*twirly* Bethesda tech trade-offs

[Deleted member 11852]

I refuse to believe that the desired features of Gamebryo (thousands of interactive physics objects, accurately tracked) can't be matched with an engine that can allow for seamless country to town transitions, let alone buildings.

Bethesda like to build TARDIS environments, I.e the interior of a building is bigger than the exterior. I think they like (or perhaps need) to segment the game world because of the way they collect and store all the data for the objects in it.

They are solving different problems to other games because of design decisions. Or rather not wanting to compromise the design they prioritise.

 

[jlippo]

Even with graphical compromises it's the world part of the game that I'm most curious and worried about.
With new generation in mind and lots more of memory to use, have they made progress in world simulation at all?

 

[Pixel]

Even with graphical compromises it's the world part of the game that I'm most curious and worried about.
With new generation in mind and lots more of memory to use, have they made progress in world simulation at all?

"Think about how we store and stream our games. We can just think about a lot more stuff at once, like characters across the world, even if their not on the screen. In Skyrim, it's clear we haven't loaded the buildings...If we have enough memory, it's already loaded when you're near. We can have the sounds from the inside come out." - Todd Howard
http://www.gamepur.com/news/14959-b...enefits-8gb-ram-and-secret-project-will-.html

 

[Sigfried1977]

Even with graphical compromises it's the world part of the game that I'm most curious and worried about.
With new generation in mind and lots more of memory to use, have they made progress in world simulation at all?

To be fair here, nobody has made any progress in that regard yet. Everyone's completely doubled down on delivering prettier pictures exclusively so far. Playing AC Syndicate now, and while the game certainly looks the part by virtue of sheer density, in many ways the way the world reacts to the player still hasn't caught up to what R* did in bloody GTA 3 back on the PS2. Same with Watchdogs. When it comes to world simulation, Bethesda's games are in a completely different league. Unlike just about everyone else, they don't just simulate the city block the player's dicking around in at the moment.

 

[Pixel]

To be fair here, nobody has made any progress in that regard yet. Everyone's completely doubled down on delivering prettier pictures exclusively so far. Playing AC Syndicate now, and while the game certainly looks the part by virtue of sheer density, in many ways the way the world reacts to the player still hasn't caught up to what R* did in bloody GTA 3 back on the PS2. Same with Watchdogs. When it comes to world simulation, Bethesda's games are in a completely different league. Unlike just about everyone else, they don't just simulate the city block the player's dicking around in at the moment.

I thought for the most part Skyrim only initiates a simulation in the grids around the player. Like only runs npc scripts in the current and adjacent grids. Hence why you see wolly mammoths fall out of the sky when they pop into existence as an occasional glitch. When you enter that grid it will take into account the time of day and what the NPCs should be doing at that time of day plus some use of random number generator to create a bit of variety in their action. The only exceptions I personally remember would be a timer and a bit of random number generation on how long Followers will stay in a place you tell them to, and also a timer set on conquered Imperial/Storm Cloak bases which randomly get retaken after a certain amount of time. NPC shop keepers acquiring random goods is no greater in complexity than every single game with a certain amount of randomness in the goods the shop keepers obtain and probably gets generated either in the shop keeper door loading screen or when you are one grid away from the actual grid that contains the shop.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Maybe not quite simulating things far away, but Skyrim (and FO3 or Oblivion for that matter) certainly kept track of npc activities all across the map. For example, in Oblivion there was some sort of noble lady who always travelled to her country home for 2 days every two weeks or so (or something to that extent). And you could actually meet her on the road. NPCs in Bethesda games actually do things besides just wandering around aimlessly.

 

[Lalaland]

I would argue that Bethesda's ability to run NPC scripts is not the same as them having AI or being interesting, the bucket trick for robbing everything is for me the ultimate illustration of this. It's awesome that the game is modelling character vision but when it's as trivial to subvert as throwing a bucket on their head with literally no reaction that's worse than a crude vision cone for me. I keep seeing folks describe Bethesda games as 'living world's' and I am dumbfounded, they have never seemed like more than a low rent Westworld to me. Made all the worse by the double whammy of a terrible animation engine and awful AI, since Morrowind I've been handling Bethesda AI by finding the nearest door (that is not a load) and watching any number of NPCs >1 fail miserably to navigate through it while I pick them off. MGSV has spoiled me on open world AI and if FO4 hasn't evolved their combat AI beyond their old reliable 'bum rush' I can see myself wasting the price of entry yet again (FO3 shooting mechanics and sheer stupidity put me right off after a few hours).

