Even a perfect game can use more quests. :hehe:

^Word. I've always preferred mods that add content rather than modify existing content. And I'm looking forward to TES5 a lot, Beth have taken on a lot of critiques to Oblivion in Fallout3, there's nothing to say that they won't continue with that trend.

Old

Well, this is nigh impossible to tell. Most of the mods exist to fix something taht was broken in the vanilla game, so it is hard to say if we are going to need them for TES V. As far as my mods are concerned, if beth screws the mages' robes again, I think I will have to make new ones by myself again, but it will be a guestion if the old models can be ported or rather recreated.

'Mean'? Perhaps but I was thinking more of new content than fixes.

Hmm... possibly. The http://niftools.sourceforge.net/wiki/Niflib claims it is inactive and has claimed this for a very long time, but the SVN changelog lists updates as recently as August 2009. So maybe it is being updated along with the rest of their stuff. I don't honestly know. I may toss a line to Amorilia at some point to check on this.

As far as I know, though, I'm the only one actively using Niflib. My understanding is that NifSkope's manipulations of Nif's, while originally based on Niflib, have been expanded beyond where Niflib left off. But I could be wrong.


Morrowind was hardly perfect, though I'll agree it was enjoyable without mods in ways that Oblivion was not. But it certainly had its share of problems, some of which Oblivion fixed (graphics, combat [somewhat]), many it didn't (combat's still not so great, character models and animations are still very weak, etc). The real issue is that the things that Morrowind did especially well (cohesion, ambience, setting), Oblivion did very poorly, which for fans of the previous title, was an extreme disappointment.

But both games benefit greatly from mods. It's simply that, from my perspective, Morrowind was a great game that could stand some improvement, while Oblivion was a boring game that can be spruced up some but nothing can be done about its overall mediocrity.

The main thing, in terms of TES5, is why this happened. If it's because of the suspected problems with the engine that I discussed earlier, then that's one thing. If it was a business decision, though... that concerns me.

Anyone compiled a list of technical advancements between OB and F03 to see what they've already solved or added?

FO3 uses finer grained locking on the heap, a less stutter prone implementation for most of the games locking, and I think it generally multithreads more than Oblivion.

And FormLists are a godsend.

I understand that equipment/body slots are different and you can specify different body meshes (by race/NPC?) Correct? How does the skeleton.nif look? More/less bones?

I honestly don't know. I was only involved in FO3 very briefly, while helping to set up the GECK wiki.

TES5 must be something very special...like complete tamriel...i cant even play oblivion on normal graphics, what will be TES5 ? My computer will explode...I better start saving some cash...

I think they should NOT start making TES5 yet , they should add more expansions for oblivion, and add lots of improvmentes.

Yeah... It's a bit too late for that.

No prob. I started a thread on the GECK forum as I assume several previous OB modders are now F03 modders.

There's also http://geck.gamesas.com/index.php/Category:Godsend_Functions.

I some how think TES5 will not be as graphically demanding as OB has. I mean, when OB came out, that was when having an 8800GT(sorry I don't know the ATI equivalents) or higher was God mode and you had a LOT of money(I think the 8800 ultra was 300 bucks..). Now a days, cards better than them, are as cheap or close to the price of older cards.

Well that's kind of confusion. I mean to say, it wont be as expensive.

Well whats the equiv. PC specs compared to a PS3 or XBox 360?

A quick googling suggets that an XBox 360
CPU:
_ cores: 3
_ threads per core: 2
_ clock: 3.2 GHrz
_ instruction set: PPC
_ typical IPC: very bad

Memory:
_ size: 512 MB
_ frequency: 700 MHrz
_ type: GDDR3
_ bandwidth: 22.4 GB/s
_ bus width: ? a total of 256 bits ?

GPU:
_ designer: ATI
_ frequency: 500 MHrz
_ memory: UMA architecture, plus eDRAM (acting as a cache?)
_ eDRAM size: 10 MB
_ eDRAM bandwidth: 256 GB/s
_ various horsepower metrics: 48 B shader ops / sec, 16 B samples / sec, 500 M triangles / sec

The number of hardware threads approaches that of a Core i7 processor, but the per thread performance is likely far lower than anything the PC world has seen in a while, even with hyperthreading disabled.

