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Daggerfall is Free!! Daggerfall is Free!!
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Helmut
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July 9, 2009 - 4:59 pm
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So go get some.   http://www.elderscrolls.com/ho.....e/home.php

Edit: Although this FileFront download is currently 8x faster: http://www.filefront.com/14005.....Free-Game/

My Dark Souls single player sensibilities are protected by a +10 GfWL Firewall of Ineptitude

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Helmut
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July 10, 2009 - 12:38 pm
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What a hilarious game. I had forgotten. The following is a snapshot of only a tiny portion of the starting dungeon. No cinematic sequences with 'fights' against mange ridden rats. So far I've faced rats, giant bats, Warriors, skeleton warriors, archers, imps, and magic imps in only my starting frock, able only to cast a single spell before needing a rest.

[Image Can Not Be Found]

I find the exit only by the most blind miracle of luck (having revisited the void once already!) and hit Daggerfall as the first town. The very first person I find right inside the gate, the welcoming committe as it were, and I share this wonderful bit of dialog:

Me: Greetings, good stranger. I am seeking information on Lady Brisienna (the queen I think?)

Peryctor Woodcroft: I don't understand. Is that supposed to mean something to me?

I don't know how long this experiment is going to last, but there are some neurons that haven't seen any action in 13 years just ripping it up right now.

My Dark Souls single player sensibilities are protected by a +10 GfWL Firewall of Ineptitude

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Steerpike
Subtropical Southeastern Michigan
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July 10, 2009 - 12:50 pm
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Lord, I remember when Daggerfall was the height of technology, and all those breaks were just something to be expected. When I first got it in '97, the game crashed so often outside of that first dungeon that I have the exact route memorized, and could probably do it blindfolded even now, more than a decade later.

Hang in there, Helmut. Sooner or later you'll meet someone who'll "just let me mark that location on your map."

Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

Scout
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July 10, 2009 - 9:50 pm
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Helmut said:

What a hilarious game. I had forgotten. The following is a snapshot of only a tiny portion of the starting dungeon. No cinematic sequences with 'fights' against mange ridden rats. So far I've faced rats, giant bats, Warriors, skeleton warriors, archers, imps, and magic imps in only my starting frock, able only to cast a single spell before needing a rest.

[Image Can Not Be Found]

I find the exit only by the most blind miracle of luck (having revisited the void once already!) and hit Daggerfall as the first town. The very first person I find right inside the gate, the welcoming committe as it were, and I share this wonderful bit of dialog:

Me: Greetings, good stranger. I am seeking information on Lady Brisienna (the queen I think?)

Peryctor Woodcroft: I don't understand. Is that supposed to mean something to me?

I don't know how long this experiment is going to last, but there are some neurons that haven't seen any action in 13 years just ripping it up right now.


Ah the mating octupi dungeons. To this day I can't believe I played that game straight for almost 2 months. I was one of the lucky ones without a preponderance of crashes so that no doubt helped me along.

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Helmut
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July 11, 2009 - 10:21 am
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I restarted after discovering my three primary skills were long blade, axe, and blunt weapons. And that's a spellsword too. I had to construct a custom character to get some other useful skills in the primary slot. Sadly, I pooched the mix and for some reason I don't have enough spell points to cast my main destruction spell. Then I wasted 2 hours in a dungeon where I couldn't find spider's silk. At least I had a save from before I took the quest. I only had 8 days in a dungeon to find the silk and when you have to rest 12 hours at a time to get over damage, there's not much time for searching left.And that was the first guild quest. I chose to skip the quest and go get some experience elsewhere.

It would take me all of two months full time to play this. At least. And there has to be a better way of mapping the dungeons.

So much of the game just passed me by in '97. Oblivion (plus the Internet) is a great deal more accessible.

My Dark Souls single player sensibilities are protected by a +10 GfWL Firewall of Ineptitude

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Steerpike
Subtropical Southeastern Michigan
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July 12, 2009 - 8:51 am
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The dungeons were part of that game's downfall. Randomly generated, they were often so immense that you could spend weeks of game time exploring them and still never find what you were looking for. Drove me crazy, and basically was the cause for the invention of Mark and Recall spells. I'm sure glad they took the time to get it right in Morrowind.

Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

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Helmut
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July 13, 2009 - 5:37 pm
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I reaped the benefit of one of the bugs I read about, where while trying to deliver a necklace to a certain someone some orcs try to prevent the delivery. Each orc carries its inventory and seemingly carries the inventory of all the orcs that came before. I gathered 750 kg of loot after killing only 10 or so orcs.

