Here's what's really powering Fallout 3's metro train

The Dutch Ghost

The Dutch Ghost

Grouchy old man of NMA
Moderator
Hello all,

I just found this article on PCgamer, perhaps people here will find it interesting on how Bethesda's developers approached and solved this problem.
http://www.pcgamer.com/heres-whats-happening-inside-fallout-3s-metro-train/

From what I have heard other similar solutions have also been used throughout Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas in order to get certain setups or animations.
In Lookout Point I recall they had to implement a hidden NPC in order to do some voice work.
 
Is that how the Elevator sequence in Lonesome Road works too?

Man Bethesda's Gamebryo is like a School production but with more money on it. It's like a puppetshow. You hide npcs in rocks so that you are able to have Mr House talking to you, put train hats on people so you can have vehicles in the game. It's kind of hilarious. Gotta wonder the stuff the XRE Cars and Vertibird guy had to do to get his mods working as well as they do.
 
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Walpknut said:
Is that how the Elevator sequence in Lonesome Road works too?

Man Bethesda's Gamebryo is like a School production but with more money on it. It's like a puppetshow. You hide npcs in rocks so that you are able to have Mr House talking to you, put train hats on people so you can have vehicles in the game. It's kind of hilarious. Gotta wonder the stuff the XRE Cars and Vertibird guy had to do to get his mods working as well as they do.
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You work with the engine. I bet it wasn't worth it at the time, to crack open the engine source and bolt that on as a new feature.
 
Funnily enough, the version used on Oblivion allowed to ride horses (and other creatures, as long as the skeleton nodes were properly named and set), which, in theory, would allow for the use of vehicles. There's even a lot of leftover functions in G.E.C.K. (non-functional) referring to this.
 
Walpknut said:
Is that how the Elevator sequence in Lonesome Road works too?

Man Bethesda's Gamebryo is like a School production but with more money on it. It's like a puppetshow. You hide npcs in rocks so that you are able to have Mr House talking to you, put train hats on people so you can have vehicles in the game. It's kind of hilarious. Gotta wonder the stuff the XRE Cars and Vertibird guy had to do to get his mods working as well as they do.
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The XRE cars are actually powered by a series of small invisible explosions. Not sure how Vertibirds are made to function, though. I know that the crows aren't actually there, they're essentially just moving textures.
 
From what i understand, these type of shortcuts are wide spread in the gaming industry. I wonder if its bad planning and mangled code from terrible programmers, or if it's an actual better choice.
 
AskWazzup said:
From what i understand, these type of shortcuts are wide spread in the gaming industry. I wonder if its bad planning and mangled code from terrible programmers, or if it's an actual better choice.
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I expect that it's a case of a wanted effect, done within the current engine as-is. Where the costs of adding the supported feature would likely outweigh the value of the [possibly single use] effect.
 
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Gizmojunk said:
I expect that it's a case of a wanted effect, done within the current engine as-is. Where the costs of adding the supported feature would likely outweigh the value of the [possibly single use] effect.
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Probably so, though i get the impression that it is getting worse with time. In 2001 Gothic you could swim and climb, rivers had currents, but after 15 years, you have in most cases much more simple worlds. Game world size and graphics have catapulted, but the functionality has declined to the 80'. I wonder if the 3d transition was too quick, to a point where all the added complexity from the bigger worlds have become so unveildy, that they always have to resort to very simple rules.
 
Tim Cain [IIRC] once stated his shock that there are developers that will cut features if the art for it is lacking. (paraphrased)

It may be that the complexity brings issues along with it, that Gothic didn't have to worry about.
Or it may just be that the developers are not all on the same page, and no one sees the entire page. You can find devs that worked on some game, and ask them, "What did you do?", and they might say ~"the minigun".

Look at FO3. Does anyone think that any of the devs (even the ultra few among them that actually played the games) knew that the Pipboy had a screensaver? Yet the FO3 Pipboy (with CRT visual artifacts) does not. They proved themselves so desperate to plaster all things Fallouty onto their game as continuity hooks... and no one implemented the screensaver.

[...And where the PC is staring at the device; and it's commonly used as a pause, and if done, the player would come back and marvel "Oh that Bethesda, such detail; the Pipboy even has its own screensaver! Genius!".]
 
