Okay, Skyrim does look pretty sweet
You’ve all probably seen it by now, but I’ll post it anyway:
Holy crap, the trees...!
And that would be “holy crap”! There’s no denying it: Skyrim looks incredible, and obviously has a pretty darn powerful engine underneath it. I’m not as blown away as the people leaving comments on the video at YouTube, though that’s probably just lingering skepticism stemming from having failed to find the previous two Elder Scrolls games engaging. Massive and gorgeous, yes, but not engaging.
But maybe Bethesda can deliver engagement this time; they are definitely delivering the scale and beauty.
And to be brutally honest, I think Unreal Engine 3 still looks a bit better. (Don’t hate and/or kill me!)
Everyhow, the question that’s come up on the site here is, of course: could Skyrim be used, if it ships with a toolkit, to craft an Ultima remake? Yeah, it probably could…the first-person view would be well-suited to an Underworld re-imagining. I wouldn’t want to be in a position of having to build 3D assets for it, though.
I want a modern AAA Ultima looking like this.
Please ?
Yeah, I have mixed feelings about TES series. The graphics are good. The fact that you can pick up and throw around or steal most things is good, and the games are generally well executed. I also appreciate their methods of content creation in that they use a lot of procedural stuff and advanced toolsets. That they’ve mentioned they were inspired by the Ultima series doesn’t hurt either.
However, for some reason I just wasn’t able to get into any of them for any length of time. What’s weird is that I’m not really sure why, exactly. Anyone feel this way but have a better idea of what’s not quite right?
My main issue with the Elder Scroll is that it tend(ed) to be extremely generic.
When you look at Arena and Daggerfall, in essence it’s more a concept than an actually interesting game. This is even trued about Daggerfall – it’s basically the Ultimate Sandbox Experience, kind of the Frontier Elite II of RPGs.
Except that well… the world feels lifeless. The “NPCs” feel like looking through an excel spreasheet and all say the exact same crap. Quests are the same everywhere. Cities design and dungeon level design basically consist of repeating the same levels parts over and over and oever again.
You can spend hundred of hours in this – but everything about it is completly generic: so what’s the point?
Coming as an Ultima fan this was basically the worst way RPGs could go to me. Bigger is not better.
Bethesda however realized that the genericness was a major issue, which is why they began changing this with Morrowind, starting by and exterior world that was handcrafted rather than randomly generated. It was a a step in the right direction, but it never clicked for me: it still felt lifeless and boring. I even tried going back to the game after Oblivion, but to no avail.
Oblivion now. This was an awesome game and I mean it. Now Bethesda has always been influenced by Ultima (the way they handled character creation before is proof of it) but Oblivion pretty much felt like taking the Ultima philosophy ball and running with it. It’s not just about the sandboxing anymore but creating a world.
By this I mean the “Virtual World” approach which is where the game shine: it’s highly interactive, you can just move stuff around for fun… and of course NPC schedules which just helped make the world feel much more alive, especially since Bethesda used time and schedule for many quests. They also took bigger step to make the NPC alive – not that it’s perfect, but simply having the NPCs voiced and all with at least a single of unique dialogue line already make them more alive than anything in previouses Bethesda installements.
There are often people who laugh at the Radiant AI of Oblivion: I can only say shame on them. It’s not perfect, but it’s far cry from NPC staying 24/7 where they are a la Bioware, isn’t it? The Radiant stuff in Skyrim sounds even more awesome – and I’m thinking were Origin still alive today, this is EXACTLY what they’d be doing with Ultima rather that simply using scripted NPC moving like Gothic and Risen do.
Oblivion had some glorious quest designs that went beyond the usual CRPG far of object fectching or monster killing. You had this wonderful quest in the capital required to follow a NPC to a specific place at a specific time for instance. And how can one no mention the quest design of the Assassin’s and Thieve’s Guild ? It had wonderful level design, but wonderful actual gameplay: it felt like playing Thief The Dark Project… except that it was part of an actual role playing experience. There aren’t many games who can make this claim… Vampires Bloodlines most likely, but what else?
And it also has a pretty damn great plotline, which albeit short, brought some pretty awesome epic moments. You know the valve philosophy of telling the story through the first person view? I think tis a terrible Philosophy but I think Oblivion is one the rare game who managed to nail it at times.
