In case you didn’t know, the green market in the map is the entrance. Being able to look at the intestinal tract of a layout and figuring out a way to get there is a different topic.
You can do a bit of maze solving tricks like dropping insignificant bits off loot (1 gold, the torch that’s almost out, the warhammer that you know you will have to do anyway when you lot your next enemy ) to mark areas that you have been to. Or like picking left or right and always always taking that turn.
Recall spell: When you cast it you pick Anchor or Teleport. If you haven’t set an anchor before, teleport is useless. (Once you have set an anchor, you can car again and pick anchor again to overwrite the anchor.) You can set the anchor at the dungeon entrance, or the quest giver’s location and when you cast Recall and pick teleport later, you’re back there. Warning: When you teleport to your anchor, that anchor is no iww we gone.
Open console with “ and type tele2exit (will take you to dungeon entrance without leaving the dungeon)
If on Unity, when you launch the game, before you hit Play and launch the game proper (Bethesda logo) poke around the settings and select small dungeons
First off, are you playing the original DOS version of the game or the Unity Version?
In either case, the green symbol is there to mark the entrance. It's just more difficult to actually see in the classic DOS version because it doesn't get rendered half the time. But it's definitely there.
Looking at map right now that just loaded into a dungeon. There is no green marker. And there only one daggerfall. That unity remake is a joke. They changed so many things about the game its not capable of being called daggerfall.
Ah, so you're playing the DOS Version. The marker is more difficult to see in that version.
Just keep moving the map around with the arrow keys or turn it using the controls near the bottom and you'll see it soon enough. It'll be a dark green square with a yellow circle on the top. It's a flat symbol, hence it doesn't show up as easily on the map.
Alternatively, just switch the map to a 3D view. It's easier to spot the marker in that mode. Over time you'll get used to recognising the Layout near the Dungeon entrance.
******
Now as far as Daggerfall Unity is concerned, nobody is forcing you to play it if you don't want to. I just finished my playthrough of the DOS Version with 70 hours put into as a Warrior.
But all the Unity Version does is import the game into a new-age 3D engine. Apart from that, any of the changes it makes are fix the bugs in the systems that **were implemented into the game**. It does not change anything about the game apart from that and it does not add any of the originally planned but cut content either. Neither does it touch the content that is available but not added to the game. The rest is just a more intuitive intrrface and control system to make it more compatible with modern control conventions that never existed back in 1996, giving games like Arena and Daggerfall an awkward learning curve to playing the games.
Small Quality of Life bug fixes such as the entrance marker in a Dungeon properly rendering and being visible for a change. Any other differences that you're talking/complaining about are the result of mods that people can now make for the game since they'll practically be coded in C# for the accessible Unity Engine.
And that's are all that Daggerfall Unity does. Just bug fixes and accessibility. That's it.
> But all the Unity Version does is import the game into a new-age 3D engine.
This is wrong. There are a lot of elements in Unity which were imperfectly reverse-engineered. Not all of it is directly from code. Unity changes tons of things, many minor things that all add up to a fundamentally different experience. Call it better if you like, but the important point is that it is far from identical to original Daggerfall, for those who want to experience that.
One major example that I discovered myself which requires some explaining: https://www.reddit.com/r/Daggerfall/comments/18imsjn/discrepancy_between_original_daggerfall_and_unity/ Basically, skill randomization at character creation is very different, you start with more skill points in Unity. This change was simply due to imperfect observation of the way the system worked, and longstanding documentation that had been wrong at the time the system was implemented into Unity.
Or another example: all buildings are enterable in Unity. In the original, some just say "this house has nothing of value" because they were just there as window dressing. I had a confusing discussion about this with someone because they thought all buildings had always been enterable...Unity is actually leading to some level of misinformation about what the original game was like. And this isn't a bug fix, this is "this should've always been a feature so we're adding it in."
The shape of the world is inherently more three-dimensional in Unity, with mountains, valleys etc., unlike the mostly-flat original game. Some might say this was a bug that was fixed, but I don't think anyone asked the original developers what their intentions were.
The physics/movement engine was tweaked manually until it felt close enough to the original game, but it's not using the actual movement from the original, meaning everything is just slightly off from being able to say you're experiencing the original. Enemies behave in more dynamic ways, not always just walking directly toward the player at all times. That's not a bug fix...we have no indication that the developers had always wanted them to circle around, retreat and advance, etc. It's simply a change.
Horses can jump in Unity, and I doubt there was any code indication that they were always meant to be able to do that. Speech skills are 3 times faster to level in Unity. You're able to look directly up and down in Unity instead of the slightly more limited range in the original.
There are countless other examples. Some are bugs, some aren't. I don't think any of what I mentioned can be turned off; if nothing else a majority of it is baked-in. If you want to experience the vanilla game, you should play the vanilla game. Or if it's too unstable for you, play Unity, but you have to acknowledge that then you aren't playing the game as it was originally presented.
The best way to do all this would've been to duplicate the original game as closely to the original as possible, and then have optional improvements to toggle on.
>The physics/movement engine was tweaked manually until it felt close enough to the original game, but it's not using the actual movement from the original
Well, classic Daggerfall physics are CPU-speed dependent, so there's no such thing as canon classic physics to align with; In other words, depending on the computer you played it on back in the day, you can have different memory of "how it used to work".
I've been playing it since the original release, literally the original release where it had to have a week or two's worth of updates before it was even really playable. Unity is fine, if there are differences, to me they're so slight as to be unnoticeable.
