Khadir

There is ... the moment the first patch for the game comes out. Which usually is within days of the release, given how shoddy most companies work nowadays, Bethesda included. @Halororor: You don't have to agree with the notion that people doing high-risk jobs need to have our respect and shouldn't be required to jump through unnecessary (and DRM is never necessary for the customers) hoops to enjoy our level of quality of life. I still think it's worthwhile to allow them to do so if it's possible. And in the case of single-player games, it is possible - as long as you don't go online DRM as the only option. The stations n Antarctica usually have just spotty satellite uplinks, BTW. Slow, prone to breakage (since you can't have a satellite orbiting a pole) and 150% booked up to scientific data transfers.

I didn't only mention soldiers in my initial post; they are just the most numerous example of such people. Scientists working in far-away places, like Antarctica for example, have the same problem. It boils down to this: There are people who are doing highly dangerous jobs for our benefit. Whether we agree with their reasons to do this job or not is of no importance. The fact is, they are there, they are risking their well-being and lives so we don't have to, and the last thing we should do is to pile up more crap on them. If you're against soldiers being where they are - which is a totally separate debate - blame the politicians, not the guys and gals on the ground.

lolwut? Think about it: You're a soldier on duty, stationed in some war zone. You risk your life every day, to keep your family fed, your people back home safe, your country independent. The little internet you have you use mostly for some quick mails between you and your family. Your cousin tells you about this great new game (say, Civilisation 5, or Assassin's Creed 2), and how he enjoys it, and manages to even send you a copy. Only ... you're not allowed to play it. Not because it's against your orders, against the law or anything like this. Not because playing games when you have free times is not allowed; in fact, your CO encourages you to have a nice hobby like this, to wind down from the hard work. You're not allowed to play this game because you risk your life for your country in the far away Shitholestan. That is what makes the Steam system, and really every kind of DRM which requires you to be online for anything, not only a problem, but also potentially inhumane - if the publishers don't offer alternatives.

There are a lot of people, some of them highly paid, doing dangerous and important job every day who can't - in big part because of their job - get internet access good enough, if any, to use Steam to play single-player games in their "off time". Time they desperately need to have. Soldiers on duty in war regions are such a group, as are scientists in far-away places like Antarctica. The downright perverse thing about it is that these people are marked as not worthy of playing many modern games not even by some cowardly paper-shuffler in his cosy and secure office, but by an automated computer system. And there are even people who defend this cold, calculated and inhumane decision.

+1! But then, I'm playing Dwarf Fortress. Without any fancy "graphic tile sets". :)

You left out one important step there though. You have to ... 1. Install the game. 2. Register with Steam (or at least start the client and log in if you already have one account you want to use for Skyrim) and activate the game 3. Download a multi-gigabyte initial patch before you are mercifully allowed to disable updates for this game, set it to "offline mode" and play it. The third step is unfortunately not an option for a lot of people, even though they might have an internet connection and use it extensively for low-bandwidth application like online banking or forum posting.

For what it's worth, I play Dwarf Fortress too. Losing is fun. To answer the OP's question: Yes, there will be "NPC spawns not related to PC's level or skills" mods. I fully intend to make and use one for myself even before I start the game; it was easy enough to do in FO3. If there's enough people asking for one, I might even clean it up and release it. :D

The empire would have to be declining for a few centuries for all of the forts to look this way - plaster crumbled into nothingness, no signs of the typical above-ground structures like stables or forges remaining and so on.

Important things to note: * You can click on an actor and type "TAI" in the console to make him freeze in place, even in the middle of an animation. Do the same to make him move again. * The default FoV ("field of view", actually a mis-named angle of view) of the game is 75. This is way too much, you usually want something closer to 45 for normal photos, and down to 20 for portraits. You can temporarily change the FoV by typing "FOV 40" into the console, but it resets when you close it, so it's not quite easy to use (aim your camera, open console, type "FOV (whatever)" in there, if you like the result type in "[sPACE][RETURN]" a few times until the console log scrolls out, then take your screen shot).

I'm sorry ... I don't understand. Can maybe someone else try to explain what Falcont is trying to say? I think he's saying don't post anything unless you have something that will contribute to the topic. "Ask the developers" isn't really helpful but it seems that this topic has been completed anyway. "a bit smaller than Connecticut." That's what I thought! Well ... neither is complaining about other people's posts really helpful, so that comment was rather self-defeating. In addition, I was the one who posted the calculation on the size in the first place, so it was most likely ill-directed as well. :D Glad I could be of help though.

I'm sorry ... I don't understand. Can maybe someone else try to explain what Falcont is trying to say?

Frankly, I never used the fast travel in Oblivion, so I can't say. Ask the developers, I guess. :whistling:

From the documentation of TESAnnwyn: So, each cell consists of data points at about 1.8m, or 2 yards, apart. I'll calculate with yards here, since that's what Bethesda most likely used. Each Oblivion cell is thus 64 x 64 yards in size. The whole Tamriel worldspace stretches from roughly -53 (Beldaburo) in the west to 47 (Abandoned Mine) in the east, and from 42 (Serpent's Trail) in the north to -42 (Tidewater Cave) in the south. Since the whole form is about that of a triangle, this means Cyrodiil stretches over about 4200 cells. That means a gameworld size of 5.6 square miles or 14.4 km². Now, the game time runs at thirty times the real time, unless you change it with a mod or the console, so all distances are "time compressed" by the same factor. This would make Cyrodiil about 5000 square miles or 13000 km². Or about half of the size of Sicily. Or, for the US residents in here, a bit smaller than Connecticut.

For non-essential NPCs: Open up the console, click on them, kill them ("kill"), close the console, arrange their possesions to taste (or lack thereof), open the console again, resurrect them with the current possesions ("resurrect 1"), close the console, quick-travel to your current position. This should do the trick. For essential characters, you have to make them non-essential first. It's easier with OBSE: Use the console to type "setrefessential 0" while having the NPC marked. If you don't have OBSE, you need to know their BaseID (easy to find on the UESP), and type "setessential BASEID 0".

Works on mine (GeForce GTX 260M build into this laptop) just fine, even forcing Oblivion into HDR+AA mode. Also, I tend to run Picasa in the background, this can take the screen shots for you as well when you press the "Print Screen" button.