a SHOCKER(not)-Bethesda will use an upgraded version of the Creation Engine for TES VI and Starfield

[Deleted Member 16721]

Fun question - Which other game has as much data loaded into the engine at one time than Bethesda's RPGs? Forget engine, the games themselves, which one loads in every plate, cup, platter, items sitting on a shelf, baskets, barrels and bowls and lets them be interactive with physics? Then let's add in cutting edge graphics at the time and first-person view. I'm not a game developer so I don't know about engines and I assume most average gamers don't, they just hear certain things and parrot it. Beth knows what they're doing, if they needed a new foundation they would build it themselves because they have the money and then some.

 

[Funposter]

cutting edge graphics

no.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

no.

Bad choice of words, because they do sacrifice some graphical quality to add more interactive details to the map. If the game had cutting edge graphics it would take too much GPU power to add all the interactive items and physics too. View distance would be even less, like 5 feet probably.

 

[ADL]

Seriously, name me 1 thing that you need changed in Skyrim or Fallout 4, and can't be done in the current engine. Just 1.

Scaling. It's apparent to everyone else here but how many more releases do we have to go through until you acknowledge that there might be a correlation between Bethesda's tech and the (lack of) scale in their games? Oblivion's Imperial City is tiny and segregated between multiple cells. Fallout 3's megaton is a couple shacks. Rivet City is a joke. Skyrim's "trading hub" is a courtyard, a couple trees, a barrack with interior, 15 buildings and a handful of NPCs to shout at you. Fallout 4's diamond city is literally 12 buildings surrounding a bar in the center.

Just as a reminder, this is Solitude, the capital and port for an entire province.

And here's the "city" everyone in Fallout 4 was talking about as if it were the last bastion of civilization.

Fun question - Which other game has as much data loaded into the engine at one time than Bethesda's RPGs? Forget engine, the games themselves, which one loads in every plate, cup, platter, items sitting on a shelf, baskets, barrels and bowls and lets them be interactive with physics? Then let's add in cutting edge graphics at the time and first-person view. I'm not a game developer so I don't know about engines and I assume most average gamers don't, they just hear certain things and parrot it. Beth knows what they're doing, if they needed a new foundation they would build it themselves because they have the money and then some.

If it's between being able to store thousands of bananas in my house to make memes for thousands of upvotes on Reddit or getting a decent, optimized and stable release that instead used the same computing power to deliver a living, breathing world that doesn't feel 15 years out of date for once, I'd choose the latter without hesitation.

That being said, if the underlying tech weren't complete dogshit, I wouldn't have to choose between them.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Guys this is to be expected. No company creates engines from scratch anymore. And there is no reason for that. Game engines are modular, with constant upgrades you reach a point when the game engine becomes "new" anyway...

Plus people blame the game engine a little too much. It is not the engine, it is Bethesda. Bethesda does not do Quality Assurance, Bethesda makes cheap art assets, Bethesda do not optimize their games. It is not the engine. The engine is capable of producing incredible graphics, as evidenced by the results of many mods for their games. Plus if they could be bothered to actually bug fix their fucking games, and optimize their shit, we wouldn't be talking about the engine. Look what results amateurs can achieve by releasing Unofficial patches and optimization mods...

Biting the hand that feeds you, Mr. Bethesdard? Beware, for you may displease your Lord and Saviour, Todd Howard

 

[Lord_Potato]

Found Jason Schreier's account. A lot of Bethesda game's issues can be directly attributed to Bethesda's incompetence but pretending that Gamebryo is a solid foundation in the same way that the Quake engine is used as a base for Call of Duty and Valve's games is incredibly disingenuous. Their tech is clearly unsuitable for the kind of scale that Bethesda and their fans are expecting/trying to make themselves.

They need a new foundation. They have id Software under the Zenimax banner, why not commission them to make something according to their specifications? They'd even be able to get a game or two out of it while it's in development. They could license the APEX engine from Avalanche who seem to be great collaborators based on RAGE 2. They could work with Unity, CryEngine, Lumberyard or Unreal. Hell, after today's court battle with CIG, I bet they could fork CryEngine for pennies on the dollar and they seem to have a great relationship with Microsoft, I bet they'd hand over a first parties' engine no strings attached if they asked. There's a lot of options out there for them and it's frustrating to see them continually pass on them when they have the time, money and resources to do something truly great and getting a solid foundation for their games for once is a huge step towards that.

