Project Idea: Morrowind Rebuilt

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Vorzak
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Re: Project Idea: Morrowind Rebuilt

Post by Vorzak »

Werewolf wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 1:41 am My suggestions are a mod that implements a game mechanic where the more you explore the wilderness, the more the game will spawn better loot drops for enemies and spawn traveling merchants that provide items and services that shops don’t. Future Elder Scrolls do have some elements that are similar but they just have tiny wilderness with hand-placed random events and NPCs. With Daggerfall’s size my idea is the game would have a mechanic/counter that awards the player for being in the wilderness and spawns exciting things, almost like a DND GM. Like you’d have to be an avid explorer of the woods before a message pops up and you come across this merchant that sells you magic items, no Mages Guild required. It’s a lot different thing future Elder Scrolls games approach to the wilderness and random events that would give players more of a reason to explore the wilderness and really sink in that feeling of a large world
Not really. What part of your proposed mod requires a million square miles of land to function? It simply wouldn’t. Your concept only provides a few basic things to do, things to find and some encounters, combined with a counter tracking your time and adjusting types of encounters - but again, that still doesn’t justify the world size of Daggerfall and it would not be difficult at all to add that mod into a small game world. There is plenty of wilderness space in “theme-park” sized worlds for this to function just fine. I can easily see something similar in Skyrim within its small world. There’s also little difference between that and Warm Ashes, aside from a counter tracking your time in the wilderness and merchants.

Your mod wouldn't really be practical gameplay and might quickly get too tedious and boring for whatever reward the player might receive. Like, what are you doing walking around the vast wilderness of the Illiac Bay in-between encounters? There’s nothing out there to explore, you'd be wandering about aimlessly just waiting for the next event to pop up. Also, it doesn't fit in with the rest of the game. Like will I get more special rewards for spending extra time delving into a dungeon? It wouldn't be balanced with how the other parts of the game are designed. No offense, IMO it seems your mod concept is a bit awkward and more of an excuse and gimmick than providing any rationale for the over-sized world.

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jayhova
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Re: Project Idea: Morrowind Rebuilt

Post by jayhova »

MrFlibble wrote: Sun Aug 14, 2022 4:19 pm What I meant to say is that if one created a Morrowind world using exactly the same random generation methods as in the original Daggerfall, wouldn't this result in a very similar samey world with all towns and cities pretty much looking like one another?

Surely, the design methods must be improved somehow for this purported Morrowind-world game to have any value of its own. I can only speculate, but the key would either lie in making more hand-crafted content, or to devise sophisticated AI algorithms that would generate more natural-looking locations which would have variety.

The latter seems like an interesting possibility, if the AI were able to create different town and city types based on terrain, climate and possible political relations between settlements. Doesn't Dwarf Fortress do something of this kind already, even without stuff like deep learning AI, just by using algorithms?
It certainly would. However, since it is a clean slate there is no reason for it to stay that way. As project Tamriel has proven the TES community has a huge capacity to create entirely new content. Loads of new and wholly original content already exists for a Morrowind environment.

If things are procedurally created, the way they are procedurally created would be part of what would be done. Might there be a single Empire-style shop in a city filled with dark elf-style shops? Sure.
MrFlibble wrote: Sun Aug 14, 2022 4:19 pm That's a very interesting analogy, I've never thought about game worlds from this point of view before, but it seems very productive. Thanks for sharing this idea!
It's not something that is very obvious. However, if you look at the Skywind project it very successfully replicates the feel of Morrowind because the scale is the same. Whereas if you look at the Skygerfall project it falls quite flat. This is largely because the engine does not lend itself to the scale that Daggerfall was built on. You simply don't miss the scale in Morrowind because it was never there. The reverse is not true.
MrFlibble wrote: Sun Aug 14, 2022 4:19 pm I will speak in the defence of DF dungeons. You're totally right that Arena dungeons often feel more like actual places, because they were designed that way, and again, the more simple game engine facilitated this illusion. You can find the same if you compare Wolfenstein 3-D and Doom. Doom has infinitely more complex level architecture, but Wolf3D uses simple clues like decoration sprites to convey the idea of where you are. You can easily tell a kitchen from a storeroom or a mess hall or a prison cell in Wolf3D, while in Doom it's all mazes that don't really resemble any particular place at all.

