I suppose this is the burden of knowing the ins and outs of cg art. We can tell if something was done by an amateur, or was done half-assed. I'm sure there are plenty of people who think it's graphics are something short of mindnumbingly amazing, but they also have no knowledge of the digital arts.
I'm now unsure if I want to get this game...I think I might just wait for Neverwinter Nights 2. Although my brother may have bought it, so I'll most likely play it then.
Indeed, as Daz said, most of us are cg artists. taht said, we're all forever screwed to always have the 'eye' when it comes to games and prevents us from fully enjoying them.
Even for all it's bugs, stale gameplay, bad art, etc. games like Oblivious really appeal to me and I'll likely play through it at least once. I just hope I can go very numb to the faults very quickly. The experience would be far better.
A quick fyi for those struggling with fps, a little bird told me that shadows are the #1 offender and turning them off along with spec. distance should bolster performance a bit. Heh, welcome to 'next gen.'
been playing now for some hours, I guess I'm lucky, as it has been VERY stable, and with a 7800gt it runs quite well at max settings, some stuff like faces are flawed, but I became quite good at looking past that.
I find battles to be quite more physical now compared to morrowind.
Oblivion certainly feels more of an adventure/action game with some roleplaying elements, so that might be why people feel it has been dumbed down, but I like it, alot.
bethesda wont respond to any attempts at support assistance. i've called them to no avail, emailed to no avail, no support posts on the forums are getting answered.
yet they manage to update thier front page with new glowing reviews every day. THAT is what angers me the most. The least you can do, is let everyone know you are aware of the problems. When my prototype is released, I plan on releasing videos of performace on common system configurations, or at least a demo of some kind. I'm pretty sure if a demo was released with the errors the full item contained it would have saved thousands of people from spending money on this title now.
i still dont understand the 'lets release it bugged with no demo' trend.
[ QUOTE ]
I'm pretty sure if a demo was released with the errors the full item contained it would have saved thousands of people from spending money on this title now.
i still dont understand the 'lets release it bugged with no demo' trend.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hmm! I think you might've figured this one out!
At any rate, any notion that Bethesda might not be aware of (or care about) problems which a gazillion people have been griping about is unlikely and can be dropped. They know, they're just not ready to make an official statement on the issue yet. Maybe they're madly churning out a patch even as we speak. I know, it feels better as a consumer to get information than not to, but developers don't generally hold back without a good enough reason. Be patient, I'm sure they're on it.
Oh please explain how lockpicking is supposed to work, I can't figure it out. Is it a timing thing?
Frank the Avenger
[/ QUOTE ]
Push up a pin over and over again. You should notice there are two different ways it will go up, either it jumps up really quickly or slides up slowly. When it goes up slowly, it will also make a different sound with two clicks instead of one.
The trick is to keep pushing up the pin over and over until it goes up slowly and then click when it hits the top. You still need fast reflexes, especially on hard/very hard locks, but it's far easier than trying to lock it in on the fast rises. And luckily time doesn't pass when you pick locks and there's no penalty for missing a chance to click in a slow pin, so you can take your time.
As for all this black aura business, I love the game! Oblivion has basically taken over my life. I've had no gameplay hindering bugs since that one part of Skingrad and tweaking the .ini has improved performance/looks somewhat. More importantly the game is fun, there's always a bunch of quests to do, combat is fast and furious (I don't know where this "boring combat" idea is coming from), I'm constantly finding new places out in the countryside, quests are varied and intereting, and if anyone knows where to find some empty Grand soul stone thingies for the love of god tell me.
Everythings been working fine for me on max settings.
The voice acting is really bothering me though. Theres no emotion what so ever and the cuts in mid conversation just kill it for me. Oh and the fact you can just teleport around using the map which has already been completely revealed makes me miss morrowind. Everything else you've all already mentioned about the ui bugs me as well.
While installing I was kind of reluctant, with all the performance issues that have come up. I'm happy to say I haven't ran into any of the issues mentioned here. I've noticed some weird flickering where polys would sort of remove themselves (like the normals were flipped for a quick frame or two). Not sure what that's about. I'm not too concerned with it, as it's happened twice and only for a very short moment.
I have a 2.5ghz AMD64, 1gb DDR400, and a 512mb radeon x1600 pro; I seem to be getting anywhere between 30 and 60 fps at 1024x768 on max settings.
As for the game itself, I haven't played long enough to judge it much, but so far it's everything I would expect from a Morrowind sequel. Although, I'm quite annoyed by the new theft system. My main source of entertainment in Morrowind was sneaking in homes, swiping everything (including silverware) and selling it to other folks. Now, you can't even sell stolen goods, as they're marked and nobody wants them. Maybe advancing in the Thieves Guild will have some outcome on my ability to get rid of my loot.
