DFO Online

DFO Online - an open-source reimplementation of a classic 1996 RPG, played from your own copy of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. It began as a 1:1 port of Daggerfall Unity (MIT, Interkarma and contributors) and is now its own game: Daggerfall Unity is the reference for its data layer and logic, not a target to match. Presentation rebuilt on hand-rolled WebGL2. MIT licensed, with Daggerfall Unity's notice alongside (LICENSE). DFO Online is an independent, unofficial project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Bethesda Softworks or ZeniMax Media. The Elder Scrolls and Daggerfall are trademarks of ZeniMax Media Inc.

The project's working name in the docs and the code is project-dagger, and the repository, the live domain, the servers and the desktop app's identifier still carry the old daggerfall spellings - renaming those is a move outside this tree (BR1, BR5).

Play it: https://daggerfalljs.dev/

The site is index.html (what it is, how to play, credits); the game is play/index.html, served at /play/. Both deploy from main to GitHub Pages. The landing page takes its palette and fonts from the enhanced skin at build (scripts/landingHtml.mjs) and carries no game data or imagery.

Docs live in bible/ - start at bible/Home.md.

Original game data (ARENA2) is required and never committed. Point tests at it with ARENA2_PATH.

Support development

DFO Online is free and open source. Active development currently costs about $600 per month to sustain across development tooling, multiplayer infrastructure, testing, builds, releases, and mod compatibility work.

Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/dfenhanced

Support on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/daggerfallonline

The monthly goal, suggested support levels, and funding breakdown are in SUPPORT.md. Sponsorship does not lock gameplay, source code, or normal releases behind a paywall.

Scripts

Node 20.19+ or 22.12+ (Vite 8's floor; CI runs 22).

• npm run dev - Vite dev server
• npm test - Node test runner
• npm run build - production build
• npm run lint - eslint over src/ (no-undef, no-dupe-keys, ...)
• npm run check - lint + test + build (pre-push gate)
• npm run cites [-- --apply | -- --check] - write a line number cited into our code as an anchor, file.js:"the line's text", and resolve every anchor (tools/citeAnchor.mjs)
• npm run shot [out.png] - headless render proof (needs ARENA2_PATH + provisioned Chromium)
• node tools/landingProbe.mjs - the landing page and /play/ in a real browser, no ARENA2 needed
• node tools/verify-deploy.mjs - after a push: proves the live /play/ serves your commit

Desktop app

app/ is the downloadable build: an Electron shell that loads the same dist/ the website deploys and adds what a browser can't - saves as real files (DFU's own layout: Saves/SAVE/SaveData.txt + SaveInfo.txt + Screenshot.jpg, settings under Prefs/) and ARENA2 read straight from your folder on disk (found for you on first run, or picked once - no ingest, no diet, full sky sets). The browser build is unchanged; the storage seam is src/systems/appStorage.js.

npm run build && cd app && npm install && npm start

The app opens on a launcher (app/launcher/), the game's front door: the latest patch notes (what came since you last played marked NEW), your game files, saves and update settings, and a big Play. It checks for an update and brings it before you play - the game's own files, only those that changed, on every platform; a release that changes the app itself is installed by the Windows -setup install and the Linux AppImage, and offered as a download on macOS and the portable exe - and on first run finds Daggerfall - on Steam, GOG, in Daggerfall Unity's settings, or an unpacked DaggerfallGameFiles.zip. An update that lands mid-session is told in the game and waits under File > Restart to Update (on macOS and the portable exe, File > Download v...).

npm run dist in app/ packages installers. Every push to main builds them for all three OSes and publishes them as ONE GitHub Release (.github/workflows/release-desktop.yml: staged as a draft, published whole once every OS built) at app-v.. - the version is derived from the commit, never bumped by hand - with the ## Patch notes of every pull request it brings as its notes (written in the PR description, never as a file in the tree). The files carry no version in their names, so releases/latest/download/DFO-Online-win-x64-setup.exe (and -mac-arm64.dmg, -linux-x86_64.AppImage) is always the newest, and the landing page links each directly. Pushing a tag shaped app-v* cuts one by hand. Details in bible/01-Overview/Desktop-App.md; headless proof: xvfb-run -a node tools/appShellProbe.mjs (point DAGGER_SHELL_EXE at a packaged binary to prove an installer's payload). The packaged app bundles NO game data - same doctrine as the site.