Greetings and salutations Quarn and Kivan!

Glad to see our resident pit bulls ready to jump into the fray when it releases. You guys are planning on playing it first...right?

I cannot speak for gamesas but I'd imagine they would be grateful. One could only hope they would cherry-pick certain members in the community to beta test the product and find the kinds of problems that typically go into these unofficial fixes which helps the console players too.

For anyone wanting to know a bit more about http://www.havok.com/index.php?page=havok-behavior, get it straight from the horses mouth. They also have a http://www.havok.com/index.php?page=showcase that gives some visual aids on how the behavior system can be used. Remember the awkward transitions in Oblivion when jumping, swimming, etc.? The behavior system should fix most of the transition issues so character / creature movement should flow seamlessly from one animation to another (walk --> run, walk --> jump, walk --> swim, run --> sneak, etc.). This "should" allow the animators more freedom to focus on the primary animations and not have to worry much about all the possible transition...which gets more complicated with more animations you add into the mix.

I think you can access the SDK by clicking on the "TryHavok" button on their site. This might be useful for plugin coders for Blender.

LHammonds

@Kivan, what kind of timeframe do you have in mind for the first UOP?

It seems likely that Bethesda will release some sort of official patch within the first few weeks or months to fix some bugs - does this mean we should plan on adjusting Steam settings not to automatically update?

Radiant Story - This is an update and expansion of "Radiant AI" as it was called in Oblivion. I don't worry about it half as much as one might expect. Why? Because I'm sure it will get severely scaled down by release time, as Radiant AI was.When Oblivion was first demo'ed, Radiant AI had a similar degree of control over the gameworld. By the time it hit the shelves, Radiant was practically gone. Why? It broke quests and caused chaos in the gameworld. Elder Scrolls RPG's are story-driven, not randomly generated, and overshadowing all else, the Main Quest must absolutely work. Given the number of leftover bugs it's difficult enough to get all of the quests working smoothly together, without some random AI element additionally breaking them.

I know there's one for Max, but as Blender's by far the most popular platform (free as opposed to $2K!) it would definitely need one if it hasn't one...

If you think Max is expensive, try Maya. MSRP right now for Maya 2012 is 3495.

And Maya 6 was what I did all my stuff in. When I seen Blender used for mods I wanted to cry. Hate that program so much.

If you moved into a new neighborhood and one of your neighbors said they would mow your lawn, walk your dog and wash your car if it ever needed to be done, would you be offended? Or just relieved and a little creeped out?

I think i'll like you .

Just wanted to throw in my appreciation as the unofficial oblivion patch was an essential mod for all my play throughs. You guys really are mustard!

Well, even though this may be a bit premature, it is good to hear that you will be around to support Skyrim Your fixes for Oblivion were extremely useful. Too bad the Fallouts didn't get as dedicated unofficial patchers.

Good news, I appreciate that you guys would dedicate your time to make the game the best experience possible for all of us. I'm sure it will be as necessary as it was previously but hopefully there won't be as much work for you guys this time around.

Thank you. Arguably the most important of all mods for an Oblivion setup. It's great to have you guys working on Skyrim.

Lets hope, at the very least, Bethesda can convince Sony and Microsoft to allow them to release your patches (with your permission of course). I don't know how many times I've had to start over because of the thieves guild Amusei bug...

Excellent news.

Thanks, and keep up the good work.

You are like the "Doctors", "Dentists", "Plastic Surgeons", and "Specialists" of the TES series.

Welcome back.

Quarn's still alive? Thank goodness... his sudden disappearance and rumors I heard made me fear something... physically unfortunate happened to him IRL.

If you think Max is expensive, try Maya. MSRP right now for Maya 2012 is 3495.

And Maya 6 was what I did all my stuff in. When I seen Blender used for mods I wanted to cry. Hate that program so much.

Thanks. I relish the work, but after a two-year absence I mayo may not be able to ketchup.

RAI did get an improvement in Fallout 3; the "Sandbox" package, which just has them do whatever (with a few guidelines).

Thanks. But, er... I thought Quarn was doing the Fallout Unofficial Patch. Maybe not New Vegas...

Radiant Story - This is an update and expansion of "Radiant AI" as it was called in Oblivion. I don't worry about it half as much as one might expect. Why? Because I'm sure it will get severely scaled down by release time, as Radiant AI was.When Oblivion was first demo'ed, Radiant AI had a similar degree of control over the gameworld. By the time it hit the shelves, Radiant was practically gone. Why? It broke quests and caused chaos in the gameworld. Elder Scrolls RPG's are story-driven, not randomly generated, and overshadowing all else, the Main Quest must absolutely work. Given the number of leftover bugs it's difficult enough to get all of the quests working smoothly together, without some random AI element additionally breaking them.