Daggerfall/Arena Questions
Charlie Hills
Tamriel, but I have some more questions anyway:
1) Was the entire land of Tamriel available for exploration in Arena?
2) If so, is that the same for Daggerfall?
3) And if so again, would these not be the *same* Tamriel? It seems
like there's a lot of work going into designing the outdoors of
Daggerfall (and this is part of what's holding up some of the outdoor
screenshots). If this is the case, then if I was familiar with the
land in TES:1 would I be totally lost in TES:2? (If it isn't already
obvious: I'm confused.)
4) Just how big is Tamriel really? I've read so many posts and FAQs
and the demo that I'm confused here too. I've heard "twice the size
of Great Britain" (177,490 sq mi) or "the size of Turkey" (296,185 sq
mi) and even once read 12,000,000 square miles. (The land is
supposedly mapped out in 6m increments.) With enough *virtual* food
and water and enough *real* patience could I walk my character from
one shore to another? I find this incredible...!
5) And if Tamriel really IS this big and has so many towns, cities,
villiages, dungeons, etc, how can it fit on only one CD? Even if we
went with "twice the size of Great Britain" in six meter increments
there would be approx 12.544 billion points needed to define *just*
the landscape. At even one byte per point, this wouldn't fit on 20
CDs. :^) Obviously Bethesda can't be taking such a brute force
method -- but as a professional programmer, I am very curious about
this. Obviously I'm not expecting a hard and fast answer any more
than I'm expecting them to send me the source code. But I thought I'd
toss this out and see what kind of responses I get.
6) This one is MUCH more back down to earth: in the demo, what does
the middle (red) status bar indicate? I realize the others represent
hit points and mana, but I haven't been able to guess this one yet.
7) And back to the subject of CDs, will the game run from the CD or
will the whole thing have to be copied to the hard drive? Or maybe
a little of both?
8) How exactly will the interaction with NPCs be implemented? This
one question can probably be the deciding factor for many on whether
to purchase this game or not. A lot of complaints about current CRPGs
is that NPC interaction is limited to: "1) player says prefab thing,
2) npc gives prefab answer, 3) repeat." Since there was an
unfortunate absence of things like this in the demo, it might be nice
to know. The FAQ (version 0.97 -- not the latest, I know) metions
some of the "whats" of NPC interaction, but not really the "hows".
Well, that's a little of what's on my brain this week. Looking
forward to some comments...
--
Charlie Hills
hil...@phibred.com (preferred address)
7400...@compuserve.com
--------------------------------------
Koz
>1) Was the entire land of Tamriel available for exploration in Arena?
Yes. But you had no reason to bother. It was all just featureless
landscape littered with a few caves here and there. And to get to
towns, you used the travel option rather than manually walking
cross-country.
Koz
--
Michael Kozlowski
mlko...@students.wisc.edu
"Attention shoppers: Blue light Special on weasels in Aisle Ten!"
K.C. Baltz
>Charlie Hills <7400...@CompuServe.COM> wrote:
>>1) Was the entire land of Tamriel available for exploration in Arena?
>Yes. But you had no reason to bother. It was all just featureless
>landscape littered with a few caves here and there. And to get to
>towns, you used the travel option rather than manually walking
>cross-country.
Agreed. Arena was "400 towns and dungeons randomly generated for your
enjoyment!" Very little of it seemed _designed_. I think they were
trying to move away from the really linear RPG's and swung to the other
extreme of boring vastness.
K.C.
--
K.C. Baltz
Copmuter Science / Computer Engineering
University of Southern California (Second Choice, Spoiled Children ...)
http://www-scf.usc.edu/~baltz
Jacques Cuneo
Charlie Hills wrote:
>
> Having not played Arena, I don't know much (i.e., *anything*) about
> Tamriel, but I have some more questions anyway:
>
>
> 4) Just how big is Tamriel really? I've read so many posts and FAQs
> and the demo that I'm confused here too. I've heard "twice the size
> of Great Britain" (177,490 sq mi) or "the size of Turkey" (296,185 sq
> mi) and even once read 12,000,000 square miles. (The land is
> supposedly mapped out in 6m increments.) With enough *virtual* food
> and water and enough *real* patience could I walk my character from
> one shore to another? I find this incredible...!
> Suposedly you have the ability to "autowalk" to wherever you want. You
can even set up flags for the game to stop when you encounter something
interesting.
