Vapourware Daggerfall Unity isnt Vaporware

[Gragt]

Authors lose interest in things all the time, it's only human. But then sometimes they're left with this huge shame that they gave hope to some people and now they can't finish what they started, and this is often the reason for a complete silence afterwards. Happened to a friend of mine.

I wish they would release the stuff then, so someone else could work on it without having to start from scratch. That’s the greatest shame of the whole thing. If anything projects like that are already big enough for only one person to tackle alone.

 

[Bester]

Unity's terrain toolkit is one of the greatest abominations the world has ever seen.

Why?

 

[Luzur]

Well Interkarma's project are getting updates, atleast:

If you’ve been around the DFTFU Subreddit, you may have noticed that community member LypyL has been working on a set of multiplayer extensions for the Daggerfall tools. He has now progressed to the point where he’s ready to show off some progress.

I played a bit of this with LypyL a few hours ago and had great fun exchanging blows and flying (literally flying) around the map taking swipes at each other. He’s done an amazing job so far, and I’m excited to host his achievement here on Daggerfall Workshop.

Daggerfall Tools for Unity – Streaming World Multiplayer Test by LypyL
www.dfworkshop.net/web_demos_other/dftfu_multiplayer/dftfu_multiplayer.html

Note: Requires the Unity Web Player.

Controls

• Click to capture mouse (webplayer).
• ESC to uncapture mouse (webplayer).
• Mouse move to look.
• W, S, A, D to move.
• SHIFT (hold) to run.
• SPACE to jump.
• LEFT-CLICK mouse to open doors, operate switches, etc.
• Q no clip/fly.
• E climb mode.
• Z toggle weapon.

Author Notes

1. On running, players will try and connect to active games on server if there are any, and if not will start a new one.
2. Games are capped at 4 players (and currently max concurrent user limit of 20 – so up to full games)
3. On joining/starting game, player has to set their name (either accept the random name or put in a new one in the input box).
4. They will spawn outside of Daggerfall. I pretty much left all of the streaming world settings at default.
5. Added scaled down location markers to make other players easier to find. Player names will also be displayed above their skins w/ 3d text meshes.
6. Players get randomly chosen skins on joining (which aren’t synced among clients – they’re different for everyone). Attacking & moving is animated (the hurt animations should be working, but I can never get them to play for some reason).
7. Basically nothing else is synced up – audio, doors etc. are not implemented yet.
8. I switched to one of the standard asset skyboxes due to the sky rig breaking in the web build for some reason.
9. There is basic combat implemented for messing around. On being hit, a player will lose health until they reach 0 or less, then their position will be set randomly (to somewhere nearby to where they are), and if they are inside, they will transition outside.

http://www.dfworkshop.net/

 

[Luzur]

Streaming World Test 1
Posted on January 13, 2015
2
This is my first week back from holidays and work is kicking my butt right now. I’m not finding the time I need to really sit down and polish the streaming world demo as much as I’d like. Rather than delay it longer, I’ve decided to release a web demo for everyone to play with. That buys me time for things to settle down at work while I chip away at the final demo. Please consider this a pre-release test and forgive the rough edges.



Streaming World Pre-Release Test 1
http://www.dfworkshop.net/web_demos...easeTest1/StreamingWorld-PreReleaseTest1.html

Note: Requires the Unity Web Player.

Features

• Explore the entire Illiac Bay. Any region, any climate, anywhere.
• Run smoothly between cities over actual Daggerfall terrain read from game data.
• Full day/night cycle with animated skies and city lights.
• Enter any building in any town or city.
• Control an athletic player who can jump onto small buildings and sprint at high speeds through the wilderness.
• Location beacon helps you find cities in the wilderness.
• Entire world is built procedurally right inside your web browser.

Known Issues/Limitations

• Not optimized. Uses a lot of memory over time.
• May encounter a brief hitch when updating sky animation or streaming in a large location.
• No bounds checking. Possible to run off extreme edge of world or crash.
• Running very distant from starting point will cause precision issues. A fix is in progress to resolve this.
• No compass or map to help you navigate.
• Cannot enter dungeons at this time.

If you encounter problems with precision or fall through ground, please use R to travel to random location or 1-4 for preset locations. See controls below.

Controls

• Click to capture mouse (webplayer).
• ESC to uncapture mouse (webplayer).
• Mouse move to look.
• W, S, A, D to move.
• SHIFT (hold) to run very fast.
• SPACE to jump.
• LEFT-CLICK mouse to open doors, operate switches, etc.
• R to travel to a random location.
• 1-4 to travel to a preset location.