Now of course it wasn’t perfect: I would have prefered a smaller but more focused world, with more developped NPCs and the optionnal dungeons usually consisted of the same generic design repeated over and over again.
But thinking about where The Elder Scrolls come from, what a long way it’s came!
Whenever I say one of those Daggerfall fans complaining how Oblivion dumbed down the game and is crap – I take it as a proof of what a great game TESIV is.
There was a time I thought Bethesda was a terrible RPG developper. After Oblivion and Fallout 3, I look forward to their next games eagerly
(ON a side note I wish I had played Redguard when it was released, it sounded like a great game – kind the opposite of a regular TES of the time really)
Everything you said sounds like it’s right. I think you nailed it. Also gave me some food for thought about my project, as a lot of it is procedurally generated and will be run by algorithms after that. While that can be a good thing, I definitely don’t want things to appear generic. On that front, how do you think the pre-Oblivion TES games would have fared had they been multiplayer, or even MMOs? I wonder if it would have been enough to overcome their repetitive/generic nature?
I have no idea how they would have fared… in mean they DID fare pretty well in the end, even if it sometime wasn’t to the taste of Ultima fans (funny point really: but I’ve know quite a few people who are more fans of the Ultima/Gothic kind of design philosophy who always disliked TES but enjoyed Oblivion – this says something). In retrospect though, Arena and Daggerfall kinda felt like a first generation EQ-ish MMO – except alone. I think had Bethesda jumped on the MMO bandwagon back then, a TES Online could have been immensely successful. Not sure about now though…
I’ve loved all of the TES games in my time (except for Arena, I never got a chance with that one). I would agree with those who say that they started “dumbing down” the series after Daggerfall, but I would disagree that it was necessarily a bad thing. They just made the games a lot more accessible. Oblivion is an extremely forgiving game, and I think that is part of its charm. While I miss some of the freedom of Daggerfall, I appreciate that it is absolutely impossible to create a broken character in Oblivion. No matter how oddly I choose my skills, my character will be viable.
I have to say, though, that while I appreciate the NPC schedules that come with the Radiant AI, I am still underwhelmed by it. With Radiant AI the NPCs just become cardboard cutouts that sleep and occasionally eat appropriately. They didn’t do enough to make it feel like the AI had actual needs, needs that the player could have a hand in effecting.
I remember reading interviews with the developers before the game was released where they talked about cool little unexpected events that the AI was triggering, like guards going out and hunting deer and fighting over the food, and certain NPCs killing their dogs for the meat. Obviously they “fixed” that stuff and took it out before the game shipped, but frankly I wish they would have left something like it in. I never witnessed the AI doing anything nearly as cool as hunting, or dog eating.
I would suspect they cut some of these features due to performances issues which is why the radiant AI is not as neat as it could have been. This would not be the first time – this is basically the reason Ultima IX ended without schedules.
Now from the video and preview it looks like the Radiant AI will more alive with lot of activity the NPCs can do in there schedule. Their radiant story bits sounds impressive too (Dragon dynamically attacking cities and puttig then on fire? Eek) and even if they probably oversell it the result is bound to be very interesting.
The engine is reportedly capable of much much more so Im not too worried. Reportedly it should have cities seamlessly in the world map which is also a big plus.
As is probably obvious by anyone who has seen the time I’ve put into modding Elder Scrolls games, I’m a huge fan of the series. But I do agree, they are missing something.
The truth is, Ultima was probably missing even more. But what Elder Scrolls is missing tends to be what I usually consider “more important”. The word “generic” is thrown around a lot, and it pretty much sums it up.
If they made the NPCs seem to be more different, then I think it would end up winning against Ultima in pretty much every way. The world is much more real (not just talking about because it has a better 3D engine). Interactivity is better. AI is much, much, much better (messing around with Radiant AI in my mod is fun). They have decent overall plots. Their worlds are amazing (the procedural stuff makes worlds look so much better than hand-placing can do… I populated the entire Serpent Isle with trees and such that look amazing with the click of a button (and a 10 hour wait 😛 ))
They just fall down when it comes to taking the overall idea, and connecting it with the little people. You get quests, but they just seem generic, and you talk to generic people. The Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion was amazing. If you haven’t done it, go do it. It was so well executed, and they actually gave the NPCs involved unique dialogue and personalities. But the rest of the game just seemed generic.