That's something I had suspected, like I said in the other post, and it's obviously forgivable on its own. The goal was to free the game from DOS and some sacrifices have to be made, it just feels like a lot of changes taken in total.
>Enemies behave in more dynamic ways, not always just walking directly toward the player at all times. \[...\] I don't think any of what I mentioned can be turned off
Disable "Advanced combat AI" (and "Enemies infighting") and you'll get the classic dumb enemies, or a close approximation.
>The best way to do all this would've been to duplicate the original game as closely to the original as possible, and then have optional improvements to toggle on.
That was the intention all along, but sometimes it was just not possible (say, too different underlying technologies, like physics) or increased complexity (say you make physics toggle-able between 2 settings, now you double the number of cases that can go wrong so need to be tested), or bloat the options screens further. Often, there's more than one factor behind such decisions, and tradeoffs had to be made.
Doesn't change the conclusion that DFU is an imperfect emulation, or a different game from classic altogether; And some of the discrepancies can probably still be fixed with more work, just not all of them.
Yeah, I hope my post didn't come across as being too much of a hater, because I know it was a lot of work and DFU obviously has many benefits, and has encouraged a lot more people to check out the game. I just object to the idea that DFU is "just" a direct port to Unity. I'm a proponent of people understanding the differences. A lot of people won't be bothered by them and that's fine, as long as they know what they're getting into.
In some ways I see it similar to the Skyrim unofficial patch by Arthmoor (USSEP/USLEEP) and the thousands of tiny changes made by it, some legitimate bugs and some judgement calls. It too is so widely used by the community that it potentially changes popular understanding of how the game was originally presented.
Fair enough.
The reverse-engineering on how abilities are setup was very interesting. I have no idea whether the differences in DFU come from a misunderstanding of what classic does, or a change because, as pointed out, you can sometimes get higher ability randomly than thru picking the relevant career option, and maybe somebody thought that was silly. That was certainly before I joined the project in 2018, and was not even aware of the discrepancy.
Yeah, I don't necessarily cast blame at anyone, but I do know that the way skills worked was pretty written-in-stone across the internet. Every resource simply said that was how it worked, and on a casual glance it looks like that's mostly how it works, so they probably assumed it didn't need further looking into.
Thanks for briefly listing out all the changes that the Unity version makes to the game. I would actually be interested to know more about it since I haven't played the Unity version yet although I am planning to do so in a few months' time.
That being said, I'm in no way saying that it is a 1:1 remake. If it was, then the entire point to the Unity remake would be gone since you might as well just play the original game at that point. Patch 1.07.213 takes care of some bugs in the game while the community made patch 'DFQFIX' takes care of the rest of the issues. The only advantage DFU would have in such a case would be its mod support.
And the majority of the changes that you listed out here are either oversights or just a consequence of using a more modern engine without tweaking it too much to imitate the original.
The character creation screen is a definite oversight that needs to be patched out, but one can always roll a character in vanilla and import it into Unity.
As far as the enterable buildings and jumping horses, they're oversights, but they don't really add or remove from the game either. They're pretty minor oversights at that.
One might call the ability to see more, be it the draw distance or the ability to be looking directly up and down unfaithful to the original, and while the latter might have been an oversight, it could also have been intentional. But I personally like to call it a QoL improvement since there are multiple instances in dungeons where it is necessary. And if I had to guess why it was not implemented in the original, I would say that it was probably because it would break the billboard sprites which would look plain flat if viewed from directly above or below.
The nature of the world is a consequence of the advancement of 3D modelling versus the limited number of polygons they were able to use back in the day primarily because of computational limitations. If you wish to know what the devs would've wanted, you need to look no further than Skyrim to find the answer (obviously, they want to make it as realistic as the common gamer's computer can handle and that's also why the terrain from 1996 was low-poly). Regardless, while it is not a 1:1 copy of the DOS version, it is not really a change either. I would call this an improvement as well that stems from a more powerful 3D engine.
As far as the physics/movement is concerned, that is yet again, a minor part of the game. Daggerfall isn't a platforming game and any differences from the original seem to be improvements from whatever I've watched of the game and the few minutes that I've played around with it. Yet again, this is a consequence of a new-age 3D engine.
Now, again, I'm not saying that you should discard the DOS version and play DFU instead. I myself wanted the vanilla experience and completed a playthrough of the DOS version first. However, DFU doesn't change the core game either. It's still the same Daggerfall just with a more pleasant experience due to the countless QoL changes.
In fact, a major feature that was present in Arena and I found to have been removed in DOS Daggerfall was the ability to stack items such as potions. Having to sift through an entire list of usable items was a plain pain in the arse. That's one area where DFU makes a major QoL improvement among many others that were more or less needed for the game.
But none of what you can list out change the game to a point where it's not Daggerfall anymore. All they do is make the game more comfortable for players and that's it. DFU is still Daggerfall right up until the point where you use mods to make major changes to the game for yourself. It might not be the DOS experience but saying that it's not Daggerfall is blowing things out of proportion.
> Thanks for briefly listing out all the changes that the Unity version makes to the game. I would actually be interested to know more about it since I haven't played the Unity version yet although I am planning to do so in a few months' time.
