Daggerfall - Mods and Ends @ RPS

Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Adam Smith writes about running Daggerfall these days with mods or via the XL Engine, which we've discussed before:

Then there’s the XL Engine, which is the main reason for this post if you discount the nostalgic warbling that follows these two paragraphs. If you haven’t heard of the XL Engine already, it’s a custom-built framework to run old games. Essentially, it totally overhauls them, with all sorts of visual enhancements and improved modding support, so it’s almost as if they are being ported onto modern systems. Daggerfall XL is far from finished yet but it’s a hugely intriguing project, which is seeing steady progress.
It goes without saying that Daggerfall is never going to look like Skyrim, but the results, even in the current 0.199 version, are impressive. As with so many mods, the work that has gone into this is astounding. The assets for the games aren’t publicly available so they have been rebuilt from the ground up. And in Daggerfall’s case that’s a lot of ground.

More information.

I've been waiting to replay Daggerfall with XL since… forever? I hope this gets done at some point.

Originally Posted by bloodlover
I've been waiting to replay Daggerfall with XL since… forever?

You and me both, and it's still a long way from being finished. The problem, imo, is that he needs to concentrate on one game at a time so he can actually get something finished.

Didn't know he started working on an XL version of Blood as well. That's an old favorite of mine.

Originally Posted by JDR13
You and me both, and it's still a long way from being finished. The problem, imo, is that he needs to concentrate on one game at a time so he can actually get something finished.

Yeah, when he announced Blood and Outlaws a lot of people were happy but I was like "man, finish a game first and then do more." DaggerXL could literally take 5 years to finish at this point.

Never heard of DaggerXL before today, but I think if I ever replay Daggerfall I'll just do the Daggerfall setup that RPS recommended and play it through dosbox.

I've seen a lot of projects like this disappear. People take on too much, get bored and it becomes vaporware.

Anyone remember the dozens of Ultima mods that were being made about….oh 7 or 8 years ago? Most never went anywhere. Some actually did finish them like Lazarus, but most of them (especially the more ambitious ones) never were completed.

I hope it gets finished as well. There has been at least one other attempt at a modern Daggerfall engine, and it was abandoned. I actually bought an old win95 box at a local "pc junk store". It even had an ISA soundblaster! It runs Daggerfall natively far better than my regular desktop using dosbox.

I think he will finish it, he has been going a long time and seems very dedicated. It's just taking a really long time because he won't seek help and he keeps adding new goals.

oh glot, why bother…

Actually most of the Ultima remakes got shut down by EA and the only ones they didn't go after were the ones made as mods for other games. A few of those died but many are either done or are still going.

The guy doing Dagger XL seems competent and dedicated, so I am quite hopeful it will eventually be released in actually playable form. However with such projects its generally not much use to "wait" for their conclusion - just enjoy, if it ever gets there.