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On dialogue #1
(Preceeded by: "The dialogue is not the same as in Morrowind.")
Exitium wrote: "I'm glad to hear it, MSFD. The Wiki dialogue system was nothing short of atrocious. Would you care to elaborate on what kind of dialogue system the game will be using this time around?"
Well, for one thing, there are no more hyperlinks within the things that people say to you. There's also a new conditions system that helps to dictate who can say what and under what conditions. It's much, much more powerful than Morrowind's system.
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On dialogue #2
Not to mention the emotions NPC's will convey as they speak. Every line of dialogue is tagged with an emotion relevant to how they feel about what they're saying. Also, when you're in dialogue, the NPC's facial expression will reflect their disposition towards you.
Exitium wrote: "That's the NPC talking. Obviously you can't talk or have any dialogue options to talk until they finish their sentence. That's no different from Fallout, VD."
correct -- that's what you see when an NPC is talking to you. When they finish you see a different set of controls and dialogue choices (something we have not shown yet).
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On dialogue #3
The character turns to face you and the camera zooms in on them (switching to first person if you're in third). In a sense it's a talking head, but it's the same art as if you just walked up to them.
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On Radiant AI #1
It's quite a bit more sophisticated than that.
Basically you can give an NPC "packages" to do certain things. These packages can be very specific -- "At 12:00 on Tuesdays, go to the Prancing Pony, sit at this particular table, and eat some food." Or they can be generic -- "At 12:00 every day, get something to eat." When a package is generic, how the NPC accomplishes it is based on traits that are assigned to them, such as responsibility, aggression, confidence, and more. So designers have the flexibility of either specified exactly how a package might be accomplished, or letting the NPC "decide" how to accomplish it.
NPC's can have any number of packages, and packages can also be added on the fly by script. Packages can be interrupted, for example by combat situations, if the player talks to them (although if they don't like the player much they may try to get out of the conversation), or even if they run into some NPC they want to talk to. They can also be interrupted by scripts.
Packages can be scheduled to happen once, or repeat at any interval, and they can be either of a specified length or made to just end "when they're done". They can be made to kick off in specific situations.
In short, it's an extremely flexible system, and one that we have been putting a great deal of time into developing and fine-tuning for the past 2 years.
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On Radiant AI #2
xemous wrote: "to MSFD, will I need some sort of dual processor just to run this thing or what. Sounds like your taking up a planktonload of cpu cycles and dev time for this thing."
Nah, it should run fine on mid-level PC's. Our AI system has multiple levels of processing, depending on where the player character is in relation to each NPC or creature. At the lowest levels, only the most minimal amount of information is processed, and then it's processed much less often than at higher levels. It's analogous to graphical levels of detail (LOD). And even then processing the packages doesn't take that much time -- it's not like every NPC has to re-evaluate EVERYTHING each and every frame.
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On Radiant AI #3
Basically all NPC's in the game have different processing levels. The processing level depends on proximity to the player character. So when NPC's are in the same loaded area as the PC, have all their graphics & such, they're in high processing level. Otherwise, NPC's are in lower processing levels, and they move up & down as needed.
At each processing level, the NPC AI packages are updated at larger increments of time. At the highest processing level, they're updated as often as possible, up to (but not necessarily) once per frame. At lower processing levels, NPC's may not be updated any more often than 15 game minutes (time is accelerated so that's actually around every 30 real-world seconds). Lower processing levels do increasingly basic things -- at the lowest processing level, basically all they need to do is update their position within the world, and perhaps move to a higher processing level if they get "close" to the player character.
This way, only the data necessary at each processing level is kept in memory, and processing for NPC's nowhere near the player character don't impact performance because they're updated so seldomly.
Basically it's analogous to LOD's, but applied to NPC AI package data as opposed to graphics.
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On Radiant AI #4
All the NPC's are always being updated -- but how often they're being updated is dependent upon their proximity to the PC. And what's done when they DO update ranges from merely updating their position in the world all the way up to full animations at the highest processing level.
So if you have an NPC that goes from point A to point B over a period of time, and the PC never goes to either of those points or anywhere in between, the NPC will take the appropriate amount of time to move from point A to point B -- but the NPC's position will only be updated every so often.
Of course, it's a lot more complicated than just that, but for sake of this discussion it hopefully gets the point across. :-)
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On Radiant AI #5
Claw wrote: "Wow. I had assumed NPCs might have a "task list" where the game looks up what they are supposed to be doing at the time the player enters their vicinity.
Are all NPCs threated the same, or do they have priorities, i.e. a special NPC could have a higher processing level than others in the same area?"
Different AI packages might have higher priority than others. For example, if a package doesn't require the NPC to move, the only thing that's checked for that NPC at the lowest processing levels is when/if their next package, if any, needs to start. It all depends on what they're supposed to be doing.
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On the dunmer blacksmith screenshot
That's no woman, that's a man, baby! :-)
It's a male dunmer (dark elf) blacksmith and he's kinda pissed at the PC for some reason. As far as the HDR ("bloom") lighting goes, there hasn't been a screenshot published yet that wasn't taken roughly 6 months ago, or earlier. Lots & lots of tweaking going on in the shader department. The contrast & saturation in that screenshot are kinda wonky, too, compared to the original.
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On "quality of character apparance" - artistry, mods and guidelines
(unknown) wrote: "snip I liked the character portraits in Daggerfall too. I didn't care for Morrowind's ugly characters. The first mods 80% of the fans install is the Better Bodies and Better Faces. I'm encouraged by the much better looking faces we've seen so far in Oblivion's screenshots. Really, nothing they've shown yet is as good as Redd's stuff. The community just flat out has better artists than the staff at Bethesda. Still you have a company of a very limited number of employees vs. a community that is thousands strong. There is a texture artist modder that I can't wait to see what he can do with the new CS. He made the game 200% more beautiful to me. Kudos to Bethesda for releasing the tools to make it happen."
