Unofficial Oblivion preview!!! Must see to believe!

Commie faggot.

 

You could or you could just stop at eliminating some which I didn't have that big of a problem with. I guess that was our biggest disagreement.

As far as all the other "unrevealed stuff" goes, I do acknowledge that your skepticism may turn out to be correct considering Bethesda's off beat responses. But then again it's not like anyone is really asking such questions (in previews at least). There's still a chance that you might be wrong and then we'll have one kick ass game.

 

Damn, it seems that i missed that one...
I remember screenshots of scenery, battle,s, but no dialogs... gotta look it up...

 

Hmm, what screenshot? The one where the woman is speaking and the only thing visual are subtitles?

And in any case, if I'm not mistaken, MSDF or another dev said something along the lines of "dialogue will be a mixture of dialogue trees and topics" when topics were mentioned in a preview or interview.

 

Rightwing nutjob

 

Shouldn't they?

That's the one. Its design doesn't really support an indepth dialogue system.

Topics don't go well with real dialogue trees, don't they? If you recall, MW had multiple responses like yes/no, pay fine/something else, etc. I don't think we should expect something much more complex than that.

 

Damn straight! Why not lead by example though?

 

Are you joking?

All interviews questions are pre-aproved, same goes to all anwers that are aproved by the PR department.

Interviewers dont ask hard questions because they need the "EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW" to sell their magazine or have more hits on their page, if they dont play ball with the company PR department they get nothing.

 

Perhaps 'paging' wasn't the best word to use since this moves the discussion to
VMM systems. Just subtitute the phrase 'load into memory'.

And so the next best thing to adding content is to intelligently load it in when required.

I don't follow the logic of what you're saying. You'll have a larger total set of actors
if you can load content in from the HD than if you're limited to 64MB. You wouldn't
have 'all the enemies simultaneously' because there wouldn't be room in 64MB.

I disagree and I'll explain why. Quadtrees and similar structures mean that you
don't have to keep track of stuff which doesn't immediately surround the area/leaf
of the quadtree that your character is currently occupying, so it can happily sit on
the HD and be loaded in as necessary (I used the word 'paged', but there are
many mechanisms). Of course you might not be able to keep track of the physics
of every single mobile in the game, but then PC games don't either.

I thought the phrase 'global variable' was being used to describe game flags, player
and creature statistics etc. In the context of a programming language (say C++)
what you're saying is accurate- almost everything is in heap memory (new/delete).

 

I know it's not that easy but is bitching about it the only alternative? What about writing few serious articles or editorials analyzing what you just mentioned. Or writing a true preview of the game mentioning the issues that a given company might be dodging. Stir things up a bit. Gain some exposure: Codex, RpgDot, maybe few other news websites would link up the articles. I'm not saying you'll change the world or something but it's a nice alternative to whining.

 

What are you talking about? It only showed subtitles as it was talking, for all we know it could be like Bloodlines where you pick a tree response and the only thing showing while the NPC is talking is subtitles (or was it nothing? I haven't played in a while).

Role-Player (I think without even knowing that one of the devs said that) talked in-depth of how a system could work with dialogue trees as well as topics. It was a more recent thread, but I don't feel like tracking it down.

I think the brunt of what he said was that each NPC would have their own dialogue trees (important/quest NPCs at least, while maybe all the fodder characters like in fallout would give one-liners, or just a wiki), but also have a button or another tree response to ask about specific topics (at the bottom of the tree responses you can click on the response "ask about specific topic" or something like that and it would bring up the wiki-like choice list of "ask about, dunmer", "ask about, monkeys").

That's exactly what I figured it would be like the first time I read what the developer said. And I think it could work well, given some love. While I don't know what they're actually planning, it certainly seems possible.

 

Ohhhhhh, he was having THAT screenshot in mind! WEll, damn, it doesn't show ANYTHING.
KOTOR had muilti-option system, and also had such "subtitles" when the NPC was talking. Fallout could have the same feature, if it was 3d and animated, and fully-voiced.

So, again, we know so little about dialog system that it is yet too early to judge it.

