Just to say how amazing this is...

Discuss Daggerfall Unity and Daggerfall Tools for Unity.
Post Reply
Al-Khwarizmi
Posts: 177
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 9:52 am

Just to say how amazing this is...

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

I have been participating in these forums for quite a long time, but up to very recently, I had only fooled around testing the game superficially. I hadn't really dived into it, investing into a character, playing him for lots of hours, caring about him and immersing myself into the game. The reason was part lack of time, and part perfectionism - being a somewhat obsessive person that doesn't like the feeling of something being incomplete, as I mentioned here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1575&p=18083#p18083

However, with the latest developments (effect system almost complete, etc.) I thought it was time to start playing seriously, and that's what I did. I downloaded the latest version a couple of weeks ago, together with the DREAM mod and all the aesthetic mods recommended in the DREAM post (curated mod lists like that are handy!), as well as the remastered music and sound effects. I didn't download content mods like the Archaeologists, Jay's quest packs or Warm Ashes because I wanted my first serious play to be on the same classic Daggerfall content that I enjoyed in my teen years, with only the visuals and sound modernized. I plan to also try the content mods later on (they look awesome) but I wanted my first experience to be more puristic.

And I just wanted to say... wow, this really *is* Daggerfall, with all its magic, but updated to be fit for the current age. It gives me the same feeling and the same addiction as when I played classic more than 20 years ago. I felt right at home asking for quests at the Mages and Fighters guilds, as I used to do, walking around the big city of Daggerfall (now much prettier than before, the mayors of the last two decades have improved things a lot), traveling to other locations. The dungeon crawls are amazing. I have never found a game with dungeon crawls as immersive as those of Daggerfall, due to a combination of fantastic ambience, looks, music, sound effects and sheer size. I have played many more modern dungeon crawlers, but nope. But Daggerfall Unity, of course, retains that unsurpassed immersion from Daggerfall. The spooky feeling when you are finding a place to rest and hear the scream of a skeleton. The crafty feeling when you navigate around by climbing vertical tunnels, levitating, water breathing or manipulating levers. The sigh when you get to the surface again after a long dungeon crawl. By the way, I'm playing without the small dungeon feature and honestly, I find the classic dungeon size perfect - it has always been one of the reasons why I like Daggerfall, because dungeons really seem like mazes and exploring is really a challenge (I'm still happy that the small dungeon option exists for other people who prefer it, and to attract new players, of course).

The feel of the engine is smoother than ever. The aesthetic modifications in the mods are just genius. They make the graphics and music much more high-quality and fit to the current age, but at the same time keeping the old feel. Furniture in houses is the Daggerfall furniture, buildings are the Daggerfall buildings, characters are the Daggerfall characters, music is the Daggerfall music, I have found nothing that is out of place or breaks my immersion but everything is much more detailed and beautiful now.

To provide some criticism, I will also list some details that I think could benefit from some slight improvements:

- Although the dungeon map is leaps and bounds better than in classic, I still miss the tiny minimap with the red and black dots. It was a crude but useful way of having a general idea of where you were in the dungeon. Although this is probably just an old timer thing. I don't think new players will miss it.

- The website helpfully recommends downloading Daggerfall Setup but it would be useful, I think, to have some guidance about what options to choose when running the Setup. I wasn't sure if I could select unofficial quest fixes, etc. without DFU breaking. I did, and I didn't break, but I don't think this is obvious.

- The tutorial probably needs some overhaul as has been pointed by other people in other threads.

But these details are insignificant compared to the sheer awesomeness that DFU provides. So this is just a big kudos to Interkarma and to all the coders and mod builders because they have done, are doing, amazing work and have created a true marvel of gaming... I have said this kind of thing often but now I can be even more sure of what I say because I have experienced the whole thing deeply, and been hooked by it just in the old times. I am not a believer but if there is a God, I think all of you can be sure that you are doing God's work. And otherwise, you're going to make a lot of people very happy.

