Default Scene

This screenshot is of a General Store facade at night. Note the street light is illuminating the store nicely.

Before taking this screenshot, I have prepared a few modified BLOCKS.BSA files with different flats in place of the defaults. The purpose was to see how Daggerfall handled a simple texture index change. If the light kept flickering, then I knew lights were stored elsewhere and had to keep looking.

Lights Out!

After changing the texture index from a street light to a spell effect, the lighting effect is no longer applied. This is a good sign that I’m on the right track.

Testing A Theory

After putting the lights out, it seemed likely that Daggerfall was injecting a standard light source whenever the engine encountered a flat billboard using any texture from TEXTURE.210 (Lights). The billboard is also set to be emissive so that it appears to be self-lit.

To test this out, I replaced the street lights with braziers, and the lights returned. This was enough to prove how lights work, but what about cows and cats? Are billboard sound effects played based on texture alone?

Daisy

For the next test, I found a nice dark spot with a cow standing near a building. This cow is mooing happily – and frequently!

Flame On

I then replaced Daisy with a brazier. Not surprisingly, the mooing stopped completely and the billboard started illuminating the building behind it.

It’s A Start

I’ve added a simple ground plane under the city map. The ground in Daggerfall is composed of squares fitting perfectly under a block. The ground is tiled together in the same way blocks are tiled together to form a complete map.

The next step is texture it.

Um, Not Quite

Even though I’ve written ground builders a few times in the past (the first was in Daggerfall Explorer), adding this feature into a new engine is bound to encounter bugs. I’ve not quite nailed it this attempt.

Textures Done

The ground textures are now being placed and aligned correctly across all maps.

Still Needs Region Processing

Daggerfall uses texture swaps for each region/climate type. You can play with these combinations in Daggerfall Explorer. Here is Sentinel using the default “temperate” texture set used while developing the ground plane.

At some point, I need to re-code the ability to swap in the correct texture. But for now I want to do something a little more interesting.

New Flats

In this screenshot, I’ve started adding flats. My first attempt isn’t that successful. They aren’t at the right height, size, or transparent. But they are standing in the right places, so it’s is a good start.

Another issue with these flats you can’t see in the screenshot is they always face the camera. If you fly into the air and look down, they’re lying flat on the ground! A quick change to the axis alignment will sort that out.

Working Flats

Flats are now correctly positioned, axis aligned, and alpha-enabled. I feel the scaling needs some work. At this time, it is unknown which numbers Daggerfall uses to scale flats. I will refine this as development progresses.

I’ve never been a huge fan of flat billboards in games, but they were a standard technique in days past and part of the Daggerfall landscape. Despite being antique tech, I feel some of the old charm has started to make its way back into the otherwise dreary maps in Daggerfall Scout.

The next step is to do some gardening and add the local plant life, such as trees, etc. These aren’t stored in the flats records along with everything else. I need to find them before I can draw them from the game files.