will EVERY city be open or just most : V - Skyrim

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 7:39 am

With Skyrim having a new engine

See, that's what I really doubt. The poses, the lighting, the basic structure we see on screens, all look way too familiar. Unless we get completely clear and legit words from the devs that this was completely built fresh, without any Gamebryo elements, here and not in a magazine, and we can confirm this in the game itself, I'll stay wary. :shifty:

The Open Cities mod proved back in 2006 that PCs could handle open cities without a slowdown.

...
Now you lost me. Even now the OC mod makes me lose lots of fps because of additional LOD, and the performance in towns is significantly worse than that in vanilla OB.
Is there a version without that?

or maybe I'm just talking out of my ass since I know nothing of programming or game engines or anything.

About this. You can't compare an MMO world that you just access from your PC - the actual simulation of it running hundreds of miles away from you on several server clusters - to something you play and simulate on your gaming machine of choice at home.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 2:46 am

See, that's what I really doubt. The poses, the lighting, the basic structure we see on screens, all look way too familiar. Unless we get completely clear and legit words from the devs that this was completely built fresh, without any Gamebryo elements, here and not in a magazine, and we can confirm this in the game itself, I'll stay wary. :shifty:

I may be wrong, but I'm 95% certain I read from one of the summaries of the non-English mags that it was a brand new engine, not based off Gamebryo. I'm paraphrasing as minimally as possible. They've also said before that it is a in-house engine built from scratch.

And having similar appearance doesn't mean the engine is the same, just that they may have used similar sorts of textures, pose styles or lighting (though actually, it's been explicitly stated that the lighting is a totally different system and dynamic (we just haven't been able to see much of it yet) and the poses don't really look that alike anyway, if anything it's the textures and model style).

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 5:31 am

I hope cities are open. I'm pulling from absolutely 0 factual knowledge, but I think the walled cities in Oblivion were part of the reason there was no levitating. Because if you tried to levitate into/out of a big city you'd enter some placeholder world of emptiness.

So, I hope cities are open, and if there not I'd be fine if they had a 'you cannot levitate here' like Mounrhold did.

...I really want levitation back.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:39 pm

The Total Conversion Mod "Nehrim" has the Mod with open cities all and that issue is all fixed up in Nehrim. It was so natural to walk into the cities without loading them that I didn't even notice it until I got to the top of a city wall and looked out and saw the whole world and thought "Hey, Oblivion can't do THIS, what's going on?" I did some research and found out there was a Mod for this, and they used it Nehrim.

So what is more jarring? Seamless, natural open-sky cities, or cities that make you pause while you wait to load them in, breaking immersion? I didn't even notice there WAS anything different for long time, but in Oblivion the first time I got to the Imperial City I was like "What the ----? MW didn't even do THIS!" and then I hated that feature.

Plus, how will the dragons be able to attack the cities in any real, convincing, and authentic way, if there is a false ceiling to the world. What, they just teleport over the city and begin their rain of destruction? I suppose they could, but I'd rather hear the cries of the people as they look out the city walls to see the dark shape on the horizon coming in slowly for its kill. That would much more dramatic and fear inspiring.

its called laziness, or they just could not make it in time

its still a company with work hours and holidays and such, if I were emperor of the world I would draft 20 million people to make the most perfect game ever

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:34 pm

I may be wrong, but I'm 95% certain I read from one of the summaries of the non-English mags that it was a brand new engine, not based off Gamebryo. I'm paraphrasing as minimally as possible. They've also said before that it is a in-house engine built from scratch.

The magazines report differently, that is why I still want an official and definite statement - more than "built internally" via Pete. All I want! My judgement of the game wouldn't rely on it, but I'd love to see what options we might get for modding and all that. ^_^

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 8:39 am

Since Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas all have walled cities I'd expect Skyrim will also. If this game was going to be on futuristic supercomputers, PS4, and Xbox 720 I would say they would be all open.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 11:17 pm

Hmmm... Two Worlds II has open cities without any apparent reduction in framerate so it should be possible for Skyrim to have them as well. Granted, the AI in that game is limited at best so the strain on the system with that game might have been a lot less.

At least I hope they will have open cities as the ones in Oblivion felt rather ... detached from the rest of the gameworld. Having loading screens when entering a dungeon I can live with, but I'd love to see people actually moving in and out of cities. Plus it would give Bethesda a reason to put levitation back in

Let's see what this new custom built engine is capable of...