Unofficial Oblivion preview!!! Must see to believe!

[Saint_Proverbius]

Besides, I voted for the other guy.

Commie faggot.

 

[corvax]

 

[corvax]

Same logic. If you can eliminate some skills because you can decide what your character should be able to do, you can eliminate all of them.

You could or you could just stop at eliminating some which I didn't have that big of a problem with. I guess that was our biggest disagreement.

As far as all the other "unrevealed stuff" goes, I do acknowledge that your skepticism may turn out to be correct considering Bethesda's off beat responses. But then again it's not like anyone is really asking such questions (in previews at least). There's still a chance that you might be wrong and then we'll have one kick ass game.

 

[Atrokkus]

Jesus Fucking Christ, don't you guys pay attention? Dialogue topics have been mentioned in several previews. Then there was that screen. What else do you really need to see?

Damn, it seems that i missed that one...
I remember screenshots of scenery, battle,s, but no dialogs... gotta look it up...

 

[NeutralMilkHotel]

Jesus Fucking Christ, don't you guys pay attention? Dialogue topics have been mentioned in several previews. Then there was that screen. What else do you really need to see?

Hmm, what screenshot? The one where the woman is speaking and the only thing visual are subtitles?

And in any case, if I'm not mistaken, MSDF or another dev said something along the lines of "dialogue will be a mixture of dialogue trees and topics" when topics were mentioned in a preview or interview.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

Besides, I voted for the other guy.

Commie faggot.

Rightwing nutjob

 

[Vault Dweller]

But then again it's not like anyone is really asking such questions (in previews at least).

Shouldn't they?

Hmm, what screenshot? The one where the woman is speaking and the only thing visual are subtitles?

That's the one. Its design doesn't really support an indepth dialogue system.

And in any case, if I'm not mistaken, MSDF or another dev said something along the lines of "dialogue will be a mixture of dialogue trees and topics" when topics were mentioned in a preview or interview.

Topics don't go well with real dialogue trees, don't they? If you recall, MW had multiple responses like yes/no, pay fine/something else, etc. I don't think we should expect something much more complex than that.

 

[corvax]

But then again it's not like anyone is really asking such questions (in previews at least).

Shouldn't they?

Damn straight! Why not lead by example though?

 

[Drakron]

Are you joking?

All interviews questions are pre-aproved, same goes to all anwers that are aproved by the PR department.

Interviewers dont ask hard questions because they need the "EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW" to sell their magazine or have more hits on their page, if they dont play ball with the company PR department they get nothing.

 

[Sandelfron]

Yeah, that's exactly what I want out of an "instant on" console--thrashing a hard drive as the homebrew virtual memory system gets overloaded.

Perhaps 'paging' wasn't the best word to use since this moves the discussion to
VMM systems. Just subtitute the phrase 'load into memory'.

Besides, with the texture sizes, audio sampling rates, and polygon counts of today, 64MB doesn't buy you that much of a working set.

And so the next best thing to adding content is to intelligently load it in when required.

As a result, you're far more likely to see the same actors repeated in a level rather than throwing in, say, every enemy simultaneously.

I don't follow the logic of what you're saying. You'll have a larger total set of actors
if you can load content in from the HD than if you're limited to 64MB. You wouldn't
have 'all the enemies simultaneously' because there wouldn't be room in 64MB.

What the hell? There is no connection between quadtrees and paging.

You might as well say "current OpenGL implementations tend to use IEEE 754 single-precision real numbers, which means you could page stuff in as required from the HD."

I disagree and I'll explain why. Quadtrees and similar structures mean that you
don't have to keep track of stuff which doesn't immediately surround the area/leaf
of the quadtree that your character is currently occupying, so it can happily sit on
the HD and be loaded in as necessary (I used the word 'paged', but there are
many mechanisms). Of course you might not be able to keep track of the physics
of every single mobile in the game, but then PC games don't either.

Oh, and there's no correlation between a variable's lexical scope and its size. Gotcha. In fact, I've seen a lot of programs where practically nothing was stored on the stack--everything was in heap-allocated memory accessible through global variables.

I thought the phrase 'global variable' was being used to describe game flags, player
and creature statistics etc. In the context of a programming language (say C++)
what you're saying is accurate- almost everything is in heap memory (new/delete).

 

[corvax]

Are you joking?

