Chronicles, a (sorta) Daggerfall mod Options

[EmericaSkater]

Started working on this project last January by asking a bunch of somewhat idiotic questions on the 3drealms forum. Once it started gaining some momentum a month or two ago I went ahead and posted a thread on 3drealms forums announcing it, mostly just to see what people thought. The response was mixed, but positive by majority so I kept hammering away at it. Over those few months I've accomplished more than I'd originally planned on, but also ended up realizing that I want even more for this mod. Since that kind of pushes any release date into the ole' "indeterminate" gray area, I figured I'd go ahead and post what I've done so far on this forum so people will at least know what I've been working on. Of course I've got videos and screens, but first and foremost is a list of the basic changes made. Most of the things herein probably aren't going to be all that impressive to most of you guys on this forum, but it's the most difficult stuff I personally have tackled up to this point...

• This mod relies HEAVILY on textures, sprites, midi's and sound effects from daggerfall
• close-combat that's a bit more in-depth than Hexen or other games of this mod's ilk
• spell system that's relatively close to daggerfall's but toggles between ranged and touch-based
• optional quests and traveling. Albeit on a much smaller scale than Daggerfall's, but it's a step in the right direction
• enemies that I'm doing my best to fine-tune for melee fighting, since that's what I really want to define this mod
• tagged "hostile" and "nonhostile" locations so dungeons can be cleaned/repopulated and revisted in one sitting
• monster spawners that will....well, spawn random monsters (if the mapper chooses) in random locations (again, if the mapper chooses)
• random ambience sounds depending on what kind of location (hostile vs. nonhostile) the player's in. Not much, but I find it better than putting a defined sound effect in a sector that may or may not play a fixed number of times

probably other stuff here that I'm missing, but I'll go ahead and let the videos and screens do the rest of my talking for me. They were done with the trial version of FRAPS. Yes, I know, I'm a huge nimrod for not paying a lousy thirty dollars to get the full version, but I figured a 30 second video here and there would be a better way of showcasing the changes I've made versus 2 or 3+ minute video that sort of just degenerates into the viewer thrilling along as I play a video game. Anywho, here's the first few I made in where I scrapped it out with a few Imps. These videos show the fixed monster spawners. Until I code ALL of the mod's bad guys I won't bother showing the random monster spawner since it's going to pretty much be a WIP till that point. These imps spawn in the same sector but different areas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j4oN1soZdU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS6WyisHVd8

these next videos just show the bow and arrow. Nothing particularly special about it, it has the same graphics as daggerfall, but works more like the bow from Oblivion. That being, the longer you hold down the attack button down the more damage the arrow's going to end up doing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XOngX-4M0g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlkjHLAMkUg

the last two videos are me fighting a warrior and a cleric. Just kind of shows how I plan on having enemies interact with each other, in addition to showing the ranged/touch spells.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyRumqH9tMs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHNMICXm2CI

next are the screens. This is just a random shot of a peasant in a town.



the next is the travel horse that takes you from one location to another.



this is the travel interface where you can get from one place to another. If you change between provinces, you change between maps. Otherwise it just takes you to different places on the board.



and the most recent for last, the inventory screen.



I only started it this morning and in all honestly I might scrap it since I'm having some trouble figuring out how I'm going to tell the game what item/weapon the player gets and in what order so I can display them correctly on the screen. In addition to that, I can't figure out what I'm going to do when the player scrolls down past that 4-square area. I'm sure it can be done, but I'm wracking my brain trying to figure it out.

SO with that note, I'll close with the last bit; features to come. Some of these things I've already experimented with and had absolutely no luck so in some sense this part is devoted to me asking some of you mod gods out there for some help.
Yet another bullet list to help sort out. I'll start with things that have totally stumped me.

