The Elder Scrolls: Chapter II - Daggerfall
Ad Blurbs
Steam [ add images ]
From the Steam store page.
Elderscrolls.com [ add images ]
available here (June 2016)
Bethesda Softworks website, 1997 [ add images ]
Images originally available at: http://www.bethsoft.com/html/dagpm1.html (page archived by the Wayback Machine). Captions in brackets are inferred from the respective file names.
(Mages Guild 1)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-05-05
(Mages Guild 2)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-05-05
(Mages Guild 3)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-05-05
(Palace)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-05-05
(Royal Court)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-05-05
(Ruins)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-05-05
(Sentinel 1)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-05-05
(Sentinel 2)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-05-05
(Sunset 1)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-05-05
(Sunset 2)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-05-05
(Castle Daggerfall)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-06-23
(Desert)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-06-23
(Distant Mountains)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-06-23
(Manor Ruins)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-06-23
(Pines)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-06-23
(Sunrise)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-06-23
(Sunrise 2)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-06-23
(Sunset)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-06-23
(Coven)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Direnni Tower)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Dungeon Room)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Lycanthrope)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Lysandus' Tomb)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Orc Hall)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Orc Palace)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Orc Palace 2)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Scourg Barrow)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Scourg Barrow 2)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Scourg Barrow 3)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Sentinel Palace)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Shedungent)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Wayrest Palace)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Woodborne Hall)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
(Woodborne Hall 2)
Screenshot originally published on 1996-07-27
Virgin Interactive Entertainment UK website, 1998 [ add images ]
Images originally available at: http://www.vie.co.uk/products/daggfall/daggfram.htm (page archived by the Wayback Machine).
Pre-release demo version, 1995-11-09 [ add images ]
Images included with the early demo version of the game.
Splash screen shown upon exit from the demo. Artwork by Mark Jones. The same image was shown at Bethesda's website.
Computer Gaming Review (CGR) feature, 1996-06-21 - Character Animations [ add images ]
Images originally available at: http://www.nuke.com/cgr/features/9606/gifs.htm (page archived by the Wayback Machine).
Computer Gaming Review (CGR) feature, 1996-06-21 - NPCs (Non-Player Characters) [ add images ]
Images originally available at: http://www.nuke.com/cgr/features/9606/npc.htm (page archived by the Wayback Machine).
Computer Gaming Review (CGR) feature, 1996-06-21 - Screen Shots [ add images ]
Images originally available at: http://www.nuke.com/cgr/features/9606/screens1.htm (page archived by the Wayback Machine).
Fan site, 1998-05-11 [ add images ]
Images found on a fan site at: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Dungeon/7027/7027nf.html and http://geocities.com/TimesSquare/Dungeon/7027/dfall.html (pages archived by the Wayback Machine). The screenshots appear to come straight from Bethesda's website.
MJonesGraphics.com - Daggerfall Logo [ add images ]
Images originally available at: http://www.mjonesgraphics.com/daglogo.html
Concept Sketches - Logo 00
Concept Sketches Some of the initial designs for the "D". The dragons forms the hilt of the dagger, and in turn the dagger formed the "D"
Concept Sketches - Logo 01
Concept Sketches Some of the initial designs for the "D". The dragons forms the hilt of the dagger, and in turn the dagger formed the "D"
Concept Sketches - Logo 02
Concept Sketches Some of the initial designs for the "D". The dragons forms the hilt of the dagger, and in turn the dagger formed the "D"
Concept Sketches - Logo 03
Concept Sketches Some of the initial designs for the "D". The dragons forms the hilt of the dagger, and in turn the dagger formed the "D"
Concept Sketches - Logo 06
Once the Dagger had been designed I came up with a few ideas for the text of the logo. Here a some early examples
Concept Sketches - Logo 08
Various fonts were tried. Finally one was create from scratch in Alias. This sped any changes that were required as just a re-render was needed after each alteration. The hilt was created in Painter and pasted onto a "card" in Alias. I wanted the font to have a blade like look to it, which is why I have the edges beveled like a blade.
Original
Here's the first attempt at the font (above). This was felt to be too unreadable. To the marketing minds it didn't shout out across a crowded store. The "A" was especially problematic in this respect.
Spine Logo
The original spine logo with the earlier version of the dragon and a more uniform typeface to enable it to fit onto the spine of the box.
Final
The final version, sans veins, and more "D" like.
Original
Below the original with wing vanes
The Daggerfall Knife
In the midst of all this Bethesda's publisher in Europe, Virgin, needed artwork for their ad campaign. The original design was at that time the one Bethesda was going to use and this was the one Virgin received. As part of their campaign they had a paper knife designed in the same of the logo. After a quick call to Virgin a package arrived a few days later in the mail with my knife. Here's a couple of views.