User avatar
UserOfThisSite
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu Mar 07, 2019 10:05 pm

Re: Just to say how amazing this is...

Post by UserOfThisSite »

If good exists, then there must be evil, so you can distinguish one from another. So I'll play role of the evil:

I also love Daggerfall and played it when I was like 7 or 8 years old, so the main reason why I can still play it even today is that connection to memories from childhood. Unfortunately, today I see through all that fakes and illusions and cheap tricks produced by devs. I personally think that all Bethesda's games should be considered "shovelware" and the company itself are just bunch of scammers, since they are full of those dev cheap tricks. Static generic worlds, generic NPCs, generic quests, generic dungeons, zero balance, all numeric values are taken from the sky, obsolete and/or completely useless skills, awful game design motivated purely by "make it faster and simplier as possible" (e.g. level scaling, so you don't need to balance areas in game, everything simply grows with a player!). I can generate any TES game on Unity within few days and this is not overexaggeration.

Unfortunately, Daggerfall is just a loot&sell simulator with zero balance and completely inadequate game design. Its goal was to create an open world game to give that epic feeling of adventure to the player and it worked, but any adequate player, who knows game's mechanics, will see how primitive the game is. The same applies to Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. Morrowind is considered the best of the series purely because of the amount of lore and monologues in the game. All those descriptions and asking for directions in quests, etc. etc. Again, purely because of the atmoshphere. But it takes time and effort from devs to do something like this, and this is why Oblivion and Skyrim simply have quests markers and minimal dialogues (and because modern players don't like to read, too). So Oblivion and Skyrim are just follow-that-marker&loot&sell simulators.

Combat in Daggerfall - you just look at the enemy and wave your mouse until the enemy is dead.
Quests in Daggerfall - bring item A from dungeon B, or kill A in dungeon/house B.
Guilds in Daggerfall - mage's guild for daedra, mage's guild / julianos' temple for item maker, the rest guilds are just random-quest-generators and useless.
Quests in Daggerfall in general - generic, useless. You can literally generate TES-like quests. First generate main goals, then targets, then complexity, then generate NPCs for all of this and you have your generic TES world. You can literally generate TES VI game yourself on Unity.
Level scaling - one of the devs' cheap tricks. The easiest way to make a game and completely inadequate game design decision, because level scaling doesn't work, if player knows about its existence. Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion - ideally players must pick skills they're NOT going to use as their main skills, this way they will be relatively stronger and have full control of their leveling. In Skyrim they removed classes, so now all skills contribute to the level and there're obsolete skills, like Lockpicking, which make your character relatively weaker every time you lockpick a lock, because you can lockpick any lock with any lockpicking skill, thus this skill exists purely to increase your level. Level scaling should be considered as a bug in game design and bugs must be fixed.
Skills - if the game has more than one weapon skill and you can play the game using only one, then every other weapon skill is useless, thus they all must be merged. Or "combat mechanics" / "character leveling" must be changed to make use of multiple weapon skills, e. g. Galsiah's Character Development mod for Morrowind.
Loot - you can't lose items, which means once you found that sword, any other sword which is worse, than yours, is automatically useless and either goes to shopkeeper or ignored and not looted. This simply destroys the whole reason why RPGs have inventory system and ability to loot and equip items. Bethesda doesn't even realize this, even today, and they just copy-pasted this generic feature from other RPGs, simply because... it's an RPG, all RPGs have inventory. Solution: items should have durability and it shouldn't be repairable, so items will have limited life, or player should go to load screen when he dies, and instead lose all items and respawn. Then having an ability to find and buy/loot items will have some sense.
Skills mechanics - exploitable and most of them are just plain stupid, as if they were designed by little child with zero imagination. "Craft million iron daggers for smithing skill in Skyrim" approach works in any TES games almost for any skill. Many skills simply force players to do idiotic tasks just to be increased.

