Interview Bethesda engine can't handle ladders.

[Lyric Suite]

You really shouldn't call him an artsy type when he is just as big of a genius when it comes to programming as Carmack is.

Romero knows how to program shit. That means is he as good as Carmack. Flawless logic.

 

[Luzur]

Dagerfall did have ladders in houses, but player need to click once on them to climb on top. Player couldn't climb on them, but walls were okey-dokey.

ive climbed on those once, but i got stuck halfway and fell into the void.

but it totally works man, you just need the right angle and alot of luck.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

I beat Fallout 1 a few times so I can make fun of it.

Healthy, balanced individual we've got here

 

[dr. one]

man was i pissed after realizing there are no ladders in G2.
inclusion of two in NotR was funny.

 

[Elhoim]

You still have Todd Howard and his idiotic rules (like "no betrayal")

That was Ken Rolston.

 

[DraQ]

Oddly enough you had betrayals in Morrowind.

Also, disabling functions is possible in oblivion engine, for example attacking is disabled if you're airborne and don't have high enough acrobatics.

Also, better birthsigns++

 

[bhlaab]

Ladders are the worst shit in games so who cares

 

[zappater]

You really shouldn't call him an artsy type when he is just as big of a genius when it comes to programming as Carmack is.

Romero knows how to program shit. That means is he as good as Carmack. Flawless logic.

I didn't justify him being a genius at all, please learn to read. As for him being a genius when it comes to programming, he started at the age of 12 and at the age of 17 he had got his first game published and for more information check wikipedia and this interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeFEW7akDqI

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.

You are wrong. Programmers are infact among the highest paid people within game development while artists and designers are paid rather poorly.

 

[made]

As for him being a genius when it comes to programming, he started at the age of 12 and at the age of 17 he had got his first game published

How is that even noteworthy? Back in the day lots of kids programmed games as a hobby, many of them are still active today.

 

[soggie]

Come to think of it, STALKER didn't have ladders while a bot mod for Half-Life had it.

Also, Mount & Blade had mounted combat while Oblivion don't.

This goes to show that the larger your programming team is, the lesser features game designers want to implement.

 

[Jung]

Can't handle doors either.

 

[shihonage]

You know John Romero has years and years of programming experience and was responsible for coding the world editors for games like Doom and Quake? You really shouldn't call him an artsy type when he is just as big of a genius when it comes to programming as Carmack is.

No, not really. Romero was completely at a loss when Carmack provided him the free upgrade to Quake2's hardware-accelerated engine, because he was unable to port Daikatana to it for the longest time.

Carmack was the undisputed engine genius (and still remains competitive) while Romero was nothing of the sort.

Romero - Carmack = Daikatana (crap)
Carmack - Romero = Doom 3 (crap)

Hence my point. Every John Carmack needs a John Romero and vice versa. It's nice when these qualities are combined into a single person, but the metaphor still works.

 

[SCO]

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

Tell that to gothic 2

 

[zappater]

As for him being a genius when it comes to programming, he started at the age of 12 and at the age of 17 he had got his first game published

How is that even noteworthy? Back in the day lots of kids programmed games as a hobby, many of them are still active today.

Back in 1979? Really must have been normal, you always hear these tales of how computers where in every living room back then. Try your bullshit somewhere else.

Carmack was the undisputed engine genius (and still remains competitive) while Romero was nothing of the sort.

Yea the undisputed engine genius, I never said engine. I was talking programming in general.

 

[Drakron]

Oddly enough you had betrayals in Morrowind.

Actually I am wrong, Ken Rolston was the one with the "no betrayals" rule.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=10408
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/General:Dougla ... _Interview

Ken Rolston was also the lead designer of Oblivion that have ... no betrayal.

Ken Rolston is also the lead designer of "Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning" ... I wonder what Salvatore will think of his rules ...

 

[ElectricOtter]

Wait, didn't Morrowind have ladders? The fuck?

 

[CrimHead]

Bethesda Engine cannot into ladders.

Fixed.

Wait, didn't Morrowind have ladders? The fuck?

In the same way Fo3 did.

 

[Mastermind]

Wait, didn't Morrowind have ladders? The fuck?

Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3 all have ladders. There just isn't any climbing animation in them. And I'm glad, I hate ladders. The "click on the ladder and get to the other side" system works just fine.

 

[Secretninja]

Resident Evil games were easier when the zombies couldn't climb stairs or ladders. I'm sure they spent like the whole budget for whatever the first game they could climb on figuring out how to get them to climb ladders and stairs.

 

[DraQ]

Oddly enough you had betrayals in Morrowind.

Actually I am wrong, Ken Rolston was the one with the "no betrayals" rule.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=10408
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/General:Dougla ... _Interview

Ken Rolston was also the lead designer of Oblivion that have ... no betrayal

Yet, he was also a lead designer of Morrowind and expansions, where you sometimes were kicked in the nutsack (albeit mildly and often turning the situation to your favour in the end) for being good little protagonist.

