Oblivion can't handle too many npcs

[lyndonrakista]

If its possible can someone make a mod that will make the game handle more npc fighting at the same time, cause im trying to make a war mod and i can see some of them not moving, they only move if someone dies, its like its capped, they only fight when someone else dies, it is possible?

[Argomirr]

No, it isn't possible (yet?). The Oblivion engine can only handle about 20 NPCs on the screen, and for as far as I know, there is no way to increase that number. That's also why there are so few war mods.

 

If you really want to make a large scale war, you're gonna have to do it in waves of 20 NPCs.

[tyreil829]

if you had lag issues during the battle of bruma quest its due to same reason im afraid

 

Sword Devil

[LoginToDownload]

I've managed to get around 40 by making them a new type of creature that just so happens to look exactly like NPCs, but no more than that before the problems start cropping up.

[lyndonrakista]

in the battle of bruma, i dont have any lag issues, and i got all the help i can plus the companion mods and more deadra mod, so my pc can handle many npc, but the engine can't, maybe oblivion is really designed for that. i put 50+ npc on fight and around 5-10 are not moving.

[LoginToDownload]

The Battle of Bruma makes use of the SetSceneIsComplex function to ease the battle's load. Not sure how much it matters, though.

[Vagrant0]

The Battle of Bruma makes use of the SetSceneIsComplex function to ease the battle's load. Not sure how much it matters, though.

It matters quite a bit since it cleans up processing to where pathing and avoidance checks are no longer being done. This isn't an issue in the spot where this battle takes place since it's devoid of any rocks or anything, but would be rather problematic anywhere else. This can be made clear by setting this flag manually in console, and trying to play the game normally, what you get is an NPC that runs into walls, rocks, makes no attempt to defend, and otherwise seems rather dumb.

 

The problem is two part. One part is just the graphical rendering of that many persons in a single scene, which is what causes most of the loss in framerate, this can be lessened by using non-NPC actors since they don't have different face information, texturing, but still is a limitation. Technically, this part could also be handled by using lower resolution textures or lower detail meshes on these actors, but still probably not enough to matter. The second part is the processing, the area that we can't do very much with since it is part of the base coding of the game. NPCs have an AI which is constantly performing disposition checks on targets, line of sight checks on that target, determining locations of targets, making a decision of using ranged combat or melee combat, figuring out how to reach that target by analyzing the pathgrid, checking to see if any attack is being made against them, and attempting to avoid or block it, and deciding what specific attack or spell should be used against that target... every frame, for every npc in the scene. Aside from the mentioned functions, none of this can be changed with scripting. Creatures have a less complicated AI since they often have scaled back combat behavior for avoidance, blocking, or disposition checks.