i disagree with the op. with the utilization of DirectX 10-11 it will be more than enough to increase the quality and quantity. dx 9 is so old its having a tough time keeping up with thousands of useless objects in a perticular loaded cell or over a vast distance ie trees mountains, power wells... with direct x 10 or 11 and brand new engine designed from the ground up. just imagine if we are not held back by the consoles we could have an elderscroll game with the graphics of crysis with fully destructable environments with massive cities with hoards and hoards of people populating them. its all technically possible form a hardware standpoint only if they utilaize the new tech on the market today and not use sub par graphics engine!
WHY NOT HAVE BOTH QUALITY AND QUANTITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If TESV looks (or plays) *anything* like DA:O, I won't buy it.

Also, by the way Beth , if it's a Steam-based thing like FO:NV, I won't buy it anyway.

Oh, and if it's not moddable, I won't buy it. :gun: <- NaDT.

No, I am not joking.

Good, then get off the forums and go play something else. You think anyone cares you won't buy the game... no.

The problem I had with OB was not JUST the resetting of clutter, but that it did so predictably every three days. Having a gradually increasing random chance to reset each day would be far more interesting, where you wouldn't KNOW whether or not something was still safe. Eventually, just about everything would reset, to reduce save-game bloat, but any changes you made to the cell might last for days, weeks, or maybe even months, or be gone in the morning. The game could even introduce player-usable LOCKS of different quality and price, where you could seriously reduce the odds of a place being "re-entered and re-occupied" by putting a decent lock on the door.

Unlike MW, OB had almost no z-axis points of interest, while forcing you through 2-dimensional mazes in a number of places. MW forced you to think in 3 dimensions on several occasions (one early quest was VERY confusing for many players as a result), and a few really interesting things weren't even available to the player unless you could levitate or jump insane distances or heights.

I have as much right to be here as you do, and to say what I wish to say, as well. If you don't like that *fact* (yes, it is one), then the problem is indeed yours, not mine.

Got that? Good. Adjusted attitude accordingly? Splendid. Moving on...

And whether Beth listens to anything I might say, or anything you might say? Who knows. Quite possibly not. Therefore, why have a thread like this in the first place? As you can hopefully now see, you can't have it both ways.

Positing ideas... discussing the merits of certain arguments... intelligent discussion has a place on the forums, not completely personal opinionated threats.

Intelligent, polite discussion makes the forum more pleasant to be in, and more meaningful.

This makes the forum a more desirable destination for any dev's... and does not put them off.

What you wrote is both a waste of their time and doesn't add anything meaningful to our collective discussion.

I was not out of line. You were. Face it, and kindly adjust attitude accordingly. Moving on....

"Personal"? Yes, but only as much as anyone else's views are. Including yours, say. "Opinionated"? Yes, but only in the sense of having an opinion and expressing it, in a thread for just that purpose, regardless of whether said opinion agrees with *yours*, or whether you even like the sound of it. "Threat"? Hell, no. Not even remotely close. Slightly tongue-in-cheek, but nonetheless accurate, portrayal of how things will go, if X and/or Y, etc. That is all.

Intelligent you might or not be, but you were incredibly impolite just before. Exceedingly rude, even. Now that might be OK in your books, but to then turn around and attempt to take that kind of moral high ground? Eesh. :rolleyes:

I wasn't posting in some random thread about possible TESV graphics decisions - that NONE of us will likely have a say in whatsoever - to make valuable use of some dev's time, or even to add anything more meaningful to a discussion that, frankly, isn't very.

To get back to the meat of it, such that it is...

Dragon Age's graphics are absolutely horrible, in comparison to Oblivion's. TESV's', one might hope, would be a step or two above TESIV's, no? Well, *I* hope so. Hence, I said what I said. And yes, it really was a bit tongue-in-cheek. A bit cheeky, you could say. Nothing worse than that though.

Hmm.

I dont see the point of needing large battles in a singleplayer game.

For MMORPG sieges ? Yes ! Definitely !

But for TES, I wouldnt care.


P.s.: And after reading through this thread, I'm amazed about what things people care about. This texture is low quality and that thing has no shadow ... hu ? I dont give a damn. Quite frankly, Dragon Age looked more than beautiful enough to me.