I like it how the beggars suddenly switch from old-beggar voice to imperial-standard voice when you check for the latest gossip, then back to old-beggar voice as a bye.
I pretty much agree with what Dazz has said, but through sheer pig-headedness im gonna play this thing, OK visuals and inventory system are poo, but im really starting to like the game ...
I found the way to make your character not look like a pile of crap is to not mess with skin tones at all , and dont mess too much with the shape, also turn off self shadowing ... this sorta helps ... but yes when i loaded the game up at home , and looked at the photoshop filter loading screens and the utterly terrable lighting on characters i felt sad for the fact it could (and should) look so much better. the only think thats really got to me now is it runs like shit on my p4 3.4,2GB ram,GF6600 GT. even on lowest settings.
I installed it yesterday and I actually lost 5lbs over night. I also woke up to look in the mirror this morning to discover all signs of aging gone. And that is just the beginning my friends, since installing yesterday afternoon my penis has grown 3 inches!!! I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would have a 4 inch penis but now I do!!! Man, I love this game!
Seriously though ... I only got to play it a little bit yesterday at work but it ran great on the default high settings on my work machine during the interior sequences. I never made it outside though so I'm not sure how it's going to do there.
Not as good on my home machine but still very playable on medium settings at 800x600. I never made it outside at home either though so we'll see how it does then.
I thought the character creation was actually pretty fun; I made a really goofy looking bastard at work yesterday that had all of my co-workers laughing. I really like the combat as I've never been a fan of typical RPG combat where it simulates rolling to hit and rolling for damage.
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what a boreing game. I cant believe I bought this...
-R
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Just like Morrowind probably It is really strange that they were able to generate such a hype given its predecessors quality (which are really only for hardcore RPG players).
well I and several people I know were hyped because morrowind was so enjoyable.. To get the enjoyment really required an investment of time and imagination though, and if your want your adventure handed to you on a plate without actively engaging in the roleplaying, then this probably won't be the game for you.
For example I played a warrior lizard man- originally bent on freeing his kin sold to slavery, but slowly corrupted by power forgot about them and even sold out their hiding place location. After time his power had brought two large houses, filled to the brim with riches and exotic weapons, and renown throught the lands- even killed a god no less and captured his soul. After his great adventures however he realised he had lost sight of his origins. With only the barest essentials, he left his posessions aside and ventured forth to free the remnants of enslaved argonians.
The game was only the stage for my story, the creators didn't define any of that, except that there were people enslaved and adventures to be had.</nerd>
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It is really strange that they were able to generate such a hype given its predecessors quality
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JKMakowka, you do know that Morrowind won game of the year awards from a large amount of sources in 2002, right? Bad games don't get given awards like that.
Na... maybe I should have expressed that differently.
Morrowind sure was great in many aspects (and not so great in many others), but it was a game for a special kind of gamer (hardcore RPG player) and not for everyone.
Thus it is strange that they were able to generate hype for this game in 'not hardcore RPG' players.
Hmm, yeah... and this also might explain why it feels a tad dumbed-down and console-like (kinda like what happened to Deus Ex 2!).
Stupid thing is, I still haven't played the game, I've got it on preorder but Amazon say they won't have stock in for 2 more weeks... hmm anyway I wouldn't get the chance to play it until then, too much work to do
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Morrowind sure was great in many aspects (and not so great in many others), but it was a game for a special kind of gamer (hardcore RPG player) and not for everyone.
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That's not true. Morrowind's runaway success was on the Xbox, not the PC. The PC sold very well for it's time, but the Xbox version broke the million unit mark (check the sites that break down sales for 2003-ish). Those buying it were not all hardcore RPG folks. It's console success is in it's GTA style gameplay, which greatly appealed to the Xbox crowd.
Everyone likes fantasy, whether it be in tiny doses or not.
True true, Nitzmoff - I think a lot of the Game of the Year awards were actually based on the XBox version and from XBox magazines... consoles don't really strike me as the "hardcore rpg player" type of thing
Plus I know of several people who previously only really played sports games who loved Morrowind.
i don't really get the hate for the auto-face generator stuff. yes, we're professionals, but as professionals we can appreciate the absolutely massive amount of asset production that goes into a title like this. the face generator allows for a ridiculous variety of faces, which is ideal for both the PC and for NPC variations... and it's really hitting the sweet spot for Oblivion's target market, who want to be able to tweak their character's face so specifically.
so yeah, i guess the faces could have been better, but with the same amount of resources/time allocated for a more "hand-crafted" approach, there wouldn't be anywhere near the amount of variety presented. and that would be a big immersion breaker among other things.
and the teleport map function doesn't force you to use it nor does it automatically place everything on the map--start traveling through the wilderness and you'll discover plenty of shrines, dungeon sites, camps, etc. that don't get marked on your map until you find them. given the very large scale of the world, and the fact that some people are just not going to want to travel and retravel certain routes over the long haul, i think it's a fairly elegant design solution.
so anyhow. like morrowind, the environment is still better than the character stuff, but the gap has closed. I missed the boat on Morrowind earlier so when i tried to play it more recently, i just couldn't, the characters look so terrible. So sure, the characters in Oblivion may not knock your custom-knitted socks off, but they're a quantum leap for the franchise
the inventory system is also about the best implementation so far in terms of making it work for PC and 360... does anyone remember how stinky the Deus Ex Invisible War inventory was? Yeah. It could have been like that.
