Starfield Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Hellraiser]

No, I'm saying that they won't do proc-gen terrain on the user's end, which was what Mebrilia was talking about, it was in the context of CPU load. On the development side, Bethesda's been procedurally generating terrain via heightmap since Oblivion and then having a designer refine it. I very much expect the same here, except with less hands-on designer time.

Well it becomes a question of scale and where exactly the gigabytes of the installation size will come from.

I'm assuming the "land anywhere" part because they showed a planetary globe with deposits marked. It doesn't make sense to implement such a thing otherwise, as in such as case you would use a mining system without landing like Mass Effect 2 did. Plus honestly it's not that hard to do on a bethesda "good enough" level if they only want to generate one part of the planet around the landing coordinates and that's it, it's a logical evolution of what they did with terrain generation as you mentioned.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

This will be Morrowind in space.

 

[Gargaune]

Well it becomes a question of scale and where exactly the gigabytes of the installation size will come from.

Barren terrain data won't present a significant impact on the game's storage footprint, not when we're dealing with 125GB's worth of game anyway. Relying on runtime proc-gen for terrain, however, would present a much bigger issue (aside from CPU load) in that you'd either have to store that data in the save file, resulting in bloat which is already a factor in Gamebryo (see my discussion with Late Bloomer earlier in this thread), or in a lack of consistency as environments would dramatically change between visits, which isn't the Bethesda way.

Sure, without Todd spelling it out, we're just speculating, but I'm fairly confident in my expectations - planets would have fixed heightmap terrain, loaded in from the game's data, and procedural generation would create content and challenges at runtime, meaning random encounters and prefab dungeons, stuff like that. Once a planet location is visited, content like dungeons would get locked in like in Fallout 4 and baked into the save file, and obviously this would cause some bloat, but much less and that's significant when you're talking about files in the 20-40MB range.

I'm assuming the "land anywhere" part because they showed a planetary globe with deposits marked. It doesn't make sense to implement such a thing otherwise, as in such as case you would use a mining system without landing like Mass Effect 2 did. Plus honestly it's not that hard to do on a bethesda "good enough" level if they only want to generate one part of the planet around the landing coordinates and that's it, it's a logical evolution of what they did with terrain generation as you mentioned.

Dunno, my impression from last year's presentation was that there would be one or more fixed waypoints that you could land on a planet, but I may be misremembering. But for Bethesda to do what Mass Effect did and let you mine them from space would be a missed opportunity since their gimmick is to run around exploring environments, whereas the latter's all about banging space aliens (or so I'm told, I got bored halfway through the first one and quit).

 

[Drakortha]

Since they introduced a nod to Oblivion, I hope they'll do the same for Morrowind and make a planet with giant mushrooms.
And netches.

Just play Elder Scrolls Online for that. Seems every other expansion for that game is riding on the coattails of Morrowind.

This will be Morrowind in space.

I remember during the marketing leading up to the release of Skyrim, Todd said that Skyrim was going to be more like Morrowind.

 

[Ibn Sina]

just saw the requirements (i'm trying to stay as away as possible, from each and every news of each and every game. they're all just hyping and shilling anyway, they've been for at least the last 20 years, but i'm digressing).
125 gb.
people still play skyrim because it's a comparably smallish download, it's convenient.
this on top of the insane video requirements, to still look like skyrim.

Whats crazy are these requirements while the models and animations look from 2015 at best. Bethseda always had soulless NPCS with eyes and expressions of blackholes but wow this one takes the cake. They very slightly managed to fix that somewhat with fallout 4 due to the cinematic cuts that comes with voiced protaganist, but now we are back to silent protaganists (no necessarily a bad thing) but as a result the zooming in on soulless, blackhole faces of the creation engine is back with vengence.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Sure, without Todd spelling it out, we're just speculating, but I'm fairly confident in my expectations - planets would have fixed heightmap terrain, loaded in from the game's data, and procedural generation would create content and challenges at runtime, meaning random encounters and prefab dungeons, stuff like that. Once a planet location is visited, content like dungeons would get locked in like in Fallout 4 and baked into the save file, and obviously this would cause some bloat, but much less and that's significant when you're talking about files in the 20-40MB range

What if the terrain is "seeded", i.e. generated based on a predetermined hash, and then only thehash needs to go in the savegame data.

 

[jaekl]

Fast travel is poison anyway unless its done in a controlled, restricted way which gives value to it.

Never understood the hate for fast travel, especially in Bethesda games. What's the appeal of taking an eventless 15 minute trek back to the Imperial City / Megaton after killing all of the trolls / super mutants in the cave / cave but radioactive?

Ideally you only do the 15 minute treks at the start of the game when you have a lot of patience still. Then later on you have teleportation, levitation, super speed etc. Feels better to work within the confines of the world than to open a menu and click a map icon.

 

[Late Bloomer]

It reminds me of https://matadornetwork.com/read/yellow-filter-american-movies/

Holy shit dude. That article is poison.

 

[Drakortha]

Ideally you only do the 15 minute treks at the start of the game when you have a lot of patience still. Then later on you have teleportation, levitation, super speed etc. Feels better to work within the confines of the world than to open a menu and click a map icon.