Yeah ok the point of TES is to have extremely good graphics, so I guess they should get better.

the engine doesn't really limit it, your computer does, also it has improved a lot lately

I felt this way in regards to detail priorities as well. Due to the low poly meshes used in Morrowind, Bethesda generally tried to create more "visual interest" through the textures themselves. Lots of intricate patterns like the two horses on the Imperial cuirass in Morrowind just seemed to have vanished entirely in Oblivion. Instead of making the armors' textures interesting enough that they didn't just look like pajamas made out of leather and chain mail, they were too preoccupied rendering those amazing 2,000 polygon pants and lathering them in specular maps. As an example.

And the average gamer's budget determines how good your computer is.... and don't give me crap about the engine not mattering because you look at the first games of a console cycle and the last games of a console cycle and you tell me that each engine is using the hardware the same amount (since it doesn't matter).

Graphics really don't matter to me. TES V could have Morrowind's vanilla graphics and I'd be fine with it. It could also even have Daggerfall's graphics and I'd be fine with it. As long as it's fun, I don't really care how it looks. Do I like good graphics? Of course, who doesn't? But I feel that the game should come first, and the pretty graphics later.

No offense and I respect what I think you (and others others) are trying to say but why do folks think they can't have it all? I agree there needs to be good gameplay, quests, etc but why does that mean graphics have to be sacrificed or visa-versa as though there were a total quality index? Adding realtime shadows to the game doesn't mean you can't have good voice acting. Having a good storyline doesn't mean you can't have high-poly models. I would like to see BGS set a new standard in all aspects of fantasy gaming but I do get concerned when fans give the impression that we don't care about visuals. Why should BGS ever update the engine?

And as far as accomidating both average and high-end PCs why not give us more latitude thru user configurable options (disable or hobble dynamic lighting and other CPU/GPU intensive features) but give us folks with better gear the option.

Both. Tech5

Thank god bethesda can yank Carmack's engines for free.

anyway, I utterly failed with my post...the developers make the game, they decide everything from the ground up. The engine is an expression of their talent. I think Bethesda will stay with their own engine but add upgrades to it like Mega Textures which are pretty much a God send from John Carmack the programing god. They allow people to basically digitally paint on a polygon with ease. I'm stoked to see what type of game Todd might be cooking up weather or not it is an elder scrolls game.

What's with all the praise for Carmack? His engines aren't really that much better than others and his "advancements" are basic logical steps that do very little to set his engines above others like Unreal, Source, RAGE, etc.

That being said, I think Todd would do well to use Carmack's work for TES V because gamebryo svcks and is old.

Well whatever engine they use, please..please have no loading between open world and indoor environments. (hing: Witcher 2)

RAGE IS IdTech5, which Carmack designed...

And go look up the advancements in the field of computer science thanks to Carmack. There are many. Carmack = A God, as far as I'm concerned.

As for TES V, I do indeed hope its possible to integrate a mega-texture-like capability for TES V's engine. That would really help them out in rendering their world without it being either pretty but sluggish or ugly but fast.

RAGE is Rockstar's Advanced Game Engine

Carmack discovered a few techniques simply because he was writing games at a time when graphics engines were still weak and he wasn't versed enough in the field to know any better.

Ray Casting: Developed by Arthur Appel in 1968 and painfully obvious.
Binary space partitioning: Developed by Schumacker in 1969.
Surface Caching: I'll give Carmack this one... but also pretty obvious.
Carmack's Reverse (z-fail stencil shadows): William Bilodeau and Michael Songy in 1998
Megatextures: Streaming textures/geometry is nothing new in games... Carmack just made it bigger and gave it a fancy name...

I think the important part to remember is that Carmack actually took those concepts and put them into practice. That isn't something that comes easily in Computer Science (I should know, I'm a CS student).

He may not be an inventor, but he is an innovator.

