I disagree, features are ok, even if I don't care about them. Eye/hear candy can be a waste, and smartphone games (seriously?) definitely are.

Eugh, given the names on that list, maybe I can't assume my own name is on there after all. "Harper"? "Hunter"? Those are surnames, people!

Oh wait, I am fairly high up. Also lol at Aria being 31. Fads are weird.

Now, are they using the most popular names, or the most popular names for new babies? Because it would make sense to use the most popular names for people who would actually play the game, because baby Kayden isn't going to be playing Fallout.

Yeah, that was what I was angling at. Just couldn't think of any supporting examples that weren't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Night,_Deadly_Night_Part_2.

The existing dialog can be cut and spliced into 1000's more names 100's of which may sound just as good as the original.

I know for a fact that you are well aware of the circumstances surrounding OB's release that made the (during development)radiant AI statement false but you choose to ignore it so you can pull that out as a mark against Todd's character. It is not and you know it.

Again, a statement made a year before release (during active development)which you are paraphrasing incorrectly btw, it was said that the mill could be sabotaged and that it would effect the towns economy, nothing about killing mill workers or destroying the economy. True it didn't make it in so that too became a false statement.

This is highly subjective and purely your own(or fan hype train) perception (reading between the lines) of what was actually said.

No he doesn't. 2 examples of out right false claim(each not false at the time the statement was made) in 17 years does not a track record make.

Not since FO3. Skyrim used a new sound compression format that made this a non issue.

With people like you villain-izing the man and the company for such things is it really any wonder we had to wait so long. BGS seeks to avoid any further such embarrassments so it's guaranteed the wait was so upon announcement the game is 100% complete and absolutely everything we have seen and heard is in the already completed game.

Unfortunately it also means we can't directly influence the development. A worthy trade off? You be the judge.

I mean anything's possible, maybe they'll pull it off. But personally when I heard him claim that, all that came to mind was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEd1D-KD5xc.

Whether you wish to brand it as "dishonesty," "misleading people," "being mistaken" or "jumping the gun and announcing a mechanic before it's confirmed," that is completely irrelevant.

You can take any of the above and complete the sentence below:

Todd Howard has a record of _______.

Pick your poison to fill in the blank, but the point is that you should take anything he says with a grain of salt.

Ah i see, you don't believe radiant AI exists. Just because half the world hyped it into something it's not and were subsequently disappointed doesn't mean it a lie. It's not a lie, it does exist and it makes every encounter with the same enemy or enemies(die/reload) different.

I hope they remembered to choose the most popular names from ~20 years ago. That would be a more accurate representation of the players' most common names, since most popular name lists only reflect the most recent naming trends. I can guarantee that Aiden wasn't exactly a popular name in the States 20 years ago.

Quoting the wikipedia article on it:

Name one NPC that does this. Name one NPC in Skyrim that behaves with radiant AI.

Bethesda has had NPCs with radiant AI. Oblivion and Shivering Isles each had a thief who may or may not ever steal in your game as it was completely random, FO3 might have had an NPC or two who triggered events at random (I forget), but we haven't seen such behavior since. Everyone has a schedule and a place they go. The Bannered Mare in Whiterun will house the same exact visitors almost every evening.

Todd Howard might exaggerate sometimes but he's certainly no Peter Molyneux like you appear to think of him as...

What? How about the vast majority of them? The proof's in the pudding, pop open the Creation Kit and see for yourself. Or read the summary of any NPC on UESP, like Ysolda or Nazeem or Lillith Maiden-Loom.

You can express concern about what Todd Howard says, but making statements like this doesn't help your case at all.

All of the people you listed are in the same spots every single day and follow the same schedules. Ysolda doesn't randomly turn up at random shops around town as if she's shopping, Nazeem doesn't randomly appear in the Cloud District or the Jarl's palace, Lilith will....well here, don't take my word for it:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Lillith_Maiden-Loom

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Ysolda

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Nazeem

See the schedules? Very specific, very exact. There is no "sometimes the NPC will randomly do this." An NPC with radiant AI looks like this: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Shameer

Specifically this part:

You people are very good at acting outraged and pretending like I'm an idiot. Unfortunately none of you are very good at reinforcing any of your claims with actual facts, examples or citations.