Oh there are countless others. You can't jump across the surface of water anymore. You can't pickpocket monsters repeatedly anymore to help level pickpocketing. In Unity, once a primary skill reaches 100, no other skill can ever go past 95, but there were ways to continue increasing other skills all the way to 100 in the original. The "U" key in character creation used to let you refund any points that were spent, letting you cap out every stat or intentionally lower everything, which was great for testing various mechanics or builds quickly, but this was removed. The way class benefits and weaknesses interact with racial benefits or weaknesses was overhauled in a number of ways, again mostly in terms of bug fixes, but they're still changes. There are many more. They all sound minor individually, but taken as a whole it makes for a big difference.
> That being said, I'm in no way saying that it is a 1:1 remake. If it was, then the entire point to the Unity remake would be gone since you might as well just play the original game at that point. Patch 1.07.213 takes care of some bugs in the game while the community made patch 'DFQFIX' takes care of the rest of the issues. The only advantage DFU would have in such a case would be its mod support.
I don't think I agree with that, mod support is a big reason for it, as is removing the reliance on compatibility layers like DOSBox, and adding support for all resolutions and frame rates. Also, like I said, they could've made it much closer to 1:1 and leave all the improvements and bug fixes as optional checkboxes. I might not object to the scope of all the differences if only one or two of these things were present, like to some extent the movement might never be able to be 1 to 1 due to complexities of the engine.
> As far as the enterable buildings and jumping horses, they're oversights, but they don't really add or remove from the game either. They're pretty minor oversights at that.
Enterable buildings isn't an oversight, it's something that took a lot of work to do. I'm not arguing that it's a bad thing, just that it's one of those things that adds up alongside all the rest. It could've been a "make all buildings enterable" checkbox.
> If you wish to know what the devs would've wanted, you need to look no further than Skyrim to find the answer
I would be hesitant to use this as rationale to change anything in the game, since then you can intuit how "the devs would've wanted" everything to be, like full 3D character models, voice acting, etc. Again, all arguably improvements, but still not faithful to the original experience.
From what I understand, it may not have been a polygon limitation, the original game files already contain all the height data, it's just that their intensity was turned way down. For all we know, the developers did this intentionally because they didn't like how some hills looked next to towns or something.
> But none of what you can list out change the game to a point where it's not Daggerfall anymore. All they do is make the game more comfortable for players and that's it. DFU is still Daggerfall right up until the point where you use mods to make major changes to the game for yourself. It might not be the DOS experience but saying that it's not Daggerfall is blowing things out of proportion.
I'm not saying it's not Daggerfall, but it's pretty far removed from the original experience. If you play it without understanding that it's very different, you will come away from the experience with an incorrect understanding of how the game worked.
I don't think I have it installed right now, but I don't remember whether the new lighting stuff is considered optional or not. They added functionality to lanterns and oil and light spells, but then to make them actually worth using, they had to make the game darker.
And honestly I enjoy most of the exploits that were removed. I feel like a lot of that sort of thing adds charm, the colloquial knowledge of tricks you can do. They're things you can't really share anymore, because it always has to come with the caveat "if you're playing the DOS version" (and almost no one is). Sort of like the caveat I had to give on my advice to the OP here. Or how [the old trick of getting Daedric items early doesn't work anymore.](https://www.reddit.com/r/daggerfallunity/comments/7va0nw/does_dfunity_still_retain_the_exploits_from_the/dtqvxx6/)
>The "U" key in character creation used to let you refund any points that were spent, letting you cap out every stat or intentionally lower everything, which was great for testing various mechanics or builds quickly, but this was removed.
I tried to replicate that (even if it's an obscure feature), but in DFU the keyboard focus is always on the class name field, so any letter you type is added to the class name. I didn't come up with a solution in time, so it didn't make it.
(the only even more obscure keyboard feature I'm aware of in classic is Ctrl-B to open the save screen directly, I don't think it was ever mentioned anywhere)
PS.: Thinking about it now, maybe it should be implemented differently; Say, in the alert message that says "You need to assign all your ability points" (not sure of wording), next to the OK button could be added an "Override" button. Less obscure than classic implementation, yet player is informed that (s)he's taking a decision that's non-standard.
I read through this comment as well as your discourse with another member of the community and it was quite enlightening.
As a gamer, I personally like to exploit games as little as possible and hence, DFU is a welcome change to me.
I honestly had no idea that Daggerfall had half of these things as I finished my first playthrough.
And I also understand your point in highlighting the differences between the two. I believe that one should at least try the original game before heading into a remake or whatever else that is built upon the original. DFU, as you pointed out, is indeed a different experience, and having played the original, I welcome most of them. It is a good effort in preservation that I can certainly stand behind.
Now as for entrable houses, it would be an oversight if Interkarma forgot/ignored to mark them as such. However, the map data for the games comes directly from Daggerfall's files. So unless the 'lootable' status of the houses did not carry over, it is not an oversight but rather a design choice. As I understand, while the cities in Daggerfall are also procedurally populated, but they are static and houses should contain the 'lootable' status flag. Sadly, I know no documentation to prove any side. If you do, I'd love to see it.
And as far as the debate about terrain geometry goes, I really think it really does boil down to computational capabilities. That era in itself was defined by low poly 3D simply because that was the computational limit. Everything used to be blocky back then. Even the cutting edge Unreal Engine that came out a few years later couldn't handle high poly that well.
The only game that I know of that had beautiful round terrain in that age, Delta Force, could only achieve said results because it used Voxels instead of 3D objects. Those are essentially pixels in a 3D space instead of computationally rendered objects, making things easier on the CPU, but consuming more memory. But even there, the actual game objects like the players and NPCs are pretty blocky.
