Project N - a.k.a. what Daggerfall totally *doesn’t* need? Ok, I’ll do exactly that!

[Arneb]

Right now I’m working on expanding the Location Generator, while making it more flexible and independent. The general idea would be to make it generate every region’s locations, without input on my part, just by pressing a button, while at the same time having options to just randomise smaller categories when needed.

To accomplish the first objective, I’m compiling a spreadsheet to try and find some correlation between a region climate areas, govern type and density of different kind of settlements. I hope this will help me write an algorithm to automatise location generation, relieving me of the need to input those data.

The second point will be supposedly needed when, after the introduction of new assets like new RMBs, RDBs, models, etc. it would be more advisable to just randomly insert said asset in its own category, without the need to re-randomise everything from scratch.

Since I'm not sure I pointed it out, I feel important to highlight a fundamental difference between this fork and DFU:
it's totally possible to add new blocks (both RMBs and RDBs) without necessarily substitute an already existing one.
Practically this means that, if anyone feels inspired to make a particular, unique block for the main square of, let's say, the city capital of the fiefdom of Hakoshae in Elsweyr, it's totally possible to do, and that particular city block will appear there, and only there.
With this system, every single location can be made as hand-crafted as whoever decides to work on that wants, while the rest will be simply generated as the vanilla game was.
On the other hand, it's also possible to make it so a certain block appears only when generating locations in a certain province, region, climate or elevation, when generating a certain location type, or any combination of these conditions.

[Daniel87]

Just yesterday when clipping thrugh the walls, I could see all these loose dungeon ends that never got tied up. There are so many rooms floating in nothingness, because the algorithm creating the dungeons kind of was very flawed.

Well, those aren't so much bugs as features. Those are called border blocks, and they're a necessary part of the generation. You can read more on why they exist here:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Dun ... eon_Blocks

Oh my, and I thought those were just loose rooms generated accidentally or something. Couldn't they just have used a single wall asset to block off block exits that lead nowhere instead of placing a whole corridor or room there?
I think next time I play I have to take a screenshot of what I mean. Basically there were a lot of floating rooms and hallways that were connected to nothing and existing in tha vacuum of space, but not touching the main dungeon complex.

[Daniel87]

WO is one of those mods I would like to hardcode in ProjectN. But I heard Macadaynu lost its source code in a harddisk failure. If that's actually true, we should probably need to remake it. In that case, your part of the project would probably be very useful.

No problem, since I layed out the basic algo behind the tree distribution and its still in my github repo of the mod:
https://github.com/Bl4ckh34d/daggerfall ... s-overhaul

EDIT: I saw there are 5 forks from my initial version of the mod, one is accessible to me:
https://github.com/Shapur1234/daggerfal ... s-overhaul
Maybe it's his github repo from the finished mod? Not sure.

EDIT2: Or maybe this one?
https://github.com/John-Doom/daggerfall ... s-overhaul
But it seems this one is 3 commits behind Shapur1234's version. I guess that might be the most complete version of WO.

Sorry that I can't help you more with this, I really only created the fundament of the mod, Mac did all the rest of it and completed the missing 80 or 90% of biomes.

Have fun browsing it

[Arneb]

Oh my, and I thought those were just loose rooms generated accidentally or something. Couldn't they just have used a single wall asset to block off block exits that lead nowhere instead of placing a whole corridor or room there?
I think next time I play I have to take a screenshot of what I mean. Basically there were a lot of floating rooms and hallways that were connected to nothing and existing in tha vacuum of space, but not touching the main dungeon complex.

Trust me, we perfectly get what you mean.

From UESP:

Border blocks
These are used when it is necessary to close the side of an internal block. They are generally composed of a single corridor which connects the two door openings on one side of an adjacent internal block, but they can also consist of an isolated room or set of rooms, and sometimes combine the two. Border blocks are used to seal a dungeon's peripheral internal blocks and do not contain any quest locations.

Every single border block has these kind of corridor/room on each of his sides (N, S, W and E), thus it can be used to close the internal blocks of a dungeon wherever it is put. The "extra" corridors/rooms aren't supposed to be seen, since there's no way (or reason) to access them.

No problem, since I layed out the basic algo behind the tree distribution and its still in my github repo of the mod:
https://github.com/Bl4ckh34d/daggerfall ... s-overhaul

EDIT: I saw there are 5 forks from my initial version of the mod, one is accessible to me:
https://github.com/Shapur1234/daggerfal ... s-overhaul
Maybe it's his github repo from the finished mod? Not sure.