Here's a closeup of the knife's hilt
In the midst of all this Bethesda's publisher in Europe, Virgin, needed artwork for their ad campaign. The original design was at that time the one Bethesda was going to use and this was the one Virgin received. As part of their campaign they had a paper knife designed in the same of the logo. After a quick call to Virgin a package arrived a few days later in the mail with my knife. Here's a couple of views.
The European cover
The US Cover
Final cover logo
The original box
Early design concept for Daggerfall box.
MJonesGraphics.com - Daggerfall [ add images ]
Images originally available at: http://www.mjonesgraphics.com/dagger.html
The above image is meant to represent the inside of a mage's tower. It's intended to tie together all the Elder Scrolls titles. This is where the scrolls are held. Part of the model is reused in the Redguard intro, so keep your eyes peeled!
Lysandus' spirit is finally put to rest.
The image on the right comes from an animation in which Lysandus and his skeletal spirit army are blown away by some magical wind. During work on the animation the design for castle Daggerfall in the background was changed and the model had to redone!
The Death Sequence
If you've ever played Daggerfall you've seen this scene a few times. The Death sequence. You body is bourn by mages to your final resting place as a crow watches over. The mage modeling and animation is mine, as is the lighting and texturing. The crypt and landscape was modeled by Dave Plunkett. Tamriel's twin moons, Masser and Secunda, look down on the somber proceedings.
Mage
Here to the right is a larger version of the mage/druid.
Horse
Although never used in the game the horse and rider was going to feature heavily in the game with combat on horses, and jousting. Like many other things it never made it. The original model I made was terrible! A fact that I was pointed out to me by Judy Weller, a tester for Bethesda. I remember she would come in daily to check my changes! I have to thank Judy for her criticisms though, the final result is much better and I was pleased to have it go in the game. It didn't of course, but what's an artist to do!?
Horse
It actually made it to the final CD and was on the back of the box until very late in the day. If you take a look at any of the old advertising for Daggerfall you'll find the shot. Oh well...Perhaps Morrowind will implement it. What could have been. Daggerfall was an exceptionally ambitious game. We all hoped and believed these horses would make the final cut. This is an early screen. The skies would later be replaced with some i created in Alias.
Horse - Galloping
This is how I imagined the horse and rider in game. It would have been great to have that extra fluidity in the game, but despite creating the animation, having that all fit within memory was really never going to happen. I had multiple riders, in all combinations of clothes and armor, male and female, all rendered out in multiple directions. I would set it all up during the day, write a bunch of batch files and let the SGI render over night. Next day I would come in and start the task of 'Sprite'n'izing' them all.
The Lich king's tomb.
This was also used on Bethesda's first website, which itself was modeled on a small Tamriel town, with each area representing a different aspect of the site. I forget what the tomb represented. If anyone out there still has any of the other images I would be very grateful if you could send me a copy! Most of the graphics that were not used in Daggerfall are gone forever, such as the real time 3D dragon, although it's skin still remains on the Daggerfall disk for all those with Andypic out there!
The Lich king's tomb.
Lysandus Awakes. A major plot point in the game where the spirit of lysandus is roused from his eternal slumber and sets you on a quest. from scratch again.
Skeleton
The model of the skeleton was from viewpoint datalabs. We were concerned that all teh assets would not be completed on time, and so to save time we used a pre exisiting model, with modificatiosn. later, for Morrowind I would create a new Skeleton, and I beleive it might even have found it's way into Oblivion after that. For a long time the skeletons in Daggerfall were hand-drawn. Players of Daggerfall may notice the strange mix of hand drawn and rendered characters. Originally after some disappointing experiments with 3D characters in Arena it was decided to use 2D for Daggerfall. After some new tests were done with the SGI's and Alias, 3D was again chosen. By that time over half the monsters had been drawn in 2D and so we set about creating them
In-game screen
And here's the skeleton in game. I was responsible for the first person weapons and spell attacks. The background textures here were some I worked on, and well as the UI graphics. There were many MANY artists involved in Daggerfall. I think this screen is one of the rare instances where everything you see on screen I worked on.
A closer look at some of the many textures I created for Daggerfall. I bring your attention to this one, as I think it shows my 'old' pixel style quite well. Daggerfall was a transition time for me, moving from pixel work to 3D.
Character Work
As a general rule standing characters were created as traditional hand drawn sprites. Characters that would be seen from multiple angles and were able to walk were developed as 3D characters and then rendered out as sprites, with touch ups as necessary. Hand creating this characters from very angle would be a huge amount of work. I mostly handled the 3D characters but I did created a few traditional style characters too. Here's one, and again it represents my pixel style at that point in time. This was created early on. Later the hand drawn sprites were doubled in size, but this fella stayed true to his pixel roots!
