Roads of Daggerfall

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ByteMixer
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by ByteMixer »

meritamas wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2020 10:02 am Don't recall ever being called a 'realism or immersion junkie', but fair enough. Fits well :D
They weren't my words. ;) After all, I consider myself somewhat of an immersion junkie, haha! :lol:
"Whatever you do, make good art." - Neil Gaiman

Jeoshua
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by Jeoshua »

Nothing to be ashamed of. I am an immersion junkie, too. I want my game as realistic and true to life as possible, tho I draw the line at bodily functions.

As far as game mechanics on roads, I think that going "on rails" should only be a thing for a TT type mod. Otherwise, depending on the surface you're walking on (grass, dirt, stone) you should pull from a different enemy spawn table and make the spawn amounts based on distance from the nearest town. That way you could have brigands spawn on roads far away from town, and more pastoral wildlife like bears spawn in the grassy tiles far off the road.

Note that "grass" includes a type of sand for desert areas.

Also let it be known that I am making my own personal map with something like this in mind. I am going to be using a Wetness index for terrain coverage, and lifting up all locations and lines between them slightly. People tend to make cities on top of local maxima (hills, bergs, etc) and away from floods, while also crowding around global minima (valleys, coasts, etc).

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DigitalMonk
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by DigitalMonk »

Jeoshua wrote: Thu Jan 09, 2020 10:58 amAs far as game mechanics on roads, I think that going "on rails" should only be a thing for a TT type mod.
Just an early morning thought: What if the "rails" were angle limited? Sort of a driving assist, but not true rails. So, if you're walking along a road and it veers 15 degrees left, the game turns you to follow it. But if you hit the edge of the road at greater than 45 degrees, you walk off of it normally. So you don't have a separate mode to keep track of, and leaving the road is intuitive. Crossing roads would be unaffected, unless you crossed them at a very shallow angle...

I dunno, I kinda like the idea of encouraging me to use roads. In games, I'm ludicrously lazy and walk in straight lines to my destination, across yards, mud, ice, through shrubs, etc. But in the real world, I'm a sidewalk/path follower. I try to do that sometimes in DF towns, but I always fall back to just running off at weird angles and jumping over ponds...

Betrayal at Krondor had a rail-based "follow road" system. It was nice, but could be a bit jarring (sudden rotations -- I will say that some kind of prediction and early smooth turning would be really nice).

meritamas
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by meritamas »

Just a quick update.
There are some promising developments but also a couple of bugs (or at least one particular bug that bothers me a lot) I haven't been able to get rid of yet.
It will take some more time because momentarily I am busy with other stuff. I'll use this post (edit it when needed) to keep you updated. Will only create a new post in case of a major leap of progress.

7 March 2020 UPDATE: I am taking a break from Roads. These days I have a lot more inspiration with regard to magic, so I tend to record those thoughts. Hoping to be back with some news in April or May.

18 May 2020 UPDATE: I got tangled up in other projects. I am planning to eventually get back to roads but cannot foretell, when that time will arrive.
Roads might even be implemented by then. Anyone with ambition, go ahead, if you contact me, I'd probable try and help.
Anyway, I'll most likely be an experienced modder by the time I come back to roads and I will need that experience to do this right. There is a lot I currently don't understand well enough that will probably be needed here.
Last edited by meritamas on Mon May 18, 2020 6:39 am, edited 4 times in total.
Interest in expanding and improving the Magic system, Capitalism and an Unleveled World.

My main quest in the DFU community is my (Mostly) Magic Mod.

communityus
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by communityus »

Just had a thought, didn't Arena have procedural roads? I think open TES arena was MIT. Not sure what all would carry over, and likely more of a AddOn / PR than a mod if go that direction but I stumbled on the fact arena had roads in another forum post (forget which one, might of been maps) and thought to post here as a approach that maybe would already fit with the framework.

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Jay_H
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by Jay_H »

Arena is a game of self-contained locations that aren't connected; no road will ever lead from one city or province to another. That's an entirely different world ;)

hannafamilycomputer
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by hannafamilycomputer »

Yes, [it has roads] but arena was pretty much 100% procedurally generated afaik. The towns weren't placed specifically, you just picked a direction and ran into things. From what I've played of arena, it looks like there were tiles picked out at random, so there would be a lake tile with a island with a dungeon, a town surronded by a moat, and so on. It's like daggerfall dungeons and cities, except there are exterior land blocks that are put together instead of dungeon blocks.

You would have to create empty road blocks that adjust to the terrian in dfu, since arena was completly flat and square. You would also need code to determine if the tiles is already a location before placing a road tile.

(There are some platforms and lakes that take you to a different 'level', and some walls at 45 deegree angles, but not many.)

Also, since the roads are randomly placed, they don't lead anywhere. They just connect to more randomly generated tiles.

It would be nice to have roads though, even if they were just random and had no direction at all.

communityus
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by communityus »

Good info.

Part 1:
To me the big drive behind roads was then to get the NPCs walking on them. Then have a option to do a local quest, like escort across the town. If the town could be seed based (I saw some random dungeon work - similar, borrow ideas from that for town) then in a sense they are static when placed if seed is used. Then within the seeded town the roads are there and you can at least have a quest going from enter/exit? I am new to quest writing as well. More or less jotting down ideas as I see this and wilderness eventually being a combo of the two works.

Part 2:
If we can have wilderness quest based on enter exit a town, then a sub step enter / exit a building or touch a bed or harvest a corn. Perhaps we can have paths between two locations that the npcs can plot linear straight walking paths. Then general idea is to make them seem alive I think like the NPCs know the world and travel it.

However the second part, doesn't require roads. But could be placed with location loader if they are a simple mesh. Or could be drawn with WOODS.WLD? I think. Anyways some thoughts.

communityus
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

Post by communityus »

Part 3:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:DFR ... ctal_Roads

Above I pretty much describe
Simple Linear Linking[edit]
A basic road system would simply be straight lines from a given town to its closest neighbours
Be sure to checkout "Noisy Linear Linking" and "Size Based Linking." DFRemake now links to dfworkshop ;-) I wonder if its our very own @Interkarma voice from the past on this one :-) or someone of like mind to be sure.

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Jay_H
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Re: Roads of Daggerfall

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