Interview Oblivion tit for tat at GameCloud

[Twinfalls]

We've just had a professional games combat programmer explain why dodging animations are difficult in the context of to-hit rolls. Chefe you can keep verbalising 'but you can do this animation' comments here, but I'll take the word of the coder.

The to-hit loss isn't really a big deal, especially if luck plays a part in the occasional zero-damage hit. The addition of blocking far outweighs the loss IMO. At any rate, it's still in keeping with Arena, Daggerfall - the vision was always RT player skill+stat based.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

<snip>
Already called Tintin an idiot, and promised not to do it again.

The loop hole

 

[Loof]

Did you guys even stop to think about why what MSFD said would be true? Lets say that you wanted to use that nifty stop animation go to dodge animation resume normal animation system.
That would mean that at ANY point in ANY animation you have to be able to start a dodge animation. Now problems with animation syncronisation pop up... say that you have x animations in the game and each animation has y animation frames. Now to avoid a models arms and legs teleporting from one position to another you have to have a dodge animation for each animation frame in each animation which gives us x*y dodge animations, and thats only for ONE animation set, and im pretty sure that a normal human doesn't have the same animations as a bear or a big nasty deamon so if we have z animation sets we end up with x*y*z dodge animations.... ooops

 

[Chefe]

Twinfalls,

I'm just giving my ideas on alternatives. I really don't care that my sword goes through an enemy, but apparently the Xboxers were outraged by it, so I listed suggestions as alternatives to that. I'm just worried that the game is going to be too twitchy. I don't have anything against FPS games, but I just don't want an RPG which takes hundreds of hours to be like an FPS. I want character skill to matter more than a player's reflexes. I have pretty good reflexes, and can play any FPS pretty naturally, so I'm also worried that just by instinct I'll be able to take down the hardest enemies at a low level just because I know how to manuever the playing field. This is similar to how you could get bad guys stuck behind rocks or a closed door in Morrowind and attack them from the other side and easily win. I'm also worried that all these radical changed in combat, and it being the only real gameplay information we've heard so far, possibly means that's where most of their resources went to and other RPG aspects are lacking.

Hey, if they pull it off and it works, then I'm fine with it. I'm going to buy Oblivion, I've decided, so naturally I want a good game. I don't want this to be the last Elder Scrolls game I play, however.

 

[geminito]

Actually, I didn't realize people had such a big problem with the whole "sword hits on screen but I missed!" thing. I understood that Morrowind is an RPG, not an FPS. I didn't really care if the action on screen matched the stat checks. I agree with the criticism that there wasn't much to do other than click the left mouse button in combat. There was strategy when you were fighting something tough (use levitate, kite the opponent, etc.). That was fun. But once the game got easy (at high levels), combat was much less interesting.

I think only FPS players (not just on the console) who thought Morrowind was a fantasy FPS were complaining about the hit/miss thing.

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

Actually, I hated that you'd "miss" even though your sword went right through, too. And I'm not a huge FPS fan.

 

[Tintin]

but your character will have to be constantly moving around in combat to be effective

Like in real combat.

Yes, but unlike in an RPG where your reflexes shouldn't determine how effective you are.

It's like I'm talking to a brick wall here. I'm through arguing with you, chico.

Are you trying to turn Oblivion into a turn-based RPG? Or do you want it to have Dungeon Siege style combat? What is your goal here? Do you want it to be like Morrowind, basically a clickfest (PLUS TO HIT DIE ROLLS) with dodge animations?

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

The hit-miss did not bother me that much, the static feeling of the compass in general did, though. That's why I appreciate the changes (provided they turn out as exiting as in your dev diary description).

 

[Chefe]

Are you trying to turn Oblivion into a turn-based RPG? Or do you want it to have Dungeon Siege style combat? What is your goal here? Do you want it to be like Morrowind, basically a clickfest (PLUS TO HIT DIE ROLLS) with dodge animations?

Do I want Oblivion, or TES for that matter, to be turn-based? I'm not even going to answer this stupid question. Read my posts in this thread.