> 5) And if Tamriel really IS this big and has so many towns, cities,
> villiages, dungeons, etc, how can it fit on only one CD? Even if we
> went with "twice the size of Great Britain" in six meter increments
> there would be approx 12.544 billion points needed to define *just*
> the landscape. At even one byte per point, this wouldn't fit on 20
> CDs. :^) Obviously Bethesda can't be taking such a brute force
> method -- but as a professional programmer, I am very curious about
> this. Obviously I'm not expecting a hard and fast answer any more
> than I'm expecting them to send me the source code. But I thought I'd
> toss this out and see what kind of responses I get.
>This one I know. The outdoor world is a fractally generated landscape.
I won't go into the morbid details of how they are genereated. Suffice
it to say that it is pretty easy to generate realistic surfaces with
*much* less information than you might think. For example, it might
take 1 point to generate 32. It is a very space efficient method. For
this reason, don't be surprised 5 years from now when all image
compression is fractal based.
> 6) This one is MUCH more back down to earth: in the demo, what does
> the middle (red) status bar indicate? I realize the others represent
> hit points and mana, but I haven't been able to guess this one yet.
> Stamina--I think(could easily be wrong)
> 7) And back to the subject of CDs, will the game run from the CD or
> will the whole thing have to be copied to the hard drive? Or maybe
> a little of both?
>
> 8) How exactly will the interaction with NPCs be implemented? This
> one question can probably be the deciding factor for many on whether
> to purchase this game or not. A lot of complaints about current CRPGs
> is that NPC interaction is limited to: "1) player says prefab thing,
> 2) npc gives prefab answer, 3) repeat." Since there was an
> unfortunate absence of things like this in the demo, it might be nice
> to know. The FAQ (version 0.97 -- not the latest, I know) metions
> some of the "whats" of NPC interaction, but not really the "hows".
> Conversations will be menu based. Also, I have seen posts about being
able to set the goal for the conversation and following the menu to that
point. I think that both are included.
> Well, that's a little of what's on my brain this week. Looking
> forward to some comments...
> --Well, here they are--flame at will
Jacques Cuneo
John N. White
> Having not played Arena, I don't know much (i.e., *anything*) about
> Tamriel, but I have some more questions anyway:
I don't know much about Tamriel either, but that won't stop me from
impersonating a knowledgeable person. :-)
> 1) Was the entire land of Tamriel available for exploration in Arena?
Each town was surrounded by a vast wilderness. No matter how far I
went, the travel map would still show me at the town, and I could travel
back to the town in zero time. I have never heard of anyone traveling
from one town to another through the wilderness. Dungeons that you
can travel to through the travel map have no wilderness associated
with them. When you leave them you will be back in the travel map.
The wilderness is flat, with some people, occasional buildings, lakes,
dungeon entrances, etc. But it all seems to be made out of a limited
number of pieces. The roads don't seem to go anywhere in particular.
After a while it seem rather repetitive. There are just a few types
of dungeons in the wilderness. The monsters and treasures in these
dungeons are regenerated whenever you re-enter them. For me it really
destroys the feeling of reality when I kill a monster and take a
treasure, only to come back and find the monster alive and the treasure
still there. I understand that Daggerfall fixes this.
> 2) If so, is that the same for Daggerfall?
I don't know if the Daggerfall wilderness can be navigated, but there
are hints that it can. I understand that you can buy a ship and sail
around, for instance.
> 3) And if so again, would these not be the *same* Tamriel? It seems
> like there's a lot of work going into designing the outdoors of
> Daggerfall (and this is part of what's holding up some of the outdoor
> screenshots). If this is the case, then if I was familiar with the
> land in TES:1 would I be totally lost in TES:2?
I doubt that anyone is "familiar" with the wilderness in Arena, except
in the sense of having seen all the pieces many times in many different
places. Even the towns and cities are nothing but an array of city blocks,
each selected from a limited number of predefined blocks. After a few
cities, you will have seen all the blocks at least once.
> 4) Just how big is Tamriel really? I've read so many posts and FAQs
> and the demo that I'm confused here too. I've heard "twice the size
> of Great Britain" (177,490 sq mi) or "the size of Turkey" (296,185 sq
> mi) and even once read 12,000,000 square miles.
I don't know how big it is in Daggerfall, but 12,000,000 sq. mi. seems
about right for Arena (see my answer to (1), above.)
> With enough *virtual* food and water and enough *real* patience could I
> walk my character from one shore to another? I find this incredible...!
I don't recall any sort of food or water requirement in Arena.