Actually, Rhedd made the face meshes, but his wife made the textures. And neither of them were bound by the (admittedly far too restrictive) art guideline that dictated how face textures needed to be structured. The way Rhedd organized the face textures allowed for a texture only twice the size to have a facial details area 4 times the size. 4X resolution over the same amount of space means more detail. If Bethesda's artists had done the same thing, Rhedd probably wouldn't have felt compelled to make his mod in the first place.
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TES CS - comment on the mod cummunity and the CS
crpgnut wrote: "I know that the game was heavily improved graphically but this was done later and systems could now handle the heavier load. Has any scripting or coding been done by the community that made you guys sit back and just say WOW?"
Oh definitely. One mod that jumps to mind was the Chess mod. Someone actually made a functional chess game. Pretty impressive bit of scripting. I also thought the McAsmod Werewolf mod was well done. And tools like the FPS optimizer and some of the .esp file management tools were pretty cool as well.
I'm looking forward to seeing what folks come up with using the new TESCS. It's a lot more powerful. As someone mentioned in one of the interviews, there are features that'll make things like the Tamriel Rebuilt project much easier to manage. New tools, easier to manage quests, much more flexible and powerful dialogue (with built-in voice recording and automatic lip synch data generation), additional script functionality, etc. Lots of improvements.
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On yielding
No, because creatures won't ever accept a yield from you.
And it is quite easy to set up NPC's to yield or flee if they start losing.
Here's how yielding works for an NPC or creature. Whenever an NPC takes a hit, or if their weapon breaks or they run out of magicka (or a few other circumstances), the NPC re-evaluates its strategy. This includes deciding to either flee or yield. Current health, weapon status, and more go into both of these decisions. The decision to flee is also based heavily on the NPC's Confidence stat, while the decision to yield is based on the NPC's disposition towards their opponent. If they decide to yield to another NPC or creature a quick check is done to see if the opponent would accept a yield -- that's based on the opponent's disposition towards the yielding NPC or creature, among other things -- and if so, the creature/NPC yields and the opponent stops combat with it.
When yielding to the player character, obviously the "would yield" check can't be done automatically, and so the yielding actor plays a yielding animation (and NPC's say something along the lines of "you have bested me" -- there's a bunch of choices for them). Then the player has the choice of either continuing to whale away on the yielding actor, in which case the actor might choose to flee (or might even start fighting again, since the post-yield attack lowers the actor's disposition towards the player). Or the player can simply stop fighting the yielding actor and combat ends.
The player can yield to an opponent in combat by pressing the "activate" key (spacebar on the PC) with the opponent close enough to activate. This is the same way you initiate conversation when you're not in combat. Anyway, if the opponent would accept the yield, the opponent says something to that effect and then stops fighting the player. If the opponent would NOT accept the yield, the opponent keeps fighting -- and NPC's might sometimes taunt the player. And as I mentioned, creatures will never accept a yield from the player.
Basically yielding all comes down to disposition. If you go up against someone who really hates you, that person is unlikely to attempt to yield or to accept a yield. If that person's confidence is low, he'll flee. But if the confidence is high enough, he'll fight to the death.
It's very configurable on an individual basis through simple modification of stats.
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On character progression and crimes
!HyPeRbOy! -- no XP -- Elder Scrolls games don't use XP. Instead, character progression is done through skill usage. Your "class" determines your major & minor skills. As you use each skill, they slowly increase. When enough major skills advance by enough points, you level up. There are other stats that go into NPCs disposition towards you -- notably fame, infamy, and bounty -- that get modified when you engage in combat & commit crimes. Those can be used to do the types of things you're thinking of.
Elwro -- kinda sorta. Crimes that are committed against an NPC which are detected by other NPCs with a high disposition towards the victim may result in the victim's buddies entering combat or doing other things (like fleeing or going to get guards to help). It depends on character traits like responsibility, confidence and aggression, plus faction membership, and disposition towards the attacker. The "Radiant AI" uses these factors & more to decide what to do in cases like you describe, so the behavior might end up doing what you describe. Except for the taking of belongings. The only NPC's that'll take stuff from you are guards, if you get arrested and go to jail.
(but that all ends up in an evidence chest at the jail, so you do have a chance to get it back).
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On exploits, fun and challenge
Well, there's a bunch of stuff we're doing to try to prevent exploits, such as only having skill usage increases on success (for example swinging a sword doesn't increase your blade skill, but hitting someone with it does), but if someone wants to cast spells on themselves over & over again for hours & hours to raise their Restoration skill, it's kinda hard to prevent that.
The challenge comes in making the game fun enough and the difficulty progressive enough so people don't feel the need to do that. Some will regardless -- it's their choice -- but personally I think it's more fun to just play the game, use my major skills and have my character progress "naturally".
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On demanding/gaining items through yield
You can pickpocket stuff from them if your sneak skill's good enough, but right now there's no plan for allowing you to take stuff from an NPC who yields to you.
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On demanding/gaining items through yield #2 - rewards & possibilities
Well, you do get a "reward" in a sense -- you're not committing a murder, so your crime gold won't go up as much.
But it wouldn't be difficult to have a special dialogue sequence, where if you activated someone who just yielded to you, you could "negotiate" terms (or even just tell the guy "Very well, but don't let it happen again").
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Birthsigns?
Birthsigns are in. I don't know if they're different from the ones in Morrowind.
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On combat #1 - Difference in controls?
Hmm, maybe a little... except for manual blocking, the controls are pretty much identical to Morrowind's -- it's just that now, selecting different attacks is actually worthwhile and has more meaning than it did in Morrowind. Like I mentioned in the article, it's a balance between player skill and character stats. TES games have always been like that.
