I don't know if you have noticed but the water animation moves wrong in some places when really it should flow with the direction of the edge where it leads. There is a reason for this so let me explain.

There is a big river near Riften, which has a river running though the bottom. The river is one big square map with the animation going one way, which extends to the water running through Riften and the water doesn't animate around the curve of the river. This is a cheap and old trick rather than having a different piece of water area. the only way around this is if you create a mesh that animates around the entire length of the river as it curves. Modders could do this for Riften for example, since it's a pretty small river way that curves through Riften.

So you see, the water is not actually animating the wrong way, it's just that it's one big animated object that can only animate one way and it cannot animate around curves with the water edge. I hope that explains this issue.

Always looked fine to me.

Down there though it doesn't really flow. It's pretty still so it could be affected by the wind and lap upon the edge of the wallls (like a pond).

I'm pretty sure that it could work of the UVs so even if the water pans straight, making a curved mesh with straight UVs would make it pan around the curve. Wouldn't be hard if that's how it works.

Look at the bend of the river running though Riften, you see it animates one way rather than around the bend of the river, i.e it's animating the same way as the big river outside of Riften as it comes into the river gate.

I don't really mind, I just think it is awesome that the rivers have current at all, and that the animations for it have been done so well.

This effect is more apparent in the Reach, since the river and the delta there had a lot of bends. It is weird and annoying at times, but just having a noticable current is amazing.

Yes, we kind of figured this out a while ago. Water is essentially just a texture that sits on a one-way assembly line roller.

Yeah, nothing new here. It didn't take long for me to figure that out. And now that I've looked at the CK, it just confirmed it. The water is still fundamentally the same as it was in Morrowind. It's just undergone a few tweaks with each new game. In Morrowind the water level was the same everywhere. That made inland bodies of water a bit trickier, without an entirely different mesh for it. In Oblivion, it became possible to adjust the height of the water on a cell by cell basis. Now inland bodies of water were easier. Now for Skyrim, it's still the same, they just added current to it on a cell by cell basis. It's nice, but doesn't always quite look right.

Yep, another place were Bethesda cut corners. When you get such kits you realise just how many corners developers cut. Bethesda should have made meshes to fit each water way but instead just use square meshes.

The game jam by Bethesda had one idea in it, which was to improve the water flow animation with better shaders. So there could be coming some improvement in the future.

Well... yes and no. Separate meshes for each body of water or each river would have been nice, but as a modder it would have been a pain. The method they used does allow for a bit more flexibility and is easier to work with. But, as I said before, sometimes it won't look quite right.

you ever been in a pond with current?

i thought what a bunch of cheap buggers.

Just like 15 years ago in Hexen* Haven't games come a long way since then?

(*A fantasy-styled FPS made with modified classic Doom engine, for the youngsters ).

Loved that game. I think Heretic was on the Doom engine, though. Hexen was on the Quake engine.

Probably doesn't help with their old engine. Unreal Engine 3 can use a huge amount of meshes so you don't have to use cheap tricks like that. t

I wouldn't call it a cheap trick. It's just a method that allows for more flexibility at the cost of accuracy. It usually works, at least.

That said, I wouldn't complain if they dropped this old engine and picked up a modern engine for the next game.

Personally I wouldn't call it flexibility because it clearly looks wrong, especially the water at the bottom of Riften near the Ratway as is my example. You'd only do that to save time and not care.

Must admit I hadn't really noticed. I have seen a waterwheel going the wrong way though.

Have you the Skyrim jam? It did have flowing based water shaders in it so its not a engine limitation most likely it is a ______ limitation and you fill blank in yourself.

I posted this question last month and the answer I got was that it is a thing called brushes that are used for rivers but steams are custom made animations.

Hmm. Hadn't noticed. I suppose you could just avoid water in general if it irritates you that much...

It irritates me because it's just bad design and people might want to know why such things animate the wrong way rather than following their path like some other steams do.

Isnt the whole map on water? That's the case with many games anyways.

Nope but it's funny because people said the same thing about Crysis 2 and found out it was animating a massive water mesh when it didn't need to. Just shows how lazy devs are or that management told them to do such lazy things. If you took pride in your work, you wouldn't do such things.

I did notice there is a big massive water map under the terrain no doing anything.