Well, hope springs eternal :thumbsup:

It's amazing how rapidly you're making progress with this. I admire your enthusiasm and dedication with this project. Keep it up!

Very impressive, Lucius.. Flagons of ale raised to your effort..

This will be especially beneficial for those that have a UMPC, where processors are too slow to use DosBox, and are plagued by invisible quest-spawns :dance:

Another update.

There have been a couple of big changes since last time. First thing is that the dungeon is finally oriented correctly, previously it was flipped around an axis. When I corrected this I had to modify the model vertices, modify the object position conversion and modify the object angle conversion ? oh and flip the culling orientation. Not too bad but more involved then it probably seems.

The next thing you'll notice is that the in-game UI is partially complete. For the "full" UI the portrait background is the wrong color and the compass isn't working but otherwise works. The compass isn't there because it turns out that it uses a 3D model and I have to find out which one and add 3D model support to the UI. The face background should change color based on your current condition which still needs to be done. The minimal UI ( the "fullscreen" option in Daggerfall ) is working correctly, including the compass.

Enemies now show up correctly, humanoid and monster alike. They currently have no AI, so just face the player and play the "walk" animation. However ground based enemies do have gravity, although the range when they are updated is too short, causing an enemy pop in the video. Anyway the next update will have actual enemy AI, so you'll get to see them move around soon.

And finally switches, moving and rotating objects work. For example if you hit the switch by the throne, it'll rotate while causing the platform and throne to move up (or down). There is also a rotating bookcase trigger by clicking on a table in another room.

So for the next update I'm shooting for monster AI, more complete UI (character screens, inventory, etc.), combat and looting (look treasure, bodies). Shortly thereafter I'll release the demo.

To see screenshots and the movie, visit:
http://daggerxl.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/enemies-switches-and-ui/

As usual, let me know what you think.

Amazingl!! You're working very fast, I'm impressed!

this looks great. good luck. I have never played daggerfall before but I was planning to get it and this just makes me want to go out and get it more then ever which I will do as soon as I finish battlespire that is.

Wow, you're fast! Still looking awesome, keep it up !

Very, very cool.. I will most definitely be keeping tabs on this. Keep up the amazing work!

Impressive

So, does this engine now recognise all dungeons in this manner, or do they need to be worked up individually?

Dungeons in Daggerfall are made of the same 'sections' (located in the blocks.bsa file). This is the reason why they all look so similar. And because of that if you build a dungeon viewer, it should be able to view all dungeons.

So the engine understands and translates all sections - excellent
If memory serves, MW and OB used numerous repeated sections too. Certainly every dungeon of the same type shared similar elements. Presumably more varied sections can be modded once this is complete. Likewise for houses, etc.

Though towns in DF actually look okay for the most part. Some contours might be nice and offer farther viewing distances, but otherwise they're okay. Its the wilderness in-between that could do with some re-randomisation using a better formula... And perhaps cities could spread a little beyond their walls, as if they're still expanding. Maybe we'll see city wall that aren't square! Sky's the limit.

So excited.

WOW. I'm honestly super-stoked enough about this to have registered on the forums, so here's a question or two.

One of my favorite quirks about vanilla Daggerfall was the capability to kinda mimic the control of the sequels, i.e. binding spacebar to interact (F1 to F4 for interaction modes), shift to run, E to jump, removing the status bar, binding a key to "sneak mode" which most likely did nothing, and adopting a WASD movement scheme. The only problem with this arrangement was with the WASD; due to the engine limitations and whatnot I could either strafe dead left/right or move straight forward/backward. The mouselook (which was pretty young at the time, if I recall) was fantastic, however.

My question is, in this project are you planning to implement WASD control to better fit that of the sequels and hell, all first person perspective games in general?

Strafing versus forward movement already works like a more modern game, you can circle strafe just fine.

Hehe. It also seems that you will be able to fully look 90 degrees upward/downward, which will be a nice touch. Hated coming to a deep, ominous shaft in a dungeon and not being able to look down it and see what lies before me.

Anyway, keep going. I'm quite surprised as to how much is known about Daggerfall's file formats. I know of several sites besides the DF Workshop, many of which have long since stopped being updated though. I know nothing about making a source port from scratch but I'm surprised that you're getting this program to interpret Daggerfall's files so easily. Will the UI have to be recoded from scratch, or can that somehow be carried over from the game's files?

This is a really neat project! Hope everything works out.

Obviously all the graphics and animations will be from the data files but I have to code the actual functionality. For now the UI functionality is handled in the code itself but eventually I'll probably move it over to the scripting system.

You are making progresses very fast. What scripting language are you thinking of using?

AngelCode, the same scripting language as used by DarkXL.

Inspirational and brings back memories of many a winter night in the 1990s playing DAGGERFALL til the wee hours. It really is the real thing as i looked at the movies and felt my heart jump as it looked like you might fall into..THE VOID I even saw a secret where the imp is that i never knew about since playing TES 2 the first day it hit New York City's J+R COMPUTER WORLD. I still have the original cd in spotless condition. Thanks this is euphoric to say the least :foodndrink: :cake: :foodndrink:

You may have already answered this, but do you have any plans for a Linux/OS X port? It'll be kind of a bummer if I have to fire up a virtual machine every time I want to play on my Macbook.

Probably Linux eventually but Mac is unlikely.

Do you have any plans yet for how you'll implement exterior cells? I know they use a different format and Interkarma had a great deal of fun cracking all the different ins and outs of them, like climate textures.

I will be using the information that Interkarma discovered (thanks by the way) as a starting point, of course. I haven't made specific plans on how I'm going to deal with it yet, other then general thoughts. Once I tackle terrain I'll figure it out and post my adventures. I tend to work on these things in stages, starting with something small and contained (like Privateer's Hold) and then building the engine by dealing with increasingly complex or large systems and then generalizing as appropriate.

So my current plan is to get the Privateer's Hold demo out soon - my next big update post will probably include the demo. Then I'll tackle a non-procedural city, probably Daggerfall.

For the second demo, once you leave the dungeon you'll show up in (or near) Daggerfall and will be able to explore the exterior and interiors.

At that point I'll probably get the exterior (wilderness) to work, with 2 modes: just like the original Daggerfall and an improved version with better procedural layouts used - but using the same textures and sprites to keep the look consistent. Anyway I don't have concrete plans after that, it'll depend on what I learn along the way, what people want to see, etc. but will include random dungeons and cities, NPC conversations, quests, reputation, guilds, full skills and magic, and various other game mechanics necessary for the game.

This probably wasn't the answer you were looking for but I'll be able to be more specific when I actually work on the terrain and other exteriors.


Edit -
Right now I'm working on the combat system which requires player stats, monster stats, items and new interface elements. I have them attacking and being hit, but no damage is being dealt yet (that's next).

If you release the source, I'm sure you'll get more than enough help in getting it ported. Personally, I wouldn't even mind helping to get the Linux port going.