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On combat #2 - Difference in controls?
Well, considering Oblivion's being released on "next generation consoles", as we've put it, in addition to the PC, on those consoles there won't be keys but rather buttons. So (aside from my specific mention of a mouse, which of course is unlikely to be present on a console), when I say "button" I mean interchangeably a key on the keyboard or a button on a game controller, or a mouse button.
And the timing for choosing different attacks isn't really complicated. Normal attacks are accomplished by tapping the attack button -- or if you prefer, clicking the left mouse button. If you click again about halfway through the weapon swing, before your character starts bringing the weapon back to the ready position, you can do another normal attack in the opposite direction. When that is depends on the weapon type & speed, but it's pretty intuitive. In this manner you can unleash almost continuous slashes - but that's not always a good idea.
For power attacks, to perform one you just hold the attack button, and if you want, also press one of the directional keys (there are 5 power attacks, one for each cardinal direction and one for just "standing still".) If you want, you can release the attack button after the attack starts. But you can hold it down and just keep doing power attacks over & over - but that's not always a good idea, either.
The spin moves are usually the left & right power attacks (it depends on the weapon and your skill level, because the attack animations are different for different weapons types, and as your skills advance you learn new power attacks that replace the old ones.)
So it's pretty straightforward. Not really anything like the complex combos you'll find in a fighting game like Mortal Kombat or Soul Calibur.
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On combat #3 - multiple hits?
It'll only hit one enemy. There's a "hit" frame within each attack animation, and when that frame is reached, the code checks to see if anyone's within a hit cone -- basically, if you're facing someone and they're within the weapon's reach, they're hit. If multiple actors are within that cone, the closest one is hit.
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MSFD's specs - non-indicative of final or current game performance
I'll tell you what kind of machine I'm currently developing on, but not how it runs (hey, it's not done yet, so any performance hints I can give you have no bearing on the final game anyway, and besides, I run the game in the debugger most of the time). I'm using a 3GHz Pentium 4 with 1GB RAM and a Radeon 9800XT with 256MB. All fairly middle of the road stuff nowadays.
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The E3 Demo #1
We've got a roughly 25 minute "live" demo (as in Todd Howard will be playing through the demo on a PC) that we'll be showing at E3, and a 2 minute trailer. I'm sure that the trailer will be widely available for download some time in the next couple weeks, if not at elderscrolls.com then certainly at other gaming news sites. The trailer is roughly 90% gameplay footage, which I think is rather refreshing.
I don't know if there are any plans to release footage of the demo at this time. But it is a pretty cool demo, and shows a great deal of the game's features beyond just the pretty pictures that most every game has nowadays.
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The E3 Demo #2
The demo gets into all that -- quests, dialogue, the user interface, map, journal, etc. I'm sure there'll be detailed writeups of it once the news sites see the demo. The trailer is more like a movie trailer, basically giving a synopsis of the game's story.
The dialogue is different from Morrowind -- no more hypertext. You have a list of topics to ask about and/or responses to what the NPCs say to you, and you can also attempt to modify their disposition towards you at any time. Control of what NPCs have which topics is much tighter, so you won't run into bunches of folks with the same dozen topics. And as I've mentioned before, you'll get information from simply listening in on NPC conversations -- if something quest related is mentioned, it's automatically added to your journal.
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Counter-dumbdown comment
You did keep your post general, but I'll respond to your concerns as far as Oblivion (and where appropriate, Morrowind) go.
"Top reasons I hate voice acting in video games.
1) Dialogue and plot are limited by amount of money publisher is willing to spend on voice acting"
True to a point, but in most cases developers will simply not have voice acting for every line of dialogue, like we did in Morrowind.
"2) Bastards are too lazy to subtitle the whole game, so I have to scramble to kill my music to try to catch some critical plot point."
Every line of dialogue is voiced in Oblivion, and every line also has subtitles (which you can turn on or off whenever you want).
"3) The whole *** up thing in America where people want famous people to do read the lines in their normal voice, destroying any immersion - here's looking at you Picard."
Patrick Stewart's a great actor with a great voice. Not sure what's wrong with wanting him to play a part. If it's any consolation, he voices the Emperor, who dies at the beginning of the game. Besides Stewart, there are a couple other big names we've got lined up to do voice work that we haven't announced yet, but most of the voices will be performed by folks who have done the job on previous Elder Scrolls titles.
"4) Horrible (censored) voice acting,"
Yep, many games are guilty of this, especially Japanese imports. But I don't remember anyone complaining about the vocal performances in Morrowind.
"5) Get the game out 3 months earlier for $300,000 less."
Actually the voice recording itself goes very very quickly. And it's not like the rest of the development comes to a complete standstill while waiting for it. Designers put in placeholder voices until the real vocals are there, and it only actually impacts a couple people. Programmers and artists aren't really impacted either way.
"6) Slow down the illiterate baboons ruining the game industry."
Not sure what you mean by this, but ok. :-)
"7) Games with subtitles that don't let you skip through the dialogue, so you read a paragraph, go get a drink, mow the lawn, etc and then come back to read the reply"
In Oblivion, you can click the left mouse button any time someone's talking and it'll end whatever they're saying immediately and move to either their next paragraph or to the list of choices. So if you're talking with an NPC you've talked with before about a subject and know he's got 3 paragraphs worth, you can just skip the speech by clicking a few times.
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On time scale, archery and editing terrain
1. The time scale is a system variable, so you can modifiy it with a console command. We speed things up so that you're not constantly using the Wait or Rest functionality while waiting for timed events to happen.
2. Yeah, it seems kind of odd for archery to not have location specific damage, but then when you remember that success in combat depends largely on your character's skill, it makes sense. It evens things out a bit more between someone who's more skilled with a mouse or controller and someone who's not.