Is failing a guild quest a huge issue? I can't tell how humungous these dungeons are before I start a quest. Rather than launching into one and then restoring a save game from before I take the quest if I can't complete it (wasting 3 hours with no progress in the process), can I just carry on, loot the dungeon, and show up 23 days later and say, sorry old chap, did my best?

My Dark Souls single player sensibilities are protected by a +10 GfWL Firewall of Ineptitude

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Helmut
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July 14, 2009 - 3:12 pm
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Apparently I would only have suffered some reputation loss, and likely would have had a chance to recover by doing more quests. No matter in the end, as I stumbled upon a hidden door in the middle of miles of nowhere and lo! There was the little bugger. I offed him quick and got back with a day to spare.

No crashes so far and my dungeon luck has been better too. I think I'm falling for this game :o, although the main quest remains invitation only and I without.

My Dark Souls single player sensibilities are protected by a +10 GfWL Firewall of Ineptitude

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Steerpike
Subtropical Southeastern Michigan
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July 14, 2009 - 4:55 pm
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You may not even know whether a quest you're doing is part of the main quest or not. If you met the lady who messengered you a letter early in the game, things are in motion pretty much without your input. One flaw DF had (one, ha!) was that it often neglected to tell you that you'd received an important message or letter regarding the main quest. I can say that the postal system in the Iliac Bay region is quite dependable.

Don't worry about rep loss. Unless they fixed that bug, your reputation goes up when it's supposed to go down, and nowhere when it's supposed to go up.

Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

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Helmut
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July 29, 2009 - 2:28 am
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I hear you on the invisible messenger front. Often, you are notified that someone of stealth has delivered a message and run off mutely (although why we wouldn't beat the answer out of them given we're level 8 remains to be explained) but not always, and a regular poll of inventory items is a very good thing. One thing that made me very happy is being able to deposit all my assorted letters of credit to the bank, and then withdraw a whopping single letter of credit afterwards.

The mini-game of worth/weight quickly becomes effortless and I enjoy only picking the cream out of each dungeon. The notion of a physical weight for gold in my inventory also was really refreshing. Is gold more valuable per kilo than other things?

I also really like the way the stores work. In Oblivion, finding stuff in dungeons was the only way as the stores were always helpless. In Daggerfall, in the early levels, the good stores can offer up to dwarven level booty without much effort. There is a transition where the stores don't seem to stock items of a given material until you've dragged some home and sold them. And then you will find other items of the same material appearing on the shelves. I really really like this. It gives me the incentive to go explore the most dangerous dungeons I can, so that my endless realms of money can be used on the (originally very expensive) cool new kits of gear that can be made now that the new (eg.Admantium) materials have been found.

I'm a level 8 'hurtful man', my own category created in an attempt to get primary skills diverse. I've succeeded in creating a being who seemingly cannot cast destruction spells despite an intelligence of 90 (only 44 spellpoints). The documentation and wiki say that casting spells should get easier as the attribute governing the spell type increase, but I haven't seen that. Anyone?

I'm definitely cheating, although not by stealing. It's simply not worth the effort to steal stuff. There's 10x more crap in every dungeon than I can carry, I've 100,000 dollars in the bank simply by dragging crap home, and nothing to buy with it. Ships and houses excluded.

I'm cheating firstly by a program that shows the direction and distance to the quest item. I save a game just inside the dungeon and this program reads the savegame file and displays the distance/direction/elevation change required to get to the goal. Often, even this isn't enough, as locations within the maze space separated by only meters are often hours apart by some physical pathway. I try negotiating the mazes for 1 hour in an effort to pseudo honestly find the quest item (to fill up with loot more like it), then secondly, I use a cheat to teleport through various quest locations. This generally progresses very quickly and once I find the item or kill the baddy I try for another hour to find the way out. If I can't find the way out, I use a separate cheat to find the exit. These dungeons are simply unbelievable in their size and general worthlessness. It is entirely a mistake to think, when the architecture or design gets interesting, that the goal must be at hand. it's just a randomly generated bit of fluff. I took so long to understand that.

The game has crashed a bit more frequently lately. I have the standard save pattern well rehearsed and so far have had no corrupt save games, which is the worst. 

- Save before getting a quest

- Save after getting a quest

- Save before all commerce attempts

- Save after all satisfactory commerce attempts

You get the idea. Makes me seem like  I have quite the problem with commitment. If I'm not going to get the quest I want I'm going home.