• arrows that get stuck in the wall. Right now they just vanish and it looks pretty lame. Anybody that's seen the videos for the WGrealms midevil mod knows that this is possible, but it's completely stumped me. I figured it was either through the hitscan command or htg_t, but neither really did anything when I worked with them.
• Skyboxes. The texture files in Daggerfall are kind of a treasure trove of mod resources and the sky textures really stand out. I've tried my hand at making skyboxes out of them but I'm really no good at that stuff and don't want to/can't devote alot of time to making cosmetic things of that nature. It would definitely be a shame for them not to be used, though. Any help I could get on this would be appreciated.
• Enemy AI. Some of the guys I've worked on are a bit smarter than the Duke enemies, and I continue to work on it but having some general frame of reference would be nice, particularly for pathfinding. That one's really my buggaboo right now. That site of Reaperman's comes to mind though it seems like it's...uh...kinda dead.
• More melee weapons. Right now I have the fist attack and the sword. It'd be nice to get some more in, I just need to think of a reason a player would want to use one over the other. Since these types of weapons use no ammo, this is going to hinge more off player preference than anything else.
• spells effects like enemies getting torched when you use the fire touch or poisoned, etc. I've already gotten a cloud of paralysis down so this stuff's no big deal.

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[DeeperThought]

I have great respect for people who can make an entire mod solo (doing the level design, scripting, ripping/creating art, etc) and it looks like you are off to a great start.

However, the screens and movies you posted don't show much of your feature list (the travel screen is my favorite of what you showed). You say there is an in-depth melee combat system, but I don't see any evidence of that in the movies. Just some enemies that can block and hit back (and a player who apparently can't block or otherwise avoid hits easily), which wasn't very inspiring. The bow didn't look very interesting either. I know it's WIP, but you really need a proper firing animation on it, and when enemies get hit they should react more (even if it's not killing them). You have a great feature list, but if I were you I would start by focusing on gameplay. Make sure that killing bad guys is fun and interesting, because that's going to be the core of the game and if that doesn't work then no one is going to care about the rest.
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[Spiker]

Hey, that looks very promising:) Looks like you're really talented. Pity the movies are so short
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[XThX2]

About the movies I must agree, can't you try to merge them all into one at least ? (In my case, I have to run through a few steps to view one :/ )

Anyway, things look really nice. The bow selection animation seems buggy. The bow firing animation, as said by DT looks too "instant" ? I can't see the guy launching his arrows.

I also noticed the sword selection animation is instantaneous. Why ? It would take some time to equip a sword.

Apart from those, I really liked those imps blocking and hitting them when they have blocking on. A really good detail. The travel/equipment tables are looking good too, reminds me of Diablo 2. Will this have multiplayer support ? (Even though I doubt )

[James]

Hah, I really like it it's always good to see new TCs, especially one that's pretty unique like this. Good luck with it for the future.

[EmericaSkater]

(and a player who apparently can't block or otherwise avoid hits easily)

Funny you should mention that, since I've been working on a shield. I'm not really a spriter or anything and resources like that are kinda tough to come by. I managed to find something though, so hopefully I'll have it working in the next couple of days. Thanks for the honest feedback, though.

The bow selection animation seems buggy. The bow firing animation, as said by DT looks too "instant" ? I can't see the guy launching his arrows.

I also noticed the sword selection animation is instantaneous. Why ? It would take some time to equip a sword.

Partly a resources hangup (like the shield) and partly some glitches I still haven't quite ironed out. The bow only had 5 frames total which were basically it being armed so I had to try and make it work with what I had. I hadn't actually assumed anybody had ever edited any Daggerfall weapons (or anything else from that game for that matter) since it's not all that popular of a game. Turns out somebody on the zdoom forums actually did do a chop job on that bow that looks pretty good, so as soon as I get the shield taken care of I'll start working on that. The sword is a glitch that's still bugging me since the code for arming it is really straight forward but, in case you didn't see or realize in the video, you can only arm the sword if either your fists are armed first or nothing is armed. It was one of the things I meant to get ironed out before I posted the videos, but when I started working on that inventory screen I didn't think there would be any problems getting it to work. When it didn't, one thing led to another, and well....

And yeah, this likely won't have multiplayer support.
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[DeeperThought]

You should put the fists closer together. It's ok for spell casting hands to be far apart, but fists should not be more than shoulder width.
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[EmericaSkater]

You should put the fists closer together. It's ok for spell casting hands to be far apart, but fists should not be more than shoulder width.

Will do. Thanks again for being honest. And thanks James and Spiker for the feel-good feedback that kept my confidence from totally deflating after DT gave me his honest feedback
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[Devon]

this is a great idea and i really like the videos.

if you keep this up i will most certainly play it for hours and hours.
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