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

[Arneb]

To be honest, the idea would be to completely remove fast travel, and I wasn't planning on implementing accelerated travel either.
I think that, if the world is filled with enough hidden locations to discover and explore, real time travel wouldn't be so boring and pointless as is in the vanilla game.
I could be wrong, thus I'm open to suggestions from anyone following this thread. Since at the moment you're probably the only one, what do you think about it?

[jayhova]

Given the size of the map the idea of not having any sort of fast travel seems a crazy one. My guess is that the map should be somewhere around the size of Australia. That's nuts.

[Arneb]

More the size of Europe, if my calculations are correct. The land above water level only, obviously.

I get this may sound crazy, but just imagine: the continent is HUGE, and moving from one province to another could take weeks, and it’s a trip that can’t be taken lightly; it needs preparation: knowing where the next safe settlement is would be as vital as having all the equipment for it.

At one point the player actually begins travelling. After a few hours, a small trail dive into the woods beside the main road, and a ruined temple can be seen on a nearby hill. What would he do? Even if exploring the ruins could not be that dangerous to a seasoned adventurer, it could use the remaining hours of daylight, and emerging from the dungeon the player could get lost in the dark of the night (by the way, I’m planning on removing the compass too, if the character hasn’t an advantage that matches the climate he’s travelling through ).

Or I could go with fast travelling: I’m in Daggerfall - hey, now I’m in Black Marsh. Ok, it took only a couple of months.

[Vorzak]

Aren't these two completely different things?

Adding the entire continent of Tamriel to DF vs a sort of 'Extreme Gameplay Overhaul.'

Nothing wrong with the combination, but maybe they should be left as two separate options. I like a level of realism and survival in gameplay, but that's not for everyone. Even "Climates&Calories" mod is rather niche playstyle in this community. What if someone wants the addition of the Tamriel landmass but prefers classic/standard DF mechanics and gameplay?

[Abhaddon]

I've been watching this and the previous topic with interest, and I think this may end up being best done as two connected but distinct projects: one for extending and generalizing DFU to support the variety of deep and wide changes the whole concept requires, and another to mold and curate the specific experience envisioned here using the base and tools the former creates.

Even though these are not wholly separate ventures, I think there is conceptual clarity to be gained in giving these parts separate names. In other words: which of these is Project N, and what is the other?

[jayhova]

I find the idea of totally recreating the world of Tamriel in the Daggerfall engine to be utterly fantastic. The idea of seeing the volcano of the dark elves in Morrowind. The chain of Stros M'Kai and so on.

[Vorzak]

I find the idea of totally recreating the world of Tamriel in the Daggerfall engine to be utterly fantastic. The idea of seeing the volcano of the dark elves in Morrowind. The chain of Stros M'Kai and so on.

I have no issues with what I thought was the original goal of this project (expanding the landmass of Daggerfall to include all Tamriel).

However I misunderstood what this project was actually about and indeed missed a few things previously reading in the thread.

I'd like for ProjectN to take a different path than DFU did: while DFU is an almost faithful port of Daggerfall, with every big change to the gameplay relying on mods, I'm not against "hardcoding" some major changes directly in the game.

For a series of reasons: first, I'm not expecting for this to get as much favour as DFU did and does, thus I don't expect to get that many "ProjectN-only" mods, if any at all. Second, from my point of view a world this huge encourages a certain type of gameplay, more survival-oriented and less "let's fast travel to the other part of the continent in a couple of clicks". Last, there are some DFU mods that I consider simply essential for a proper DFU experience, and I mean those mods that are so well integrated in the game that seem like they were made for the original game.

This is very different than I had assumed. The vision and direction of the project seems to be going FAR beyond just adding Tamriel continent to Daggerfall. Appears to include hardcoding whatever subjective gameplay additions, mechanics and major changes (possibly lore-breaking) that are "essential" to the creator's playstyle. No disrespect whatsoever about this, all cool, I just didn't realize.

I really like the concept of Tamriel continent build-in. The hardcoded gameplay changes will probably be a no-go for most people. Not sure myself, though I like some of the concepts.

Great work and much respect to @Arneb and anyone helping on this project!

[jayhova]

I think there is a lot to be gained to allow as much mod cross-compatibility as is reasonably feasible. Certainly, I like the idea of encouraging survival-style play. However, preventing any sort of fast travel seems like it takes away the ability to really enjoy a continent-sized map. Of course, there are modes of travel e.g. Dwarven airships that would be really cool, making a Daggerfallesce flight sim. I would like the ability to enable fast-travel (possibly with a mod) even if it is by default not enabled.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkGJaI9DdtU&t=279s[/youtube]

[Vorzak]

I think there is a lot to be gained to allow as much mod cross-compatibility as is reasonably feasible.

Agreed. I'd just create the Tamriel landmass, keep it as vanilla, lore-friendly and compatible as reasonably possible - let mods to do the rest. This allows far more flexibility, creativity and customization. I wouldn't even consider hard-coding any major changes or imposing my personal play-style on anyone. But this isn't my project.

Certainly, I like the idea of encouraging survival-style play. However, preventing any sort of fast travel seems like it takes away the ability to really enjoy a continent-sized map.