The RAM is terribly small, particularly for a UMA system. Though that architecture does mean that the CPU has a good amount of bandwidth available to it even by current standards, at least when it's not having to fight the GPU for access to it.

The GPU is an exotic design with no close equivalent in the PC world (eDRAM has never been deployed to PC based GPUs that I know of - maybe that's changed by now?). I don't know enough about the various measures of GPU processing power to compare that to PC equivalents without looking more stuff up.

edit: fixed typos

I looked thru a few articles after I posted the question and agree. If the typical PC exceeds the specs of the PS3/360 then console design would be the limiting factor for the technologies used in a new game. I know Crytek optimized CryEngine 3 for the PS3 as it was the weakest performer (of the 3 platforms) and stated that performance on the PC is best. Hoping Beth can give us improved rendering and that they shoot high.

That would attract me to modelling/texturing again. Its no fun making something render quality and have it look like crap ingame.

Yeah, thats why it won countless awards and was the best selling xbox360 title back then. I guess your entitled to an opinion that differs with 99.9% of the rest of the world.



http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55631

Bethesda has two teams, possibly more. Basically a design and prototype team, and a production team. While the production team was finishing up oblivion, the design team was cranking up on fallout 3. Once it got into full production the design team started on tes 5. They keep a few on for DLC's for a while, but essentially they have already been working on tes5 now since 2006-2007. This is how they keep all their employees busy by staggering launches and overlapping each title.

The game's graphics will be a little better than Fallout, but generally the same tech as Oblivion was used on with a few more improvements. It has to be this way until the next xbox comes out due to hardware limitations.

I personally think that while the game was stunning on some points(size of the world, graphics, basically the engine), it got a bit overrated near release(maybe because of the hype).
Fallout 3 is a much more solid vanilla game.


To be more exact I think the prototype team works on the engine(and are probably given tasks in accord with the games planned/currently in developement, like "add guns" for Fallout) while the design team just makes a game out of the engine.
At least it would seem logical to me .

I hope that means we'll see more improvement in other areas (AI), but of course those are bound by the same hardware.

I expect the engine of tes5 to be a lot better than tes4, after all they're much more familiar with the technology and they've had plenty of time to optimize. The game itself is a different story. Tes4 skipped on a few areas that tes3 did very well and still sold extremely well. There's no reason for Beth to take the different approach now.

As a modder I care much more for the engine than the game itself, I hope they don't break anything.

If the GECK is any indication we're going to have some pretty cool stuff to play with with the TES V Construction Set.

The one thing I'd like to see in TESV's engine that overrides all others is more optimised AI.

The rediculous performance hit of actors in Oblivion essentially kills the game for me, as a player I can get by with pretty much every other engine problem, but the AI makes interactions painful. As a modder, I know that as long as they keep the game as open to modding as Oblivion is, all the game problems can be sidestepped.

They could make a pretty rubbish game, but as long as it's on decent foundations, we can always turn it into a pretty good game. And that's probably how it'll be, since nowadays profit is everything, not product quality. If a dev can get away with making a bad game and still turn profit, they'll do that rather than put in the effort to create a good game. That's just the sad state of the industry ATM. Of course, there are exceptions...

And this is what pisses me off the most. This is not a console bash, but it's a fact that consoles are vastly inferior hardware wise to a PC. so why limit the games potential this way just because of some stupid idea that developing the game for the xbox = more money? This has been proven to be totally false!! Look at how many people are ditching the console version for the PC version for mods? WHO SAW THAT COMING (or didn't)? The fact that something so major to the sales of the game could have been missed is a major blunder, what if they made the game with the PC in mind to begin with? can you even imagine that?

A PC franchise should stay a PC franchise!! I can not stress that enough, but beth will make the mistake again despite the evidence.



Exactly, this is the way it is and you know what? I say keep doing it! why? Because the more they do the closer we get to the industry crashing again, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983 needs to happen again just so they can wake up and see what they are doing is wrong.