Daggerfall - The Adventures of Rodrigo the Lizard

[Crichton]

So I'm bored of Scarface and Lego Star Wars, my copy of EU3 hasn't arrived yet and I can only work on my NWN2 module so many hours in a week, so I decided to do the unthinkable. After all the pro-Daggerfall knob-jobs I've read on this site, I decided that maybe my younger self wasn't fair to it and to give it another shot.

But how to do so? Tales of woe about VDMsound and DosBox, Fat32 and jumping, animation speed and sound glitches haunted me. So I did the only reasonable thing, I made a new partition on my beaten up old linux box and installed 98 on it (I had to pirate both 98 and daggerfall, I have no idea where either disk is if I even still have my old ones).

Installing 98 was an ordeal, but at the end of it I can play daggerfall as it was intended to be played, on an operating system that supports and hardware that people in '96 were still dreaming about.

I couldn't really remember what worked in terms of chargen, so my first character was a fearsome furry feline axe-wielding warrior and he couldn't make it out of the opening dungeon, no axes. But the game so obviously wanted me to use long blades and I'm a contrarian, so I went with a bludgeon-wielding lizardman instead.

He smashed everything in the starting dungeon and then, finding himself with no money and no prospects, decided to go where they're always hiring ... to the fighter's guild.

His first three missions were: Smash a giant scorpion, smash a bunch of rats and smash a giant spider. Those accomplished, he was accepted into the guild and given a mission to kill a wearboar. After about 2.5 hours of real time crawling through a maze smashing rats (and bats, and skeletons), he finally found the wereboar and the stupid bastard had somehow locked himself in a cage. That would have been a great time to have a missile weapon. He just smashed him with a sliver-shod quarterstaff instead. Those rats add up and he's now level 4.

On returning from the wereboar lair he was promptly given another smashing rats mission and then another wereboar mission. We'll see how that turns out. So how's Rodrigo doing so far?

Fancies himself: A defender of the weak and slayer of fearsome monsters.
What he actually spends his time doing: Smashing rats.
Why smash rats: To shut the squeekly little fuckers up.
Rats smashed: 2546.

So what do I think of daggerfall this time around? The jury's still out. On the one hand, the controls are garbage, it looks awful and I spend most of the time mindlessly swinging the mouse to kill foozles. On the other hand, the exploration provides an interest for the curious and maybe the missions will get more interesting if Rodrigo increases in rank or something.

 

[IV Flavia]

I played Daggerfall briefly when my uncle used to own it. I didn't spend a lot of time with it, which is probably why it didn't interest me at the time. Looking back, I should have bought it when I had the chance.

 

[hakuroshi]

That's a nice number of rats
As much as I love Daggerfall, I think the game would have been torn apart by Codex if released, say, last year with Oblivion grafix.
It is a good place to return to, but easy to disappoint if you never played it in its own time.

 

[denizsi]

Installing 98 was an ordeal, but at the end of it I can play daggerfall as it was intended to be played

People rely so much on DosBox, when a game doesn't work/play as intended, they are quick to bitch. However, you could download Virtual PC or also pirate ( ) VMWare to make a virtual machine and endure that ordeal in your host, like I did (not the pirating part).

Don't stick to the same guild office all the time. Travel to other places, try other offices of the guilds. It increases the odds of getting different quests. Also, you don't have to accept every quest. If you had enough with playing the rat-slayer, just refuse, say no to the quest.

By the way, you can get quests from merchants and people passing by outside too. There is a chance of getting one from a merchant based on your reputation and some other factors when you "talk" to them, and you get can get yourself quests out of nothing by talking to NPCs outside. Just ask for jobs, and somebody is ought to direct you to one, with a phrase like "I heard Teodore Kinsley of Restless Djinn is looking for someone to..".

on an operating system that supports and hardware that people in '96 were still dreaming about.

I played it in early '97 on a very average machine, with no performance issues. I think I may have had a new type of ram (but still low memory) at the time, which might have made a significant difference.

On the one hand, the controls are garbage, it looks awful

Why do you think controls are garbage, it's no different than what you have today? You do know that there is mouse look, right? I see from the screenshots that you are in cursor mode. You don't have to use the cursor; go into options and then mouse options.

As for graphics, it's a personal preference apparently. I still get a genuine enjoyment of graphics in Daggerfall. It's far above and beyond looking awful to me.

As much as I love Daggerfall, I think the game would have been torn apart by Codex if released, say, last year with Oblivion grafix.

With just new graphics and nothing else changed? Of course it would. It's a good game for its time and for what could have been done after Daggerfall, how it could be improved, but still, it would be better than Oblivion in my opinion.

edit: Thinking again, I don't think it would be torn apart by The Codex to the degree of many other RPG wannabees would. The game still offers a lot more than than the average modern RPGs along with a solid character system.

 

[Elwro]

As for non-guild quests: there's also a special quest set which contains tasks given by members of nobility.

 

[cutterjohn]

I re-installed Daggerfall myself last summer too, but I used DOSBOX. Runs pretty decently in it, but the sound isn't the greatest, or IOW I get a little static.

Maybe, I'll end up trying Virtual PC with an old win98 install, as I see many people suggesting that, and I did endure playing Daggerfall for a while with VPC running win98 on a 500M G3 notebook.

 

[Jim Kata]

You probably just need more CPU. I have sound problems with some games when I don't have enough cycles.

I can ALMOST play fallout with dosbox, but I am just shy of having enough CPU for the sound to work properly....

 

[abstract]

what? fallout is a windows game.

 

[Section8]

As much as I love Daggerfall, I think the game would have been torn apart by Codex if released, say, last year with Oblivion grafix.

