Game Skyrim Forum

Generally thats not graphics it's a physics collision problem. Graphics is all very well but I hope they put a huge emphasis on physics. It's no good having everything look all nice but have no real world feel.

Crysis has some low res textures here and there. id Tech 5 has MEGATEXTURE, it can almost be counted as procedural texturing.

oh ok i assumed it was graphics. but regardless, i'm surprised that there's not a single game that doesn't have this issue.

I really hope that The Elder Skrolls 5 will look alot better than the previous games. Oblivion just looks plain bad now. I don't see why they shouldn't try and learn the CryENGINE 3 now that it has built-in support for Xbox 360 and PS3.

Aaaah, but will Morrowind with MGE run smoothly on an 8 year old machine?

I hope BGS takes IDTech5's megatexturing for ESV.

First of all, I think Oblivion looks great, even by today's standards. The problem with Oblivion's engine is the large number graphical oddities and poor performance, even when compared to games that look much better. I get the sense that Oblivion's engine has a lot of overworked plumbing. At this point I'm willing to say they should keep the engine but it needs a massive overhaul.

Well, you're in luck, because that's what they're doing.

Just a bit ago I read all the add ons that are compatible with GameBryo and just hope they will really use those.
Still as said before I'd wish there was even more compatible like Euphoria, and i REALLY hope they can implement auto tessellating too since it just makes it possible to have more detail and make things more immersive.

@Tissue - You might find this interesting: Zenimax Online Studios is registered with Umbra.

Yes, I've known that for quite a while. It makes me glad that Zenimax is aware of Umbra, although I'm not sure BGS can share Umbra from Zenimax Online. I'm hoping BGS took notice of what ZO did there.

Isn't that a feature of DirectX11?

Because if consoles can't handle tessellation, then there's pretty much no chance of seeing it on the PC. Bethesda likes to keep things even on all platforms.

Well I really hope they can handle it because it is a neat feature to add more detail, especially to round and organic objects.
Or that it is at least something that can be implemented in some way.

If they don't keep the engine and scripting a tightly locked secret it may even be something that could be modded in at some point.

Yeah, it really bugged me that so many things were hardcoded in Oblivion.

Yea it's almost like "People on Xbox can't have that feature so we make sure nobody can EVER have it", unless they really break their knuckles to crack the coding (which they luckily did, the cracking, not the knuckle breaking).
There's actually the good question why the construction set was not available on the Oblivion DVDs directly but only by download, that way fewer people will even know there IS a editing tool.

Hope they're not trying to kill of modding, but don't wanna reach that deep into conspiracy theories.

I just hope they make a good decision on the engine, it's add ons and the modability, I know it's all mostly about the money but hey, the gamers and especially the modders are a HUGE part here.

No mystery on the CS: most of the time it takes to make a CS tool out of Bethesda's more powerful tools is spent on making it "safe" for random users. Why? Because user interfaces for wide audiences are pure HELL. For Bethesda employees, there are a lot fewer safety checks needed, they probably don't need some portions at all (mesh viewer), and quite a bit of what we expect in the CS is probably automated. It's basic programming: making a program work correctly takes a certain amount of time. Making it work for an untrained userbase that will invariably do something horribly wrong takes much more time

Fallout 3 didn't get the GECK for how long after release? There's simply no question that Bethesda is going to be delaying future tools until after release for the forseeable future on account of it takes time away from the game itself otherwise.

you can count on bethesda to change something cough cough [censored] cough

Hmm, sounds like gamebryo has got a bit of bashing, but I realy do belive that many of the GRAPHICAL aspects lies at BGS itself.
Many of the models, textures and specially the animations have been quite poor for both Morrowind and Oblivion, a thing greatly iliustraded by all the varioius mods created for enhancing thoose things.
I hope that for TES V, Beth realy does an amazing job on theese graphical aspects.
Anyway, when it comes to engines.. Gamebryo seems nice overall, but its the optimization that puts me abit off. Seems that there are just as powerful engines out there capable of doing the same thing, but with greater optimization (no, not cry)
But, as we havent seen anything its easy to just compare it to oblivion, which is obviously a bad comparison

About optimization, Todd Howard had something to say about that at his DICE speech back a while ago. He said that they wished they continued to optimize Fallout 3 till it was about to release, and that that is a lesson they learned. So expect ESV to have better optimization anyway. Hopefully much better memory management and such too.

