No, I beg of you, please don't add useless realism.

People in general hate snows that you can't walk on. Footprints are fine. Penalty-inducing snows are not.

For one, I don't play a game to tread through snow, knowing I'm wasting half an hour of my life and half an hour worth of my PC's specs electricity only to move to that bridge I can see in my FoV half an hour before

Yep. You ski instead! :happy:

Realistic snow and ice physics would be great. Sadly, knowing Bethesda's policy of adding vs. removing/culling features in TES games, I don't think we're going to see any of it. Snow will be a shader on models, that's all.

Which is a big wasted opportunity, imo. You could ski, you could use snow shoes, slide on ice etc.

Ofelas - the original Pathfinder movie is a good example of how you travel and fight in snow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BBn-7H2kEk

I don't care either way about how excessively real people want snow movement to be, but I do sincerely hope, especially in an environment where it's so prominently featured, that NPCs in Skyrim will be able to follow tracks to pursue you. Some early games (I'm thinking of the first Commandos) did that, and it was fun deliberately leading enemies into traps or otherwise having Benny Hill-esque moments.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1244212/Commandos/bennyhill.PNG

"To create realistic precipitation effects, Bethesda originally tried to use shaders and adjust their opacity and rim lighting, but once the artists built the models and populated the world the snow appeared to fall too evenly. To work around this problem, they built a new precipitation system that allows artists to define how much snow will hit particular objects. The program scans the geography, then calculates where the snow should fall to make sure it accumulates properly on the trees, rocks, and bushes."

You're wrong. Snow will not be a shader.

Oh, burn. The final effect is exactly the same as a shader, except the density of the snow won't be uniform. Boo hoo, it's still just a visual effect.

I honestly think this would be ace.

I mean think about it, there are only going to be a few regions in this game where this would even need to be taken into account, so it's not like people are going to have to put up with it all of the time.

Slipping over could really be a random occurrence, based on your agility (which prevents it) the gradient (slope) of what your running on (which increases it), and a bit of a random factor. It could happen to anyone, not very often. But imagine that you are being chased by 3 barbarians. It would be quite likely for one of them to fall, which could interrupt the others allowing you to make your escape. Snow-boots (or any boots in which you could customize by adding steel studs or skis to) could massively prevent it, and in the end could be a life saver if you are running along a glacier up on a high ridge.

There are a few issues though. What would happen to monsters treading on the snow?

Any monsters have likely evolved to live in that climate, so they'd be alright with snow, non?

If it were to have this level of realism it would still make a difference for the animals somehow. Different types of animals would probably be better at it.

I know it's not going to happen, so I just want some basic realism, like slippery ice and getting slowed down just a little through snow. I'm pretty sure there will be footprints.

1. Snow can be (sound) very different depending on what sort of snow it is and how cold it is outside. I've not heard a snow splash since my college days in the midwest of the states. Here snow has a squeak or a crunch/squeak to it when you walk on it. There is no splash at all. Since it is so cold here, there is nothing even close to anything liquid enough to splash.
2. If walking in deep snow here we call it "breaking trail" and yes it is slow and difficult to wade though the snow and make a path. But after a couple of times through the snow is packed and walking becomes just as fast and easy as walking on a sidewalk in summer.
3. I've played snowshoe softball so....depends.
4. don't know
5. The packed snow is so hard here that unless it is freshly fallen snow, there are no footprints left to see. If there is fresh snow, there is usually enough that rather than footprints you see where someone has waded through and not the prints themselves. Just two tunnels where legs have waded a path through. After doing that several times, you have a flat path that holds no prints.

I'd imagine that having snow impede movement wouldn't be that hard to script, but it could get rather annoying, depending on how often players needed to walk on snow. If it is implemented, then there should certainly be a way to bypass it, either special equipment, or some sort of spell, or both. If magic can let you walk on water, I can hardly imagine a spell to make walking in snow easier would be impossible.

I didn't mean to suggest by having snow trip you up that it should be harder to move through. I don't want that kind of thing either, but I do really love the idea of those barbarians tripping behind you and get all tangled up with each other and can't catch you now. Or you fall, and they all have a round of free stabs at you before you can get back up.

The thing I hated the most about being a new character in MW or Oblivion was the run speed. I hated it so much I often cheated and got the fast-run mods that gave you 50 or 75 to start with on Speed. So anything that makes running around slower I would really hate. But let it be an option in the Options menu for those that want greater difficulty. I don't begrudge those that want any feature if I can turn it on or off somehow to suit my tastes.

Morrowind had a slow run speed but I thought Oblivion was fast. You could eventually run faster than the horses, thus defeating the purpose of horses. Not even the water would slow you down, unless you were on a horse.

Well, probably nothing will make you think otherwise, but it will still be a shader. These articles very poorly relay information. But as made apparent by the several high-res screens we now have, snow is a 2D pixel-shaded effect, laid over top of the surface geometry, based on the surface normals. It's exactly like the snow as seen in Crysis and Crysis Warhead, but inferior in many ways. There are strange striped artifacts on the snow. It exceeds the Crysis snow in one way, and that's that it has an artist-directed component which makes the snow appear not so even. In Crysis basically everything looked white.

