I'm with you Maeg, which makes me feel a bit hypocritical as I was initially against the change, but after seeing the difference, I just can't see resorting back to Oblivion an option, it simply looks too old and plain now.

Skyrim would be better, but its feasability now. Third party workarounds arent available, maybe they will be, maybe they wont be. The trouble is I think we have spent enough time and effort on Miss Skyrim to realise that she's not what she pretended to be in the first place (depending on your gender anyway, oh just stick with the anology)

Sure I would prefer to stick with Skyrim for the aesthetics at least, but how many weeks or months will we waste on taking Skyrim out to dinner just to find she was a bit of a plonker?

Bah, I'm going to try to write a custom-made gravity script and I'm going to TCL Actors. I'm sure if I work long enough on it I can come up with a viable workaround that is not overly intruding, or that at least will cover MERP's needs.

Sounds interesting, I'm no expert either, but I doubt it would affect the hardcode of the game?

I totally agree with this. I don't think MERP/Skyrim should be given up on until every last avenue has been explored, including continued pressure on Bethesda, contacting the Havok guys, possible fixes through SKSE etc, and lastly - a MERP divided into several world spaces (as undesireable as that may seem at this point in time). Let's not rule anything out.

Maeg from what I've seen so far, if you're bloody determined to do something, you'll do it! In other words if there's any workaround a problem out there, you'll find it mate!

Well if that can be done, I am one hundred percent with you. I would rather stick with Skyrim, but I am trying to be pragmatic. Ok, so its going to be a wilderness issue really. Interior spaces should not be affected (needs testing) so going between interiors might be the major issue that needs to be overcome. Have you tried an interior town? I wonder how thats affected within the point of silly havok?

No it wouldn't, but it might give us a better idea of what the issue is. I don't know... I just wonder if someone could come up with a fix and pass it along to Beth.

I'll second that. But I would hate to see our projects become second rate to what we left behind in Oblivion. Ok, lets give it a shot.

Or preferably SELL it to them as download content with a license similar to the "first born and prima nocte with your wife" that goes with the Steam agreement.

That's the spirit! Thanks for continuing to be so optimistic Maegfaer.

Lol. I was just thinking the same thing. The potential embarrassment alone should be enough for Bethesda to have a crack at this bug.

Or I could threaten them with a whole night in with my ex wife. My god man, that would be horrific. I dont think I could even joke about that, gives me the shivers. If I locked them all up with her and the only release was to fix the bug they'd have it sorted in half an hour. There would be casualties, there always are when dealing with wild animals. Would sort it though.

No, there are laws against it. Its too horrible to contemplate. You listening Bethesda?

At any rate - let's just try to keep our spirits up and keep working away at the problem. There MUST be a way around this!

Well that was just unnecessarily rude. He has a point. It's pretty amazing we get modding tools in the first place, and while I agree this bug is big (I've categorised it as "Critical" in my bugs topic), if it's not fixed then we'll possibly find workarounds. I understand it's a huge blow for large worldspace mods, but we are talking a really low number of mods, compared to something like the NavMesh bug that affects almost all non-texture pack mods.

I'd love to see this fixed. But he's completely right in that Bethesda don't really owe us anything. The support and feedback they've been giving is really out of the ordinary and highly appreciated, be it good or bad news.

@thekarithian Even if it might be an option for you to go back to modding Oblivion, the question is how many players would be willing to go back? My opinion is that we should do everything in our power to try and save this relationship, Skyrim is so pretty!

Would it be legal to donate money to the person who comes up with a fix for this?..

@SomeWelshGuy Sure there are other problems with the CK, that doesn't makes this one unimportant. I know it's great that they release modding tools for Skyrim, I'm just not in my "grateful" mindset right now

Right, someone get the beers in, I'll sort the crisps (chips to you lot across the pond).

Does anyone else feel like Pippin and Merry about to leave Rivendell with no idea of just what they are about to do and how they are about to do it?

Maegfaer, I will try a test interior world with a couple of NPC's set somewhere in the forbidden zone. Lets see just how far this bug goes.

You must live over here in Britain. The question is, is it illegal to give someone a present on any day other than their birthday? Nope.

Skyrim has clearly beguiled you, do not succumb to her ways, she is a canny tart.

Any road up, whats the plan? Do we have one?

Go Maeg!

Ah that's the spirit, I think remaining positive is our best friend at the moment? Even if the worse comes to the worst, we have a decent chunk of land to play with and we also have the added advantage of worldspace transition. Not ideal I know, but I still think sticking with the skyrim is the way forward.

From what I've seen so far, the main issue with TCLing actors that are moving is that after a few seconds if their elevation changes, they start walking up into the air or down into the ground. I tried a lot of stuff ingame on actors, and right now the best workaround to me seems to be TCLing actors, but every 1 out of 10 frames you toggle TCL back for one frame, and you do a check if they are starting to fall (could simply be an animation state check, or a certain Z position change) and if they do keep TCL on for a while. The moment they change their animation state from falling to something else (landing anim or 2 frames with the same z position) you TCL them back off.

Another method to check if their feet reaches collision, is putting an invisible Activator object a very short distance under their feet and then call a LOS check on the Actor towards the Activator. If the feet reach collision, the LOS will be negative. If the feet don't reach collision, the LOS is positive. It's a pretty fail-safe system, but costs some performance (LOS checks are relatively heavy). Shouldn't be done every frame, but every half a second or so.

I'm sure there will be other problems, but I'm going to try anyway.

Ok, if we hit worse case scenario and had to do transitions, is it workable? is it feasible? (is it secret, is it safe, has Gandalf possessed me?)

So we have 4x4 quad workable worldspaces, its not a lot given the size of Middle Earth and Mesogea. Middle Earth would be the difficult one, given that it is what it is. The map cant be changed. Are there convenient bottlenecks for worldspace transition?

The pass above Imladris is convenient, Moria is convenient and its pretty daft really that in Oblivion you can ride a horse up the side of a sheer mountainside. Gap of Rohan? tricky but the fords of Isen could be a bottleneck. Can a fast river be crossed easily?

Its north to south where the trouble lies. (a long time before that if I know the wild Bilbo)

Will this impact on performance when it comes to implementing large scale battles and the like?

As far as I have tested, it were all actors except for the player. Creatures are Actors too in Skyrim.

Perhaps thats where the issue sits. Why not the player? It would help if we had some input from Bethesda. Ok, they have said they wont fix it, but surely they cant be averse to just making some comment about where we can go from here. Come on Bethesda, play the game (we play yours )