Feelings of Disappointment

[jedimembrain]

I don't really buy it .. sorry but Ive been playing and modding games since I was 17 and I know what has gone into Bethesda games .. No other studio comes close to the scale and complexity of their titles and the amount of work it takes to make it all come together in insane .. To top it off they have made a ton of improvements in animation/rendering/voice acting and the quality it going to leaps and bounds better than Oblivion .. Take a look at unmodded oblivion and see for yourself on how much better they have gotten since their last undertaking in this franchise,

 

Uncharted is great game made by a massive team with an ungodly budget.. The game itself is made in an entirely different manner with no options at all in player choice .. its more like watching a movie in how it takes control of every aspect of the game and story allowing them to control visuals to be exactly what they want... Bethesda's engine on the other hand is designed to give the player not only free controls of where they go and what they do but also a giant sandbox to do it in.. they can't plan out animations for every move like uncharted does .. they cant go in and mocap every part of a dungeon because the player might go a different rout ..Uncharted takes control of EXACTLY where the player will be and what they will be doing .. allowing them to mocap every second of footage nearly .. the only times of the game where they don't have full control are during the shooting scenes where the player can run around .. and even then the level design is settup in a way to keep the player in a certain range and from doing anything the animation engine wasn't designed for .. and of course those parts looks far less polished. Bethesda's engine has to allow for some weird things to happen with the animations .. like jumping down the side of a cliff and fallout 50 feet to land unharmed (as seen in the god mode shout video)

 

I could go on for pages honestly .. Bethesda makes games that no other company today can even come close to making .. and to try and say they are anything less than godly in what they have accomplished just makes me think you don't know what your talking about .. Would you rather have them lock off the world and be more polished? .. maybe you should concider a job in hollywood instead of game design .. that seems to be what uncharted is going for.

[CalibanX]

The thing that I thought was interesting about the two Uncharted videos (I haven't played the game) was that there seemed to be variety in the walk/run animations. It's just not the same, static animation that just replays over and over for every NPC and PC in the game. Adding little hand gestures where the character swats at flys or stumbles with his footing over loose terrain does look more natural to me and adds some visual variety to a player's actions. I think Skyrim could benefit from things like this.

[Ghogiel]

I think you are over selling BGS and under selling just about all other studios. You're right in saying that the art team has come on strong, and continues to improve. But there is still more to be had out them.

 

And for the record mocap would work perfectly fine in Skyrim for the vast bulk of character animations. It's not an either or thing. When comparing Uncharted, it's not actually doing anything Skyrim couldn't. And in fact there are a lot of similarities, pretty much the same thing when the character is at free roam and full controll. I don't understand mocap every part of a dungeon statement really, every object could have 'handles' and the character can dynamically interact with the environments pieces, yes actually put his hand down and touch any type of railing of any size on the fly, and not need to have separate animtion sequences for each wall that might vary in height by a few inches. It's the reason why they used the engine they have, it's basically an all in one solution that is designed specifically to set up really intricate character environment interaction: in real time, and not pre scripted. As for falling down 50' to land unharmed.. and? just do that. It's not something that doesn't have a very straight forward solution in their animation engine.

 

those swatting fly animations would be on scripted timed in havok script and randomly played to break up the one loop run and walks. It's all doable in Skyrim

Edited October 31, 2011 by Ghogiel

[jedimembrain]

I think you are over selling BGS and under selling just about all other studios. You're right in saying that the art team has come on strong, and continues to improve. But there is still more to be had out them.

 

And for the record mocap would work perfectly fine in Skyrim for the vast bulk of character animations. It's not an either or thing. When comparing Uncharted, it's not actually doing anything Skyrim couldn't. And in fact there are a lot of similarities, pretty much the same thing when the character is at free roam and full controll. I don't understand mocap every part of a dungeon statement really, every object could have 'handles' and the character can dynamically interact with the environments pieces, yes actually put his hand down and touch any type of railing of any size on the fly, and not need to have separate animtion sequences for each wall that might vary in height by a few inches. It's the reaosn why the used the engine they have, it's basically an all in one solution that is designed specifically to set up really intricate character environment interaction: in real time, and not pre scripted. As for falling down 50' to land unharmed.. and? just do that. It's not something that doesn't have a very straight forward solution in their animation engine.

 

those swatting fly animations would be on scripted timed in havok script and randomly played to break up the one loop run and walks. It's all doable in Skyrim

 

Have you played uncharted? .. they take control of the movement a lot .. its how they get away with the visuals .. Like you will have to climb a crumbling object of some sort and during the entire scene you can move him around but every aspect of the animations playing *like things falling or the character making some subtle breath as he clings for his life* will all be planned out before hand .. something Skyrim could never do at it's scale .. plus your forgetting about NPCs .. NPCs at the scale of Skyrim's will not be able to have extremely complex animation systems with 20 different animations for walking and all sorts of little subtle animations for breathing and turning .. I'm positive they would have to remove something from the engine to afford the taxing that would add to it .. and lets not forget that we have yet to see how many unique animations may still exist in Skyrim for cutscenes .. I saw the intro and if that quality is persistent in the whole game then I would be very very impressed.