The Dreugh
Pictured on the left, was one of the last characters to be designed. We decided that there was not enough variety in the underwater creatures so the dreugh was added to "pep" things up a bit. Its original design came from a sketch by Mark Jackson, who also worked on sketch work for Battlespire and Redguard. Once a Bethesda employee he left after Daggerfall to become freelance once again.
Centaur
The horse may not have made it into the game but the 3D mesh was used to design the centaur to the right. All of the Daggerfall characters were animated with at least 16 frames for each cycle. Unfortunately most of that animation had to be cut out to fit the graphics into the game. The high frame graphics are now lost as Bethesda has changed networks since that time and a complete backup was not made.
Frost and Fire Daedras
The fire Daedra, as does the Frost Daedra below, makes extensive use of Alias' particle system. It looked so nice in the test renders! Again due to the every present memory restraints it had to be chopped back quite a bit. Both characters went on later to reappear in Battlespire, although by then they will have doubled in size, and have more frames. Still that was not enough for many who thought that they still appeared too "pixelated".
Frost and Fire Daedras
The fire Daedra, as does the Frost Daedra below, makes extensive use of Alias' particle system. It looked so nice in the test renders! Again due to the every present memory restraints it had to be chopped back quite a bit. Both characters went on later to reappear in Battlespire, although by then they will have doubled in size, and have more frames. Still that was not enough for many who thought that they still appeared too "pixelated".
The gargoyle
This was one of the first creatures I designed for Daggerfall. In its original rendering it was far more human like, and much less threatening. With the ever shifting Daggerfall deadline it became obvious that the artists were going to have much longer to tweak the graphics than we had anticipated . So I decided to go ahead and redo the graphic, and tweak many more.
Orc Witch Doctor
This character, a variation on the standard Orc, was completed late in Daggerfall's development. By the time I had a better grasp of modeling, texturing and lighting so I believe that this is one of my favourite characters from Daggerfall. Bare in mind that all the human-like figures that you see here are based on a model I made after only two weeks of using Alias. They were later refined for Battlespire, I gave them fingers and better proportioned bodies, but I always felt that I should just find the time to redo them completely. Unfortunately on Daggerfall the schedule only allowed at Maximum 2 days for a character, including modeling, animating, rendering, and finally getting the graphics into a format that the programmers could use.
Druid A
The 3D rendered characters started life as fairly detailed models. They were never meant to be seen large, so no fingers and toes, and other small details such as buttons, but we could add pockets and belt buckles, which could still hold up to viewing at a small size. The frames available were cut back to save memory, here are a couple that show the original walk animation before we cut them down to 4 frames. What these animations show is the effect of light coming from the druids' staffs and interacting with the clothing. This get somewhat lost in the in-game animations.
Druid B
The 3D rendered characters started life as fairly detailed models. They were never meant to be seen large, so no fingers and toes, and other small details such as buttons, but we could add pockets and belt buckles, which could still hold up to viewing at a small size. The frames available were cut back to save memory, here are a couple that show the original walk animation before we cut them down to 4 frames. What these animations show is the effect of light coming from the druids' staffs and interacting with the clothing. This get somewhat lost in the in-game animations.
Winged Seducer
The winged Seducer test animation. AS with all the graphics animation frames had to be radically reduced to make way for all the graphics. So the horse and this seducer were never seen in game in this way. It's nice to be able to show some of this stuff off now after all these years. One little thing... I did complete a 3D dragon for Daggerfall. A low polygon model, animated and textured. All that remains of that are some rogue textures and this animation, which I used as a basis for the wing flap.
Daedra Seducer
Her she is. Not too bad detail wise. This was late in Daggerfall production. The combination of 3D and 2D touch up working quite well. Soon after we began to work on purely 3D games, I worked on Terminator: Skynet and it's interesting to compare the sprites here and the low polygon character work there. Battlespire was the last of these sprite based 3D games. Redguard was produced at the same time and I think works better graphically. I was very fortunate to have worked on all those projects. Very fortunate indeed.
SCORE Magazine CD, February 1996 [ add images ]
Images published on the cover CD of the Czech gaming magazine SCORE (issue #26, February 1996). The date stamps on the image files are from 2 February 1996.
Box cover art
Character faces
Character faces
Character faces
Character faces
SCORE Magazine CD, April 1996 [ add images ]
Images published on the cover CD of the Czech gaming magazine SCORE (issue #28, April 1996). The date stamps on the image files are from 2 April 1996.
Character faces
Character faces
Magazine Advertisements [ add images ]
Computer Gaming World (US), Issue 130 (May 1995)
Computer Gaming World (US), Issue 135 (October 1995)
PC Player (Germany), Issue 02/1997
PC Gamer (U.S.), Issue 28 (September, 1996)
PC Gamer (USA), Issue 11/1996
Official screenshots, art and magazine advertisements are considered promos.
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