Now it's not only turn based I'm being accused of, but it's Dungeon Seige as well? Stop putting words into my mouth. Got it? Good.

Do you REALLY know how I want it? Do you REALLY REALLY want to know? Do you REALLY REALLY REALLY want to know with whipped cream? Do you REALLY REALLY REALLY want to know with whipped cream and a cherry on top? Do you REALLY REALLY REALLY want to know with whipped cream, a cherry on top, and syrup?

I'd like it to be like Arena or Daggerfall, where the movement of your mouse simulates your sword. I also liked how Arx Fatalis handled combat. While Arx was somewhat similar to Morrowind (as in the direction you pressed the WASD keys determined if your weapon attack sideways or overhead) it was much less frustrating and felt more... "real" and stimulating, if you will.

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

New problem: Too hard to do all those dodge animations.
Solution: Replace all dodge animations with animations of your weapon missing. You only need one per-weapon. Maybe a "whiff" sound to go with it.

 

[Tintin]

I'd like it to be like Arena or Daggerfall, where the movement of your mouse simulates your sword.

Yes, that was fun.

Solution: Replace all dodge animations with animations of your weapon missing. You only need one per-weapon. Maybe a "whiff" sound to go with it.

That doesn't make sense. How do you make an animation of your weapon missing? For your weapon to miss, the opponent would have to dodge it, or you would have to aim in the wrong direction.....If you're facing your opponent and you press hit....what exactly would be an animation of your weapon missing...?

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

If you're facing your opponent and you press hit....what exactly would be an animation of your weapon missing...?

Nothing hard about an animation that works if your opponent is right in front of you: your weapon goes in a different direction. A possible problem is if you were already facing the wrong direction and the miss animation ends up correcting it, but you could probably set it up so if you didn't have a chance of hitting anyway it doesn't bother to check your scores to see if you hit, and as a result, no special animation (regular strike, still a miss).

 

[Tintin]

If you're facing your opponent and you press hit....what exactly would be an animation of your weapon missing...?

Nothing hard about an animation that works if your opponent is right in front of you: your weapon goes in a different direction. A possible problem is if you were already facing the wrong direction and the miss animation ends up correcting it, but you could probably set it up so if you didn't have a chance of hitting anyway it doesn't bother to check your scores to see if you hit, and as a result, no special animation (regular strike, still a miss).

So...if you press hit, and your to-hit calculatets no hit - then your sword goes swinging off to the side wildly for some weird reason? (though even inexperienced fighters know how to swing a sword in front of them). Because even if it goes off only slightly, it woudl still hit the opponent standing in front of you.

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

Boy, all these solutions you guys have for keeping to hit. You should come work for us!
Look. You're making too big a deal out of this. Stats govern the amount of damage done. We have not eliminated randomness and character attributes or skills. You still make saving throws when spells hit, for example. Can't you just get over the elimination of ONE DIE ROLL (which, by the way, increased the use of character stats over Morrowind) and move on?

 

[Tetragrammaton]

In the name of realism and true role-playing, I suggest that we have a series of stats beyond the simple "blade" and "block", with ones covering the whole area of tactical prowess. Then, when you choose to do battle, just press the button and the game will take it away from there. The computer generates a complex choreography and you watch your PC utilize the tactics that you have built up, as it dodges, charges, and blocks all on its own.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Boy, all these solutions you guys have for keeping to hit. You should come work for us!

Flip that the other way around instead. It is us whom you should be working for.

While I'm a true believer in "keeping it simple", there's a line you can cross where you go so simple that instead of being simple, it's absurd. One of the aspects of simplicity it is makes sense without little thought. It's obvious as to how it's supposed to work. Putting axes in a blunt weapons skill, for example, isn't simplifying it. Axes are not "blunt". It instead confuses the end user and thus actually reduces simplicity.

I'm not sure what the point of that little tirade was, but there you go. To the topic on hand, I would rather have my opponent dodge and block rather than me always miss. I think some balance between the three is better than one over the other. Sometimes you would miss, sometimes you might've hit but for your opponents last minute step to the side, on others your opponent deftly blocks your swing. The result should be a much more natural fight as it's not reasonable to think that you'll always hit the guy standing in front of you with your sword all the time, or that you'll always miss either.

