OpenTESArena

This is an in-progress modern open-source engine for the 1994 DOS game The Elder Scrolls: Arena by Bethesda Softworks. The goal is to replicate all aspects of the original game with a clean-room approach while making quality-of-life changes along the way. Details on Arena's inner-workings can be found in the wiki. No game assets are distributed.

Current status

No actual gameplay yet, but all locations and interiors can be accessed. Citizens wander around but can't be interacted with. Collision detection is barebones and needs work. Character creation works but class questions and player attributes are not implemented.

Controls:

• WASD - move and turn. Hold LCtrl to strafe.
• Esc - pause menu
• Tab - character sheet
• F - draw/sheathe weapon
• G - hold and click voxel to destroy
• L - logbook
• M - world map
• N - automap
• V - status
• F2 - player position
• F4 - debug profiler
• PrintScreen - screenshot

Playing OpenTESArena

Windows

Download The Elder Scrolls: Arena on Steam

• Alternate downloads: GOG, Bethesda website

Download OpenTESArena

1. Get latest Windows build
2. Extract the .zip

Copy game assets path (skip if Steam library is default C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\)

1. In your Steam library, right-click The Elder Scrolls: Arena then select Manage -> Browse local files
2. Open ARENA folder then highlight the current directory path and copy with Ctrl+C
3. Back in the OpenTESArena release folder, open options/options-default.txt and paste the game directory after ArenaPaths=
   • Example: ArenaPaths=C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\The Elder Scrolls Arena\ARENA

Music (optional)

1. Download eawpats
2. Extract the .zip
3. Move the extracted eawpats folder inside the OpenTESArena data folder
   • If you'd like a different sound patches library like OPL3, edit the value of MidiConfig in options/options-default.txt so it points to the MIDI .cfg file for that library

Run otesa.exe

Common issues

• Missing MSVCP141.dll error
  • Download and run latest X64 vc_redist.x64.exe from Microsoft
• No sound, alcOpenDevice() warnings
  • Download OpenAL 1.1 Windows Installer (zip) and run oalinst.exe

Linux (Debian-based)

Download packages

sudo apt-get install wget unzip rar

Download The Elder Scrolls: Arena from Bethesda website

wget https://cdnstatic.bethsoft.com/elderscrolls.com/assets/files/tes/extras/Arena106Setup.zip

Download OpenTESArena

Replace <version> with the latest build number (#.##.#) and <arch> with an architecture (x86-64, rpi4) available on the Releases page.

wget https://github.com/afritz1/OpenTESArena/releases/download/opentesarena-<version>/opentesarena-<version>-linux_<arch>.tar.gz
tar xvzf opentesarena-<version>-linux_<arch>.tar.gz

Extract game assets

cd opentesarena-<version>-linux_<arch>/data
unzip ../../Arena106Setup.zip
rar x Arena106.exe

Music (optional)

1. Download eawpats
2. Extract the .tar.gz
3. Move the extracted eawpats folder inside the OpenTESArena data folder
   • If you'd like a different sound patches library like OPL3, edit the value of MidiConfig in options/options-default.txt so it points to the MIDI .cfg file for that library

Run OpenTESArena

cd ..
./run.sh

macOS

Download The Elder Scrolls: Arena

1. Get the full game from the Bethesda website
2. Extract Arena106Setup.zip
3. Arena106.exe is a self-extracting RAR file. Use a tool such as The Unarchiver to extract it into a folder of data files

Install OpenTESArena

1. Download the latest macOS build
2. Open the .dmg and copy otesa.app to the Applications folder or another location you prefer
3. Right-click on the .app and choose "Show Package Contents"
4. Navigate to Contents/Resources/data and copy in the files for Arena that you extracted earlier

Run OpenTESArena

1. Return to the Applications folder or wherever you have the app installed and open otesa.app. If you have Gatekeeper turned on (the default for macOS), you will need to do the following:
   1. Right-click on the app and choose "Open"
   2. In the warning that appears saying that it is from an unidentified developer, choose "Open"
   3. The app will start. In the future, you can just double-click on the app without having to go through these steps

Options files

options-changes.txt is created in your user prefs folder the first time OpenTESArena runs and stores values that differ from the ones in options-default.txt.

• Windows: <username>/AppData/Roaming/OpenTESArena/options/
• Linux: ~/.config/OpenTESArena/options/
• macOS: ~/Library/Preferences/OpenTESArena/options/

Building OpenTESArena from source

Install third-party tools and libraries

• Git
• CMake
• OpenAL Soft 1.19.1
• SDL 2.0.10
• WildMIDI 0.4.4 (required for music)

sudo apt-get install git g++ cmake libsdl2-dev libopenal-dev libwildmidi-dev

Download source code

git clone https://github.com/afritz1/OpenTESArena
cd OpenTESArena

Build OpenTESArena

• Navigate to the root of the repository
• Use CMake to generate your project file. In a Unix terminal, the commands might look like:

  mkdir build
  cd build
  cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=<?> ..
  make -j8

  where CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE is one of Debug|ReleaseGenericNoLTO|ReleaseGeneric|ReleaseNative
  • For maximum compatibility, use ReleaseGeneric
  • For maximum speed only compatible with your specific CPU, use ReleaseNative
• Note: by default, Jolt Physics enables vector instructions (SSE, AVX, etc.) which will cause runtime errors if your CPU doesn't support them. You can set these to OFF in CMake (more information).

Running OpenTESArena

• Copy the data and options folders from the project's root folder to the same directory as the game executable (this should be fixed in the future with a post-build command)
• Make sure that MidiConfig and ArenaPaths in the options file point to valid locations on your computer (i.e., data/eawpats/timidity.cfg and data/ARENA respectively)

Other guides:

• Building with Visual Studio (Windows)
• Building with MSYS2 (Windows)

Contributing

Check out CONTRIBUTING.md for details on how to assist with development.

Resources

• Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages - a great resource for information about Arena
• Various tools like WinArena and BSATool for browsing Arena's assets
• The Elder Scrolls: Arena manual