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Aaron edited this page Nov 30, 2017 · 69 revisions

What is OpenTESArena?

OpenTESArena is an open-source engine re-implementation for the game "The Elder Scrolls: Arena" by Bethesda Softworks, being developed from scratch in modern C++. It requires a copy of the original data from the floppy disk version to run (available on the Bethesda website here).

Documentation about the technical details behind Arena is either hard to find or non-existent, so for decoding many of the original file formats, either researching patterns in the data itself or adapting other existing open-source tools is necessary. Thankfully, the Arena manual is an excellent resource for understanding the game's rules and design.

Scope

This is a rough list of features acting as the long-term roadmap. Features may be added, removed, or iterated on as time goes by, so they might come and go from here depending on how the project is progressing.

Current priority (~0.5.0 - ~0.6.0):

  • Load original city/dungeon data

Next priority (~0.6.0 - ~0.10.0):

  • Better pop-up functionality (chain pop-ups together, yes/no buttons)
  • Character creation questions
  • Clicking in game world
  • Collision detection
  • Doors and secret walls
  • More entities (animating sprites, enemies)
  • More game interface button behavior (spells, steal, use item, camp)
  • More software rendering functionality (distant sky, lights, occlusion arrays, ...)

Later (~0.10.0 - ...):

  • Automap notes
  • Class rules and traits
  • Inventory and containers
  • Levels and experience
  • Load artifact data
  • Water rendering and shading (darkness and fog)
  • Wandering people
  • Wilderness (seed-based chunk generation)

Outside scope (until more things are implemented):

  • (new) Custom class creation
  • (new) Followers
  • (new) Journal tabs (player statistics, etc.)
  • Loading/saving
  • Localization
  • Modding
  • (new) New kinds of stores
  • Pickpocketing
  • Quests (main quest, random quests)
  • Reflections in windows and water
  • Scripting
  • Services (bartender, priest, shopkeeper, wizard)
  • Spells
  • Sprite variation (clothes/hair/skin colors)
  • (new) UI scale
  • Vulkan

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