However, it is not true that DF dungeons do not have variety. They certainly do, and the developers clearly tried to make "places" out of individual rooms and dungeon blocks. The problem is that when this is thrown together by a random generator, the sense of place is gone, you get locations that look like building interiors and real underground dungeons, caves and crypts, and sometimes even areas that look like they belong outdoors (like a courtyard with towers and sometimes, catapults, or a cattle pen with a cow in it) all mixed together without any sense or rhyme. This is exacerbated by the fact that dungeons layouts are seemingly random assigned to dungeon "types", so you can arrive at what is called a "castle" to only find a mound for an entrance and a maze of caverns inside, and so on.

That, and also don't forget that the devs were clearly only learning the potential of XnGine's true 3D environments. This is clearly underutilized, and as a result, many rooms look empty and incomplete, contributing to the feel that nothing makes sense in DF dungeons. I think it is very obvious that with some more experience and direction, some very impressive and more consistent dungeon locations could be created, including believable castle or fort interiors, underground passages, crypts and so on.

As for my defence of the dungeons as they are, it's very simple. They're enjoyable on their own, at least for me, because they effectively provide a roguelike-esque experience, and are fun to explore, even though they make little sense as realistic locations.
One of the things that I would hope to promote it the idea that dungeons do not have to follow the same pattern as Daggerfall. I think at this point we have enough knowledge of how dungeons go together to create a good procedural creation kit. I think a lot of the things in Arena were in fact good ideas that got dropped in Daggerfall. One of the drawbacks of DFU is that it seeks to faithfully recreate the original. But what we can clearly see is that when you have a large canvas like DFU you can create fantastic new material. This sort of thing is not possible in TES games because there is no blank space in them. Morrowind was the exception to this because new landmass could be created and installed into the game. It took a very long time because all of the landmass had to be handcrafted. The upside of procedural generation is a computer can create as much land as you need it to and can do it over and over better each time.
MrFlibble wrote: Sun Aug 14, 2022 4:19 pm Also guys, could you please not quote entire posts? it just clutters the thread, making it more difficult to navigate.
You will notice I tend not to do that. The funny thing is that I was doing all the hard work of editing out all of my comments before I got to the bottom and saw this. :-) :lol:
Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

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jayhova
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Re: Project Idea: Morrowind Rebuilt

Post by jayhova »

Things I'd like to see related to this:
  • A landmass generator
    As far as I am aware, we don't really know how the landmass was generated. But clearly, it was generated on mid-90s machines. Of course, one of the big things missing is paths for rivers, roads, and lava flows. Imagine ancient world mega projects like aqueducts. These would also need pathing. Tunneling through mountains would not be an insurmountable challenge for a society with mages capable of casting passwall.
  • A creation kit
    When Daggerfall came out user created content just wasn't a thing. The creation kit that came with Morrowind changed TES and ended the idea that the developers were the sole gatekeepers of content.
  • A Morrowind Bible
    I would like to see Morrowind as the Daggerfall team would have done it not as the Todd Howard team did it. There is quite a radical distinction between the Arena Morrowind and the Todd Howard Morrowind. I'd like to see something in between. I am not saying that there should be nothing taken from 'TES Morrowind' but the game is, to a great extent, alien for the sake of being alien. Morrowind has been a part of the Empire for centuries. While there are likely to be places where the Empire has less influence there should be a balance. An entire city was relocated simply because the scale of the published game demanded it.
  • Content mirgration
    There is a great deal of user-created content that exists and could be used in a modern engine (like Unity). I would certainly like to see some cross-pollination of existing content.
I'm thinking with DFU nearing completion, a creation kit seems like the next logical step.
Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

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Werewolf
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Re: Project Idea: Morrowind Rebuilt

Post by Werewolf »

I’d say that some of the good things in Arena that didn’t make it into Daggerfall like the better dungeons were the limitations of learning how to develop for a 3D engine. If someone were to make a dungeon generator and a landmass generator that would open up a lot of possibilities. Daggerfall’s dungeons have their charm but someone could make far more logical blocks then the default ones, Daggerfall has overly long hallways and random rooms that don’t seem that logical, it’s a night and day difference compared to Arena. Arena having castles being mazes was unrealistic but it’s dungeons still felt far more real then Daggerfall’s. In Arena castles felt like castles, crypts felt like crypts, caves felt like caves, etc. Also don’t forget how Elden Grove in Arena was outside in foggy woods, there’s nothing like that in Daggerfall.

