Another classic game is getting closer to being fully playable natively on Linux. The project to recreate The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall in the Unity engine has hit an important milestone and now the the main quest is completely playable.
Daggerfall is the second entry in Bethesda’s long-running Elder Scrolls series of role-playing games and was originally released way back in 1996. It was an ambitious game, with thousands upon thousands of locations to explore in an virtual game area the size of a small real-world nation. It’s a game that I personally lost a lot of time to way back in the day and I’m happy to see that a project that allows me to play it natively on Linux is coming along swimmingly.
Daggerfall Unity hit the important milestone of having the main quest line be playable from beginning to end. In the post announcing this milestone, the main developer behind the project details how it’s taken nearly a year of development time to reach this point and it was probably the biggest hurdle to clear in the project. There’s still a lot left on the project roadmap including the magic system, important bits of the UI and things like vampirism that have yet to be implemented. Hopefully won’t be too long before everything else falls into place.
Currently the quest system is only available in the unstable builds, with further testing needed before a stable build is put out. Bethesda made Daggerfall free a few years ago to celebrate 15 years of the Elder Scrolls series, so you can download a copy directly from them.
You can try out Daggerfall Unity by grabbing a build here. There are also links there to acquire the game and see the code repository for the project.
Thanks for the tip Sasa.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Last edited by Shmerl on 17 October 2017 at 6:24 pm UTC
Giving Daggerfall the graphical fidelity of the later games would be fantastic, along with certain gameplay improvements. Nice to see this progressing!
Last edited by Sslaxx on 17 October 2017 at 6:29 pm UTC
Is it a total recreation of the game (assets and everything), or just the game engine?
Quoting: MayeulCI am just curious to know the answer: why didn't they use OpenMW's engine? Is this game really that different?
Is it a total recreation of the game (assets and everything), or just the game engine?
I suspect the answer would be something like "developer knew Unity and had no time to invest in other engines". Which is OK, it's their time, but makes their project non open really, since others can't just go and build it from source to get a playable game even if they have game assets.
Last edited by Shmerl on 17 October 2017 at 6:47 pm UTC
Quoting: ShmerlUnity is free to use afaik. I sure didn't have to pay anything to download it a year back or so.Quoting: MayeulCI am just curious to know the answer: why didn't they use OpenMW's engine? Is this game really that different?
Is it a total recreation of the game (assets and everything), or just the game engine?
I suspect the answer would be something like "developer knew Unity and had no time to invest in other engines". Which is OK, it's their time, but makes their project non open really, since others can't just go and build it from source to get a playable game even if they have game assets.
Everyone can download Unity, load the Daggerfall project and build it.
Sounds open source enough to me.
Quoting: TheSHEEEPEveryone can download Unity, load the Daggerfall project and build it.
Sounds open source enough to me.
I think Unity doesn't fit several freedoms from the expected list. I.e. run it as you wish (for example can you just build it for Android, or they require special license?), and freedoms of modification and re-distribution. Otherwise it would have been a FOSS engine.
Last edited by Shmerl on 17 October 2017 at 10:21 pm UTC
Quoting: TheSHEEEPUnity is free to use afaik. I sure didn't have to pay anything to download it a year back or so.Freeware and opensource are two diiferent things.
Everyone can download Unity, load the Daggerfall project and build it.
Sounds open source enough to me.
Quoting: ShmerlYou need a special license for source code access, but other than that, Unity Free can be used for all supported platforms (including Android), unless the project makes more than $100.000 a year in gross revenues: http://download.unity3d.com/company/legal/eulaQuoting: TheSHEEEPEveryone can download Unity, load the Daggerfall project and build it.
Sounds open source enough to me.
I think Unity doesn't fit several freedoms from the expected list. I.e. run it as you wish (for example can you just build it for Android, or they require special license?), and freedoms of modification and re-distribution. Otherwise it would have been a FOSS engine.
Quoting: TobiSGDYou need a special license for source code access, but other than that, Unity Free can be used for all supported platforms (including Android), unless the project makes more than $100.000 a year in gross revenues: http://download.unity3d.com/company/legal/eula
It's still not FOSS.
We could otherwise be here all day arguing definitions of open source but this is a discussion that has been around since the 90s and we're not going to resolve this in the comment sections of an article for a fan recreation of an old game.
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