Do you think Beth is getting lazy because of modders?

[CraftySentinel]

 

 

ON TOPIC;; I don't agree, Bethesda works very hard on their games. Skyrim is an AWESOME game out of the box, modders tend to forget that for some silly reason. I mean seriously, I played skyrim on console for over a year before I got my gaming PC, and I loved the hell out of it. Sure it has problems, but all games have problems.

 

Skyrim modded is not comparable to any game, because of COARSE you think it's a million times better that way, because you have thousands of options to make the game exactly how YOU like it! No one knows what makes a game better in YOUR opinion then YOU! ^_^

 

 

Bethesda does work very hard on their games, but their engine is holding them back severely. Their texture artists are great, even though their engine forces them to deal with DX9, 3.2GB of RAM, and massive texture compression even with 1K diffuse maps. Their meshers are adept at optimization, even though their engine limits them to about 4k polygons on a single mesh (and they usually use even fewer polygons to ensure that the game doesn't crash). Their concept artists and whoever designs the landscape is world-class, even though their engine forces Bethesda to use a terrible LoD system ripped from 2006.

 

Many developers now includes dynamic wet effects, footprints in snow, hair and cloth physics, and dynamic meshes that react to player interaction. A few of things have been added in sub-par forms in mods, but even more things, modders have been unable to add. I tried to fix Bethesda's awful LoD and got 700 endorsements for my trouble, but even that isn't enough to fix Bethesda's Creation engine.

 

Long story made short, Bethesda needs to ditch the Creation Engine ASAP. It's slowing them down, consuming more time, money, and resources than it needs to, and ultimately is responsible for most of the dirty scripts and bugs in Skyrim.

 

 

I agree, Bethesda is not getting lazy they are just trying to push their old engine too hard and swapping from Gamebryo animations to Havok animations and behavior didn't go well for them either, but I can't really fault them too much for it since it was only added in halfway through development (Or so I read somewhere.). I don't see them changing to a new engine anytime soon it also takes time and money for a development team to get accustomed to a new engine, and according to Wikipedia the Creation Engine will be used for at least one more game... lets hope they don't try to add in more high-tech features... For all the bad rap Papyrus gets, for a inbuilt scripting system it's fairly robust so props to Bethesda for it.

Edited August 26, 2013 by CraftySentinel

[Lachdonin]

and according to Wikipedia the Creation Engine will be used for at least one more game...

 

 

Wikipedia could be referencing Fallout 4, which everyone basically knows is being made as we speak. If that's the case, then we are likely to see and end of the Creation Engine within the next year or two.

 

That said, I don't see how the Creation Engine is holding them back, considering the only other open world games (which I have been exposed to, at least) are either cookie cutters of Dark Souls (one of my all-time most hated games), Dead Island or the absurdly generic Crackdown/GTA/SaintsRow/Prototype.

 

There are some technical limitations, yes, but those aren't holding Bethesda back in the genre it's producing, since most of said genre is packed with static environments, blocky graphics and predictable encounters. Sure, they can't generally match linear scripted games where the environment changes around you, where rain runs over the lens of your sniper scope, or where you can track your enemy though the snow, but those things tend to be far easier to do in FPS' and linear RPG's than in open worlds.

 

 

[Transbot9]

No, I don't think Bethesda is being lazy.

 

Many of the problems Bethesda ran into during TES4's developement were because of the limitations of the Xbox 360. It's why there was a sizable chunk of cut content. The version of the Creation Engine that Skyrim uses is a nerfed version, again because of consoles (although some features may have been locked because they weren't ready yet). Havok also introduces it's own set of bugs - it's why world spaces have issues beyond +/- 64 cells from cell 0 (we had to break up the worldspace for Beyond Skyrim because of Havok, not the Creation Engine).

 

As for the Unofficial bugfix mods, those have been going on at least since TES3.

 

Is there even another engine that comes close to what the Creation Engine can do? Who knows about Source2, but that's still in developement and Source is showing it's age. I don't know if anyone has managed to push the Unity engine that far, but I know it has it's limitations. I know there are other engines out there, but I don't know enough about them. Even with competators to Havok floating around, they've pretty much become the industry standard.

