• The Elder Scrolls Megathread XX: Might as well be XXX
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I remember pre-skyrim fantaszising about dynamic characters who can believably chat in pubs. Like thirty hand gestures,twenty sitting animations, ten leaning animations,characters leaning in to face and block others, head nodding, shaking, eye rolling, raising and lowering voices depending on how many others were talking. What a shame we got what we got.
[QUOTE=The Jack;52826687]I remember pre-skyrim fantaszising about dynamic characters who can believably chat in pubs. Like thirty hand gestures,twenty sitting animations, ten leaning animations,characters leaning in to face and block others, head nodding, shaking, eye rolling, raising and lowering voices depending on how many others were talking. What a shame we got what we got.[/QUOTE] That sounds like a lot for the previous generation to handle, especially because by the time skyrim came out, we were already maximizing console hardware to its limits. Maybe if skyrim came out this gen and if bethesda really cared about that stuff, it may have become a reality. But what's with the specific numbers? Why 30 hand gestures? Why 10 leaning animations?
Not specific, but I think the ratios are alright. I don't think such a system is that taxing, it just hasn't been done before. Rockstar, rich as they are, have done far more with animation and physics on the last gen of consoles, and some stuff by valve, bungie and so on've delivered some impressive stuff. I'm sure bethesda could've gotten away with more, especially given that they really could've optimised more.
[QUOTE=The Jack;52826963]Not specific, but I think the ratios are alright. I don't think such a system is that taxing, it just hasn't been done before. Rockstar, rich as they are, have done far more with animation and physics on the last gen of consoles, and some stuff by valve, bungie and so on've delivered some impressive stuff. I'm sure bethesda could've gotten away with more, especially given that they really could've optimised more.[/QUOTE] yeah I guess. but this is BGS we're talking about, you can't really trust them to get it right.
I wish we could have a little more body diversity for the character creator, though
[QUOTE=Dazzgrace;52827023]I wish we could have a little more body diversity for the character creator, though[/QUOTE] We will never have our big tiddy chubby GOTH Qt3.14 [del]GF[/del]Dragonborn :'(
[QUOTE=The Jack;52826687]I remember pre-skyrim fantaszising about dynamic characters who can believably chat in pubs. Like thirty hand gestures,twenty sitting animations, ten leaning animations,characters leaning in to face and block others, head nodding, shaking, eye rolling, raising and lowering voices depending on how many others were talking. What a shame we got what we got.[/QUOTE] Uh what game have you ever seen come even CLOSE to number of animations [I]for just sitting[/I] or done anything that complicated for a numerous number of possible scenarios which wouldn't glitch out due to unforeseen possibilities? Like Beth made a game with plenty of issues but shit like this is just silly to expect and I don't think people truly appreciate the amount of time and effort goes into making these big AAA games. Like you think they willingly want to work in large groups that have trouble communicating properly in which you have to create a puzzle piece and hope everyone else with their different jobs fit your puzzle piece just right and that you can fit yours just right into theirs. And this is a very simplified look at it all, so lets consider the amount of work thirty animations for sitting and talking would do: - Hours of voice acting as you would have to do retakes for mistakes, cycle each actor for the different npcs that would talk and then voice act each scenario x30. - Animating each action to where it would fit with the other animations while making sure none of them will conflict with geometry, location and make sure they transition smoothly into each other x30 again. - Making scripts for each specific scenario and then writing scripts to make the change into the other animation of scenario (moving from sitting calming to quick hand gestures and eyes rolling, but wait we have to then transition to sad, but oh wait we need a smooth transition back to normal, now lets make that happen to everyone in this friggin room.) and making sure that it can handle all varieties that the 30 animations could possibly make, which is a shit ton fyi. This isn't considering the texture work, the modeling work, ai pathing for each possible reaction and animation as the model will move different and interact with the world differently. They would also have to take into consideration other ai that are shoving and push their way through as not to clip into each other. Then there is the generic sound work to be done, gotta make sure for each of the thirty scenarios AND the all the possible combinations that could occur you would need proper ambient sounds, sounds for interacting with the environment and any other miscellaneous noises you would need. And then you need to somehow make them all work in cohesion with each other to lower and rise to meet the demands you wanted of different audio levels. Now keep in a mind a team of people are doing this and the guy that does ai pathing is probably not going to have an everyday conversation with the guy who models the character, so you have miscommunication and the things you have to fix whenever something doesn't fit well together. Not to mention we still need to play test it, on top of the multiple times they would have to spend applying each thing to make sure the jenga tower of shit wouldn't immediately crash when running it. Oh look we got a single pub done!!!! And this is still all very vague and extremely simplified, the amount of time for each step (especially the horror maze that would be scripting and ai behaviors) would take a crazy amount of time just for this pub. Now we gotta replicate all of that into a giant open world space with a shitload of interiors. My brain is melting thinking of how long a game like that would take, not to mention it would probably be outdated when released. A good example of this is Overgrowth, 10 years in production with a single guy and he sure as hell doesn't have thirty different fucking animations for different kicks, punches, and grabs when the entirety of the game is about martial arts.