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Didn't Tim Cain also like Oblivion? Unless he really was being sarcastic.
 
Hardboiled Android said:
The XRE cars are actually powered by a series of small invisible explosions. Not sure how Vertibirds are made to function, though. I know that the crows aren't actually there, they're essentially just moving textures.
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Man, not sure if you are pulling my leg with the Small explosions thing, I just don't know with Gamebryo.

To me Tima Cain's and Avellone's praise for 3 always comes off as "damned by faint praise", they usually praise the game for very basic shit like rewarding the player with loot at the end of a dungeons and will more often than not throw sutile jabs at the egrerious flaws like their lack of originality and in the case of Sawyer he even criticized how the engine worked. Hell in the New Vegas CE making of DVD Avellone even said of people that have never played the originals "Curse them" in a joking manner. I might just be projecting.
 
TorontRayne said:
Didn't Tim Cain also like Oblivion? Unless he really was being sarcastic.
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Tim Cain has said that he liked playing FO3. He said it disappointed a lot of his fans to learn that.

I dunno... it seems to me that Tim Cain likes to load his comments with bits in between the lines... but maybe I'm just projecting. ;)

(Myself, I thought he destroyed them on Matt Chat for essentially co-opting both Fallout plots as FO3's; but it was mildly put.)
 
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Gizmojunk said:
TorontRayne said:
Didn't Tim Cain also like Oblivion? Unless he really was being sarcastic.
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Tim Cain has said that he liked playing FO3. He said it disappointed a lot of his fans to learn that.

I dunno... it seems to me that Tim Cain likes to load his comments with bits in between the lines... but maybe I'm just projecting. ;)

(Myself, I thought he destroyed them on Matt Chat for essentially co-opting both Fallout plots as FO3's; but it was mildly put.)
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I think he does that, yeah. From what I've gathered he (as well as some other original devs, like MCA) "liked" playing the game and found several details in it to be superb - mostly things which a large chunk of NMA agrees was great, stuff like visual design and overall aesthetics, exploration etc. - but found the story, writing, world building and so on to be lacking.
Then again, they were quite diplomatic in their comments. I suppose that they didn't want to intentionally badmouth the developers and potentially burn a bridge or so. I guess that, deep inside, they are disappointed by the game, but unlike regular NMAers, they aren't vitriolic about it or just don't really care all that much anymore to speak openly. Fargo seems to have taken up that role.
 
Yeah, there's a reason for the elevator thing.

Asked a friend who was a modeler on the Broken Steel DLC.

He says that it's due to the old engine (the one used on Oblivion, FO3, FNV) requiring a static mesh to be joined to another mesh. He also says that the Horse in Oblivion is not a good comparison since Horse movement was extremely unsmooth and buggy.

Skyrim kind of fixed that. Though, horse movement is a bit buggy. Your character feels like a statue on the horse. Completely frozen.
 
Or, maybe he even really liked the game. For me that doesn't really matter. There are a lot of paintings I like, but I would never get the idea to do my art in the same way because I follow a different design and principle. I love pop art for example, but I would not do it - except I have to.

Important is what he makes, not what he likes. His actions speak for them self. For all we care, if he liked the males istead of da girlz, would that make his work less appealing for example? :V
 
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Crni Vuk said:
Or, maybe heven really liked the game. For me that doesn't really matter. There are a lot of paintings I like, but I would never get the idea to do my art in the same way because I follow a different design and principle. I love pop art for example, but I would not do it - except I have to.

Important is what he makes, not what he likes. His actions speak for them self. For all we care, if he liked the males istead of da girlz, would that make his work less appealing for example? :V
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What?
 
He's saying it doesn't matter what Tim Cain likes because he can produce stuff that isn't crap, or you can appreciate shit that is crap, or something along the lines of Tim Cain is a sellout who likes shit games. Yes. That's the one.
 
TorontRayne said:
He's saying it doesn't matter what Tim Cain likes because he can produce stuff that isn't crap, or you can appreciate shit that is crap, or something along the lines of Tim Cain is a sellout who likes shit games. Yes. That's the one.
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Yeah, sorry. I read that at 2 AM I was like "what".
 
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