Documentary

[jman0war]

Idea (i'm an "ideas guy"just ask my wife)

So i'm just throwing this idea out here as a discussion.
A bit like walking through a garden flinging wild flower seeds and seeing what takes root.

Idea:
A Video Documentary that documents the release of Daggerfall, the online community it gave rise to, the early hacking and modding of DF, the DF Remake attempt (and it's variations including Dungeon Hack), the Bethesda cease and desist, MW relase and TES CS, TES CS mods (that draw from DF themes), Bethesda releasing DF for free, DFWorkshop and DaggerXL projects, and general DF themes and influences that live on.

The purpose of the Documentary would be to firstly inform viewers of the legacy that DF is and then to attract people to the re-makes: chiefly DF Unity and DaggerXL; as contributors, watchers, and supporters, what have you.

My intial thought was to title the Documentary: "Searching for Donald Tipton"
Borrowing from the "searching for Bobby Fischer" movie title.

Why Donald Tipton, and who is he?

Donald Tipton was, along with Dave Humphrey, probably the earliest hacker of DF.
He was highly knowledgeable about DF generally and was a frequent and welcome contributor on alt.games.daggerfall.
One day he was in some sort of heated argument with someone (i can't remember who), the other guy was calling his DF mods and utilities 'crap' and Donald up and left. He posted something along the lines of "I'm done. You'll never see me again!" and that was it.
We never saw him again, ever.

His departure was a great loss and shock to the early DF online community.
I can't help but believe the DF Remake would have come along further and faster had he remained engaged.

Anyway why Donald Tipton?
I suppose he's a sort of enigma.
He had volumes of knowledge about DF, was glad to share it and had a real passion for the game.
It's puzzling that he could shut the door on all that so abruptly.
It would be amusing to find he changed stripes and was here all along under a different guise.
But i don't think that's the case. I think his loss was kind of like being deep, deep in the bowels of some dungeon, you didn't set an Anchor, jumped down a big drop, have no levitaton and can't climb back up, so now you'll have to foot your way out. You can probably get there, it's just going to be a much longer and tougher slog.


But it's probably not a good title for a Documentary, too obscure.
The Documentary would be about DF, the community and it's evolution and Donald was but early and bright spark.
The bigger story is that evolution.
So maybe: Daggerfall - The Documentary

In my imagination it would feature in-person interviews with people that cast some tall shadows like Todd Howard, Ted Peterson, Julian LeFay, Mark Jones, Eric Heberling, Dave Humphrey, InterKarma, people involved in the early Re-Makes etc

Anyway I can dream can't i?
What do you think?


It's quiet around here.

[Interkarma]

It could be an interesting story, I think. Daggerfall has seen a lot of personalities over the years. It may not have the level of mass popularity as more culturally significant video games but it definitely has staying power. For some reason, Daggerfall has attracted more reverse engineering efforts than most other closed-source games of the era.

[tyhender]

It could be an interesting story, I think. Daggerfall has seen a lot of personalities over the years. It may not have the level of mass popularity as more culturally significant video games but it definitely has staying power. For some reason, Daggerfall has attracted more reverse engineering efforts than most other closed-source games of the era.

Are you sure? How about SKYRIM? Hehehe.

[TheLacus]

It could be an interesting story, I think. Daggerfall has seen a lot of personalities over the years. It may not have the level of mass popularity as more culturally significant video games but it definitely has staying power. For some reason, Daggerfall has attracted more reverse engineering efforts than most other closed-source games of the era.

Are you sure? How about SKYRIM? Hehehe.

15 years and 3 sequels later, I'm absolutely positive that Skyrim is not from the same era.

No doubt I would watch that documentary, but I guess it will require a lot of effort to make, and a lot of knowledge about Daggerfall and the history of its community.

Yes, it would!
It would need Brendan on board.

He basically took over the DFMake after Paul Sv left.
Then after the cease and desist (more or less) from Bethesda, he took the project into a new direction - Dungeon Hack.
He posted a pretty detailed history here:
http://dungeonhack.sourceforge.net/Dung ... ty_History

Are you sure? How about SKYRIM? Hehehe.

15 years and 3 sequels later, I'm absolutely positive that Skyrim is not from the same era.

Um,it's pretty much from AD era, I guess =D.

Yes, it would!
It would need Brendan on board.

Hey, that would be great.

I wonder what he has been doing, long time since we know anything about him, at least as far as I can tell.

Story about Donald Tipton actually dame me think he's still out there. I wan't "out there" in so early times, but I think it's obvious he worked on Bethesda with making Daggerfall.

Yes, it would!
It would need Brendan on board.

He basically took over the DFMake after Paul Sv left.
Then after the cease and desist (more or less) from Bethesda, he took the project into a new direction - Dungeon Hack.
He posted a pretty detailed history here:
http://dungeonhack.sourceforge.net/Dung ... ty_History

Sad to see so many of the people mentioned in there vanished at some point never to be heard from again. Also makes me feel super goddamn old that I'm mentioned there from around 2006.

[TheLacus]

I remember this interesting pdf, but i can't remember who posted it here.

http://kultcds.com/Upload/MakingofDaggerfall.pdf

[jman0war]

Taemos

[Hallfiry]

Taemos

And I guess I wrote it and never finished it (thus all the typos, grammar errors, placeholders, etc.)

[jman0war]

Hallfiry?
Wow.

How did you find out these forums?

[Hallfiry]

Hallfiry?
Wow.

How did you find out these forums?

I google for my nickname every now and then, as it's a good indicator for websites discussing my work. A few days ago I saw the forum discussing my PDF and the CES video and so on, but that was right when the forum was down, so I could only read from google's cache. Now a few days later, I can join the fun

[jman0war]

I google for my nickname every now and then, as it's a good indicator for websites discussing my work. A few days ago I saw the forum discussing my PDF and the CES video and so on, but that was right when the forum was down, so I could only read from google's cache. Now a few days later, I can join the fun

Great, i'm sure you'll enjoy having a look around.
InterKarma has really kept the flames of Daggerfall alive though the years with his tools and forum.

Daggerfall left a big impression on me.
I discovered it in the Betony demo that shipped with PC Gamer magazine in 96 i think.
It was the first time i suppose where i found myself standing there in a 1st person perspective game with a really interactive way to swing a sword, and experiencing this sense of the overwhelming size of the game world.
The possibilities, the hidden things, the easter eggs people were finding.. It was awesome.

New TES games just don't ever capture that.

What did you do with Bethesda back then and are you in the games industry today?