The fast travel and compass markers started with Oblivion and it will never go back to the way it was. Doing so would require an entire generation of consumers to unlearn the convenience of those features, and also require Bethesda to give a damn about their open world design making logical sense (such as making viable roads and routes between locations, NPC's that can say more than a few lines and give the player directions, locations that exist for more reasons than it just seeming like a cool/wacky idea, etc).

Bethesda like to claim they are in the business of creating worlds, as if it's a badge of honor they wear. But it's a lie. It would be more honest for them to say they manage theme parks. Starfield Direct showcases each location and feature in their game like a fun attraction.

 

[EvilWolf]

Since they introduced a nod to Oblivion, I hope they'll do the same for Morrowind and make a planet with giant mushrooms.
And netches.

Considering the subject matter of alien planets with the equivilent flora and fauna I'd be interested to know if Michael Kirkbride was involved at any point.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

This will be Morrowind in space.

In Current Year, a game that is essentially Morrowind in Space would be tremendous incline.

 

[Gargaune]

What if the terrain is "seeded", i.e. generated based on a predetermined hash, and then only thehash needs to go in the savegame data.

I don't know exactly what data format defines terrain in Skyrim or Fallout 4 as-is, but I doubt it would be worth it. The only benefit in procedurally generating terrain at runtime would be expanding the space for exploration at the expense of the level designer's opportunity to handcraft. You could get around that detriment with a mix and match approach, parts X and Y of a planet are developer handcrafted, and beyond their bounds, the game will generate random landmasses, but you'll soon run into a serious case of diminishing returns...

Think of it this way, if you have each planet offer an explorable space the size of, say, Far Harbor, you might as well have pregenerated the heightmap and dumped it to the 125GB of game files, tweaked or not - no save bloat, no CPU load. Proc-gen would only help if you really wanted planets to be planet-sized and fully explorable, but at that point I don't think it'll matter how much you optimise the seed's format (and ulterior runtime decompression!), you're talking about a thousand planets, each with potentially more terrain than any single prior Bethesda game, that could be massive bloat for a save that has to stay within a couple of dozen MBs. Basically, the more you take advantage of the feature, the more you bloat the save. And you can't really take cell reset buffer approach because it's one thing for Lexington to clear dead raiders after a while, it's another for the same set of coordinates to land you on a mountain today and a lake next week. It's possible, but it'd be a departure from prior form, and I don't think it's very appealing.

And finally, I'm not even sure what the gameplay case would be to have such large planets, not for general audiences anyway. It'd be a cool novelty and you know there's that one guy who'll want to explore everything, but I imagine most people will have had their fill after their 160th Far Harbor. If this were a single star system, I could see the appeal of being able to "land anywhere" on five or six planets maybe justifying the technical effort, but with a thousand planets?... That, to me, suggests design priorities were likely elsewhere.

 

[Robotigan]

Either way, runtime generation is super cool. If it's based on a predetermined seed, modders can force it to accept alternative seeds for new universe generation. If it's a unique seed per player, modders can eenable the option to enter a custom seed so you can share interesting universes with your friends.

 

[WHATAMESS]

Secondly with current creative bankruptcy, the plausibility of anything otherworldly (ie. not currently known to man) will fall well below any acceptable sci-fi standard (which I consider to be somewhat higher than for most fantasy). Sapient aliens non-existent, anthropomorphic or hivemind. Non-sapient aliens just a rehash of generic monsters you'd whip in Spore creator.

What's with all this slobbering demand for things like sapient aliens or unrealistic designs/anti-NASApunk? The "aliens everywhere" sci-fi like Star Wars or Mass Effect has been done to fucking death, and if anything it's a mark of low quality. People who claim that the visual design and setting are boring because there's no humanoid aliens to fuck or because there's no muh hecking x-wing starfighter ships are literally against any effort being put into sci-fi at all.

 

[Kiste]

Bethseda always had soulless NPCS with eyes and expressions of blackholes but wow this one takes the cake.

I wish they would just return to the version of FaceGen they used in Oblivion, where almost everyone looked like they had an additional chromosome or fetal alcohol syndrome.

At least that shit was funny.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I've watched half of the deep dive and I'm hyped for Starfield. I can be a murder hobo in space, that at least is a cool gameplay loop that without a doubt exists. Sure, it's not worth keeping great expectations about the story or game economy balance. But the moment I saw the combat possibilities I was going "bring it on, punching people from railings and throwing landmines at them from the air"!

WIll I have to finally buy an RT card though? In my case this means changing the motherboard, RAM and CPU as well.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

Really nice graphics in the trailer.
NPC looked amazing, couldn't tell them apart from the Bethdrone employees giving the talk

Spoiler

 

[Kiste]

WIll I have to finally buy an RT card though? In my case this means changing the motherboard, RAM and CPU as well.

There were some unconfirmed rumors about RT support last year but did they actually mention anything about it in that deep dive video? I don't think so.