Yes, given the choice I would probably rather have the more traditional implementation too, but this is a pretty good compromise given that they're shipping for two very different systems. And as much as we all love cocking around with the more traditional inventory space, the way this inventory sorts I can get stuff faster.
i got my own gripes though, it's not all fanboy for me! still doesn't run very well on even my fairly strong system, and the Oblivion plane looks uncannily similar to the "hell" themed levels from UT2k3. which made me laugh. but overall i'm enjoying it like i've not really enjoyed a game of this type in quite some time.
so yeah, i guess the faces could have been better, but with the same amount of resources/time allocated for a more "hand-crafted" approach, there wouldn't be anywhere near the amount of variety presented. and that would be a big immersion breaker among other things.
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Heh, I've actually *really* held back on what I thought of the character work in this game up to now, but gauss is egging me on! ;-p
Having worked with and even helped develop morph target based systems for customizable heads, I'm not buying the argument (which we've had before regarding EQ2) that that's why stuff looks so poor. Yes we are professionals, and as such we are inclined to be less forgiving when it comes to bad looking stuff. I make videogame characters all day long, so I dont know how I can possibly look at a game and not judge that aspect of it with the same eyes, regardless of how the content was made.
I dont see the 'hate' as being directed at the principle, so much as the results. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with using something like facegen, as long as the results look good. In this case however, they largely do not. Just because a characters head wasn't individually hand crafted, doesn't mean that it has to have nasty stretched UV's all over it, a weird bump map and a really odd skin shader that doesn't work too well. Conversations in the game are made hard when I'm looking at a character thinking WTF?! Sometimes the faces are OK, but when they're bad, they're *really* bad. Literally teetering on the edge of what my mind reads as human (for the humanoid chars that is!). The poor quality is just a real shame that's all. A missed oppurtunity. Some of these faces don't belong in a game that has the potential to provide fantastic vistas so in that respect I think Art direction failed.
However, after implementing some of the tricks in the Oblivion forums, I've gotten significant fps boosts and am now quite enjoying the game, so that's good!
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Some of these faces don't belong in a game that has the potential to provide fantastic vistas so in that respect I think Art direction failed.
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Unfortunately this was true of Morrowind too. Those weren't even parametric, they were static, and still some looked really awful. It's a big shame, it seems like whoever's in charge of the environments is having a field day (pun alert!) while the character artists and lead are really struggling...
I'm glad someone found a way to tweak the inventory system and HUD to be less console-y, from screenshots the default doesn't look too nice to my eye. I mostly liked the way they handled it in Morrowind, but gauss if what you say is true then I'll give a shot at sticking with the standard Oblivion inventory
you're welcome to share URLs for optimizing, i still need get mine to the point where a gallop through the verdant countryside doesn't end up with less-than-galloping framerates.
and yes, i admit there are a number of the faces that are bad, in fact very bad. most of the "very old" faces, and any of those elven races that just have a normal human face that has been y-stretched in a very peculiar fashion. i guess i don't like the lizard people mostly on a design basis, because they look like b-movie rubber masks. they look like very realistic rubber masks, though, i really believe i'm looking at real rubber
i'll refine my defense of the character faces. yes, there's still a lot of shoddy work there. and there's no excuse for so many NPCs that look like really, really creepy. so i would refine my argument as saying that if you're careful about using it, you can really come up with some great looking faces. i'm quite proud of my vaguely russel crowe in gladiator-looking nord warrior chap i've created. i also created a few very neat looking orcs.
i agree that just because a player can get (with a little patience) good results with the system doesn't justify a lot of very assy looking NPCs or some uneven workmanship with regards to UVs and the like.
but they're still about a billion times better than Morrowind. I know that's not really an excuse, but they were really, really, really behind the curve with Morrowind's characters, and now they're just mediocre, and not making-gauss-not-play-the-game-at-all bad. that's progress, right?
Running the coolbits registry mod for nVidia cards, and changing the 'draw frames ahead' rate from 3 to 0. Need to untick 'vSync' for this to work. The trade off is ever so slight tearing on occasion (for me at least).
Making sure my nVidia drivers were current, and settting them to 'highest performance' as opposed to 'highest quality'.
Defragging C: and *then* installing the game.
Running msconfig.exe and killing the vast majority of windows background programs.
