How much of Daggerfall is randomly generated?

If it's the same as Arena, everything that isn't a major city. So the wilderness of Daggerfall and the small little settlements in it would all be randomly generated at the beginning of the game.

How many major cities are there?

Also, wow. Daggerfall is 6000 square miles randomly generated... just about everything?

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall%3a%50laces

So I guess pretty much everything that isn't on that page is randomly generated.

Is it possible to randomly generate a game with modern graphics and a physics system and have it work well?

Procedural generation techniques always uses some sort of rules or a grammar to generate content and mix it with unique content. IMO if you want to make a game with a realistic land scale and realistically sized towns this is the only viable way.

All of Daggerfall's towns, terrain, and dungeons were procedurally generated once back in 1996. So everybody has identical towns and dungeons on their Daggerfall installation. Capitol cities and main quest dungeons were hand-created.

Stonefrog wins the day. We all have the same dungeons to play and the same towns to visit. That works out well for us because we get to share interesting places if we like.

Indeed, it's possible to create huge game worlds using procedural generation. For the sci-fi fans, there's Frontier and its buggy sequel First Encounters, which came out around the same time in the early-mid nineties as Arena and Daggerfall, in which the game can procedurally generate the entire galaxy, hundreds of millions of planetary systems with stars, planets, moons, asteroidal bodies and etc, all in the space of one old-time floppy disk-- less than a megabyte. All the computer needs is the math for generating the systems and they'll turn out the same each and every time because the numbers don't change. Known systems like Sol, Alpha Centauri, and so on are hand-coded, just like the capital cities and main quest dungeons in Daggerfall and Arena. Physics and light-sourcing are also reasonably handled, at least given the time the games were released.
Frontier is similar in many ways, tone-wise, to Daggerfall-- totally free form universe where you get to take whatever role you want in the game. And like the Elder Scrolls, it's still got a loyal fan base online.
Of course, there's also some difference in using a five-megawatt pulse laser as opposed to a fireball spell.
While I agree with mingoran that creating a landmass the size of Daggerfall's play area would be prohibitively difficult without procedural generation, I also think the method has a problem with sameness, a sort of bland uniformity of everywhere. Aside from the main quest dungeons and capitals, Daggerfall has no famous landmarks to seek out. Every town is pretty much the same as any other, aside from the building textures and NPC names. The best way, for my money, would be a more balanced combination of the two methods. Procedural generation for wilderness and many towns, but hand-code a little more variety in. Give the players some nice out-of-the-way locales to wander. I think the later Elder Scrolls games, from what I've seen (and I'll admit I've only played Arena and Daggerfall) have at least some of that, though perhaps they took it too far and limited the scale of the game.

Another game with procedural generation is Dwarf Fortress, so if you're interested in randomly generated worlds complete with a rich history and culture you should check it out.

That German one, like Doom 3. K -something.

http://www.theprodukkt.com/kkrieger.

Pretty much everything in Spore is procedurally generated as well.

kkrieger isn't random, though. Its content was designed beforehand. The program generates all the content procedurally when it's run so it can be distributed as a small executable (the point of that demo). That group even released a version of the tool they designed to make those demos.

Also, wow. Daggerfall is 6000 square miles randomly generated... just about everything?

Every game has the same wilderness and cities. However, they may have used some sort of randomization when they created it.

Isn't Arena different every time though? How large is Arena?

Arena is pretty much infinite in size, as you walk the wilderness in the area just gets randomly generated. It's literally impossible to just walk from one town to another.

So, is it really infinite, or is there number one can call it's size? It must have a limit.

I heard that if you walk to the very edge of the wilderness outside a city in Arena, the map wraps around and you'll find yourself back on the opposite site (i.e. keep heading north and you'll end up in the south). I myself have never attempted this as the wilderness does seem to go on for quite some time.

I'm not really sure, I think I recall someone saying that if you go far enough the game crashes due to memory overflow or somesuch, but I don't know for certain.

Also, is Arena a good game? Can anyone give me Arena's minimum size, and is Arena a varied game? When crossing the border between Cyrodiil and Skyrim in Arena, will I notice a difference in environment, architecture, and ruin types?

well there will be snow and the look of the houses will be different.

It's a good, casual, game. Much like Daggerfall (to a certain extent.)
I'm a bit biased towards Arena, as it's the first ES I've played.

Isn't Arena different every time though?

Nope. Neither the cities nor the wilderness is random in that sense.

How large is Arena?

Very, but rather same-y after a while, like every game. How soon "a while" is varies by the person on the keyboard.

So, is it really infinite, or is there number one can call it's size? It must have a limit.

I've never had the stomach to check, but someone reliable told me it eventually loops back to the town you left. I doubt extremely that you circumnavigate the map. Arena just doesn't have that kind of code built into it.

Also, is Arena a good game?

Oh, hells yes it is. And the price is right.

is Arena a varied game?

There's some variation, like every game, but there's no denying that the graphics are limited by today's standards and can tire quickly on one if one is not in the correct state of mind. Turn your clock back to 1994...some of you will still be using sippy cups, others will be pre-utero...

When crossing the border between Cyrodiil and Skyrim in Arena, will I notice a difference in environment, architecture, and ruin types?

Not much of a difference, really, but there are subtle differences. As someone said above, there is also seasonal weather, so that's a nice change from MW/OB's essentially between-the-Tropics weather.

In Arena, Cyrodiil is a city in the Imperial Province! Get it right!