As for missing in Morrowind, I'm pretty sure I always hit... or was that because I'd passed the Uber status of level 13?

As for animations, don't they use bone structure in the models already or am I too far ahead of the times? I thought by now manipulating models was just a matter of merging bone movements into each other. IE: You have a movement with current bone position. Those bones can only move in a certain way. You have a final position those bones now need to be in. Your program determines the path from the current position to the end position and moves the bones naturally without moving them beyond their ability (no backwards bending elbows for example). That way, you can stop movements mid-motion and from that position, move them towards another end-position such as a strike or block. Of course, if you've blown all your development time on the pretty graphics and Patrick Stewart instead of those nifty small things that really make a difference, then I guess doing that would be too hard.

We've just had a professional games combat programmer explain why dodging animations are difficult in the context of to-hit rolls. Chefe you can keep verbalising 'but you can do this animation' comments here, but I'll take the word of the coder.

These are the same guys that say Mounted Combat is too hard to do though. Speaking of which, Mount and Blade seems to be quite capable of stopping animations mid swing and performing other actions such as a block, or even putting a weapon away. If you study it closely, the changing weapon is a bit odd but it all happens so smoothly that it's rather nice.

 

[Chefe]

Boy, all these solutions you guys have for keeping to hit. You should come work for us!

Sarcasm senses tingling!

Look. You're making too big a deal out of this. Stats govern the amount of damage done. We have not eliminated randomness and character attributes or skills. You still make saving throws when spells hit, for example. Can't you just get over the elimination of ONE DIE ROLL (which, by the way, increased the use of character stats over Morrowind) and move on?

Never. I will fight you to the ends of the earth.

But really, what I think we're mostly worried about (what I know I'm worried about) is this becoming that magical thing we call twitch gameplay seen in FPS games.

In the name of realism and true role-playing, I suggest that we have a series of stats beyond the simple "blade" and "block", with ones covering the whole area of tactical prowess. Then, when you choose to do battle, just press the button and the game will take it away from there. The computer generates a complex choreography and you watch your PC utilize the tactics that you have built up, as it dodges, charges, and blocks all on its own.

No thanks; Dungeon Seige really didn't really do much for me.

 

[Tintin]

These are the same guys that say Mounted Combat is too hard to do though.

Great, here's the "if the game dedicated to this can "somehow" "manage" to do it, then anything can!" argument again.

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

As for animations, don't they use bone structure in the models already or am I too far ahead of the times? I thought by now manipulating models was just a matter of merging bone movements into each other. IE: You have a movement with current bone position. Those bones can only move in a certain way. You have a final position those bones now need to be in. Your program determines the path from the current position to the end position and moves the bones naturally without moving them beyond their ability (no backwards bending elbows for example). That way, you can stop movements mid-motion and from that position, move them towards another end-position such as a strike or block. Of course, if you've blown all your development time on the pretty graphics and Patrick Stewart instead of those nifty small things that really make a difference, then I guess doing that would be too hard.

Give me a break, DarkUnderlord. How you can possibly assume that our team doesn't have the technical knowlege to handle even fundamental animation just boggles my mind. There are HUNDREDS of animations in Oblivion. There's a complex blending system, that allows animations to transition in and out. A priority system that enables multiple animations encompassing various body parts to play at once. Yes, we could add in a dodging animation that can interrupt whatever's happening and dodge out of the way of a blow just as the attack is launched. But if the actor is already in the middle of another animation, the dodge would have to be blended in within the extremely short span of time between attack start and strike, and if the dodge animation is too different from the current animation it simply won't blend out in time. And if you just interrupted the current animation and jumped to the dodge state, it'd look very jarring and wrong (like the aforementioned Han Solo dodging Greedo's shot.)

Or, we can just reduce the amount of damage done if you're not very good with the sword. And I am finished talking about the to hit roll.

