Back On Deck For 2016

Happy New Year everyone! I’m back from holidays and almost on top of my RL workload again. That means a whole new round of updates to Daggerfall Unity and DFTFU are about to begin. I’ve picked up where I left off last year with the item and inventory system, and will be posting more on this shortly.

Sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll start adding new test builds leading up to the 0.2 release. Key features of 0.2 will be:

  • Basic inventory system and loot tables. Import items from classic saves.
  • Travel map interface (by LypyL).
  • Dungeon and interior automap interface (by Nystul).
  • More bug fixes and incremental updates.
  • Some more community resources for contributors.

I’ve also made a small new year’s resolution to post more technically-minded articles in 2016, as I let this slip with all the rapid-fire updates leading to 0.1. It was quite a shift for me going from pure tool development to building a game, and I rather miss just talking about what I’m working on.

Thanks for all your patience during the holiday season. I look forward to reading your feedback with the next round of updates.

Daggerfall Unity 0.1 Release

DaggerfallUnity0.1Release

 

After several test iterations, Daggerfall Unity is feeling reasonably solid across the two main platforms Windows and Linux. A huge thanks to all testers who helped discover early bugs and quirks. There’s obviously still more to fix, and a lot of game features to implement, but we have a pretty good starting point with this build. At some point, I need to push a stick into the ground and say “it starts here.”

 

It Starts Here

Daggerfall Unity 0.1 is now available for general download. Key features of this build are:

  • Create a new character or load an existing character from a classic Daggerfall save.
  • The entire world of the Illiac Bay is ready to explore at 1:1 scale to Daggerfall itself. Go anywhere, enter any dungeon, and explore any town.
  • Quick-save and quick-load your progress.
  • Dungeons are populated with fixed and random enemies just like in Daggerfall.
  • Basic combat mechanics with the ebony dagger.
  • Game console for enabling god mode, setting run speed, teleporting around world, etc.
  • Lypyl’s enhanced sky mod with dynamic skybox, procedural clouds, and even phases of the moon!
  • Nystul’s beautiful far terrain mod and improved terrain generation.

 

Download

Updated to 0.1.1.

[ddownload id=”2298″ text=”Download Daggerfall Unity 0.1.1 (Windows)”]

[ddownload id=”2299″ text=”Download Daggerfall Unity 0.1.1 (Linux)”]

 

Manual

A PDF manual is included with the download, but you can also download a standalone copy.

 

Feedback

If you would like to offer feedback and bug reports, please use this thread on the forums or contact me directly.

 

What’s Next

I will be a little quiet the next few weeks due to current work commitments, but rest assured the next release is already being worked on. I will soon repeat the process of dropping test builds leading up to the next release milestone. Here’s a list of features scheduled for the next release.

  • Early item support! Inventory will be imported from classic saves.
  • Ability to open inventory window and equip items.
  • Loot enemy corpses and treasure piles.
  • Full save/load UI allowing for multiple saves.
  • In-game options UI for changing game settings.
  • The ability to rest to recover health.
  • More contributor mods.
  • More bug fixes.

There’s a lot of open source activity happening at the moment from contributors, so it’s possible we might end up with more features in the second release than listed above. I will reveal these on Twitter as they become ready to show off.

Upcoming Leave Time

Hey everyone! I’m putting the wraps on the second test build of Daggerfall Unity, which should be ready sometime in the next 24 hours.

Before then, I wanted to take a minute to let you know that I’m heading to Melbourne next week for PAX Australia. We’re going for the whole week, not just the PAX weekend, which means I won’t be around to answer emails, drop by the forums, or commit any changes to git.

So if you don’t hear from me and everything seems to go quiet – don’t worry! I’m just taking well-deserved break and will be back to work starting in early November. I will still answer any forum queries I can if I get some spare time in the evenings.

I also wanted to extend a huge thank you to everyone who sent me their feedback on the first test build. You have helped me find several bugs and other problems that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. When the first true release hits, it’s going to be that much better for your time and information. I’m looking forward to repeating the process on the next test build.

All the best!