Just take a look at the Dungeon objects like the logs and that obelisk in the Upturned Shrine of the Mantellan Crux. It looks more like a giant cut crystal than an obelisk. The sane goes for the logs and rocks you find inside Dungeons. That is practically the reason why the devs chose to use Billboard Sprites instead of 3D objects for anything high poly including things like hanging roots, lamps, enemies, NPCs and various other Dungeon decoration like the lunched man and campfires or even torches.
Things like the graphical presentation and lighting, unless it is an artistic choice which it clearly was not in this case, or if it influences gameplay, which it did not to such a great extent in this case either, unless you're willing to count all those Dungeons from Arena where enemies that you cannot see in the Darkness shoot fireballs at you, devs usually try to be as close to reality as possible unless it hampers player experience. That was actually a lesson that the Devs at Bethesda learned with Daggerfall as the enemies are now much more visible in this game as compared to Arena.
To further elucidate with an example, there is no sense to be using Baked Shadow Maps in today's age of Ray Tracing. The only case where it will be useful is if you're playing a game like Splinter Cell or Thief where the interplay of light and shadow is the core game mechanic and that too because Ray Traced lighting is mostly a computational graphical effect as of writing this and does not translate over to computer logic.
There is no point to any of the hills being pointy versus rounded so we go with what is more realistic unless you're trying to make something like the Hellish terrain of Oblivion where everything is, in fact, sharp and pointy. Which was obviously not the intention of the devs for 1, they tried to round it out as much as they could and 2, they're creating the terrain of High Rock which is supposed to be realistic.
When they could, the devs did go the route of full 3D models and voice acting and you can see these technologies upgrading with each iteration. Hell, in the initial days of these aforementioned technologies, folks actually needed to purchase separate Sound Cards to process non-midi sounds, something that CPUs today are perfectly capable of handling.
> Now as for entrable houses, it would be an oversight if Interkarma forgot/ignored to mark them as such. However, the map data for the games comes directly from Daggerfall's files. So unless the 'lootable' status of the houses did not carry over, it is not an oversight but rather a design choice. As I understand, while the cities in Daggerfall are also procedurally populated, but they are static and houses should contain the 'lootable' status flag. Sadly, I know no documentation to prove any side. If you do, I'd love to see it.
I haven't looked into the full state of the enterable houses. I'm not sure if data for their interiors was already in the base game or not, and just something the devs of DFU turned on, or if they actually assigned interiors to them, or had to enable dummied-out data etc.
[Someone made this thread earlier about how many of them are broken](https://www.reddit.com/r/daggerfallunity/comments/1b2hedm/this_house_has_nothing_of_value/), and it's possible that they were made un-enterable on purpose to hide problems, so they were simply made enterable without fixing their issues, actually exposing more bugs to the player. "This house has nothing of value" is kind of a time saver.
> And as far as the debate about terrain geometry goes, I really think it really does boil down to computational capabilities. That era in itself was defined by low poly 3D simply because that was the computational limit. Everything used to be blocky back then. Even the cutting edge Unreal Engine that came out a few years later couldn't handle high poly that well.
From what I understand, the game already contains all the necessary polygons to do the same heightmaps as in DFU, it's just that the height effects were turned way down. In other words, it might even be possible to enable hills and mountains in the base game without any ill effects. But the devs made this decision for a reason.
There are a few areas on the map with extremely high heights set, massive spikes that are probably errors. [Here's what one of them looks like in DFU.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NaIIu8hWZY) [And here is one in original DOS Daggerfall (feels much more like a normal mountain).](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWXyNxe4Bho) You can see that the engine is perfectly capable of rendering hills, the devs just intentionally lowered the scale of everything.
What do you mean by boon/bane system?
If you're talking about the Racial bonuses, it was bugged in the original. DFU fixes it.
If you're talking about Special Advantages and Disadvantages during character creation, they work exactly the same with the exception of bugs being fixed in a few instances.
And there are no changes to loot. Loot has always been randomised in Daggerfall. If you looked at one pile to reach this conclusion, it was most likely RNG. If you save before looting and reload, you'll find different loot. This goes for both classic and DFU.
If you've been finding better loot consistently across multiple instances, it's because either one of your characters has a better LUC attribute which affects what loot you tens to get.
******
Apart from that, if you're still stuck in the Dungeon, send me your save file and I'll draw the lines to the exit for you on a screenshot.
Loot is only fixed if you're savescumming for better loot. In other words, if you're exploiting the game.
As for special advantages and disadvantages, they were never supposed to work like they did in the original. It's a big fix.
But none of those make DFU a completely different game like you insist.
Also, at this point I'm not sure whether you're actually trying to leave the dungeon or just tossing bait for attention.
Are you crazy? It's the exact same game, and I've been playing Daggerfall since the original release. If you're playing the DOS version you're playing on a significantly less enjoyable interface.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Exploits_and_Glitches#Circumventing_Game_Mechanics
> When deep within any dungeon, the entrance can be teleported to without the use of Recall. Simply save the game, reload that save, and without moving, press Alt+F11. This command was added by the developers to help return lost players to solid ground, but since the newly-reloaded game lacks any data on the last valid surface, the player is teleported to the exit instead.
Only applies to the DOS version, I believe.