Oblivion had a breton farm worker and archery trainer in Skingra who stole from others for food during the day.

Yes this was probably an bug unlike the argonian thief, he had lots of food in his home and they had forgotten to add it to him.

However you see npc in guilds eat at the food table. radiant AI at work.

You can also see lots of radiant AI in Skyrim if you pay attention, on lady was constantly attacking me in Riverwood, found I had an minor fee and had probably stolen something from her then I run into the guards. More fun if you deploy crafting equipment You can see npc start interact with it.

Same with npc in you heartfire house goes to bed. they select an free bed to sleep in.

Now they probably tuned it down in Skyrim to avoid lots of the comedy in Oblivion as it also could become tragedy.

Why do you always act like everyone's got a vendetta against you after you make contentious claims? They reined in Radiant AI for Skyrim, yes, because sometimes it got ridiculous in Oblivion. But Skyrim still uses the same system to control NPC interactions, and they even added dynamic NPC reactions to what the player does with Radiant Story.

Yes I'm not doubting Oblivion. I know Oblivion actually did have a couple examples, which unfortunately hasn't repeated since. They weren't bugs either, they were designed that way.

The point was that Oblivion's presentation suggested radiant AI would be something they all have, in reality? Less than 10 NPCs probably had radiant AI. Meanwhile Bethesda still tries to claim it has radiant AI in it's games, but the few Oblivion examples we got remain the only examples of truly radiant AI we've ever seen. Everyone else follows very strict schedules.

I'm not, I'm merely pointing out how empty and meaningless the counter-claims are, to the point where they can hardly be called "claims" at all. And yet everyone stubbornly wishes to cling to said "claims" even when they themselves cannot provide evidence for them. It's madness, and part of the reason I'm so bold on these forums is because it drives me nuts to watch people willingly fooling themselves into believing things that simply aren't true. What purpose does that serve...?

Examples? Name examples. I would urge you to name examples, and if you cannot, then rethink your stance on the matter, because it may be false. Truth should be easy to highlight with examples, no?

The claim for removing Oblivion's radiant AI entirely was that they couldn't quite get it to work, though I don't recall any specific examples being named beyond one where an NPC that needed a hoe (farm tool here) to do their job might rationalize that they should kill another NPC that has a hoe. They felt the system could be too chaotic and pre-emptively axed it.

As for NPC interactions, that's it. That's really all there is. They might strike up a conversation, they might not. That's it. That's all the "radiant AI" that remains, which is really no more radiant than Sticky's story-telling programming.

But let's hear "dynamic reactions" to "radiant story" examples. I'd love to hear about those fables, as I've never witnessed them myself.

No as this is their schedule, npc has schedules, or they would just stand around in their house. Lillit don't feel an need to go to the marked its her schedule.

Radiant AI is not sims3 AI, its an scheduler who assign tasks, at the marked her movement is not hard coded she is simply ordered to move around and chat from time to time.

Then she goes back to the stable probably use some tool to give the impression of working. then she goes inside as scheduled

Now I had an mod with an craftable and movable crafting station, I deployed it in Riverwood and the bosmer preferred to use it over cutting firewood as he was told use crafting station in area. Again its not sims, an pure sims like behavior would not work as it would not get the npc looking like they are working.

Now in FO4 things might be simpler as its fewer loading doors and npc needed schedules to pass loading doors.

I suppose they are all going to be white names

If I was a SJW Bethesda would feel my wrath.

Npc auto equip tools in both Oblivion an later games, this is probably an response to the issue of having them fight over it, you also equip an pickaxe in Skyrim then mining, this is funny if you have one in your hands already. I think you overthink that the radiant AI do after that they claimed in the first presentation and who was to unpredictable.

its not need based and never has been said it was, even during the original presentation. Its just about shedules and you let the npc do as told if possible, Npc can not pass loading doors based on an use command. They need to be directed past it.