Daggerfall Unity Test Build

Sometime in the next 7-10 days, I will release a test build of Daggerfall Unity as part of my lead-up to first release. Everyone is welcome to try to the test build, but testers should be comfortable with editing INI files as this build will not include a launcher. I’m hoping to get valuable feedback and squash as many bugs as possible prior to first release. Test build will be available for Windows and Linux.

The first release of Daggerfall Unity will carry the moniker “Outer Loop” as this best describes the work so far. The outer loop is that essential framework of game startup, character creation, free roam, save/load, basic combat resolution, resting, and player death. With this framework out of the way, I can start work on individual systems that exist inside of the outer loop. For example, quests, inventory, and loot tables are systems that will be incrementally added over time. Systems with a high number of dependencies (e.g. quests rely on many other systems) will arrive later than more atomic systems with a lower number of dependencies.

Once the first release is available, I’m hoping to set a release schedule of every 4-6 weeks at most. I’m planning out the work in small dependency-aware chunks that should be achievable in those time-frames. This means releases will generally pendulum back and forth between small features and large features.

I have tried my best to create a versioning save/load system so that your saves from older releases can be loaded by newer releases, but it may become necessary at some point to set a minimum supported version for saves. I will mention this in the release notes if and when it happens.

As always, life has a habit of getting in the way despite best intentions. I will let you know whenever there will be delays due to personal issues or scheduled leave time.

Thank you all for your support and encouragement so far. I look forward to hearing your feedback if you decide to play with the upcoming test build.

Twitter Reminder

Just a reminder to anyone hungry for more news, my day-to-day progress is posted to Twitter @gav_clayton. I post small updates and screenshots almost daily (sometimes multiple times a day) whereas this blog is generally for detailed updates and major milestones Even if you aren’t on Twitter yourself and can’t follow me, the feed is visible to everyone.

I’m moving rapidly towards first release of Daggerfall Unity and will have more updates for you soon. Stay tuned!

Remastering Daggerfall

Less than 12 months have passed since I began work on Daggerfall Tools for Unity. In that time, my little project has grown substantially and attracted a lot of attention from around the world, including articles on Kotaku AU and Rock Paper Shotgun.

As word about Daggerfall Tools for Unity has spread, a lot of hopeful Daggerfall players have visited looking for word on a remake – only to find a set of development tools not aimed towards players. While everyone seems excited about the potential Daggerfall Tools for Unity offers, there’s a lot of latency between new developers coming on board and getting up to speed before they can offer their contributions. So as a developer community, we may be climbing a steady ladder towards remaking Daggerfall, but there’s very little for non-developers to experience and no clear direction from which a remake will come. I’m contacted by passionate Daggerfall fans almost every week and it breaks my heart that I don’t have more for them.

I want that situation to change. I want the average Daggerfall player to be able to experience progress and have a clear sense of direction that Daggerfall Tools for Unity can be used for remaking Daggerfall, and then some.

What this means is that I can’t just create a toolset. Raw building blocks aren’t enough. I also need to create a scaffold for remastering Daggerfall that includes everyone, developers and players alike.

So let’s get this out of the way. I will shortly release a burgeoning Daggerfall remake, proudly using the Unity engine and Daggerfall Tools for Unity.

For players, this means you will be able to download regular builds to experience the project as it grows. You will become part of the process, able to offer your feedback and constructive criticism to the betterment of the project. Developers win out as well, because you get a functioning Daggerfall remake – completely open source – to build on and change as you desire. For the first time we can all, developers and players alike, come together and contribute.

So where does this leave Daggerfall Tools for Unity? Nothing changes at all. My remake project will be built on the same Daggerfall Tools for Unity that everyone has access to. If anything, this will only improve Daggerfall Tools for Unity by creating a proving-ground for new features and increasing the number of testers.

I will soon release a new web site, solely for distributing the latest playable build of my Daggerfall remake. Daggerfall Workshop will remain as the hub of social activity and development news.

And the best news for players is there’s a swag of new features coming in Daggerfall Tools for Unity 1.4 and 1.5, all aimed at creating playable systems and filling in those blanks between a toolset and a game.

Feel free to leave your comments on this post, or head over the forum post where I’ve kicked off the conversation.