I was playing Divinity 2 The Dragon Knight Saga (great rpg btw) and was pleased to see that it has ladders that can be used. The game uses the Gamebryo engine. The thing is, I remember Todd saying in an interview (don't remember which one for the life of me, I've read too many) that real time ladders in TES are a thing that they still didn't figure how to implement. Now with a new engine and all (I know some say it's still an improved Gamebryo, but the point still stands) I wonder if there will be ladders that you actually use in Skyrim, instead of ladders that you click on to get teleported?

Here's how Divinity 2 does it, nice and smooth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysxrDtWQfF4

I bring up this subject because I think a game like Skyrim has a much more developed stealth/platforming/acrobatics component than Divinity and would be very useful for developing the cities vertically and improving the stealth breaking into buildings/escaping gameplay. What say you?

Good question, i have no answer,,,,,, Gstaff might know :/

Any engine can do ladders, even the worst engine.

I think it's mostly a gameplay issue.

Yea, I know, this is one of Bethesda's Achilles heels. Ladders are more a thing of animations than engine I suppose, and animations are (were?) not one of the strongest points of Bethesda. Never played Divinity 2 but I played Gothic which is a 2001 game and it had actual ladders in it. So yea, I think Bethesda should try to find a way to include actual ladders and ropes because many of us favor the stealth gameplay and the benefit would be great :tops:

Oh, man...we aren't in 1998...those things are easy to implement nowadays. If Skyrim doesn't have them is because Bethesda doesn't either want or care about that detail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Civilization_IV :whistling:

Perhaps Bethesda just got really svcky developers.

Honestly, I have no idea why.

I'm sure "Gamebryo can", "Creation can", I'm not sure if "Bethesda animators can".
(remembers that archer's moonwalk backpedalling in Todd's demo and starts to believe ladders are even harder to pull off)

It's not an animation problem either, just look at dragons animations... Humanoids are easy to pull off nowadays, think motion capture...

They just don't know how to make it right, should NPCs be able to use them too, how to prevent abuse of ladders, how to make sure they never cause the frustration of getting stuck on the ladder while getting slashed to pieces... Maybe developers could give their thoughts if someone asked. No doubt they had brainstormings on this.

Yep, this has nothing to do with Gamebryo, just with development priorities and gameplay consequences. I can custom script and animate ladder climbing in Oblivion, it's not hard. Remember that most ladders make you switch between worldspaces, so a "teleport" will occur in those cases anyway.

Nicely said, I'd like ladders for alternative entrance to buildings. I remember ladders were a hot desire in the suggestion threads. Nothing compares to climbing to the top of a ship's mast with three pirates right behind you Let us hope the next gen consoles will be more forgiving with what the developers can add in the game. As long as they couldn't even do open cities, I didn't expect ladders at all.

P.S. Hell ya, Divinity II TDKS is awesome! Lost a lotta time playing it.

I can but only agree, I am a stealth player as well and I'd like as many features from the Thief series brought into TES as possible. Like others said, the ladders are a matter of level design rather than engine. I think the natural order of solving this would be first open the cities, then open the houses, and when there is no loading time left, then add climbing and ladders, ropes and all sorts of platforming features to make the thieves parkour as fluid as possible. There's no point in having a nicely animated climbing if it ends with a loading screen.

As regarding the possible glitches or whether the NPCs should use ladders or not, I've played Gothic for such a long time and used the ladders in the Old Mines... like hundreds of times. Never saw a ladder bug, never got stuck. Exploiting the ladders is a non-issue in my opinion, as long as NPCs can shoot arrows at you while climbing you can't exploit them.

Climbing and ladders :nod:
I go put them in the Beyond Skyrim thread :wink_smile:

Ladder combat would be a nice touch also. :whistling:







Just saying.

A ladder climbing animation was in Point Lookout.

So fun to shoot that tribal once he reaches the top.

I agree that ladders have to be in real time, but so are the doors. I don't like vanishing through the doors. The technical limitations are obvious, but I wouldn't be so optimistic like others that the furture hardware will suddenly give Beth all they need to do away with loading. Let's think about it: with nowadays hardware they can't pull off a seamless detailed world, at today's level of detail. Let's say the next console has 10xRAM, 10xCPU and 10xGPU power, although I doubt the leap is so big, but still. Those would definitly allow a seamless world for today's level of detail, but Beth will also improve the details, the textures, the graphics, etc which will again devour resources! So my prediction is, like today's hardware can't handle today's level of detail with no loading, the same the future hardware will not handle the future level of details with no loading. This will go on forever, they would have to sacrifice making the world more detailed and beautiful in order to make it seamless. The most I expect is some of the cities open, but the houses never, unfortunatly.

You're assuming that progress in both will be completely parallel, I don't believe so. I think hardware capabilities will grow faster than the level of graphics, and will thus leave room for more simultaneous rendering of level of detail. It has roughly been like this in the past as well. Compare Morrowind's level of detail with Oblivion's, and you will see an increase, not gigantic, but an increase nonetheless.

Oblivion can have open city on a strong PC. It's the consoles only that can't. I think in time all the loading cells will disappear, maybe not as soon as TES VI, but the closed city between walls will surely go away. The houses -or at least the big buildings- will probably keep being separate, who knows. But the ladders are 100% doable, click the link in the OP.

the only reason i can think of that they dont have them is because oblivion has so much that it has to load to much for the next area but im pretty sure it can be done but not for everything if anyone's ever played harry potter and the order of the phoenix on ps2 there were no loading screen in any part when u roamed around to castle all the doors opened and everything and this was on the ps2.

lol that video reminds me of tomb raider, good old tomb raider

no its not that console cant if it can be done on the ps2 with the whole harry potter castle then the ps3 should be able to do at least all of the castle's

I think they could add functional ladders already, they just focused on other gameplay aspects. When Todd says the magic words "not sure yet, messing with X" it doesn't mean they can't figure it out, it means he's dodging. AND HE"S THE GOD OF DODGE, I TELL YA I think the more the series is developed, the more features they add on each department. Stealth was GREATLY improved from Morrowind to Oblivion, now the improvement is smaller, but there still is one. Ladders and ropes for assassins will come, I could bet on that.

Don't know that game, but dare I say it's safe to assume it's not as heavy on details, npc's and clutter as Oblivion? These and the Radiant AI are svcking resources.

What's so important in actually seeing that you climb the ladder / rope? The warm and fuzzy feeling that you are helpless while climbing?

And of course Gamebrio / Netimmerse can do ladders, it could do so different games as Civ4, DAoC, Divinity II, Pirates!, Empire Earth, Freedom Force and even Epic Mickey on the Wii.

In a game like TES? It is important, accurate simulation is a big part of my immersion in a fantasy simulator like this. The power is in the overwhelming details and possibilities. And the people above have explained that ladders help their stealth approach to buildings.