On the body topic, the male body in Skyrim was very idealized, muscular, attractive... but the female body was just a person. Kinda the same case for FO4, though the triangle and the base shape is the closest you've gotten to an idealized female body in a base Bethesda game as of late. It's no wonder why CBBE and all the waifu mods are so popular. Males have always looked good, and it's not like base Bethesda females are bad, they're just not good like the dudes are. CBBE base shape in Skyrim was crazy though, the outline was ok but the actual assets were way too big. The guy himself said you weren't really supposed to use it at the max weight, but then he made that the default. I'm not sure how SE is doing though.
I don't know why more companies don't do character customization like Saints Row does. Maybe add in a height slider as well.
im not sure thats a fair comparison, adding more animations to overgrowth would be like adding more animations to street fighter, it would make your opponents moves much harder to read, and therefore the combat system more muddled and inconsistant.
[QUOTE=WrathOfCat;52827262]im not sure thats a fair comparison, adding more animations to overgrowth would be like adding more animations to street fighter, it would make your opponents moves much harder to read, and therefore the combat system more muddled and inconsistant.[/QUOTE] The point still stands that even a bad game can take upwards of a year to complete, not to mention something with actual effort on something shitty like BSG creation kit or engine. And still no one has told me of a game that actually accomplishes the expectation they have, which is weird why it has somehow become their expectation. I am not saying to give up holding companies to a higher standard, but people will expect something without even thinking through the actual work required of it and then act disappointed when that lofty expectation wasnt met. It reminds me of when I was younger and heard about Jurassic Park Operation Genesis. I thought it would be where you could play as a dinosaur and roam forests interacting with other dinosaurs, I got something completely different and much more mundane but it was still an awesome game for the time. I feel hype and lack of knowledge in game production has created a pretty toxic mindset with a lot of games and it puts massive pressure on studios already having their arms twisted by the corporate section that runs them.
[QUOTE=jimbobjoe1234;52827251]I don't know why more companies don't do character customization like Saints Row does. Maybe add in a height slider as well.[/QUOTE] I guess maybe it's an issue with the climate right now? If a Bethesda game came out with a unironic boob slider from 2015 forwards, I'm sure heads would roll.
Chains man I've gotta say I think you're overestimating the problems. I don't think it's an easy thing to do, but you've way overblown how much effort stuff like that actualy is (admittedly, Bethesda use shit tools) the ability to copy, paste, edit goes a long way for making stuff in bulk, and random choice and key words are easily better sollutions than something highly detailed. NPCs are a very important part of an RPG, but bare minimum, Bethesda should at least be able to have someone sit in a chair in a way that's convincing and organizing some basic conversation actions.
All of this varied animations and generic tavern conversation could be done better with the help of machine learning. Animations are probably easier than believable speech synthesis, but I'm sure we'll reach both of them in the near future. For totally artificial voices, I think we have a long way to go still. But Apple is onto something with their [url=https://machinelearning.apple.com/2017/08/06/siri-voices.html]half-synthesized voices[/url]. We're soon over the hype phase of all this machine learning and AI stuff. While not exactly the same, I'm excited to see this implemented (please link if some game already utilizes this) in future games: [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0Gilv5wvY[/media] On another note, for new features, I'm really hoping for climbing in the next elder scrolls game.
