I totally agree, I dont see how they could NOT use perfectly good code that DID work well in MW/OB in the new engine. When you upgrade something so much you lose some efficiency as the base of that program wasnt necessarily made to handle all the new functions. Doesnt mean you cant use what you know and have to start new to make it work even better. I've done some programming and I think the basics hold some same principles.

We don't know how long they have worked on this engine. It could have been since Oblivion's release, since Fallout 3's release or some time in between. If we knew that, we could make a rough guess at how well the engine could perform.

Well if it's not a Gamebryo engine I wonder if Skyrim will still be full of clutter that you can pick up? I suppose there will be no converting Oblivion armour to Skyrim either.

I just hope the faces are good and the animations smooth.

Two possible reasons. One being that it was perfectly good for the engine they were using then (Gamebryo) but doesn't actually play well with the engine they're using now. The other being that... well, it wasn't perfectly good to begin with. Bethesda's been completely overhauling a lot of aspects of their games recently, and in some cases specifically because what they had been building off of simply wasn't good enough and couldn't be "fixed" to be good enough.

EDIT:
The faces and animations, as always, are going to depend on Bethesda's artists and animators. I don't have especially high hopes for either, but they've apparently brought in some fresh blood for this new project. Hopefully that fresh blood includes some people who can do a bit better in those areas.

I agree with what some other people posted here. I can hardly believe that they coded a new engine from scratch and made a new Elder Scrolls game within three years. Bethesda has become a larger company for sure and they're a big developer now, but this seems to be a bit too much to handle. That means they would have to make a new engine from scratch, make a new tool set (Construction Set) from scratch and develop a huge open world RPG in less time than it took them to make Oblivion. And probably half of their team will already work on DLCs during the last half year of development, just like they did with FO3. I guess screenshots and most importantly the game itself will show.

Personally I take everything developers say before release with a grain of salt. I remember how they proudly showed their unbelievably good radiant AI and the dynamic shadows in the prison cell a few months before Oblivion's release. None of it ever appeared in the actual game (at least not even remotely similar to what was shown in the videos). The Peter Molyneux syndrome.

Why do they only show the cryptic pre-render video now after the announcement? Not enough time to prepare some screenshots and videos or write a summary of new gameplay features or the main story? No, it's because they want to build up hype...the more, the merrier. Mentioning a 'new engine that is spectacular' but not showing any screenshots is just another step in that direction. Screenshots will just show the reality...which is probably pretty cool and certainly much better than Oblivion, but I don't expect it to be what I would call 'spectacular' either. I hope they will prove me wrong though.

That's awesome. What does he mean by "internally"? I'm just curious as the why Todd said it'd be a revamped Gamebryo engine, and now they're saying it's gonna be all new from the ground up.

More than three years. The fact that they were working on Fallout 3 doesn't mean that they weren't working on other things, and it's likely they started work on their new engine well before Fallout 3's release. Besides that, they've been extremely clear that yes, this is a new engine from scratch, not something derived from Gamebryo. Whether or not it seems hard to believe doesn't change the fact that it's apparently the case.


So do I, unless it's a blunt statement like that they're using a new engine that isn't based on Gamebryo. There is no weaseling or wriggling out there. It's pretty blunt and plain.


Well, I don't think anyone (aside from Bethesda) is claiming that it's going to be spectacular. That doesn't change the fact that it's new. It could certainly be new and absolutely terrible (and as I've already said, I've got my concerns as far as optimization and performance goes), but it's still new in any case.


Internally means that it was developed in-house by Bethesda rather than licensed from some other studio or company as middleware. And technically, Todd never said that it's a revamped Gamebryo engine. He made ambiguous statements about them building from the work they'd done on their previous games, and people interpreted that as meaning it was going to use Gamebryo.

It could very likely be the result of the downfall of Emergent Technologies - the developer of Gamebroyo.

With the parent company gone, there is 0% support for the gamebroyo engine anymore and certainly no "New" features. Also it is accepted wisdom in the software world that once a company goes down, most other companies stop using their products due to lack of support and future growth - and it would be risky for Bethesda to continue with Gamebroyo UNLESS they:

1. Own the source and have in-house experts on that source.
2. Are so far along in the development of the new engine to want to turn back.

We don't really know, but it makes "sense" that Bethesda would drop the use of Gamebroyo with the parent company gone (http://www.gamingbusinessreview.com/emergentsellsassets.htm).