I don't even remember them in Morrowmind. I played it on Xbox. I shall have to have a look.
Okay, so it wasn't 3 months until I came back...hehe.
Anyhow, after playing a lot over the past day and a half, I've gotta say I'm loving it! It feels like the next generation of morrowind and I loved morrowind. As far as the graphics go, yeah sure, it's not all picture perfect. I've noticed a few technical issues, but for the most part everthing is looking really nice. The characters on the XBOX 360 versions looks much softer than the screens you posted Daz, which to me, really helps with some of the funny shading I've noticed from time to time. The environments look great, the weapons and armor looks great, but as someone said before, they are doing quantity over quality.
Personally, the best games are usually not the prettiest as I find more time spent on the gameplay usually results in less time on the graphics. While we certainly see exceptions to that, I think it's a safe bet that it happens a lot. I would have to say out of anything that has really stuck out as poor quality for me, it is the voice acting which seems very much the same despite the context of the conversations. And sure, Non-American accents would help sell the atmosphere even more. <shrugs> The hand to hand combat feels really good, but still isn't where it should be in my opinion. Getting smacked in the face only to reel back and stumble is pretty sweet though! Force feedback helps on this one ! I've only scratched the surface of what the game has to offer in it's grand scheme of "play whoever you want, however you want", but I've not felt slighted for my money once. The sum of it's parts more than make up for any particular shortcomings for me.
I can't speak for the people playing the pc version, but the xbox version thus far has been solid, enjoyable and a true next installment in the series. If you enjoyed Morrowind, then I'm 99.9% sure you're going to love Oblivion.
-ps- I forgot to add, the animations are pretty weak and they were pretty weak in Morrowind. I'm not sure if their animation team was overtaxed or under experienced or what. I'm sure there are some good animations around the world somewhere, but if there are I have not found them yet.
We should all jump in and apply to Bethesda as character artists and animators, that way we'll know for sure what's going on
Oh yeah, and if you're making a new male evil character for Oblivion, "Shadowbeard" would be a pretty apt name
Plus "Shadowbeard the Assassin" sounds cool
Got my CE yesterday and played it for about six hours. As far as I've played, I must say that this game rocks!
Problems I've encountered are the installer crashing after install and giving me a dx9x dll error, the intro not showing except for a tiny 100x100px square on the upper left, the age slider during character creation fucking up my efforts and lousy mip mapping on the terrain (which might be a bug - it just looks wrong). Some of the faces look shitty, too - even I could create better looking ones (and god knows I suck at faces). The faces don't screw up the game for me though.
Everything else is just awesome. Some of the sidequests are so full of ideas and funny stuff that it just makes me want to play more and more.
As for the framerate issues, the game runs ok for me (after disabling the joystick in the ini). I play on an AthlonXP 2.8, GF6800, 2.5GB RAM.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot:
- I can assign my mousebuttons to whatever I like, no problem with that.
- Light and heavy armour do have very different influences on my char.
- Maps and automatic minimaps do exist.
As for the framerate issues, the game runs ok for me (after disabling the joystick in the ini). I play on an AthlonXP 2.8, GF6800, 2.5GB RAM.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot:
- I can assign my mousebuttons to whatever I like, no problem with that.
- Light and heavy armour do have very different influences on my char.
- Maps and automatic minimaps do exist.
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Care to share the knowledge? How do you diable the joystick, and where are these minimaps you speak of?
There's something about editing the .ini to set "useJoystick" to 0 or something. Maybe search the .ini file for references to "joy" and see what comes up.
Neolith, as for the terrain thing, it's not a bug, but Virdog said you can edit the .ini to get rid of the nasty long-range mipmapping, I can't remember what the setting was, something about cell range maybe? However he also said it impacts on performance so it might not work too well if you don't have an ultra-high-end system.
has anyone accidently become a vampire? hope theres a cure.
The more im playing this game the more im loving it. I just hope its as big as Morrowind, 6 months into that game i was still finding secret daedric caverns hidden in normal caves. Im trying to go down the master thief route its just so much fun pick pocketing guards.
Haha yeah Thermidor, that's part of what I liked so much about Morrowind - the fact that even after playing for months, playing several different characters and following different sub-quests, you can STILL find new and cool things that you never knew about before... really keeps the interest up.
You can do morphable faces well, like Daz says. We've got a couple former Bethsoft artists at Mythic and I talked to some of their character folks at an IGDA thing about six months ago. They mentioned to me that they were hand painting all of their normal maps and that they thought that once they had practiced enough they were getting as good results as you could get with a normal map. I didn't take the time to argue the case for high poly models, but it seems clear to me that they made some poor choices about their face system.
However, I do agree that we as character artists place WAY too much emphasis on polish of the characters faces. I know I've made this mistake many times before - assuming all players will pay as much attention as I do. For big games like Oblivion providing lots of different looks tends to be more satisfying to the average player than a few, highly polished looks.