Dude, seriously, just, STOP. I am tired of explaining why the engine is not the issue. One of the reasons i hate gamers is because 99.9999% of them can't write a "hello world" in C yet they claim to know everything about engines and game development... I repeat, just because you know how to eat well does not mean you know how to cook...

You are talking about a "new foundation". How many AAA games were released this generation that relied on a "new foundation"? Please, tell me. I am waiting...

Witcher 3? Based on an improved Witcher 2 engine.
Assassin Creed? An evolution of the Prince of Persia engine
Unreal 4 engine? An evolution of the first Unreal engine
Cryengine? An evolution of the original Farcry (2004) engine
Doom (2016) and other id games : an evolution of the original quake engine...
Battlefield 5? An evolution of the original Frostbite engine many years ago...
GTA V/Red Dead Redemption 2? An evolution of the GTA III engine...

I could go on all day, the point is, almost no engine was build from scratch this gen. Only Mankind Divided used a new engine, and Tomb Raider reboots, other Square Enix games like Final Fantasy XV... And even those could have reused some parts from older engines...

Thing is, there is no reason to throw away code that is proven to work, and is bug fixed and polished. Game engines are modular. You can replace some stuff, but you don't need to chop your head off just because you have a toothache... Even when companies announce "a brand new engine" they really are just upgrading their old engine and giving it a different name, for marketing reasons. Even Bethesda did that with "Creation engine" which was just Gamebryo. They had to name it differently so idiots wouldn't cry that Skyrim would have the same graphics and gameplay systems as Oblivion...

Now, you are saying they should use another engine. And i got to say, you are very ignorant of how game development works. Using Unreal 4 or Cryengine won't make Fallout 5 or the next Elder Scrolls better. In fact, they will probably have to spend YEARS just retooling their creation kits for those engines, in order to make the damn games...

Seriously, name me 1 thing that you need changed in Skyrim or Fallout 4, and can't be done in the current engine. Just 1.

Entering buildings without a fucking loading screen all the time. Seriously, my pc runs Witcher 3 and Assassin's Creed Origins like a charm on max settings... but still I have to wait in Fallout 4 for the game to load the inside of a fucking two floors building I just entered.

 

[SpoilVictor]

The real question is how long they can duck-tape new features onto Gamebryo before it breaks for good (is FO76 breaking point?).

No wonder they don't want to change engine - they are familiar with it, they have tons of assets, scripts etc. they can flip into another game, is easy to mod. Problem is they eventually they will have to switch, because old engine will drag them down too much. And it doesn't matter if limitations come from engine itself or their lack of skill.

Other thing is that maybe Brokesda still wears the crown of open-world RPGs, but competition doesn't sleep: we have CDPR with Witcher and Cyberpunk, Obsidian with that space thing and very likely Skyrim clone fueled by M$ dollars. Heck, even those tools from Ubisoft will eventually figure out to dump Assassins Creed pseudo-historic setting and go full fantasy RPG, considering that Origins and Odyssey are almost there.

At one point they will have to decide if they want engine that remembers position of 3000 sweetrolls or modern engine on par with competition. But at that point it maybe too late, frankly I wont cry.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Entering buildings without a fucking loading screen all the time. Seriously, my pc runs Witcher 3 and Assassin's Creed Origins like a charm on max settings... but still I have to wait in Fallout 4 for the game to load the inside of a fucking two floors building I just entered.

Again, you're not counting the data Beth games load. Witcher 3 is all decorative, you can barely interact with anything in the game world. You can't pick up items sitting on a shelf with physics. The computing power of the engine goes mostly to loading the enormous amount of tiny details in Beth games, which is what we want, or else Beth will just do what other devs do and Elder Scrolls VI: The Witcher and be a cutscene simulator without the charming elements we love from Beth's games. They'd have to cut down all the handplaced items and just make it all decorative, which is not why I play a Bethesda game.

 

[ADL]

Entering buildings without a fucking loading screen all the time. Seriously, my pc runs Witcher 3 and Assassin's Creed Origins like a charm on max settings... but still I have to wait in Fallout 4 for the game to load the inside of a fucking two floors building I just entered.

Again, you're not counting the data Beth games load. Witcher 3 is all decorative, you can barely interact with anything in the game world. You can't pick up items sitting on a shelf with physics. The computing power of the engine goes mostly to loading the enormous amount of tiny details in Beth games, which is what we want, or else Beth will just do what other devs do and Elder Scrolls VI: The Witcher and be a cutscene simulator without the charming elements we love from Beth's games. They'd have to cut down all the handplaced items and just make it all decorative, which is not why I play a Bethesda game.

