I believe the dungeon blocks and their respective formats are deciphered so pretty much any dungeon would work right now, perhaps with the exception of things like the door guardian in Shedungent, which would have to be scripted as it's a unique entity.

That is correct. In fact I expect the second demo to be able to display almost any dungeon, city or interior except for a few features (such as water). Privateer's Hold is a testing grounds, its easier to test one dungeon then to say - "here's every dungeon, hope it all works" right away. And also remember that I've been building the engine, getting all the file format parsing, building collision systems and getting game play features to work - but it is general work, not specific to this dungeon.

And while my DarkXL engine was a good base, the way rendering, collision, player physics and game play works in Daggerfall is quite different. So really all the non-core elements had to be done from scratch. But having a good framework and low level systems in place certainly helped.

I am very impressed by what you have done.
Superb work !

I guess he's using Privateer's Hold for the demo because we all know what it looks like. It won't be hard to make a 1:1 comparision of it if you can be in the same privateer's hold every time by starting a new game.

I'm eager to start making improved models for Daggerfall, but there are still a lot of questions: what format I should use? How can I extract the original models from the game, how to test the updated models in game? Is it possible to replace the sprite objects, e.g. treasure piles, lanterns, etc... with 3d models without collisions?

Better not have random spawn when I rest! :swear:

You're getting ahead of yourself, aren't you? :celebration:

In the mean time, check the http://www.dfworkshop.net for Interkarma's older programs which can explore every file format.

Well, I need not only explore, but export/import meshes. I know that there is a program, which allows you to export models from the game (I used it once), but I can't find it anywhere. Also I need to know in what format the meshes should be exported for integrating them into the game.

http://www.uesp.net/file.shtml?dagger/files/dfto3ds.zip,

DFto3DS v1.1
16 October 2002 244 kb Export Daggerfall 3D objects in ARCH3D.BSA to DXF and 3DS files. 3DS files support textures.

Boo. Petition for a Blender plugin NOW!

Very exciting! I look forward to finally playing Daggerfall.

Thank you!

Just want to wish LuciusDXL a ton of luck for this project. Having just started playing Daggerfall seriously for the 1st time this week, I'm very excited for daggerxl!

Daggerfall's use of nudity is very artistic. This was a simpler time, back in the dark ages known as the 20th century. A time when the ESRB and Soccer Moms didn't exist.

Fun Fact #24: There was no ESRB around for Arena, but it came out in time to give Daggerfall a well-earned M rating.

M Rating? Daggerfall?! Were we playing the same game?

I found the child-guard, given the setting, monsters, and plot, a little out of place.

I agree, VPAINT.CIF and WPAINT.CIF would have seemed out of place if they did use them.

It would be interesting to redraw the character's image for higher resolution! I could do it keeping both censored and uncensored variants. I have an experience of drawing people (http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt346/rhymer1987/a6d308b0.jpg, http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt346/rhymer1987/b283f418.jpg), so it won't take a lot of time. I even can make your face for it, if I have your picture. The only problem - I need to know suitable resolution of the picture and its size.

And returning to the question of improving models - I read that game determines the place of some objects through the textures applied. (E.g. - doors in the dungeons and sound\light sources). What about the new engine. Is it safe to make completely new model with it's own textures, or I have to apply the "door" texture to the model. And what about the light sources? Can I replace flat lanterns with 3d models? And what about the particle systems? Is it possible to make fire (as a light source) using particles?

Right now there are no provisions for making your own light sources and such. Eventually you'll be able to make a replacement for existing items and be able to add your own lights and tags to new items. Think of it this way: the game decides it wants candleX at a certain location. Now since candleX comes from a certain set of textures it automatically gets a light source. So you make a 3D model to replace with candleX, which is simply swapped in whenever that sprite is used. Then if you want your own light source you set it up (I'm not sure exactly how yet: meta data in the model? a light source placed in your modeling package? something to be figured out) which will replace the default light source.

Just remember that these features aren't in yet, I'm still working on getting the core game to work.

And what about the doors? How it is better to make them? I mean exit doors.

And what about the higher resolution character image? What resolution and size it should be?

I'm insisting that you stop asking so many questions. Right now the goal of DaggerXL is to interpret the entire original engine and its file formats, custom content comes second. Not saying it's never too early to start thinking about what you want to do, but there's no real clear-cut way how to do any of the stuff you're asking about yet. The actual program has to be released first.

I'm thinking a good start to a character paper doll would be double or triple resolution. Even if Daggerfall becomes higher resolution, I'd like to stick to the pixel-art style.

Seconding StoneFrog. As much progress as luciusDXL is making, the final program is nowhere close to being "final." He's already said that all enhancements are on the backburner and he's more concerned with getting the program up and running. It'll be awhile.

As others have pointed out, it's too early for this. What happens if the final format gets changed and suddenly all your work is invalidated?


Your best bet here is to make your artwork larger than any screen resolution that is likely to get used. After all, 2D art can always be scaled down, but if you make it too small, the reverse doesn't work nearly so well.

Well, I will keep silence until I am allowed to talk. Sorry for being so curious - I just want to see one of my favorite games beautiful and up-to-date. I hope the working version of the engine will be completed soon and it would be possible to think of graphic enhancement.

You know what would make me drool? Cell shaded color. :drool:

That's very good. Did you draw these on top of any Daggerfall face picture? The style is similar.

You can extract all faces and textures using one of Interkarma tools called Daggerfall Imaging.
http://www.dfworkshop.net/

Interkarma has also been updating his blog recently, by the way.