Miax

You know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Screenshots will show us a great deal what the new engine is like, if it looks similar to Gamebryo, maybe give us some landscape, details, models, how detailed the textures are. Maybe filtering so we can see if the game uses some neat special effects and lighting. Maybe even how open ended the landscape is.

Just gotta wait for some screenshots.

I've said this before, I'll say it again: Gamebryo doesn't have a "look". Bethesda's implementation of Gamebryo, along with their art and assets, has a look. Unless they've hired in some new talent to handle that art or they've done some really fancy stylistic things with the effects in their new engine, expect that look to be present in Skyrim.

EDIT: The visuals in the game are going to depend, above all else, on Bethesda's artists and not on the engine that they use.

Development of an engine can start a long time before development of content (games) on that engine start.

Since Gamebryo engine changes from Oblivion to Fallout 3 weren't such a giant leap, I think they had probably some people working on the new engine tech since 2006.

And as said no Gamebryo doesn't mean the new engine doesn't have similar problems. If it has similar problems it will become clear that the issue was never the engine.

I just hope no baby gets thrown out with the tubwater so to speak. In other words I hope we won't lose good features like modeability or detailled interiors (including clutter) just so we get better animation or better faces.

This link says that they have confirmed that they are using a new engine.....and was posted today....http://www.ripten.com/2010/12/12/all-new-engine-for-the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-sam-n/

I think the news of a new engine is fantastic.
Lets just hope they have the competent programmers that are needed when building a new system from the ground up. Assuming they do it right and have an idea of all the features they intend to include it should likely be alot less buggy than their previous games. At worst it will still be buggy, but the bugs won't be the obscure ridiculous mystery bugs of Oblivion that were damn near impossible to even figure out, much less fix.

No, I do not believe they ever completely excluded Gamebryo from this "new" (with quotes) engine. That's a logical leap you're making.




This is a very good point.


Keep in mind that we're getting this information from those probably most removed from the development process (no disrespect Nick or Gstaff). I'll give more credit from an actual developer or Todd himself.

EDIT: I fully expect that Skyrim's going to look great without a doubt. Whether all of the Gamebryo quirks from the previous games will be fixed remains to be seen.

It just quotes the twitter message, it's not telling us anything we didn't already know.

true, new engine means new engine. I don't know what is so hard to understand...

Let's hope!

This quote from an interview from August 2010 makes me think otherwise:



'Inspired' by the technology we have? Fallout 3 tech is the starting point? Sounds more like an engine upgrade to me than a really new engine. Probably a lot of the code used for the Oblivion/FO3 engine was already theirs. They only needed to exchange the basic framework with their own code and now they can call it a new engine. Personally I expect a heavily pimped FO3 engine, but nothing that makes your jaw drop to the floor.

Absolutely not. Look through the various statements on it, both here and elsewhere (including earlier in this thread). The Twitter post could be read as being somewhat ambiguous on that point. Most of the others are not, including Gstaff's own post in this thread. "It's an all new graphics and gameplay engine internal to BGS" is a pretty plain statement - Gamebryo is in no sense internal to BGS, and in no sense "all new".


Not being a programmer or project lead doesn't mean that they wouldn't be aware of whether or not the engine used for Skyrim is new. I don't think it's very fair to criticize me of "logical leaps" and then imply something like that.

EDIT: Phitt, you can't just "exchange the basic framework" of your overall rendering engine and expect it to work. Moving from a middleware engine to something internal takes significantly more effort than that.

I understand skepticism, but this is getting ridiculous. They've explicitly stated that they're using a new engine developed internally and we have absolutely no reason to believe otherwise, so I'm not sure why there's even an argument here.

I am going to have to agree with Rabish12 here. We all know Bethesda and it's notorious "void of information" PR department. Do you guys REALLY think they would say something like this unless it was absolutely brand new?

Is it inappropriate for me to say that I love you?

:blush:

Gamebryo is a nice looking engine, especially after the FO3 improvements. I'm actually glad it is still on gamebryo.

http://twitter.com/nickbreckon/status/14015054991069184

That's enough proof for a new engine.

Try reading the thread next time.

For their sake, I hope Bethesda is telling the whole truth when they tell us they'll have a new engine. Seems like the news was big enough that Game Informer ran off and wrote an article in response to the tweet: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/12/12/elder-scrolls-v-will-use-new-engine.aspx