Now the most interesting effect was then someone was killed in Riverwood by an dragon, widow was acting because of the loss of her husband, how she knew he was dead was another question

Bit overall its just an tool to handle npc without having to micromanage down to animation level that they should do.

Here are some articles that archive some of the first instances of Bethesda introducing the concept of Radiant AI to the public:

http://www.gamechronicles.com/qa/elderscrolls4/oblivion.htm

http://www.gamingnexus.com/Article/Elder-Scrolls-IV-Oblivion-Interview/Item859.aspx

The only part of the description that holds true today is that dialog options between NPCs are not scripted and have a randomness element to it. Anything else, such as following a strict schedule of where to go, is not radiant AI. If that's radiant AI, then games like Majora's Mask have radiant AI. And while I can understand that you could TECHNICALLY argue Ysolda talking to generic NPC #4 instead of generic NPC #3 while at the inn is a radiant interaction, my point is that's still a far cry from what radiant AI was initially advertised as. Radiant AI was introduced as being "NPCs have general goals to meet and will choose for themselves how to complete their tasks," but today? Today it's "NPCs have a list of dialog lines they'll have with other NPCs, and they periodically choose one to spout."


This entire discussion was born from "Todd's claims about radiant AI leading up to Oblivion were ultimately untrue." Were they? Yes, very much so. And to this day, radiant AI still doesn't serve a fraction of the purpose it was initially supposed to. (and ironically, Oblivion continues to exhibit more radiant AI than any other Bethesda game to date...)

True, true... Well I'll have to wait and see if my name goes on the list and what that does or listen to others experience on whether people thinks it's worth it.

Well, there are plenty of non-anglo names in America's top 1000, and I imagine localization teams will have a ball with their region's top 1000.

Radiant AI is not scheduling, it's an algorithm that determines a large variety of decisions from what direction to take the next step to what type of weapon to use for an attack. These random decisions are what make NPC(more apparent in enemy NPCs) appear to behave dynamically. If NPCs didn't have radiant AI then every single time you load them into a cell they would behave exactly the same way each time taking the same steps and attacking in the same way every single time. Every NPC in OB, FO3, NV, and SK all had radiant AI. This is most apparent when you reload a save and try to interact with them in the same exact way twice in a row.

Considering the names I'm planning to use is either James (my own name) or Johnny (the name of many of my Fallout characters in the past), I would be gravely disappointed if those aren't on the list.

I don't hope they change the list on localized games... Yes I want to play the German on German. But why should they use German forenames in Boston? That don't make any sense... I want to give my character fitting names for this setting. And it would be annoying if they use German names for this... They don't change Boston into Hamburg or Moira Brown into Maria Braun either...

Radiant AI is present and functioning in Oblivion exactly as Todd explains it in that old E3 presentation. It is used for every NPC from Uriel Septim to your ordinary wolf.

The schedules are just a component of the conglomeration of things referred to as Radiant AI. The schedules do nothing but tell NPCS when to do things. What technically qualifies as AI, however, is not in the timing of the things that NPCs do, but is in how NPCs are made to do them.

A real-world, robot vacuum cleaner exits its docking station on schedule, proceeds to vacuum the floor according to a set of rules that allow it to cover the entire floor, and ends its routine by returning to the docking station for recharging. Oblivion's NPCs work the same way. They are assigned goals, and they pursue those goals according to a generic set of rules specific to each goal. Scheduling tells an NPC when to pursue a goal. AI tells the NPC how to pursue the goal.

When an NPC is told to eat, it eats according to the AI rules for eating. When an NPC is told to sleep, it sleeps according to the AI rules for sleeping. Travel, Ambush, and Follow are further examples of goals pursued by NPCs. NPCs are always in pursuit of one AI goal or another, even when they appear to be doing nothing more than pacing back and forth.

A developer once explained that the "radiant" in Radiant AI refers to NPCs using elements of their environment to satisfy their goals -- the AI radiates outward. While an NPC pursues the goal of wandering, if there is an empty chair within his wander radius, he will sit in the chair. If food is within an NPC's vicinity when told to eat, the NPC might use that food. If there is a bed within a specified radius when an NPC is told to sleep, the NPC may climb into that bed.