I'm sure the artists working on this game had to make some tradeoffs to achieve such a big, deep game world.
"I had somone come up to me and ask "does anyone know what the fines are for doing necrophilia in this town" "
I ran into that women. Depending on what you say, she'll also mention that it's not her "first offence". I'm guessing she's an old Morrowind character but I don't actually know.
Even better, I was talking to an Argonian about some local cuisine and he mentioned "peppered deer penis". That's classy.
As for curing vampirism, go into some chapels and ask about a cure, they'll send you on a quest. Unfortunately, I can't beat the quest because it makes you collect items I can't find. They don't give you any hints, either.
Being a vampire is such a hassle because the sun will damage you after a while and it totally ruins your face. Breaking into houses to feed on people in their sleep is cool, though.
To get the automatic map press the tab button, click on the compass on the lower right and in the row above that click the very left button.
To cure vampirism you either have to do a pretty hard quest that requires you to get some of the bigger soul gems (and they're very hard to get) or you go into a chapel to pray. If you've been a really good char (not stealing, no murder, always take the good path etc.) there is a good chance that the nine heal you instantly.
If you become a vampire and (and don't want to be one) try to get rid of that as soon as possible. Because after a few days no one will trade with you and you'll die after a few seconds in the sun...
If you're still having performance issues try turning grass off. Hit tilde to bring up the console and type in 'tg' and hit enter (then close the console).
If you have vampirsm in your current affects list its too late to do the cure disease/pray at shrine trick. But if you go back to a couple of days earlyer you will see a disease thats draining your fatigue, thats the time to use a cure disease potion.
On the performance from , i just caqnt seem to get my fps up really, once i get in a fight , if theres more than 2 people in the fight it chugs like a sob. still loving it tho.
Replies
I'm now unsure if I want to get this game...I think I might just wait for Neverwinter Nights 2. Although my brother may have bought it, so I'll most likely play it then.
-ps- better make it 4 months, I scooped up Ghost Recon too! 8D
Even for all it's bugs, stale gameplay, bad art, etc. games like Oblivious really appeal to me and I'll likely play through it at least once. I just hope I can go very numb to the faults very quickly. The experience would be far better.
A quick fyi for those struggling with fps, a little bird told me that shadows are the #1 offender and turning them off along with spec. distance should bolster performance a bit. Heh, welcome to 'next gen.'
I find battles to be quite more physical now compared to morrowind.
Oblivion certainly feels more of an adventure/action game with some roleplaying elements, so that might be why people feel it has been dumbed down, but I like it, alot.
back to the game...
yet they manage to update thier front page with new glowing reviews every day. THAT is what angers me the most. The least you can do, is let everyone know you are aware of the problems. When my prototype is released, I plan on releasing videos of performace on common system configurations, or at least a demo of some kind. I'm pretty sure if a demo was released with the errors the full item contained it would have saved thousands of people from spending money on this title now.
i still dont understand the 'lets release it bugged with no demo' trend.
I'm pretty sure if a demo was released with the errors the full item contained it would have saved thousands of people from spending money on this title now.
i still dont understand the 'lets release it bugged with no demo' trend.
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Hmm! I think you might've figured this one out!
At any rate, any notion that Bethesda might not be aware of (or care about) problems which a gazillion people have been griping about is unlikely and can be dropped. They know, they're just not ready to make an official statement on the issue yet. Maybe they're madly churning out a patch even as we speak. I know, it feels better as a consumer to get information than not to, but developers don't generally hold back without a good enough reason. Be patient, I'm sure they're on it.
Oh please explain how lockpicking is supposed to work, I can't figure it out. Is it a timing thing?
Frank the Avenger
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Push up a pin over and over again. You should notice there are two different ways it will go up, either it jumps up really quickly or slides up slowly. When it goes up slowly, it will also make a different sound with two clicks instead of one.
The trick is to keep pushing up the pin over and over until it goes up slowly and then click when it hits the top. You still need fast reflexes, especially on hard/very hard locks, but it's far easier than trying to lock it in on the fast rises. And luckily time doesn't pass when you pick locks and there's no penalty for missing a chance to click in a slow pin, so you can take your time.
As for all this black aura business, I love the game! Oblivion has basically taken over my life. I've had no gameplay hindering bugs since that one part of Skingrad and tweaking the .ini has improved performance/looks somewhat. More importantly the game is fun, there's always a bunch of quests to do, combat is fast and furious (I don't know where this "boring combat" idea is coming from), I'm constantly finding new places out in the countryside, quests are varied and intereting, and if anyone knows where to find some empty Grand soul stone thingies for the love of god tell me.
http://www.liztail.com/obv_magic_screen.jpg
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=289344
The voice acting is really bothering me though. Theres no emotion what so ever and the cuts in mid conversation just kill it for me. Oh and the fact you can just teleport around using the map which has already been completely revealed makes me miss morrowind. Everything else you've all already mentioned about the ui bugs me as well.