I hope you have fun with this pre-release demo. Thank you for your patience while I take care of real-life stuff.

 

[Luzur]

Also, i forgot about the Direnni Tower demovideo:

 

[Luzur]

new video out from Interkarma:

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I like that dual-wielding support. Was that in the original game? Also, I'm considering playing Arena and Daggerfall soon since I never had gotten around to them. Would you suggest putting Daggerfall on the back burner and waiting for Daggerfall XL, or do you still think the projects completion is still a long ways away?

 

[Luzur]

I like that dual-wielding support. Was that in the original game? Also, I'm considering playing Arena and Daggerfall soon since I never had gotten around to them. Would you suggest putting Daggerfall on the back burner and waiting for Daggerfall XL, or do you still think the projects completion is still a long ways away?

Euhm... i have no idea really, but would say play Arena and Daggerfall as is, then hope either DaggerXl or this one gets done, otherwise you'll wait.

 

[Greatness]

I like that dual-wielding support. Was that in the original game? Also, I'm considering playing Arena and Daggerfall soon since I never had gotten around to them. Would you suggest putting Daggerfall on the back burner and waiting for Daggerfall XL, or do you still think the projects completion is still a long ways away?

You could equip a weapon in each hand, but there wasn't really dual wielding like modern games. You couldn't attack with both at once, but you could swap between them.

As for playing, Of course do the originals first. Even if you're going to play DaggerXL when it releases (and it probably never will), having played the vanilla versions should still be mandatory just so you know what all has changed compared to the original game's vision.

 

[Luzur]

New video up!

 

[baturinsky]

Arena is pretty good. It has the best dungeons in series.

 

[LESS T_T]

New video up!

Cool, "Daggerfall with guns," eh.

 

[Luzur]

Well Lucius is still missing and people have started to doubt he will show up now on his forum.

Interkarma on the other hand keeps on giving:

Streaming World 1.2 Release Demo
Posted on February 19, 2015
I had this buried in the 1.2 release post earlier and forgot to post it to the Demos page, which means a few people might have missed out the latest demo code. Reposting just in case!





Features

• Huge streaming world over 340,000 km/2 created at runtime.
• Over 15,000 fully explorable locations and dungeons.
• MIDI synthesis and context song manager.
• Full day/night cycle, seasons, and weather effects.
• Enemies in dungeons, including random enemies based on dungeon type.
• Basic combat system.

Streaming World 1.2 Release Demo

• Windows Standalone
• Linux Standalone

Controls
General

• Mouse move to look.
• W, S, A, D to move.
• SHIFT (hold) to run.
• SPACE to jump.
• LEFT-CLICK mouse to open doors, enter dungeons, operate switches, etc.
• ESC to exit game (standalone).

Weapons

• Z to toggle weapons.
• Right-click and drag mouse to swing weapon.

Transport

• R (while outside) for random location, season, time of day, and weather.
• R (while in dungeon) to recall back to dungeon start.
• 1-7 for preset location (keeps current season, weather, etc.).

Music

• P to toggle songs on/off.
• [ to play previous song in context playlist.
• ] to player next song in context playlist.

Timescale

• – to reduce timescale (0-8 steps).
• = to increase timescale (0-8 steps).

Other

• I to toggle mouse invert on/off.
• H to toggle high speed running on/off.
• L to toggle debug text on/off.

and:

Text And Localization – First Look
Posted on February 12, 2015
2
Text, text, text! There’s so much text in Daggerfall – from “Rat just died” all the way up to multi-page books. Before it’s possible to tackle many gameplay elements, something must be done about all this text. All the better if the text engine provides localization features at the same time.

Rather than start from scratch, I have integrated the excellent free Unity asset Smart Localization into Daggerfall Tools for Unity. On this solid foundation, I’m building import tools to convert Daggerfall’s various text sources into a format that can be easily localized and consumed at runtime.

Let’s take a look at the basic workflow. Everything starts with creating a “Localization Workspace” in your project Assets. By the way, it’s possible to work on translations without Unity installed, more on this towards the end.



What you see above is the Smart Localization workspace. I have already created 3 languages for English – en, French – fr, and German – de. There is also a Root Language File, which needs a bit more explanation.

