Interview Bethesda engine can't handle ladders.

[Dagorath]

As I understand it, the artists in the game development world are paid far more than the programmers are. This may well be why said programmers appear to be "lazy" - they are undervalued.

Why the artists are paid more, I do not know; there are freaking millions of decent texture artists (many of whom do shit for free - just look at modding communities!) and any prat can do a wireframe.

 

[ortucis]

Assassins Creed is a game made for AI to use ladders. Hell, the fuckers can go anywhere you can. My first reaction in AA was pretty much, "wow my character can climb anywhere and escape and superfast and.. and.. oh wait, everyone else can as well, even that strange guy with weird mustache".

Oh well, AA2 was a good game, but I still completed the whole game counter-killing professional soldiers from start till the end (funny thing is, game introduces you to counter kill like hours in-game.. TUTORIAL AFTER TUTORIAL!) since all the moves from first game worked the same.

Anyways, ladders. AA's AI gets A+ while using them.

 

[SuicideBunny]

ac is a bad example. they had a legion of coders and artists to get the technical side to near perfection, and managed to completely drain any soul out from it while doing so.

 

[Rhalle]

Ladders? Hell, they shouldn't feel too bad.

Bioware can't master lighting, shadows, or cloth phyiscs.


What's funny is that I know how to map and code some in the Source engine, and I know I could do an NPC on a ladder, even if I had to code the behavior; and I assume I don't know jack fucking shit compared to someone with a computer science degree and a job at a top-tier gaming company.

Pretty fucking sad.

 

[jiduthie]

This is just the kind of topic that the codex doesn't do justice to.

Developer X doesn't include feature Y.

Everyone feels good because obviously developers are incompetent. Despite that we even have self-proclaimed "programmers" to describe why Y is so hard to implement.

Of course, it all misses the point.

Game designers can have fun with ladders. Programmers can find ways to implement ladders. The real question is how many man hours it takes to implement such a feature.

This is why we have producers. If it takes 40 man hours to implement feature Y, yet we could use the same amount of man hours to implement feature A and also have a shortcut to Y, then why wouldn't you want them to do that?

I dislike Bethesda games because they're overly simplistic, not because they haven't implemented ladders. Moreover, their sales tend to indicate that their man hours have been implemented wisely. Beth simply isn't going to go "oh shit, maybe if we did, uh, depth and stuff, we would make a lot of money." Whining about the implementation of ladders in Beth games is ineffectual and idiotic. How many of you, in your own jobs, would go "oh shit, I'm making the company money, time to change course!" When sales are good, whining on forums will not change design decisions.

I realise all of a sudden, I make this point about every six months, but yet here I am again. Who's the real tool?

 

[xemous]

how the fuck are these idiots still in business.

 

[Mastermind]

Whining about the implementation of ladders in Beth games is ineffectual and idiotic.

I agree. However, I disagree that they've spent their man hours wisely. Wise enough to sell well? Yes. I actually like their RPGs. But they routinely spend time implementing dumb shit that will not increase their sales and could easily be redressed if they weren't lazy assholes. Like the fucking birthsigns in morrowind/oblivion. Most of them are useless. Why? They just replicate spell effects. What's stopping them from replicating spell effects that are actually useful from beginning to end? How is having a bunch of birthsigns that boost attributes you can max anyway making them more sales?

 

[Crichton]

I played "Dark Messiah of Might and Magic" recently and the NPCs had no trouble climbing ladders. Of course I was waiting at the top of the ladders to smack them. With short ladders (so not much falling damage) we could repeat this process 4-5 times per NPC.

 

[jiduthie]

birthsigns in morrowind/oblivion. Most of them are useless. Why? They just replicate spell effects. What's stopping them from replicating spell effects that are actually useful from beginning to end? How is having a bunch of birthsigns that boost attributes you can max anyway making them more sales?

No, I disagree. Birthsigns are awesome because they take minimal effort to implement yet afford the illiterate and barely able to feel they are customizing their characters. Oblivion is a beautiful example in that the character system makes no sense, leveling up actually decreases your effectiveness unless you power game. The fact the system made no sense was completely irrelevant. It was easy to implement specifically because no one had to spend much time thinking about it. It didn't hurt sales.

Oblivion is the Bush/Cheney approach to gaming. Offer them everything, give them nothing. Get elected, sell boxes, then fuck off.

Edit: My liberal self has just realised that perhaps my argument was diminished by picking on conservatives. Realise that Bush/Cheney could be replaced with Obama/Biden and the effect would be the same in my liberal eyes.

