Author Archives: Interkarma

Updated Builds May 2018

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A new round of 0.5 builds are available from Live Builds page. Here’s an overview of what has changed in this version.

New Features

  • Spellmaker now shows gold and spell costs. Spells will remain free to buy and cast for testing purposes.
  • Casting spells now deducts spell points from player, but can continue to cast spells at 0 spell points for testing purposes.
  • Crime & Punishment updates with more work on Court UI in progress (Allofich).
  • Implemented Drain Attribute, Paralyze, Levitate effects. Check these Twitter links for short videos of Paralyze and and Levitate in action.
  • Started work on Heal Attribute effects and resistance back-end. Currently only Heal Strength is available, will build more soon.
  • Can now open spell book from character summary UI.
  • Using smaller SoundFont “TimGM6mb.sf2” by default to reduce distribution size.
  • Can now use custom SoundFont by placing .sf2 file in StreamingAssets/SoundFonts and setting SoundFont=filename.sf2 in settings.ini.
  • Active spell effects are now saved/loaded.
  • Allow mods to save/load data (TheLacus).
  • Updated player headbob, smooth crouch, and other movement mechanics (MeteoricDragon).
  • Implement town NPC dialog to include “Where Is > Person” queries (Nystul).
  • Implement spell icons for active spells. Includes tooltips while game is paused.
  • Updates to ensure default materials always have glossiness 0 and metallic 0 and alpha channel available. This is groundwork for using later Unity versions.
  • Attacking civilians with offensive spells is now considered assault. Killing civilians with offensive spells is considered murder.

Bug Fixes

  • Fix bug with loose file asset injection (TheLacus).
  • Fix bug where player could not delete spells from spell book.
  • Fixes for enemy turning (Allofich).
  • Fix mobile NPCs “skating sideways”. Still some mobile NPC pop-in to resolve.
  • Fix guild membership lost after loading a game (Hazelnut).
  • Fix weather manager causing a crash after loading interior save, and preventing future saves.
  • Fix enemies shooting bow too much (Allofich).
  • Fix %god macro causing a crash in popup dialog. This would become evident when player could not complete quest or rest after bug occurred.
  • Fix certain quest NPC placement tracking to support dialog system.
  • Fix certain town quests starting and ending instantly due to travel time not being calculated (merchant and commoner quests are still in progress).
  • Fix bug where player could melee attack at bow range after changing hands from a bow attack.
  • Fix travel map border not disabling when zooming in.
  • Minor quest fixes.

 

For more frequent updates on Daggerfall Unity, follow me on Twitter @gav_clayton.

First Look At Spells

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I recently demonstrated spell missiles and discussed the back-end framework driving magical effects in Daggerfall Unity. I’m happy to report that it’s now possible to create custom spells and hurl sparkling death at your foes! As my last article was a bit dry and technical, I’ll start this one off with a short video of spells in action.

 

New Builds

You’ll find all new test builds on the Live Builds page as usual. Here are the key features of this release.

  • Create custom spells in the Spellmaker UI (invoke using “showspellmaker” from console).
  • Spellbook UI where custom spells are saved with your character.
  • 3x magic effects are currently available for testing:
  •     Continuous Damage Health (a damage over time effect).
  •     Damage Health (a direct damage effect).
  •     Heal Health (heal yourself and other entities).
  • All elements and target types are available (as appropriate for effect) when creating spells.
  • Smooth crouching, head bobbing, and head rocking when damaged (Meteoric Dragon).
  • Sound and music volume sliders (in progress). Some effects not wired up to volume slider yet (Meteoric Dragon).
  • City Guards and crime tracking, starting work on Crime & Punishment (Allofich).
  • More mod support in the back-end (TheLacus).
  • Various small bug fixes and improvements.

While only 3x effects are available at this time, this doesn’t nearly do justice to the progress that has been made. Spell effects are actually very small scripts – usually no more than a few lines of code and some properties. What really matters is the framework driving magic in Daggerfall Unity has finally progressed to this point. The previous article has more on this if you’re interested.

 

Testing

The purpose of these builds is to test the magic & effects framework is well-behaved and usable in its current state. What I’m looking for are crashes and other unexpected behaviour in the framework. Once this is working well, I will continue to roll out more effects in future builds. To keep testing as focused as possible, here’s a summary of what you can expect from this release.

  • Create and cast spells using the starting 3x test effects above.
  • There is no spell absorption, reflection, or elemental resistance at this time.
  • You can select elements to change appearance of spell and missile, but all elements are equal in terms of damage.
  • All target types (caster, touch, target at range, etc.) should be working.
  • Spells do not yet increase related magic skills of character.
  • Spells are all currently free to buy and to cast – so make them as weak or powerful as you like.
  • All of these free spells will be expired at some point closer to 0.5 stable.
  • Magic items are not implemented yet, this will come much later in 0.5 cycle.

