KoW - D.R.E.A.M.

[King of Worms]

Yeah Im kind of done with it currently, if you prefer the 2020 textures, than by all means... but all the 2020 textures using roughness are bugged in the new light system. Your choice makes no real sense honestly. Exchanging one temple for 50% of the game... nah, your choice. Anyway, appreciated the feedback. I might correct that one texture.

[Izendel]

This dancer character I'm sure it's not yet finished. You could use her portrait from the dialogue screen to finally give her a face

I'm working on dancing lady. Don't worry it will be completed till next DREAM update

[King of Worms]

Izendel you are a godsend

[King of Worms]

I couldn't find those buff/debuff icons you are talking about.

https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/254

[Daedrix]

I'm working on dancing lady. Don't worry it will be completed till next DREAM update

Great news Izendel Is that work gonna be useful for every variation of the dancer character (like the hooded ones) or will it be just for the bald one?

Thanks for the link, KoW. I had already found it, but I liked the icons already included in DREAM better, so from those I assembled this:



As you can see I just reordered the icons in a file to be put in "...\Textures\IMG\", so that it overwrites Daggerfall's classic icons. I spent a while trying to figuring out the conceptual associations between the magic effects and the icons XD, and of course it still has the original engine limitations, such as a lot of spells automatically assigned to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th icons from the top-left, and the potions effects assigned to the first from the top-left. But at least now buffs\debuff icons fit in a bit better in the HD game.

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King of Worms, is there ANY chance for you to produce a "DREAM - More vanilla faithful Temple pack"?
Or, if you'd rather have nothing to do with it for now, could you please share with me the files you've worked with (textures, heights, normals, materals .mat files; just the temple files of course)?
It would all be for my personal use of course, or I could send you the assembled .dfmod for you to release.
My OCD is making me do this. I have no intention of stealing your hard work. I'm doing this just out of my love for the game, nor I'm looking for any "modder" glory. It would just be YOUR files, but assembled in a pack that works with the new lighting and reflection system.

These are my biggest gripes with the new temples textures:

First of all, while every other texture is a more or less 100% faithful upscaled recreation of the vanilla textures, I don't see why the temples should have received an artistic style overhaul. They don't fit in.

I'll explain better what I mean, temple by temple.

- Mainland temple.

Daggerfall seems to be set in what in our world have been the european middle ages (specifically the period between 800 AD to 1300 AD)
The mainland temple textures would look more at home not earlier than the 2nd half of the 15th century, more like the 16th-18th century.
They look too "Modern age" (end of 15th to beginning of the 19th century) and don't fit with the rest of the medieval aesthetic zeitgeist of the game.



This style of ceiling tiles began to be used not earlier than the Renaissance age, through all the Modern age, til the Art Nuveau movement at the beginning of the 20th century.

The mainland temple interior looks like it belongs in one of the mansions in Dishonored, not Daggerfall.
It's too Baroque, too rich.
You can see how it mashes and clashes badly with the temple's exterior in architectonic style; not even the windows coincide:



VS



While the original temple's interior style coincides perfectly with the exterior:



This happens with the doors as well.
The original shabby looking wooden entrance door clashes with the new 18th century mansion style texture interior:





A 100 septims entrance door vs a 1000 septims door inside the temple?



The original interior door looks much more coherent (with the original exterior-coherent interior, of course)



The interior's alcoves are also a no-no for me.



Let's not forget that Daggerfall comes from a time period when 3D architecture was still in its infancy.
The new textures, as I said before, are too rich, too detailed. Not as in too high resolution, but too busy, overloaded with elements. They clash badly with Daggerfall's simple and minimalist 3D structures.
Daggerfall's aesthetics key lies in simplicity. Sometimes less is more.

- Swamp temple.

First of all I think that the swamp temples' particularity should have been preserved.

Second, the problems I had with exterior - interior coherency with the mainland temple type resurface vehemently in the swamp temple types:



VS



VS



BTW you can see my bad attempt at recreating an upscaled version of the original floor tiles XD

The original floor tiles, for comparison:



- Mountain temple.

I think the original wooden ceiling fit much better, for the exterior temple has a straw roof





Here I too, though I like your floor textures, still prefer the original HD restored textures faithful to the intentions of the original artist:



Look at that beautiful lighting system! Sadly unavailable unless the vanilla-faithful textures are compiled in a .dfmod pack:



- Desert temple.