Quite possibly, because many Codexers, myself included, value innovation in areas other than graphics very highly. The same old shit with shiny presentation isn't going to win favours of anyone around here, especially when that same old shit is over 10 years old and full of unrealised potential.

On the other hand, if a Daggerfall remake project ever gets off the ground...

 

[Elwro]

It has a DOS version. (edit: talking about Fallout).

 

[abstract]

oh

 

[JrK]

The newest version of DOSbox has an auto-set cycle option and is a lot faster than previous versions, so get that one if you want to play DF.

Also, the main reason why I liked DF is it's superb near-proggy music score. I couldn't get enough of the shopsong and snowsomething (which has a 7/6 timesignature or something more odd).

 

[Crichton]

@ deniszi: Your mouselook suggestion hit the spot, that solves a major control issue. I'm still annoyed with the cusor/mouselook dichotomy and the "swinging" mouse attack system is silly, but having mouselook brings things almost up to the morrowind level (except the 1st person is forced, unfortunately). It'll never be JA (it'll never even be oblivious), but it'll do.

RE: quests; Rodrigo just took a job with the local mages guild to run another undead dungeon and bring back ectoplasm, but it looks like a bust. There's a thing in there he can't scratch (looked it up, it's an Elder Vampire) and it's blocking the way, so he may just move along and do something else.

RE: graphics, the screenshots don't really portray just how bad the pixilation is. It's frequently hard just to tell what the heck you're looking at unless you're at a "sweet spot" about 5 feet from the object. And of course everything looks the same, same people everywhere, same dungeon walls all the time, etc.

 

[AZ]

Dosbox is good because it can use smoothing effects against pixels. Just needs a quick cpu.

 

[elander_]

As much as I love Daggerfall, I think the game would have been torn apart by Codex if released, say, last year with Oblivion grafix.
It is a good place to return to, but easy to disappoint if you never played it in its own time.

If they fixed the bugs and removed some annoyances this game would rock both to the mainstream and the hardcore player.

Some needed changes:

+ Fix the bugs.

+ Improve dungeon, town and wilderness generators.

+ Chain quest templates, that is, allow certain quest templates to be prerequisites for other quest templates and thus creating dynamic stories.

+ More quest templates, more elaborated quest templates.

+ Localized guild quest templates (Morrowind did localized guilds well).

+ Fix magic and combat unbalance with enchanting that happens after level 30-40 or so.

+ More town/world events. Some that were planned and never added like sieges, kingdoms at war, cities under quarantine because of plagues.

+ A world map like RoA and the survival skill.

Daggerfall system allowed devs to have as much user made content and prescripted linear stories mixed with quest templates and generated places. It was a great system that still has a huge potential for expansion.

 

[hakuroshi]

It's just that you cannot expect from an old game, however praised by sages, to have the same effect today as when it was new. Even if it is in fact better then recent releases in almost every way. There was several very good rpgs after DF and they greatly influenced our views on the genre. Compared to that view many old classics simply won't be very impressive.

If they fixed the bugs and removed some annoyances this game would rock both to the mainstream and the hardcore player.

Some needed changes:

...

Daggerfall system allowed devs to have as much user made content and prescripted linear stories mixed with quest templates and generated places. It was a great system that still has a huge potential for expansion.

Potential, yes. Never fully realized. Sad. It could be the best crpg ever. At least to some.
This changes mean that it should be completely new game Or, maybe, finished one. Many of thet changes were expected from Morrowind... sigh...

 

[Crichton]

Let's see, played a few more hours, what's new?

Quests: Still searching around for non-dungeon quests. I found one that was "bring me four objects from my friends at the following four places". I was initially excited by the idea of negotiating with NPCs for the items but it turned out to be an easter egg hunt. One of the four places was a dungeon, two of the others were guarded by generic humans. Rodrigo failed his first quest (bring me some orc's blood) because apparently the guy wanted the exact vial of orc's blood that was in the dungeon where he suggested finding it. (I eventually got sick of the skeleton bashing and just bought the fucking orc's blood from an alchemist, but the quest giver refused to accept it)

On the subject of generic humans, they suck. Rodrigo knocks them down like ten pins. Why? So nearly as I can determine because they have about a 20% chance of having one item that isn't complete crap. Meanwhile my character has gear that could fucking hold robocop down.

The monsters are slowely upgrading in an oblivion-like fashion, I now find many skeletons and spiders and hardly any rats or bats.

I probably didn't notice it as a kid, but the random loot system make Oblivious look like Arcanum. Skeleton sprites have one-handed axes and sheilds, so that's what you expect to find on their bodies. What do you actually find?

1 long sword, 1 short sword
1 long sword, 1 bow (no arrows)
1 long sword, arrows (no bow)
1 axe, 1 short sword
2 short swords
2 bows (no arrows)
1 short sword, 1 flail
1 two-handed axe, 1 short sword

About one rotting skeleton in five has a eleven weapon (usually a sabre). The local shops have no weapons anywhere near that good. Why? Because the skeletons stole them all, duh.

My copy of EU3 arrived yesterday so I may just hang it up for a while. If not, I think the lizard man will move to a larger city and try to join the thieves guild or something to get some different quests.

 

[cutterjohn]

You probably just need more CPU. I have sound problems with some games when I don't have enough cycles.

I can ALMOST play fallout with dosbox, but I am just shy of having enough CPU for the sound to work properly....

Whoa new tag. Bryce?

Anyways, I dunno, I had the semi-staticy sound when I had the 3200+, and even with the 4800+ it's just about the same. Also, I had to crank back the settings for DOSBOX as the game played to fast otherwise, so I'm thinking it's more of a sound bug somewhere...