The Elder Scrolls: Arena remake gets Jolt Physics and big new features

OpenTESArena is an in-development open source game engine remake of The Elder Scrolls: Arena, with a big new release out now as the developer continues working towards making it actually playable.

Being fully playable is still a while away though, going by their current progress a lot of the main gameplay mechanics simply haven't been put in yet. Another fun project for preserving another classic though.

Speaking about the release the developer said: "This release brings greatly-improved player movement thanks to the addition of Jolt Physics. The player can now climb out of chasms, jump, and swim. Other baseline gameplay features such as hit registering, killable enemies (w/o AI), item pickup, and using keys on doors allow the starting dungeon to now be considered minimum-playable. Rendering performance is still below average and more optimizations are planned."

Check out their release overview video below:

YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view. View cookie preferences.
Accept Cookies & Show   Direct Link

The main new additions for this release:

New features and changes

• Jolt Physics integration
• Minimum-playable starting dungeon
  • Key can be obtained and used on cell door
  • Enemies can be killed (no AI or combat calculation yet)
  • Corpses and treasure can be looted (equipping not implemented yet)
• Click to attack with right mouse button in modern interface mode
• Citizen name generation
• Citizens can be killed (crime not implemented yet)
• Baseline support for original item definitions
• Locked treasure chests can be bashed open
• Locked doors can be bashed open (magically-locked doors not implemented)
• Attribute allocation and stats in character creation (values not gameplay-functional yet) (@libertus21)
• Player gold
• Player can now die from lava and drowning
• Player can now fall to the ground from exhaustion and may die depending on the location
• Indoor walking sound and swimming sound
• Swimming music
• Fanfare now plays when picking up quest items (quests not implemented yet)
• Player camera can now look straight up and down without breaking math (@libertus21)
• VOC sound file repairing feature (data/audio/VocRepair.txt). Removes several pops/clicks in original audio, eventually to be replaced by mods
• Modern interface reticle
• Gameplay clock modding (data/Clocks.txt)
• Convenient Windows batch file in windows/setup_OpenTESArena.bat for installing Visual Studio toolchain and building from source (@libertus21)