Changes from Arx Fatalis

This page documents differences between vanilla Arx Fatalis and Arx Libertatis. Beware that this list may not be complete. For a complete list of changes see the changelog.

Improvements

Gameplay

These changes have been made because we think the original behavior was a bug, but feel that they should be documented nonetheless. When mod support improves some of these changes could become optional.

• 1.1+: Reduced default duration for Protection from fire () and Protection from cold () when cast by NPCs (commit 45b17db)
• 1.1+: Protection from fire () now respects the duration supplied by scripts. (commit 45b17db)
• 1.1+: Changed color of the Protection from fire () aura from to , to make it visually different from the aura of the Armor () spell. (commit 9ef8b9c, commit 65271f9)
• 1.1+: Restored some unused spell sounds. (commit e94d112)
• 1.1+: RAF cheat no longer limits the player's caster level to 1. (commit 84d43e2, commit 44e218a)
• 1.0.3+: Calculated Object knowledge and Projectile skills now include attribute modifiers from items and spells. (commit 93c67fa)

Removed Features

While most of the functionalities were kept intact while porting and cleaning up arx fatalis, some features were no longer relevant or made other improvements harder. Some of these features may be re-added in a future version

Graphics

Gamma correction

Removed in: Arx Libertatis 1.0 (commit 3ad44dc)
Prognosis: Will be re-added (feature request #254)
Preserved in: gamma branch

Vanilla Arx Fatalis had options for screen brightness, luminosity and contrast. This was removed in Arx Libertatis because we couldn't get it working reliably across platforms. Some kind of brightness option needs to be re-added, possibly as a post-processing shader in order to also work in windowed mode.

X.Org bug | SDL bug

"Bump mapping"

Removed in: Arx Libertatis 1.0 (commit b16ef98)
Prognosis: Will be replaced by proper bump/normal mapping (feature request #67)

Arx Fatalis does not ship with bump maps, but the original game used a grayscale version of the normal diffuse textures and texture combine operators to approximate the effect. While using this technique could yield some interesting results, in most cases it produced a blurred effect. Should be reimplemented as per pixel bump mapping using shaders.

TODO: Add a screenshot of the effect.

PNUX texture effect

Removed in: Arx Libertatis 1.0 (commit a4b6234)
Prognosis: May be reimplemented as a post-processing effect

Color conversion applied to all textures in the game, resulting in funny looking scenes. Was only used for the PNUX cheat, so in the end it was not worth porting. Would be trivial to implement as a post processing effect.

TODO: Add a screenshot of the effect.

Texture size option

Removed in: Arx Libertatis 1.0 (commit a4b6234, commit 23052d7)
Prognosis: May be reimplemented when needed

Vanilla Arx Fatalis provided the option to downscale larger textures before uploading them to the graphics card, to lower video memory usage. As Arx only has relatively small textures, this option isn't really needed these days. May be re-added once we have higher-resolution textures.

16 bit texture support

Removed in: Arx Libertatis 1.0
Prognosis: He's dead, Jim

Vanilla Arx Fatalis could convert textures to 16-bit before uploading them to the graphics card, to lower video memory usage. This isn't really needed these days, reduces image quality and complicates the code too much.

Interface

Editor mode

Removed in: Arx Libertatis 1.0 (various commits)
Prognosis: Will be replaced (feature request #67)

The released Arx Fatalis 1.21 source code could be compiled to enable a level editor mode. This feature was not available in released Arx Fatalis binaries. The code heavily relied on Microsoft Windows windowing functions and we decided to not attempt to port it. Instead, we plan to create our own editor in a cross-platform toolkit.