The “Fighters” Update

A whole new cycle of Live Builds is now underway for Daggerfall Unity 0.4. Here are some of the new features you’ll find in the latest “Fighters” update.

 

Quest System

The quest system is now open! Visit any Fighters Guild and speak to the usual quest giver to receive a random guild quest. Be sure to bring your strongest character, because quests span everything the Fighters Guild has on offer, from rats to liches.

 

While still incomplete, the quest system in Daggerfall Unity manages to kick things up a notch over classic:

• No more binary QBN/QRC files and command line compilers! Quest scripts can be created with a simple text editor like Notepad and are based on Donald Tipton’s TEMPLATE v1.11 scripting language, the de facto standard for creating Daggerfall quests. If you’ve written Daggerfall quests before, you already have the skills needed to write quests in Daggerfall Unity.
• Quests scripts are JIT (just in time) compiled by Daggerfall Unity. This means you can write new quest scripts and test them while the game is running.
• Daggerfall’s classic quests have already been migrated to the new scripting language and many quests are perfectly playable in Daggerfall Unity now.
• New features! Daggerfall Unity is already extending the capabilities of the quest system beyond what’s possible in classic, such as using location exteriors in quests. It’s even possible to write new quest actions in C# and extend quest system through mods.
• The Quest Debugger lets you see what your quest is doing at any time by displaying the internal Task states and Timers, and helping you find buildings quickly. This debugger will continue to grow in power as the quest system develops. Note: Quest Debugger is always enabled in “Fighters” update. A toggle will be added once quest system passes tests.

 

Real Skills

Be prepared! Daggerfall Unity now has real combat formulas, including weapon and armour checks, dodging, critical strike, and more. If you take on a vastly more powerful enemy, you might not land a single blow.

 

Skill and level progression are now working. Your character will grow in power by playing the game and be able to level up at last. Skills like dodging and critical strike will be checked during combat, and skills like medical are checked during rest. Daggerfall’s level-up formula is applied on travel and rest, and you’ll go up in level once your skills have been raised enough.

 

You can now set your interaction mode using F1-F4 (default keys). Use Info mode to find an NPC or building name, and use Steal mode to try your luck at picking locks. This even checks your Lockpicking skill against the lock using Daggerfall’s lockpick formula.

 

New UI Windows

The exterior automap will help you navigate around town locations. Named buildings are marked automatically for now, and the Quest Debugger will direct you to quest buildings until the discovery and “talk” systems are implemented. Like the dungeon automap, you can zoom, pan, and rotate the map. It’s great dragging the map around with left mouse button rather than using arrow keys.

 

The keybind interface will help you bind keys just like in Daggerfall.

 

Wandering NPCs

Mobile NPCs now wander the streets during daylight hours across all climates in Illiac Bay. Meet Nords, Redguard, and Bretons in your travels.

 

The “talk” system has not yet been implemented in Daggerfall Unity, so you can’t yet speak to these wandering people to ask for directions, rumours, and so on. This will be coming sometime in 0.5 update cycle.

 

More Mods

All the mods that were previously integrated with Daggerfall Unity now have standalone updated versions from their creators. Available mods are on the Released Mods page of the forums. Please let the creator know if you encounter a problem with their mod.

You can now create art replacement mods for Daggerfall Unity. Check out the new Modding pages for more details on how to replace textures, sprites, models, sounds, and movies. A few great-looking art mods are already in the works, such as the Terrain Flats art mod by jman0war. He is hand-painting all new terrain art and it looks amazing.

 

And in case you didn’t know already, Daggerfall Unity has a runtime C# compiler, mod packager, and mod loader. This has been available for a while, but not a lot of people seem to know about it yet. Check out this page on the forums for more information on creating a Hello World styled mod in C# for Daggerfall Unity. You could even make a mod that adds custom actions to the quest system!

 

Get Involved

You can find the latest builds on the Live Builds page as usual.

For conversations, please use the following forum thread for all talk and bug reports for now. More information will be found in that thread to help you run quests.

 

Credits

I have the following people to thank for their contributions to the above features, in no particular order:

Allofich – For tirelessly working on skills, formulas, level ups, and researching classic save format. Some of the real gameplay features in this release would not have been ready without his efforts.

TheLacus – For creating the asset swap capabilities, documenting everything, and supporting people in their efforts to mod Daggerfall Unity.

Nystul – For the incredible automap user interfaces and mods he creates.

Lypyl – For the runtime C# compiler, mod packager, and mod loader. Also for his help with reverse engineering building data during early stages of the quest system.

JustinS – For his perfect keybind interface.

And thank you to everyone else who has contributed smaller fixes and patches on GitHub: muderbeard, midopa, electrorobobody, and more. Daggerfall Unity has only come so far thanks to the ingenuity and generosity of contributors. The combination of open source and a brilliant community will take this project a long way in the future.

Cheers!