One thing that limited modders with Oblivion was that the engine wasn't designed/optimized? to handle a larger number of NPC's, enemy's, etc all in the same location at the same time. I'm not sure if it was a graphical limitation or do to all of the other factors taking place such as AI and pathing, etc. This prevented modders from ever creating a large scale type of battle mod.

Do you think with the changes and optimizations Bethesda made with the Creation engine that this might be possible this time around?

Considering the story (civil war aspects) and the different clans it would be the perfect setting to have one clan attacking a stronghold of another. It would be awesome to participate in a battle where 30 or so NPC's from one clan attack a fortress of another and you right in the middle of the battle. Suddenly a dragon shows up and everybody is fighting for their lives instead of each other. I can think of a ton of possibilities and story lines to come up with. It would be a modders dream to be able to create something along those lines.

Think the new engine can do it?

Nope, too much goes into one NPC for there to be too many of them clumped together no matter the game engine thats used I would think.

You've obviously not watched the gameplay trailer. There's a scene where you're surrounded by 6-8 Draugr.

Bigger than Oblivion and Fallout 3? Yes. After that who knows how big they can get?

I have seen it and that's kind of what got me thinking about it. I don't recall fighting that many creatures at once in Oblivion. I'm wondering if Bethesda was pushing the limits in that scene or if many more would be possible. Are you thinking that's about the max or are you insinuating that you think the engine can do more?

I'm thinking to make it feel like a fairly large battle you would need around 15-20 on each side.

So you think the limitations most likely are not graphical and it's all of the other stuff the engine is doing? Do you think the engine could spawn the NPC's just before battle with just a basic AI script such as attack things that oppose the player and leave out all of the daily routine activities, quest paths, etc.? Just brainstorming here!

Idk, maybe if you stripped them down, you dont see NPCs in say an RTS having much going on except following the orders you give to them. These NPCs are also a lot more detailed, it would also probably strain the system graphically, unless you gave them less detailed battle armor for massive battles.

Also it depends on whats meant by massive... so who knows.

Given the AI in use, and the bogging too many NPCs in one place caused on even some pretty meaty PCs in Oblivion, Fallout 3, and New Vegas- I don't see battles getting much bigger considering that the Xboxes and PS3s aren't getting any processing power upgrades. :shrug:

I haven't played Fallout 3 or New Vegas yet. Were any of the battles in those significantly larger than Oblivion?

We have to keep in mind though that Bethesda didn't do as much work on the engine for those games.

I was also thinking that if a dragon can attack a town (or city?) there would have to be a number of NPC's running around fighting or something during the battle. If everyone just disappeared and left you to fight on your own it would seems really out of place and kill the atmosphere.

I never beat New Vegas but Fallout 3 had a couple large scale battles in it.

Yes, and as someone mentioned there was 6-8 draugr being fought at once. I think its safe to safe due to the new engine code they have reduced the lag during large fights.

This seems pretty likely, especially for Draugr in forts and caves. What would AI have them do anyway, walk in circles and moan?

By large scale do you mean around 10 or more on each side or just the player vs a bunch of enemy's?

Well, with some mods

http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/images/3211-1-1232708472.jpg

Of course MMM can bring some really nice computers to a slideshow, let alone the consoles.

I've personally been able to have 6-7 or so companions from enclave commander fighting maybe 10-12 enemies.

each unique enemy eats up at least 1MB of memory which consoles do not have much of.

I would like 40vs40 like in Alterac Valley
Actually 20vs20 would do but hopefully with no lag (bruma :ermm: ).

Sounds good. I would hope then we may be able to have at least 10-12 on each side then with the new engine. Maybe even more!

Both.

Yeah, but don't expect anything like that in the vanilla game. I would hope the engine can handle that with mods.

Who else remembers that Oblivion trailer when it showed large numbers of NPCs getting ready for what looked like a huge battle? A few months later once they actually got the final console hardware they must have been like, "oh, this svcks. sorry pc folks, no big battles and no full shadows for anyone."

I don’t know why you had to mention the ‘strain’ on the modders at the start (the game and its players should come before the modders, really) but yes, one of the things which really undervalued the mainquest in oblivion was that the ‘Final battle against Oblivion!’ consisted of about 10 guards vs a few scamps.

I agree that creating a great game should always come first from a developers standpoint but there are some people that value the ability of being able to mod the game as the most important thing to them. For me if Bethesda had never allowed TES to be modifiable it would still be a great RPG but there are lots of good RPG's. Its the release of the modding tools and support that Bethesda gives to the community that truly sets it apart from all of the others in my opinion and makes is exceptionally special and therefore earns my loyalty and high praise. I mentioned the limitation of not being able to create large scale battles (and created this thread) not as complaint directed at Bethesda but only as a unfortunate limitation upon the modders imagination with the provided capabilities of the game engine.

It's not going to happen. Total War-scale battles aren't possible when every NPC is unique and every object has physics. Something like that would bring even moster PCs to their knees.

If the NPCs have full on AI, then there will be an upper limit. If they can designate "dumb" NPCs for battles, then more could be added. This has been an issue on the engine all through Oblivion and Fallout. Not sure if they can do it this way. Hopefully they have addressed this.





Enemies, especially critter types, typically have a reduced AI scheme so we have always been able to have more enemies than scripted NPCs, be they friendly or not.

Gamebryo rendered shadows and lots of NPCs (and generally just lots of objects in general) horribly. That's why Better Cities lag so much. That's why there are no shadows in Oblivion. That's why FPS goes down by like 10 digits if there are 5-6 NPCs on the screen.

I just wonder how my weaker than console pc could support so, many big battle in mount and blade warband max textures and all. But that game was dodgy. It spawn 50 enemies each side and when it falls down to about 20 another 50 spawns until the amount of troops in each army were wiped.

The battles are so english engrossing and it does it so slyly that you think all 300 or so on each sidewas simultaneously spawned.

I dont know how they do it with fairly good ai.