[Heather Stewart]

Lucius describes it best in his http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1008178

So it's like a construction set for it? I don't really understand what he is saying.

[CYCO JO-NATE]

So it's like a construction set for it? I don't really understand what he is saying.

It's basically a port. He's making a brand new engine that lets you play Daggerfall natively in Windows. Ideally it will fix all the bugs that exist in the DOS version of Daggerfall, allow for higher resolutions and longer draw distances, and add a slew of optional features and enhancements that didn't exist in Daggerfall. Since it uses the Daggerfall assets, you still need to obtain a legal copy of Daggerfall (pretty easy now) and install it/patch it to the latest version (not quite so easy). DaggerXL essentially replaces your Daggerfall executable, so that you don't have to use DOSBox to play Daggerfall. If you've ever played any of the Windows-based Doom ports, DaggerXL is basically the Daggerfall equivalent of one of those ports.

DaggerXL does have its own http://daggerxl.50.forumer.com/index.php and http://daggerxl.wordpress.com/, where you can see what DaggerXL is all about. In fact, if you go to the blog and scroll down a bit to the first video you see, you'll get to see DaggerXL in its current state, which should also give you a pretty clear idea of what it is. Make sure you scroll down and view all the videos and screenshots.

Lucius eventually plans to add mod support, so it will act like a Construction Set, but that's not it's main purpose.

[ANaIs GRelot]

I disagree completely, I think Arena well deserves to be remade if this project is completed.

Hmm. I didn't mean to say that Arena wasn't 'deserving'.
It's just that so much of the graphics are similar between the two games that one would be better to port Arena into Daggerfall (in a manner similar to World of Xeen).

[Marine Arrègle]

i could see arena working well in the daggerfall engine, though there would need to be a lot of texture work for the new provinces. if you make each province about the size of a region, it would play out really well.

though there would need to be a lot of assets created, since daggerfall only managed to create breton and redguard npcs (and one generic elf, and a few half-assed dark elves). or i suppose you could try to port over arena's textures, it's free afterall.

[Fiori Pra]

It's just that so much of the graphics are similar between the two games

No.

The sprites are completely different. Arena's are hand-drawn, cartoony sprites; Daggerfall's are 3D-rendered models.
Arena's textures are all 64x64 squares, Daggerfall's have different sizes and are generally larger.

The two games look a lot different. The only graphics that are about similar are in the interface notably the paper dolls.

[Stephanie Kemp]

No.

Arena's are hand-drawn, cartoony sprites; Daggerfall's are 3D-rendered models.

Many of Daggerfalls sprites are hand-drawn... I think all of the stationary ones and most of the stationary animated ones are hand-drawn, plus some of those that are mobile.
And most of Daggerfall's textures are 64x64 or 128x64. The largest are about 128x128 but are non-repeated elements, tapestries or the like. Arena's texture size would present no problem in translation and look perfectly at home in Daggerfall.

EDIT: Found 2 repeating textures at 128x256, and a few at 128x128. Couldn't see any 256x256 but I'd take Lucius' word for it. :read:

It's true that Arena's graphics are largely inferior and could do with being translated/upgraded to Daggerfall standards, and it deserves to be. Easily done, over a long enough time period.

i suppose you could try to port over arena's textures.

:thumbsup:

[D IV]

Just wanted to mention that the largest Daggerfall textures are 256x256, though admittedly they are fairly rare. Incidentally, due to the way the texture format is structured that is the largest size they can be. Of course, other formats, such as image files can be bigger.

But, indeed, most textures are pretty small. 64x64 is a common size, as Levethian mentions.

[lilmissparty]

Arena's sprites are a tricky thing. Static NPCs and mobile townies are undoubtedly hand-drawn. Some of the monsters are trickier, though - such as the Fire Daemon, the Golems, and the Ghouls. They seem to be particularly primitive 3D renderings, similar to something you'd see in RuneScape.

I still find it neat how Arena's engine supported water reflections (not just for sprites, but puddles in the cities could reflect entire buildings as well).

[Tha King o Geekz]

so stoked. keep it up buddy. ive been waiting for this for over 13 years

[Danel]

There's a new DaggerXL post on the http://daggerxl.wordpress.com that talks about moving NPCs, climbing, fogging using the sky color and more. Check it out and let me know what you think!

[Jessie Butterfield]

Nice, you definitely know what you?re doing.

[Jordan Fletcher]

Awesome. Npc spawning also depends on the time of day. If i remember well the sun goes down at 18 hour i believe (gives vampires a 2 hour frame to shop) then at 20 hour all shops close doors and music changes to the night song. After 20 hour npc spawning rate slowly decreases until midnight when npcs stop appearing and only the occasional thief will try to attack the player. Then at 7 hour (a close guess) sun will raise again and vampires will go to sleep.

Climbing looks smooth. That's one of the situations where the use of a grain detail texture could help for textures not to look too blurred at close range.

[Amanda Leis]

mingoran, the spawn rate for NPCs will be adjusted for the demo - right now it's the full number of NPCs (daytime) or no NPCs (night time) with nothing in between. Obviously the rate at which new NPCs are spawned should decrease until it turns off entirely at night (i.e., all NPCs go inside). NPCs that are out will naturally be despawned as they go out of sight (beyond a certain distance), so eventually there won't be any NPCs out unless they happen to be close enough to a player to not be despawned. To see this is action, if you're in a town and you have an NPC standing still and you loiter until the middle of the night, there probably won't be any NPCs around - except for the one still standing there waiting for you to do something. :lol

Anyway, thanks for the observations.

[Amysaurusrex]

Are the forums down? http://daggerxl.50.forumer.com/ doesn't respond anymore. It does respond to ping, but it never loads in the browser.

[DarkGypsy]

Are the forums down? http://daggerxl.50.forumer.com/ doesn't respond anymore. It does respond to ping, but it never loads in the browser.

Works for me.

[Margarita Diaz]

No, they're up. Odd. Just keep trying I guess.

[Scott]

Ok, now it's me. This afternoon I can't get the http://daggerxl.50.forumer.com/ to load. Anyone else having this problem?

[emily grieve]

The forums are down today, hopefully they will be back up soon. I've added a http://daggerxl.wordpress.com/news section to the DaggerXL website to track things like this. I'll post there when the forums are back up.

[Chloé]

They work again for me. At least temporarily.

[Carys]

Greendogo beat me to it, the forums are indeed working again.

[marie breen]

Lucius, I am SO excited about your project! The Elderscrolls forums are starting to make me twitch from all the 'Morrowind pwns ALL/is infallable' threads the uninitiated plebians are making.
YOU, Sir are the key to my unraveling sanity

[jessica breen]

So, how?s the next demo coming? It seemed that you were nearly at the point of releasing it.

[Katey Meyer]

The Pre-Alpha build has been released! See the http://daggerxl.wordpress.com for more information.

[James Baldwin]

The Pre-Alpha build has been released! See the http://daggerxl.wordpress.com for more information.

Oh cool, I?ll test it as soon as I find some time

[Blessed DIVA]

Hooray!