You would definitely need patience, however. :-)
> 5) And if Tamriel really IS this big and has so many towns, cities,
> villiages, dungeons, etc, how can it fit on only one CD? Even if we
> went with "twice the size of Great Britain" in six meter increments
> there would be approx 12.544 billion points needed to define *just*
> the landscape. At even one byte per point, this wouldn't fit on 20
> CDs. :^) Obviously Bethesda can't be taking such a brute force
> method -- but as a professional programmer, I am very curious about
> this. Obviously I'm not expecting a hard and fast answer any more
> than I'm expecting them to send me the source code. But I thought I'd
> toss this out and see what kind of responses I get.
I believe that they have mentioned the word "fractal". I assume that
they are doing something more sophisticated than what they did in
Arena, which was to just stick together pieces from a limited list.
They could specify parameters at widely spaced points, then use
fractal techniques to interpolate in such a way that the exact same
contour is never repeated anywhere else in the wilderness.
The real problem is that looking out across a great expanse would
require a huge number of polygons. Arena "solved" this problem
by using a flat terrain and having things visible only when you
get near enough to them. Things like walls and buildings would
suddenly appear before you as you approached. Another solution
would be to arrange things so that you can never see too far in
any direction. It is not too hard to arrange this in a dungeon,
but it wouldn't work in Daggerfall where you can climb up on a
tall building and get a good view. A better solution is to have
distant stuff represented by a few polygons that look about right
from a distance, then replace these with more detailed polygons
when you get closer. That way things don't just pop into existence
as you approach.
> 6) This one is MUCH more back down to earth: in the demo, what does
> the middle (red) status bar indicate? I realize the others represent
> hit points and mana, but I haven't been able to guess this one yet.
Stamina. It drops slowly even if you're standing still. If it goes to
zero, you fall asleep and the monsters get a free lunch. Resting restores
stamina, and it can also be restored with a spell. The maximum amount
is determined by the endurance stat.
> 7) And back to the subject of CDs, will the game run from the CD or
> will the whole thing have to be copied to the hard drive? Or maybe
> a little of both?
I understand that Daggerfall will take 20 meg or so of HD space, but
it runs from the CD for the most part.
> 8) How exactly will the interaction with NPCs be implemented? This
> one question can probably be the deciding factor for many on whether
> to purchase this game or not. A lot of complaints about current CRPGs
> is that NPC interaction is limited to: "1) player says prefab thing,
> 2) npc gives prefab answer, 3) repeat."
In Arena you selected your question from a menu. It was very simple,
with no conversation trees. For instance, you select the option for
"where is the nearest store", then select the name of the store
from the list. You will be told it is to the northeast. Then you
go to the northeast and ask another NPC, and find it is to the
north. Then you go to the north and ask another NPC who tells
you it is nearby. After this you can look at your map and you
will see the store labeled. After all this you will have accomplished
nothing permanent since all the labels in the city disappear if
you leave the city for a while. (Only the last n cities are saved,
where n is a small integer.)
Personally I hate the type of NPC interaction where I have to type
in words, though. First, I can't spell without a spell checker.
Second, I can never guess the right word. I then have to get a
walkthrough, only to find out that I had tried several synonyms
of the word that the game wanted.
> Well, that's a little of what's on my brain this week. Looking
> forward to some comments...
Here they are.
--
j...@vnet.net
Ben Violette
mlko...@students.wisc.edu (Koz) wrote:
>Charlie Hills <7400...@CompuServe.COM> wrote:
>
>>1) Was the entire land of Tamriel available for exploration in Arena?
>
I remember that one of the selling points for this game was that it had to
largest world for an RPG out. Even in the manual it says that you could travel
from one town to another but the closest ones would take 20 min of walking. Is
this true Bethesda? (I'm directing this to you as you've been so generous in
your answers to questions on here). It seemed to me that the area around the
town was just randomly generated and generated as you want in large patches.
Like say you were in a pathwork quilt and you got to the end, the program
would load up a random patch (maybe one with a dungeon, town, or some other
structure), to stitch onto the one you on. So you could just keep going in one
direction forever and ever and eve and the computer would just keep adding new
things on. There's obviousely only a limited amount of terrain as I could
leave one town and come across a small village with some people and then in
another town on the other side of the continent leave a different town and
come acorss the same village with the same floorplan, although a different
environment. So could you REALLY travel from one town to another? It was made
so that there would really be no reason to so it's not like anyone would
really try it.
-Ben
p.s. oh, and will there be slave traders in Daggerfall this time?
Bethesda01
wilderness
area outside the city gates would eventually wrap.
However, in DAGGERFALL you will be able to walk from one town to another
if you want. For those that prefer a speedier method, there will be a
Fast Travel Option which can be customised to make stops at interestngs
point on the journey
Bethesda Softworks