Of course that memory organization is not trivial for such complex system, but you will still use references to common data combined with "instance" data and save memory that way, if possible.
I was mainly referring to it in a UI sense, the way you should do lists is segment them so that you're only loading in what is visible. Most developers don't bother, Worst offender is the Sims games, all of them just dump the entire catalogue in one big list despite it being super inefficient to load and display. I'm not saying lists as a data structure are inherently bad, but the way most developers implement it is. Why load in a list of 1000 items if only 100 can be displayed at any one time. Worst if you have a list that is reliant on render textures then you get StarCitizen and Cyberpunks problem where the UI doesn't immediately load in. UI should be snappy and ready to use you shouldn't have to fight it for control and it should hold up regardless of the use case otherwise you designed it wrong. I shouldve clarified more.
Oh I agree with that. Morrowind was meant to be a lot more ambitious but Bethesda nearly went bankrupt, so it was streamlined because the team couldn't manage.
The entity/object hierarchy is pretty complex because the player can apply all sorts of unique properties. Each alchemy level corresponds to marginally stronger potions which means the stats can't be an inherited property. And then you get enchantments, weapon improvements, weapon naming, and FO4's crazy weapon mod system. Either all of these properties exist per entity or the game has to somehow figure out which entities have identical properties at runtime and group them together. Actually now that I think about it maybe you were on the right track earlier. Maybe they use a hash function on item creation to check if they should create a new entity or increment a counter. Since crafting menus are the most controlled environments in their games, they might be able to hide this more computationally complex check.
That's exactly what happens. In fact the save file is referenced in the exact same way as updates, mods, and the game itself. So like Skyrim.esm predefines the default state of the game and is loaded at the base of the stack, then Update.esm, then all your mods in whatever silly load order you have them configured in, then finally your save is loaded at the top of the stack.
I'ma be real wit you. Most game devs probably don't think about UI optimization that much because it's presumed to be the least taxing aspect of their games. This isn't like webdev where project managers monitor page responsiveness and clickthrough rate like a hawk. I'd also imagine Bethesda can get away with bad patterns because they're not loading in image files, they show the game models themselves which should already be loaded in.
Engineering aside, UI design is a lost art not just in videogames, but software in general. It all started with Apple lemmings swooning over their spring-loaded taskbar animations and the rot spread and spread...
Don't get your hopes up:
Skyrim was probably even worse than FO4. Maybe not the main story, but most of everything else.
It's definitely an eclectic cast of characters.
Wasn't it Fallout 76 where you could move faster by looking at the ground?
Go all-out with what? The combat and level design in Skyrim are horrible. You even get regenerating health from the start of the game, ensuring it's a braindead experience and undermining what little RPG elements the game has left (what is the point of building a character with high endurance or restoration spells if every player character heals by default).
For the same reason Star Citizen is in the MMORPG section instead of the Hague.
A poignant metaphor for our own inescapable mortality. Todd is such an artist, he paints with gameplay instead of "fampyrs."
Oblivion was the game that crushed my faith in AAA games. I was massive Morrowind fan and played it for years, I was at ripe age of 16 years old when Oblivion released so I was just at that demographic where it should've been life-altering experience. I wanted to like it. I really did. I convinced myself to play it, telling myself I enjoy it while it all felt so hollow. I managed to play for 2 weeks before abandoning the game for many years and every brief return to it has only proven how foolish I was to even try to take it in. At that age I couldn't exactly put it into words what made it so terrible, those articulations dawned on me much later but all in all, Oblivion remains the single most disappointing game I have ever played in my entire life.
You bought three displays but skimped on an Asus GPU for, what, Gigabyte? Nigger, I'ma slap you!
And to think it's only few short years when people said he looks ageless.Todd Howard looks so old now.
I realize he has wrinkles and little undereye bags which he hadn't back in the day.
NPC routines already existed in the Gothic series and frankly they were done far better. Bethesda didn't do anything worth mentioning.
This takedown deserves its own takedown. It's not so much that I think the questline is Goodfellas or anything, but several online critics have the most bizarre tunnel vision that makes them insufferable to read. It reminds me of all those youtubers who lost their minds over Kid in a Fridge somehow oblivious to the fact that the quest's premise is a very intentional joke. If a straight delivery throws you off, I don't know that you're qualified to evaluate writing quality.
Because they're corrupt. The game is set in a medieval land ruled by a loose confederation of petty kingdoms. Casual corruption is to be expected. The author seems to struggle to think outside of contemporary societies and their robust legal frameworks. This ties in with his confusion about a legal business dealing generating intrigue. Like many preindustrial societies, Skyrim's population mostly adheres to a code of honor and tradition not legalism. That's the entire catalyst for the Civil War. The common folk wouldn't differentiate between an undisclosed business dealing and a forceful seizure. What the author is trying to spin as bad writing are actually examples of good worldbuilding.
I... paralysis exists in multiple forms. There are two ways to apply it to a bow (or any other weapon) and you can go around Karliah-ing people to your heart's content. There's funny youtube videos that feature players doing exactly that. It also exists as a spell. And it is used elsewhere. Just off the top of my head, Kematu paralyzes Saadia at the end of that Redguard quest.
It's more accurate to say it's a design limitation. If you watch a speedrun of their games, the engine clearly can handle the player physically moving that fast. The problem is the cells don't stream in in time so everything looks glitchy. If they really wanted to add vehicles, it's easy to see all the ways they could reduce the data streaming load. Instead of tracking every NPC and item in the cell at all times, they could simply unload those resources when they're out of view. They could drastically reduce geometry without sacrificing visual fidelity if they didn't dot their landscapes with so many points of interest and modeled interiors. But that simulation detail has become part of their brand so they elect for heavier loads and constrain the player's speed to compensate.
This isn't surprising for a game where everything is tied to a fixed tickrate. If you uncap the frame/tickrate then you're not going to simulate stuff in more granular increments but increase the speed of the simulation. And looking at the ground means the game has to render less geometry so it can push frames faster. And if you wanna get spooky, that's how our own universe works. As you approach the speed of light, the 'simulation' speeds up from your frame of reference. You can tell the engine wasn't designed for online and BGS Austin struggled to implement the netcode. The server shouldn't just accept whatever the client tells thems. It should be able to evaluate whether the information it's receiving makes sense and overrule the client if it says the player is moving faster than they should.
I had the same exact experience, I loved playing Morrowind. The dust storms in the northern desert areas with 5.1 surround was really immersive. And they released Oblivion, and they just destroyed everything. Removed skills and added level scaling. Pirated it once, played a few hours and never again. Skyrim I played to archmage then never again.
