Damnit Todd... why'd you have to ruin my morning?

morrowind was released 8 years ago, and oblivion 5 years ago

Well done batman,don't you think i knew that.

He said the major cities were not open, but there will be smaller towns too. Remember?

Why do people think that a separate cell suddenly doesn't include a skybox? DRAGONS CAN STILL ATTACK CITIES....you only have to be in that city to see it happen....or they may have a separate animation of the dragon attacking the city when you are outside the city to show you whats going on inside that cell. When you enter, a new animation continues from where the previous left off.

I know of a solution. Back in the time of Half-Life they made it so when you went through a load between maps, if a monster was following you it would also come through. If they wanted to they could make it so that if you run away from a dragon and go through a city gate they could have it fly over the wall and follow you. haha. Not likely to happen tho.

Funny thing is, in Oblivion I once tried to lure an angry mud crab into an Inn but it wouldn't follow. Hmmm wonder if there's a mod for that.

I think it is a misconception. They won't be separate worldspaces. Just a brief load. I remember Todd mentioning that the engine now streams objects in a much better and efficient way.

Yes



I sure hope so, but probably not in the vanilla version because Bethesda is not DICE

And I agree... this is crap... Especially when Bethesda refuse to make a good game to PC and then tone it down for the consoles (like DICE are doing with BF3)

They will be seperate he states it very clearly. The thing he says after that (that it wouldn't be like clicking on a door and waiting) is referring to how it would be on a next-gen console. Go back and look at it again and you'll get it. I also didn't quite follow the first time around.

"So our bigger cities still have walls that load you... if we were on a next gen system that's something we wouldn't have to do but at the end of the day the experience is kind of the same, as you'll just be walking smoothly into that city, as opposed to clicking a door, waiting for a load, and then going in."

Seperate cells. :violin:

I'm happy as long as I can see the dragon attacking the city from outside the walls, and then continue on inside the "cell" to participate in the same encounter. Guards could follow you into cells in Oblivion, so I don't see why not.

Actually yeah, there appears to be separate cells, now listening to it again. But I still wonder how they'll do the city on the arch (solitude?) and Markarth. The cliffs and edges of the rocks etc must funnel you to a wall and door section where you enter the city. Only real option I can think of.

maybe they'll add a little isolated area in between world spaces to serve as a disguised loading space?

kinda like in uncharted 2 but with gates or something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntSKRa6sNzA&feature=player_detailpage#t=433s

Its hard to know from his wording 100% if it will just be a "separate cell" without loading screen in the same way that all exterior spaces are separate cells, just cities will have their own, or if it is a "closed off separate cell" where there is a loading screen and an actual transition to a different "worldspace".

If its the former, that's actually not what I thought he said the first time listening, and I wait with baited breath for how that is implemented.

If its the latter, I actually would WANT there to be graphic walls around the cities. If the city is indeed in its own cut off cell with loading screen like the interior of a building, I better not activate such a screen unless I DO click on a door. Just walking into open air and suddenly I'm in a new "interior" cell of the city... if that's what happens, I'm going to have to have a mod to fix that before I can even play the game. Flame all you want on that comment, but I wouldn't stand for that.

But again, its not 100% clear what the implementation actually is from what he said.

I agree completely. And I even said, several times, that this is a nit-pick issue, and can and will be fixed with mods (hopefully).

But get over myself? That's just a tad bit rude don't you think?

Just to point out that having cities in separate cells does allow for them to be a tad bigger. I haven't checked this out yet, but I'm certain that the 'interior' of the Imperial City is bigger than it's 'exterior'.
It also gives you a bit more freedom with design: for example, the Temple District 'interior' exit is built into the main city wall, while the exterior entrance (linked the the interior exit) is some way down a hill, not joined onto the city walls.

Uh. Didn't really bother me. Loading times weren't that long. And why are the walls there? Because..well, it's realistic. I don't think many large medieval cities didn't have walls around them.

Pretty much how I feel. Seamless would be nice, but not if it's going to have a significant impact on performance. And having walled cities on some platforms and on not on others isn't a precedent I'd want them to set. Think hard about the effects on the game if the door were opened to platform exclusive features. Imagine the forums following an announcement that there would be mounts ... in the Xbox version only.

No, the size is exactly the same as the city worldspaces are child worldspaces of the main worldspace (and thus use the same landscape). The Temple District entrance is a slightly weird design error, there is supposed to be a tunnel that you never actually see in game (there are mods for it that add the tunnel).

Personally I don't mind walled cities that much, but like some other people I wonder how this will work with dragon attacks. Will the dragon be gone suddenly if you leave the city? Or will he hover about the low detail LOD buildings and spit fire without any NPC targets?

Something else I'm curious about is how are the cities going to look like from an upper angle looking down? In some cases in Oblivion, you could see into the cities from above and they looked horrid.

Fallout: New Vegas, compared to Fallout 3, is a lot more unstable quite often. And while I do not know if that relates to the towns and such, it may do seeing as towns contain items and so on. The walled towns of Fallout 3, though I do not know, may have been the reason to why the game was more stable. But still, so what if towns are walled? It's will probably be a meager detail compared to the overall aspect of the game anyway.

Yeah me too... I remember that pretty clearly. I guess they've changed it since then??

My guess is all the AI loaded into one giant cell is too much for the CPU in the consoles.

Probably for a lot of lower end PC's too, but PC's can scale the graphics back, so I'm not sure how much of an issue open cities would be.

AWwwwwww

All the hardware scaling, all the optimization benefits didn't add up from XBOX to XBOX 360 to bring this feature back.

Next-gen will have its own resource demands just like the one Beth had to deal with from XBOX to X360, so Beth may still end up sacrificing open cities unless they change their mentality.

Because they are extremely large and detailed and filled with stuff, mowworinds cities had close to nothing in them if you really think about it.