3. Quivers behave like weapon sheaths in Obliivion-- if you equip arrows, you'll see a quiver on your character's back that matches the type of arrow. They're not separate objects.
4. Yeah, it was a pain placing everything by hand in Morrowind. Now you can generate regions very easily, but still go in and fine-tune the areas by hand afterward. It's a pretty cool system.
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On mounted combat - priorities
In response to: (MSFD)"Just so you know, we're not terribly happy about not getting mounted combat in, either. We wanted it, but it just wasn't going to happen in the time we had -- not and implement a feature so significant with the polish and robustness it deserves."
Saint_Proverbius wrote: "You kind use the same argument with having horses you can ride, though. Having to get off the horse, fight, then get back on to ride back to town doesn't seem polished at all."
You could use that argument if you wanted. On the other hand, most of the time you'll be getting into combat situations in interiors -- dungeons, caves, dwellings, the plain of Oblivion -- which are places you can't take your horse anyway. And there are some exterior areas where horses aren't allowed either, like some cities and arenas. So while it would have been very nice to include mounted combat, the situations where you'd want it aren't a huge huge part of the game.
!HyPeRbOy! wrote: "Would it be technically/practically possible to add mounted combat as a feature in the forthcoming Oblivion-expansions? With such a promise/hint everyone would calm down about this "issue"."
Yes, that's certainly possible. Now that the foundations are in place -- horses and riding -- adding mounted combat can be done without starting from scratch. Dunno what plans there are for expansions or future games at this point, though, so I can't make any promises.
In response to: (MSFD)"We wanted it, but it just wasn't going to happen in the time we had -- not and implement a feature so significant with the polish and robustness it deserves."
Spazmo wrote: "What about dialog in Morrowind, then?"
Touche', but this is Oblivion we're talking about, not Morrowind. The company's gone through a lot of changes -- from the time Morrowind was started until it was finished, and again from the time Morrowind shipped until now. It's a very, very different company, and the team has grown in both experience and size. Hopefully that'll all translate into a much better game in Oblivion.
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On soil erosion and terrain editor
Anyway the soil erosion and random placement of trees & such doesn't happen in-game. It happens in the construction set. As far as erosion goes, that happens when the terrain is generated. A tool in the TESCS lets you generate the landscape, raise & lower areas, and specify how much erosion has taken place, so areas can be naturally smooth or jagged. Makes it much easier to create realistic landscapes withouth having to build the entire thing by hand. The landmass in Oblivion is very large, this as an important feature to have.
In addition, there's a region editor that lets you define areas that have probabilities set up for various types of trees, shrubs, rocks, etc., and you press the "generate" button and the areas are generated. Artists can go through and refine the areas by hand as required, but time is saved by them not having to place every single tree, rock, shrub or fallen log by hand.
All the random generation happens in the editor -- so everyone's Tamriel is the same as everyone else's.
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On soil erosion and terrain editor #2
Well, we never claimed that terrain generation and automated region population were new ideas -- just that we're using them so that we can produce a more natural looking world (that's larger than Morrowind's land mass) without having to place everything by hand. :-) Yeah, it definitely would have been nice to have it for Morrowind.
And yes, the region editor & terrain generator tools come with the PC version of Oblivion. They're all part of the Elder Scrolls Construction Set.
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On armour - slots
One new feature of Oblivion is that armor can comprise one or more "slots". So you can have a "suit of armor" that you equip all at once, or separate helmet, greaves, cuirass, etc. that you equip individually -- or any combination. It all depends on how the art is set up.
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On combat #4 - foes switching hands and weapons?
If an NPC or creature has a weapon, they won't try to get a better one. Only an unarmed (or disarmed -- there are skill perks you can get that give a chance to disarm) skeleton would pick up something that's lying around. Also if their weapon breaks and there are others lying around, they'll grab a new one.
The only time a non-player actor would switch weapons is if they have both ranged and melee weapons. They'll switch between them depending on the distance to the opponent.
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On combat #5
When you hold the attack button for longer than a click, you do a "power attack", which can indeed do more damage, and at higher levels have some pretty cool skill perks associated with them. However, they are slower to perform, leaving you vulnerable, and they consume a large amount of fatigue, which means you'll do less damage on your next attack.
So you really have to balance normal attacks, active blocking and power attacks, so you can keep your fatigue level up and thus be able to do the most amount of damage to an opponent.
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On combat #6
Vault Dweller wrote: "The way I see it, your chance to hit is a chance to hit a *defending* opponent and it's implied that his defense abilities (armor, dodge, parry, etc) are taken into consideration."
And it is, in the decisions the opponent makes, and in how much damage your strike actually does. The opponent will decide, based on their skills, equipment, and stats, to dodge, block (with weapon or shield), attack, etc. When your sword strikes, the raw damage the weapon can do is modified first by your skill with the weapon, the weapon's condition, your current fatigue level, your luck. It is further modified by the opponent's armor rating (which is affected by the amount, type, and condition of the armor worn, plus the wearer's armor skill, fatigue and luck), it's modified by any appropriate defensive magic the opponent is using, and if the opponent is blocking, it's modified based on the opponent's blocking skill and the quality of the shield or weapon. So if your character is really tired and has a heavily worn claymore and a low blade skill, and you swing at a heavily armored opponent who's right in front of you, yeah, you'll hit -- you just won't do much damage.
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On combat #7 - attack animations
Yeah the attack animations are different for each weapon type. And there are several of them that play when you attack, so you don't always get the same one. And that doesn't even include the power attack animations, which again are all appropriate to the weapon. LOTS of attack animations in this game.
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On combat #8
In response to: (MSFD)" Even a clumsy idiot can swing a 6' claymore roughly in the direction of an opponent 3' away and hit them. They're not going to do any damage, but the sword will hit. That's the way it is in Oblivion."