While installing I was kind of reluctant, with all the performance issues that have come up. I'm happy to say I haven't ran into any of the issues mentioned here. I've noticed some weird flickering where polys would sort of remove themselves (like the normals were flipped for a quick frame or two). Not sure what that's about. I'm not too concerned with it, as it's happened twice and only for a very short moment.
I have a 2.5ghz AMD64, 1gb DDR400, and a 512mb radeon x1600 pro; I seem to be getting anywhere between 30 and 60 fps at 1024x768 on max settings.
As for the game itself, I haven't played long enough to judge it much, but so far it's everything I would expect from a Morrowind sequel. Although, I'm quite annoyed by the new theft system. My main source of entertainment in Morrowind was sneaking in homes, swiping everything (including silverware) and selling it to other folks. Now, you can't even sell stolen goods, as they're marked and nobody wants them. Maybe advancing in the Thieves Guild will have some outcome on my ability to get rid of my loot.
We'll see. So far, I'm liking the game very much.
I found the way to make your character not look like a pile of crap is to not mess with skin tones at all , and dont mess too much with the shape, also turn off self shadowing ... this sorta helps ... but yes when i loaded the game up at home , and looked at the photoshop filter loading screens and the utterly terrable lighting on characters i felt sad for the fact it could (and should) look so much better. the only think thats really got to me now is it runs like shit on my p4 3.4,2GB ram,GF6600 GT. even on lowest settings.
ahh well.
Seriously though ... I only got to play it a little bit yesterday at work but it ran great on the default high settings on my work machine during the interior sequences. I never made it outside though so I'm not sure how it's going to do there.
Not as good on my home machine but still very playable on medium settings at 800x600. I never made it outside at home either though so we'll see how it does then.
I thought the character creation was actually pretty fun; I made a really goofy looking bastard at work yesterday that had all of my co-workers laughing. I really like the combat as I've never been a fan of typical RPG combat where it simulates rolling to hit and rolling for damage.
-R
what a boreing game. I cant believe I bought this...
-R
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Just like Morrowind probably
For example I played a warrior lizard man- originally bent on freeing his kin sold to slavery, but slowly corrupted by power forgot about them and even sold out their hiding place location. After time his power had brought two large houses, filled to the brim with riches and exotic weapons, and renown throught the lands- even killed a god no less and captured his soul. After his great adventures however he realised he had lost sight of his origins. With only the barest essentials, he left his posessions aside and ventured forth to free the remnants of enslaved argonians.
The game was only the stage for my story, the creators didn't define any of that, except that there were people enslaved and adventures to be had.</nerd>
whats your pc like astro?
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My home comp:
P4 2.4
1GB RAM
Geforce 6600GT
Not exactly sure what is on my work comp except that it has a slightly faster AMD processor, a 6800GT and 2GB RAM.
It is really strange that they were able to generate such a hype given its predecessors quality
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JKMakowka, you do know that Morrowind won game of the year awards from a large amount of sources in 2002, right? Bad games don't get given awards like that.
Morrowind sure was great in many aspects (and not so great in many others), but it was a game for a special kind of gamer (hardcore RPG player) and not for everyone.
Thus it is strange that they were able to generate hype for this game in 'not hardcore RPG' players.
Stupid thing is, I still haven't played the game, I've got it on preorder but Amazon say they won't have stock in for 2 more weeks... hmm anyway I wouldn't get the chance to play it until then, too much work to do
Morrowind sure was great in many aspects (and not so great in many others), but it was a game for a special kind of gamer (hardcore RPG player) and not for everyone.
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That's not true. Morrowind's runaway success was on the Xbox, not the PC. The PC sold very well for it's time, but the Xbox version broke the million unit mark (check the sites that break down sales for 2003-ish). Those buying it were not all hardcore RPG folks. It's console success is in it's GTA style gameplay, which greatly appealed to the Xbox crowd.
Everyone likes fantasy, whether it be in tiny doses or not.
Plus I know of several people who previously only really played sports games who loved Morrowind.
so yeah, i guess the faces could have been better, but with the same amount of resources/time allocated for a more "hand-crafted" approach, there wouldn't be anywhere near the amount of variety presented. and that would be a big immersion breaker among other things.
and the teleport map function doesn't force you to use it
so anyhow. like morrowind, the environment is still better than the character stuff, but the gap has closed. I missed the boat on Morrowind earlier so when i tried to play it more recently, i just couldn't, the characters look so terrible. So sure, the characters in Oblivion may not knock your custom-knitted socks off, but they're a quantum leap for the franchise
the inventory system is also about the best implementation so far in terms of making it work for PC and 360... does anyone remember how stinky the Deus Ex Invisible War inventory was? Yeah. It could have been like that.