Not that I'm very optimistic about it, no. I just don't want to assume too much.

 

Yeah, GUI elements we haven't revealed yet appear when you get to ask questions & say things. That stuff's not visible when NPCs are speaking -- the game just shows you the subtitles (if you have that option turned on).

 

Pretty much. Of course, you can try writing a letter to your congressman demanding a thorough investigation of Oblivion's features, but I think that would be still qualified as bitching.

It's coming

There was no whining. I simply posted a collection of amusing quotes without complaining about anything.

 

Obviously.

Now, how is dialog option-box constructed? Does it have those vicious wiki-links?
Or it's classic: npc's line and your options?

 

The space allocated for subtitles isn't big enough to support anything decent. As for the Bloodlines dialogues, while they were well written, they were simplistic and mostly linear. Also, needless to say, considering the nature of TES games, deep and interesting dialogues for more than a handful of NPCs are out of the questions. It's simply impossible, and people should neither expect them nor criticize Beth for the lack of them. It's not where the game can shine.

Hmm, doesn't ring a bell. Can anyone post a link?

Out of curiosity, when you read "dialogue topics" what is the first thing that comes to your mind?

Have you played MW?

 

Unfortunately, yes.
And that's exactly why I am asking: to make sure if it's same shit, or improved ^_^

 

Sandelfron, I think you're taking this "load stuff from disk" idea as too much of a religious cause. Of course you can load art assets from disk. This was never in doubt. My point is that the limited working set allowable on today's consoles means you're either going to have to page constantly and come up with really good predictive caching algorithms... or just start simplifying the game so that you can hold a whole chunk in memory at once. Practically everyone tends to go for the latter. I'm not saying the former isn't possible, but no one in the Christmas-deadline-obsessed, marketing-dominated games industry seems to want to spend the money on the former.

To keep this vaguely on topic, it's the difference between Daggerfall, where the only major loads were upon entrance and exit of major cities and dungeons--even when using the '1' cheat mode for superspeed--and Morrowind, where one scroll of Icarian Flight could mean a whole lot of loads.

 

True. In face of a long or short blade, true roleplayers should always go for the rat launcher.

I think the error in his argument is that like others before him he is trying to compensate or excuse for something which would be considered badly implemented in the game with the idea of roleplaying. This is akin to someone saying that one would never have a problem that a gambling skill was broken because he was roleplaying an unlucky gambler. And this is just poor argumentation because our attitude towards something does not change what that something is or how it operates.

 

I assume it's this post.

 

Oh I do. When I see a heavier, slower Katana, I think to myself "I must have this bigger and slower item which may do more damage but since I'm not to strong anyway, I still need my dagger since it's much faster, and doesn't weigh as much letting me carry more loot/armor/whatever. But the katana is stronger!"

Logically it still depends on your character. If you play a rogue/assasin/whatever character where strength isn't a strong suit, you'll want a faster, light dagger. Tis mere common sense.

 

That's only assuming that the game's ruleset actually provides for the things you've mentioned. If the only difference between one weapon and another is the damage it does and that one looks omg kewl, then why bother with the puny dagger? If the game allows you to sneakily stab people with the dagger or conceal it more easily or enchant it for cheaper, then it makes sense.

 

Given that your character is so weak, it would make much more sense to carry a powerful magical weapon which could cut through armor like butter and such. I mean, it doesn't sound like you have a snowballs chance in hell of penetrating a monster's thick hide with that puny dagger of yours, since you don't have the strength to generate any real force.

I mean, if a 3lb katana is heavy for you... I don't think the weapon you choose matters unless it's magical enough to fight by itself.

What's the old saying? Common sense is as common as it is wrong?

Spazmo brings up good points for keeping a dagger handy, but not for abdicating katana use altogether.

I mean, you bring up the assassin thing... but ninja used katana, or something similar, not daggers. In fact, in any situation where you can't gaurantee killing an opponent in one hit while he's completely unaware the dagger is a pretty terrible choice. Less reach, less power.

 

Ill probably buy it second hand or rent it someday