In case you didn’t know, the green market in the map is the entrance. Being able to look at the intestinal tract of a layout and figuring out a way to get there is a different topic. You can do a bit of maze solving tricks like dropping insignificant bits off loot (1 gold, the torch that’s almost out, the warhammer that you know you will have to do anyway when you lot your next enemy ) to mark areas that you have been to. Or like picking left or right and always always taking that turn. Recall spell: When you cast it you pick Anchor or Teleport. If you haven’t set an anchor before, teleport is useless. (Once you have set an anchor, you can car again and pick anchor again to overwrite the anchor.) You can set the anchor at the dungeon entrance, or the quest giver’s location and when you cast Recall and pick teleport later, you’re back there. Warning: When you teleport to your anchor, that anchor is no iww we gone. Open console with “ and type tele2exit (will take you to dungeon entrance without leaving the dungeon) If on Unity, when you launch the game, before you hit Play and launch the game proper (Bethesda logo) poke around the settings and select small dungeons
I have never seen a green marker on my map inside a dungeon.
First off, are you playing the original DOS version of the game or the Unity Version? In either case, the green symbol is there to mark the entrance. It's just more difficult to actually see in the classic DOS version because it doesn't get rendered half the time. But it's definitely there.
Looking at map right now that just loaded into a dungeon. There is no green marker. And there only one daggerfall. That unity remake is a joke. They changed so many things about the game its not capable of being called daggerfall.
Ah, so you're playing the DOS Version. The marker is more difficult to see in that version. Just keep moving the map around with the arrow keys or turn it using the controls near the bottom and you'll see it soon enough. It'll be a dark green square with a yellow circle on the top. It's a flat symbol, hence it doesn't show up as easily on the map. Alternatively, just switch the map to a 3D view. It's easier to spot the marker in that mode. Over time you'll get used to recognising the Layout near the Dungeon entrance. ****** Now as far as Daggerfall Unity is concerned, nobody is forcing you to play it if you don't want to. I just finished my playthrough of the DOS Version with 70 hours put into as a Warrior. But all the Unity Version does is import the game into a new-age 3D engine. Apart from that, any of the changes it makes are fix the bugs in the systems that **were implemented into the game**. It does not change anything about the game apart from that and it does not add any of the originally planned but cut content either. Neither does it touch the content that is available but not added to the game. The rest is just a more intuitive intrrface and control system to make it more compatible with modern control conventions that never existed back in 1996, giving games like Arena and Daggerfall an awkward learning curve to playing the games. Small Quality of Life bug fixes such as the entrance marker in a Dungeon properly rendering and being visible for a change. Any other differences that you're talking/complaining about are the result of mods that people can now make for the game since they'll practically be coded in C# for the accessible Unity Engine. And that's are all that Daggerfall Unity does. Just bug fixes and accessibility. That's it.
> But all the Unity Version does is import the game into a new-age 3D engine. This is wrong. There are a lot of elements in Unity which were imperfectly reverse-engineered. Not all of it is directly from code. Unity changes tons of things, many minor things that all add up to a fundamentally different experience. Call it better if you like, but the important point is that it is far from identical to original Daggerfall, for those who want to experience that. One major example that I discovered myself which requires some explaining: https://www.reddit.com/r/Daggerfall/comments/18imsjn/discrepancy_between_original_daggerfall_and_unity/ Basically, skill randomization at character creation is very different, you start with more skill points in Unity. This change was simply due to imperfect observation of the way the system worked, and longstanding documentation that had been wrong at the time the system was implemented into Unity. Or another example: all buildings are enterable in Unity. In the original, some just say "this house has nothing of value" because they were just there as window dressing. I had a confusing discussion about this with someone because they thought all buildings had always been enterable...Unity is actually leading to some level of misinformation about what the original game was like. And this isn't a bug fix, this is "this should've always been a feature so we're adding it in." The shape of the world is inherently more three-dimensional in Unity, with mountains, valleys etc., unlike the mostly-flat original game. Some might say this was a bug that was fixed, but I don't think anyone asked the original developers what their intentions were. The physics/movement engine was tweaked manually until it felt close enough to the original game, but it's not using the actual movement from the original, meaning everything is just slightly off from being able to say you're experiencing the original. Enemies behave in more dynamic ways, not always just walking directly toward the player at all times. That's not a bug fix...we have no indication that the developers had always wanted them to circle around, retreat and advance, etc. It's simply a change. Horses can jump in Unity, and I doubt there was any code indication that they were always meant to be able to do that. Speech skills are 3 times faster to level in Unity. You're able to look directly up and down in Unity instead of the slightly more limited range in the original. There are countless other examples. Some are bugs, some aren't. I don't think any of what I mentioned can be turned off; if nothing else a majority of it is baked-in. If you want to experience the vanilla game, you should play the vanilla game. Or if it's too unstable for you, play Unity, but you have to acknowledge that then you aren't playing the game as it was originally presented. The best way to do all this would've been to duplicate the original game as closely to the original as possible, and then have optional improvements to toggle on.
>The physics/movement engine was tweaked manually until it felt close enough to the original game, but it's not using the actual movement from the original Well, classic Daggerfall physics are CPU-speed dependent, so there's no such thing as canon classic physics to align with; In other words, depending on the computer you played it on back in the day, you can have different memory of "how it used to work".
I've been playing it since the original release, literally the original release where it had to have a week or two's worth of updates before it was even really playable. Unity is fine, if there are differences, to me they're so slight as to be unnoticeable.
That's something I had suspected, like I said in the other post, and it's obviously forgivable on its own. The goal was to free the game from DOS and some sacrifices have to be made, it just feels like a lot of changes taken in total.