But the worst is... NOTHING has changed even today - Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4 - they all suffer from the same idiotic cheap tricks and completely inadequate game design decisions. And I'm not even talking about bugs and unfinished features and even prototype features which were left in the game, because publishers don't really care about the game, they just want devs to finish it as fast as possible AND they want to put as least resources on this as possible, because any cent on put in development is -cent from budget. They would rather spend it on advertisement and promotional stuff like shows and interviews.

In the end, unfortunately, TES series are just shovelware games, which are being remade over and over and even reskinned into post-apo style and renamed from TES to Fallout.
If I sound rude, please ignore it, that's how I communicate. I'm actually very non-emotional and thus the chances that I'm angry while posting are ~0%. I also use sarcasm very often.

User avatar
King of Worms
Posts: 4752
Joined: Mon Oct 17, 2016 11:18 pm
Location: Scourg Barrow (CZ)
Contact:

Re: Just to say how amazing this is...

Post by King of Worms »

Lol man the 2nd post is so depressing I considered a suicide after few lines of text :lol:

I completely agree with a opening post and Im glad it was written, so I can just sign it up and call it KoW approoved.
Amen!

User avatar
jayhova
Posts: 923
Joined: Wed Jul 19, 2017 7:54 pm
Contact:

Re: Just to say how amazing this is...

Post by jayhova »

I am in total agreement here. Actually on both parts. I tend to play without gameplay expansions to get that vanilla feel with a better visual experience.

When we talk about Daggerfall you need to understand what was the goal and the influence. The influence was pencil and paper RPGs and previous attempts to recreate them on a computer. They all failed. They all continue to fail. Clicking a mouse button cannot equal rolling actual dice to see if you hit the monster. Here is where the real problem come in. How do you simulate an inexperienced fighter incapable of hitting a target when you are an experienced gamer used to crushing your street fighter II opponents? This is the quandary of moving into the world of RTCRPGs(Real-Time Computer Role Playing Games) The fallout games keep the turn based mechanic hit location and other RPG mechanics. TES gave those up to be real time.

Julian Lefay said that the best CRPG isn't as good as the worst P&P RPG. But you got the sense that he was trying to fix that. With the latter games they began to cover up that you couldn't fix that with prettier graphics and more casual challenges.
Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

User avatar
mikeprichard
Posts: 1037
Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2017 6:49 pm

Re: Just to say how amazing this is...

Post by mikeprichard »

I won't be getting into this more here, but I 110% agree that level scaling (of enemies, loot, etc.) is an astoundingly lazy and obsolete mechanic that should be killed with fire. But despite its many quirks and flaws, I still love Daggerfall.

User avatar
Nystul
Posts: 1501
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:31 am

Re: Just to say how amazing this is...

Post by Nystul »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 11:39 am - Although the dungeon map is leaps and bounds better than in classic, I still miss the tiny minimap with the red and black dots. It was a crude but useful way of having a general idea of where you were in the dungeon. Although this is probably just an old timer thing. I don't think new players will miss it.
I have plans to implement this, as well as a system for custom markers. although I need to find time for it - currently I am busy with stuff at work (also cool stuff: VR/AR/MR - but it takes up most of my time)

the tiny minimap should be pretty straightforward imo, so maybe someone wants to jump in and implement it
I would also love to indicate water/flooded areas on the map somehow

legion
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2018 5:06 pm

Re: Just to say how amazing this is...