[QUOTE=war_man333;52827410]All of this varied animations and generic tavern conversation could be done better with the help of machine learning. Animations are probably easier than believable speech synthesis, but I'm sure we'll reach both of them in the near future. For totally artificial voices, I think we have a long way to go still. But Apple is onto something with their [url=https://machinelearning.apple.com/2017/08/06/siri-voices.html]half-synthesized voices[/url]. We're soon over the hype phase of all this machine learning and AI stuff. While not exactly the same, I'm excited to see this implemented (please link if some game already utilizes this) in future games: [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0Gilv5wvY[/media] On another note, for new features, I'm really hoping for climbing in the next elder scrolls game.[/QUOTE] Holy fuck those animations are dumb smooth
[quote] wall of text [/quote] Nope. Having a dedicated animator make that many animations in Skyrim's behavioral outlay is actually quite straightforward. Amateur animators have made over 27000 animations for Skyrim in five years. The problem with skyrim's animations is the animator sucks. She openly admits this. She hated animating people, and made her animations with two, exactly two keyframes. Two. In 2011. To put this in perspective, the average animation in AvP2 (2001) has eight keyframes. [quote] CBBE [/quote] Calliente has no idea what a people looks like. Yes she deliberately stylized things, yes she did what she wanted, but as many verts in the breasts as the rest of the body, isn't particularly any different than the modeler in Skyrim making things as understated and gangly as she did. UNP is the goto body because you can make people bodies as well as *pron stra* and changing the morphology shows this pretty handily, UNP can handle it, CBBE not so much.
Climbing, swiming, flying, acrobatics, spears and... good writing, a new boldness to do things uncommon. Morrowind had a lot of awesome strange stuff, oblivion swapped everything for the most generic thing they could go for, skyrim's at that frustrating point where it's toned down enough to upset but involved enough that people won't really consider it a strong downside and'll praise it for being improved over the predecessor. I still await a game that has a good weapon skill system. One hand/two hand isn't a good dichtimony, but blade and blunt is only somewhat better, and morrowind just had too many weapon skills. But I think it'd honestly be nice if they worked on making it fun. I don't think I'd mind if they just used one melee weapon skill. I think Brawl, Melee, Throwing, Archery works. Maybe melee might be good if it were split pole/other, pole/blade/blunt. Sword- better defense Axe-More damage mace/hammer- treats armour as less. pole- Reach is a big advantage, but maybe polearms get in the way a bit indoors/get out of hand often. [I]I like the way assassins creed does polearms; they're an absolutely fantastic weapon to pick up, but Ezio'll drop em because they're the medieval equivelent of an assault rifle and not great for sneaky-stabby/social-social, or carrying around conveniently on your body. [/I] Shortbow-fast, lets you do acrobat shit Longbow-powerful, sucks if you run Crossbow-letting you prep the bolt is a pretty significant gameplay difference, I think doing light/heavy like bows would make it more fun/interesting. Repeating crossbow- Hilariously weak on it's own, good for poison and enchanting. Sling- Guards comment about how you must be a poor shepard, and you do a better throw if you move the right way before firing. Also easy to conceal/low quality ammo is easy to come by/you can use exotic projectiles. Dagger- a great weapon to use while grappling (cause grappling is super cool), a default weapon to switch to if you get disarmed, and it'd be way cheaper to get a dagger with an exotic material. Then they need to make stamina an interesting game mechanic (like, whoever bothered with stamina potions?) encourage players to switch weapons and spells more (like a dedicated button for throwing your weapon or adding disarms that force a secondary equip.) and add options to try and control an enemy's movement. Like I reckon if they got physical weapons solid, that'd be most of the battle. If they could make a fun game out of just deathmatch with steel/wood weapons, while not ignoring that spells will be added, they've got an addicting game for the casuals and all they need is good writing for the nerds that like that and non-combat options for the people who wanna do the rollplay. I realised I went full fanboy with a wishlist, but I think if they made the combat with mass-market appeal then they maybe wouldn't have to go with a dumb story or a lack of a developed nordic pantheon and strange creatures.
Imagine if Bethesda actually took the episodic approach to TES series where we'd get base game with all the content, then every now and then we'd get new content to the game, like mini expansions with actual effort put into them. To be honest, if this was done correctly, then I would gladly pay for something like this, like the new Hitman game.
[QUOTE=Peon Greenjoy;52828027]Imagine if Bethesda actually took the episodic approach to TES series where we'd get base game with all the content, then every now and then we'd get new content to the game, like mini expansions with actual effort put into them. To be honest, if this was done correctly, then I would gladly pay for something like this, like the new Hitman game.[/QUOTE] The thing is that sometimes I'd rather prefer them to make a sequel just so they can make engine upgrades. The games are drowning in content, both the vanilla variety and through mods, but each game has some dumb fucking hardcoded mess that mods can't fix.
[QUOTE=cdr248;52828083]The thing is that sometimes I'd rather prefer them to make a sequel just so they can make engine upgrades. The games are drowning in content, both the vanilla variety and through mods, but each game has some dumb fucking hardcoded mess that mods can't fix.[/QUOTE] If they actually make a well scaling future proof engine with accessible tools, it may as well last for many years onward. it's too much to ask for. Actually crazy how small the dev team was on Skyrim, it's no wonder. I also think Bethesda game studio is held down by their own publisher. Games clearly have so much potential, they make tenfold on them in revenue, but yet each new iteration suffers, it's like the publisher doesn't want to spend more money. On Fallout 4 they had slightly more people working, but yet it was dumbed down in so many ways, just not enough manpower to develop the game of such scale.