 

[Mastermind]

No, I disagree. Birthsigns are awesome because they take minimal effort to implement yet afford the illiterate and barely able to feel they are customizing their characters.

Making them useful would take just as little of an effort as it already does.

Oblivion is the Bush/Cheney approach to gaming. Offer them everything, give them nothing. Get elected, sell boxes, then fuck off.

More like average politician approach to gaming. Just the other day Obama's press secretary was calling his constituents a bunch of faggots.

 

[jiduthie]

Making them useful would take just as little of an effort as it already does.
.

Nah, balancing things is harder then just making them a farce and generally useless.

As for the political commentary, I'll concede that it was ill considered in that I happened to use names. That posturing and flash is more important than substance when it comes to securing the masses, I'll leave as an open question.

 

[Raghar]

You need:
- specific state machines just for being on ladders
- transition from, to ladders
- can you shoot from a ladder? if no, should the AI drop the ladder, climb up or climb down before shooting, or should we implement shooting from the ladder?
- same for melee combat
- same for using objects
- if there's a stair and a ladder to go to a place, which one should the AI use if the ladder is the nearest but it can't fight while climbing a ladder?
- what happens when two AI crosses themselves in a ladder?
- what happens when an AI in a ladder dies? when the corpse falls on somebody down the ladder?
... and so on...

You forgot on a situation when two characters are having sex on the ladder. A lot of people are completely lost at what they should do when they are faced with situation like that, not to mention AI.

More seriously if they have a code that relies at an implicit grid they can't add ladders easily because ladders are zero length bridges.

On the other hand they seems to have to use an engine, not something coded specially for one game, thus they are highly likely using some kind of graph algorithm for that stuff. Well animations required specifically for ladders are bitches.

 

[Topher]

Well animations required specifically for ladders are bitches.

Bethesda is notorious for cutting features because they are hard to animate. If memory serves that's why they're are no flails in they're games anymore and was also a reason they didn't do mounted combat.

 

[jiduthie]

You forgot on a situation when two characters are having sex on the ladder. A lot of people are completely lost at what they should do when they are faced with situation like that, not to mention AI.

More seriously if they have a code that relies at an implicit grid they can't add ladders easily because ladders are zero length bridges.

On the other hand they seems to have to use an engine, not something coded specially for one game, thus they are highly likely using some kind of graph algorithm for that stuff. Well animations required specifically for ladders are bitches.

Yet it goes.

/salud comrade. we must ignore reality as long as we can hold those western devils.

 

[ksjav]

"WE GOT NPCS CLIMBING LADDERS!" is hardly something the marketing department can use to sell the game, if it could that shit would have been done and done, as it stands such a feature is irrelevant to them.

 

[flushfire]

counter-strike bots use ladders.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

This is... impossible. Really, this must be a joke - There cannot be any difficulty with the implementation of ladders in any game, seriously.

You need:
- specific state machines just for being on ladders
- transition from, to ladders
- can you shoot from a ladder? if no, should the AI drop the ladder, climb up or climb down before shooting, or should we implement shooting from the ladder?
- same for melee combat
- same for using objects
- if there's a stair and a ladder to go to a place, which one should the AI use if the ladder is the nearest but it can't fight while climbing a ladder?
- what happens when two AI crosses themselves in a ladder?
- what happens when an AI in a ladder dies? when the corpse falls on somebody down the ladder?
... and so on...

and that's why game design is more complicated that it seems (and why it should be left to programming types, not to artistic types, like it was done in the past)

Bethesda was entirely happy to have mounts in Oblivion that you couldn't cast spells or fight on. Why do you think they would care about all of that crap?

 

[Mastermind]

Making them useful would take just as little of an effort as it already does.
.

Nah, balancing things is harder then just making them a farce and generally useless.

It's a single player game. They don't need to be balanced to make them equally useful, merely making them uniquely useful is enough. They'd just need to follow two simple rules: no attribute boosts and no abilities that can be easily replicated with spells. I could come up with better birthsigns in a couple of minutes.

 

[jiduthie]

They don't need to be balanced to make them equally useful

This seems to be incoherent. Please advise.

They'd just need to follow two simple rules: no attribute boosts and no abilities that can be easily replicated with spells

You do realise you're asking for effects that don't exist within their spell system? Would you rather them offer spell effects, which take time and effort to produce, that can only be offered in birthsigns while denying their use within the overall spell system?

