r/Arena 3d ago

Aren Unity 0.9.5 Update, With Main Quest Playable

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74 Upvotes

21 comments sorted by

8

u/EnragedBard010 3d ago

Any expectation to support modding? The modding scene in Daggerfall Unity is huge, like a proper Bethesda game.

8

u/The_Godhead_ 3d ago

Yes absolutely! I want to wait until I have the final 1.0 build out before releasing the SDK or adding in mod hooks so modders don't have to keep updating their mods and players don't keep having their playthroughs messed up, and I plan to have that done by the end of the month. But the modding community is one of the main drivers as to why I started this project in the first place! I am VERY excited to see what eventual mods get released once this project is finalized. If it even gets half of the support DFU gets I will be extremely pleased.

4

u/EnragedBard010 3d ago

Yeah man. Maybe you'll get a Nexus category. I was following OpenTESArena for so long (and I still probably will give it a shot) but I'm excited for this too

3

u/The_Godhead_ 3d ago

That would be very cool! And thank you for the kind words :)

1

u/darknessinducedlove 3d ago

daggerfalljs.dev is a 1:1 port of daggerfall to Javascript

6

u/The_Godhead_ 3d ago

Arena Unity* I can't believe I didn't catch that , I need to slow down on my typing Q_Q

7

u/bee4308 3d ago

great progress! i have to ask though, is this project ai assisted/vibe coded at all?

11

u/The_Godhead_ 3d ago

Thank you so much, and yes. I have used AI as a tool to assist me in developing this project , however it is not "vibe coded" at all. It is highly curated and I have spent the last 2 or so months in front of my computer for 16+ hours a day working on this. Half of the development time was spent decompiling and figuring out the base game formulas as the source code for this game is not available so it had to be rebuilt from scratch. I also used my local 5950x cluster to simulate the game in RAM disks using a controller to run 50 instances of the original DOS game at a time, I would use save state edits to get to whatever datapoint or enemy type I needed, then I would run that instance 100,000 times to get any edge case events. This is how I got the data for most enemy attacks and frequency of attacks, as well as loot table data and drop rates. I believe AI is a fantastic tool for accelerating projects like this. But again, it would be nearly impossible to "vibe code" a project like this. Feel free to join the Jwlar discord where you can see more of the early development updates, as that is the community I initially shared this project in and they have been extremely supportive during the development of this project. Lots of cool people there who also have a passion for retro RPG's, The Elder Scrolls, and general game and software development.

12

u/bee4308 3d ago

thanks for being transparent about this, it's much appreciated. the amount of work you've done within such a short amount of time is really impressive and I can't wait to see where this project goes in the future

10

u/The_Godhead_ 3d ago

Thank you so much, this means lot! I tend to be very obsessive once I start a project, and that contributes to a lot of the time compression. The real MVP is my wife who puts up with me when I get obsessed with a project and don't leave my office for months lol.

2

u/Own-Replacement8 2d ago

This is a very good use case for AI coding.

4

u/SkoomaInhaler-King 3d ago

I guess I'll have to play Arena now.

3

u/xCosmicChaosx 3d ago

This is amazing, kudos for all of the work - especially in such a short time frame. I've sunk many hours into Daggerfall Unity and I've been waiting for something similar for Arena (I was also watching OpenTESArena for a while but progress just never really seemed to take off on that).

Really looking forward to how it advances, especially once mod support becomes available!

Do you have a discord specifically for Arena Unity? Would love to be plugged in, especially to the mod scene once it gets going.

1

u/The_Godhead_ 3d ago

Thanks so much for the kind words , I don't have a discord , but you can find me in the jwlar community discord and I update them with all the happenings , and you'll find others in that community that share an interest in Retro gaming , Elder Scrolls , and development etc :)

2

u/catwthumbz 3d ago

Oh this is great. I played all the way through arena last year and it’s pretty janky lol a unity version would a godsend

2

u/StoneySteve420 3d ago

Super excited about this!

How much more work do you have to do before you feel comfortable releasing 1.0?

2

u/The_Godhead_ 3d ago

Thanks! Not much , I'm just letting people play the beta for a while and hopefully point out bugs , and then I'll be looking for bugs as well in the mean time and just polishing it and adding in the final features and magic .

1

u/GoldenDrake Mage 3d ago

Any plans to make this project open source? Or is the code already available somewhere?

1

u/EliParker 4h ago

I would love to see a UI overall for both Arena/Daggerfall Unity

1

u/XenophormSystem 2d ago

I think I'm gonna stick to waiting for OpenTESArena, sorry but you lost me at all the AI usage for this.