The Root Language is a database of native key/object pairs that can be morphed into other supported languages. In addition to strings, the Root Language also supports images, sounds, and other game objects.

I am writing one-click importers that transfer text data out of Daggerfall’s various files (even the .exe) into their own text namespace. See below for an example after importing the contents of TEXT.RSC.



There’s a fair bit going on here, so I’ll break down all the parts.

Type is the type of asset being worked with. These are all STRING for now, but GAME_OBJECT, AUDIO, and TEXTURE are also supported.

Key is the unique key for this resource. As we’re importing from Daggerfall, the tool maintains each unique key in its own namespace. RSC means that TEXT.RSC was the source and the following digits are the unique ID for that text record. Each distinct resource will have its own three-letter namespace (BOK, IMG, SND, etc.) and unique ID.

Comment is the actual value, or contents, of that record. Anyone that has worked with Daggerfall’s text data will be familiar with the % codes. What’s a little different are how the control bytes are parsed into text format, for example [0xFD] for end of line. This is done because the control bytes are not valid characters for XML (which is how everything is saved to disk) and they are not generally human readable. The [0x00] format makes it very clear where control bytes are used and simple for a human to edit. It’s also trivial to parse these back into byte format.

A little more on those control bytes for anyone unfamiliar with them. They are basically for TTY-styled formatting. They control things like text position, justification, and font, and are very specific to the native Daggerfall GUI at 320×200 resolution. It’s very likely that future developers will prefer not to use the control bytes for their modern scalable UI. However, I pass through the control bytes exactly as-is and its up to the end developer how they wish to use them. If you would like read more about Daggerfall’s text then this article would be of use.

Once the Root Lanuage is ready, it’s time to create our translations. As the text is already in English – en it’s just a simple matter of opening that language and copying all values from Root.



Now the great thing about Smart Localization is that it supports CSV import/export. This means you can export out your language data to CSV file to edit in Excel or similar tool.



Because everything is uniquely keyed, translation teams can build “master” CSV files that implementors can use to quickly add/update languages in their projects. For example, below is the CSV for German – de from their TEXT.RSC file.



And then imported into Unity ready to use in a game project.



One issue with existing translations is that localization teams have needed to squeeze more complicated character sets down into Daggerfall’s 8-bit format. The good news is this is no longer necessary – you are no longer limited by Daggerfall’s engine. The bad news is that a lot of text will probably need to be rewritten for true character set translations for modern platforms. I will work with international Daggerfall fans to ensure they can use native character sets in the translation tool chain.

So we can create a giant resource database and spin-off various translations. How does this get used in a game project?

Accessing localized resources is very easy. For example, to retrieve a localized text string above, you would use the following code. Other resources are just as easy.

string textValue = LanguageManager.Instance.GetTextValue("RSC.1004");
As the native IDs are preserved, it will be easy for upstream developers to call for the correct translations as linked from quests and elsewhere. You can also add custom values for your own project, just need to give them a unique key.

Fell free to hit me up in the comments or via email if you have any question.

and:

Daggerfall Tools for Unity 1.2!
Posted on February 10, 2015
3
The huge 1.2 world update is finally live! The tools have come so far since 1.1 and a big thank you is in order to everyone who tested Developer Preview versions and sent me feedback. You’ve all helped 1.2 become more than it could have been without you.



What’s New!
Core

• Now requires Unity 4.6. (and not yet compatible with 5.0).
• Vast streaming world can be created procedurally at runtime.
• Blazing-fast billboard system for dense trees.
• Tilemap shader for retro-style ground textures.
• Enter any valid building or dungeon.
• Random encounter tables in dungeons.
• MIDI synthesizer with custom SoundFont support.
• Hundreds of bug fixes and small improvements.

Demo

• Complete streaming world demo scene included with all code.
• Weather effects with Weather Manager.
• Helpers to change lighting based on time of day, season, dungeon.
• Contextual Song Manager to play music appropriate to player.
• Ambient Effects Player to play sound effects in dungeons, etc.
• A player compass.
• Footstep Manager to change footstep sounds in winter.
• Example enemy and player scripts for basic combat setup.
• Many more small helpers and one-shot classes to learn from.

Get The Release!

• Download
• Documentation
• Source Code

 

[Metro]

The title and date of this thread. Love ya, breh.

 

[garren]

Wait so is this interkarma guy making a modernized daggerfall port or is this just a tool for fucking around and not playing from beginning to end?