 

[Section8]

I'm with MSFD on the dodge animations, it's really not worth the effort for something so trivial. Besides, you're always going to have players bringing up criticisms if they don't understand the underlying systems. If it's not "Why the fuck am I missing? He's right in front of me!" it's going to be "Why the fuck am I not doing any damage? A sword cuts through leather!"

As far as twitch based combat goes, it's the logical path to take if you want to improve on the piss-poor dullness of Morrowind combat. I think the age old model used in Ultima Underworld is passable as far as being somewhat interesting, and a helluva lot more varied than nucking your left mouse button, and you'd be hard pressed to make an argument that it was "too twitchy." Funnily enough, the biggest factor in killing that style of combat in Morrowind was that one fucking checkbox "Always use best attack", which was a pretty goofy option in my opinion.

Here's a slightly unrelated question for one of you Bethesda lads if you come back to this thread, what's the go with parrying? That to me would be a reasonable way to convey a lack of weapon skill to the player, and would stop arguments about both missing and not doing any damage when you hit.

 

[Twinfalls]

Twinfalls,
I'm just giving my ideas on alternatives.

No you're not. MSFD has patiently explained why doging animations are not worth implementing in Oblivion. And you're jumping up and down like a little kid saying 'but why can't you do [this]!! Why can't you do [that!!].

It's understandable why he now can't be bothered to continue talking on this topic.

 

[Twinfalls]

We've just had a professional games combat programmer explain why dodging animations are difficult in the context of to-hit rolls. Chefe you can keep verbalising 'but you can do this animation' comments here, but I'll take the word of the coder.

These are the same guys that say Mounted Combat is too hard to do though. Speaking of which, Mount and Blade seems to be quite capable of stopping animations mid swing and performing other actions such as a block, or even putting a weapon away. If you study it closely, the changing weapon is a bit odd but it all happens so smoothly that it's rather nice.

Mount and Blade is a dedicated mounted combat simulation, with RPG aspects tacked on (and not yet complete). Remember that unlike M&B, Oblivion still uses a CS, one which caters for all the massive size and the shitloads of other aspects to the game, and the flexibility of which must neccessitate trade-offs.

To-hit is gone. But so what? There will still be zero-damage hits. Luck will still factor in this. Plus there's now blocking.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Funnily enough, the biggest factor in killing that style of combat in Morrowind was that one fucking checkbox "Always use best attack", which was a pretty goofy option in my opinion.

Is it dumber to have that button or the fact there's always one attack with a weapon that works better than any other? I think it's the latter. What's the point of having three or four attack types when there's one attack that's better than the rest?

 

[Elwro]

What's the point of having three or four attack types when there's one attack that's better than the rest?

I think the idea was that it was better in terms of damage only. It could've taken more time than the others or be more fatigue-demanding, which (if balanced properly) could, if overused, lead to your opponent knocking you down (iirc) and you being unable to perform any demanding physical feats until your fatigue regenerated.
Of course, it didn't work out, but iirc it wasn't as stupid as "Hit the button to use the best attack".

And I am finished talking about the to hit roll.

Good! Let's talk about... soul capturing! Is that in? Is it changed in comparison to how it worked in MW? Are there any quests connected to the ability (e.g. capturing someone's soul in order to have him interrogated etc.)?

 

[Chefe]

No you're not. MSFD has patiently explained why doging animations are not worth implementing in Oblivion. And you're jumping up and down like a little kid saying 'but why can't you do [this]!! Why can't you do [that!!].

It's understandable why he now can't be bothered to continue talking on this topic.

Yes, Yes I am.

And if you don't have anything other to say than "OMG LEIK QUIT!!! U BABY!!" then please, don't quote me. I'm tired of hearing your incessant nagging. You quote someone just to act like a bitch, and then don't say anything else.

We were talking about the loss of the to-hit rolls, and now we're not. We'll just have to wait for a gameplay video or something to see if the combat comes off as being twitchy (which is, again, my biggest concern). Again, I will explain myself in that it wouldn't bother me if the combat did not come off as being similar to an FPS, managing that would be a good thing and, from their descriptions, combat would be interesting without requiring FPS-like tactics..