It’s not so much the engine’s fault (I’m incorporating more Ultima-like NPCs using the same engine), but more that Bethesda decided not to focus on that. From some comments I’ve seen about Skyrim, I think they have decided not to focus on it again. Which is ok… Elder Scrolls aren’t really about that, and they are great games regardless. It would be nice though…
THEPAL: “Their worlds are amazing (the procedural stuff makes worlds look so much better than hand-placing can do… I populated the entire Serpent Isle with trees and such that look amazing with the click of a button (and a 10 hour wait 😛 ))”
I’m glad someone else thinks procedurally generated worlds can be well executed (at least for the natural environment). TESIV should have been multiplayer. That would do away with the stale interactions.
Wow, I just read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim
Particularly, the Gameplay and Development sections are pretty crazy. While it sounds like a bunch of corporate spin, I wonder how much actually made it through to the game? Hopefully a lot.
“I’m glad someone else thinks procedurally generated worlds can be well executed (at least for the natural environment).”
Not all procedural stuff is good. But for Oblivion, Bethesda actually did research into land erosion, growth patterns of plants and trees… all sorts of stuff. And built that into their engine. So it generates objects on a level I have never seen before.
I’d kill for procedural trees in NWN2.
I mean, there’s this: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PlugIns.Detail&id=4 …but all it does is randomize the trees in an area after you place all of them by hand. It can cut down on time, but not by that much. And it’s not current; it needs to be enhanced and recompiled for the latest version of NWN2, and to support SoZ.
And there’s this: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PlugIns.Detail&id=10 …but it’s also out of date.
I might see if I can crack into the latter one, if I have time, because it’s basically what I’d need. Wish there was some way to specify which areas it would render trees in, but…meh.
I know I had posted this quite some time ago, but things like that are always important to remmember:
Playing Favorites: Bethesda’s Todd Howard
Posted September 24, 2009 by James Brightman
http://www.industrygamers.com/galleries/playing-favorites-bethesdas-todd-howard/1/
1. Ultima 7 (PC)
Depending on the year, I flip this choice around between 3 games: Ultima 4, Ultima 6, or Ultima 7. No other gaming series has, over such a long period of time, given me such joy. I get lost in the world of an Ultima; it’s a real place to me. The people were real, their problems real, and travelling a new world, ripe with its own history, all real to me. Nothing else has inspired what I do as much as Richard Garriott’s creation. If gaming is the ultimate escape, then Ultima is its best game.
still looks like they haven’t nailed down dense forests. though i will forgive them because of how good the new version of the theme music is.
Procedural stuff is not necessarilly bad of course, you just have to be careful because it could give a generic feel to it. I figure using procedural to create the big stuff and then polish thing by hand to give them a more distinct feel is a good approach.
Oh and this favorite RPG quote from Todd Howard is golden. He gets a lot of bashing on some forum, but this man GETS what CRPGs should be all about.
“It’s not so much the engine’s fault (I’m incorporating more Ultima-like NPCs using the same engine), but more that Bethesda decided not to focus on that. From some comments I’ve seen about Skyrim, I think they have decided not to focus on it again. Which is ok… Elder Scrolls aren’t really about that, and they are great games regardless. It would be nice though…”
The thing is I think, is that the TES world remain so big with so many NPCs than actually writing detailed dialogue for everyone of them would probably double development time. That and not to mentions to cost of voicing everything.
I think Fallout 3 does show Bethesda can create more detailed worls and NPCs though: Fallout 3 has quite a lot of memorable NPCs which are well written and really have quite a bit of lines to talk and discuss with them. But that’s the Fallout way and I’m not sure world the size of Fallout 3 would sit that well with TES fans for TESV.
I’m hopefull Skyrim will take some cues from Fallout 3 though, notably in term question with multiple solutions and such, but TES is obviously more about the virtual worlds that Fallout 3 was. (Fallout 3 still had all the worlds simulation bits, but they rare were used in quest and all)
SERGORN: “Procedural stuff is not necessarilly bad of course, you just have to be careful because it could give a generic feel to it. I figure using procedural to create the big stuff and then polish thing by hand to give them a more distinct feel is a good approach.”
