Oblivion shadows: before and after

[Vault Dweller]

Stupid? None. Blatant lie? 80%

Ok, which parts are blatant lies? The player is a foreigner, and everyone hates the foreigners, he is cursed by the Nerevarine prophecy, and he doesn't know about the enemies. Maybe the "enemies know who he is" and "blind pawn" is a bit of a stretch.

Was the beginning "bad"? No. Did the fact that you are a "hated foreigner" affected the game in any way? No. People were more than eager to deal with you, give you quests; you could join most factions in the first 5 minutes, etc. So, another lie - let's not call it a stretch. "Enemies know who you are" is another lie in the context that they give a damn. The blind pawn thing is yet another lie. I'm suprised that a developer can fit so many lies into one paragraph.

If you read that paragraph and actually take it seriously, you'd have a very different idea about the game. That's the point.

 

[Tintin]

Hmm........fine, you win. Guess the execution didn't live up to what was intended.

 

[bryce777]

There's no santa claus

 

[Tintin]

There's no santa claus

As long as you believe, there is, Timmy.

 

[dongle]

There's no santa claus

That's OK, we still have the Easter Bunny!

 

[Elwro]

Morrowind features complex, finely articulated character creation and game systems, vast landscapes, an elaborate setting with multiple inter-woven themes, flexible, and open-ended, non-linear, freeform gaming.

@VD: OK, I'm sorry. Such a sentence is not exactly a "lie". It's just plain puke-inducing bullshit.

BTW, I seem to remember Ken writing some good PnP WFRP modules. :shock:

 

[The Internets]

I though their was a good post on page two of this thread about the difference between lighting in the emperor conversion shots, about how the torch light wasn't being occluded in the german video shot making the brightness/contrast differences between the two a moot point; the lighting was different because no shadows means no dark/light side too objects.


anyway, they released system recomendations:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=228254

And from the recommended vs. minimum it seems as if this game may scale very well, as "128MB Direct3D compatible video card and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver" includes a 9600 for shits sake.

My interpretation is good for scaling, and perhaps this explains why that new shot look so bad. That's quite a bit of fudge factor in terms of GPU power.

 

[Vault Dweller]

@ Elwro: Speaking of which:

From an interview with Graeme Davis:

What did you think of Ken Rolston’s version of Realms of Sorcery?
Not a lot, I'm afraid. Ken is a great guy and a personal friend, but I don't think he got the support and feedback he needed from GW until it was too late. I guess I'm partly responsible for that myself, since Ken was writing it at about the time Flame was set up. Ken's version, to me, misses the spirit of WFRP in some intangible way, and feels a lot more like RuneQuest.

 

[Elwro]

@VD: OK, I checked. I made a mistake and mixed up Ken Rolston with Carl Sargent :shock:. The best WFRP module I played (GMed in fact) - "Power Behind the Throne" - was written by Carl Sargent. In fact, almost all the modules I liked were written by Carl Sargent and Graeme Davis (et al.).
Besides Realms of Sorcery (which, I agree, feels "out of place" for a WFRP veteran) Ken wrote the "Something Rotten in Kislev" set of three modules which was quite interesting, with some Eastern European themes, shamanic rituals, gods of the forests etc. (I GMed the whole "Enemy Within" campaign.)

But, with the quote you gave, everything fits now as I've never seen the reason for the new uber-elven-mage classes in the printed edition of Realms of Sorcery.

 

[Solik]

Now, IMO, you've just rendered everything you'll ever say here useless, no matter how articulate it may be.

Hey, that's a neat trick! By adding this in to the end of yet another bland insulting post, you can now choose to, at any point in the future, blindly ignore anything and everything I say whenever I point out how ridiculous your argument, logic, and stance are. Not that you wouldn't have done that anyway, but now you have an excuse. "Hey, remember that time when I called you an idiot? Yeah, so I don't have to listen to you." I love it.

You can, I'm sure, see how articulate I'm being in other threads when speaking with reasonable people that don't post with carrots two feet up their asses.

In the future, please refrain from going all Jack Thompson in response to lighthearted posts.

 

[crufty]

Maybe, but are you saying that if you were standing outside you wouldn't notice someone hiding in the shadow of a pillar?

Hey, if it works for Indiana Jones... :D

The point wasn't so much the pillar--it's that shadows change with time over the course of a day , and that while you wouldn't want to hide in the shadow of a chair, a large pillar (or a stack of boxes) might be a different story. Hiding in dynamic shadows = good.

Now it may have been that object shadows never played into stealth, and stacking boxes wouldn't work w/stealth, obj shadows or no obj shadows.



One thing that NWN did right, I thought, was the shadows...