Human Shield wrote: "So the Unarmored skill is just someone having tougher skin? Dodging doesn't exist."
Dodging does exist. You can move out of the way of an attack. In addition, there's an Acrobatics skill perk that gives you a quick-roll move.
The amount of damage done when a blow does strike -- as I have said I don't know how many times -- is dependent on a lot of things: the weapon's damage rating and condition. The attacker's skill with the weapon, luck, current fatigue level. The target's armor rating (which is based on the quality and amount of armor being worn, the appropriate armor skills, luck, fatigue, and any innate or magical armor bonuses), whether or not the target is blocking (and the condition of the shield or weapon being used to block the blow, the blocking skill level + luck + fatigue), whether or not the target has a resistance to normal weapons if the weapon is "normal", whether or not the target has the ability to reflect damage back on the attacker, plus there are variations for hand to hand and arrow hits, and that doesn't even include strikes from enchanted weapons. And then depending on the amount of damage done, there may be a knock back, stagger, or the target might even be knocked down or temporarily paralyzed. And if the opponent blocks, the attacker might recoil, or if the opponent's block skill is high enough he may execute a block attack, which has a chance of staggering the attacker or even disarming him.
Whether you hit or not depends if there's an opponent in front of you and within your weapon's range. Whether an opponent hits you or not depends if you're in front of the opponent and within the weapon's range. NPCs will dodge out of the way if they can. As the player, you can do that too. And while the decision to attempt it is yours, and you have to push a directional button to do it, your character's stats & skills and even equipment have a lot to do with it. Your speed is affected by how much you're wearing, your athletics skill, your relevant armor skill, and I mentioned the acrobatics dodge perk earlier.
As I've said, over and over again -- stats play a huge, huge role in this game.
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An ode to non-existant sacrifices - die-rolls, and gameplay vs. graphics
There are PLENTY of die rolls against stats in Oblivion. We took out the "to hit" roll and changed it so that instead of missing at close range, the amount of damage you might do changes depending on your stats.
And how many times do I have to reiterate that there are PLENTY of people working on other things besides the graphics and special effects? A tremendous amount of effort has gone in to Oblivion's AI and game systems, not to mention the quests, dialogue and gameplay. We are NOT sacrificing game play for graphics. In fact, in the 3 years I've been working on Oblivion, for example, I haven't written a single line of graphics related code, and the same goes for several other programmers here. There are two reasons people assume we're emphasizing graphics over game play. 1, because the graphics look really good and the screenshots are the most obvious facet of the game that's been revealed, and 2, because we haven't revealed everything about the game yet, and people either ignore, downplay, or don't know about the non-graphical features we HAVE revealed.
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The non-existant sacrifices #2
That's why we have a bigger team. Not all the programmers do graphics programming. Obviously all the artists focus on is the graphics. The world building team would have the same level of effort whether the graphics were state of the art or not. And the designers don't have anything to do with making graphics pretty at all, they just work on quests & dialog.
Yes -- it does take more time to create higher fidelity graphics. But that time and the work involved is divided up among more people, and nobody's sacrificing anything in the game just so we can have nice graphics.
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On lighting effects
Oblivion actually uses HDR (High Dynamic Range) lighting. What's called "light bloom", as seen in Fable and other earlier games, is a static effect that's always on, whereas HDR lighting continually adjusts the "glow" based on changes in light. It simulates the way your irises dilate and contract. Valve recently released a video that shows the Half-Life 2 engine in split screen, with HDR on one side and non-HDR (or fixed aperture) on the other. Pay particular attention to the brightness of the land as the view sweeps from right to left, past the sun, towards the end of the video. It doesn't change at all on the non HDR side, but it does on the HDR side. It's a subtle effect but it actually does happen in real life.
Of course, like lens flare and page curl, it can be overdone, but we'll continue tweaking it until the game ships.
And of course if your graphics card can't handle the effects, you'll be able to turn them off.
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On lighting effects #2
Yeah, we have glare that appears if you look directly at the sun in addition to the HDR effects, but no lens flare. You're supposed to be IN the world, not viewing through a camera.
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On magic
Vykromond wrote: "And in Oblivion, said moronic barbarian won't even have to stop hacking faces if he wants to cast Tier VII Fireball: he can do it with his ebony hand axe and tower shield still equipped!"
It's doubtful said barbarian would even have Tier VII Fireball available to him, let alone be able to cast it, weapon in hand or not. There's a lot more to magic than we've talked about so far. Have patience, all will be revealed in time.
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On magic #2 - justifying the change
Lore explanations aside, the reason for being able to cast any time is to improve gameplay, and the reason for the armor penalty to cast is to better balance character classes.
So something that was a nuisance in Morrowind isn't a nuisance anymore, and there's better balance between the character archetypes. I understand your concerns, but aren't improvements to gameplay and balance GOOD things, whether there are published lore-based explanations for them or not? I mean if it's that big a deal, it's easy enough to add a book to the game explaining why
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On magic #3
Being able to cast even if you have a weapon drawn improves gameplay because you don't have to "ready magic" and then cast. You just cast. One less artificial step to worry about. And it really does make combat flow more smoothly.
I'm actually surprised you need me to spell this out for you. The armor penalty makes spells less effective they would be if cast without wearing armor, unless your relevant armor skill is high enough to overcome the penalty.
Role playing as a pure magic user, you'd be inclined to select magic skills as your majors (major skills start at a higher level and contribute towards leveling up). If you should happen to put on some armor, your spells will be less effective because your armor skills are low. You could train them up, wear armor a lot and get into combat so you take hits and improve the skill, and eventually you'll get good enough at armor to avoid the penalty. But why take the penalty in the first place, when you can have magical defense spells at your disposal?
