Will Daggerfall ever be released for free on the Bethesda home site like Arena was?

i doubt it, too buggy and rumor has it they lost the sourse code....:ninja:

Bummer....

If I buy it then would it run on newer PCs? I heard that older games don't tend to like running on new systems.

only if you run through dosbox, just like arena. Its far by the most complex game. You'll feel like you've been thrown in the deep end when you start playing. Some people like it, some dont, i sit on the fence about it.

i suggest you ty the demo first, if you can get that running then get the real thing, also it'll give you a taste of what to expect. the link is in the pinned stuff i think.

Thanks, I didn't know there was a demo.

hmm how do we get Arena for free?

From: http://www.elderscrolls.com/downloads/downloads_games.htm

Even if the source was lost, it's not needed to release the game for free.

That said, it's extremly unlikely that Daggerfall will be released for free, cause gamesas (Pete) said so.

Daggerfall is not hard to find on eBay for a reasonable price, considering how fun and fulfilling the game is. Battlespire, however, is almost impossible to find in a condition that amounts to anything more than a CD.

There are several at amazon at reasonable prices.

I know about the deals on Amazon. They are not much better than what's on eBay.

Maybe when they'll celebrate their 25th year anniversary.
Or it will be Morrowind..

doubtful daggerfall will be released free. the source code will never be released, isn't there signifigant parts that are licensed or something?

My guess: Maybe, Arena was that after all. And Daggerfall is next whenever it happens.

In a different topic I saw a long time ago one of the admins said it would never be released in any form ever again. But if they don't release it free, I wish they would release it on http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/, or even put it as a bonus on the PC version of the next TES, like how Xbox Ninja Gaiden had the original NES games on it.

No, it was in-house technology. It's with Morrowind that they started using licensed stuff. (Well, with Redguard actually, it included GLide stuff for those who had 3DFX cards.) The XnGine was developed by Bethesda and used in Terminator: Future Shock, Daggerfall, Battlespire, and Redguard. I think the first prototype for Morrowind was built with it as well, but they adopted NetImmerse (it wasn't yet called Gamebryo at the time) when they started building the real game.

It's sad the source code is lost. All software companies should all do like Id Software does and open-source their old engines, letting people make modern ports for their old games and preventing loss of code. Unfortunately, dixit Pete, "that's just not what we do."

The sound system is licensed. So they used the HMI Sound Operating System middleware. Lots of DOS games use licensed sound code, to deal with various sound cards.

Doom used a licensed sound system as well. Id Software just got it removed from the code before opening the source. While obviously very important, the sound is not as critical as the renderer, and the renderer itself isn't necessary (unless the game relied far too much on exploiting glitches to achieve special effects, I guess). What really matters is how the game data is used and how the rules of the game are implemented. If you've got these two elements, you can rewrite everything to modernize it.


For example, if Oblivion's code was opened with the okay of Emergent (Gamebryo's owners) but not the other middleware holders, the game would suffer mostly from the loss of Facegen, as that's a big part of game data that would no longer work.

Terminator: Future Shock was way ahead of it's time, and could've had the most to offer if the source was ever released. Especially fixing the flawed gravity. You know Fallout 3 looks surprisingly a lot like Future Shock, except Future Shock looks a lot more desolate from total nuclear war. and radiation was deadlier.

Morrowind did start on the Xngine, though i'm not sure how far they ever got with it. i honestly can't remember if there were any promo shots then. i remember hearing they were happy to switch to the netimmerse which opened up the console market, as well as easy customization.