"scans the geography" = has the world space normals, including normal maps
"calculates where the snow should fall" = limits the possible areas for snow to be placed based on these world space normals. The surfaces that point directly "up" will collect the most, and angles less than "up" will receive less and less snow.
"tried to use shaders AND adjust their opacity and rim lighting" = they at one point had more simple shaders that didn't take into account the surface normals. They also didn't have this artist-directed component, which probably equates to "snow density maps" in game, which prevent snow from ever showing in certain areas. Doesn't mean they don't place the snow with a shader now.

Don't rely on people who know nothing about graphics technology to relay it to you correctly. They took many an artistic license in those articles. I know with absolute certainty the methods they're using on Skyrim just from the screenshots.

What we haven't seen, though, is how snow will appear on terrain. I'm hoping they try a static, fake volumetric effect ala Uncharted 2 or Lost Planet 2. With some snow animation at your feet. This will go a long way with making snow seem volumetric when it's really not.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Back in the day many many explorers DID have to travel and survive in snow, maybe not chest high but fairly high snow. They had to live in it, find food, travel through it and survive.

Why do you assume skyrim's snow wouldn't even be say, ankle/knee high? They've already mentioned snow "accumulation" being in the game, having snow that accumlates but doesn't have a volume to it would be rather absurd and pointless apart from seeing it on your clothing or hair. I

What's gonna happen if I wait a day under the snow now? Is it going to stock up forever?

I have a feeling this snow thing's gonna blow out...

Only one magazine has used the word accumulate. All they have said is that snow will appear as though it has properly fallen on stuff. jonwd7 has a very good post explaining how the process will work. His method matches what one of the other magazines said about a dusting appearing and what Bethesda said they wrote to calculate where snow would and wouldn't fall on an object. It also matches what we have seen in the screenshots.

In previous games, they just painted stuff white that they wanted white. They didn't take real world physics and object shape into consideration when putting that snow on objects. Now, they have gone and written a special piece of code to do that. This way, they can create an overlay (of sorts) for objects so now will only appear where you might expect it to in real life. This allows them to have the object with snow on it and one without. When it starts snowing, they can start using parts of their pregenerated overlay to give the appearance of accumulation.

You people are trying to give me snow related nightmares, arent you...

Snow is the devil. You can push it, you can lift it, you can blow it away, but it will always come back the next day with another foot just to piss you off. I can live with slipping and sliding on ice, and I can live with snow making running take more stamina and slow you down a little, but for what is left on my Minnesota sanity...snow doesn't need to be so realistic that we look like Sven an Oly out there. If you want realistic, get up to my house and I'll give you a damn shovel. I seriously pitty anyone that lives more north than where I do. When I picture hell I dont' see fire, I see snow and ice.

It should be hard to pass through extreamly snowy mountains, I agree. But more often than not, you'll only sink down a foot or two before the snow compacts enough for you to stand on it. That's not going to really hurt you unless your trying to run. And animals that live in this climate are going to have an adantage over you. As long as the snow looks nice as it falls in game, gathers on objects realisticly, and only slows me down a little and I'll be fine. Slipping and sliding on ice is okay as well, but it shouldn't be over the top.

:lmao:

I hear ya brother.

Hahaha that's awesome! This Michigander remembers - you all got it bad this year. Well said! :goodjob:

One thing I would love to see though are footprints in the snow, of creatures and such. It would make hunting feel so much more real - that's about all I would hope for.

Ultima Underworld 2 had this cool ice area where your character slipped along the surface. Something like that (although toned down compared to UW2 - that was crazy zero-friction stuff) would be interesting.

Snow effecting movement, and maybe your character stumbling in it, is a great idea. Generally I think the environment should mean something, and be occasionally challenging - not just be pretty graphics on the way to the next fight.

Why would you fall when you sprint? That doesn't make sense.
Slowing movement and making it more exhausting is good

Walking in snow would cause fatigue and slow you down, there's not much chance of falling, even when trying to run, you just go slowly.

I just want breaking ice, especially mid-combat. The sound of ice breaking under you is a deep boom, that is difficult to describe until you've heard it. One of the scariest sounds you'll ever hear.

To OP: Only six inches? Where do you live? We got at least a foot in most places, drifts are ridiculous. And in all honesty, it really isn't that bad if you can keep warm. Then you realize these are the Nords, and all complaints about snow go out the window. They come from Atmora, which is further north and likely even colder than Skyrim, and they (Proto-Nords, at least) have lived in Skyrim since before the first era (though they didn't get a (recorded) king until 1E 143). They're probably as used to it as the trolls and giants.

And combat? I don't know much about how Scandinavians fought, but I remembered something about the Russians. Ever heard of the Battle of Ice? They used a frozen lake to their advantage, and defeated a superior force. Here's the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Ice

haha this would be awesome.