Oblivion vs. Assassin's Creed

[ComicKaze]

I've been playing the leaked unfinished version of Assassin's Creed PC (which I already own on PS3) and it makes me wonder just what's possible with Oblivion or future games. I mean I've been adding mods to it for over two years but even with tons of LOD and textures and open cities, I realize it'll never even come close to looking as good or running as smoothly. I mean, I love Oblivion, it's a totally different game and Assassin's Creed has repetitive gaming but the cities really take my breath away and show me what's possible with PC hardware these days. But in many areas, including the cities, the loading times (almost none), and especially sword play and horseback riding (horses look very realistic, can gallop, can rear up, you can fight on horseback without Deadly Reflex).

 

With all the mods, Oblivion framerates dip into the teens for me but AC stays around 50 FPS, it's quite astonishing with the depth and vast size of the cities. No loading time, no abrupt jarring loads with arbitrary doors that open into other cells. No objects or people fading within view of you. It's just all rendered and you can explore as you like for what seems like miles of crowded streets and urban rooftops. I was delighted to get the Open Cities mod but I heard that Imperial City was impossible to render because of the enourmous resources needed and yet IC doesn't really seem that big to me at all.

 

I know it's just wishful thinking, but perhaps the next TES could offer cities as vast as this. Oblivion's cities pale, don't even come within 1-5% of AC's cities.

 

I captured these two frames to really demonstrate with Anvil vs. Damascus.

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/1848/70476533cg5.jpg

This is with Open Cities, Qarls, a ton of other mods, extreme LOD, OOO, etc. etc. etc. It gives me about 20 FPS

 

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/1690/77225383ml3.jpg

This is AC, it gives me around 50 FPS and that entire city is there for you to explore. No loading, it's just smooth as butter, you just walk right in or climb, whatever you prefer :)

 

http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/9241/47088182xn8.jpg

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/1516/44399230wq3.jpg

 

Do you guys think the next TES game could look like this? I find it ironic that AC performs so much better, guess that's what happens when technologies improve and you have a newer engine that is not saddled with all the background stuff Oblivion is. If I could get an RPG inside the cities of AC and it allowed me first person view, that would be heaven.

[ComicKaze]

Here are some more screenshots. What an amazing game Oblivion would be if it could support cities this size. As it stands, even tiny cities like Oblivion with no more than a dozen houses require you to go through doors to move you into different cells. AC has thousands of unique structures and architecture and streets, canals, rooftops, towers, minarets, castles, etc. you can explore withou any loading at all. I thought Open Cities was groundbreaking and pushing my PC to the limit but I guess it just turns out its the Oblivion Engine that is too antiquated.

 

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/2985/67702123wr0.jpg

 

http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/7812/32079821zn9.jpg

 

http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/4725/62442813ka3.jpg

 

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/7329/80285995xc6.jpg

 

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/493/31418816ye7.jpg

 

http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/9333/65401396xp2.jpg

 

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/528/23560752uc8.jpg

 

http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/9599/10hc6.jpg

 

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/84/11ap6.jpg

 

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/9763/11997591hm6.jpg

 

The cities are always SO crowded which give it tremendous atmosphere, but then I guess none of them need to have their own tasks and daily cycles and places to live.

[ninja_lord666]

:) <--- See this smiley right here? That's you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this smiley represents logical thought ---> http://209.85.62.26/12313/194/emo/read.gif

 

See how far that space is? Each line is about a mile. Games have engines, and engines have limits. Games cannot go past those limits. Oblivion will never be like Assassin's Creed due to said limits. Got it?

[ComicKaze]

See how far that space is? Each line is about a mile. Games have engines, and engines have limits. Games cannot go past those limits. Oblivion will never be like Assassin's Creed due to said limits. Got it?

 

I never said Oblivion would look like AC, I was pondering the possibility of the next TES having such vast cities.

[bben46]

Looks good. This is one of the first real - as opposed to advertising type - sets of screenies I have seen. It looks as if they use a haze effect to cut down on having to render as things get further away. The haze seems to be graded, into several zones, up close, little to no haze, mid distance slight haze, further distance - somewhat more haze, then far distant , max haze. This could help increase the FPS by limiting the detail of objects not in the immediate vicinity.

[GenghisKhanIT]

Looks good. This is one of the first real - as opposed to advertising type - sets of screenies I have seen. It looks as if they use a haze effect to cut down on having to render as things get further away. The haze seems to be graded, into several zones, up close, little to no haze, mid distance slight haze, further distance - somewhat more haze, then far distant , max haze. This could help increase the FPS by limiting the detail of objects not in the immediate vicinity.

 

This is quite a nice trick, but it is around since long time.

Also, if you think about it, the human eye doesn't see thing very differently, because of the atmosphere, so it has the additional advantage that the result looks "right".

 

(EDITED)

[Sypron]

The buildings in AC arn't as unique as you think. They are all placed together from a very basic tileset, with the exception of the occasional unique mosque or cathedral. You will even notice the exact same buildings and architectural features across the three cities, just with different colors.

 

The difference between AC and TES is that the world of AC is just a playground. There is no depth to it, not interaction. It's just the things you can grab and the clones walking from point A to point B and eventually back to A. You jump from one concrete slab that resembles a house to the next one and occasionally stop to kill some random nameless citizen with no home or life. TES is a rich, vibrant and interactive world full of thousands of interactive items, plants, buildings and people. The people have lives, roles, names, quests.

What I'm getting at is if you make the world in the elder scrolls game that big with that many people you loose all the depth and immersion.

 

PS: How about some pics of Jerusalem?

[wizardmirth]

Exactly, Sypron. How many of those AC buldings can you enter and how many objects on the ground can you interact with a number of ways include pick up and throw, add to inventory, use, and sell? How many of those people walking around are not simply copies of one another with no indivual AI and individual lives? Ususally a game specializes in some sort of gimmick like stealth in Thief, whereas AC is a like a next-gen Prince of Persia. But when a game is simply as open-ended like Oblivion then you're going to run into more limits. You'd probably need a machine a few generations ahead of the currently best once available now be able to handle all the rendering and scripts of Oblivion with AC's level of detail, which is really just a larger tileset as Sypron said. Not to mention all the extra work involved in making all those little nooks and crannies come to life with new people and new combinations of interiors and belongings just so your thief character can be satisfied. Development tools would have to drastically evolve to make such grand-scale tasking more cost and time effective. I'm not saying it can't happen one day, but no way in the next TES game unless maybe all those extra non-essential buildings were the equivalent of null-spaced cardboard cutouts that were all part of a larger piece.

[GBHis]

You also need to note that Oblivion is like 5 years older than AC, and that the AC development crew had the ability to look at games like Oblivion, Gothic and Splinter Cell and see what worked / what didn't work / what could be improved.

 

Can AC be modded?

[ninja_lord666]

You also need to note that Oblivion is like 5 years older than AC...

What frame of time are you using? Oblivion came out in 2006.