But the reality is that if you think you're going to send me on a 2000 mile journey to kill some asstard mage in 10 days there and back with a 2500 acre/ 14 level deep dungeon to suss, of course I'm going to want some backout plan. Or all'y'all can just go find another hero.

-

My Dark Souls single player sensibilities are protected by a +10 GfWL Firewall of Ineptitude

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Ernest
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August 29, 2009 - 8:25 pm
Member Since: July 2, 2009
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I don't think I ever even got out of the first town in Daggerfall.  Got off the boat, talked to some people, went into a cave by the sea, and basically (more or less) never came out.

Oh boy!  But I remember Arena!  Want to talk about spaghetti dungeons!  And bugs!  Oh my that may have been the buggiest game I ever played.  Played before I even almost knew what gaming bugs were.  Geez that was even before the net.

Back in the day for real.

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Steerpike
Subtropical Southeastern Michigan
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August 31, 2009 - 9:25 am
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Heck, Ernest, Arena was a paragon of logic and tight code compared to Daggerfall. I remember once being hired to kill a goblin who was hanging out in an orchard (which was actually THIRTY-SIX LEVEL dungeon). This was before any good cheats existed and few patches had been released. I spent three real life weeks in that dungeon, foolishly assuming that anything so large and complex must be part of the main questline. Alas then that when I finally found the specific goblin that wanted killing (among the dozens of others living in the orchardungeon) and bonked it with my sword, it went through the wall and fell into the Black Void, the Todash Darkness that surrounds all structures in Daggerfall. With no way to follow it, I dejectedly walked back to the entrance cloaked in shame and defeat.

The idea of randomly generating dungeon components wasn't a bad one given the technology of the time, but someone needed to put some brakes on the thing.

Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

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Ernest
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September 1, 2009 - 7:20 pm
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In contrast Oblivion is really nice.  Easy to get into, tons and tons and tons of mods (which are a game in and of themselves; in fact really the only game I ever play in Oblivion).  Every time I play it I enjoy it and wander for a bit and then quit and don't come back for months.

I don't know what it is with games these days.  I keep buying them and love (some of) them, but I'm just not playing.  Maybe the renovation, which is the culmination of work stretching all the way back to 2004.  Maybe the result of my job, which I've said here a dozen times I love.  Maybe games just have become too complicated.  I don't want to lose my life in them.  Maybe it's Ben.  As I've also said a dozen times he is the greatest thing ever and I definitely don't want to distance myself from him.  I just want to enjoy a dungeon crawl which allows me to save and return later without having to relearn how to play.

I look, for instance, at the little smiley below–the wizard with the stick–and find myself thinking how nice it would be to have some sort of nice little nethack descendant that used figures like that and let me run a dungeon sort of like the Eye of the Beholder series.  No need to manage food and a million conversations and blah de blah de blah.  Just let me go in, explore with nice mechanics, a compelling story, a decent vendor system, and let me save when I want.  Sort of like Rage of Mages.  Or what was that great game?  Spellcross?  I still think that was an underappreciated gem of a strategy game.

I think also of the stupendous marvels Dungeonmaster and Dungeonmaster 2.  Totally intuitive, marvelously atmospheric, and geez 20 years old.

I was playing Dungeon Siege 2 but even that started to get too complicated.  Escapism doesn't mean I want to lose my life.

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Helmut
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September 2, 2009 - 1:24 pm
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Steerpike has it nailed there I think. After the hand crafted goodness of Ultima (and others) Daggerfall completely ignored the ground rules for dungeon layout with the autogenerated stuff. Instead of leading to the quest items or characters of meaning, rooms of architectural interest were just randomly placed in the middle of bland sections. Quest items were often very close to the entrance of large time wasting dungeons and some of the most trivial quest items were located in the largest dungeons of all. With the cheats I'm using, this isn't any hindrance anymore. I have a quest item locator that tells me distance and elevation to the quest item and if that doesn't work there's a developer cheat for stepping through all the interesting places in the dungeon, and another glitch that lets you escape quickly without casting recall. No more 2 day dungeon crawls for me!

I agree with the notion of simplicity. I'm enjoying playing older games on dosbox. They startup fast and as long as they don't crash, the gameplay can be simple and quick allowing 20 minute gaming days. I'm finding true uninterrupted immersion time impossible to find.

My Dark Souls single player sensibilities are protected by a +10 GfWL Firewall of Ineptitude

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