I don't think there's any publisher meddling here. Bethsoft seems to have full autonomy over their projects.
[QUOTE=27X;52827849]Calliente has no idea what a people looks like. Yes she deliberately stylized things, yes she did what she wanted, but as many verts in the breasts as the rest of the body, isn't particularly any different than the modeler in Skyrim making things as understated and gangly as she did. UNP is the goto body becuase you can make people bodes as well as *pron stra* and changing the morphology shows this pretty handily, UNP can handle it, CBBE not so much.[/QUOTE] I dunno about verts and breasts and bodies because I'm using UUNP and that's like UNP but for U and me(???) But the UUNP base shape is the CBBE base shape so that's what I'm talking about in terms of aesthetics. If CBBE was understated and gangly and so was Skyrim I consider that to be a positive -- it fits with the style of the game, doesn't it? Tbh I don't care what the body shape is like so long as it's distinctly feminine and somewhere near the level of conventionally attractive that the default male body is, so UNP and CBBE both did the job for me. Something to note is that the most popular body mod for males (sos) adds dicks, but besides that it makes next to no changes to the actual body shape set by Bethesda; IIRC it bulks up the thighs, defines the butt and pretty much nothing else.
Bethesda allocate resources weirdly and have a few hacks in their team (hence, model fixing projects. Obviously they've got very competent people, but there's obviously a couple of shitheads doing things wrong) I don't get why people get excited for big name voice actors, that's just a sign they're using budget poorly. Stewart was wasted in oblivion, and Bean wasn't especially noticeable. Von Snydoff... I'm willing to bet they could've hired a at least one guy for a year for the price one of these guys got for a few sessions, and when it comes to open world RPGs, one guy, let amok (they can't really do that, but anyhow) could've done a lot more than voice work. Also two games and still no return of morrowind dunmer voice, beyond a ghost who honestly sounded nowhere near as good. A damn shame cause I can fucking nail that voice and i'm no pro voice actor. I'm also horribly unemployed at the moment so if anyone can contact bethesda and ask them if they want a morrowind dunmer voice for cheap... I'll work for food.
I'm sitting here, thinking to myself, with all that bitching I do, maybe I should just fire up UE4 and make my own dream version of TES. :rollout: Funny enough, pretty sure if you'd take the best modders in Skyrim scene and put them on a project it might even result in a playable game.
What if the next Elder Scolls game just adds in a fucking gun?
[QUOTE=jimbobjoe1234;52828620]What if the next Elder Scolls game just adds in a fucking gun?[/QUOTE] You mean Fallout?
[QUOTE=jimbobjoe1234;52828620]What if the next Elder Scolls game just adds in a fucking gun?[/QUOTE] I'd be okay if it's a flintlock. Or a magical musket
[QUOTE=jimbobjoe1234;52828620]What if the next Elder Scolls game just adds in [B]a fucking gun[/B]?[/QUOTE] So two of the most popular kinds of mods in one? Should prove popular.
Honestly the Dwemer make fucking robots so a gun is not out of the question, considering how much less advanced that is. Does anyone renember the Morrowind mega-mech lying around in pieces inside one of the Red Mountain dungeons? Dwemer managed to skip the AI thing by slapping soul gems onto things, but making a fully functional automaton with working joints, capable of walking and even attacking? That's insane as far as tech accomplishments go. Flintlocks, blunderbusses and muskets would be ok and would be a nice addition to the Marksman perk so you have 3 weapon categories to choose from, bows, crossbows and guns. Ranty but I also would've liked Dawnguard to have added small sidearm crossbows like what Geralt has in TW3. Skyrim allows for some crazy hybrid spellsword builds so a Bloodborney aggressive sword + crossbow/flintlock setup would be cool. [QUOTE=DiscoInferno;52828674]So two of the most popular kinds of mods in one? Should prove popular.[/QUOTE] aren't fo4 sex mods controlled by you shooting guns that trigger anims?
[QUOTE=MrHeadHopper;52828691] aren't fo4 sex mods controlled by you shooting guns that trigger anims?[/QUOTE] You see, most people would look at this, have a chuckle, move on. In the meantime, I'm already wondering if you could make a mod where you can commit suicide, combine it with this and then shoot yourself in the face with sex.
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