Quick Summary

Daggerfall Unity is a ground-up recreation of Daggerfall in the Unity engine. It works as a drop-in engine replacement for classic DOS version with improved controls, quality of life enhancements, and powerful modding capabilities on par with many large commercial games.

New users need only provide their own copy of DOS Daggerfall for the required game data, then unzip and play Daggerfall Unity – which natively supports desktop Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms.

History & Goals

Daggerfall Unity was created as a side project to study game development and to revive interest in one of my favourite old games.

The history of this project stretches all the way back to 2001 when I started developing tools to explore textures, models, map layouts, and more in Daggerfall’s game data. This culminated in a full-blown remake attempt starting in 2015 and reaching feature parity with classic Daggerfall in 2019.

Other than recreating Daggerfall’s core game experience with many enhancements, my goal was to enable the creation of mods so that users could modernise assets and find new ways to experience the game. Daggerfall Unity’s modding capabilities continue to expand as the community grows, including localization support for the global community.

Development & Learning

Daggerfall Unity is open source with the full project available on GitHub.

Over 70 people have contributed to Daggerfall Unity, helping it to become the robust community-led project it is today. Community feedback and open contributions were critical to success.

When starting Daggerfall Unity, I directed development through the whole process with a clear mission statement and open roadmap to communicate where the project was up to.

During development, I built the core game framework and large features involving data management, runtime world generation, quest system, magic, and more. I reviewed thousands of pull requests ranging from simple fixes to complex feature additions. I also managed a website, community forums, subreddit, and my Twitter social media presence.

In recent years, the Daggerfall Unity community has become fully realised with multiple independent communities.

Mod Adoption

At time of writing, Daggerfall Unity Nexus has over 580 mods with a combined total of 4.9 million downloads. This places it within the top 70 of all games supported by Nexus alongside many huge commercial games. Daggerfall Unity also has native support from the Nexus Vortex mod manager.

Mods range from graphical upgrades through to entirely new gameplay, guilds, and other complex changes.

In Media

Daggerfall Unity and its mods have been covered by various online media platforms. Some notable examples are below.

• Rock Paper Shotgun
  🠢 Daggerfall Unity renovates Bethesda’s 1996 RPG with all mod cons
  🠢 Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall Unity remaster hits 1.0, updating the biggest Bethesda map for today’s PCs
• VG247
  🠢 It’s taken nine years, but Daggerfall, the huge second Elder Scrolls game, now has fan-made remaster
• Kotaku
  🠢 The Biggest Elder Scrolls Game Has Been Remade In Unity
  🠢 Bethesda’s Biggest Game Ever Is Free And Remastered
• PC Gamer
  🠢 How to have the best Daggerfall experience today
• GOG
  🠢 Daggerfall Unity – GOG Cut
• GameRant
  🠢 The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall: How to Install Daggerfall Unity
• PCGamesN
  🠢 Elder Scrolls remake Daggerfall Unity is killing it on Nexus Mods

Interviews

Over the years, there have been a few interviews as Daggerfall Unity progressed.

• One Man’s Quest To Remake The Biggest Ever RPG In The Unity Engine
• Exclusive interview with Gavin Clayton, the man behind Daggerfall Unity
• Interview: Daggerfall Unity Is A Remake “More Ambitious Than The Famously Over-Ambitious Original”

Legacy

Daggerfall Unity is a rare outcome in the world of fan recreations. Not only is the core game feature complete and on parity with original, it is arguably the best way to experience Daggerfall today. With better controls and hundreds of refinements, Daggerfall Unity is a smoother and more comfortable way to enjoy Daggerfall. A whole new generation of users have now experienced this classic game in ways the original developers could not have foreseen.

As an open source project with an active creator community, Daggerfall Unity has the potential to grow long into the future. Mods generate continuously novel experiences, and future maintainers can fix bugs or remix the source into whole new games.

Starting in 2024, I am using everything I learned developing Daggerfall Unity and starting an original game project. I will continue to be an active member of the Daggerfall community into the foreseeable future, but will take less of a role in development, maintenance, and support. I feel this is necessary to provide time for my new project and to allow Daggerfall Unity to grow independently.

My hope is the wider community that has grown around Daggerfall Unity will continue to expand my vison in new and unexpected ways. I look forward to seeing what the future holds.