[Floor Punch]

There's no capacity to port to mention. Releasing a game for both the Mac and PC required that you plan to do that from the very start. And even then, it's @$$-hard. I've seen both DirectX and OpenGL on the inside. Trust me :shakehead:

Hmmm... bummer... I guess I'll start saving up for the PC gaming rig then (maybe also make it an HTPC)...

[Laura Simmonds]

I think it was quite good but their should of been a vid showing limited aspects to the Leveling system. And then the Fast Travel was also more or less confirmed which I think is good and should be like Fallout 3 style Fast Travel.

My advice would be travel to somewhere a good 10-15 minutes away from the destination and walk there while exploring. I have also seen some people complaining about the lack of PC information on controlling the UI sytem "Push up on the D-Pad" etc, again wait for some more details and remember that the majority of Sales does generally go to consoles so people who read the update would understand what they meant. To be honest I think PC's do have the better deal Modding and High- end systems but I am not outright saying any console is better than another just making some observations on various Forum posts. No Flaming please not the object of the post

[Colton Idonthavealastna]

If they are designing the UI with controllers in mind without thinking of the more efficient method they used when actually designing the game ( mouse + keyboard ) , I will probably loose a little faith in the advancement of video games. My gaming controller has a 116 buttons please make the UI take advantage of this.

[Arnold Wet]

Was it not released on ps3?

Yeah, that's true.. the PS3 release was a year later though...

OK, does anyone know the breakdown of PC vs. Xbox vs. PS3 sales of Oblivion? Wikipedia tells me that Oblivion had sold over 3 million copies total by the time Shivering Isles came out (cool!) but couldn't find any info on the platformwise breakdown.

(Incidentally, Eps, do you know if it is significantly easier to port an Xbox game to PS3? I'm wondering if Sony paid Bethesda to port Oblivion...)

[CArlos BArrera]

i love the new favorite list -stop the action thing as a console user i was limited to four keys as the diagonal keys were no reliable.

[Matthew Aaron Evans]

Seems like they're catering to the console for the UI again. At least we'll have mods to fix it..

[pinar]

Damnit! They still mention NOTHING about attributes!

[Dan Scott]

I'm not sure how I feel about this menu system, for a couple of reasons:

1. They only gave one screenshot, and it's of the menu who's Oblivion equivalent I looked at the least. I don't care about how I access the menu as much as I care about the functionality of the menu itself, specifically the items menu.

2. They only described the Console perspective. You'd think that these developers would learn by now that PC gamers have feelings too. Share the love, please. We'd like to know whether or not Skyrim's menu system is going to make us happy or not.

And as a side note, what about the HUD? I'd consider that a pretty important piece of information pertaining to menu systems and GUI.

[Lloyd Muldowney]

After finishing reading all of the threads on the new GI article the amount of hysteria and sensationalism that was based on a lack of information and misinterpretation was surprising to me to say the least. Everyone who has read the article should note how little it really tells us, and the description is from one persons perspective that leaves much open to interpretation. There is a lack of detail. It would be wise to wait until you have more evidence on how something works before your thoughts culminate in judgment about it. The article simply lacks detail and leaves too much open to interpretation.

[Monika Krzyzak]

Seems like they're catering to the console for the UI again. At least we'll have mods to fix it..

Because it doesn't work the other way around. Catering to pc, then throwing it into a console is a horrible idea.

[Steve Bates]

Because it doesn't work the other way around. Catering to pc, then throwing it into a console is a horrible idea.

Or, ya know, you could take the tiny bit of extra time to cater the PC version to PC players and the console version to console players.

But that's just silly, is it not?

[Gavin Roberts]

Well, morrowind had somewhat different interfaces on Xbox and PC.

The PC interface was excellent, you could resize the windows and everything, I could make the map windoow the size of the whole screen if I wanted.

I'm a still quite concerned about the UI, and getting inspiration from apple is the most stupid thing I've seen yet. I like using UI mods in Oblivion so I can see ALL my skills at once without having to scroll. So showing one skill at a time and having to scroll through them is a realy big step backwards to me. v___v

[Justin]

Or, ya know, you could take the tiny bit of extra time to cater the PC version to PC players and the console version to console players.

But that's just silly, is it not?

Yes, it is... they should be the same, its the same game, and one shouldn't have privileges over the other (unless its something like graphics, which are customizable) . I hate how PC players (myself being one) somehow feel they are entitled to x many more features than the console players... a lot of PC gamers on here seem to be somewhat arrogant, and I don't get it at all. Beth should do what they've done, make one that works for both the console and the PC.

[C.L.U.T.C.H]

Yes, it is... they should be the same, its the same game, and one shouldn't have privileges over the other (unless its something like graphics, which are customizable) . I hate how PC players (myself being one) somehow feel they are entitled to x many more features than the console players... a lot of PC gamers on here seem to be somewhat arrogant, and I don't get it at all. Beth should do what they've done, make one that works for both the console and the PC.

That utterly fails to take into account that what works well on one does not work well on the other. Given the differences in how they are controlled and how they are viewed means that there are different needs for the players. Those needs should be addressed. If they are not, while it may be good for one of them, it will svck for the other.

[Janine Rose]

Yes, it is... they should be the same, its the same game, and one shouldn't have privileges over the other (unless its something like graphics, which are customizable) . I hate how PC players (myself being one) somehow feel they are entitled to x many more features than the console players... a lot of PC gamers on here seem to be somewhat arrogant, and I don't get it at all. Beth should do what they've done, make one that works for both the console and the PC.