Everything in Gamebryo is cells, if the cell isn't loaded then nothing is happening there while it's fascinating that particular Skyrim AI has a schedule that is tracked while the PC isn't in that cell, the teleport trick for escort missions show that this is an exception. In essence when you get an escort mission you simply fast travel to the location and wait 12 hours because hostile AI isn't spawned without the PC being present, your escort arrives perfectly intact and you save yourself the infinite stress of Bethesda companion AI (do I need to insert one of the 9 bajillion Lydia gifs here?). The biggest single improvement I can trust is in this game is 64 bit support (because it has to be for next gen consoles) which will finally allow me to load more cells on PC without the constant crashing and eliminate some of the awful popup that has characterised Gamebryo for ever. Everything else I'm awaiting release given Bethesda's semi-detached relationship with the truth (this is what the 4th 'all new' Gamebryo?) I mean remember Radiant Quests and how they were to allow for a new future of infinite quests until you realised they were all 'Retrieve X from Y' or 'Kill X at Y'?

I've always wanted the games Bethesda describes but the gulf between what they describe and what is delivered has grown to the point that without a complete rebuild it's hard to see how they can evolve beyond what they delivered with Oblivion 9 years ago

 

[Deleted member 11852]

When it comes to world simulation, Bethesda's games are in a completely different league. Unlike just about everyone else, they don't just simulate the city block the player's dicking around in at the moment.

It's better than many games but definitely has some way to go and I'll guess we'll see whether Fallout 4 improves on the Radiant AI which was equally brilliant and flawed.

And you could actually meet her on the road. NPCs in Bethesda games actually do things besides just wandering around aimlessly.

This is clever scripting, the lady is designed to travel from here to here along this route so whenever you enter any of the areas the script runs and determines if she should be present and what she should be doing. The same was true in Fallout 3 where traders would roam paths between settlements so if you follow the path you can always, eventually, locate a particular trader. The same was applied to missions where an NPC would "go home".

I would argue that Bethesda's ability to run NPC scripts is not the same as them having AI or being interesting, the bucket trick for robbing everything is for me the ultimate illustration of this. It's awesome that the game is modelling character vision but when it's as trivial to subvert as throwing a bucket on their head with literally no reaction that's worse than a crude vision cone for me.

The bucket trick is a good example of the AI being simultaneously brilliant and flawed. The same flaws were true in older games such as being in the close vicinity of a NPC like a shopekeeper and crouching (ready to steel - and generally looking suspicious) and waiting for the NPC to turn away so you could rob them blind which was just fine as long as they didn't see you do it.

While it was handy to rob people for money it also was ridiculously immersion breaking. I'm hoping in Fallout 4 that if you obscure an NPCs vision in such a blatant way, or start skulking aorund where shop or home, they will react appropriately.This is not even particularly complicated AI so I hope it's in here.

 

[nightshade]

As Shifty said do we really need to have hundreds and thousands of objects?
Witcher 3 has a lot of objects around that can be manipulated and moved, although not on par with Bethesda games since majority of the inventory stuff you see in Witcher 3 only exists as a menu icon. But on the other hand witcher 3 looks miles better, bigger and denser than the Bethesda games.

I am sure an acceptable compromise could have been reached. Think the biggest issue Fallout 4's visuals have is the really poor ambient occlusion which becomes even worse of a problem due to the almost cartoony colour palate

 

[Deleted member 11852]

As Shifty said do we really need to have hundreds and thousands of objects?

Bethesda appear to believe so. It's their vision for Fallout.

I am sure an acceptable compromise could have been reached.

The stock visuals (i.e. before the modding community has stepped in) for the last three Bethesda Game Studios games have been pretty poor and yet Bethesda have had both commercial and critical success. Why should Bethesda comrpomise what is evidently a successful forumla? When your last game sold over 20 millions copies, why would you take that risk? How do you know you'll please more than you displease?

There is already a shitstorm on GAF becuase Bethesda have allegedly dumbed down the conversation system in Fallout 4, which is now like Mass Effect.

