Throughout the development process this is the mission statement that will define my goals and priorities:
“To create a playable build of Daggerfall in the Unity engine, and to provide a scaffold for future improvements.”
By “playable build”, I mean a workable version of Daggerfall from character creation through to completion of the main storyline. Development priority will be allocated to gameplay systems in order of their impact to the core gameplay experience. For example, character creation and progression, exploration, questing, combat resolution, and item management are part of the core gameplay loop. Features such as leaving your weapon with a blacksmith for repair are considered auxiliary to core gameplay and will have a lower priority. That doesn’t mean they won’t be addressed – they will – but only after higher priority items are working.
What this means is that Daggerfall Unity will spend a majority of early development layering down these core systems until it is possible to play through main quest in a direct manner. This will be the baseline structure, the “scaffold” mentioned above.
From a design point of view, I want to keep Daggerfall Unity as close as possible to vanilla Daggerfall – with the exception of course being improvements inherent to a rewrite for a modern engine and some light quality of life enhancements. This means all original textures, models, UI, etc. will be used as-is from your free Daggerfall installation.
I also want to ensure there is at least some potential for early mod efforts. To start with this will be very simple (e.g. editing text files), but as the project grows so will the potential for mod-makers. I know lots of people are keen to contribute with mods right away, and I’m keen to see them! But we need to have something that works first and something that can be modded second. So mod-makers, please be patient with me while I get the main systems up and running. You guys are awesome, and I won’t forget you.
I hope this gives you all some idea of my goals and priorities. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Edit: Updated March 2017 to better clarify separation between core game development and mod support.