 2018 9:28 am is it really procedurally generated ad infinitum every time you play?

Actually no, from what I understand. Every location has its own random seed. Each chunk of wilderness is 64x64 blocks and each wilderness is 64x64 chunks. I believe the city/town/village at a location is always in the center of the wilderness, so in theory you only have to go 32 chunks in any cardinal direction for the game to start breaking (which takes roughly 10-15 minutes I think).

MrFlibble wrote: BTW, is your implementation based purely on observation (plus stuff from the manual and Codex Scientia I guess), or do you do some reverse-engineering as well?

I've been getting a lot of great reverse-engineering assistance from GitHub user Carmina16. I don't know exactly how they do it (probably by decompiling the executable, etc.), but it lets them record the original program's behavior in pseudo-code and then I can reword it in C++ as part of a clean-room implementation. It's really helpful as it gives me the option to either implement things the way Arena did them, or in a modern way that makes more sense with current PC specifications.

afritz1 wrote: ↑Tue May 01, 2018 4:54 pm I've been getting a lot of great reverse-engineering assistance from GitHub user Carmina16. I don't know exactly how they do it (probably by decompiling the executable, etc.), but it lets them record the original program's behavior in pseudo-code and then I can reword it in C++ as part of a clean-room implementation. It's really helpful as it gives me the option to either implement things the way Arena did them, or in a modern way that makes more sense with current PC specifications.

Interesting! It appears that disassembling and reverse-engineering old DOS binaries is getting more traction these days. I've been talking to a user in another forum who does some interesting stuff with executables of Wolfenstein 3D and other games on the same engine; however the difference is that source code for these is available (but not for all versions).

Great afritz1, huge steps.

Keep on it!

I really appreciate your work on this. Seems weird to say this, but I think Arena has more mod potential than Daggerfall. Daggerfall has soooo much art to replace. Arena is quite a bit more sane for small manpower and reminds me of Dungeon Master with its grid-like design.

Please consider revising the "modern" control style or adding an "ultra-modern" option that mimics what is currently possible in dfunity:
-locks the crosshair to the center of the screen
-looking around doesn't involve clicking, it's what moving the mouse does by default.
-swinging a weapon doesn't involve holding down right-click. You just click.

Also consider adding some GUI-specific scale options. The crosshair and GUI elements take up a lot of space when running at 1080p, for example. If I could scale them at 2x instead of the 4x or whatever they're auto-scaled to, it would look nicer.

BansheeXYZ wrote: Please consider revising the "modern" control style or adding an "ultra-modern" option that mimics what is currently possible in dfunity:
-locks the crosshair to the center of the screen
-looking around doesn't involve clicking, it's what moving the mouse does by default.
-swinging a weapon doesn't involve holding down right-click. You just click.

Yeah, the current modern mode is not final by any means. Since it wasn't in the original game, it can essentially be anything, and it'll probably end up being a lot like what people expect from typical first-person cameras. However, since the renderer is in 2.5D, there are inherent limitations with trying to look straight up and down.

I'm not sure how I feel about click to attack, but it might be a quality-of-life thing added eventually (just like with Daggerfall Unity, and that's a feature I like, so it might be added sooner than later).

BansheeXYZ wrote: Also consider adding some GUI-specific scale options. The crosshair and GUI elements take up a lot of space when running at 1080p, for example. If I could scale them at 2x instead of the 4x or whatever they're auto-scaled to, it would look nicer.

There's already a cursor scale option in the options. A UI scale option would be nice to have, but for now I'm focusing on implementing all interface code relative to a 320x200 space just for the sake of consistency and to make feature implementation more convenient.

afritz1, WOW,

congrats also to You. A wonderful project! I have so many fond memories of Arena!

Jukic wrote: ↑Mon May 14, 2018 7:37 pm afritz1, WOW,

congrats also to You. A wonderful project! I have so many fond memories of Arena!

Thanks. I didn't know what Arena was until 2011-2012, so unfortunately I don't have all the same memories of it as others, but maybe my project will fix that . The first time I beat Arena was last year, so I've at least managed to finish it! (also a small part of the reason for that was so I could have a character who I could test the entire game with ).