If yes, then those effects would take time to implement.

If not, this sounds to me like a design question that has nothing to do with laziness. They've either designed/programmed/produced spell effects or they haven't. I'd be happy to provide you with my thoughts on whether design decisions in Oblivion are good or bad, but birthsigns fulfilled the goal of providing an apparent differentiation from other characters without requiring any significant extra development time.


Edit: I'm playing your game to the detriment of being clear. You want the developers to provide birthsigns that give effects that are unique, and not replicated within the spell system. Furthermore, you argue that such a thing would not take time. In fact you point out that you could come up with extra birthsigns in a few minutes. Either the effects are within the games existing capabilities(i.e. are in the spell system) and do not take development time or they are new effects(i.e. not "easily replicated") and thus take up development time. Mastermind cannot have it both ways.

 

[Raghar]

Yet it goes.

/salud comrade. we must ignore reality as long as we can hold those western devils.

Umm, what?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Well animations required specifically for ladders are bitches.

Bethesda is notorious for cutting features because they are hard to animate. If memory serves that's why they're are no flails in they're games anymore and was also a reason they didn't do mounted combat.

Of course, they can't afford money for such things (especially when Retord Howard says that for him an RPG is a guy on a horse killing things) or for getting another engine (the one they currently use is not made by them anyway), they have to spend millions on advertising and buying reviews.

But hey, it works for them I guess...

 

[Sceptic]

No, there should be a balance. Every John Romero needs his John Carmack.

Romero - Carmack = Daikatana

And Carmack - Romero = Doom 3. So yeah you do need both.

Like Infocom masterpieces of storytelling?

Except that the programmers at Infocom did know how to write. Programmer and artist doesn't have to exist in 2 separate people, if the same person can do both then great. But if the programmer is a shit writer then you get Oblivion and FO3 dialogs.

 

[Mastermind]

They don't need to be balanced to make them equally useful

This seems to be incoherent. Please advise.

I'm saying they don't need to be equally useful. Phrased it rather poorly. I'd be willing to take a less useful birthsign if it provided some unique form of gameplay.

You do realise you're asking for effects that don't exist within their spell system?

I'm not. I said "easily replicated". A permanent fortify magicka is not easily replicated. Sure, you could cast the spell yourself, but you presumably want to spend the magicka on something else. And even so, the birthsign's constant fortify magicka would still be very useful because good ES spells are generally very expensive to cast (especially damage ones) and you can never have too much magicka. Moonshadow OTOH is useless. Invisibility is fairly cheap and easy to cast. There's no real reason to get the Shadow birthsign unless you really can't live without having an invisibility spell from the start. And I say this as someone who abuses the crap out of invisibility in every game that gives me the opportunity.

Example of birthsigns that do not require any change to their magic system:

Shit birthsign
Lord: 100% weakness to fire, POS lesser power heal
Good birthsign
Lord: 100% weakness to fire, permanent restore health effect

Shit Birthsign:
Steed: +20 to speed
Good birthsign
Steed: 100 constant effect feather (free encumberance makes your character move faster too, so it would have a similar effect)

Shit birthsign:
Shadow: 60sec invisibility spell you can use once per day
Good birthsign
Shadow: constant effect 20 point chameleon (they might need to tweak this so the predator effect isn't always on or it will be pretty annoying)

They all stay in the same spirit of the original, except they're actually useful from the very beginning to the bitter end.

Nevermind that they make unique spell effects for quests all the time. Why can't they be bothered to make a few for something that'll be with the character for the whole game? It's nothing more than pure intellectual laziness. If they're so strapped for cash that they can't pay someone to come up with better shit, they can shoot me an e-mail, I'll do it for free.

 

[Mastermind]

Except that the programmers at Infocom did know how to write. Programmer and artist doesn't have to exist in 2 separate people, if the same person can do both then great. But if the programmer is a shit writer then you get Oblivion and FO3 dialogs.

Oblivion dialogue was fine for the less important things, which leads me to believe that Todd Howard insists on writing the dialogue for things like the main quest, even though he can't write for shit, just like Adolf Hitler insisted on planning military strategy when he couldn't plan for shit.

Fallout writing has always been shit, you faggots just can't come to terms with it.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Fallout writing has always been shit, you faggots just can't come to terms with it.

Yes, Fallout always had the retardation present in Fallout 3, I wonder why I haven't noticed idiocies like "have you seen my father, middle aged guy?".