Fallout 3 engine info?

[Odin]

King of Creation of DAC informed me of some info regarding the new engine that Elder Scrolls, evidently Serban of Jucaushii.ro sent over some info to RPGDot regarding the engine:<blockquote>

• first-person and third-person perspective
• combat will be bloody and visceral
• The outcome of combat will not be decided by virtual "dice roll"
• it takes place in the world of Tamriel, specifically in the Imperial
  Province of Cyrodiil
• the most amazing graphics that the console gaming world has ever seen
• either on foot or on horseback, players can explore a huge exterior world
• the dev. tools randomly populate areas, according to input parameters
  (area type - e.g. forest, types of trees, bushes, soil etc.)

</blockquote>Well who would make an engine that only served one viewpoint now-a-days..
Thanks King!

 

[PinkyDW]

Screw graphics (and yes the screenshot I saw made me freak out too) what the hell are they thinking with making the combat with "no virtual dice roll"?

I'm a Bethesda fanboy as is well known, but one of the great things about Morrowind was the skill system (not special I know, but it was good for this game). You could swing all day, and if you hadn't acquired skill with a particular weapon, you wouldn't hit shit...

As for this "randomly populated" stuff, I know their old games did that, and it makes for a quicker development, but somehow that just seems lazy. I won't go into the possible ramifications it would have on gameplay, its beyond me, but seems like it could cause problems... lack of depth perhaps? since random npc 122332 will have no specific information

 

[Briosafreak]

They are the same viewpoints from Morrowind, there`s nothing new there, the game was first person but you could put it at third person, from behind the character.

Well at least from the pics we now know that the camera can be made free for pics or development tweaks, wich tells us it can be put anywhere the devs want it. One less excuse for them now.

 

[PsychoSniper]

No diceroll ?

What the fuck ! That means no criticals.

 

[Macaco]

You people seem to underestimate the flexibility of an "engine". Most of what the engine does is related to rendering, physics, etc. And not the point from wich you view the world. the only difference is optimization, but even then most of the effort would be from the art team (ie.: you need to have lower polycount models and smaller textures to compensate for the bigger view area on isometric third person). Just look at the half life engine, and think about thing like the command interface on natural selection, or even the spectator camera on CS, and both those cases didn't change a single line of code in "the engine" per se.

I'm more worried about what pinky said, of course they could change it for fallout, but the fact that apparently oblivion will be some kind of fps worries me.

 

[Claw]

Screw graphics (and yes the screenshot I saw made me freak out too) what the hell are they thinking with making the combat with "no virtual dice roll"?

I wonder why that's even mentioned as engine feature. You could mod UT to determine hits with a virtual diceroll. Of course it could mean they don't intend to do it. If they intend to develop TES more in the Action game direction, that's fine. They could well find a way to implement skills differently and it fits the direction TES took from the start. As far as I understand anyway.
But if they don't change that for Fallout.. ouch.

As for this "randomly populated" stuff, I know their old games did that, and it makes for a quicker development, but somehow that just seems lazy.

Well, they can't place every mob by hand, and if they include some parameters so it's not entirely random like Morrowind was, a definite step upwards.

 

[Voluptuous Pachyderm]

They are the same viewpoints from Morrowind, there`s nothing new there, the game was first person but you could put it at third person, from behind the character.

Well at least from the pics we now know that the camera can be made free for pics or development tweaks, wich tells us it can be put anywhere the devs want it. One less excuse for them now.

I may have got your post slightly wrong but here goes.

The third person view in morrowind wasn't just positioned behind your character, you could twirl it pretty much all around them even to the front looking back over their shoulder to something behind them.

 

[Briosafreak]

That`s a better description, i should have made that clearer.

 

[Brillo]

I wonder why that's even mentioned as engine feature. You could mod UT to determine hits with a virtual diceroll. Of course it could mean they don't intend to do it. If they intend to develop TES more in the Action game direction, that's fine. They could well find a way to implement skills differently and it fits the direction TES took from the start. As far as I understand anyway.
But if they don't change that for Fallout.. ouch..

Aside from the "most amazing graphics" thing, none of this tells us anything about the engine itself, much less what FO3 might be like. This isn't the generic low-level 3d engine stuff that the two games will probably share, it's the high-level stuff that gets added on top by developers on a game-by-game basis. The stupid console mag this info appeared in isn't gonna talk about any of the relevant shit.

Well, they can't place every mob by hand, and if they include some parameters so it's not entirely random like Morrowind was, a definite step upwards.

They placed every mob, rock, tree, mushroom, and divet in a hill by hand for Morrowind. (Damn ) The only thing at all random were certain bits of loot found in crates and such. If anything, the random generation thing is a step backwards. There are a lot of things that need to be hand-crafted, and the landscape (especially in a FP game) is one of them.

 

[Claw]

They placed every mob, rock, tree, mushroom, and divet in a hill by hand for Morrowind. (Damn ) The only thing at all random were certain bits of loot found in crates and such.

Ah yeah, now that you mention it, I saw some cliffracers in the editor. You wouldn't get the impression from playing the game though, where higher-lvl mobs suddenly pop up next to a town just because you levelled up.

