Can Bethesda's programmers shorten the loading times for PS3's version of oblivion?

what's with all these people calling into question someones programming skills?

unless you are a dev making a superior game (in which case you would NEVER say such a thing) .... that's a ridiculous statement.

 

To be fair, it is pretty obvious when comparing games within a genre that some developers have more skill, time, finances, and/or resources. Of course to say such about Bethesda would require comparing games of similar scope (very few). I think what people are saying though is that Bethesda's games do have a history of bugginess/performance issues and that the PS3 port is probably a quick and dirty and won't be very represanative of much.

 

The reality is that very few teams have the balls to try to make games the size of oblivion. Of course it's buggy, it's in a class of it's own as far as size and complexity goes. I would say their programming is probably pretty damn good considering the challenges they faced.

 

I understand that you can extrapolate some degree of competency through released games. I guess some of the comments struck a nerve with me because I'm just sick and tired in general of joe-average-gamers throwing around comments like "they're lazy" regarding devs. As if they have a clue.

 

You see the same comments (deservedly so IMO) about SOE when looking at the likes of Untold Legends on PS3. That game is lacking in many features found in other titles, so you can only assume they're just not that good overall.

I agree with those who rate Bethesda as poor programmers overall. There engines are...clunky. On PC they don't scale well with better hardware, they seem to miss some optimizations (see the hacks for Morrowind that could get your frame rate for example), they don't seem efficient in the loading department, and in Oblivion they're a bit behind the graphical times too. I dare say this is because as developers the engine isn't a big concern and they're more interested in the game and content. As such, I also agree it's unlikely Oblivion on PS3 will have any loading advantages. I doubt it'll have an frame-rate advantages either. I just don't think Bethesda care about framerate at all.

 

I think it's a much safer bet that they started development on the PC.
And it's painfully obvious that it was at best a timed exclusive. It cannot have been a deal for perpetual exclusiveness, because if it were it wouldn't be coming out for PS3 now!

The real kick to the nuts for Oblivion IMO, and I got a feeling I'm going to get peed on the head for this, was the decision that there'll be a 360 SKU without a harddrive.

I frankly don't understand what Sony alpha-kits could have to do with Oblivion's shape one way or another.

 

thanks Shifty... but you're not a joe-average-gamer AND you explained your reasoning.

 

Well if you look into the facts that there are tons of community made mods that raise the performance and\or show better graphics without a performance hit for both Oblivion and Morrowind, it should tell you that they arent exactly very skilled in that department, OR lazy.

Another bell should ring when a game has extremely bad framerates even on very high end computers, without the game itself being enough graphically impressive to justify it. It took what? 6 months before we could run Morrowind at the highest settings with 30fps. (6 months as in, we had to wait for a new line of GPU's). Sure it took a while before we could run DOOM 3 on ultra high aswell, but graphically the game was insane even on normal settings, Morrowind and Oblivion wasnt mind blowing in terms of graphics, yet they are huge resource hogs.

If some hobby coders can raise the framerate AND sharpen up the graphics without any real performance loss (they upped the texture resolution, wich doesnt really have a performance hit if you got enough VRAM to hold it) in a matter of a few months, it should tell you that the developers are either Lazy or not particularly skilled.

 

The game is entirely built upon middleware: Gamebryo, Bink, Havok, Facegen, Speedtree, etc. They would need support for all these components on the PS3 in order to port the game (unless they change vendors, which takes more time still).

 

Frankly, keeping the game on a single layer probably was a speed optimization.

 

Yeah, but as I've tried to point out, it is coming to PS3 now regardless. While I agree that all this middleware isn't a good starting point, it seems like Bethesda already has a plan.

... unless of course it isn't really coming to PS3, but I thought that was kind of officially confirmed by now?

 

Well yes, my point was that they may not have been able to work seriously on a PS3 version before this time due to lack of support on the PS3 from their various middleware providers.

 

LET'S NOT TALK ABOUT THEIR OTHER PROJECT.

Well, actually I'm not so certain of the ridiculous of such statements.
You don't need to be a a grand chef to criticize a dish, nor do you need to be a grand film maker to express your opinion on a movie you just watched.

 

I'll say no more then!

 

You know what was is Bethesda game was that I wouldnt mind them doing a sequel to? Pirates of the Caribbean! The 2003 game.

I have to say it didn't feel like a completed game. It felt more like the bones of a possibly very good game that got shipped before completed. I played the PC version on a decent rig and it looked very nice and was surprisingly fun.

Actually I don't think it was developed by Bethesda - just produced by them or something. I believe the title was orginally developed as a Sea Dogs game. But they sold out at the last min and did a movie tie in. Anyway I think they had something really interesting going there.

I enjoyed this game a lot more than Sid Meyers Pirates! 2. The ship vs ship combat was pretty damn fun. They had a decent combat system for sword fighting and gun fighting and a big open world with lots of islands to explore.

I always thought that if they fleshed it out a bit like an Elder scrolls game it had the potential to be amazing. And it's probably not nessasary to sell it under the Pirates of the Caribbean name

 

Patches?

Their suntans?

 

HORSE ARMOR !! For $1

 

Advanced PR techniques!
"We cannot officially deny a PS3 version. Not today, and certainly not after announcing it. Err. You know, if we ever decide to announce that we're making it. We could just start shipping it. Err. I mean, we could, that doesn't mean we will."

 

The average Joe gamer really doesn't find much to fault in Oblivion. At its release, none of us were really used to games pushing as many polys, normal mapping so many surfaces, or applying HDR on top of it all the way Oblivion did. A lot of console gamers were blown away by the game and didn't get hung up on its flaws. It's us tech-dorks that did the most nitpicking, and even in a tech-centric forum like this, I'm surprised to see such harsh criticisms of the developers, considering the steep challenges they had to face, and the relatively narrow timetable in which they overcame most of them.