The only one thing I want in Skyrim is the dissapearance of the the "cell blocks", even more if we talking about separate cells "inside a building", I dont want experience several loading times just to get to my private chamber bed.
Thanx in advance Bethesda.

Why ? Never bothered me.

I came into this thread not knowing what to expect (it was a rather vague title) but found myself agreeing with OP right off the bat.

I too find it crazy annoying.

You have to realize only a small minority would be able to handle a game that would require that much processing power for all the stuff Skyrim will have in it. Consoles wouldn't be able to do it, and a majority of PC gamers wouldn't be able to do it. Only the high-end gaming computers would be able to tackle such a game effectively. Don't expect separate cells disappearing for a long time.

Oops... Small "minority" is what I meant. :confused:

Are you talking about the random loading screens while your walking? I hate those to but for beautiful gameplay there is a price. Do you think bethesda should require the downloadong of the game onto your three sixty so they can maximize the preformance? I wouldn't mind. What about you guys?

Fair enough.

Call NASA, ask them to give us their computers.

Then, maybe.

I don't even think ANY high end PC user could run OB if all appropriate interior cells and the exterior were merged into one, ie building interiors and the town exterior is the same worldspace, you just open a door and can seen in kind of deal. peep through windows in or out, caves just being hole on side of the rock, and you just keep walking in...

Even if everyone had super computers and had the option of this seamless transition from interiors to exteriors, I would still suggest breaking interior cells from exterior cells the resource you could save doing that would be a LOT. And would allow for the detail to be cranked up in both exterior and interiors. not to mention the nightmare of tracking bugs or conflicts now not being potentially isolated to a small cell...

One can dream though.

"Small majority" made me laugh aha.

But I do agree, cells are here to stay for this generation at least.. I can't wait for the day loading screens will be gone!

I think it's more about engine optimization than actual hardware limits...and with a new engine...maybe Bethesda will give us a surprise in this matter

Everyone would like that gone but it's just not feasible yet :brokencomputer: . You either split the world into cells or go for the traditional seperate areas with loading screens only between them,

The seperate cells inside a building can/will be most likely removed. However, it is infeasible to expect them not having buildings as separate cells. I mean, the occasional load screen is fine and is needed if you don't want everyone but those of us who have state of the art gaming computers to lag excessively or crash.



Well it's possible to do where everyone can run the game but we would have to lose our thousands of items in the game, I'm not willing to lose my items that make the world unique from other games and feel more real just so I can avoid a few loading screens.

Oh I missed that! I just read it in my head and auto corrected it.

Eh, as long as you download it to your hard drive and clear the cache every so often ( Xbox360 ) it's not so bad. :shrug:

Well there are culling techniques that can help greatly with the geometry and graphics side of it. Not sure how having 100 AI packages all in the same cell as yourself.

As I think about it, while I don't think there is a solution for this in relation to a large open world TES game in this gen of hardware, even if OB had all the culling features you can think of, I still think the cell merging would kill computers, the nextgen though... so perhaps this sort of thing is not so far off.

And the bug conflicts would be a big soup to sort out in essentially one huge cell that was dev'd by what, 20-30 different people.

Open citys morrowind style fast travel. That is what I want.

already confirmed insides will be insides outsides will be outside, use mods

Well, there's always the dynamic AI processing that Radiant AI offers, which is like "AI Tessellation". The closer you go to an NPC, the more complex its AI becomes. That was already implemented in Oblivion, and if it gets optimized maybe it could work.

Anyway, I don't ask for all interiors/exteriors to merge. If there are open cities a-la Morrowind/Elsweyr mod, and the interiors are merged (so, as the op said, I don't have to see 2 loading screens in order to go from my cellar to my bedroom (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Rosethorn_Hall)), I'm already happy.

No loading screens took more than 10 seconds to load in any of my Oblivion's playthroughs on a low-end PC with a lot of mods.

I find your point useless for two reasons:

1- The loading does not take much time and it helps to keep the game stable and running smoothly. Also some cells are stored in the system's buffer, allowing you to quickly exit one to another in a couple seconds, the same time it would take for you to wait the door animation to play and open it.

2- There are too many things to render and simulate at the same time making it impossible to have a unified cell for the whole game. I am not talking only about items, but scripts, physics, animations, lighting, NPC AI packages. It would destroy your computer or console.

Pete Hines already confirmed the separate cells when answering a question regarding windows via twitter. Look up the topic "windows" in this thread and you'll read about it.

Then why sometimes I had the feeling that I was more watching loading screens rather than actually playing the game? And that on a pretty nice PC.



Elsweyr mod already showed that open cities could be done, even in the old, unoptimized Gamebryo engine. I just hope the new engine brings up some serious optimization in that matter (see quote below).



I just hope he meant interiors / exteriors, not "tons-of-(mostly senseless)-interiors" / city exteriors / exteriors.

1.So does optimized engines. How do you think CryEngine 2 was managed to pull off what they did so early as in 2007?

2. False and not impossible. Far from. All fable games have had it. Red Dead Redemption (a big open RPG) has it. Crysis had it in big camps as well (although it's not an RPG, it has a lot of stuff anyway). Also given that these games will all be considered "old" when Skyrim comes out close to 2012, it only enhances the distinction. Your logic that no games can handle it pretty much fails here.

I think it really comes down to optimization of engines. This goes for PC/PS3/Xbox 360.

Having loading times by cell seperation is kinda bad. It feels so... outdated. So static.
But the worst part is that you can't fluently play the game. Going out from houses or dungeons with a loading screen is really bad. Otherwise, you would get this "wow" feeling coming out a dungeon with no loading screen in between. Cell seperation pretty much eliminates that "wow" feeling.
Also, cell seperation makes (for instance) enemies that chase you suddenly fade from thin air. Very immersive-breaking.
Finally, there would be no easy way to view exteriors from interiors. A few mods for Oblivion have successfully done this. If cell seperation is an absolute must (probably by performance issues from poor engine-optimization combined with too many items) then Bethesda should do what these mods have done.

I've also been wondering if it can't be designed so that the "object distance" is tied to what you can actually see. For instance, look at a house from exterior, and the objects inside it doesn't get rendered because of the house's walls blocking your sight.
This would perhaps be a solution to any performance issues related to no cell seperation? Not sure though, as I don't know anything about scripts or anything like that.

The day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_XT5 becomes PC's (read: personal computers). It may be possible to pull it off.

do you play the game for 12 seconds each time?