This came up in a recent discussion and I wanted to get the insight on what the modders actually thought of the current engine.

*Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

EDIT :

1. Is it really a true Gamebryo engine?
2. Is it actually a Gamebyro hybrid of sorts?
3. Does it make things easier or harder for the modding community?
4. Does it limit the implementation of modder's ideas?
5. Is it the core of bugs for all Beth games?

This is something I've been wondering too. Is there really anything that gamebryo/creation engine does exceptionally well compared to other engines? As far as I know, it seems the negatives far outweigh the positives.

Moved post as an addition to the OP.

I've wondered this myself. The whole nif format for meshes and hkx for animations seems so left of field and little/no documentation around for any of it - you gotta think it's hurt the modding community at least - not sure if this is an issue with the engine or just bethesda limit it to those formats.

Not that I expect it to change any time soon. If it were able to deal with more common formats, that would be most welcome.

I think, in terms of modding, it would be easier to work with if they would release some free, open source tools for us to use, such as importers and exporters, and maybe some easier to understand documentation. On the actual playing the game side of things, I don't see anything wrong with it. I think the way Bethesda uses it works fine for them.

I would blame Bethesda instead.

I don't think it's fair for the engine. I mean, Civ 4 uses Gamebryo and you don't see the shenanigans we see in Oblivion.

No, I don't believe Skyrim is using Gamebryo no matter what others said. It is like saying Source Engine is actually GoldSrc because they use the same console commands.

Skyrim is most certainly using Gamebryo. All of the nif formats are there - just updated since New Vegas. Dig into the animation commands, they're all still referencing Gamebryo or NetImmerse (Gamebryo's previous name - for Morrowind). Still the same problems with rain falling through roofs, water plane clipping if you get into the water just right, same 60Hz tick bug as previous games, it's all there. The evidence is far too much to ignore.

Bethesda needs to give some serious thought to picking a more modern engine for their next TES game, or the competition in the next couple of years will blow them out of the water. Witcher 3, I'm looking at you.

Have you guys heard about the Rise of the Triad 2013 reboot? It suffered strongly from performance issues. Now why is that? http://www.interceptor-entertainment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=151&t=3134:


Now look at Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and those two Fallout games. The NetImmerse/Gamebryo/Creation engine is http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JoelBurgess/20130501/191514/Skyrims_Modular_Approach_to_Level_Design.php. Exactly what Frederik Schreiber says is a boon for modders. Sure, there are issues like weather effects not clipped by geometry, but if you look at the performances you get in-game and think about the amount of drawcalls you must be getting for the current scene, it shows that NI/GB/C is better optimized than is commonly thought.

It seems to me it's moreso the script systems like Papyrus that are a hurdle for modders to achieve what they want.

As I mentioned http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1476422-the-destruction-magic-seems-a-bit-unimaginative/?p=23081523 In some form the gamebryo engine has always caused quite a bit of performance issues to game breaking bugs which is partially the engine and also the developers. As far as should TES games run on the system or any game from them I'd say no. Mostly because this engine has appeared so far more of a hindrance to players experience while playing the games. I can't comment on modders but I have seen people complain about the gamebyro engine and more so know that bethesda lacks developers who can actually code on certain platforms, PS3 is the main issue with skyrim. Completely unacceptable how at launch it was a pile of crap for lack of better word, and heavily criticized by many throughout this forum and the interwebs. Luckily i didn't run into many issues but even I must admit i ran into few problems like quest bugs and memory issues that caused my game to really freeze and lag alot.

All in all I do feel if anything bethesda needs better developers who know what they're doing, but getting a better engine for future titles or even using say, frostbite engine 3 or something for a future TES game might be something to look into because gamebryo will not be able to last against top new engines being made.
Same thing goes for Activision with call of duty seeing how all the games this generation are being run on Quake 3's Engine: ID Tech 3, while graphically the engine has improved dramatically people have noticed the graphics not really being all too different in the past 3 years so it's clear something new has to change.

Other games have so much better and smoother graphics as far as I know and have seen. The regular argument is that this engine is so special because it draws so many objects, but I think that's completely crap. Look at other games which draw worlds even bigger than Skyrim in one loading (not considering pop-ups which exist in all games) and you notice how much better they look. A good example is the Uningine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw4_9s9fDB8

Huge worldspaces, much better graphics?