I'm accounting for it and it's all unnecessary bullshit. Most people here that don't have a hate boner for MMOs and a TES game lacking the moddability acknowledge that TESO is the best release since Morrowind and that's on a completely different engine that doesn't have as many items to pick up. It looks better, runs better and plays better than Bethesda's releases and that's with thousands of concurrent players running around. Imagine what Bethesda could do using something like the APEX engine or a commissioned idTech variant that is built for their needs. That's the kind of potential that's being squandered over some piece of shit that was never suited for their games in the first place.

I already said this but if it's between choosing a living, breathing world that meets modern technical standards or being able to put a million cheese wheels in my house for memes at the expense of the game feeling a decade and a half out of date, I'll choose the former without hesitation.

 

[TemplarGR]

The real question is how long they can duck-tape new features onto Gamebryo before it breaks for good (is FO76 breaking point?).

No wonder they don't want to change engine - they are familiar with it, they have tons of assets, scripts etc. they can flip into another game, is easy to mod. Problem is they eventually they will have to switch, because old engine will drag them down too much. And it doesn't matter if limitations come from engine itself or their lack of skill.

Other thing is that maybe Brokesda still wears the crown of open-world RPGs, but competition doesn't sleep: we have CDPR with Witcher and Cyberpunk, Obsidian with that space thing and very likely Skyrim clone fueled by M$ dollars. Heck, even those tools from Ubisoft will eventually figure out to dump Assassins Creed pseudo-historic setting and go full fantasy RPG, considering that Origins and Odyssey are almost there.

At one point they will have to decide if they want engine that remembers position of 3000 sweetrolls or modern engine on par with competition. But at that point it maybe too late, frankly I wont cry.

There is no "duct tape" you ignorant kid. It is software, you delete and write again as you please. There is virtually no difference between replacing parts of gamebryo and writting another engine from scratch.

I can' believe you people are so thicc in the head. Even various youtubers have made videos explaining in detail that gamebryo is not the problem, and you still don't get it...

 

[Funposter]

RAGE is actually built upon the the Angel Game Engine which was used by Rockstar San Diego for games like Midnight Club 2 and Red Dead Revolver. It's not an evolution of RenderWare, which was used for GTA 3/VC/SA. I'd also ask - do you think a different developer would be able to do a better job using Bethesda's engine to develop a similar open world game, which also featured physics for handplaced objects etc. etc? Is it sheer incompetence on Bethesda's part, a limitation of the tech which they are using or developing for (consoles), or do you just not see any problem with the fact that every interior in Skyrim/FO4 needs to be its own cell, among various other issues?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

RAGE is actually built upon the the Angel Game Engine which was used by Rockstar San Diego for games like Midnight Club 2 and Red Dead Revolver. It's not an evolution of RenderWare, which was used for GTA 3/VC/SA. I'd also ask - do you think a different developer would be able to do a better job using Bethesda's engine to develop a similar open world game, which also featured physics for handplaced objects etc. etc? Is it sheer incompetence on Bethesda's part, a limitation of the tech which they are using or developing for (consoles), or do you just not see any problem with the fact that every interior in Skyrim/FO4 needs to be its own cell, among various other issues?

No need to make it a hypothetical, Divinity 2 was created using Gamebryo.
Can't remember what it was that made me notice, but I was able to tell it was a Gamebryo game while playing it. The developer's cut version is a really good game though.

 

[Funposter]

RAGE is actually built upon the the Angel Game Engine which was used by Rockstar San Diego for games like Midnight Club 2 and Red Dead Revolver. It's not an evolution of RenderWare, which was used for GTA 3/VC/SA. I'd also ask - do you think a different developer would be able to do a better job using Bethesda's engine to develop a similar open world game, which also featured physics for handplaced objects etc. etc? Is it sheer incompetence on Bethesda's part, a limitation of the tech which they are using or developing for (consoles), or do you just not see any problem with the fact that every interior in Skyrim/FO4 needs to be its own cell, among various other issues?

No need to make it a hypothetical, Divinity 2 was created using Gamebryo.

Never played it. The only well-known game I ever remember as being created usign Gamebryo is Catherine, and it just makes me laugh.