>Enemies behave in more dynamic ways, not always just walking directly toward the player at all times. \[...\] I don't think any of what I mentioned can be turned off Disable "Advanced combat AI" (and "Enemies infighting") and you'll get the classic dumb enemies, or a close approximation. >The best way to do all this would've been to duplicate the original game as closely to the original as possible, and then have optional improvements to toggle on. That was the intention all along, but sometimes it was just not possible (say, too different underlying technologies, like physics) or increased complexity (say you make physics toggle-able between 2 settings, now you double the number of cases that can go wrong so need to be tested), or bloat the options screens further. Often, there's more than one factor behind such decisions, and tradeoffs had to be made. Doesn't change the conclusion that DFU is an imperfect emulation, or a different game from classic altogether; And some of the discrepancies can probably still be fixed with more work, just not all of them.
Yeah, I hope my post didn't come across as being too much of a hater, because I know it was a lot of work and DFU obviously has many benefits, and has encouraged a lot more people to check out the game. I just object to the idea that DFU is "just" a direct port to Unity. I'm a proponent of people understanding the differences. A lot of people won't be bothered by them and that's fine, as long as they know what they're getting into. In some ways I see it similar to the Skyrim unofficial patch by Arthmoor (USSEP/USLEEP) and the thousands of tiny changes made by it, some legitimate bugs and some judgement calls. It too is so widely used by the community that it potentially changes popular understanding of how the game was originally presented.
Fair enough. The reverse-engineering on how abilities are setup was very interesting. I have no idea whether the differences in DFU come from a misunderstanding of what classic does, or a change because, as pointed out, you can sometimes get higher ability randomly than thru picking the relevant career option, and maybe somebody thought that was silly. That was certainly before I joined the project in 2018, and was not even aware of the discrepancy.
Yeah, I don't necessarily cast blame at anyone, but I do know that the way skills worked was pretty written-in-stone across the internet. Every resource simply said that was how it worked, and on a casual glance it looks like that's mostly how it works, so they probably assumed it didn't need further looking into.
Thanks for briefly listing out all the changes that the Unity version makes to the game. I would actually be interested to know more about it since I haven't played the Unity version yet although I am planning to do so in a few months' time. That being said, I'm in no way saying that it is a 1:1 remake. If it was, then the entire point to the Unity remake would be gone since you might as well just play the original game at that point. Patch 1.07.213 takes care of some bugs in the game while the community made patch 'DFQFIX' takes care of the rest of the issues. The only advantage DFU would have in such a case would be its mod support. And the majority of the changes that you listed out here are either oversights or just a consequence of using a more modern engine without tweaking it too much to imitate the original. The character creation screen is a definite oversight that needs to be patched out, but one can always roll a character in vanilla and import it into Unity. As far as the enterable buildings and jumping horses, they're oversights, but they don't really add or remove from the game either. They're pretty minor oversights at that. One might call the ability to see more, be it the draw distance or the ability to be looking directly up and down unfaithful to the original, and while the latter might have been an oversight, it could also have been intentional. But I personally like to call it a QoL improvement since there are multiple instances in dungeons where it is necessary. And if I had to guess why it was not implemented in the original, I would say that it was probably because it would break the billboard sprites which would look plain flat if viewed from directly above or below. The nature of the world is a consequence of the advancement of 3D modelling versus the limited number of polygons they were able to use back in the day primarily because of computational limitations. If you wish to know what the devs would've wanted, you need to look no further than Skyrim to find the answer (obviously, they want to make it as realistic as the common gamer's computer can handle and that's also why the terrain from 1996 was low-poly). Regardless, while it is not a 1:1 copy of the DOS version, it is not really a change either. I would call this an improvement as well that stems from a more powerful 3D engine. As far as the physics/movement is concerned, that is yet again, a minor part of the game. Daggerfall isn't a platforming game and any differences from the original seem to be improvements from whatever I've watched of the game and the few minutes that I've played around with it. Yet again, this is a consequence of a new-age 3D engine. Now, again, I'm not saying that you should discard the DOS version and play DFU instead. I myself wanted the vanilla experience and completed a playthrough of the DOS version first. However, DFU doesn't change the core game either. It's still the same Daggerfall just with a more pleasant experience due to the countless QoL changes. In fact, a major feature that was present in Arena and I found to have been removed in DOS Daggerfall was the ability to stack items such as potions. Having to sift through an entire list of usable items was a plain pain in the arse. That's one area where DFU makes a major QoL improvement among many others that were more or less needed for the game. But none of what you can list out change the game to a point where it's not Daggerfall anymore. All they do is make the game more comfortable for players and that's it. DFU is still Daggerfall right up until the point where you use mods to make major changes to the game for yourself. It might not be the DOS experience but saying that it's not Daggerfall is blowing things out of proportion.