Oh how nice double standards. PC-players can't have any special treatment, but console-players can have UI spesifically designed for them? Beth hasn't designed UI - at least according to information available - that works equally well on PCs as it does with consoles. Several people in these threads sound like they have severe inferiority complex with those fears of not being entitled as well. I for one view these issues more like what suits each platform the best - and then designing UI which benefits from their perspective pros and minimizes cons. Let everyone be entitled and make the best game ever and reap huge profits with unexpectedly high sales! :trophy:

[Krystina Proietti]

Have you guys read the article over at gi yet, it doesn't paint a very good picture with its simplified design what do you guys thing.
Hopefully this is just the 360 version an the pc will be different. Less flashy more utilitarian.

[Melissa De Thomasis]

No. They'd announce it if that were possible. Plus, Skyrim is not developed on OpenGL. And no, making a port from DirectX to OpenGL is not easy IN THE LEAST. It would mean rewriting 70% of the game engine.

They aren't using DirectX on the PS3. The PS3 uses a custom rendering API, with the option of OpenGL ES. Being that OpenGL is also available on Windows, using that would make cross-platform development easier. There's a lot more to worry about than Direct3D/OpenGL, but since we know they aren't using Windows/DirectX exclusively (due to the PS3), there is always the option of porting it to OSX.

[Penny Wills]

No. They'd announce it if that were possible. Plus, Skyrim is not developed on OpenGL. And no, making a port from DirectX to OpenGL is not easy IN THE LEAST. It would mean rewriting 70% of the game engine.

There's no capacity to port to mention. Releasing a game for both the Mac and PC required that you plan to do that from the very start. And even then, it's @$$-hard. I've seen both DirectX and OpenGL on the inside. Trust me :shakehead:

???

I've seen them "on the inside" too, and you quite obviously display that you don't have a grasp on what a "game engine" entails. I assure you that 70% of the engine is NOT dedicated to rendering the graphics to the screen, on any of the platforms, DirectX or OpenGL. You're pulling the 70% figure out of absolutely nowhere. Porting a game to OpenGL would be more or less replacing the rendering part of the game engine, nothing more. Why you think a port to OpenGL would have anything to do with the game logic is beyond me. The game can run without a 3D renderer at all if they so choose. They could play the game at the console/debug/text level. Nothing about what you see visually has any bearing on most of the game engine, it's just a visual representation of what the CPU is doing to simulate the open world that Skyrim takes place in.

...Aaaaand, it MUST be developed on OpenGL if they're going to port it to PS3 sometime. Unless they plan on foregoing OpenGL entirely for that. It's not like they're going to be using DirectX on the PS3, so they HAVE to port it to OpenGL, so according to you they must be rewriting 70% of the engine for the PS3 port already. :rolleyes:

If I were to guess, you have the percentages completely backwards, in fact. I bet the vast majority of the game engine has nothing to do with rendering, in either OpenGL or DirectX. And where it does is certainly not as hard as what you make it out to be. You don't even know they already haven't replaced the renderer-specific calls in their engine with a generic API, which allows them to drop in an OpenGL or DirectX renderer quickly and easily without any "rewriting". Again, they're going to have to "rewrite" the engine just to get it on PS3, so who's to say they didn't go with a generic rendering API in their engine so they could simplify the port to PS3?

[Nomee]

Beth should do what they've done, make one that works for both the console and the PC.

Except it didn't exactly work for PC. Check the downloads numbers for the interface mods.

[Sabrina Schwarz]

I don't like that the skill names are in grey font while their corresponding values are in white font. It really should be the other way around.

[Wayne Cole]

Edit:
Redundant post.

[Damien Mulvenna]

Two things I wasn't very happy about:

Switching items pauses the action now it seems. So if you're a mage and use many spells in battle you'll spend a lot of time in a menu switching between spells. Or if you just want to use a potion or change to a bow you have to pause. At least us PC people will get hotkeys but I feel sorry for console folks forced to pause the action.

The other thing I don't like is that all bookmarks are in the same menu-list sorted alphabetically. Why!? Why just one list with all the bookmarks? Basically I'm getting an inventory+spellbook menu without some of the looted junk in it....!?

I'll reserve judgment till I play it but it seems like DarN will have to work his magic again to make the UI worthy of being called a UI

[Honey Suckle]

It gave very little new information in it unfortunately. The only new information was that there is a favorites menu for the console versions (they didn't acknowledge the PC UI at all) and unfathomably they don't let you sort this favorites list at all - it's only done alphabetically with no other options.

To summarize some of my worries:
*Scrolling through a pretty horizontal list is less efficient than a vertical list that could easily display all 18 skills at once. Hopefully that "looks before function" impression is wrong and there is a better view than the pretty pretty picture they showed.

*No mention of the PC version at all when talking about it.

*I'm worried about the unfathomable "we aren't going to let our users sort their favorites list" is going to hop to the PC version too. Imagine being confined to a SINGLE keyboard button to access your "favorites" menu to "quickly" change your abilities, unable to use any of the dozens of possible choices on your keyboard, mouse, or other input device...

[Andres Lechuga]

IIRC, Gstaff came on one of the threads last night and said that there will be hotkeys for PC players, so the thing about a favourites list will hopefully not be so much of a problem for you. Plus, it also suggests that they have made some sort of different PC UI, although that's just me speculating. I went to bed when he was online so I don't know what else was said, sorry.

[Thema]

I think everyone should just try the UI before jumping to conclusions about how terrible the menu. Oh and I think that the UI described will be PS3 and Xbox360.