Edit: Let me expand upon the original point: Do we think that if Bethesda handed Creation over to CDProjekt Red, that they'd be able to make a game of The Witcher 3's quality using it, or would it be easier create a hypothetical build of The Witcher 3 which had havok physics tied to plates and had a few NPCs in every town with predefined schedules?

 

[TemplarGR]

Entering buildings without a fucking loading screen all the time. Seriously, my pc runs Witcher 3 and Assassin's Creed Origins like a charm on max settings... but still I have to wait in Fallout 4 for the game to load the inside of a fucking two floors building I just entered.

Ok, now i am sure you are an autist. You clearly don't read what others have said and can't understand...

Witcher 3 and Asscreed are not similar games to Fallout 4. Key differences:

1) Fallout 4 has far more items on a given place, all with physics, pickable, and with their own properties. Also, saving the position of items is CRUCIAL, so you cannot just treat them as "decals" fluff, the engine (and save system) actually have to care about every little scrap metal. It is also important to note like unlike some other games, items on the ground in Bethesda games appear exactly like they are in the inventory. There are no "bags" hacks here...

2) Fallout 4 is far more customizable. This takes its toll. You can always optimize for delivery of content if the content is set in stone but when the game is extremely moddable like Fallout 4, then the game world is comprised of little LEGO pieces that are less optimized but more flexible. There is a reason a modding scene in the scope of FO4 or Skyrim does not exist for Witcher 3 or Asscreed, and it's not because the games were unpopular... At best in Witcher 3 or Asscreed modders just swap some models...

It is not "hard" to make Bethesda games avoid loading screens by the way. There is no gamebryo limitation that makes loading them in the background impossible...

Hell, even modders made stuff like removing New Vegas loading screens or the Whiterun gates... Without access to the executable.

The reason Bethesda has loading screens is because console restrictions... They are afraid console hardware can't handle all that stuff.

Remember, consoles are supposed to be troublefree. If a game crashes on a console, that's BAD. If it does so on PC, who cares?

So Bethesda has to always keep in mind that some retards are going to attempt to break the game, by amassing tons of loot in one place, for example. This will destroy the limitations of the console hardware and lead to bad implications (like security risks and even the potential for hacking the console). That is why they put safeguards in it, including loading screens.

Get it now?

 

[Lord_Potato]

More shitty excuses to defend a lazy developper and his substandard, archaic engine design...

I guess fanboys will swallow anything when it comes from Bethesda.

Let me guess... are you perhaps a fan of Fallout 76 too? Having fun with friends, are you?

Personally I never cared about movable plates on the tables in taverns of Oblivion or Skyrim. About the possibility of rearranging forks and knives. It may be sweet for LARPers and autists, but I'm neither.

The loading times however are not acceptable. If they are needed on consoles, so be it. I play my games on PC and do not want shitty ports.

And you still did not adress the issue of tiny "cities" in Bethesda games.

 

[ADL]

So Bethesda games are special because it allows idiots to put 10,000 cheese wheels in their house and everything else suffers as a result. Glad we cleared that up.

 

[Feargus Jewhart]

So Bethesda games are special because it allows idiots to put 10,000 cheese wheels in their house and everything else suffers as a result. Glad we cleared that up.

More shitty excuses to defend a lazy developper and his substandard, archaic engine design...

I guess fanboys will swallow anything when it comes from Bethesda.

Let me guess... are you perhaps a fan of Fallout 76 too? Having fun with friends, are you?

Personally I never cared about movable plates on the tables in taverns of Oblivion or Skyrim. About the possibility of rearranging forks and knives. It may be sweet for LARPers and autists, but I'm neither.

The loading times however are not acceptable. If they are needed on consoles, so be it. I play my games on PC and do not want shitty ports.

And you still did not adress the issue of tiny "cities" in Bethesda games.

So, looks like we have two people who don't code or understand about complexity.
Yes, those 10k cheesewheels use a lot of memory when they're being tracked. For example, if you can tell me a way to track effects applied in a non matrix way and thus non n^2, I'll be more than glad to hear it. Same goes for memory handling, if you can give a better way to balance resources, I'll be more than glad to hear them. Though, realistically how will you limit what kind of clutter one place will have?

Consoles (especially the Xbox) have huge memory issues, one of the biggest complaints by the KC: D developers was the memory handling. Because of that the transition from LOD and loading of objects would happen right in front of the player.