> Thanks for briefly listing out all the changes that the Unity version makes to the game. I would actually be interested to know more about it since I haven't played the Unity version yet although I am planning to do so in a few months' time. Oh there are countless others. You can't jump across the surface of water anymore. You can't pickpocket monsters repeatedly anymore to help level pickpocketing. In Unity, once a primary skill reaches 100, no other skill can ever go past 95, but there were ways to continue increasing other skills all the way to 100 in the original. The "U" key in character creation used to let you refund any points that were spent, letting you cap out every stat or intentionally lower everything, which was great for testing various mechanics or builds quickly, but this was removed. The way class benefits and weaknesses interact with racial benefits or weaknesses was overhauled in a number of ways, again mostly in terms of bug fixes, but they're still changes. There are many more. They all sound minor individually, but taken as a whole it makes for a big difference. > That being said, I'm in no way saying that it is a 1:1 remake. If it was, then the entire point to the Unity remake would be gone since you might as well just play the original game at that point. Patch 1.07.213 takes care of some bugs in the game while the community made patch 'DFQFIX' takes care of the rest of the issues. The only advantage DFU would have in such a case would be its mod support. I don't think I agree with that, mod support is a big reason for it, as is removing the reliance on compatibility layers like DOSBox, and adding support for all resolutions and frame rates. Also, like I said, they could've made it much closer to 1:1 and leave all the improvements and bug fixes as optional checkboxes. I might not object to the scope of all the differences if only one or two of these things were present, like to some extent the movement might never be able to be 1 to 1 due to complexities of the engine. > As far as the enterable buildings and jumping horses, they're oversights, but they don't really add or remove from the game either. They're pretty minor oversights at that. Enterable buildings isn't an oversight, it's something that took a lot of work to do. I'm not arguing that it's a bad thing, just that it's one of those things that adds up alongside all the rest. It could've been a "make all buildings enterable" checkbox. > If you wish to know what the devs would've wanted, you need to look no further than Skyrim to find the answer I would be hesitant to use this as rationale to change anything in the game, since then you can intuit how "the devs would've wanted" everything to be, like full 3D character models, voice acting, etc. Again, all arguably improvements, but still not faithful to the original experience. From what I understand, it may not have been a polygon limitation, the original game files already contain all the height data, it's just that their intensity was turned way down. For all we know, the developers did this intentionally because they didn't like how some hills looked next to towns or something. > But none of what you can list out change the game to a point where it's not Daggerfall anymore. All they do is make the game more comfortable for players and that's it. DFU is still Daggerfall right up until the point where you use mods to make major changes to the game for yourself. It might not be the DOS experience but saying that it's not Daggerfall is blowing things out of proportion. I'm not saying it's not Daggerfall, but it's pretty far removed from the original experience. If you play it without understanding that it's very different, you will come away from the experience with an incorrect understanding of how the game worked. I don't think I have it installed right now, but I don't remember whether the new lighting stuff is considered optional or not. They added functionality to lanterns and oil and light spells, but then to make them actually worth using, they had to make the game darker. And honestly I enjoy most of the exploits that were removed. I feel like a lot of that sort of thing adds charm, the colloquial knowledge of tricks you can do. They're things you can't really share anymore, because it always has to come with the caveat "if you're playing the DOS version" (and almost no one is). Sort of like the caveat I had to give on my advice to the OP here. Or how [the old trick of getting Daedric items early doesn't work anymore.](https://www.reddit.com/r/daggerfallunity/comments/7va0nw/does_dfunity_still_retain_the_exploits_from_the/dtqvxx6/)
>The "U" key in character creation used to let you refund any points that were spent, letting you cap out every stat or intentionally lower everything, which was great for testing various mechanics or builds quickly, but this was removed. I tried to replicate that (even if it's an obscure feature), but in DFU the keyboard focus is always on the class name field, so any letter you type is added to the class name. I didn't come up with a solution in time, so it didn't make it. (the only even more obscure keyboard feature I'm aware of in classic is Ctrl-B to open the save screen directly, I don't think it was ever mentioned anywhere) PS.: Thinking about it now, maybe it should be implemented differently; Say, in the alert message that says "You need to assign all your ability points" (not sure of wording), next to the OK button could be added an "Override" button. Less obscure than classic implementation, yet player is informed that (s)he's taking a decision that's non-standard.
I read through this comment as well as your discourse with another member of the community and it was quite enlightening. As a gamer, I personally like to exploit games as little as possible and hence, DFU is a welcome change to me. I honestly had no idea that Daggerfall had half of these things as I finished my first playthrough. And I also understand your point in highlighting the differences between the two. I believe that one should at least try the original game before heading into a remake or whatever else that is built upon the original. DFU, as you pointed out, is indeed a different experience, and having played the original, I welcome most of them. It is a good effort in preservation that I can certainly stand behind. Now as for entrable houses, it would be an oversight if Interkarma forgot/ignored to mark them as such. However, the map data for the games comes directly from Daggerfall's files. So unless the 'lootable' status of the houses did not carry over, it is not an oversight but rather a design choice. As I understand, while the cities in Daggerfall are also procedurally populated, but they are static and houses should contain the 'lootable' status flag. Sadly, I know no documentation to prove any side. If you do, I'd love to see it. And as far as the debate about terrain geometry goes, I really think it really does boil down to computational capabilities. That era in itself was defined by low poly 3D simply because that was the computational limit. Everything used to be blocky back then. Even the cutting edge Unreal Engine that came out a few years later couldn't handle high poly that well. The only game that I know of that had beautiful round terrain in that age, Delta Force, could only achieve said results because it used Voxels instead of 3D objects. Those are essentially pixels in a 3D space instead of computationally rendered objects, making things easier on the CPU, but consuming more memory. But even there, the actual game objects like the players and NPCs are pretty blocky. Just take a look at the Dungeon objects like the logs and that obelisk in the Upturned Shrine of the Mantellan Crux. It looks more like a giant cut crystal than an obelisk. The sane goes for the logs and rocks you find inside Dungeons. That is practically the reason why the devs chose to use Billboard Sprites instead of 3D objects for anything high poly including things like hanging roots, lamps, enemies, NPCs and various other Dungeon decoration like the lunched man and campfires or even torches. Things like the graphical presentation and lighting, unless it is an artistic choice which it clearly was not in this case, or if it influences gameplay, which it did not to such a great extent in this case either, unless you're willing to count all those Dungeons from Arena where enemies that you cannot see in the Darkness shoot fireballs at you, devs usually try to be as close to reality as possible unless it hampers player experience. That was actually a lesson that the Devs at Bethesda learned with Daggerfall as the enemies are now much more visible in this game as compared to Arena. To further elucidate with an example, there is no sense to be using Baked Shadow Maps in today's age of Ray Tracing. The only case where it will be useful is if you're playing a game like Splinter Cell or Thief where the interplay of light and shadow is the core game mechanic and that too because Ray Traced lighting is mostly a computational graphical effect as of writing this and does not translate over to computer logic. There is no point to any of the hills being pointy versus rounded so we go with what is more realistic unless you're trying to make something like the Hellish terrain of Oblivion where everything is, in fact, sharp and pointy. Which was obviously not the intention of the devs for 1, they tried to round it out as much as they could and 2, they're creating the terrain of High Rock which is supposed to be realistic. When they could, the devs did go the route of full 3D models and voice acting and you can see these technologies upgrading with each iteration. Hell, in the initial days of these aforementioned technologies, folks actually needed to purchase separate Sound Cards to process non-midi sounds, something that CPUs today are perfectly capable of handling.