Yes, given the choice I would probably rather have the more traditional implementation too, but this is a pretty good compromise given that they're shipping for two very different systems. And as much as we all love cocking around with the more traditional inventory space, the way this inventory sorts I can get stuff faster.
i got my own gripes though, it's not all fanboy for me!
so yeah, i guess the faces could have been better, but with the same amount of resources/time allocated for a more "hand-crafted" approach, there wouldn't be anywhere near the amount of variety presented. and that would be a big immersion breaker among other things.
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Heh, I've actually *really* held back on what I thought of the character work in this game up to now, but gauss is egging me on! ;-p
Having worked with and even helped develop morph target based systems for customizable heads, I'm not buying the argument (which we've had before regarding EQ2) that that's why stuff looks so poor. Yes we are professionals, and as such we are inclined to be less forgiving when it comes to bad looking stuff. I make videogame characters all day long, so I dont know how I can possibly look at a game and not judge that aspect of it with the same eyes, regardless of how the content was made.
I dont see the 'hate' as being directed at the principle, so much as the results. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with using something like facegen, as long as the results look good. In this case however, they largely do not. Just because a characters head wasn't individually hand crafted, doesn't mean that it has to have nasty stretched UV's all over it, a weird bump map and a really odd skin shader that doesn't work too well. Conversations in the game are made hard when I'm looking at a character thinking WTF?! Sometimes the faces are OK, but when they're bad, they're *really* bad. Literally teetering on the edge of what my mind reads as human (for the humanoid chars that is!). The poor quality is just a real shame that's all. A missed oppurtunity. Some of these faces don't belong in a game that has the potential to provide fantastic vistas so in that respect I think Art direction failed.
However, after implementing some of the tricks in the Oblivion forums, I've gotten significant fps boosts and am now quite enjoying the game, so that's good!
Some of these faces don't belong in a game that has the potential to provide fantastic vistas so in that respect I think Art direction failed.
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Unfortunately this was true of Morrowind too. Those weren't even parametric, they were static, and still some looked really awful. It's a big shame, it seems like whoever's in charge of the environments is having a field day (pun alert!) while the character artists and lead are really struggling...
I'm glad someone found a way to tweak the inventory system and HUD to be less console-y, from screenshots the default doesn't look too nice to my eye. I mostly liked the way they handled it in Morrowind, but gauss if what you say is true then I'll give a shot at sticking with the standard Oblivion inventory
and yes, i admit there are a number of the faces that are bad, in fact very bad. most of the "very old" faces, and any of those elven races that just have a normal human face that has been y-stretched in a very peculiar fashion. i guess i don't like the lizard people mostly on a design basis, because they look like b-movie rubber masks. they look like very realistic rubber masks, though, i really believe i'm looking at real rubber
i'll refine my defense of the character faces. yes, there's still a lot of shoddy work there. and there's no excuse for so many NPCs that look like really, really creepy. so i would refine my argument as saying that if you're careful about using it, you can really come up with some great looking faces. i'm quite proud of my vaguely russel crowe in gladiator-looking nord warrior chap i've created. i also created a few very neat looking orcs.
i agree that just because a player can get (with a little patience) good results with the system doesn't justify a lot of very assy looking NPCs or some uneven workmanship with regards to UVs and the like.
but they're still about a billion times better than Morrowind. I know that's not really an excuse, but they were really, really, really behind the curve with Morrowind's characters, and now they're just mediocre, and not making-gauss-not-play-the-game-at-all bad. that's progress, right?
Turning off self shadowing (doesn't actually seem to work properly anyway), turning specular distance to low.
Tweaks to the ini. Specifically: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=295524
Running the coolbits registry mod for nVidia cards, and changing the 'draw frames ahead' rate from 3 to 0. Need to untick 'vSync' for this to work. The trade off is ever so slight tearing on occasion (for me at least).
Making sure my nVidia drivers were current, and settting them to 'highest performance' as opposed to 'highest quality'.
Defragging C: and *then* installing the game.
Running msconfig.exe and killing the vast majority of windows background programs.
I don't even remember them in Morrowmind. I played it on Xbox. I shall have to have a look.
Anyhow, after playing a lot over the past day and a half, I've gotta say I'm loving it! It feels like the next generation of morrowind and I loved morrowind. As far as the graphics go, yeah sure, it's not all picture perfect. I've noticed a few technical issues, but for the most part everthing is looking really nice. The characters on the XBOX 360 versions looks much softer than the screens you posted Daz, which to me, really helps with some of the funny shading I've noticed from time to time. The environments look great, the weapons and armor looks great, but as someone said before, they are doing quantity over quality.
