This is true. As-is, Daggerfall is an amazingly riveting game that never ceases to entertain, nor cease to exercise the imagination. At the same time, however, it is certainly the saddest of the games, the plethora of promised content that was cut at the last moment. Gameplay elements aside, the http://www.imperial-library.info/gallery/dagger_shot01.jpg and http://www.imperial-library.info/gallery/dagger_shot03.jpg were to be worlds different from what we have now.

Should - nay, when this gets done, the dreams of every Daggerfall fan would be fulfilled as this shadow of the game's true, intended self that Bethesda coudl never express is reunited. Daggerfall would become the greatest Elder Scrolls game of all time, without a doubt. Keep at it!

Just how ambitious is this project? Has adding 3D NPCs and creatures ever been considered? So far, this looks great. How much more is this project intended to change?

Yes, Daggerfall has amazing role-playing elements. However, Daggerfall lacks anything interesting to do, It's huge, but everything is randomly-generated and looks the same. Is Daggerfall going to be easily moddable with DaggerXL? Getting a modding community going for Daggerfall would allow people to create those interesting places that Daggerfall lacks.

If Lucius shows the degree of cleverness building modding tools for DaggerXL that he has with DarkXL it should be awesome.

Side note: why can't the guys posting screenshot archives also post aspect-corrected versions? The stretched screens everybody shows of old games are maddening.

Mmh, well consider that Daggerfall's native resolution is 320x200 and that DOSBox captures are usually upscaled to 640x400, which corresponds with the Normal2X scaler most people use. DaggerXL, however, is pretty much going for the 4:3 aspect ratio, with most people running it at 800x600, 1024x768, and the like. The rendering is modified to match appropriately, although the interface does stretch/skew from what I can tell. Eventually Lucius will hopefully figure out a way to readjust the default interface to not get butchered by these new resolutions.

I'd say that any attempts to make new graphics for the interface will be done with proper, modern aspect ratios in mind, so that's something to look forward to.

Daggerfall is lacking in things to do when compared to more modern games which are mostly statically scripted, have more developed and interesting characters and better plots in quests. But this can me moded in. Modern games also lack a lot in immersion because they are statically scripted and lack procedural generation features.

Just one correction, Daggerfall supports both procedural and unique content. For example the Wayrest manor inside the city of wayrest is a unique land block placed in that specific location and surrounded by the rest of town that was procedurally generated. There are also dungeons that are partially procedurally generated and have unique sections inter-mixed. Same with procedural quests and main quests which are always the same while procedural quests are fragments of a story which is scrambled when player accepts a side quest but that allows for repeatable quests.

I would say the features that make Daggerfall unique and greatly contribute to immersion are the awesome writing; the realistic scale of the land and towns (dungeons not so much) with the weather patterns and the hollydays; procedural quests, the reactions and comments of the population to how the player did a quest (this is handled dynamically by whatever quests are active and not in a static way); the role-playing and freedom. This last part is a bit weak compared to other games like Fallout and also Morrowind but this also can be expanded with mods.

There is a new post on the http://daggerxl.wordpress.com which talks about what I've been working on and what is in store for the near future.

Holy [censored], seriously? That's awesome!
Keep it up lucius! :thumbsup:

Maybe I missed this, but do you have a program that can unpack whatever-the-hell-format all the textures and stuff are in? You know, for looking at the textures/sprites/whatever out-of-game.

And: :bowdown: All Hail Lucius!

Nothing has been created alongside DaggerXL for such a purpose, but Interkarma made two tools a while back:

• http://www.dfworkshop.net/?page_id=78, navigates TEXTURE.### archives like a web browser and can also view skies. Images can be saved out as gifs.
  
• http://www.dfworkshop.net/?page_id=9, can also view 3D blocks and has unofficial names assigned to each archive to help with searching. Images have to be saved out manually.

I'm trying to figure out what this is because a lot of awesome people have called it awesome, so i'm sure I'll think thatit is once I know what it is.
So basically it, rather than emulating DOS, puts a modern application in which the software of Daggerfall can 'rest' on a modern computer (PC I assume, not Mac.) This will allow mod-ability (By anybody or by your team?) That could replace textures and sprites to make Daggerfall look as good as games that are much worse game-play wise.

