Hello Everybody!

Ziefnab

As the title says Hello.

This post is to introduce myself to the community as well as get the feel for a project I'm developing currently for myself but may depending on interest turn into a community project. I apologize in advance this will be a little long.

A little about me, I didn't actually start trying to make games or anything like that until the Unity engine launched a few years ago. Before that, I was really into modding Morrowind mostly.

So The idea behind this project as of now is to recreate Daggerfall, one of the better RPGs of the late 90s in the Godot engine. This project not only brings Daggerfall into a more modern 3d environment, it also with modern RPG game mechanics.

This project will have fully implemented First and 3rd person cameras with animations. Full dungeons and cities with more modern 3d models and textures. It will have all the current systems and skills in the Daggerfall game itself with added extras. The idea is to create the core game of Daggerfall in Godot as well as add more modern ideas with it.

Now as I said as it stands now this project is for myself as I can't wait to play Daggerfall in a fully 3d world so it will be done. This is to gauge the community interest in such a project. I hope to plan a formal announcement with a demo featuring a fully functional first and 3rd person camera in about a month freely available to anyone to alter and use as they wish with incremental releases of added features after.

So what do you think? questions? comments?

I'll try to get back to this thread as often as I can thanks for your feedback.

TwistedTwigleg

Welcome to the forums @Ziefnab!

joel127

Hello and welcome!

Your project seems an insane amount of work, I wish you luck :)

I assume you are already aware a recreation of Dagerfall in Unity is well under way? https://www.dfworkshop.net/

MagicMike

It sounds like a big project. When I started programming, I wanted to make open world games where you could do anything you want, like most people who get started making games. I made lots of cool stuff, but nothing that was ever finished and polished despite putting years of work everyday, into certain projects.

I recommend thinking about time/money as a budgeted and limited resource. Now, making this game is not necessarily a bad thing... but every aspect of the project will take a significant amount of time, and probably 4x the amount predicted because of the many unkown challenges that always come up, 10x if you are new to programming.

Everything that's done at the design stage will save you a huge amount of time. So I recommend widdling the concept down to it's core components, so that you can figure out the bare minimum essential things so that you can have a polished working game.

Also I recommend coming up with a full list of required art assets for this bare minimum build, completely before you start coding, to include all meshes, animations, textures (to include all gui and menu textures), sound effects, and music. I know this sounds like a lot of work upfront, but it will save you a huge amount of work in the end.

When it comes to art assets, I recommend considering purchasing assets, for example this 3D set for a mid-evil village:

https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/max-medieval-town/1121454

Also, for cohesion, I know you said 'modern' look implying realism, but everything has a style. So I recommend coming up with a well defined art style before you start building the project as well. This will save time for your asset selection and creation.

This would include (for example): [this could be copied from the Daggerfall, but explicitly defining it will help] General Saturation Ranges General shinyness level of objects Typical color palettes for various areas Texture detail level How pronounced small details are in models (Does the world feel more like many small details, or bigger structures... and specifically where in this range does it fall... visual examples may help when defining this) General Mood/Feelings of objects/animations/music * Character and Monster general Bodyshapes (what do they all have in common)

Very few things will perfectly match your art style that you purchase, but you can edit them to close the gap. Having a specific art style helps provide much more cohesion to the games look and feel.

Anyways good luck! Exciting.