Post by legion »

I make a huge distinction between Daggerfall and III-V.
The sequels took what was worst about Daggerfall and magnified it -- they took the generic element and turned it into a safer, limited sandbox play style.
Keep in mind that the design team changed radically starting with Morrowind. They have kept the same Lead Designer through all the newer games (Todd Howard) and all these games are similar because of that.
Daggerfall, meanwhile, was totally different -- a risky and innovative experiment when it came out. The game was so ambitious they could never hope to have enough time and money to have it reach its full potential. Daggerfall Unity is a modern-day endeavor to achieve that.
To me, Daggerfall is superior for aesthetic reasons. I've always liked the music composition, the sprites, and the atmosphere of this game. Morrowind-Skyrim were never able to match it. Its ironic how archaic 2D graphics technology ends up looking better than 3D.
I still think the randomly-generated, endless dungeons are far more exciting than any of the pre-designed drivel. None of those games are challenging at all.
But what if you're going on a simple quest to kill an orc in a dungeon, but then you go down the wrong hallway, fall through a broken trapdoor elevator, end up in an underground ancient cavern full of ancient vampires and you have no weapon capable of harming them so you just kind of have to dodge them, and you spend weeks trying to escape the dungeon, totally failing your quest, but eventually you get out of there and you're relieved to just get out with your skin intact.
Then you can move to a different province and join a new Temple and start your life over again. So you just live and let live, there is no metagaming or need to be a perfectionist in your RPG and this was intentional, it was the design element that set Daggerfall apart and no one dares to try it anymore.

User avatar
jayhova
Posts: 923
Joined: Wed Jul 19, 2017 7:54 pm
Contact:

Re: Just to say how amazing this is...

Post by jayhova »

legion wrote: Mon Apr 15, 2019 12:01 am I make a huge distinction between Daggerfall and III-V.
The sequels took what was worst about Daggerfall and magnified it -- they took the generic element and turned it into a safer, limited sandbox play style.
Keep in mind that the design team changed radically starting with Morrowind. They have kept the same Lead Designer through all the newer games (Todd Howard) and all these games are similar because of that.
Daggerfall, meanwhile, was totally different -- a risky and innovative experiment when it came out. The game was so ambitious they could never hope to have enough time and money to have it reach its full potential. Daggerfall Unity is a modern-day endeavor to achieve that.
To me, Daggerfall is superior for aesthetic reasons. I've always liked the music composition, the sprites, and the atmosphere of this game. Morrowind-Skyrim were never able to match it. Its ironic how archaic 2D graphics technology ends up looking better than 3D.
I still think the randomly-generated, endless dungeons are far more exciting than any of the pre-designed drivel. None of those games are challenging at all.
But what if you're going on a simple quest to kill an orc in a dungeon, but then you go down the wrong hallway, fall through a broken trapdoor elevator, end up in an underground ancient cavern full of ancient vampires and you have no weapon capable of harming them so you just kind of have to dodge them, and you spend weeks trying to escape the dungeon, totally failing your quest, but eventually you get out of there and you're relieved to just get out with your skin intact.
Then you can move to a different province and join a new Temple and start your life over again. So you just live and let live, there is no metagaming or need to be a perfectionist in your RPG and this was intentional, it was the design element that set Daggerfall apart and no one dares to try it anymore.
What I find interesting is the psychological nature of how games are put together and how that psychology changes over time. The games after Daggerfall are fundamentally different starting with Redguard, Redguard was Todd Howard's big debut. Redguard was a historical story about a hero. As such, the story itself was a forgone conclusion. This mindset shaped all games TH worked on afterward. Every game in the series after, required you to fulfil the prophecy of an epic tale. The game puts you in a role, tells you that you are special, that you have a special role to play. In later games you cannot even fail. In Daggerfall you can be a nobody. You can betray the emperor and do as you please. There are missions, but these are not scripted story elements. You can fail, all to easily.

More and more with later games the story was planned out and all the parts of the world that did not enhance the story were trimmed away. Why have places that the PC won't visit? Why have landmarks the PC won't look at? Make the world exclusively for the player and leave everything else out. How would a world like that appear if you were living in it? What would the world be like if the next major city was a 20 minute walk away? Like a twilight zone episode.

I don't want to roleplay in a twilight zone episode. When I roleplay with people I know the DM makes the world seem as big and real as he can. At its best an RPG is a world simulator. Legend of Zelda is not an RPG, It's a video game.