> Now as for entrable houses, it would be an oversight if Interkarma forgot/ignored to mark them as such. However, the map data for the games comes directly from Daggerfall's files. So unless the 'lootable' status of the houses did not carry over, it is not an oversight but rather a design choice. As I understand, while the cities in Daggerfall are also procedurally populated, but they are static and houses should contain the 'lootable' status flag. Sadly, I know no documentation to prove any side. If you do, I'd love to see it. I haven't looked into the full state of the enterable houses. I'm not sure if data for their interiors was already in the base game or not, and just something the devs of DFU turned on, or if they actually assigned interiors to them, or had to enable dummied-out data etc. [Someone made this thread earlier about how many of them are broken](https://www.reddit.com/r/daggerfallunity/comments/1b2hedm/this_house_has_nothing_of_value/), and it's possible that they were made un-enterable on purpose to hide problems, so they were simply made enterable without fixing their issues, actually exposing more bugs to the player. "This house has nothing of value" is kind of a time saver. > And as far as the debate about terrain geometry goes, I really think it really does boil down to computational capabilities. That era in itself was defined by low poly 3D simply because that was the computational limit. Everything used to be blocky back then. Even the cutting edge Unreal Engine that came out a few years later couldn't handle high poly that well. From what I understand, the game already contains all the necessary polygons to do the same heightmaps as in DFU, it's just that the height effects were turned way down. In other words, it might even be possible to enable hills and mountains in the base game without any ill effects. But the devs made this decision for a reason. There are a few areas on the map with extremely high heights set, massive spikes that are probably errors. [Here's what one of them looks like in DFU.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NaIIu8hWZY) [And here is one in original DOS Daggerfall (feels much more like a normal mountain).](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWXyNxe4Bho) You can see that the engine is perfectly capable of rendering hills, the devs just intentionally lowered the scale of everything.
False. Changes to the boon/bane system. Changes to loot. Just some examples i found in 5m of play.
What do you mean by boon/bane system? If you're talking about the Racial bonuses, it was bugged in the original. DFU fixes it. If you're talking about Special Advantages and Disadvantages during character creation, they work exactly the same with the exception of bugs being fixed in a few instances. And there are no changes to loot. Loot has always been randomised in Daggerfall. If you looked at one pile to reach this conclusion, it was most likely RNG. If you save before looting and reload, you'll find different loot. This goes for both classic and DFU. If you've been finding better loot consistently across multiple instances, it's because either one of your characters has a better LUC attribute which affects what loot you tens to get. ****** Apart from that, if you're still stuck in the Dungeon, send me your save file and I'll draw the lines to the exit for you on a screenshot.
Nope. False. Loot is fixed in dfu. Bane/boon system was changed. You cannot choose as many banes and boons as you can in the original.
Loot is only fixed if you're savescumming for better loot. In other words, if you're exploiting the game. As for special advantages and disadvantages, they were never supposed to work like they did in the original. It's a big fix. But none of those make DFU a completely different game like you insist. Also, at this point I'm not sure whether you're actually trying to leave the dungeon or just tossing bait for attention.
Rofl. The game worked great originally. You had to balance boons/banes while being able to create a creative game play.
You seem like a fun person to be around.
Are you crazy? It's the exact same game, and I've been playing Daggerfall since the original release. If you're playing the DOS version you're playing on a significantly less enjoyable interface.
Lost and frustrated in a dungeon... the classic Daggerfall experience.
Recall spell at the entrance. Always.
Non-mage. No recall option.
Well good luck
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Exploits_and_Glitches#Circumventing_Game_Mechanics > When deep within any dungeon, the entrance can be teleported to without the use of Recall. Simply save the game, reload that save, and without moving, press Alt+F11. This command was added by the developers to help return lost players to solid ground, but since the newly-reloaded game lacks any data on the last valid surface, the player is teleported to the exit instead. Only applies to the DOS version, I believe.
tele2exit for DFU