There are a few areas where setting up Daggerfall Unity could be a lot easier:
- Obtaining Daggerfall’s game files. There is no easy way of obtaining Daggerfall’s game files for non-Windows users. You basically need to install the game on a Windows PC then copy game files to your platform of choice.
- Using the right game files. Most setup issues boil down to the game files being a CD-based version (movies not copied into arena2), not patched to .213, or game files have been modified over the years and don’t work as expected.
- Settings not persistent. Every time you download a new version of Daggerfall Unity, you need to configure your settings.ini and keybinds all over again. There is no way of pushing out new settings without giving you whole new files each time with all default values.
- Unclear when something goes wrong. If you start the game without setting your Daggerfall path, or if files are missing, you just see an unhelpful black screen or an obscure message.
Starting from 0.2, I will try to address the above problems with the following changes:
- Providing game files download. Starting from Daggerfall Unity 0.2, I will provide a download archive for a known-good set of game files. This archive can be unzipped and used on Windows/Linux/Mac. You can still point to your own installation as before, so this download is completely optional, but it will be the recommended source of Daggerfall’s game files moving forwards. As Daggerfall’s game files are static, you will generally only need to download this archive once and it can be used for all future versions of Daggerfall Unity.
- Settings will be persistent. The settings.ini and keybinds files are now deployed to Application.persistentDataPath, so you will keep your settings whenever upgrading Daggerfall Unity. New settings will be automatically synced without changing your other settings.
- Setup UI. The new Daggerfall Unity game setup UI will be a friendly starting point guiding you through first-time configuration. If there are problems with your game files, the setup UI will try to point you in the right direction. This will evolve over time based on user feedback.
- Options UI. Coming later in 0.2 cycle will be a Daggerfall Unity options UI. Most settings can be configured without opening settings.ini or keybinds files at all.
More news on the 0.2 release will be posted soon.
Woo!