Note: Due to changes in the modding system older mods may not work in this version. Please revert to build #105 for any broken mods until creators update for current version.

 

Feedback

For discussion on these builds, please head over to the forums. If you want to report a bug, post this to the Bug Reports forums. If you’re not sure if something is a bug or just not implemented, don’t hesitate to ask in Help & Support.

I hope you enjoy this early preview of spells in Daggerfall Unity. Have fun!

 

For more frequent updates on Daggerfall Unity, follow me on Twitter @gav_clayton.

Magic & Effects Back-End

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In my previous article, I showed progress on the visual side of spell-slinging and had lots of fun with casting animations and throwing around missiles with lighting effects. Now I have to regard the business end of the spell system and how all of this holds together under the hood. This article will be a lot more tech-oriented than my previous one, but may still be of interest if you’re curious about how spells will operate in Dagerfall Unity.

Please keep in mind this is all under active development so concepts discussed here are likely to be refined or expanded by the time everything rolls out.

 

Magic & Effects System

One major shift in this process was changing how I think about the spell system. I have a long list of goals I want to achieve during this stage of development, above and beyond just emulating Daggerfall’s classic roster of spells. Primarily, I want to create a central way of handling the majority of effect-based gameplay. This means advantages/disadvantages, diseases, poisons, spells, magic items, potions, and so on should all come together under the one system or group of related systems. Once I had made that decision, it no longer made sense to call it the “Spell System” as spells are just one part of the collective. So the Magic & Effects System was born.

This is why you won’t see the word “spell” very much moving forward but you will see the word “effect” a lot. In this context an effect isn’t something visual, it’s how something works. For example, an effect that heals the player is a script which increases their current health. This naming is taken from Daggerfall itself where spells and magic items reference effects directly using a type and sub-type.  You can read more about classic Daggerfall’s spells and their effect indices on this UESP page.

You will also see the term effect used by Daggerfall’s Spell Maker UI when creating a new spell. You can add up to three effects per spell as shown in screenshot below from classic Daggerfall (spell maker is not yet implemented in Daggerfall Unity).

 

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Spells: Front-End Graphics

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It’s finally time for spells to get the treatment and become a regular feature in Daggerfall Unity. I have decided to approach this feature-set in a more visual way than I did the quest system, which involved several months of back-end work before I could even show a single screenshot. This time around, I want the process to follow the visual diary approach from day one to make it more interesting to watch things unfold. This also helps me stay motivated as it’s a lot more fun to hurl around glowing balls of magical death than build a runtime compiler for the quest system.

There will be some more code-oriented articles later in the series, but for now let’s take a look at the front-end graphics of spell-casting animations and missiles.

 

Setup

Before I can do anything else, I have to implement the basic cast/recast loop. Thanks to Lypyl, a baseline spellbook interface is already in the game. It doesn’t have any actual spells yet, just some temp line items, but that’s all we need right now.

I wired up the spellbook to the “cast” key (default is Backspace) so player can select a spell from their collection. It doesn’t matter which “spell” you choose at this point. Just double-click any item to let the game know you’ve selected something.

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Taverns, Custom Loot, Climbing, Languages, Mod Features

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A new round of Live Builds are now available with some great new gameplay and mod features to enjoy.

Tavern Rooms, Food & Drink

Thanks to Hazelnut, it’s now possible to rent a room in taverns. And thanks to Allofich, you can also purchase food & drink for RP purposes. During your tenancy, you’ll be allocated a bed and can use that tavern as a home base. Just talk to any friendly bartender across the Illiac Bay.

Rooms are saved with your character, so if you leave town and return later before your tenancy expires, your room will still be available. This all ties in perfectly with Hazelnut’s world persistence. You can leave loot piles in your room and return later to retrieve them. Just don’t forget to pick up your loot before your room expires or those items become property of the house. No refunds!

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New Builds For 2018

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Welcome to 2018 everyone! What a great few months we’ve had in Daggerfall Unity. Despite my general absence in November through December last year, work still continued on the project at an excellent pace. I owe a debt of thanks to everyone that continued adding features while I was out of the scene for several weeks. I want to make this post all about these contributions, and mention the people who contributed during that time.

We’re close to a stable “Quests 0.4” build now before officially moving on to 0.5 and spells. “Stable” in this case doesn’t mean everything is complete or bug free – just that quests should be relatively steady and playable based on our current position in the Roadmap at the end of 0.4. Work will continue on improving and tightening up quest system all the way to 1.0, but now it’s time to move onto something new. This often means exciting new bugs to fix so the stable build stands as good fallback point if anyone is experiencing too many troubles with latest versions.

You’ll find the latest downloads on the Live Builds page as usual. If you’d like the very latest code, you can check it out directly from our GitHub page. And if you’d like a full blow-by-blow account of all changes up to now, the Commits page has what you’re after. This post mainly covers featured highlights and the people who added them. In alphabetical order, they are:

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