 

[nightshade]

Because progressiveness ?
At some point you will have to try for it and go ahead with it, at some point the complaints people have will translate into game's quality. Just because they sell well does not mean they can keep doing it over and over again though, even COD started to change (both in terms of gameplay and also the tech side) because otherwise it would end up doing worse than before. The dialogue choices like Mass Effect are one of my biggest complaints about the game but that's a game design discussion.

What I am trying to say is that success does not mean they never try to improve, they've had a few years since Skyrim and these few years just so happened to be the transition period for console generation where every other studio spent time and effort on developing something new. Gamebroyo might provide them with what they want but it also has a ton of negatives and it's not just limited to how the game looks but also how buggy it can get. Just have a look at how difficult mod management can get in a Gamebroyo game.

 

[Lalaland]

...
The stock visuals (i.e. before the modding community has stepped in) for the last three Bethesda Game Studios games have been pretty poor and yet Bethesda have had both commercial and critical success. Why should Bethesda comrpomise what is evidently a successful forumla? When your last game sold over 20 millions copies, why would you take that risk? How do you know you'll please more than you displease?

There is already a shitstorm on GAF becuase Bethesda have allegedly dumbed down the conversation system in Fallout 4, which is now like Mass Effect.

Yeah that last change undermines your point and Bethesda's own RP base, a lot of the folks I know who really love the current Gamebryo and are concerned that changing the engine would compromise the parts that allow them to 'LARP' inside the game. Yet with a voiced protaganist and now the changes to the dialogue system Bethesda have really hollowed out the RP possibilities. It's hard to tell yourself you're Miles Gundersnatch, Thief Extraordinaire one moment and Dave Dastardly, Boiler of Frogs the next if the lines are both voiced by the same bored sounding narcoleptic pile that on with terrible three word sentences that don't match with what the character actually says and they may have shot themselves in the foot here.

On the upside the leaks show an improved animation system (looks to be ~3-4 years ago quality) but the AI still looks ropey as all hell (saw the classic staring at last alert spot while crab walking crap as before).

The game's graphics and engine have progressed enormously There game is employing physically based rendering and, finally, volumetric lighting. It's not like things are standing still.

We've only seen it running on consoles with relatively puny CPUs and limited resources. Before you write it off, why not wait to see what it looks like on a decent PC?

Fair enough I didn't touch on the short looking horizon for shadows for this very reason as FO4 would be far from the first game on these consoles to have shadow pop-in

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The game's graphics and engine have progressed enormously There game is employing physically based rendering and, finally, volumetric lighting. It's not like things are standing still.

We've only seen it running on consoles with relatively puny CPUs and limited resources. Before you write it off, why not wait to see what it looks like on a decent PC?

 

[Rodéric]

I'd like them to make sure noone gets motion sick playing their game above all. Fallout 3 is the only video game I played capable of doing that, quite a technical prowess in itself...
(And I played over a hundred video games.)

 

[Deleted member 11852]

It's a immersive feature. There will much nausea after the Great War due to all of the radiation.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Yeah that last change undermines your point and Bethesda's own RP base, a lot of the folks I know who really love the current Gamebryo and are concerned that changing the engine would compromise the parts that allow them to 'LARP' inside the game. Yet with a voiced protaganist and now the changes to the dialogue system Bethesda have really hollowed out the RP possibilities.

The difference between the freedom to use the game world and the conversation system is that the latter was heavily criticised. I won't comment on the new conversation wheel system given what little we know about and I'm conscious most of the furore is direct result has come from leaker of which some (most? all?) have rolled characters without high CHA.

The reason I think this could be important is the Vault-Tec SPECIAL video on charm and it's focus on how charm is now a significant influence on interactions and conversations, whereas it really wasn't before and was a dump stat for a lot of people. I'd like to see the experience of players who have a higher CHA stat.

The old Fallout 3 / New Vegas conversation system was tedious most of the time. Except in a few instances where a certain (usually aggressive or rude) response would immediately terminate the conversation and initiate combat, conversations were mostly about clicking every possible conversational option until you had received every piece of information. Conversations rarely branched this way or that except where a stat or skill check took place and these were few and far between. In places conversations could go round in circles. It was whack-a-mole with a text interface.

I can definitely understand why they've tried to change this aspect of the game.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

All I know is the game doesn't look very good. Some people can theorize all they want about the gaming looking not-that-bad because it uses the technique X and technology Y, but the statistical sample taken from the overwhelming majority of reactions around the Internet can't lie: this isn't looking great.