Why resort to personal attacks on John Carmack, I was OBVIOUSLY being sarcastic(or not) in every sense of the term by calling him a God. You don't need to be so offended, secondly what the heck man...chiiiiil have a beer :foodndrink: .


and well said Orzon esp this bit
"He may not be an inventor, but he is an innovator. "

I believe that there shouldn't even be such a dilemma: Better graphics or more NPCs on the screen.
The engine should be able to support the story or at least try to. Oblivion led the player to believe in an epic finale battle which couldn't be done because of technical limitations.
KorVegor said that "The Elder Scrolls never has been about massive action-oriented battles but is a game with a strong emphasis on exploration, depth, and content."
To a certain degree he is right, but if your story leads you to an epic battle then you should be able to support it. If not, dont go there in the first place.
General possibly engine related things that kind of bothered me in Oblivion:
- Very few/none random props in the world (not inside cells). No pick-able rocks or other random generic stuff lying around to throw.
- City cells. Especially since they had to make huge city walls (comparatively to city size) in order to hide the city from view.
- Bodies felt indestructible: No limb loss.
- Unjustifiable number of human constructs (buildings) for the population of Cyrodil. Too few NPCs.
- Too quiet cities. No background sounds, no field markets and random performers (related to on screen NPCs limit?).

Many people say that they don care about graphics. I disagree. It is one thing to just imagine what a powerful fireball would look like as it hit the enemy and another to actually see it. It certainly increases fun. Resources should be at at best equally shared between all the elements of the game.

I think people generally have the wrong idea. What's really important isn't what you do, but HOW you do it.

Having more polygons isn't necessarily a bad thing. It really depends on how the engine is built. With current engines, video cards and rendering techniques, polygons are a cheap resource... they're fast to calculate. Obviously having 3D models with millions of polygons won't work for real-time but having 3D models running around with 20 thousand polygons is a lot easier to pull off than plastering everything with 1024x1024 normal maps on models with 5 thousand polygons. In today's generation, loading textures is really where the bottleneck is as far as graphics go.

I'd rather see everything at a lower visual quality than seeing a few features at high quality. Because the objects themselves isn't what's making the picture, it's the ensemble that creates the environment... Your mind will filter the image and make it HD.

In this particular case, quantity is quality.

Whoever says that gameplay is sacrificed for the visual quality of games we have today is just fooling themselves. What's affecting design decisions is the idea that if you appeal to a wider audience, you'll make more money. The media is focused on the visual quality of the game because that's essentially what differentiates the games apart. The reason for that? If everyone is trying to appeal to the same audience, they're all going to be making the same game. Why are they trying to appeal the same audience? Because it's a safe investment for the publisher. It's just how the perception is for the mass.

But that doesn't mean that developers focus on graphics. All they worry about is the execution. If they can get some extra shine here and there, yeah they'll go for it but they're not going to seek out shiny technologies… that's what companies that built engines are there for and the game developers get those engines because it's easier for them to focus on other things while still have a good looking game.

And this is where Bethesda fails. It's always seeking for better technologies. In a way, I can't blame them because the essence of their games kinda requires better tech for stealth play and having more ways to interact with the environments… you know, their main focus and key element to their games. It's the fact that they seem to only focus on tech that bothers me. Animation blending, facegen, speedtree, havoc physics, etc. Normal maps and HDR were the new thing at the time as well… so they abused it. It makes their games look more like tech demos…

There's a reason why Fallout 3 has gained a lot of fame. None of it is new tech.

So really, at this point, how they decide to draw the images… how they make each cell load, having more or less polygons and all that crap, really isn't important.

I agree with the op. High polygon models don't make a game look good. It's all in the lighting and the texture. While you do have to have fairly high poly models, you don't need a massive amount. Texture maps and lighting make a much larger difference. I sometimes like to find a tall hill and take a gander at my surroundings, something I couldn't do as well in Oblivion without a mod. I believe they need to focus more on graphical bugs and graphical physics.

Also noticed that the models themselves are high poly, but the collision models are awkward. For example if you stack 5 books at eye level, you can see a space underneath each book. Why not make the collision models more accurate? Higher poly collision models are what I'd like to see.

So my opinions on what is needed:
1. More accurate collision models(For less bugginess and fewer graphical errors and awkwardness)
2. More realistic bump mapping and lighting for the textures(Might include less shiny cave rocks. Rougher concrete, sandier sand, etc)
3. Lower poly models would help with LOD and better texture detail. Not as low as Morrowind, but it doesn't have to be as high as Oblivion.

Those I think are the major things that come to mind for me.

Paralax Occlusion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKHbtxmybmc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeF-kCr_vyo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKe1pt2rPI4