» Wed May 02, 2012 10:52 pm Firstly- Skin Shaders for people, Colour shaders for everything
Could this not have been applied to Creatures, Armours, Clothes and weapons?
-creatures-I think everybody Noticed that all Regular wolves are black. All Creatures look the same, This is a problem not just for the immersion but also for the gameplay. If i am in a cave with 6 frost trolls i would like to know which one to focus on (those fights usualy involve lots of running around, it's easy to get mixed up and the health bar shouldn't be my only solution) . It would have meant more dragons, werewolves with your hair colour and more horse selections for you to ride too.
- Clothes- This game is even MORE limited than oblivion in what is worn. Everybody notices that most outfits show up many,many times. If the Game Could colour different outfits properly this would be less noticeable. Plus.. We like some personalisation! There are no Red Mage robes. No purple farmer02 clothes!! No dyes to Collect From the flowers and monsters of skyrim!!
- Armours,jewelry and weapons.
There are so little Armours and weapons in skyrim. In many cases- The Material doesn't go with the style. Ebony for instance is of an aldmeri design and it's found In draugr ruins on draugr .
Overall though there isn't realy many weapons. Each main material has 8 weapons. But why Can't the player find (or make) nordicly styled items made of Ebony , Or make imperial things out of moonstone? Where are the orichalum katanas? The Steel Elven weapons? Obviously some Combinations would not exist.. But otherwise... This would have made the smithing skill mean more than a way to get daedric early and abuse everything into "legendary" You could have made something truly unique! There would be much more jewelry Options
Look at it this way
Metals- iron,steel,moonmetal,ebony, orichalum (adding more would simply involve adding a colour... or if bethesda used formula for weapon creation- colour , weight modifier, Speed modifier, wear modifier and damage/protection modifier - Mithril,Adamantine, bronze, stalhrim, The red material that makes up tribunal's royal guard armour... etc!! That's 5, 9 or how many armours you can think of !
Metal armours
Basic (iron), Nordic, Nordic Fullplate , Imperial, Orcish, Elven, "Ebony" ,dragonguard.. maybe we could count ancient nord,scaled and dwarven- This is 8,11 or how many you can think of.
At this point- there is more than 40 full sets of armour if you are being conservative, it might be closer to 99 if your feeling a little more adventurous. (and we aren't even Counting Non metals yet!!)
Then, we get stylish yeah?
All of these armours have at least one instance of cloth/fur. If each type had A tint mask and a detail overlay...
White fur, Orange fur, Brown fur, Black Fur, grey fur.. Can we die fur? Do we account for different patterns (as seen on sabercats)
Brown cloth,Grey cloth,Black Cloth,Blue cloth, Red cloth, Purple cloth, green cloth, orange cloth...
Brown leather, black leather, pale leather, red leather, grey leather..
Dragon scales? Troll hide? Horker hide?
Chain mail?
Whatever you get, Times that by how many armours you had. Fur might need a different Texture for some models (due to the edges) and most of these extras wouldn't be found on bandits.. but otherwise... There is now a ludicrous amount of different armours using only a few new masks. Haven't even began with enchantments!!
- Dungeons
- What if every Dungeon had an entity inside it that said "all the rocks here are white and smooth, So we use this tint and this bumpmap and this specular map" or "all the rocks here are dry and muddy, So we use a brown tint, this bumpmap and No specular.
That would have realy added a more unique feel to every dungeon. The same thing could be said for.. anything? Houses included! We wouldn't realy think all the inns the same if one of them had blacker wood or something simple like that.
Creatures/Races/ People
- With the armour for Falmer/draugr... Would it have made more sense to Consider that armour (perhaps considered a misc item to the player for conversion at a crafting place), rather than an additional skin? This would have allowed for more variation.
- Like my Dungeon idea above.. What if the dungeon Dictated Certain Colours of things? I noticed that Corrupted shades have red eyes.. What if the game says "everything that spawns in this dungeon with glowing eyes has "this" colour glowing eyes- This shows that these undead are the property Of "insert boss here" and again makes every dungeon feel more unique. The same could apply to spells.. all of the witches in this dungeon have... Red lightning spells, Whilst in another they are orange and purple in the last! This kind of thing would make more dungeons feel special.
-There is only One body slider? There are no men With big bellies? No women With child bearing hips? i think that minimal effort would have been needed to do such a thing.
- There is no "random" generator for Generic npcs. In the construction set you will notice that there is a hundred or so bandits. It would make more sense if we had a device that said "it's not going to be these races, its not going to have these Features, it's this likely to be male.. etc" it's a bit inefficient to have 40 of the same npcs who's only difference is their face!
Minor things/nitpicks
thieves guild armour... I think that sort of thing is unlore friendly and a waste of time- You can't realy blend in and gain trust with "criminal armour" . That's like going into a chapel wearing full Daedric, or a stormcloak spy in the legion wearing Stormcloak armour!! Some enchanted rags would have done fine!
The complexity of weapons. Most things Not iron, steel or dwarven Look Stupid (especialy swords) . Practicality is important! It's not even Lore friendly!! Maces and warhammers Aren't the worst offenders and axes/daggers are hit and miss... but with swords and bows
think about this
Why does Ebony Hurt more? It doesn't!! Ebony is Simply Super strong and so it Can make thinner, Sharper blades without compromising durability. It's also Heavy and expensive, so you don't want to waste Any of it. Ebony does quite well in this regard for maces and axes- Whilst Quite ornate, they look Usuable. The bow and greatsword on the other hand.. ugh!! Ebony is probably a weak argument in comparison to Elven And Malachite, but my points still there.
Orcish/daedric weaponry- WHY IS IT SO CRUDE? Does the lore not explicitly state that The orcs are the BEST armourers of tamriel? Aren't daedra supposed to perfect EBONY? (which is black, Not a steel grey) It Would make MUCH more sense If these weapons had Basic Blades. Why is this problem also inefficient? Because basic Blades are Easier to make and so modellers could have spent more times on other things. (also- Most of the bows look too unreal , a few crossbows in place of the sillier ones would have done well)
Water (not the streams, but the rivers and seas and pools)- Compare bethesda's water.. an opaque texture which adds fog if you get in enough (also allowing you to look underwater with complete clarity if your on the surface= Crap) to... Valve (software)'s water.. Which uses a clear texture and adds fog underneath it (decent) (they also have flowmaps, but that's not the point) . The source engine isn't even that crazy on water and yet looks many times better.
But then again- Bethesda's programmers can't make ladders, so this change of fog location might be a bit too much.
- in Snowstorms/rainstorms you can still see Extremely distant mountains... There would be a big performance boost if fog was added. (which might have allowed For rain and snow to collide with objects rather than ghost through them)
