Things We All Wish Bethesda Would Learn

[Rennn]

1. Rats (Skeevers) that don't attack with suicidal intent. Charles Darwin is turning in his grave.

 

2. Deer and other herbivores that run faster than the player character.

 

3. Get a decent engine. Stop using a rehash of an engine from 2002, especially when said engine doesn't even have an elegant LOD solution or competent lighting effects.

[hector530]

1. Rats (Skeevers) that don't attack with suicidal intent. Charles Darwin is turning in his grave.

 

2. Deer and other herbivores that run faster than the player character.

 

this sounds a lot like the "bethesda doesnt know what vampires are!" argument. its not the real world so things can behave differently. skeevers are like 25 times bigger than real life rats why shouldn't they be aggressive.

[ginnyfizz]

Because size isn't everything XD.

 

I'm with Renn on this one. I remember a friend making me a mod for Oblivion that lowered the aggression factor of all wild creatures, as we are both country folk and felt that psycho rats and wolves were redonkulous. Having spent time in the arctic region of Sweden, I have observed that wolves howl a lot but are unlikely to have you for dinner. Bears on the other hand...if you go down in the woods today, pack a darn great rifle just in case.

[brokenergy]

1. Rats (Skeevers) that don't attack with suicidal intent. Charles Darwin is turning in his grave.

 

2. Deer and other herbivores that run faster than the player character.

 

3. Get a decent engine. Stop using a rehash of an engine from 2002, especially when said engine doesn't even have an elegant LOD solution or competent lighting effects.

 

Skyrim isn't using Gamebyro engine, it's the Creation engine. Other than that, all of the animals in Skyrim and infact infected with a fungi that makes them stupid from the real animals on earth.

[blove]

Looks like a duck to me.

[JimboUK]

1. Rats (Skeevers) that don't attack with suicidal intent. Charles Darwin is turning in his grave.

 

2. Deer and other herbivores that run faster than the player character.

 

3. Get a decent engine. Stop using a rehash of an engine from 2002, especially when said engine doesn't even have an elegant LOD solution or competent lighting effects.

 

Look at the Avalanche Engine 2.0 Just Cause 2 used, it looked stunning, you could see for miles without any real loss of quality and it ran very smoothly. Compare that to the clunky Gamebryo engine Skyrim is using, the engine wasn't much use in 2002, it certainly isn't now. That said you do have to wonder what Gamebyro without Bethesdas "modifications" would run like, other games that use it are nowhere near as bad.

[Rennn]

1. Rats (Skeevers) that don't attack with suicidal intent. Charles Darwin is turning in his grave.

 

2. Deer and other herbivores that run faster than the player character.

 

3. Get a decent engine. Stop using a rehash of an engine from 2002, especially when said engine doesn't even have an elegant LOD solution or competent lighting effects.

 

Skyrim isn't using Gamebyro engine, it's the Creation engine. Other than that, all of the animals in Skyrim and infact infected with a fungi that makes them stupid from the real animals on earth.

 

It's widely known that the Creation Engine is a rehash of the Gamebryo, with slightly improved lighting and an even buggier scripting language.

Edited January 19, 2013 by Rennn

[Rennn]

1. Rats (Skeevers) that don't attack with suicidal intent. Charles Darwin is turning in his grave.

 

2. Deer and other herbivores that run faster than the player character.

 

3. Get a decent engine. Stop using a rehash of an engine from 2002, especially when said engine doesn't even have an elegant LOD solution or competent lighting effects.

 

Look at the Avalanche Engine 2.0 Just Cause 2 used, it looked stunning, you could see for miles without any real loss of quality and it ran very smoothly. Compare that to the clunky Gamebryo engine Skyrim is using, the engine wasn't much use in 2002, it certainly isn't now. That said you do have to wonder what Gamebyro without Bethesdas "modifications" would run like, other games that use it are nowhere near as bad.

 

If Bethesda really wanted to, they could license the CryEngine 3 or the Frostbite 2. The Avalanche 2.0 is anoher good choice for open-world games, like you said. All have beautiful lighting and LOD, and the CryEngine at least is moddable. Really, the CryEngine 3 beats the Creation Engine in every way, from physics, to environmental interaction, to LOD, to lighting, to animations, to scripting. Heaven knows Bethesda made enough money from Oblivion and Fallout 3, they easily could have afforded it.

 

If they were really on a shoestring budget, they even could have used the Source Engine. Its LOD isn't much better than the Creation Engine's, but the physics and environmental interaction is all present. It's insanely moddable, it has good lighting, and any Source game runs smoothly on almost any hardware. The capabilities of the Source Engine, which is even showing its age a little, still far surpass the Creation Engine.

 

They even could have used the Phyre Engine. It's capable of streaming an entire open-world rpg without a single load screen, which is a far cry from Bethesda's "long load screen every 1.5 minutes" engine.

 

There are a dozen engines that would have passed the Creation Engine in almost every way. I guess they just wanted to stick with their familiar POS for another generation. :(

Edited January 19, 2013 by Rennn

[JimboUK]

Oh hell yeah there are plenty of good alternatives, I mentioned the Avalanche 2.0 engine because the way it handled the LOD, it was hugely impressive, the lighting was stunning too. Mind you if they customised any of them as badly as they have Gamebryo I doubt we'd see much improvement, Divinity II uses Gamebryo and it doesn't have a fraction of the issues Bethesdas efforts have.

[ziitch]

I'd say that CryEngine 3 would be the best best choice, and here's why:

 

1. There are actual editing tools that come with engine that can be distributed, unlike Frostbite or Avalanche. Avalanche can support Lua injections, but that's it, and honestly CryEngine's land modification tools are just downright awesome compared to what you get from anything else.

 

2. It's not locked to a single development team. CryEngine 2 had some success with other developers using it for their games, and is quite flexible - Aion used CryEngine 2 iirc. Considering that, it should able to support a large amount of unique identities and NPCs both nearby and far away, instead of just throwing a bunch of cookie cutter characters at you to save resources.

 

3. The physics in CryEngine3 are meant to be accurate. Avalanche was built to exaggerate them, as you will notice in JC2. Frostbite, though, also aims for the same thing.

 

4. It can be scaled to meet specific demands. Considering that the engine is years ahead of most of its competition, is relatively new, and is actively updated, there shouldn't be much of an aging problem with the game given Beth's lengthy development times.