Interview Bethesda engine can't handle ladders.

[SeriousDev]

Guess what, I've yet to encounter a game designer that even asks himself half of these questions.
Then answering these is just 5% of implementing the result.

It's not that it can't be done, but a studio specialized in 3rd person action games will do it much better and focus much more on it than a RPG studio (esp. Bethesda) : more animations, more transitions, more interruptible states, more love...

Actually you show why many people never accomplish anything. Instead of blocking out all the infinite possibilities and doing something for every single case, why not look at what you do want to do? You don't need to have NPCs on the ladders at all, or can limit this dramatically. There's no real reason to want combat of two guys passing each other on adjacent ladders it's just fucking ridiculous.

Instead of being some STL fagtoes babbling about best practices and requirements, we can just put the feature in the game like a good C programmer would. Block off ladders completely from AI if you need to. Add them as a more expensive node in your pathfinding if you want to have them use ladders for some reason (and really who gives a fuck if npcs even move, let alone go grocery shopping using ladders? it's only an issue since it's a FP popamole crap fest anyway).

And transition animations, really? Is that so hard? Also, you can be surprised how little you need for something like this to look good. Animation blending works wonders.

 

[Tramboi]

Actually you show why many people never accomplish anything. Instead of blocking out all the infinite possibilities and doing something for every single case, why not look at what you do want to do? You don't need to have NPCs on the ladders at all, or can limit this dramatically. There's no real reason to want combat of two guys passing each other on adjacent ladders it's just fucking ridiculous..

You're correct, you *can* sacrifice features.
Next step is you can remove ladders. And that's what they did.

Instead of being some STL fagtoes babbling about best practices and requirements, we can just put the feature in the game like a good C programmer would. Block off ladders completely from AI if you need to. Add them as a more expensive node in your pathfinding if you want to have them use ladders for some reason (and really who gives a fuck if npcs even move, let alone go grocery shopping using ladders? it's only an issue since it's a FP popamole crap fest anyway)..

Your comment about C and C++ is ridiculous...
C++ is an industry standard, even the Sony SPU compiler targets C++.
Even Id Tech went C++

And transition animations, really? Is that so hard? Also, you can be surprised how little you need for something like this to look good. Animation blending works wonders.

I worked on a action game on previous generation consoles where just walking the character blended 9-18 animations and there was procedural animation for the character to cling on objects in the world. I think this kind of stuff is out of focus for a RPG (even though Bethesda is clearly bad at these compared to some competitors).
And I developed the animation and blending code in a AAA STR that is just about to ship which animates lots of soldiers and mechanical units.
So I know a thing or two about animation blending

 

[SeriousDev]

Actually you show why many people never accomplish anything. Instead of blocking out all the infinite possibilities and doing something for every single case, why not look at what you do want to do? You don't need to have NPCs on the ladders at all, or can limit this dramatically. There's no real reason to want combat of two guys passing each other on adjacent ladders it's just fucking ridiculous..

You're correct, you *can* sacrifice features.
Next step is you can remove ladders. And that's what they did.

Instead of being some STL fagtoes babbling about best practices and requirements, we can just put the feature in the game like a good C programmer would. Block off ladders completely from AI if you need to. Add them as a more expensive node in your pathfinding if you want to have them use ladders for some reason (and really who gives a fuck if npcs even move, let alone go grocery shopping using ladders? it's only an issue since it's a FP popamole crap fest anyway)..

Your comment about C and C++ is ridiculous...
C++ is an industry standard, even the Sony SPU compiler targets C++.
Even Id Tech went C++

And transition animations, really? Is that so hard? Also, you can be surprised how little you need for something like this to look good. Animation blending works wonders.

I worked on a action game on previous generation consoles where just walking the character blended 9-18 animations and there was procedural animation for the character to cling on objects in the world. I think this kind of stuff is out of focus for a RPG (even though Bethesda is clearly bad at these compared to some competitors).
And I developed the animation and blending code in a AAA STR that is just about to ship which animates lots of soldiers and mechanical units.
So I know a thing or two about animation blending

So then why are you defending them? What makes you think they are competent?Why do you make it out like ladder implementation is so hard when you know it's not? I am guessing there is some wacky limitation on animation count they contend with for consoles or the engine to explain some of it but really it's like they just do the barest minimum of anything and then do it in the most full of suck manner possible.

The C language programmer comment was about attitude, not about language. The real issue is not ladders it's a company that seems to do only what's needed for screenshots.

 

[Tramboi]

I don't defend them, I tried to expose to some people why it is not that trivial to implement ladders with the same quality than walking.
There are enough good reasons to bash Bethesda games, let's leave implementing ladders aside

 

[SeriousDev]

But I am in the mood to be angry about something.

 

[Tramboi]

Let's bash them about animation speed scaling!

 

[zeitgeist]

Why is anyone even slightly surprised about Beth cutting corners every possible way with regard to animations and art assets and such? They don't even have a diagonal walking/running animation for cryin' out loud, your character just moonwalks and slides to the side, doesn't even rotate in the direction you're going. If they could get away with all characters just lifelessly standing in something resembling the default Poser standing stance for 95% of the time, they'd do it. Oh wait.

 

[Naturaliensammler]

lets face it, climbing ladders isnt as cool and actiony as having 3-4 extra gore/dismemberment animations when shooting the head off a mutant with a pistol.

soldier of fortune had it all, well except mutants.

yeah, but soldier of fortune was a long time ago, grandpa, this is the new generation of HD games we are talking about!

Didn't SoF2 feature a dynamic destruction system for the head so you could have realistic holes in the head?

 

[zappater]

I don't get why people are talking about it being hard or accusing Bethesda for not being able to program ladders when its clearly about time, hell almost nothing in life is hard. If it takes 10h to do ladders properly then the question is, out of your finite amount of hours to complete the game is it worth spending 10 of those on ladders? Apparently Beth does not think so, a lot of us disagree and they are twats for having different priorities. Everyone knows ladders is a must have feature after all!

 

[Luzur]

lets face it, climbing ladders isnt as cool and actiony as having 3-4 extra gore/dismemberment animations when shooting the head off a mutant with a pistol.

soldier of fortune had it all, well except mutants.

yeah, but soldier of fortune was a long time ago, grandpa, this is the new generation of HD games we are talking about!

Didn't SoF2 feature a dynamic destruction system for the head so you could have realistic holes in the head?

 

[chzr]

lets face it, climbing ladders isnt as cool and actiony as having 3-4 extra gore/dismemberment animations when shooting the head off a mutant with a pistol.

soldier of fortune had it all, well except mutants.

yeah, but soldier of fortune was a long time ago, grandpa, this is the new generation of HD games we are talking about!

Didn't SoF2 feature a dynamic destruction system for the head so you could have realistic holes in the head?

 

[Luzur]

lets face it, climbing ladders isnt as cool and actiony as having 3-4 extra gore/dismemberment animations when shooting the head off a mutant with a pistol.

soldier of fortune had it all, well except mutants.

yeah, but soldier of fortune was a long time ago, grandpa, this is the new generation of HD games we are talking about!

Didn't SoF2 feature a dynamic destruction system for the head so you could have realistic holes in the head?

 

[Sceptic]

DU, can you pretty please replace Luzur's avatar with this? The smirk is just too good.