Good advice.
Something I found difficult to believe about Skyrim was the comment on the Wikipedia article, “The game world is described as being hand-crafted; as lead designer Bruce Nesmith explained in an interview with Official Xbox Magazine UK, ‘[t]he whole world is hand-crafted. In Oblivion we did some generated landscapes, and there’s none of that anymore.'” That would be a real feat if true, considering how many tufts of grass, etc., there probably are (millions).
Interesting also that they said the game world was 4×4 miles in size. A bit small to contain five cities and vast expanses of wilderness.
WFT DRAGON: “I’d kill for procedural trees in NWN2.”
Some time in the next month or so I’m going to be adding flora generation to Littoral. It will use the same logic as the old Littoral. Basically you specify a series of grayscale bitmaps, one per flora object. The value of each pixel represents the probability of that object occurring. Each object is defined by two variables, trunk size and canopy size. Using the size information Littoral can ensure that flora objects don’t overlap, but smaller flora like bushes that have no canopy can exist under the canopy of larger objects like trees. It worked in the older version and was relatively simple to code.
While it wouldn’t be writing to a NWN2 file format, a converter could be made easily enough to put them in that format (assuming it’s been published).
As far as I know, there are no plugins which support import of advanced terrain data beyond elevation and texture mapping.
At least, I haven’t seen anything more advanced than YATT: http://nwn2yatt.sourceforge.net/news.htm …which deals exclusively in terrain and textures. Advanced object placement remains a manual process.
I also don’t know if the level file format — not really even a file format, since it’s treated as an object within the module file, although that’s partly a semantic distinction — has been widely published, at least to the level that would allow for something like Littoral to export a level with fully placed objects. I suppose I could investigate, though…push a level out as an ERF file and then see what it looks like in a hex editor.
“Interesting also that they said the game world was 4×4 miles in size. A bit small to contain five cities and vast expanses of wilderness.”
Well it’s supposed to be roughly the same size as Oblivion and even if I guess Skyrim also has smaller locations, Oblivion had more cities than that and feel big enough so I wouldn’t worry about this.
@SERGORN:
True, I suppose if everything is on the same scale then the illusion of realistic proportions is maintained. In a game world 4×4 miles is pretty big compared to what we’re used to also.
@WtF:
YATT looks pretty useful. Since it supports L3DT you might get better results using it for elevation data than Littoral, as my implementation of the diamond square algorithm is a bit of a hack and I’m sure the guys at L3DT are way more experienced at that sort of thing than me.
Too bad the file format is still a mystery, as the work involved in reverse engineering it would probably be substantial depending on how it’s constructed. I’m no expert, but back when I used to hack old Ultima savegame files I’d make a copy, change one thing in the game and save, then do a binary comparison in my equivalent of a hex editor.
Just did some research and found this:
http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/File_formats
Sadly many of the file formats appear not to be documented specifically. Also heard that most of the formats are the same as for NWN1, with the exceptions mentioned here:
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=591562&forum=119
I found some documentation on the BioWare site for NWN1 file formats, including .ARE file objects (areas, natch).
Granted, for NWN2, those will be a bit different. Someone on the NWVault also posted a dissection of the game’s .TRN (terrain) files…might be a bit useful.
But yeah…some grunt work with decoding will be needed still.
YATT is sometimes useful, though not as much as I’d hoped; I find I get better results doing minimal terrain work at the outset of an area (layer-caking, basically, with smoothing only where needed), focusing on asset placement instead, and then finishing the terrain up at the end.
Though if I could speed up tree placement…that has ALWAYS been the choke point, the delay, in my area building, regardless of which version of NWN I’ve been working in.
I think i’m hanging out for this more than Diable III 🙂
Skyrim I feel is going to be a better game than Oblivion and take game of the year awards.
Three things to make awesome into perfect:
1) Staff combat. Can we hit things with our staffs?
2) Detail. Can you add scratches on your character from battle and dents on your swords and armour from battle?
3) Horse combat. Not to the extent of Assassins Creed, but like casting “on self” spells on a horse.