Is that right? cause that sounds awesome :bowdown:. I had no idea somethng like that would be possible (Imagine Orsinium in Morrowind graphics)

DaggerXL looks really good, but I doubt DaggerXL will allow the filling of the gap between Daggerfall's graphics and Morrowind's graphics. To anyone involved in this project, is that a realistic goal? The largest technological gap in TES series between Daggerfall and Morrowind and I'm not sure about Daggerfall matching Morrowind's graphics. Is that possible at all?

I"m sure it will allow that easily. It will probably allow all kinds of things Morrowind can't do. It already has bloom. What it would take to achieve that is a lot of modders doing a lot graphics work and modelling. That almost never happens with any game.

But that aside, I didn't find the graphics to be Daggerfall's biggest issue. Daggerfall just needs more interesting things to explore. I wouldn't care much if they were blocky and in 256 colours. I like Daggerfall a lot, but it doesn't give me a reason to wade through swamps or break in through people's roofs like Morrowind does.

The most interesting parts of DaggerXL Lucius' ideas about adding interesting things to the game. Moddability is right at the top, but things like procedural rivers and roads also sound extremely cool.

Morrowind can't do those things directly but the MW Graphics Extender can. Along with more complicated shaders like SSAO.

Anyway the graphics improvements I'm especially looking forward to from DaggerXL is the extended view distance.

I think Daggerfall could get up to Morrowind-level graphics, althogh it'd be quite painful. Right now the two main ideas are improved textures and possibly even models, since, well, mobile NPCs in Daggerfall are already sprites of rendered models. Wouldn't look too out-of-place. Reaching the amount of polygon depth of Morrowind may be difficult, simply because everything in Daggerfall is denser than in other TES games. Think about the largest cities, like Daggerfall, Wayrest, and Sentinel. Each of those has hundreds of houses, and almost all of them are viewable from one point now due to the view distance. Anything more than ~150-200 polygons for each house and you're already killing lower end computers, assuming no awesome LoD system/render culling is implemented anytime soon. Though I think Lucius does plan to implement these, which already makes DaggerXL much more optimized than Bethesda's Gamebryo builds.

On the topic of actual graphics, for some reason, I think for the most part I'd want to play Daggerfall with its original art assets. All those neat things promised but never implemented - enemies on horseback, interesting wilderness, etc. for some reason, I'd love to imagine what all these improvements would look like with the original graphics, as they would be in 1996 if Bethesda managed to accomplish all of their promised features. That's just me, however.


You guys should visit the DaggerXL forums more often. A lot of ideas for graphical mods/overhauls are being tossed around there, may give you a better idea of what is/isn't feasible than in this thread and the blog alone.

Hey guys. I haven't been on here in a while, but the project continues along. There was a minor setback (computer problems, see the blog for more info) but things are moving forward again. To that effect, version 0.17 has just been released! You can read about it http://daggerxl.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/daggerxl-version-0-17-released.

That looks great.

Last I looked MGE had a hackish clone of the sort of bloom Oblivion aims for: if it's bright enough, make it more bright! DaggerXL applies bloom to things that are supposed to emit light. the effect is very different and IMHO much nicer.

One thing that would dramatically improve the look of DaggerXL would be to change the daytime lighting like in Morrowind and Oblivion. It looks good in Daggerfall, but the light doesn't even try to move with the sun position. Morrowind and Oblivion look awesome because of it, even with their graphics turned down to nothing. They don't do it correctly at night though, which I always found odd. It's just weird to have the light travel opposite the moon.

DaggerXL version 0.181 has been released. Read the http://daggerxl.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/build-split-part-i-version-0-18-released for more information.

A couple of days ago I put up some Youtube videos showing the current state of DaggerXL (Version 0.181). You can read about it on the http://daggerxl.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/the-current-state-of-daggerxl/.

Direct links to the Youtube videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3SzQqf9KBM&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJQ0rYjIaro&feature=related

:drool: That looks amazing.

I love the part from 7:35 to 8:12!

Very impressive. I look forward to giving this a go one day.


Thank you.
:)
-kwm

Nice videos! Eagerly awaiting new updates

I followed the instructions from the DaggerXL site to try the demo, and it works fine during the beginning cutscenes and even when standing still in Privateer's Hold, but as soon I move, the demo stops working and the computer I use shuts down. What am I doing incorrectly?