[Ghogiel]

MW had little touches in their walk animations akin to swatting flies. That particular detail is so minor on resource. But I know they do add up...There are a lot of different idles in Skyrim, as there were a few in Ob. And for the record it's not incredibly complex to add those types on anims to the state machine. It just goes in the script, and loops back to the idle and to every other animation, it's all done in the node based editor...

 

Anyway, I still think you are over plying BGS and underplaying every other studio, and making a right meal of all the prescripted sequences in uncharted, they are moot, Skyrim has some, Uncharted has more, who cares, the point is which ones are better, and more to the point the quality on character world interaction during real time play, and how good looking the character animations during that. My opinion still stands, I don't think uncharted is doing anything Skyrim couldn't or isn't.

[Vagrant0]

The thing that I thought was interesting about the two Uncharted videos (I haven't played the game) was that there seemed to be variety in the walk/run animations. It's just not the same, static animation that just replays over and over for every NPC and PC in the game. Adding little hand gestures where the character swats at flys or stumbles with his footing over loose terrain does look more natural to me and adds some visual variety to a player's actions. I think Skyrim could benefit from things like this.

Except that they're kinda out of place, and random... especially when your character happens to have something with sharp metal points in one of their hands. Random animations, more often than not, always look random, out of place, or just dangerous. As for variations based on footing, that's nice and all, but is really only applicable in closed-scene environment where those locations can be specifically mapped. While something might be done with a flagged collision surface, the problem with that method is that it would often be too touchy and transition poorly as objects are often overlapped and collision planes themselves are often imperfect (by the number of times you can see feet and hands of actors dipping below geometry).

[hejpadig]

The thing that I thought was interesting about the two Uncharted videos (I haven't played the game) was that there seemed to be variety in the walk/run animations. It's just not the same, static animation that just replays over and over for every NPC and PC in the game. Adding little hand gestures where the character swats at flys or stumbles with his footing over loose terrain does look more natural to me and adds some visual variety to a player's actions. I think Skyrim could benefit from things like this.

 

Skyrim has different running animations as well. When you run normally it has its own animation, and when you sprint it looks different. I'm sure the character will do different things to bugs and flies when he hasn't moved for some time. We also know that you will walk slower in a snowstorm, which might have another animation for facecover.

Edited October 31, 2011 by hejpadig

[Ghogiel]

The thing that I thought was interesting about the two Uncharted videos (I haven't played the game) was that there seemed to be variety in the walk/run animations. It's just not the same, static animation that just replays over and over for every NPC and PC in the game. Adding little hand gestures where the character swats at flys or stumbles with his footing over loose terrain does look more natural to me and adds some visual variety to a player's actions. I think Skyrim could benefit from things like this.

Except that they're kinda out of place, and random... especially when your character happens to have something with sharp metal points in one of their hands. Random animations, more often than not, always look random, out of place, or just dangerous.

good point actually. They don't need to be random though. you can have world space trigger to play those anims. like say you walk into a cloud of flys, then the character might perform the swatting anim. Weather based or terrain effects, like for example when you hit water you character starts to swim, but think on snow drifts or on ice, or mud, or if it's really cold, or if they are tired, could all trigger appropriate sections of the state machine. Lots of room to add depth with this one.

[CalibanX]

The stumbling & fly swatting examples were just examples. I'm sure a clever dev could come up with ways to make them work in particular circumstances. In Oblivion, NPCs had various idle animations, I don't see how having some alternate idles (for instance) that would activate in certain situations would over-burden the system. A fly swat here & there in an empty hand in the forest seems doable to me. -Just something, to break up the robotic-ness of having just one default run/walk idle would go a long way to increasing immersion.

 

The snow storm idles sounds great! That would be a great example of the kinds of things that I'm talking about. Does anyone know if there are any wounded/crippled animations in Skyrim the way there were in F3?

Edited October 31, 2011 by CalibanX

[Vagrant0]

The stumbling & fly swatting examples were just examples. I'm sure a clever dev could come up with ways to make them work in particular circumstances. In Oblivion, NPCs had various idle animations, I don't see how having some alternate idles (for instance) that would activate in certain situations would over-burden the system. A fly swat here & there in an empty hand in the forest seems doable to me. -Just something, to break up the robotic-ness of having just one default run/walk idle would go a long way to increasing immersion.

yes, sure, if the progress of the game is on unmovable rails so that all the actions are synced and in the proper times... But then you're just watching a movie. It's not that it would overburden the system, it's that the number of times that they were appropriate without having to manually flag every bit of scenery and ground with weighting for specific idles, would be significantly less than the number of times that they would be inappropriate. For example, take a look at some MMOs which have variations to idle animations... Sometimes legs and other body parts clip through scenery, objects in hand clip through the body, or others, the idles look repetitive, or they're just darn annoying. And flagging all that terrain for a rare gem of naturality would certainly distract from you know... Actual development in making the game longer or more enjoyable on the whole. How much time do you actually intend to be just standing around idle, in 3rd person really? Compared to say... running through dungeons, fighting things, casting spells, and actually playing the game. Frankly, anything which is even more varied and natural than FO3 would be an improvement, and FO3 itself was quite groundbreaking with the way it managed its idle AI with a non-fixed/scripted scenes.