It's been a while, Ni!

The only thing I've sorted are the vast amount of chicken heads you've bit off.

The true joy is seeing it work. When programming stupid programs in VisBasic or VisC++, the joy was seeing what you did actually happen, not the work itself. It is long and boring, and not always the most exciting part of the day. But when you see something you created actually do what you want, you can't help but smile. Even if it is a stupid dice-roll program or a simple 'cartoon' animation.

It's still possible to miss. Try to hit someone behind you or far away, and you will miss

I think this change with Oblivion was a good change. Seeing the sword go thru an enemy and not doing any damage was very annoying. It's not annoying in isometric games, as you only view the combat from far away, but up close it look rather silly and just reminds the gamer it's all fake.

I always thought it was annoying because the game required the player to aim at the enemy. You'd center the screen at an opponent only to find out that it didn't matter, because the dice rolls decided the outcome. In isometric games and recent MMO's you're only required to select the enemy, while your character does the rest. You're just left with the strategy.

If there was more strategy involved in Morrowind, then the dice rolls wouldn't have been a hindrance. But as it was, the few RPG elements didn't cooperate with the action elements.

If you're tackling that aspect in particular, yeah, I do see your point. The truth is that most of this goes straight over most people's heads, and they've no idea how much work goes into even the simplest game feature.



Couldn't agree more. The more quasi-real and immersive a game's visuals are, the less appropriate old school mechanics are in determining how those visuals behave. I'd argue that even Morrowind already crossed into "this will look ridiculous if it's controlled by dice" territory; Oblivion certainly did, and Skyrim goes without saying.

I think almost evryone who'd play MW now (new to the game), wouldn't like it. Partly due to it's chunky combat, which improved on OB and continues to improve to Skryim, and the graphics, which got better in OB and continue to do so in Skyrim. I love RPGs, butcombat and graphics are far too important to be sneezed upon and ignored. The great part with TES seriers as it has been through years is that, as Todd has said, all games are unique. They don't feel like sequels in another province, they feel fresh. A good example of a game series that has not evolved much from the first is Ratchet and Clank, basically the first game and the latest only differ in graphics a bit and detail in other aspects. I'm looking forward to Skyrim as it is and I'm happy no matter how it ends up, complainers are spoilt brats that could play MW or OB or DF or Arena if they like that game, Skyrim will be unique and great.

No I have not. I will bring this idea to my team and we will do a little research and see if it is something we may want to consider. As of right now, we're working with Flash, as 2 of my programmers feel comfortable with it. This choice allows us to hit multiple platforms, and as I said before, we're shooting for Android, PC, and Xbox360, and we are not ruling out iOS, as it is a huge market. I've been playing a lot of indie games on my mobile for awhile now, and I like what I've seen. Most of these games can be found both on PC via websites or Steam, and through Xbox Live. It's relatively easy to write code for, as long as you have your books and tutorials handy for reference. The only thing I don't like is touch-screen implementation, as many of the games I have played either don't have fine-control or your finger obstructs the view of what you're doing.

But yes, if we get things rolling and we enjoy our first release, we will definitely be exploring new avenues.

Okay, we're not going to talk about Bethesda here, because they're a company and they have to churn out results. As for game design, you got me at an advantage, because I'm pretty clueless.

But I got to disagree that "True joy is seeing it work". This works for everything in life except your passion. If you really love what you do, then simply doing it is joy (not fun mind you, but it is joy). Exercising, experimenting, fooling around for fooling around's sake, pushing the boundaries and even repetitive work is different when you do what you really love.

As I said we're not talking about Bethesda here anymore, but about people in general.

lol, I've never coded anything substantial in my life and I always assumed this. That is why I am hyper-critical of any new ideas. Every thread is "We should have this" or "They should do this". People don't think about how ridiculous half of the stuff they propose would be to code. Spears: likely not a huge issue, all you're talking about is copying code and changing texture skins (assuming there are pole arms). Most of the rest of the crap people bring up though often could mean huge chunks of dev time. Just off the front page there are threads asking (some borderline demanding) for more complex armor/weapon repair rules, crafting to have an unneeded amount of depth, inclusion of a new race, high numbers of leisure activities, and one implying they want PC laid traps. None of those would be easy or simple to code and none really would make the game any better. It just boggles the mind.

Call me cynical or callous, but I think it might have something to do with ages on the forum. There seem to be a fair number of younger people who might be bursting with ideas but not with empathy and understanding for the devs.

I'm only using spears and levitation as examples. I would personally love to see them both in Skyrim, or a later TES game for that matter, but at the same time, I can see how difficult it would be to script those appropriately. Other things to consider would be how you can use chameleon at 100% and slaughter every NPC undetected, the psychic guards who somehow know what you did across the continent (I mean, I knew news traveled fast, but faster than me with my super athletics?)....

Realism is great. It allows the player to connect more with the game, and feel as though they're actually there. I feel combat still needs some tweaking, and I'm hoping they've built it correctly in Skyrim. You can still effectively 'miss' an enemy even if you visually see your sword hit them. It all depends on how intricate they get with the angles of attacks and such.

I know what you mean. I find true joy with interacting with my son. He's at such a fun age. He just started crawling. He jabbers constantly. He smiles when you make eye contact. Little things like that are what joy is in my eyes.

I'm not saying I hate programming. Far from it. But it CAN be boring and tedious at times, no matter how fun the end result is.


Sinister Raven: The thousands of ideas that pour in could be from a younger audience, and it could also just be from someone who has put a lot of time and thought into their idea, and their wish is to hopefully see it in a future game. The internet has given game developers an endless portal into seeing what the fans want. It's a wonderful tool. Even before I wanted to put together a team to try and make something, I enjoyed seeing the passion people have behind their ideas. It's given me a lot of thought of what can and can't be done as well. I have over 110 typed pages of stuff we plan to put into our game, and I know about half of it probably won't make it in. Some of it due to the limitations of Flash, and some of it the limitations of myself and the team. BUT. It is always nice to see people come up with new and fresh ideas that may be used later on.

On that note. I need to get to bed. Thank Akatosh my wife is getting up with our son. It's 530, and he's due up in the next hour and a half. Goodnight all.

Agreed with most of your points. Very well thought out but ironically I don't see how the message would reach its intended audience. Nevertheless, good job, OP. And keep up the good-spirit; we really need that here in abundance!

I hear ya dude. Your post (and subsequent replies especially) make a lot of sense; apologies if I seemed overly critical.