 

[Hellraiser]

Either way, runtime generation is super cool. If it's based on a predetermined seed, modders can force it to accept alternative seeds for new universe generation. If it's a unique seed per player, modders can eenable the option to enter a custom seed so you can share interesting universes with your friends.

Yeah I thought the exact same thing and it would be an upside of that approach and one reason I would prefer it, but with the Toddster's vague statements/lies he made so far it's hard to determine how it works.
After all there are lies, damn lies and bethesda marketing hype spewed by Todd and Hines.

I mean bethpizda said they did not have the technology before to make it, but what technology and why it was needed is a mystery, as is whether the reason was not retarded. Was it hard drive space, SSDs, GPU offloaded calculations for the terrain noise, raw CPU power, more RAM? Maybe the toddster wanted snazzy space engine effects but they couldn't code a non-choppy shader or particle system to do it. Or he didn't want to have the same issues with maximum object count on consoles that plagued the settlements in their Boston shantytown building game.

Well at least it's only 3 more months until this gets released so the answer will be known fairly soon, unless they delay it again

 

[AwesomeButton]

WIll I have to finally buy an RT card though? In my case this means changing the motherboard, RAM and CPU as well.

There were some unconfirmed rumors about RT support last year but did they actually mention anything about it in that deep dive video? I don't think so.

If I have to upgrade my PC anyway (4790k CPU / 1080ti / 24 GB DDR3 ram), I might as well get an RT card.

 

[dbx]

What if the terrain is "seeded", i.e. generated based on a predetermined hash, and then only thehash needs to go in the savegame data.

I don't know exactly what data format defines terrain in Skyrim or Fallout 4 as-is, but I doubt it would be worth it. The only benefit in procedurally generating terrain at runtime would be expanding the space for exploration at the expense of the level designer's opportunity to handcraft. You could get around that detriment with a mix and match approach, parts X and Y of a planet are developer handcrafted, and beyond their bounds, the game will generate random landmasses, but you'll soon run into a serious case of diminishing returns...

Think of it this way, if you have each planet offer an explorable space the size of, say, Far Harbor, you might as well have pregenerated the heightmap and dumped it to the 125GB of game files, tweaked or not - no save bloat, no CPU load. Proc-gen would only help if you really wanted planets to be planet-sized and fully explorable, but at that point I don't think it'll matter how much you optimise the seed's format (and ulterior runtime decompression!), you're talking about a thousand planets, each with potentially more terrain than any single prior Bethesda game, that could be massive bloat for a save that has to stay within a couple of dozen MBs. Basically, the more you take advantage of the feature, the more you bloat the save. And you can't really take cell reset buffer approach because it's one thing for Lexington to clear dead raiders after a while, it's another for the same set of coordinates to land you on a mountain today and a lake next week. It's possible, but it'd be a departure from prior form, and I don't think it's very appealing.

And finally, I'm not even sure what the gameplay case would be to have such large planets, not for general audiences anyway. It'd be a cool novelty and you know there's that one guy who'll want to explore everything, but I imagine most people will have had their fill after their 160th Far Harbor. If this were a single star system, I could see the appeal of being able to "land anywhere" on five or six planets maybe justifying the technical effort, but with a thousand planets?... That, to me, suggests design priorities were likely elsewhere.

Why would you need to save the procedurally generated content in the save file? That's retarded, unless you allow user modification to the map (and even there you just save the modified bits).
Also, heightmaps are expensive as fuck in term of storage. need (at the very least) 16 bits per pixel, need a lot of resolutiomn to have terrain that doesn't look like shit (say 10cm per pixel) and can't be lossy compressed (otherwise you get noticeable errors every time you load an heightmap, unlike procedural generation that always stays the same irregardless of how many time you regenerate it)

 

[Kiste]

I can be a murder hobo in space, that at least is a cool gameplay loop that without a doubt exists.

That was pretty much the only part of the deep dive that piqued my interest. Disable another space ship, board it, fucking murder the fuck out of everyone and take their shit. And their ship. Like Sid Meier's Pirates! in space. Could be serious fun times, if done well.

 

[Gargaune]

WIll I have to finally buy an RT card though? In my case this means changing the motherboard, RAM and CPU as well.

There were some unconfirmed rumors about RT support last year but did they actually mention anything about it in that deep dive video? I don't think so.

If I have to upgrade my PC anyway (4790k CPU / 1080ti / 24 GB DDR3 ram), I might as well get an RT card.

Some RTX is in, they mentioned Global Illumination a fair bit in the presentation. Though it should be optional, at least on PC, seeing as the minimum listed GPU is the 1070 Ti.

Why would you need to save the procedurally generated content in the save file?

a lack of consistency as environments would dramatically change between visits

for the same set of coordinates to land you on a mountain today and a lake next week

 

[dbx]

Why would you need to save the procedurally generated content in the save file?

a lack of consistency as environments would dramatically change between visits

for the same set of coordinates to land you on a mountain today and a lake next week

That's not how procedural generation works you know?

 

[dbx]

"School mom lecture about capitalism"
That truly is a perfet description of outer worlds (or any obsidian game really)