Role playing as a pure warrior, you're going to choose combat related skills, including armor, as your majors. You'll be able to cast spells with your armor worn, but your magic skills will be so low that the spells won't be very effective anyway, so you probably won't bother.
A hybrid class like a battle mage would choose both magic skills and combat skills as majors, hoping to balance the two so as to be most effective, but bearing in mind that the number of major skills allowed is limited.
Yes, of course the game is still skills based. Skills improve through usage, just as in Morrowind. But classes are important too, because class is dictated by which skills you choose as your major skills. Major skills start at a higher value. And only increases in your major skills contribute towards leveling up
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On magic #4
Actually if you press Attack and your weapon isn't drawn, your weapon is automatically drawn for you. You have to press Attack again to do an attack, though.
In response to: (MSFD)"Role playing as a pure warrior, you're going to choose combat related skills, including armor, as your majors. You'll be able to cast spells with your armor worn, but your magic skills will be so low that the spells won't be very effective anyway, so you probably won't bother."
Vault Dweller wrote: "Awesome! I love when designers force players into playing stereotypes!"
As to the enforcing stereotypes, remember that you CAN raise every single one of your skills to the maximum amount. It just takes longer to do it if they're not major skills to begin with. And once you've done that, then certainly class is irrelevant. But it's not irrelevant to start, and it's not irrelevant for much of your progress through the game. If we didn't want class to matter at all, we wouldn't bother including it.
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On magic #5
We have 6 schools of magic, each of which is represented as a skill. You can be 100% proficient in any of them. If you choose only one of them as a major skill, it'll start at a higher level and advancing it will contribute towards leveling up, just as if you choose non-magic skills as major skills.
So you can be fantastic at destruction (shooting fireballs) but horrible at restoration (healing spells). Just like you can be fantastic with a sword but horrible with a bow.
For Oblivion, there are also changes to the magic system that we haven't talked about yet that may change your perspective somewhat.
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On magic #6
Each magic effect (fire damage, restore health, chameleon, etc.) resides in a school of magic - Destruction, Restoration, Illusion, Alteration, Mysticism and Conjuration. The same 6 from Morrowind. No schools of magic have been removed. Don't confuse skills in the magic schools with skills of a certain specialization (magic, combat or stealth).
Other than that, I can't comment on what skills are or aren't in the game.
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On magic #7 - progression and services
LlamaGod wrote: "They had NPCs that raise your skills to maximum, make you spells and magical equipment and now they got NPCs to recharge the equipment too. Why not actually have them as abilities for people to do if they want to persue that instead of just having NPCs to do everything for you?"
First off, enchanted weapons don't regain their charge automatically like they did in Morrowind. So you have to keep them recharged. Conan isn't necessarily going to be going around hunting for soul gems and soultrapping creatures, and so he can go into town to have it done for him. Also, Enchanting is no longer a skill, it's a guild perk, so yeah you have to pay to have it done. There is a special type of stone that is embued with magical effects that will enchant a weapon or worn item without paying someone to do it for you, but there aren't very many of them and you don't get to choose the magic effect of the enchantment.
NPC based training is much more controlled. You can't just pay someone and have your skills raised up to maximum anymore. We've done a lot to address the valid complaints that it was too easy to advance skills in Morrowind.
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Re-run: promoting the game
It's not that it would blow everyone's mind, it's that we don't want to say everything about every facet of the game all at once. We reveal things over time, from announcement until release. It helps keep people interested in the game. Or would you prefer we released a 100 page article detailing all the game systems on announcement day? :-)
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On-the-fly generated quests in conjunction with NPC goals?
No, hiring the PC to do something would involve a quest being created in the TESCS. It'd have to be pre-made, not generated on the fly. Maybe in the next game :-)
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The game, the impressions
That said, as a programmer I didn't get much of a chance to see too much of the "real" game outside of test areas for much of the development time. But as the game has started to come together over the past several months, as I've had more opportunities to actually play the game as opposed to just testing my own parts of it, I have to tell you -- this is one hell of a game. I get more & more impressed at what the designers and artists have put together the more I see of it. I truly believe that a lot of doubters are going to be impressed, and I'm not talking about visuals alone. That's my honest opinion. If I had bad things to say about the game, I wouldn't say anything at all. So those of you who do give the game a chance, I hope you enjoy it.
Oh, and mounted combat? No time. This game is freaking huge and even with the large team we have, we just weren't going to have time to get it into the game. Don't think we're not disappointed about that. There are (as always) plenty of other features we had talked about including but ended up cutting due to lack of time -- even on a 3+ year project.
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The game, the impressions #2
Well, the fighting I am quite familiar with, since combat AI is one of my primary tasks. So aside from that, obviously the environments have impressed me, you've all seen the screenshots but there's soooo much you haven't seen yet. Dungeons, cities, forests, settlements, etc, exploration is great. But I wish I could tell you about the quests I've seen & played. Very, very cool stuff.
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Die rolls & randomness
There is LOTS of randomization in Oblivion. Yeah, we got rid of to hit, but that doesn't mean we removed ALL of the rolls. There are still plenty of saving rolls, and the combat AI in particular uses lots of randomness.
Precise mouse movements? To an extent. Basically, if the dude's in front of you and within your sword's reach when you press the attack button, you hit. There's no locational damage -- even with archery -- because the amount of damage you do is dependent on your character's skill. It also levels the playing field a bit by giving you a bigger target (i.e. you don't have to aim for the head or a chink in the armor or whatever to score a hit.)