In all honesty, I don't really care a moddable an engine is. If the game is great enough from the start it doesn't "need" any modding. I would never make my weather mod if the vanilla weather already was good enough.

Still, no offense, but I imagine this thread (and my above reply too) is pretty useless, because there's no way in Antartica that Bethesda will change their engine. As far as they are concerned, they already have changed their engine (even though we all know that the Creation engine is the same engine as before, just with a new name). Bethesda would never admit that their own "new" engine is bad enough to force them to change to a new one; I mean, who would?

Didn't Gamebryo themselves go out of business? That'd mean you can no longer count on getting updates handed to you, so you'd need to do it all yourself. That's probably one good reason to ditch it, depending on how much time Bethesda wants to spend on that kind of stuff.

They seem to be still in business - http://www.gamebryo.com/

Personally, I don't look upon being a mod user as a primary means to actually fix issues, as I welcome the use to allow me the means of customizing the game to suit my tastes. You can never have enough personalization and the implementation of using mods allows for near unlimited applications. That alone more than warrants the means to do so.

No offense taken but please understand that this thread was not created in an attempt to change anything. Not that threads actually do that, anyway.

It was initially, and continues to be, a means of inquiry.

Holy crap the next TES really needs to adopt this engine.

(About the only thing that's not right about that engine is the lamps at night don't cast shadows in the floating village scene)

Voted No on all questions. Sick of the 11-year-old game engine they're using right now.

I thought Bethesda already said they would change the engine after Skyrim and then one other game, maybe Fallout 4? So whatever the other game is would be the final game to use the engine, at least that is what I thought I heard.

If a new engine allows us to mod the next game to the extent that we can mod this one, I'm okay with changing. But if a new engine will not allow us to mod the next game to the extent that we mod this one, I'd rather stick with the engine we have.

+1

Completely agree with Pseron Wyrd. Loss of modability would take away a very large part of the appeal that the TES series has for me.
And contrary to hlvr, I don't see fixing bugs as the main reason for modding, but tweaking the game to my tastes, and creating my own version of the game world. Mods can add nearly infinite amounts of gameplay and content - expanding the game. The ability to fix it is a nice side effect.
Whether it's Gamebryo/something similar/something else, doesn't matter much for me. With the current engine, we have the advantage that many of the basics are already there - the editor hasn't changed that much since Morrowind, for instance. If the same level of support is maintained with a new engine, then why not?

This. I almost posted a long reply to the OP last night saying the same thing.

It (might) be great If BGS were to develop a new engine and not remove a significant amount of mod support. Otherwise, I'd rather have them stick with Gamebryo. In terms of bugs, I think that's more of a BGS than Gamebryo thing, and FONV and Skyrim were the least buggy games I've ever seen from the engine, so it seems to be getting more stable.

IMO, it would depend on precisely what might get lost. If it's some corner case thing that, while interesting, isn't ultimately that important I'd be more than happy to lose it to gain a far better engine built around modern hardware than an aging and crusty old system built around hardware that's approaching a decade old.

It's time for 32 bit DX9 games to die, and Bethesda needs to unplug the life support on them.

The core question I ask is...

Will this theoretical new engine have the same modularity that we currently have? Cellular exterior worldspaces, modular record override system... This is what makes TES games so moddable.

Or indeed, will any hypothetical new engine be as locked down and proprietary as Gamebryo is? Or more so?

Bethesda (and indeed Gamebase USA and Havok) have generously turned a blind eye to the unofficial import/exporters that are used by modders of Bethesda games (and other Gamebryo based games), but there's no guarantee that another middleware vendor would do the same. We might have the situation that there'd be no official way of getting new models into the game, and cease-and-desist notices served on anyone who tried to reverse-engineer the model format to develop unofficial ones.

Even if new unofficial import/exporters were allowed, it might be a very long time (if ever) before some generous and brilliant software engineer produced some.

From my experiences with both at launch they were the buggiest games i've seen, had so many problems people were complaining. Granted as I said i think both the devs and the engine are contributing this as well, i remember the modding community touched on Bethesda have crappy coders and they have the fix the same problems on each game that the devs can't.
Wish i knew specifically what they were but i know it's got to do with gamebryo engine, Either way something has to change. I also think all RPG's as open world like TES should be supported by updates and new content for literally 3-4 years. Not this 2 years bull