White Rabbits

... and polar bears, tundra, alpine environments, glaciers, moose, wolves, pine forests and mead.

Me. :hubbahubba:

A question...

Why isn't Ken Rolston in Bethesda Game Studios anymore ? What happened ?

He retired shortly after Oblivion's release, then a year or so later he decided to come out of retirement and is now working for Big Huge Games as a creative director for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

I'm a Final Cut Studio man—one of the few Mac users in the building (along with my counterpart, sal go). You can see my current setup (and the back of my head) for a hot second in the studio tour that GameInformer put up.

If my eyeballs had not been melted by the Skyrim Radian Epicness, they would have exploded from viewing your awesome skills.... I have begged Todd to hire you...


..... I now see telepathically

Ah so that's the Mac I saw in the video. At least there's only two of you

Do you guys miss him? His work on TES games?
Are you disappointed that he joined another studio instead of sticking to BGS?

edit: Talking of Ken Rolston there, few posts at same time probably made this unclear.

Hi friendly devs
i have a couple engine/pipeline questions
what kind of textures does the new engine use? just color and normal map? anything else?
what format are the normal maps in for the new engine? i mean do they use all 3 channels like oblivion or just two and it interpolates the third direction?

when you guys do normal details for weapons and the like (thinking of the elven and silver weapons from Oblivion), do you sculpt those just on a flat plane in zbrush and then cut and paste the normals on to the uvs for the game model? or is there a different process?

what do you use for retopologizing?

do you use crazybump much?

since its a new engine are the modding tools going to come out at the same time as the game? are they going to be similar to previous construction sets?

Thanks for taking the time to reply

• C\C++ is going to be the language to focus on for the foreseeable future. It's what you're going to use if you want to code for 360 or PS3. C# is good for tool development because of how fast you can get something up and running. Knowing other languages are good just from a knowledge standpoint - for example, working with a functional language (Erlang, F#, etc) where you can't modify values can give you some interesting insights on how to approach problems from a slightly different perspective.
  
  
• I don't have any major recommendations for general game development that come to mind at the moment other then the Game Programming Gems books which are full of various neat little tidbits and ideas (some more useful then others).
  
  
• Interesting - and probably not normal. I got hired near the beginning of Fallout crunch, so after I got my machine set up by IT and got the game building and running on my machine and 360 dev kit I basically just played the game. A lot of what I did that first week or two was playing the game with a debugger attached and whenever the game crashed or froze I would try to figure out why - which helped familiarize me with the code and who was responsible for what part of the game.
  
  
• Hmm... there's been a minor nerf gun skirmish or two. And during one power outage a couple of guys broke out their remote-control mini-helicopters and flew them around in the theatre

have anyone of you att the skyrim team, tried out real swords, mace's, axe's just to get a picture of how the weapon should feel in the players hand during gameplay?

Not only have we tried real weapons but we encourage regular combat in the atrium against each other. Unfortunately some of us have had to learn to use our feet to make games and play them now

The books looks very promising albeit high level. On the other hand I like a good challenge. They've also made some subtle hints in a couple of lectures about F#, will check it out once I'm proficient enough in c++ at least. Thanks for your recommendations.

Also, mini-helicopter duels are awesome. Setting up an obstacle course and having two people compete simultaneously for the best lap time is hilarious.

theres a question that has been heavy on my mind for awhile, and i just have to ask it, i hope this is a proper place for it, but i dont see why it wouldnt be, since it has nothing to do with info on skyrim.

anyway, i've looked through images of the old games, battlespire especially, and i see quite alot of partial nudity and very revealing "outfits" on some characters, the one that caught me off guard the most was rishaal tamir, i think her name was... that daedra child?

she was wearing a caveman cloth which barely covered her and her long hair covered the other half of her chest, i have to admit, i wasnt expecting something like that...

well, to get to my actual question, why did you guys decide to switch "extremes"?

you went from partial nudity to being very modest with the bodies [i didnt want to use "prudish" cause that sounds insulting], yet becoming more brutal and macabre.

ok, in morrowind, there was no more nudity, except for argonians and khajiit, i think? of course, they didnt have any details... yet i was surprised by some things i found, one being this dremora i met on a pilgrimage... i believe he said, i quote: "After I kill you, I will [censored] your corpse. Don't worry. I'll be gentle."

that was certainly... surprising to hear. :laugh:

then when oblivion came out and i explored it intimately, i found some very macabre things, such as all the brutal treatment of corpses in many dungeons, and i even found child-sized skeletons, i think, as well as clothing to match on table with coffins nearby and blood, etc...

i mean, using a little imagination, you can see what happened there, and its a very mature scenario.

so, to reiterate, why did you switch extremes?

by the way, to make this very clear, i do NOT care for nudity, i dont mind that its gone, and i absolutely LOVE the brutal, macabre scenarios and language i've come across in morrowind and oblivion, so please keep that up. :nod:

Favorite season?

Favorite media of art?

Any idea when details on the engine will come out? I love hearing about the story and the world and all that jazz, but what really gets me excited is hearing about new tech, new game play mechanics, etc. I know it's probably under wraps for a while, but any idea when we'll be getting more?

For you longtime veterans at Bethesda, whatever happened to robot Mark Jones? http://www.mjonesgraphics.com/

Great guy, did much of the artwork and modelling from Daggerfall to Tribunal.

When did y'all decide to start using Havok Behavior, and how much time do you believe it frees up for the Bethesda Team?

does anyone throw knives, I know no one that does

also I asked about modeling tutorials and where you learn stuff for that, but what about for texturing, I am very limited by that

Also for the game will the cloths move like they do in the http://www.havok.com/index.php?page=showcase?

I have three questions, but not all of them have to be answered:


Question Une: If the 7000 steps were real, how many of them do you think you could physically climb before passing out/dying from exhaustion?

Question Deux: If you were attacked by a murder of dragons, how many of them could you engage in hand-to-hand combat at the same time? (Probably upwards of 50, right?)

Question Trois: Speaking of dragons, what is the correct term for a group of dragons? As you can see, I used the word "murder" for the group, but I don't know if that is the correct term, so....

Also, if you know the correct word, but would prefer to use a fake word that sounds cooler, knock yourself out.

Me and my friends want to start an Indie Game project to make a portfolio but we dont know if we should write it in C C++ or C# can any programmer direct us in the best direction to make this project the most experience giving possible as a preparation for gaming industry?

:rofl: Awesome
Who is your favorite Simpsons character? :tongue:


UP AND AT THEM
(just had to do that)

I know how to throw a knife, but I cant guarrantee you would be stabbed by the handle or the blade.... though I would certainly try to throw it hard enough that it wouldnt matter. Im pretty sure I can impale with the handle...yes, the handle

As far as texturing tutorials, there are tons. just search for them. Check out 3dtotal.com cgsociety.org theres tons of great stuff out there. Also youtube and Veoh





Question 1: probably 6152 and a half..

Question 2: Im pretty sure I could take at least two dragons on my own. If I beat one up real bad though Im pretty sure the rest will scatter. Three might be an issue unless I had some friends with me.

Question3: Hmm Im not sure what the correct term for a group of dragons is but I think "brood" of dragons sounds pretty cool.

I use a single edged leaf knives so it is much harder for me to stick it, I have also impaled with the handle before, but the handle on mine isn't sharp at all it just stuck into the wood, it was so awesome

Ill be sure to check those out