 

Overall, though, I'm still hoping that Id is working on whatever Bethesda will be using after the Creation Engine. Id's a good Engine developer, and I can see them building Bethesda a new (or even more heavily modifed) open world game engine.

[Rennn]

 

That said, I don't see how the Creation Engine is holding them back, considering the only other open world games (which I have been exposed to, at least) are either cookie cutters of Dark Souls (one of my all-time most hated games), Dead Island or the absurdly generic Crackdown/GTA/SaintsRow/Prototype.

 

There are some technical limitations, yes, but those aren't holding Bethesda back in the genre it's producing, since most of said genre is packed with static environments, blocky graphics and predictable encounters. Sure, they can't generally match linear scripted games where the environment changes around you, where rain runs over the lens of your sniper scope, or where you can track your enemy though the snow, but those things tend to be far easier to do in FPS' and linear RPG's than in open worlds.

 

 

 

 

Eh, false.

You can hate Dark Souls all you want, but the Phyre engine allows for filtered fully dynamic shadows, extensive physics, dynamic fragmenting meshes, native sunrays in DX9, and most importantly, stream loading. You know, the thing that allows Dark Souls to avoid load screens while Skyrim has a load screen every 2 minutes if you change cells. It's not a great engine, unlike the Phyre 2.0 that's supposed to power Dark Souls 2, but it's better than the Creation Engine.

 

In addition, Dead Island uses the terrible Chrome 5 engine, which is nearly (but not quite) as out of date as the Creation Engine at this point.

 

Try looking at Borderlands 2 (Unreal Engine 3) or Dragon's Dogma (MT Framework) if you want to see open world done on a tolerable engine. Better performance than Skyrim, despite the fact that one has cutting edge graphics with PhysX and AO, and the other is a console exclusive running on 7 year out of date hardware.

 

The Creation Engine is a modified version of the Gamebryo from 11 years ago. The very idea of cells is dying out.

Next-gen engines, such as the Unreal 4, Frostbite 3, Phyre 2.0, or Fox engine should all put the Creation Engine so far behind it's not even worth laughing at. Unless Bethesda counters with something new, they'll be too far behind to even be able to catch up.

Edited August 26, 2013 by Rennn

[Rennn]

No, I don't think Bethesda is being lazy.

 

As for the Unofficial bugfix mods, those have been going on at least since TES3.

 

Is there even another engine that comes close to what the Creation Engine can do? Who knows about Source2, but that's still in developement and Source is showing it's age. I don't know if anyone has managed to push the Unity engine that far, but I know it has it's limitations. I know there are other engines out there, but I don't know enough about them. Even with competators to Havok floating around, they've pretty much become the industry standard.

 

Overall, though, I'm still hoping that Id is working on whatever Bethesda will be using after the Creation Engine. Id's a good Engine developer, and I can see them building Bethesda a new (or even more heavily modifed) open world game engine.

 

Bethesda's games have been buggy since 2002 in Morrowind, because Morrowind used the Gamebryo Engine, which is an older version of the Creation Engine.

 

Yes, many engines far and away pass the Creation Engine in open world games.

Look at the Phyre or Phyre 2 engines, which allow stream loading and virtually do away with load times.

Look at the Unreal 3 engine, which despite having a similar LoD system to Skyrim's, actually supports DX11 and is reasonably optimized.

Look at the CryEngine, CryEngine 2, or CryEngine 3, all of which are better in everything from physics to LoD than the Creation Engine.

 

Remember, I also said that Bethesda is not lazy. However, they're holding on to their relic of an engine for far too long. Other developers, like Bioware, were also falling victim to this until recently. Bioware made DAO and DA2 on the Aurora Engine (or the Eclipse, I forget which, they're both terribly optimized), and you can see for yourself how those games were optimized. DA2 should, by all rights, run on a potato. Instead, it stresses a 7950. Wisely, Bioware has switched to the Frostbite 3 for DA Inquisition.