Yeah CD Projekt with Witcher 3 made everyone else's lives terrible because of the standards raised, but the truth is that Fallout 4 looks worse than a decently modded Skyrim on a modest PC from 2012.

One would think that after the rampant success of Skyrim and the crapload of money it brought would make Zenimax/Bethesda double-down on the art resources for Fallout 4, especially for the detail being given to the various assets. Instead, the textures look flat and the models seem to have a low polygon count for a game being launched in late 2015.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

All I know is the game doesn't look very good. Some people can theorize all they want about the gaming looking not-that-bad because it uses the technique X and technology Y, but the statistical sample taken from the overwhelming majority of reactions around the Internet can't lie: this isn't looking great.

Absolutely correct. But this isn't "news", it was clear from the reveal trailer in June. Why people are suddenly surprised is a bit of a mystery - particularly given Pete Hine's interview back in August:

Metro: In terms of the reception to the game so far, I was looking again online and I was surprised at how negative a lot of it is. There seems to be a significant proportion of the fans upset at the quality of the graphics and there also seems to be a Diablo III style reaction to the use of colour – which was personally my favourite part of the reveal. Do those sort of complaints surprise or upset you?

Pete: Definitely doesn’t upset us. Very little surprises me after 16 years in this industry. [laughs] Generally speaking… I think we’re an industry, we’re a form of entertainment. As with most forms of entertainment you never get 100 per cent agreement on anything. And so, at the end of the day, whether it’s what the graphics look like or whether the gameplay is what you want or whether you like the setting, or whatever it is, everybody is entitled to their opinion.​

Yeah CD Projekt with Witcher 3 made everyone else's lives terrible because of the standards raised, but the truth is that Fallout 4 looks worse than a decently modded Skyrim on a modest PC from 2012.

The Witcher 3 also had an awful lurching framerate on consoles, particularly the swamp in Velen. It looks great, but it's taken what... ten patches to get semi-decet and close to a solid 30fps on consoles? They made different compromises.

One would think that after the rampant success of Skyrim and the crapload of money it brought would make Zenimax/Bethesda double-down on the art resources for Fallout 4, especially for the detail being given to the various assets. Instead, the textures look flat and the models seem to have a low polygon count for a game being launched in late 2015.

I agree on how the game looks but I'm yet to be convinced that the game could look significantly better without taking a hit in other areas. I'm interested to see some of the large scale battles that the press got to see in Cologne, but we've seen glimpses of huge airships crashing into the ground, vertibird battles and more.

I'm not, nor was I expecting, huge advances in graphics. I always believed that Bethesda would take the increased power of the new consoles and direct it at the things they have always seemed to focus on because I presume they think they're more important. And I'll definitely reserve judgement on the game until I've put a good 20 hours into it.

 

[Lalaland]

The problem with this is that they haven't fixed the problem with Bethesda's previous dialogue systems (that their writing is awful) rather they have eliminated that risk entirely by hiding dialogue and not exploiting the power of a good CHA system. In a good CHA system there are multiple ways to reach your optimal outcome and it feels different, even where there are limited game consequences a little bit of writing can turn that into many more outcomes just by changing the dialogue that accompanies it.This is what makes multiple chars interesting, yes folks may have saved the Wasteland multiple times over but because they were snarky or helpful or a loner it felt different, limited dialogue and voice acting make that harder

As a thought experiment you face a guard blocking a door there are two outcomes for the conversation 1) guard moves and 2) guard continues to block you. A bad conversation system would turn this into a three prompt conversation (choice 3 is attack the guard) a good conversation system allows for the writers to craft multiple dialogues for the same outcome. e.g

"I heard your buddy crying for help around the corner" Guard Moves
"You're handsome big boy, how's about you let me in there and I make it worth your while later" Guard Moves
"Your boss is yelling for you"
"Please my dog is dying and the only cure is on that shelf behind you"
etc, etc

I suspect the main reason a lot of folks don't care about the loss of detailed dialogue prompts in Bethesda games is that most of the writing made your head hurt after 5 mins and was rapidly clicked through thereafter, games like PoE and Divinity:OS show that a well implemented dialogue system can make a game.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

BTW here are some leaked screenshots of the game on PC with supposed maxed out settings:


http://imgur.com/a/Wj4dm