General:Mark Jones' Posts

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Mark Jones' Posts
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Interviewee(s) Mark Jones
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These are a few notable comments from Mark Jones on The Elder Scrolls setting. Jones is known as Mark Jones on youtube.

2017[edit]

On the Daggerfall CES Cinematic video (2017-03-01)[edit]

Wow! I haven't seen that in over 20 years! I was lucky enough to have worked on that demo. It IS Julian Lefay and a bunch of other Bethesda employees. Was Todd Howard in that. He may have been! I still have that sword that Julian uses hanging on my wall. I was responsible for the purely 3D stuff, done on an SGI (was State of the art. Unix.) Thanks for digging this up! Mark Jones

Do you have any idea if anyone kept the footage?
It looks like Julian Lefay is portraying King Camaron at the signing of the peace treaty followed by footage of the battle at Cryngaine Field. Both would have been interesting cutscenes to watch in the final game. This also makes it clear why Daggerfall has a live action introduction since Bethesda clearly shot more live action footage that wasn't included in the released game.

it was Julian. much like with Daggerfall itself we aimed very high. we wanted something cinematic. grand. BIG. I'd love to see it again as there was a lot of blood sweat and tears in those few minutes on screen. Bethesda needs an on-site custodian of its history. it's so easy to loose stuff over time. I wish I still worked there but I'm not sure who else is around from those days

Besides Todd Howard of course, I know Bruce Nesmith is still working on the series. He was recently lead designer on Skyrim and quest writer for Fallout 4. As a long time fan of the series, I keep on eye on the credits to see who's working on the games
Oh, and I almost forgot Kurt Kuhlmann.

I've been trying to get 'back in' to Bethesda for bout 10 years or so. I apply every 18 months to 2 years. So far nothing. Fingers always crossed however :) I do know many of the Daggerfall crew did return. Not sure how many 'originals' are there now.

As someone who played the newer Elder Scrolls games first and then went back to the old ones, I was surprised at how unique the world and design of each game was. Daggerfall's 2D sprites and scale, Morrowind's ruins and creatures, it was all amazing! I've even started trying to learn how to use 3D-modeling software and am hoping to use them in Daggerfall Unity when its done.

Daggerfall Unity does look very interesting ! I've been watching it's progess Good luck with the modeling :) It's the most gratifying feeling when you finally get to complete a model and it's here in the 'world'

Daggerfall and Morrowind certainly have 'legs'!. I've some info about those games' creation on my website (www.mjonesgraphics.com), and I think they still resonate so much because of all the hard work and passion that went into them. These were not large teams compared to today's, but what we lacked in number we made up for in that passion.

what software did you use back then?

the world building was inhouse utilties. The character work a ixture of various things depending on artist. I used animator pro for many and then a hybrid of Alias rendred stuff tweaked in Animator Pro after. The style evolved as we progressed. It tok years and 3D artwork was beginning to make its way into many games back then.

how did you learn all these complex programs back then?

yes. But that's just part of the job. There is always new stuff to learn. And really you learn. Subset of each piece of software. Then add more as you go.

what these inhouse world building utilities were look like? What was an inspiration to build them?
did Terminator Future Shock have mouselook control interface in this CES 1995? And how and when this feature was invented?

I cannot help you with that one I'm afraid.

so, you used
this for 3d modelling on SGI Irix:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_Alias
and this for 2d sprite animating on MS-Dos:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_Animator
Right?

yup! (Among others)

"world building was inhouse utilties" - what kind of utilities there was?

it's been An age but we had an in house game engine and utilities were written as needed.

I would like to reimplement these utilities and the game engine so I would like to know a little bit more about how they looked and functioned

it's been a while! I don't think I have the recall to go back that far and give you a description. Might also be against any NDA I might have signed. :)

Any chance your open for art commissions. Loved the stuff on your portfolio!

I have a portfolio? I had to give up on my website after 20 years because I couldn't afford it, and I've unfortunately not been able to get any gaming work for a few years now.

I have a question regarding something 3d related from Morrowind if you don't mind me asking. I made a comparison image of a prerelease shot of a Redguard you put up on your old site, and then an image of what the same character looks like in the release of the game: https://i.imgur.com/l5Vp6DV.png In my opinion, the prerelease one looks a bit better, and so it makes me wonder why the model was changed to what it ended up releasing as. Also, just out of curiosity, do you remember if the human race heads were based on any real life people, like celebrities or friends? I see some similarities to some celebs but it could just be coincidence. Thanks in advance.

I can't say why they are different . Perhaps things had to be streamlined a d so polygons were reduced along with texture sizes. As for the human heads I remember using lots of references , something a learned form Louise Sandoval who also worked on elder scrolls.

WOW! Mark jones! You have a YouTube channel? I am a massive fan of your work, I used to follow it on the dragons eyrie. Do you happen to know what happened to that website by the way? It appears to have been gone for a while now, it's a shame to see it go. Oh also, what are your opinions on the company "Oncelost Games"? In case you're not familiar, many of the old Elder scrolls developers such as Ted Peterson and Julian LeFay teamed up to create an open world RPG separate from the elder scrolls series. Do you reckon you would ever join them?

I don't really have any presence on the web. My website I did for about 20 years, but I couldn't afford to keep it up. Paying every year for webspace and all that with no income coming in.... Well it wasn't easy. I did hear about them and Ted did contact me. But I didn't think my art skills were up to snuff for the project . Use it or lose it as they say :) they weren't ever that great, something that became increasingly apparent as the years went by and technology had less restrictions .

does anyone have any idea how the Oncelost games is coming along ?

I wonder why Bethesda never used this footage in the final game? It's especially interesting because Elder Scrolls co-creator Julian LeFay is the guy in the trailer. (2017-03-01)

I never went to the show, but I'm not sure it went over well. We spent a ton of effort on it though.

It actually looks like none of the material in the demo ever showed up in the released game. Hence why I'm hoping someone kept a clean copy for archival purposes.

I'm not aware of what was kept. The stuff I worked on was on the SGI machine we abandoned those after a few years when battlespire was completed . As for the rest of the video I'm not sure where it ended up. according to legend Daggerfall's source code disappeared. if that's true who knows where some video went to. I have no idea if the source code really did go missing. I heard it on the internet ;)

Thanks Mark!
I think someone at Bethesda confirmed that the Daggerfall source code was lost when they moved offices. It's why two fan projects are rebuilding Daggerfall from scratch inside new game engines (DaggerXL and Daggerfall Unity projects).

they're still in the same building. it can't have got far :) i wave I whenever I drive by! (but no one ever waves back....except for Dodgy Mike...less said about that the better....)