When I play p&p rpgs (which is 2-3 times a month), when my turn comes around in combat I tell the DM something like "OK, Gast runs towards the serpent saurian on his left, and attempts a critical attack to incapacitate with his battle axe". I then make my to hit roll, the enemy has a chance to parry, and if he fails I roll for damage. In Oblivion, I'd use the keys to make Gast run towards the Argonian on the left, and when I got to within range I'd make sure the lizard was in front of me and press and hold the attack button while holding the forward arrow, thus performing a power attack. I can see it all happening, just as I would have described it verbally to the GM. Of course, in that time, the Argonian might have dodged out of the way, he might have brought his shield up, he might have started an attack of his own. At any rate, if I'm close enough and facing the guy, he'll be hit. But Gast sucks with a battle axe, the battle axe is damaged, Gast is highly fatigued, the opponent is blocking or wearing armor and/or has a high armor rating, the blow might not do much damage.
Yes, in real-time, your strategic decisions are limited because you have to respond to changing conditions on the fly. You still have strategic choices, of course -- how you equip your character, when to use magic, when to attack and when to block, what spells and weapons to use against certain enemies, when to flee, when to yield, etc. You're not going to plan out complex tactical maneuvers. But then again, you're not going to have a party to coordinate either. You may have NPCs or creatures fighting on your side, but they're autonomous.
Stats matter. Skills matter. NUMBERS and randomness matter. Make no mistake -- Oblivion is most assuredly a stats-based, skills based RPG. It's also a real-time RPG, which necessitates a greater degree of player control.
And besides -- the to-hit roll was one of the things that sucked about combat in Morrowind.
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Die rolls & randomness #2 - to hit
Seeing a 6 foot long claymore go straight through an opponent 2 feet in front of you and hearing a "whoosh" as it totally misses isn't fun by anyone's standards, unless you'd have been on the receiving end of the blow. Combat has been improved by removing the to-hit roll. But we also added new factors to the amount of damage you can do to account for its removal. So it's not really a net loss in "features", if you want to look at it that way.
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Die rolls & randomness #3 - damage
We do have a die roll to determine which bit of armor takes damage (if the target's wearing any) on a hit. The armor pieces are weighted against the roll based on their size. But health damage is non-locational.
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Dialogue and UI
Yeah, GUI elements we haven't revealed yet appear when you get to ask questions & say things. That stuff's not visible when NPCs are speaking -- the game just shows you the subtitles (if you have that option turned on).
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On essential NPCs - forced reload
OK, so I was wrong. If you kill an essential NPC, you have to load a previous game save.
The number of NPCs you cannot kill is a tiny fraction of the NPCs in the world. The fact of the matter is that killing NPCs that quests rely on breaks the game. Many NPCs are so essential to the game world working, with our AI and so forth, that their deaths can cause any number of things to appear as bugs, or not as we intended. The designers do handle certain NPCs being killed in quests, the ones that make sense to kill, but not, for example, the Count of a city, or the heir to the throne. And it was either force you to re-load, or have the designers remove what made the quests entertaining and compelling in the first place. And I think we can all agree that it's better to have quests that are more fun to play through than quests that are artificially simplified because the designers had to worry about every obscure contingency.
But don't worry about accidentally finding yourself in this situation. We'll have a visual indicator of who's an essential NPC and who isn't, so the chances of you accidentally killing an essential NPC will be slim. And if you find yourself in combat with one, you can always attempt to yield.
Anyway, sorry for the confusion!
ps -- the visual indicator is a small icon that appears when you are close enough to talk to the NPC you're looking at. It'll be one color if they're an essential NPC, another if they're not.
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On essential NPCs, forced reload #2 - the justifying nudges
Would you rather find out AFTER you killed someone that you needed to reload? Wouldn't you rather know ahead of time? Or would you rather we do what Gothic did, and not allow you to attack them in the first place? Or would you rather we made the quest lines simpler so it couldn't be a problem in the first place? Or cut quest lines so the designers could account for all contingencies in the smaller number of quests? Or significantly extended development time by forcing the designers to account for every possible contingency?
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On essential NPCs, forced reload - the justifying nudges #2
How do you know that some or all of those things aren't all being done in certain instances? It's all a matter of choosing your battles as a designer. Do you want to spend your time making sure you can complete everything in the game even if you kill everyone -- which COULD lead to intentionally simplifying the quests -- or do you want to spend your time making the quests as good as possible? The essential NPC flag removes that battle for the designers, so they can focus on the more important task of making interesting, compelling quests. They always have the ability to handle the deaths of NPCs when it makes sense to do so.
Oh, and as far as the game over screen -- what would you do after you saw it? I know I would reload so I could continue playing :-)
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On essential NPCs - the indicator
The indicator is a very small icon that appears only when you're close enough to start a conversation with someone. It looks one way if they're essential, another way if they're not.
No halos, no auras, no beams of light shining down.
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On essential NPCs - the indicator #2
Even without it, you won't always be able to kill everyone you attack in the first place. Guards come running if they're around, and others who like the guy will come to his aid as well. Chances are, if you attack an essential NPC you'll probably either wind up dead or hoping they'll accept your yield.
Or you'll get arrested & carted off to jail.
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Comment on assumptions about Oblivion based on previous games
We really haven't said anything about quests, dialogue, magic, lots of things, so the only thing you have to go by is Morrowind and what we HAVE said. But what's in Morrowind does not necessarily imply what's in Oblivion -- I would have thought the differences between Daggerfall and Morrowind made that obvious. And so it doesn't automatically follow that things in Oblivion are going to be the same way they were in Morrowind when we haven't talked about them yet. Such an assumption is a logical fallacy.
I think this is one of those cases where we'll all just have to wait & see what you think of the game after it comes out. It's really not as huge a deal as some people want to make of it.
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A comparison of "size" - Morrowind & Oblivion
Oblivion's land mass is BIGGER than Morrowind's. The cities are larger, and there's a large number of settlements and camps and a HUGE number of shrines, tombs, caves, dungeons, etc. to explore. And while there are fewer skills, each now has skill perks you earn as you advance them, giving you an actual reason to advance other than just "getting better at them." Make no mistake -- Oblivion is a huge, huge game. To discover everything and play every quest will take you a very, very long time.