The least controversial (imo, lol) temple textures.

I would just get rid of the alcoves in the walls, for the same reasoning as in the other temple walls (complex textures don't fit in minimalist 3D structures),



and it is good to go.

PRO: A sand coloured temple in the desert. The colours of the exterior are the same as in the interior.
A nice and sensible addition to the vanilla game.

CON: Or one could simply restore the desert temple like it was in vanilla, that is the same interior as the mainland temple,
respecting the original artist's vision.
One could make the reasoning that the desert temples are in mainland Hammerfell, same as the "mainland type"
temples are in mainland High Rock, hence the "mainland" style, so they share the same interior style. The "anomalies"
would then only be the swamp and mountain styles, because they are located in isolated regions, literally at the
eastern edges of the map.

To conclude, I think a stylistic overhaul should be out of scope in a HD recreation of the game.
After all, why faithfully recreating 95% of the original textures in pristine HD, while the remaining 5% is partially, when not totally, different from the source?

What I felt it was needed to be said on this matter I shared, without sentiment.

Now that all of this is off my chest, whichever decision you might take on this subject, I will respect.

[King of Worms]

Hi, Im completely burned out and need a break from this, as always after a major release.

Spoiler!

You want the current textures used, to remake em? Or the old ones so u can revert to old version?

Im up for changing the temples, but not now - I can support u at that if you want. Just keep it simple for me.

100% return and reverting to 2021 version is a no-go for me in next version. The changes I did have reasons and they stand. Im willing to transform what is, to something more in line with rest of the game, getting rid of wooden modern ceiling (which caused issues elswhere at the cemetaries) things here and there, windows more fitting interior/exterior.

But flat out return to 2021 is not how I want to do it. Nor will I remove the alternate walls to make em SAME as the other walls, when I have a option to make em different. Dont like the current different walls in the entrance halls? Good, I can see your point, offer some better ones, create em or sketch some ideas and I can try to make em in HD.

I appreciate your feedback and your passion for this. As I say, Im incredibly burned out with this currently, just typing this hurts. Im glad new version out and ppl can play it, so thinking about the temples is really deadly for me currently

If you have the passion, skills, drive, whatever to make it better, Im up I will join in few months or weeks, who knows, currently I need a break.

Good job on the icons btw

2nd day edit: many of the daggerfall decissions were made only based on limited time, budget and also bugs. Like having a desert temple same interior as the mainland. I will never revert to that. You propably OCDing a bit really here. Im also not doing 1:1 recreation of old textures, ever visited my dungeons? I checked the textures now, it will be really hard for you to make any sense of them as one thing is texture naming, another thing is material naming. Material can be called 361 and have 161 textures in it (as I swapped the interior for example) - not sure how skilled u at unity, if u ever worked with materials and dfmods.

Just specify what textures and materials u want. I will take a look at temples in the next Dream release somewhere in 2022 personally, I dont think its such a disaster as portrayed here really.

[Jay_H]

Yeah, give yourself a break. Especially with all the work that goes into a release like you just did, it's important to let these projects float for awhile. You'll feel better after detaching for some time (Notice I haven't touched any of my mods for months, too)

[King of Worms]

Yes sir

[Interkarma]

Absolutely take all the time you need to decompress mate. This kind of thing is hard and we know how much love and hard work you pour into this.

[Daedrix]

I hope this fits the topic. I've made an icon pack that supposedly "enhances" (emphasis on supposedly) the vanilla icons.

The first 15 icons from the left in the top row are made from sprites made by KoW; I painted the other ones.

This is the result:



As you can see, the quality varies wildly... some are ok-ish, while others are (un)acceptable

I especially like how the spirals have come out.

I'm posting these here cause this is as far as I can go with my limited abilities, and I thought that maybe someone who can actually draw, and shares my idea of how an HD vanilla icon pack would be cool, can use these to jumpstart their work.

Since the image is a preview, please tell me if someone wants me to post the actual file.

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BTW Kow I saw your interpretation of other textures different from vanilla, such as inside castles and dungeons, and I have to say I like them all so far.

I especially liked the mosaic floors in Castle Sentinel.