 

[Luzur]

To tell ya the truth, i have no real concrete idea.

I just post whatever i can find.

 

[Eyeball]

My heart breaks every time this thread bobs to the top of the list.

 

[agris]

Wait so is this interkarma guy making a modernized daggerfall port or is this just a tool for fucking around and not playing from beginning to end?

Tomas on February 23, 2015 at 4:24 am said:
Great job ! So what are your goals for the future?


Interkarma on February 23, 2015 at 6:35 am said:
Short-term, I’ll keep working on the text & translation features, fixing bugs, and rounding out API based on feedback.

Longer term, the number of big new features will inevitably slow down as I transition from rapid expansion into maintenance mode. The focus will shift from myself to developers who are implementing more game-like features using the tools. Hopefully we see a relentless march towards a new Daggerfall and similar experiences as the open source community hooks in and builds on what I started

It looks like he's figuring out how to build the world element, including dynamic content generation and day/night cycles while implementing tools to ease with eventual translation. He's making a platform for someone else(?) to drop the Daggerfall game mechanics, NPCs and quest content into. I can't tell if he's dynamically creating NPCs though.

 

[octavius]

I was going to try the DarkXL version of Star Wars: Dark Forces, since the original looks quite ugly (and the controls are pretty bad too) compared to sourced versions of contemporary games like Doom, Hexen, Heretic and Duke Nukem 3D. It's only in Alpha stage, but despite some bugs people have completed it.
But, there's no way to turn off the music, which is a deal breaker for me. I just can't stand constant music playing in games, and especially FPS games.
Of course we all (?) knew deep down this project was too ambitious to be completed by only one guy, but I still had some small hope...

 

[Drax]

I was going to try the DarkXL version of Star Wars: Dark Forces, since the original looks quite ugly (and the controls are pretty bad too) compared to sourced versions of contemporary games like Doom, Hexen, Heretic and Duke Nukem 3D. It's only in Alpha stage, but despite some bugs people have completed it.
But, there's no way to turn off the music, which is a deal breaker for me. I just can't stand constant music playing in games, and especially FPS games.
Of course we all (?) knew deep down this project was too ambitious to be completed by only one guy, but I still had some small hope...

Maybe you can change the music files so they have just a couple of seconds of silence?
I have no clue what format they used, I remember I used to do that sometimes to get rid of shitty music that couldn't be turned off.

 

[octavius]

Good idea.
I didn't find any specific music files, but I found a file named Sounds.gob (other gob files are Dark, Sprites, and Textures. I removed the Sounds.gob file, but then DarkXL refused to start. So I made an empty text file and renamed it to Sounds.gob, but that messed up the game.
Gob files are custom LucasArt archive files, so it's probably not an easy task to edit out specific music files (if indeed the music files are within).

Apart from the constant music DarkXL plays smoothly enough, and I'd much rather play it than the original.

EDIT: found a solution!
Grabbed a program called Container Manager from The Massassi Temple:#1 Source For Everything Jedi Knight
With that I was able to edit the Sounds.gob file. There files within were in VOC and GMD formats. I assumed VOC are voice files and GMD are music files and deleted all the GMD files, and now the game seems to work flawlessly - no music and no missing sounds that I have noticed so far.

 

[octavius]

Completed the first three levels DarkXL with little problems, but the fourth level was worse. Those turrets are nasty!
And grenades are almost useless. I think one problem is that DarkXL does not have a Secondary Fire button.
Also, the degree to which you can look up and down is quite small.
Still, I'm enjoying the game, but I think I'll adjust difficulty to medium.

 

[Sceptic]

Also, the degree to which you can look up and down is quite small.

I think Lucius kept that degree to the same as the original game, which you'd kinda have to because I think it'd otherwise mess the textures and the spirtes. You can notice this in something like ZDoom or Doomsday.

 

[Luzur]

Also, the degree to which you can look up and down is quite small.

I think Lucius kept that degree to the same as the original game, which you'd kinda have to because I think it'd otherwise mess the textures and the spirtes. You can notice this in something like ZDoom or Doomsday.

Yeah it would just make stuff look flat.

 

[m_s0]

My heart breaks every time this thread bobs to the top of the list.

Yup. The worst part is that I don't think it matters whether Lucius comes back again or not at this point.

Wasn't he gauging interest in a DOOM source port at some point? That's pretty insane when you're already working on several different ports concurrently, and I can definitely see how something like that would drive a guy crazy.