Oblivion runs better on my PS3 than Fallout 3, so I'm a little worried about TES V. Does Bethesda know how to optimize or are they just terrible at making PS3 ports?

I;d say ps3 ports in general for all companies that dont develop for the ps3 specifically. Cause they arnt optimized to run on a ps3 but a 360 or PC.

Since the ps3 came out later, most games are made for pc or 360 then ported to ps3. (or so i read about)

I know that this only indirectly concerns the engine but I think it still fits here.

They should look at a few things other games do any maybe try to work those in, for example the CryEngine editor allows to "auto texture" the environment based on it's angle, so if you texture a mountainside only the ones that have a up to 40° get a grass texture, ones that are over 40° get a rock texture, this gives it a far more natural look. You can change at what angle it does what texture of course.

It would also be nice if roads could actually be put on the environment and then adjust it to them, again something the CryEngine editor does. You simply draw the road on the environment as a line and then let it recalculate the environment around it AND the flow of the road, that way the roads are actually smooth and don't corkscrew everywhere.

Something that sadly probably won't be possible but would just for the environmental design be a hugely nice feature is actually making overhangs and digging caves (once again, CryEngine allows that). With so much wilderness you have in each game having all hills simply be slopes and having no overhanging parts or actual cavities just feels kinda wrong, sadly I'm not sure if the environmental design engine will be capable of doing that.
If not that a feature that would allow you to "cut holes" into the environment would be neat, if you want a cave you could just cut a hole, decorate the edges and add rocks and plains to make a cave mouth.

Also editing the environment simply by setting hightpoints would be nice and I actually imagine such a feature would not be THAT hard to do. Just set a point, enter the hight you want and it pulls or pushes it to the hight, set several point and connect them. Like that it would be far easier to do some landscaping.

Another nice thing would be to draw "territories" on the environment you could then make invisible and simply assign a "ownership" to them (makes it easier to manage zones than with Cells alone) or leave them visible and have a more clear cut texture edge, that would look better than some texture just kinda fading into each other
In fact I have a Architecture program and it uses the three mentioned features, it makes sculpting the surroundings way easier. Though this runs on CAD, not sure how easy that would translate over into the environmental designer Beth uses.

Speaking of that creating some walls and objects directly in game would be a neat feature too, no messing around with meshes all the time when you can just "draw" walls, fences, railing and such.

As a last point a auto "roughening" feature for cliff walls would be kinda neat adding point that jut out, look broken off rather than smooth and automatically adds some shrubs, plants or roots maybe.

stop STOP you make me want a TES on cryengine *sob*

It would be nice to have caves that look natural (unlike oblivion) or have mountains that look natural (unlike...) If TES:V really is in skyrim, I hope they have mountains not just just hills. Caves with entrances that have no doors and are not always on 90 degree angles.

They can make a lot of improvements w/o needing the features you listed. A good thing about gamebryo is that its easy to mod though. and modding is half the game right, maybe even more.

ideally they would make a game that has the option of utilizing 4 cores and lots ram for super high rez textures and long view distances, but make it scalable for people with only dual cores. remember computer tech is changing all the time and we only get TES games ever 5 years or so. and it seems that the time span is increasing cause of the size and complexity of games always increasing. i dont want to become dissolusioned with a game a few years down the road cause the developer made the game to average pc specs of the time. as much as i love my heavily modded oblivion and now fallout 3.......the current engine is just pathetic graphically wise when you compare it to other games today and even games released around the same time as oblivion. in a game where immersion is a huge selling point, remember morrowinds "be anyone, do anything" slogan, graphics are an essential factor.

as for crysis being playable, anyone with an 8800 or whatever the ATI equivalent of the time was can play the game with max graphics just fine. that card came out over 2 years ago. i remember morrowind maxed out my first computer big time which was only a 1.0 ghz. now you could probably play morrowind on a psp or nintendo ds.

as for what they use..........since they now own id software i really hope, no i pray that they take advantage of idTech 5 and all of its gloriousness.

yeah It would be badAZZ if they used Crytek engine, imagine.... No please don't use Unreal engine, It's crap. Gamebryo seems to work fine for them, And it doesn't look too bad, but a little updating would help. Continue using the speed tree , for all the tree's, It looks cool. Havoc, Is an unrealistic Physics generator, when someone dies it looks like they are made from string, unrealistic movements ruin the experience, even though it is a fantasy game. yup so thats about it.