For anyone that's been around the Daggerfall community for several years, you should remember the old Daggerfall Workshop forums. At one time, this was a thriving subcommunity of Daggerfall fans with a development focus. I shut down the old Workshop forums in 2007, but recently found a backup created the same day it was dismantled. For historical and nostalgic reasons, I have made the old forums available for a while. You will find them at the same old URL of http://forums.dfworkshop.net.

I have also posted a http://www.dfworkshop.net/?p=790 at the forums on my blog. I tried to summarise what the Workshop used to mean to others in the context of the day. Keep in mind this was a time before the massive community growth following Oblivion, before Daggerfall was free, and before DaggerXL.

I will keep these forums open for a couple of months before deactivating them for a final time. I also pose the question of whether the Workshop could still use forums in its current incarnation. If I get some feedback to the positive, I will launch new Workshop forums in the future, even if it's just to talk about my new exploring tools.

Wow, it's like being assaulted by nostalgia. I had somewhat forgotten what a hub it was for different projects, which really made it a nice atmosphere of ideas from people with different aims. I'm glad it survived its abrupt crash and I'm glad you've thrown it back up for us all to see again :happy:

But it's kind of sad to see the names of people that were a constant part of the interactions on the forums that were never heard from again after it went down.

Yes, lots of familiar names I'd all but forgotten. I was looking back through the New Reseach forum earlier, simply amazed at how much time and effort so many different people invested into researching Daggerfall's file formats. There really is an unrecognised collective of brilliant contributors - each one a stepping stone paving the way. I imagine a lot of the Workshop regulars moved on to making Oblivion mods and other projects. Maybe this will bring some of them out of the woodwork.

By the way, Arctus. I still can't thank you enough for your time administering the forums while my life was falling apart. I deleted more than 5 pages of inactive spam-bot registrations in the process of cleaning up the forums before going live again. I can only imagine the work you put in keep things together before I pulled the plug.

Just did what I could to help out, since there wasn't much else (programming, etc) that I could do! But where are you leaning on the idea of bringing back the dfworkshop forums for your new work? The forums will probably never be like they used to be, but it would be pretty cool to see them active again.

Regarding new forums, I'm just trying to get a feel if there's any need for them at all. The format would be very different, of course.

I like the idea of having a base to discuss my new tools outside of individual emails, but I'm not sure interest will be high enough to warrant an entire forum for that purpose. The main audience for my new tools seems to be DaggerXL modders, and I'm just as happy to chat with the talented folks over there and not bother with maintaining my own forums. I just thought I'd run it up the flagpole to see who (if anyone) saluted.

Oh my, Toram. I wonder whatever happened to that project. It was just, cool. So many projects that stopped because of the loss of the forums, so sad.