All interviews questions are pre-aproved, same goes to all anwers that are aproved by the PR department.

Interviewers dont ask hard questions because they need the "EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW" to sell their magazine or have more hits on their page, if they dont play ball with the company PR department they get nothing.

I know it's not that easy but is bitching about it the only alternative? What about writing few serious articles or editorials analyzing what you just mentioned. Or writing a true preview of the game mentioning the issues that a given company might be dodging. Stir things up a bit. Gain some exposure: Codex, RpgDot, maybe few other news websites would link up the articles. I'm not saying you'll change the world or something but it's a nice alternative to whining.

 

[NeutralMilkHotel]

Hmm, what screenshot? The one where the woman is speaking and the only thing visual are subtitles?

That's the one. Its design doesn't really support an indepth dialogue system.

What are you talking about? It only showed subtitles as it was talking, for all we know it could be like Bloodlines where you pick a tree response and the only thing showing while the NPC is talking is subtitles (or was it nothing? I haven't played in a while).

And in any case, if I'm not mistaken, MSDF or another dev said something along the lines of "dialogue will be a mixture of dialogue trees and topics" when topics were mentioned in a preview or interview.

Topics don't go well with real dialogue trees, don't they? If you recall, MW had multiple responses like yes/no, pay fine/something else, etc. I don't think we should expect something much more complex than that.

Role-Player (I think without even knowing that one of the devs said that) talked in-depth of how a system could work with dialogue trees as well as topics. It was a more recent thread, but I don't feel like tracking it down.

I think the brunt of what he said was that each NPC would have their own dialogue trees (important/quest NPCs at least, while maybe all the fodder characters like in fallout would give one-liners, or just a wiki), but also have a button or another tree response to ask about specific topics (at the bottom of the tree responses you can click on the response "ask about specific topic" or something like that and it would bring up the wiki-like choice list of "ask about, dunmer", "ask about, monkeys").

That's exactly what I figured it would be like the first time I read what the developer said. And I think it could work well, given some love. While I don't know what they're actually planning, it certainly seems possible.

 

[Atrokkus]

Ohhhhhh, he was having THAT screenshot in mind! WEll, damn, it doesn't show ANYTHING.
KOTOR had muilti-option system, and also had such "subtitles" when the NPC was talking. Fallout could have the same feature, if it was 3d and animated, and fully-voiced.

So, again, we know so little about dialog system that it is yet too early to judge it.

Not that I'm very optimistic about it, no. I just don't want to assume too much.

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

Yeah, GUI elements we haven't revealed yet appear when you get to ask questions & say things. That stuff's not visible when NPCs are speaking -- the game just shows you the subtitles (if you have that option turned on).

 

[Vault Dweller]

I know it's not that easy but is bitching about it the only alternative?

Pretty much. Of course, you can try writing a letter to your congressman demanding a thorough investigation of Oblivion's features, but I think that would be still qualified as bitching.

What about writing few serious articles or editorials analyzing what you just mentioned.

It's coming

I'm not saying you'll change the world or something but it's a nice alternative to whining.

There was no whining. I simply posted a collection of amusing quotes without complaining about anything.

 

[Atrokkus]

Obviously.

Now, how is dialog option-box constructed? Does it have those vicious wiki-links?
Or it's classic: npc's line and your options?

 

[Vault Dweller]

What are you talking about? It only showed subtitles as it was talking, for all we know it could be like Bloodlines where you pick a tree response and the only thing showing while the NPC is talking is subtitles (or was it nothing? I haven't played in a while).

The space allocated for subtitles isn't big enough to support anything decent. As for the Bloodlines dialogues, while they were well written, they were simplistic and mostly linear. Also, needless to say, considering the nature of TES games, deep and interesting dialogues for more than a handful of NPCs are out of the questions. It's simply impossible, and people should neither expect them nor criticize Beth for the lack of them. It's not where the game can shine.

Role-Player (I think without even knowing that one of the devs said that) talked in-depth of how a system could work with dialogue trees as well as topics. It was a more recent thread, but I don't feel like tracking it down.

Hmm, doesn't ring a bell. Can anyone post a link?

Now, how is dialog option-box constructed? Does it have those vicious wiki-links?

Out of curiosity, when you read "dialogue topics" what is the first thing that comes to your mind?

Or it's classic: npc's line and your options?

Have you played MW?

 

[Atrokkus]

Have you played MW?

