Ign article: No ladders in fallout.

[iavor55]

Actualy in Oblivion I noticed when I climbed the guard towers :P

[SpacemanSpIiff]

Well... The PC can't do it but NPC was made to do that in Point Lookout!

To not make a spoiler, Mr Jackson at a certain point in game will climb a very long ladder. Not thinking many noticed that since you are occupied with other tasks at that point. :whistling:

 

And a certain someone does a remarkable free-climb up a sheer cliffside in Operation Anchorage.

 

I did notice Mr Jackson do that climb though, was enthralling. Certainly someone at the studio put alot of effort into it when he could've just had him dissappear like every other NPC prior to that.

 

Also, someone made a functioning ladder somewhere underground, though they only function if you're going up, not down.

 

 

 

Doing something as 'simple' as the way counterstike does it is not as 'simple' as you'd think Its only possible because in the engine that Counter strike (and CS:S) runs on, A player can climb a ladder in realtime is a coded into the engine. The gambryo engine that Oblivion and Fallout3 are coded on is not capable of this feat. Its just not coded in. (probably ground clamping issues they had?)

 

 

As for the NPC that climbs a ladder. hes likely not actually 'climbing' the ladder. hes likely playing a climbing animation in the right spot that takes him up in a vertical direction to give you the illusion that hes climbing.

[Nimboss]

@ sakura357

Well, I missed this reply and the few before... I'm not sure how to reply since I'm not native English. It seems this reply fix two flies in the smash, but I'm not sure what the true purpose is of this reply. Since I was never stating what HL1 or HL2 could do when climbing.

 

For sure climbing ladders is a technical issue for any game engine I seen when browsing forums regarding utilization of the specific game engine in specific. More than once I've seen questions on how to make a proper ladder animation and the code behind to make it proper. Let's just stop there! Certain game engines have these kind of hardcore stuff put into the guts of the engine for this where a part of the needed stuff this game or engine or end customization needed.

 

Now for the implementation of how Mr. Jackson climbs the ladder I'm not sure it's "just" an animation, and since neither of us have actually dived into the code how this was done I make this open. I however presume Bethesda used a similar approach like "sitting a chair" or "lean against a wall" when the NPC reach the must complete, after that climbing animation kick in and the NPC starts to climb. IF it is so this would open opportunities for gifted animators to expand what is doable. IF not for sure this is like you say a hard coded limitation of the current Gamebryo engine that Bethesda decided to use.

 

Lastly, Bethesda could have claimed that they really needed climbing ladders to work, if so this would been a task for the Gamebryo coders to implement and if this was to costly this was discarded before anyone of us get the words of it. This is also another issue regarding what you can get into a game engine or what not. Most game engines is constructed and forced to be extremely good at restricted types of games like FPS, RPG or simulation. When you start to mix these genre's You're in big problems. I have currently not seen any game engine that take ALL these types into a working solution without some quirks, restrictions or complete fails on some features. If it existed I would been a lifetime supporter (also) at that game engines forum for sure.

[Johssy]

Are there even any open world games with functioning, non-buggy ladders? I've never seen any now that I think about it. They're just in FPS' where you kinda just run into them to go up or down.

 

And that one animation where that guy climbs the ladder shows that they could've done something along the lines of that on all ladders, had they had the time. Like with so many other things left out of the game.

[SpacemanSpIiff]

I think it really came down to the question of "Do we really need to spend the time effort and money to get functioning ladders in this game?"

 

I guess we see what the answer is.