 

[Data4]

Now, IMO, you've just rendered everything you'll ever say here useless, no matter how articulate it may be.

Hey, that's a neat trick! By adding this in to the end of yet another bland insulting post, you can now choose to, at any point in the future, blindly ignore anything and everything I say whenever I point out how ridiculous your argument, logic, and stance are. Not that you wouldn't have done that anyway, but now you have an excuse. "Hey, remember that time when I called you an idiot? Yeah, so I don't have to listen to you." I love it.

You can, I'm sure, see how articulate I'm being in other threads when speaking with reasonable people that don't post with carrots two feet up their asses.

In the future, please refrain from going all Jack Thompson in response to lighthearted posts.

-D4

 

[Lumpy]

That reminds me, are horsies unkillable uber-NPC's like teh Stewart? Will the message "YO BITCH DON'T KILL YO HORSE" pop up in huge font if you try to attack it? I bet that retarded unicorn in that one quest is unkillable. In fact, I wonder if the game world will feature a wizard who'll warp into existence in front of you and tell you to fuck off if you try cross certain boundaries you're not supposed to cross, like in Drakken.

In other words:
"Hey I'm inventing reasons why Oblivion sucks. IT'S NOT A GAME!!! Will you sleep with me for that guyz?"

 

[dagamer667]

This is what Oblivion looks like without shadows.

http://www.elderscrolls.com/images/art/ ... liv06B.jpg

As you can see, the game still looks very good, just without as much eye candy.

The next picture on the other hand seems to state otherwise. (Just scroll down a bit.)

I am just happy that Oblivion will still surpass Morrowind at all levels, though not as much as it could have.

You know what's really funny? That pic looks quite a bit more realistic than the ones with overly exaggerated shadows.

 

[elander_]

You know what's really funny? That pic looks quite a bit more realistic than the ones with overly exaggerated shadows.

Thats understandable. The picture with the shadows is too dark because it lacks radiosity. Now this is something that will take some good years to have in games. Hope it makes devs focus more in gameplay and less in cg porno.

 

[Chefe]

They better bring shadows back for Fallout 3.

 

[bryce777]

You know what's really funny? That pic looks quite a bit more realistic than the ones with overly exaggerated shadows.

Thats understandable. The picture with the shadows is too dark because it lacks radiosity. Now this is something that will take some good years to have in games. Hope it makes devs focus more in gameplay and less in cg porno.

Thermal bloom is radiant AI for grafix.

 

[aweigh]

I'm just wondering why Bethesda didn't just jump on the 3-D bandwagon. Sly Cooper 3 had a completely 3-D level, and the game brought the necessary 3-D glasses, and Hideo Kojima said Metal Gear Acid 2 (the PSP series) will feature "3-D content", as well as its own headgear. Do shadows matter WHEN UR IN DE HOLODECK!?!!!!

 

[elander_]

And now for something completely different. Heres some Battlespire dialogs. You know that FPS game Beth made right after Daggerfall. This game had some nice dialog system and the dialogs were writen by Ken Rolston. The characters in Battlespire even have some sort of personalities. Don't belive then me check it out:

http://til.gamingsource.net/tsobs/part01.shtml

http://til.gamingsource.net/tsobs/part02.shtml

Don't criticise KR too much guys. I doubt he was responsable for the decision of making the dialog system the way it is in Oblivion.

They better bring shadows back for Fallout 3.

Mainstreamed Fallout 3 will suck like hell with or without shadows.

 

[Chefe]

Battlespire: The only TES game with dialogue trees.

Too bad the rest of it sucked ass.

 

[raziel014]

Regarding the shadows in the before and after screenshots.
Take a look at this:

From E3 Demo



Original screen from German bootleg video



Before and after; E3 and bootleg



Screenshots I've taken myself from the video from the german magazine
note - this is from the same source as the original screenshots in the before and after screen





The only thing I've done is to correct darkness and colors. And a bit of sharpening. Nothing else. Do you think it looks all that bad? The only thing I can say is that the original E3 screens seem to have a little higher detail in the brick textures. But nothing else. The game will still look good.

 

[bryce777]

Actually, I do think it looks much worse.

It was hard to tell in some of the previous shots, but I can't imagine how you can't tell the difference.

 

[John_Blazze]

this *little* lower detail in brick texture actually made it look alot worse, + the lightning is ALOT worse on walls, in E3 vid it looked like a dirty wet and cold cell, now it looks like bricks are painted on the regular walls.

 

[Chefe]

It looks so bland and ugly now. So... boring.

For fuck's sake, it doesn't even look better than Morrowind. If you can't see this, you need to get fucking glasses and take that fanboy stick out of your ass.

 

[Jason]

It seems like only a true fanboy would care this much about Obilvion's graphics.