 

[MikeJahn]

But if the programmer is a shit writer then you get Oblivion and FO3 dialogs.

Sadly Oblivion and FO3 have professional dedicated writers...

Yep, it kinda makes it cthulhu esque when you think about it. These people are payed to write well, and they churn out shit, TYPO filled shit.

The problem isn't all of the typos the problem is shit like

"So you fight the good fight with your voice"

 

[ortucis]

Resident Evil games were easier when the zombies couldn't climb stairs or ladders. I'm sure they spent like the whole budget for whatever the first game they could climb on figuring out how to get them to climb ladders and stairs.

Them climbing ladders didn't really made the game hard, it was (in RE4) and still is (inRE5) the shitty "next-gen" controls that made your life hell as a PC gamer.

In every game where the AI can climb the ladders, it just becomes a really good way to trap and kill every moron near you by just waiting at the top of the stairs (popamole?). Only in Assassins Creed did the AI bother bringing the player down (kinda pointless since you can then just counter kill them all, might as well let the player run away..) and did what the player would do, wait at the top for you to show your face.

However, the only game where it was REALLY fun was the Dark Messiah. Knocking off ladders or kicking Orcs in the face as they climbed one by one was just hilarious (+ points for kicking them off the ladders and into the fire or spikes conveniently placed at the right angles/locations). My favorite of course was spilling oil at the top of the ladder and setting it on fire as the enemies climbed one by one and then screamed when lit on fire (you can throw a barrel to make it even better).

Ahh good times (also, the only place where Source physics didn't seem like a gimmick the game could do without).

 

[denizsi]

If my understanding is correct, it's completely possible to add new animations to characters in Oblivion in 3rd person and attach animated objects to the characters that play their animations on demand. There's even a combat mod that adds all kinds of moves like kicks, thrusts, beheading animations etc. but you can see the seams of the animated models in first person while it looks fine in 3rd person.

So, based on this, it should be possible to implement manual ladder climbing even in Oblivion. The game has everything one needs to do it. Example:

1. When an actor activates a ladder object, he will be "locked", moved up and down all the way as stated in the ladder object's script or by little amounts based on key input of the player and the custom animation will played and stopped accordingly to reflect the state of the climb.

2. Every time the player activates a ladder object, ID of the object and the Z coordination of the player at the time of activation will be stored in an array so if the player is climbing several ladders between several floors, there will be a linear record of them to be used by other actors. If the player activates the same ladder object twice subsequently (ie. the player climbing up or down to another level, and climbing down or up back to the original level), the references will be deleted from the array when there aren't hostiles in the cell.

3. Scan the cell for hostiles and store them in another array.

4. Check the distance and the Z difference between the player and the hostiles.

4.A. When it's less than the default height of the player's race (also taking into account the height of the race model vs. object center) between the player and either hostile AND the distance is also below a certain amount (to determine whether the hostile can catch up with the player to hit him while climbing), check the animation played on the player model. If it's, say, ani_climb_player_race_something, make that hostile attack the player. If the player is hit, climbing animation on 3rd person is stopped or the animated object in first person is removed, player is "unlocked" and falls down.

4.B. If Z difference is higher or the distance bigger, get the hostile's Z, compare it against the other Z values in the array mentioned in (2) and when a match within a tolerable range is found, get the corresponding ID of the ladder object and make the hostile activate all the objects in the array in the same order the player did. Obviously, if the player climbed only one level, there will be only one reference to be activated.

5. Hmmm, that's about it, I think. In case several levels can be reached via both ladders and through the terrain that's elevated at some places, it probably would be a good idea to let the AI try to reach it through the nodes first but I don't know if there's a script function to determine whether the AI is able to reach the player or not.

I'm sure I've missed some stuff (like collision between multiple climbers which would be incredibly easy to handle without resorting to physics except for the ragdolls when someone dies which are handled automatically but the ladder scripts could attach another scripted object to actors who die on the ladder to check for collision with other live actors to deal accordingly), but that would be the basic implementation that I know would work in Oblivion. At most, the animation part would be disastrous but the game gives you all the functions you need to script this.

Now that I think about it, I think the arrays were an OBSE feature. Anyway, for a programmer or coder, implementing this stuff from scratch should be a very simple.

So, I can only repeat what everybody knows: Bethesda cannot into game development!

 

[Jaesun]

4 fucking pages on ladders.

4 fucking pages.

 

[Topher]

4 fucking pages on ladders.

4 fucking pages.

Only because it deals with Bethesda. An actual discussion about how to handle the problem and about how other games have handled it would be interesting but as is stands this topic is almost pure butt hurt (with a few good exceptions).

If anything it's this kind of useless whining that should get marked as