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On skill progression
Oblivion (like Morrowind) has classes that are defined by which skills you pick as "major" skills. When you choose your character's class (from a list of predefined classes or make your own), the major skills start at a higher level than the others. Your character has all of the skills -- but the ones that aren't major skills start out at lower levels. Some of them may be boosted from the base level depending upon the race you choose and perhaps your birthsign.
As you use skills, their levels advance. How much they advance depends on what you're doing with the skill and whether or not you were successful. When you have advanced your major skills enough, you level up. Leveling up gives you a chance to improve your base attributes (intelligence, strength, etc).
So your character's class is actually quite important.
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On skill progression #2
Yes, a "class" in Oblivion is a set of major skills.
Oblivion uses a similar point distribution when you level up to Morrowind's. When you level up, you pick whichever attributes you want to advance, and one or more attributes may have bonuses depending on the number of governing skills you've advanced since the last level.
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On skill progression #3
There are 21 skills, but your numbers & combinations of major vs other skills are off. More on that later. We've also changed training and taken other steps to try to keep "class" important through more of the game. Hopefully it will be LESS of a problem.
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On Radiant AI #6
It's designed to make things easier for OUR designers. They can very quickly create complex behaviors for the NPCs and tie those behaviors to the quests WITHOUT writing scripts for the behaviors. It gives them greater flexibility and power in creating complex, involved quests, and it makes it easier for them to set up NPCs who aren't necessarily quest related, and to set up behaviors for NPCs who are only quest related some of the time. Since they don't have to spend so much time writing lengthy scripts to define an NPCs behavior, they can make those behaviors much more complex and they can spend more time making the quests and dialog better.
They can have an NPC "get food at 12PM every day", or they can have an NPC "go to this particular tavern, sit at this particular chair, and eat for one hour at noon 3 days a week; on the other three days you're in this other town, and you eat at one of three different taverns in any available chair at 1:30PM; but on the 7th day you are traveling so you just eat if you can acquire anything (which means that he'll probably buy something at a settlement along the way)". In the first example, the NPC will get food but how he obtains it will depend on what he owns, how much money he has, if he has any weapons, and his AI settings.
That is basically all the designers need to do. We've spent a great deal of time making all of that work. Compare filling out a few dialog boxes to typing in hundreds of lines of script code, and I think you get the picture.
Yes, mod makers are going to have a field day with it. But we wrote it for our own purposes.
That is basically all the designers need to do. We've spent a great deal of time making all of that work. Compare filling out a few dialog boxes to typing in hundreds of lines of script code, and I think you get the picture.
Yes, mod makers are going to have a field day with it. But we wrote it for our own purposes.
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On Radiant AI #7
One example I saw the other day that I thought was cool. I was wandering through part of the Imperial City, and a dark elf woman ran up to me & entered into dialogue with me. She'd been looking for me, said her husband had sent her to find me, and could I go to such-n-such's house to meet with him? So I said sure, went to the house, and then became involved in a surprising quest line I hadn't expected (don't want to spoil what it was about, sorry).
RAI enabled the designers to set up this woman to "find the PC and force-greet." I'm not sure in this specific instance, but she could have either been in another part of the town, or across the map and been trying to meet up with me for days. RAI makes it easy for the designers to set up "push" quests like this.
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On Radiant AI #8 - dialogue
We've talked about this before, but we have a system that allows NPCs to engage in unscripted conversations with each other. As NPCs go about their daily business, if they encounter one another and their dispositions towards each other are high enough (and other AI settings allow it), they may pause and engage in coversation. There's a system of statements and relevant responses that they can choose from. But in addition, they'll often talk about other things, things related to the main story, and also things like "oh, did you hear that such & such's granddaughter has disappeared?" "yeah, but she's always hanging around that bandit cave", and if you overhear this you may get a new quest just by listening in to their conversation, without even talking to either of them directly. Or you may get information about a quest you're already working on.
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On Radiant AI #9
Read a book on AI, and you'll find things very similar to what we're doing. The reason it's AI and not scripting is because it uses goals and rules to determine how something is going to be accomplished. The designer establishes the goals, sets parameters (such as responsibility, aggression, confidence) on the actors, and leaves it up to the rules that have been established in the code to determine how the behavior plays out. It is most definitely artificial intelligence in the academic sense of the word. It's not a neural net -- NPCs don't learn -- but that's not the all-encompassing definition of the field of artificial intelligence anyway.
I'm sorry you are unable to see the impact this has on gameplay. No, it is not being used to generate random quests. But it does address one of the main complaints about Morrowind -- lifeless NPCs. And it does have a profound impact on gameplay, because it makes the NPCs seem more like they're people living in this world, rather than just repositories of information and givers of quests, because they have things to DO. It impacts gameplay because people related to quests may not always be in one place all the time. It impacts gameplay because it adds a layer of unpredictability for players -- you have to learn peoples' routines if you want to always know what they are (especially useful for a thief character, who wants to rob someone but needs to wait for just the right opportunity to do so.)
Several of you seem to be sticking to one small facet or another of what's been said about Radiant AI, and as a result are looking at it only with a narrow view. Instead, given the information we've told you about it, try to imagine the possibilities of what such a system might provide, and then realize that we have done the same thing.
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On Radiant AI #10 - NPCs attacking eachother?
TheGreatGodPan wrote: "will an NPC ever attack another NPC, like they were talking about with STALKER? Could you get someone so irritated that they take out their anger on others? It would be cool to be the anti-Pay-it-Forward guy."
They can -- all actors have dispositions towards one another, and if one's aggression is high enough and responsibility low enough, they may very well decide to attack another NPC. We have safeguards to prevent it happening in certain instances where we don't want it to, but it can definitely happen.
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