General:Julian Lefay's Posts

Julian Lefay's Posts
Medium/Format	Online Forum
Interviewee(s)	Julian Lefay
Hosted By	Discord GeoCities Quora

These are a few notable comments from Julian Lefay on The Elder Scrolls setting. Lefay is known as jjdanois#7364 on discord.

Undated

On eating mechanics (circa 1998)

We will never have food in the game as it is an irritating distraction that serves very little purpose most of the time. We also don't require your character to go to the bathroom.

On the player character of TES3 (circa 1998)

It will still be single character. No party. I never liked the party idea. I becomes more of a strategy game than immersion role-playing. We are, however, toying with the idea of autonomous companions

Importing characters to TES3 (circa 1997-1999)

Morrowind will almost certainly not have a character import system. These things tend to unbalance the game and destroy the storyline faster than anthing, although we did discuss having a character be the son or daughter of that character, thereby inheriting some of the reputation and maybe the name and other things from his illustrious (or infamous) sire.

On player's leading armies for TES3 (circa 1997-1999)

It was always our goal to have more control of the politics of the land and commanding armies is one of my own favorite things, but that is a massive undertaking. I may not be given sufficient manpower and time to do many of the things I would like to.

Will TES3 be more than one disk? (circa 1997-1999)

I don't know if the game will be more than one disk. I hope not, but it is probably unavoidable.

On players owning estates for TES3 (circa 1997-1999)

As for owning a shop, keep or whatever. Yes those things have all been discussed but, again, it comes down to how many people I will get and how much time.

On multiplayer in TES3 (circa 1997-1999)

The multiplayer aspect is one of the foremost concerns for the overall design and many things will follow those dictates. Multiplayer and singleplayer should be as indistinguishable as possible. We are a small company and totally private. We don't have the manpower or financial resources that the big guys do. We usually have to do thinsg in half the time with half the people. I personally want to get everything in the game but in the end I will have to compromise but I wont know where to draw the line until well into the project. Frequently major features are in the game until the final month of the game when it is finally realized that we cannot make them work as well as we would like and then they are cut. Ah well....

2010

Statement on DaggerXL Forums (2010-09-10)

Being the programmer of the original Daggerfall, Arena, and Battlespire, here are my two cents.

Arena was a stealth RPG (long story) but never really got the effort it merited. It did have a bunch of firsts, though, that I am proud of, like dynamic lighting with proper drop off and such. It was a small team and it was not bad given the conditions.

Daggerfall was horribly understaffed and many features were dropped or cut short. It was buggy but this was mostly due to pressure to release the game prematurely. It was done with only one main programmer (me, although I had an assistant occasionally) which is absurd on a project of this size. Especially considering that I was also the main designer (Ted was phenomenal and deserves at least equal credit but left before the project was done) and project leader and the Chief Engineer in charge of all other Bethesda development. Consequently, the project suffered and I consider it one of the great missed opportunities in my life, seeing what the game could have been but having to fall short. Had the dedication of the company been there, it could have so much better while retaining the feel it has. Ah, well... It has always had a dedicated following, strangely enough, even during development and testing. Most of the gods a named after some very dedicated testers, one exception being Julianos, God of Logic, whom I named after me! :)

My favorite (if I can use that word, considering my viewpoint) must be Battlespire. While it, too, suffered from a complete lack of resources and support, it was the best controlled project and the one where I had complete control of all aspects of the game and its development. If it had had hardware rendering support it would have been a much bigger success, I think. But, then again, I am rather biased.

I only just found out about this project today, much to my surprise. I am still not sure what it really is... I am intrigued, of course.

2017

What was it like to work on the Elder Scrolls series as a programmer? What were the engineering challenges you faced? (circa 2017)

I can only answer for the first games in the series. I am generally viewed as the creator of The Elder Scrolls series but there were other, very talented people, who participated and contributed greatly, as well. While I speak of my experience with the project here and it therefore seems focused on me, I want to point out that this was not a one-man effort and others also deserve great credit. I get the creator credit, I think, because I worked on the original games in the series (Arena, Daggerfall, and the, mostly forgotten, Battlespire) as a designer (never the main designer, though), but, more importantly, as the project leader and the main, and frequently only, programmer. I was also the Chief Engineer of all of Bethesda Softworks development back then. Not a big deal in the early days of few employees but but more and more of a big deal as we grew.

Back in those days, Bethesda Softworks was a small company with very little money and very few employees. We were only four people when I started there, in 1988, working out of the owner house. It would be a couple of years before we started working on Arena, which was not supposed to be an RPG, but we used stealth to turn it into one. We had to. Bethesda Softworks did not want to make an RPG so we had to be creative in how we could make one without the boss catching on. But that’s another story for another day.

I had a couple of junior programmers working with me on Arena (all of it written in Assembler with the help of my two female junior programmers, who were quite good, in retrospect), and on Daggerfall I had a junior programmer in the beginning who left after some months, and then a junior programmer at the end, who left at the end of the project. The rest of the time, I was the only programmer. I did have one guy working on most of the 3D engine on Daggerfall. On Arena, I did all of the graphics coding.

We did all of Daggerfall in 18 months and Arena in less than 12. That is basically unheard of. And, to be honest, it damn near killed me. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s impossible to describe the pressure from the company, that was running out of money, the pressure of having to push the envelope as hard and as far as I did in terms of the technology, the pressure I applied to myself to try to achieve the near-impossible. I do not recommend anyone ever try this. When I say it damn near killed me, I’m being quite literal.