If someone were to make all-new dungeon blocks and a generator, then someone could make castles that almost are laid out like a real castle. That would be the proper follow-up to Arena’s dungeons as Arena fave you the sense of location really well with the issue being castles being maze-like which is expected from the raycast engine. Imagine a castles in Daggerfall that are like actual castles, with hallways, dining rooms, dungeons, chambers, etc.

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MrFlibble
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Re: Project Idea: Morrowind Rebuilt

Post by MrFlibble »

jayhova wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 10:48 am One of the things that I would hope to promote it the idea that dungeons do not have to follow the same pattern as Daggerfall. I think at this point we have enough knowledge of how dungeons go together to create a good procedural creation kit. I think a lot of the things in Arena were in fact good ideas that got dropped in Daggerfall. One of the drawbacks of DFU is that it seeks to faithfully recreate the original. But what we can clearly see is that when you have a large canvas like DFU you can create fantastic new material.
I would love to see community-made dungeons for DFU that make more sense than the vanilla ones. I wonder how far this could get and whether the limitations are still comparable to those in vanilla, or if the new dungeons could grow as complex in terms of details as possible.

Taverns Redone seems like a great mod that reshuffles vanilla assets to create new locations that look more like actual places. Dungeons would probably require more work because there are so many different rooms to create, and also they still have to function as dungeons, i. e. present a challenge to find your way around. You'll have to admit that Arena dungeons are generally not challenging from this perspective, and if one gets lost sometimes, this is more likely because they often use a sparse set of similar textures while the geometry is extremely limited.
Werewolf wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 2:25 pm If someone were to make all-new dungeon blocks and a generator, then someone could make castles that almost are laid out like a real castle. That would be the proper follow-up to Arena’s dungeons as Arena fave you the sense of location really well with the issue being castles being maze-like which is expected from the raycast engine. Imagine a castles in Daggerfall that are like actual castles, with hallways, dining rooms, dungeons, chambers, etc.
This is certainly not something I would object to, generally, but at the same time it's probably a good idea to keep in mind that the novelty factor of such "realistic" locations would inevitably be rather limited. A dungeon, or for that matter, any level in any video game, has to function as part of gameplay first and foremost, not just resemble a real place or create "atmosphere". Down at the core, any level is a set of rooms connected by corridors, and the defining factor is how it plays, not how it looks.

What I mean to say, vanilla DF dungeons may make little sense, but they present a real challenge to the player, in part because of how convoluted they are. I've played almost halfway through Morrowind (I guess) but the only dungeon I encountered so far which is even remotely comparable to DF dungeons in terms of complexity is Arkngthand. Everything else is fairly short and straightforward, and too obviously boils down to the aforementioned "rooms connected with corridors" formula.

I would certainly find it interesting if someone made a really big castle with many rooms where you can get lost, like those described in some fairy-tales, especially if playing through such a dungeon would not simply amount to walking into a room, taking care of any monsters inside and taking all the loot.

You know, it's just occurred to me that vanilla DF dungeons certainly undermined one aspect they could have made more use of, namely the switches that open up new passages. It seems that many of the randomly generated dungeons have more levers than there are actually doors or walls you can open, and you never know what lever opened/closed/changed state of what in the dungeon.

All the while this switch-door mechanic is a major staple in both old-school RPGs (like blobbers) and FPS games contemporary to Daggerfall. It is not once that I thought that DF devs could have learned a lot from their colleagues who worked on Future Shock, and also from other FPS titles like Duke Nukem 3D, or perhaps even Hexen (although many still dislike the switch hunt mechanic in that game). Of course, randomly generated dungeons are a bit at odds with planned level progression that is employed in aforementioned games, but since dungeon blocks are hand-crafted anyway, this could have been used at least on a local level. Instead, the blocks were apparently deliberately made with several alternate paths, presumably to facilitate better interconnections between blocks and prevent the player from getting stuck in dead ends, contributing to even more confusing layouts.

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