I'll then change my statement to say that the random distribution is probably better than their effort. Complaints about the apparently randomly distributed mobs were widespread, and people judge a game by appearance, not by how it's actually crafted.
And you have every right to appear shocked. How could they manage to populate the world so pointlessly with mobs that mostly seem to get increasinly powerful the higher your level? I wasn't thrilled by the mob distribution.

Also, doesn't it get old if the same mobs spawn in the same places all over again? I thought it got old pretty damn fast.

 

[Brillo]

Ah yeah, now that you mention it, I saw some cliffracers in the editor. You wouldn't get the impression from playing the game though, where higher-lvl mobs suddenly pop up next to a town just because you levelled up.

Ok, I should clarify. They placed every mob location by hand. They used something called leveled lists. Which means that when the player got near those locations they put out a creature that was about(+/- a certain amount) your level. Same with the generic loot. Some containers contained specific unique items. Others used the same kind of leveled lists.

So really what they were doing was placing "random gold pieces appropriate to the players level" rather than 50 gold pieces in a crate. Or "a creature of this type appropriate to the players level" rather thana 5th level rat.

Some good things about this, and some bad. Sounds like they're changing this somewhat for ESIV.

 

[Claw]

Maybe I should clarify. I don't care. I never implied I didn't believe they placed every mob location by hand. I could have guessed that since the mobs seemed to get more and more powerful they used some device (did I mention I don't care how they implement it, only about the visible result?) to link my level to which mobs are spawned.

Changes nothing about the fact that a formerly desolated area suddenly became crowded with mobs. Exotic mobs become alot less exotic if they suddenly appear everywhere.
And for whatever reason (No, that doesn't imply I want to know the answer) the mob density increased and became an annoyance.

*shrugs*

Whatever, it's a thing of the past now.

 

[Taintspore]

The outcome of combat will not be decided by virtual "dice roll"

Sounds like their past failure TES: BattleSpire. It was Daggerfall FPS and it blew.

I wonder why that's even mentioned as engine feature.

Doesn't make any sense to me either, I think they just needed one more bullet for the list.

 

[Briosafreak]

Yeah, Battlespire, good point.

Still it doesn`t say a thing about Fallout3, we still have to wait.

Meh

 

[Roshambo]

Sounds like their past failure TES: BattleSpire. It was Daggerfall FPS and it blew.

The same goes for Redguard, too.

I wonder if Oblivion is just one of the "TES Lite" action games that have about as much appeal as replaying any Tomb Raider game, the first time around.

As far as mob placement and world design, Bethesda should take some notes from Pirahna Bytes and Origin, please. After playing Gothic, Morrowind was painful to wander around in. Especially when it came to NPC interaction. Honestly, the only way they could make the NPC interaction in Morrowind any more dull would be to implement Dragon Warrior's speech system into it.

And, just like in Morrowind, you'll probably have to quicksave every fifty feet you walk, because you just stepped into the range of a critter that's about to dice you to pieces whilst you have no hope of fighting them, much less running away. It is not just because of the poor movement system, it's mainly because you can't identify anything more than three meters in front of yourself. By the time you can identify what something is or can see it, you're likely well within the "fucked range".

Whereas in Gothic, you can look around and see if there's a monster, and you have to judge your skill against them before you run into their awareness range. The creatures were placed in context to the world design, as were the items and more. Unless the critter is wandering around, you can avoid them versus playing the semi-automatic encounter Russian roulette in Morrowind. That is unless you're heavy with the magic, which is the only way to play a TES game without growing ancient.

 

[Briosafreak]

As far as mob placement and world design, Bethesda should take some notes from Pirahna Bytes and Origin, please.

I agree, and looking at their forum they seem to have kept an eye on them, don`t know if the end result will show it or not though.

 

[Jabbapop]

combat will be bloody and visceral

I'm somewhat enthused that they seem to be taking the game content in a mature step. Which may not be the case for gameplay. :-\ It will be interesting either way to see the final result.

The outcome of combat will not be decided by virtual "dice roll"

I'm kind of not clear on this one. Does this mean that the success of each hit will be based upon aiming skill? I know in morrowind people were irked about the fact that you could be right in front of a creature and use your weapon and it wouldn't be hit.

 

[Captain Spong!]

Re: The"virtual dice roll"

They could mean a system where the player is rewarded for the accuracy of their aiming by achieving a "hit", but the character's skill determines how powerful that hit was in terms of damage, or whether it penetrates armour or has any special effects such as stunning.

First post, be gentle with me...

 

[Role-Player]

[*]combat will be bloody and visceral
[*]The outcome of combat will not be decided by virtual "dice roll"
[*]it takes place in the world of Tamriel, specifically in the Imperial
Province of Cyrodiil
[*]the most amazing graphics that the console gaming world has ever seen
[*]either on foot or on horseback, players can explore a huge exterior world
[*]the dev. tools randomly populate areas, according to input parameters
(area type - e.g. forest, types of trees, bushes, soil etc.)[/list]</blockquote>Well who would make an engine that only served one viewpoint now-a-days..

That's information about the game (Oblivion) rather than the engine itself. Those are features which are exclusive to Oblivion, not to the engine.

 

[Dove]

Just what I was about to say. A simple dice roll, random number generator would be easy to add to virtually any software engine created. And would be necessary if they plan to use S.P.E.C.I.A.L., or anything remotely equivalent, and without that, it would be an action game.

And nothing would piss us off more.