However, having come through the ordeal, I came out of it being so much better at programming at high speed under stress than I had been at the beginning. That has served me well ever since. Nowadays, when I work at a company and everyone around me is breaking under the pressure of a deadline, working around the clock, sleeping at their desk, and are moaning and groaning, I feel quite comfortable, no pressure, just cruising along at my normal speed, which, after the Daggerfall gauntlet, was easily fast enough to get everything done and start doing other people’s work. In fact, I haven’t really felt stress or pressure from schedules since those days, nothing has ever compared. It’s a hell of a way get toughened up but the game industry excels at doing this to programmers, spitting out broken corpses or super-programmers at the end of a grueling project.

I have many anecdotes from those days, including how Tod Howard (the current master of The Elder Scrolls series) came to be where he is today. Tod eventually took over the series after I left Bethesda Softworks and, although he’s not making the games the way I would have, he’s done a fantastic job and I’m glad that he ended up being the one to carry the torch onward.

I am glad I had the experience. I grew more than I ever have before or since in terms of my skills but, more importantly, I came out of it deeply humbled. There is nothing like getting broken and beaten up by life, yourself, and circumstance, to teach humility. It was the beginning of me learning to respect other people properly, to think about things with a philosophical spin and consider my greater goals in life and the greater goal of life, in general. I came out of the process with the first inkling of what wisdom might be and where and how I might look for it. I won’t say that I have found it, of course, that would be presumptuous and not very wise, but I started to recognize the importance of things other than dominating other game companies and other programmers or the drive to be the best programmer in the world and regarding other programmers like I was in some kind of duel-to-the-death arena (inside joke there, as well) with them. These things became mostly meaningless and instead became the need to be the best programmer I could ever be and, more importantly, the best person I could be. I’m hating this paragraph but leaving it in there. It, in no way, sums up or even accurately describes everything that changed about me during those years and, frankly, it comes across to me as a bit pretentious, even though it’s not at all meant as such, but I’m not a writer, so I’ll leave it as is, warts and all.

After this it becomes introspective and about inner balance and the care of my craft and not very interesting, I suspect. Needless to say, working on The Elder Scrolls was the single most influential thing I’ve ever done and changed me forever.

Edited to add: I did notice that you asked about technical challenges but, honestly, there were so many back in the days when there was no proliferation of 3D graphics cards, or fancy CPUs, and all the other things we have now. It would be a book unto itself to go through those challenges. Every day you were faced with some serious technical challenge. That’s the whole job, basically.

Daggerfall was, I think, my first real RPG I ever played in Jr High. It’s the thing that made me fall in love with TES. So first off, thank you. You created/helped create the best IP in the world. Second, we don’t forget Battlespire in the lore community cuz that was full is dank lore. It gets brought up often enough to keep it relevant, especially when we wanna talk about the weird stuff like nymics and Dreamsleeve terminals. Finally, if you don’t mind answering one more question three years down the road, a little factoid gets thrown around a lot in lore communities that the lore books in Daggerfall; most, all, or at least some, were written by what mostly could be referred to as fans of the series (really being just Arena at the time). As the legend goes, the game testers were fans and they were tasked with writing a tone of lore. Would you be able to confirm on deny this, if that’s ok?

Thank you for your time and your series.

It’s quite correct that a large portion of the books you find in Daggerfall were written by our testers. I don’t know the exact percentage of books that came from our core testers, but it’s quite high. They were very good and extremely helpful throughout the whole process. As a result, several of the gods were named after some of our testers, an indication of how instrumental they were during development. I’ve never actually met any of them in person, which I would have liked. Of course, what they wrote was checked for quality and fit before being added to the game, but mostly it was excellent as we received it. They were not actually tasked in any way but took it upon themselves to produce the material once it was decided that it would be in the game if it met certain standards and fit the lore. Glad you enjoyed the game despite its many flaws. :)

2020

On Combat Systems in games, in the OnceLost Games discord (2020-02-16)

I haven't thought much about the combat system yet. The Daggerfall system was basically a compromise. I'd like to see some form of optional complexity. If you really want to have your combat moves make a difference then you should be able to but if you're not a real-time gamer then you should still be able to play the game and have fun. But, like I said, not real thought has been given to this yet.

On Party Systems in games, in the OnceLost Games discord (2020-04-20)

It's just very hard and potentially clunky. How do you tell him to attack? Or not to attack? Or who to attack? Of who to talk to? Or what to say? Communicating with a companion becomes complex very quickly. And, if you don't have that, then we're back to the utterly dull cardboard cutout follower.

A big budget can be an asset or a detriment, IMO. Great things have been done with little to no money, and terrible things with tons of money. That being said, I'm not upset about the lack of focus on a companion system. One of the biggest reasons I liked TES is because it was just me.

Yes, I think it helps immersion. I am the main guy. I am personified. A party does not personify a player as well. Unless you make it party-based. IMHO.

100%. Arena is the first RPG that I can remember where I felt like I was just playing myself in a fantasy world without the complexities of dealing with other characters.

I want to be me in a fantasy world.

Ironically, Arena, at one point, had a party in it. But I took it out.

I want to be a much more competent and heroic me. But YMMV. ;;)

2022

On the races in Elder Scrolls, in the OnceLost Games discord (2022-04-03)

I haven't followed the lore in the later Elder Scrolls and the races weren't as developed as I would have liked before then. I should really favor Nords, I suppose.