For anyone new to Daggerfall Tools for Unity, here are some featured posts from 2014. If you are introducing the project to a new community, feel free to link these articles (or just link back to this one).
Time & Space and More
Looks at world time and day/night cycles, along with player GPS and beginnings of world streaming. http://www.dfworkshop.net/?p=1388
Direnni Tower – Full Demo
Fully playable demo inside your web browser, or standalone for Windows. Introduces sound system, ambient sound effects player, sky effects, combat, dual wielding, enemy AI, building interiors, and a lot more. http://www.dfworkshop.net/?p=1325
Streaming World – Part 3
Shows off the early streaming world system, along with some details about setting terrain tiles with marching squares. http://www.dfworkshop.net/?p=1515
First Android Build
Community member Eric creates a native build of Daggerfall city on Android (i.e. not using emulation). http://www.dfworkshop.net/?p=1425
Release 1.1 and City Basics Part Two
The current release at end of 2014. Also provides updated tutorials showing just how easy it is to create basic gameplay. http://www.dfworkshop.net/?p=1419
I have added a Frequently Asked Questions page to the Daggerfall Tools for Unity lineup. This hopes to address some the queries I get the most via email and from other communities just learning about the project.
I can’t believe it’s December already. The Holiday Season will be upon us before we know it. I also can’t believe Daggerfall Tools for Unity has only been in development a few months. If you’ve just started following this project, here’s how it looked on August 16th this year after wrangling import of a single model.
Now it looks like the below and can do all this stuff. Check out the Direnni Tower Demo page if you would like to play the demo this video was created from.
In less than 4 months, this Unity Asset has gone from loading a single untextured model to full locations with dungeons, enemies, weapons, combat, sound, building interiors, and a fully streaming overworld system is on the way. I am very proud of what I’ve accomplished so far. But more importantly, I’m having fun.
And to my great pleasure and surprise, others have taken an interest in what this project signifies. You guys understand these tools represent freedom to do creative things with Daggerfall, beyond just remaking the game. The simple demo above is only a taste of what’s possible.
For the first time all content and gameplay of Daggerfall can be recreated using a modern, powerful game engine. An engine which supports more than a dozen platforms and provides an entire development ecosystem backed by an enthusiastic community. It’s now possible to create entirely new Daggerfall experiences and share your creations with other Daggerfall fans. For example, community member Eric managed to get a city build running on Android.
If you don’t have development skills, you can still help by letting others know about these tools. The sky’s the limit for Daggerfall now, we just need more interested people to help reach those heights.
So that’s the last four months. What happens next? Obviously my first priority is to release version 1.2 with streaming overworld features. But that’s only a short-term goal, I also have plans for 2015 to share with you.
I want to keep growing and refining these tools, and encourage other developers to get on board. I believe the time is finally right to build a small game with Daggerfall Tools for Unity. This not only shows what is possible, it provides a starting point for others and helps critically evaluate suitability of these tools for larger projects. Part of the process will be tightening up loose screws and adding features to solve problems encountered on a real project. The result will be a new Daggerfall-styled game for you to enjoy, and a more refined version of the tools. I will talk more about this project in early 2015.
I also need to provide a support hub for Daggerfall Tools for Unity. Beyond just documentation and tutorials, support means engaging with new developers and giving them a place to cooperate and share information. This hub will be a new site attached to dfworkshop.net with a community focus. I want to make the emphasis all about you and what you create, no matter how large or small. There’s no reason we can’t build a microcosm of the lively mod scene enjoyed by later Elder Scrolls titles. I am planning out the beginnings of this site now and should be ready to launch in first half of 2015.
So that’s the tools in review, with exciting new things to come. I’m feeling very positive about next year and look forward to meeting new Daggerfall fans in the future.
One more thing. If you’d like to keep tabs on my daily progress, I try to tweet small updates as frequently as possible. You will find me on Twitter @dfinterkarma.
I’ve created some informational pages about Daggerfall Tools for Unity, including a Feature Gallery of the more visual features. The Introduction and What’s It For? pages should be of great help with communicating the purpose of the toolset.
I’ve completed the first pass at porting code over to Unity. I now have textured models, city blocks, dungeon blocks, and flat objects working. I could lay out complete cities and dungeons at this stage, but want to do some code tidy-up first. Overall, I’m very happy with progress considering I only started work on this a few days ago.
There is a lot of Unity-specific work to go. I need to flesh out editor scripts and add options controlling how scene data is spawned. In case you’re wondering, everything is created procedurally from game files directly within the editor with a single click. After that it just works like a normal scene. The same could be done directly from code as well. Check out the new screens below.
In the last screenshot, you can see realtime shadows acting on the scene. Even the flats are casting and receiving shadows. This is using a standard cutout shader, which works in both forward & deferred.
Right now the scenes are built very atomically (from very small pieces). This is perfect for seeing how everything is put together and mucking about with the individual pieces. However it won’t be optimal for real-time uses. One of the options I’m planning will combine meshes and textures sensibly to minimise draw calls and state changes.
Check back in a few days for another update. The next update will include the first release for you to play with.
Since leaving the Workshop, I’ve been using Unity a good bit for other projects. It occurred to me the other day it should be trivial to drop my Daggerfall library (Daggerfall Connect) into Unity as everything was written in very portable C#. A few hours later, I had Daggerfall models firing up in Unity.
Scourg Barrow exterior in Unity.
It’s only a small step from here to spawning entire game-ready cities and dungeons in Unity. For the most part, this can be done using layout code I’ve already written for Daggerfall Modelling. I’d just need to refactor for Unity and build some editor scripts to hold it all together.
Based on this, I’ve decided to repackage the useful parts of Daggerfall Connect and Daggerfall Modelling into a small suite of scripts for Unity developers. As usual, this will be free and open source for everyone.
This doesn’t mean I’m returning to the Workshop full-time. I’ll only be allocating a few months of spare time for this project. I just think it would be great to see all the code I’ve written over the years being put to use by someone, and what better way to wrap up my years with Daggerfall than making one final tool available for a game engine anyone can use?
Let me know what you think! Is there something particular you’d like to see in Daggerfall Unity? If you’re a Unity developer and want to contribute, I would be more than happy to share access to the SVN (will be setting this up soon) to people with the right skillset.
Get the most recent version of Daggerfall Unity:Releases