Todd Howard didn't remove fast travel so much as he removed the need for it by removing the world. Fast travel itself is just a way of making the world more convenient. It can be replaced by Tedious Travel without removing the Daggerfall feel. As you say, part of that feel is the feeling that you can fail.
Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

BansheeXYZ
Posts: 555
Joined: Fri Oct 23, 2015 8:19 pm

Re: Just to say how amazing this is...

Post by BansheeXYZ »

UserOfThisSite wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 1:51 pmCombat in Daggerfall - you just look at the enemy and wave your mouse until the enemy is dead.
Well, you're not going to get 3d mechanics from a 2d fps. There's definitely some kiting, though, against enemies stronger than you. There's also the occasional mob. I definitely don't like the huge role paralyze plays early on. It's way too strong and lasts too long. Debilitating but not crippling debuffs are more interesting for combat. There should have been a "slow" debuff from spiders/scorps, stackably draining speed. Trying to limp away to safety would be more exciting than standing still waiting for death. Eventually paralyze from liches and stuff would show up, the idea being that you'd have potions or items to deal with it by then. But I'd have it last 5 seconds max so it isn't a death sentence without them.
Quests in Daggerfall - bring item A from dungeon B, or kill A in dungeon/house B.
Guilds in Daggerfall - mage's guild for daedra, mage's guild / julianos' temple for item maker, the rest guilds are just random-quest-generators and useless.
I actually don't have many complaints about the quest diversity. There are escort quests, fetch quests, rescue quests, basically every excuse to see some amusing dialog play out or go dungeon diving.

Things like hordes of orcs attacking a city are great ideas for new quests. Or map % explorer guilds where you get rewards for mapping out dungeons fully would be fun. There are endless opportunities to construct elaborate new quests.
Skills - if the game has more than one weapon skill and you can play the game using only one, then every other weapon skill is useless
I see no problems here, you can make characters with multiple weapons skills. You just need to be aware of its impact on guild eligibility.
items should have durability and it shouldn't be repairable, so items will have limited life, or player should go to load screen when he dies, and instead lose all items and respawn. Then having an ability to find and buy/loot items will have some sense.
That sounds like some hardcore roguelike stuff. Most people detest games where treasure they worked hard for can break. Then the game feels like a treadmill rather than a progression. Very preferential.
Skills mechanics - exploitable and most of them are just plain stupid, as if they were designed by little child with zero imagination. "Craft million iron daggers for smithing skill in Skyrim" approach works in any TES games almost for any skill. Many skills simply force players to do idiotic tasks just to be increased.
One of the downfalls of making a game super hard is it can make the game grindy. Daggerfall never feels grindy to me. You just naturally improve at stuff or buy training, you never feel like you need to go out of your way to boost skills.

Blowingsand
Posts: 34
Joined: Sun Apr 21, 2019 1:03 pm

Re: Just to say how amazing this is...

Post by Blowingsand »

I was 42 when Daggerfall came out. Now I'm 65, and I NEVER thought I'd be playing it again. What a wonderful surprise! Not as awesome as Jesus walking out of his grave, :shock: (Happy Easter everyone) but pretty close :lol:

Back In 1996 I never got out of Privateer's Hold.
Let me share my first two weeks in Daggerfall Unity:

I am a Redguard swordsman in Daggerfall. I'm pretty much dis't by everyone I try to talk to because of my race. Finally a shady lady slips me contraband to be delivered to a shopkeeper in Blackford. Upon entering said shop, I'm falsely accused of stealing just as the real perp escapes. Pursued by a guard I fast travel back to Daggerfall to find my notoriety has preceded me. A posse of guards forms behind me as I zigzag thru the city. I end up making a plea deal. 50-something days later, I'm enjoying the fresh air of Tamriel once again. I wish I could remember the name of the fellow I took the rap for - I owe him.

Post Reply