Personally, the best games are usually not the prettiest as I find more time spent on the gameplay usually results in less time on the graphics. While we certainly see exceptions to that, I think it's a safe bet that it happens a lot. I would have to say out of anything that has really stuck out as poor quality for me, it is the voice acting which seems very much the same despite the context of the conversations. And sure, Non-American accents would help sell the atmosphere even more. <shrugs> The hand to hand combat feels really good, but still isn't where it should be in my opinion. Getting smacked in the face only to reel back and stumble is pretty sweet though! Force feedback helps on this one
I can't speak for the people playing the pc version, but the xbox version thus far has been solid, enjoyable and a true next installment in the series. If you enjoyed Morrowind, then I'm 99.9% sure you're going to love Oblivion.
-ps- I forgot to add, the animations are pretty weak and they were pretty weak in Morrowind. I'm not sure if their animation team was overtaxed or under experienced or what. I'm sure there are some good animations around the world somewhere, but if there are I have not found them yet.
Oh yeah, and if you're making a new male evil character for Oblivion, "Shadowbeard" would be a pretty apt name
Plus "Shadowbeard the Assassin" sounds cool
I'm hoping for some thirdparty exporters to be written, and possibly some way to replace some animations?
Oh and, a new great plugin I found, one that fixes the bouncy thirdperson camera:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=295459
uriel needed to be more epic, like yoda!
Wasn't sure if this had been sceen.
Problems I've encountered are the installer crashing after install and giving me a dx9x dll error, the intro not showing except for a tiny 100x100px square on the upper left, the age slider during character creation fucking up my efforts and lousy mip mapping on the terrain (which might be a bug - it just looks wrong). Some of the faces look shitty, too - even I could create better looking ones (and god knows I suck at faces). The faces don't screw up the game for me though.
Everything else is just awesome. Some of the sidequests are so full of ideas and funny stuff that it just makes me want to play more and more.
As for the framerate issues, the game runs ok for me (after disabling the joystick in the ini). I play on an AthlonXP 2.8, GF6800, 2.5GB RAM.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot:
- I can assign my mousebuttons to whatever I like, no problem with that.
- Light and heavy armour do have very different influences on my char.
- Maps and automatic minimaps do exist.
As for the framerate issues, the game runs ok for me (after disabling the joystick in the ini). I play on an AthlonXP 2.8, GF6800, 2.5GB RAM.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot:
- I can assign my mousebuttons to whatever I like, no problem with that.
- Light and heavy armour do have very different influences on my char.
- Maps and automatic minimaps do exist.
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Care to share the knowledge? How do you diable the joystick, and where are these minimaps you speak of?
Neolith, as for the terrain thing, it's not a bug, but Virdog said you can edit the .ini to get rid of the nasty long-range mipmapping, I can't remember what the setting was, something about cell range maybe? However he also said it impacts on performance so it might not work too well if you don't have an ultra-high-end system.
Also: So predictable, yet so early! Topless mod.
The more im playing this game the more im loving it. I just hope its as big as Morrowind, 6 months into that game i was still finding secret daedric caverns hidden in normal caves. Im trying to go down the master thief route its just so much fun pick pocketing guards.
However, I do agree that we as character artists place WAY too much emphasis on polish of the characters faces. I know I've made this mistake many times before - assuming all players will pay as much attention as I do. For big games like Oblivion providing lots of different looks tends to be more satisfying to the average player than a few, highly polished looks.
I'm sure the artists working on this game had to make some tradeoffs to achieve such a big, deep game world.
I ran into that women. Depending on what you say, she'll also mention that it's not her "first offence". I'm guessing she's an old Morrowind character but I don't actually know.
Even better, I was talking to an Argonian about some local cuisine and he mentioned "peppered deer penis". That's classy.
As for curing vampirism, go into some chapels and ask about a cure, they'll send you on a quest. Unfortunately, I can't beat the quest because it makes you collect items I can't find.
Being a vampire is such a hassle because the sun will damage you after a while and it totally ruins your face. Breaking into houses to feed on people in their sleep is cool, though.
To cure vampirism you either have to do a pretty hard quest that requires you to get some of the bigger soul gems (and they're very hard to get) or you go into a chapel to pray. If you've been a really good char (not stealing, no murder, always take the good path etc.) there is a good chance that the nine heal you instantly.
If you become a vampire and (and don't want to be one) try to get rid of that as soon as possible. Because after a few days no one will trade with you and you'll die after a few seconds in the sun...
If you're still having performance issues try turning grass off. Hit tilde to bring up the console and type in 'tg' and hit enter (then close the console).
http://www.oblivionportal.com/wikiwalk/index.php/Vampires
If you have vampirsm in your current affects list its too late to do the cure disease/pray at shrine trick. But if you go back to a couple of days earlyer you will see a disease thats draining your fatigue, thats the time to use a cure disease potion.
On the performance from , i just caqnt seem to get my fps up really, once i get in a fight , if theres more than 2 people in the fight it chugs like a sob. still loving it tho.