EDIT2: Or maybe this one?
https://github.com/John-Doom/daggerfall ... s-overhaul
But it seems this one is 3 commits behind Shapur1234's version. I guess that might be the most complete version of WO.

Sorry that I can't help you more with this, I really only created the fundament of the mod, Mac did all the rest of it and completed the missing 80 or 90% of biomes.

Have fun browsing it

Thank you for the links, I'll check 'em ASAP.

[11th_defender]

Since I'm not sure I pointed it out, I feel important to highlight a fundamental difference between this fork and DFU:
it's totally possible to add new blocks (both RMBs and RDBs) without necessarily substitute an already existing one.
Practically this means that, if anyone feels inspired to make a particular, unique block for the main square of, let's say, the city capital of the fiefdom of Hakoshae in Elsweyr, it's totally possible to do, and that particular city block will appear there, and only there.
With this system, every single location can be made as hand-crafted as whoever decides to work on that wants, while the rest will be simply generated as the vanilla game was.
On the other hand, it's also possible to make it so a certain block appears only when generating locations in a certain province, region, climate or elevation, when generating a certain location type, or any combination of these conditions.

I can already imagine people remaking specific places like the imperial city to be more like they appear in later tes games, and the possibilities for totally changing daggerfall is endless. Wishing you the best on completing this.

[jayhova]

I can already imagine people remaking specific places like the imperial city to be more like they appear in later tes games, and the possibilities for totally changing daggerfall is endless. Wishing you the best on completing this.

Tamriel was retconned to fix limitations with smaller maps. Even Daggerfall moved the kingdom of Daggerfall to make it more centrally located. I'd like to see a what-if scenario where retconning in Morrowind and after did not happen e.g. Ebonheart in on the mainland etc.

[Arneb]

Why choose when you can have both of them

[jayhova]

Why choose when you can have both of them

My reasoning is that had the team that created TES I&II made Daggefall the size of Arena they would not have. It was moved in Morrowind for gameplay purposes and then an old Ebonheart was reconned on the mainland.

[Arneb]

In the last weeks I’ve been working on a roads/tracks generator, and the corresponding modification to the code to make those appear in game. Even if I’m taking heavy inspiration from Hazelnut’s Basic Roads code (like, almost copy-pasting it), it’s taking a long time nonetheless, but doubtlessly not as much as it would have taken if I had to write everything from scratch.

While working on this essential (IMO) aspect of the project, I’m pondering which direction I’d like for it to take. I already said that I’m not against for this DFU fork to distance itself from classic Daggerfall by hardcoding some considerable differences in its base code. But what should these differences be? I’ll list a few points I came up with.

1. A character will choose a starting settlement of origin. This will be as random or deliberate as the player desires.
2. Every location within a certain range from his origin will be “discovered” (dungeons and covens aside), while everything else will be hidden, like the “Hidden Locations” mod.
3. Townsfolk won’t point locations on your map anymore, they’ll just give the usual generic indications; the different colors for shops, guilds and taverns will be removed, every building will have the same color.
4. Questgivers won’t point locations on your map either, they too will give an indication composed of a direction and a number of days of travel; it will be up to the player to find his quest objective.
5. Townsfolk will obviously be able to sometimes answer questions regarding the position of a quest objective.
6. It will be possible to find maps for sale in General Stores; these maps will be of different kind, and will "discover" on more or less close-by settlements, dungeons, etc.
7. The map will be filled with a huge number of “hidden locations” which won’t appear in the travel map: these locations will be bandit camps, graveyard-sized dungeons of different types, etc.
8. Fast-travel will be completely removed*.
9. Locations of quests given by guilds will be potentially more distant the higher the rank in that guild; at the same time, different quest will give different reputation increases, based also on how far the quest objective was; at higher ranks, I'd like to allow quests to have their objectives in a different region.

There are other modifications that I feel are almost essential, e.g. those introduced by mods like Climates&Calories, Roleplay&Realism, Combat Overhauled, Realistic Wagon, Darker Dungeons, etc...

Yep, let's say I see this project steer more toward the exploration/survival part of Daggerfall. But it's in its early development phase, so everything is still open to debate. We'll see.

*Teleportation from Mages Guild to Mages Guild will still be there, obviously, that being instant travel more than fast travel. And I could take into consideration the possibility to keep fast travel in the form of ship travel, coach travel and...Silt Striders?

[11th_defender]

Fast travel completely removed? How is that supposed to work? Was the idea to have accelerated travel like in travel options or actually completely removing fast travel. I think an option between both would be good.