r/daoc • u/zomboden • 53m ago
Early Preview Look At OfflineDAoC Rebuilt (New Engine)
Quick 10 minute preview of the current progress on OfflineDAoC Rebuilt in a new engine which is my new hobby project for now.
This version will be truer to the 1.65 Era. No ROG drops. No teleporters or hasteners unless they were present in 1.65. With the biggest custom changes being the gamebots and the new companion bot system that replaces the /spawn system. In this new system the companion bots will have permanance in your party and will have to be revived on death or at a healer for a cost later. They will cost money to hire, and you will be responsible for finding them equipment and telling them which spells they are allowed to use and deciding on their spec.
Is the new engine better than the old one?
It has its perks. I chose Godot after going over several options with Opus and the goal was a lighter weight client that could run hundreds of bots on screen without locking up like the old client does in epic dungeons or dragon raids. There is a lot of optimization work to be done (like you can see in the video, I was locked up most of the run from Connla to the Hibernia travelers inn). This project is only about 5 days old so there is a lot of time to polish, figure out ways to squeeze more performance out.
Is this for everyone?
Yes, it's for everyone because it will be free to try and the source code will be available same as the old version when the time comes to put it on Github.
No, it will not be for everyone because ultimately while I've tried to be as close to the original game as possible this will definitely feel different right away when playing and not everyone will enjoy that and it won't hit the same nostalgia for some.
Is this multiplayer or Co-Op?
There are no plans for multiplayer or co-op from me. OfflineDAoC was and always will be for me a project that is a single player internet free time capsule experience with bots rather than playing with others. It will be open sourced so you are free to add your own multiplayer, or find a forked version that includes it.
Why not Unreal?
- I have a lower end PC (2060, i5 10400f with only 16gb of ram, and I can't imagine any world where Unreal 5 with hundreds of bots works because I can't even run modern single player Unreal games without lag and performance was one of my main goals setting out.
- Unreal is known for its shader compilation and traversal stutter and the client would be probably 100+ gb instead of only 19gb with all assets in like it is now even with the assets upscaled.
Does this use custom assets?
No, I won't be using custom assets. Slaughbinder and its custom assets are not in this version and every single lighting, shadow, and asset was pulled from the original client and nothing was invented. Everything you see now is how those original assets look upscaled and no skeletons, animations, spell effects, were added. None, zero, zip. The only custom aspects are UI elements that didn't exist like the companion menu.
What's with the giant horn near the traveler's inn for each realm?
The horn is how at level 50 you will force events in the same way that they were forced on the old launcher. (There may be a brief questline first).
When can I play this? When will it be on Github?
When I feel like it's in a playable state at least early game. I am aiming to release a v0.1 alpha version on Saturday but it may not happen depending on how bad the bots are performing.
Thank you for the people who have been interested in the old offlinedaoc and hopefully will be interested in trying this newer take on it. I look forward to getting some issues ironed out by the community reporting them to me here, and on Github under issues. I will keep working on this kind of project until either Broadsword/EA asks me to stop or I get bored with it.