July 23rd, 2016:

The game world is currently a barebones test city with some textured blocks, stone arches, and day/night cycles. No jumping, collision, or sprites yet (they're only in my test project). A few of the menus work, including most of character creation.

Here are some hotkeys in the game world:

• Tab - character sheet and inventory
• M - world map (click on provinces for province maps)
• L - logbook
• N - automap

I'm currently trying to catch back up to the state of the world shown in these preview images, since the project is now aiming to use original data exclusively instead of tool-extracted images from applications like WinArena. The graphics engine is in development and is only partially implemented here.

This open-source project aims to be a modern reimplementation of "The Elder Scrolls I: Arena" by Bethesda Softworks. It is being written in C++11 and uses SDL2 for cross-platform video, OpenAL Soft and WildMIDI for sound, and OpenCL for 3D rendering. There is currently support for Windows and Linux.

The concept began after I saw the success of other open-source projects like OpenXcom and OpenMW. It really started out more as an experiment than a remake, but now the project is steadily inching closer to something akin to the original.

It's named OpenTESArena so there's less confusion with the Quake III-based OpenArena.

Open a pull request if you'd like to contribute.

Get the latest data and options folders here (last updated July 16th).

• Download the Full Game from the Bethesda website.
• Extract Arena106Setup.zip.
• Run Arena106.exe.
• Pick a destination folder anywhere.
• Install.

• Suggested: eawpats12_full.tar.gz (I use 7-Zip for extracting it on Windows).
• Copy timidity.cfg from eawpats\winconfig on Windows or eawpats\linuxconfig on Linux up one folder into eawpats.
• The lines with dir in timidity.cfg may need to be ignored for the right directories to be used (for example, dir c:\timidity becomes #dir c:\timidity and dir c:\eawpats becomes #dir c:\eawpats).

• OpenAL Soft 1.17.2
• OpenCL 1.2 (AMD, Nvidia) - use cl2.hpp header from OpenCL 2.0
• SDL2 2.0.4
• SDL2_image 2.0.1 (this dependency will be removed eventually)
• WildMIDI 0.4.0

• Build the components static library (i.e., components.lib) separately using the files in the components folder.
• If necessary, edit the Visual Studio project's include and library directories to fit your computer.
• Link to the developer libraries and components library and build the executable.

• Put the data and options folders, as well as any dependencies (SDL2.dll, wildmidi_dynamic.dll, etc.), in the executable directory.
• Verify that Soundfont and DataPath in options\options.txt point to valid locations on your computer (i.e., data\eawpats\timidity.cfg and data\ARENA respectively).

If there is a bug or technical problem in the program, check out the issues tab!

This project is early in development.

Baseline features to do:

• Load original assets
• Character creation
• Game world interface and buttons (some hotkeys already work)
• Graphics engine using OpenCL
• Free-look camera
• Music and sound using OpenAL Soft
• Random test cities and dungeons
• Sprites
• Collision detection
• Weapon attacks (eventually hold right mouse button to swing)

Later features:

• Automap
• Character faces (currently just DOSBox captures)
• Class traits (spell point multiplier, knight auto-repairing, etc.)
• Click to move and turn
• Enemies
• Inventory
• Weapon and armor overlays
• Levels and experience
• Options menu (just options.txt for now)

Some of these features are being left until later either because the original data is not accessible, they're simply too complex to mess with at this stage, or they're new ideas to consider.

Original features:

• City and dungeon data
• Loading/saving
• Quests
• Spells
• Wandering people
• Wilderness

New features:

• Custom class creation
• Followers
• Left click to attack
• New Imperial race
• New journal tabs
• New stores

The 3D graphics are being done with a ray tracer I am writing in OpenCL. Test versions show it functioning decently on high-end graphics cards, but there are still many optimizations that can be done. As it is fairly experimental, I can't guarantee that the graphics engine will run well either on low-end computers or in CPU mode. I suggest using a modern GPU.

I puzzled for a long time about whether to use a ray tracer or OpenGL, or even just a software renderer, and I finally decided that this would be a good place to show that real time ray tracing can be done in some games today. Arena looked like a good game to experiment with graphics-wise due to its low geometry count.

I've also considered replacing all of the geometry with rectangles instead of triangles. This would theoretically speed up rendering by 2x, but it would make integrating any kind of traditional rendering like OpenGL more involved if I ever consider adding that option in the future.

All of the music and sound files, as well as the vast majority of wall and sprite textures, are available to look at thanks to exporter programs like WinArena and other utilities. However, this project will still use the original files that came with the floppy disk version of Arena.

Here is the Unofficial Elder Scrolls website for information regarding the original game. I also recommend the Lazy Game Review on YouTube for a (humorous) overview of the game's history and gameplay. The Arena manual PDF is available here as well.