Unfortunately, yes.
And that's exactly why I am asking: to make sure if it's same shit, or improved ^_^

 

[Psilon]

Sandelfron, I think you're taking this "load stuff from disk" idea as too much of a religious cause. Of course you can load art assets from disk. This was never in doubt. My point is that the limited working set allowable on today's consoles means you're either going to have to page constantly and come up with really good predictive caching algorithms... or just start simplifying the game so that you can hold a whole chunk in memory at once. Practically everyone tends to go for the latter. I'm not saying the former isn't possible, but no one in the Christmas-deadline-obsessed, marketing-dominated games industry seems to want to spend the money on the former.

To keep this vaguely on topic, it's the difference between Daggerfall, where the only major loads were upon entrance and exit of major cities and dungeons--even when using the '1' cheat mode for superspeed--and Morrowind, where one scroll of Icarian Flight could mean a whole lot of loads.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Here is an example. You have a decent dagger, you explore and find a great katana that's 10 times as good as your dagger. If your long blade skill is low, the blade is useless to you. If you can use both equally well, odds are you will pick the katana.

Not if you role-play.

You must usually roleplay an idiot. I mean a true retard.

True. In face of a long or short blade, true roleplayers should always go for the rat launcher.

Someone dumber than Pres. Bush. Any REALISTIC personality would want the advantage gained with the katana, especially in life or death situations like fighting.

I think the error in his argument is that like others before him he is trying to compensate or excuse for something which would be considered badly implemented in the game with the idea of roleplaying. This is akin to someone saying that one would never have a problem that a gambling skill was broken because he was roleplaying an unlucky gambler. And this is just poor argumentation because our attitude towards something does not change what that something is or how it operates.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Role-Player (I think without even knowing that one of the devs said that) talked in-depth of how a system could work with dialogue trees as well as topics. It was a more recent thread, but I don't feel like tracking it down.

I assume it's this post.

 

[Xyber02]

Here is an example. You have a decent dagger, you explore and find a great katana that's 10 times as good as your dagger. If your long blade skill is low, the blade is useless to you. If you can use both equally well, odds are you will pick the katana.

Not if you role-play.

You must usually roleplay an idiot. I mean a true retard.

Oh I do. When I see a heavier, slower Katana, I think to myself "I must have this bigger and slower item which may do more damage but since I'm not to strong anyway, I still need my dagger since it's much faster, and doesn't weigh as much letting me carry more loot/armor/whatever. But the katana is stronger!"

Logically it still depends on your character. If you play a rogue/assasin/whatever character where strength isn't a strong suit, you'll want a faster, light dagger. Tis mere common sense.

 

[Spazmo]

That's only assuming that the game's ruleset actually provides for the things you've mentioned. If the only difference between one weapon and another is the damage it does and that one looks omg kewl, then why bother with the puny dagger? If the game allows you to sneakily stab people with the dagger or conceal it more easily or enchant it for cheaper, then it makes sense.

 

[Sarvis]

Oh I do. When I see a heavier, slower Katana, I think to myself "I must have this bigger and slower item which may do more damage but since I'm not to strong anyway, I still need my dagger since it's much faster, and doesn't weigh as much letting me carry more loot/armor/whatever. But the katana is stronger!"

Given that your character is so weak, it would make much more sense to carry a powerful magical weapon which could cut through armor like butter and such. I mean, it doesn't sound like you have a snowballs chance in hell of penetrating a monster's thick hide with that puny dagger of yours, since you don't have the strength to generate any real force.

I mean, if a 3lb katana is heavy for you... I don't think the weapon you choose matters unless it's magical enough to fight by itself.

Logically it still depends on your character. If you play a rogue/assasin/whatever character where strength isn't a strong suit, you'll want a faster, light dagger. Tis mere common sense.

What's the old saying? Common sense is as common as it is wrong?

Spazmo brings up good points for keeping a dagger handy, but not for abdicating katana use altogether.

I mean, you bring up the assassin thing... but ninja used katana, or something similar, not daggers. In fact, in any situation where you can't gaurantee killing an opponent in one hit while he's completely unaware the dagger is a pretty terrible choice. Less reach, less power.

 

[Kuato]

Meh, you guys'll argue against anything we say just to be argumentative. But you KNOW y'all will be buying the game day one

Ill probably buy it second hand or rent it someday