Beth has a lot of incompetence, but unfortunately as long as they pander to the lowest common denominator aka consoles, we are stuck with better graphics and less content. That's because console players want to get better looking games, but the hardware doesn't change. That's why TES 6 probably takes so long, because they're hoping a new console generation would be announced. So to get those "better looking graphics" they have to sacrifice on other memory and space constraints, such as content.

 

[Zenith]

[Intelligence 25/50] So, looks like we have two people who don't code or understand about complexity.

Both of the posts you quoted explicitly state willingness to do away with movable clutter altogether. So no need to store any transformations. But even then, despite not knowing any specifics, I seem to remember .nif format supporting quaternions, can't say if used just for animations or for any old transforms as well.

 

[Feargus Jewhart]

Both of the posts you quoted explicitly state willingness to do away with movable clutter altogether. So no need to store any transformations. But even then, despite not knowing any specifics, I seem to remember .nif format supporting quaternions, can't say if used just for animations or for any old transforms as well.

D-did you read what I wrote even? Only 1/3rd of my point is about the interactivity, nor is it even my main point.

>Beth has a lot of incompetence, but unfortunately as long as they pander to the lowest common denominator aka consoles, we are stuck with better graphics and less content. That's because console players want to get better looking games, but the hardware doesn't change. That's why TES 6 probably takes so long, because they're hoping a new console generation would be announced. So to get those "better looking graphics" they have to sacrifice on other memory and space constraints, such as content.

I specified explicitly that the biggest problem is making it all run on consoles, even without clutter consoles struggle loading games with low interactivity like KC: D. Console hardware doesn't improve until a generation changes, but they expect the graphics to keep up with PC on some level.

That is the reason for the city sizes, Skyrim came out also on 360 and PS3 so they had to make it on same hardware as Oblivion did, but still get better graphics.

EDIT: Playstation 4 and Xbone came out two years after Skyrim, so Oblivion and Skyrim are technically same gen games.

 

[Frozen]

Templar you're a fucking idiot.

 

[Lutte]

No engine could fix laziness

While it'd take close to a rewrite for their current gamebryo fork to achieve something actually ambitious for a scifi space game, even using a better engine or fixing gamebryo would not cure Bethesda's main issues, inherent laziness, incompetence and unwillingness to expand their core studio headcount (because they sell so many games while overworking a skeleton crew, why bother?)

Of course, at some point that sort of short term thinking may break them even with their mainstream idiot audience.

 

[Zenith]

D-did you read what I wrote even? Only 1/3rd of my point is about the interactivity, nor is it even my main point.

Seemed like your main retort to the quotes. I'm not going to defend someone else's walls of text, just drive-by commented on what stood out to me. You admit to being wrong on 1/3rd then at least, fine by me.

My personal opinion doesn't really fit into this slapfight, I'd much prefer a smaller, more handcrafted world, and back before Skyrim release there was still hope they were going to make interaction more UUW/Arx-like (seemed possible at the time, with them buying out Arkane and announcing crafting etc). Would've made interactive clutter have a point. But now it's whatever. I've been skipping their games ever since and don't have a horse in this, they can release TES6 as a TESO expansion for all I care.

Lulz. No such thing as duct tape in software, you ignorant kids!

 

[Ovg]

Jesus fuck, autism simulator "stack your forks and stick them up your ass", shitty editor, no way to do vehicles, even though fallout would make sense with some mad max mixed in, duct tape and chewing gum instead of engine changes. Apart from that, fallout 4 gunplay, the only improvement over 3 or NV, was not even made by Bethesda.

 

[SpoilVictor]

There was a time when I thought that motto "Mod it till it breaks" is only relevant to Brokseda games, but it is also true for their engine itself.

In the end I'm glad that they are sticking to old engine (even possibly for next gen consoles). Let them push this, release bugfests, crappy animations, crazy physics, shit lighting etc. - it will only hasten their demise, as Brokesda for way too long got free-pass from journalists and gamers alike.

 

[Ovg]

But the real problem I have is that they are lazy, as those mods which just fix uv wrapping has shown us. I am not even sure the "new and improved" head models are theirs.

But I'll bite, the problem is that it's a console game. Ok I get it. So why can't it be released as a finished product? I understand us pc gamers have time to install some engine hacks, like NVSE, but console gamers can't. That means they are spending big money on a shoddy product.
Look to the other console games. Even KCD on PS4 (was it PS4?) was basically a finished game that you can play on a console and still have, more or less, the same experience as if you played it on a pc. The only mods it has are some shaders and texture mods / head replacers. Why can't bethesda reach that point before releasing their games?