For sake of discussion... Survival game-play is awesome! It can be challenging and immersive. A play-style I prefer, in fact. It fits well in a game like Daggerfall, no question. But it has limits and drawbacks, and depends on what level of the survival and realism the player is willing to put up with for a fun experience. Removing fast travel and other things discussed here does seem a bit extreme.

My interpretation of what has been proposed so far:

Quest objective located 5 days travel-time from town
+ 1000s of square miles of space
+ Real-Time Travel Only
+ NPCs only provide vague directions
+ No navigational aids (no compass, map, etc.)
+ Foggy weather

confused-travolta.gif (38.52 KiB) Viewed 644 times

If this happens in real life you're dead lol.

This is an impossible scenario. Never knowing what direction you're facing, when even with a compass you can easily be off by a little and miss a location by miles. Climate, weather, time of day, terrain, etc. all play a big factor, can make anything impossible to find - on top of dealing with wilderness encounters and attempting any kind of exploration along the way. Lose track of everything in seconds, wander in circles for RL hours, go hungry, go insane, ask yourself why you ever left town on a pointless journey!! - you aren't any closer to the objective than you were 9 RL hours ago. (yes trying to make it sound as realistic as possible lol -just having fun)

Regardless, just real-time-travel is incredibly boring by itself since the wilderness is empty. Filling the wilderness with enough encounters and small areas to explore to make walking for 100s of miles bearable or creating/adding more dungeons and towns closer together so distance between things is more reasonable for walking would put a significant strain on realism and make the world feel extremely small - potentially defeating the purpose of the game.

This reminds me though of a video series where someone walks the entire Illiac Bay in classic DF. Took him 70 RL hours. Just puts the scale of the game world into perspective.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/J9JxRw9Zxw0?list=PL3sB ... NTP-kW_yWf[/youtube]

[Arneb]

First of all, I thank you all for the points you've raised, I'm totally open for confrontation.

This is very different than I had assumed. The vision and direction of the project seems to be going FAR beyond just adding Tamriel continent to Daggerfall. Appears to include hardcoding whatever subjective gameplay additions, mechanics and major changes (possibly lore-breaking) that are "essential" to the creator's playstyle. No disrespect whatsoever about this, all cool, I just didn't realize.

Up to this point in development, the only things that's been added outside what was strictly necessary for the expanded map to work have been roads and tracks, and even that is still activated through a modified version on Hazelnut's Basic Roads mod, mainly because it was easier that way
(What I mean is, it's still a mod that can be enabled in the mod window. But I'm not sure that, when I'll have made all that I intend to build around roads and tracks, disabling it wouldn't break anything)

There are other subjective gameplay additions that will work the same way, and for the same reasons, and Climate&Calories will probably be among those.

The idea behind the eventual changes is that the aim of the project is to add Tamriel continent (and beyond) to Daggerfall and to make it feel like a real, huge space, and I that like fast travel is the contrary of what I'm trying to attain. What is the purpose of a landmass the size of Europe if what I'm doing is just teleporting from one location to the other? I understand this was perfectly reasonable in vanilla DF since the wilderness had literally nothing to offer, but what if that wilderness was interesting to explore?
And, what would be lore-breaking in removing fast-travel?

I'd just create the Tamriel landmass, keep it as vanilla, lore-friendly and compatible as reasonably possible - let mods to do the rest.

As I wrote before, I highly doubt anyone will ever make mods for this project. On top of that, I'm not even sure, when I'll be finished slaughtering IK's code, that this fork will still be mod-firendly

My interpretation of what has been proposed so far:

Quest objective located 5 days travel-time from town
+ 1000s of square miles of space
+ Real-Time Travel Only
+ NPCs only provide vague directions
+ No navigational aids (no compass, map, etc.)
+ Foggy weather

If this happens in real life you're dead lol.

This is an impossible scenario. Never knowing what direction you're facing, when even with a compass you can easily be off by a little and miss a location by miles. Climate, weather, time of day, terrain, etc. all play a big factor, can make anything impossible to find - on top of dealing with wilderness encounters and attempting any kind of exploration along the way.

Almost everything right, aside from a couple of fundamental points: roads and tracks would be there, giving some basic but useful ways to find some kind of settlement; maps would be for sale in General Stores, and if you know that a certain road leads to a certain town, well, all you need to do is follow that road; some kind of fast-travel in the form of coaches, ships, Mage Guild to Mage Guild teleport, and so on; and climate-survival advantages that bring back the old good compass.

Filling the wilderness with enough encounters and small areas to explore to make walking for 100s of miles bearable or creating/adding more dungeons and towns closer together so distance between things is more reasonable for walking would put a significant strain on realism and make the world feel extremely small - potentially defeating the purpose of the game.

I admit the idea is to fill every pixel left empty with some kind of location, but this is still in development, and at the moment I have to take a few thing into consideration. But in any case, those location would not appear on the map even when discovered, and would be so small to be not intrusive, and not easy to find either.

Still much more to say, but not enough time to keep writing. But please keep the discussion going, it does help me reason on what I'm doing. Just remember, when (legitimately) complaining about the subjectivity of some choices, that this whole project is and will be extremely subjective: I draw the political and climate map based loosely on what I read on the UESP, but I made some totally arbitrary choices; right now I'm the only one working on this, with the only, super-important contributions being assets developed by modders for DFU, plus the open source code for said mods I'm scavenging here and there. And much more.