Edited August 26, 2013 by Rennn

[Lachdonin]

Did... did you really just cite Dragon's Dogma as an example of a tolerable open world engine? What with its lag, environmental pop-in, audio sync problems and total lack of depth to the world? Borderlands 2 I can understand, being an absolutely fantastic game (though with a good share of loading screens, which rather defeats your point) but Dragons Dogma remains something of a dyslexic, technical mess.

 

The Cryengine 3 offers some serious potential (as we saw in Farcry 3) though the actual extent of scripting it can support remains to be seen. It's mostly been used just for FPS games with a free roam feature rather than anything remotely like Skyrim.

 

I'm not saying that the Creation Engine is the best choice for the job, but it's certainly not the worst as you are making it out to seem.

[Transbot9]

Phyre is Sony, so it might not be the best cross-platforms support *shrug.*

 

It's hard to determine at this point what may work best after Bethesda's next game (presumably Fallout 4), since a lot of engines are getting prepped/tweaked for Next Gen consoles. Id Tech 5 may or may not be worth it for Bethesda to adopt/modify, but I don't have RAGE so I can't use the toolkit to personally compare how well it works compared to the CK, let alone how well the technical execution of the game itself compares to Skyrim except by screenshots.

[Rennn]

Did... did you really just cite Dragon's Dogma as an example of a tolerable open world engine? What with its lag, environmental pop-in, audio sync problems and total lack of depth to the world? Borderlands 2 I can understand, being an absolutely fantastic game (though with a good share of loading screens, which rather defeats your point) but Dragons Dogma remains something of a dyslexic, technical mess.

 

 

I did say that it was on 7 year old hardware. The MT Framework is older now, but most engines wouldn't have managed an open world game with those graphics on the PS3 and 360. Look at Skyrim on the consoles; a worse framerate, worse graphics, same draw distance, unfiltered shadows, more bugs, and more load times.

 

In addition, I'm not making the Creation Engine out to be the worst engine. The Aurora Engine, Eclipse Engine, or the Gamebryo Engine that the Creation Engine is based on are all still worse.

However, the fact that Skyrim looks pretty good and runs tolerably is more of a testament to Bethesda's skilled programmers than it is a positive feature of their engine.

Edited August 27, 2013 by Rennn

[kleinstaff]

bottom line is that while skyrim was made with console first with all its limitations

 

it is the pc version and the modding community that made the game one of the best selling games of the last 3 years

 

lets be honest the console version and vanilla version are horrible looking and buggy and glitchy at best

 

while it was probably never bethesda intentions skyrim became a quality game after they launched their creationkit

i know several people who eventually bought the pc version because the game was so improved after the CK

my own daughter is one of them

 

the majority of sales might be because of the console version but its fame and mark it made on todays gaming industry is because people can mod the hell out of the pc version and really do what bethesda so likes to promote

DO WHATEVER YOU WANT

 

and people at bethesda realize this all too well even if they rarely will admit this

[GlassDeviant]

It's all about money.

 

The problem is, was, and always will be the fact that Beth is making games for consoles and PC is the red haired stepchild now. Modding is the only saving grace and the only thing extending the life of Skyrim beyond the first year after release. If and when they ever get modding on consoles we are going to be totally SBT'ed because almost nobody will bother developing for the comparatively puny PC game market. There is one and only one up-to-date game in terms of high end graphics that is coming up which is PC exclusive with no possibility of ever appearing on consoles, and that is X: Rebirth. Egosoft has designed their engine to take full advantage of the power of modern PCs and even the latest consoles could not hope to run it at all. Beth gets most of its money from console sales, therefore we will never see anything even remotely optimized for PC, much less designed for it like X:R. Their games will always be console games with PC graphics tacked on after the fact.

 

This is not the fault of the programmers, this is the fault of corporate executives who are out to make the most money for the least investment like any other business. These decisions come from business people, not the devs, people who don't have the vision to create something beautiful and elegant, whose only goal in life is to chase the almighty dollar. They don't understand the art of the craftsman, for whom the product is the purpose, and the money is secondary. This is also why modders produce better quality content, there is no money involved so the product is all that exists.