Renzatic on 15/12/2010 at 01:19
Quote Posted by Melan
...
and Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon, both perfectly.
I never knew that. I've got double the respect for the guy now.
As far as Skyrim goes. It's got a great setting (think Bloodmoon, which was supposedly an island off of Skyrim if I remember my fiction correctly), and FO3 was fun enough to numb some of the disappointment from Oblivion. It has the potential to be a good game. Doubly so if Bethesda gets some good writers behind them and remembers what made Morrowind so much fun.
Eldron on 15/12/2010 at 14:14
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Whoah, I didn't know that. I thought it was some sort of middleware solution like UE3 which was getting long in the tooth, hence the crappy animation and interior/exterior loading and other limitations. Thanks for clearing that up.
So... that means that most of the engine's problems were Bethesda's fault to begin with
ARRGH
Apparently they have learned alot though, and have upped their manpower (in both artistic and coding department) considerably, so I'm positive they'll surprise us this time.
Digital Nightfall on 15/12/2010 at 14:17
Are you talking about the recent studo acquisitions? Bethesda alone is working on Skyrim. Neither id nor Arkane are involved with it. All of the other ZeniMax studios have their own projects which they're working on internally.
Judith on 15/12/2010 at 15:06
Quote Posted by Eldron
The only thing gamebryo was related to in terms of issues was that it isn't the fastest one and bethesda probably outgrew it in terms of what they need now, it has nothing to do with the visual quality of the art, nor has it anything to do with the animations or facegen.
It has something to do with the visual quality in terms of lightning and shadows, and this is quite poor element of this engine. Outdoor lightning is awful, especially in Fallout 3/NV. If you take a look at any editor (TES/Geck), you'll see that a lot of meshes have planes or other outlines with gradient black to alpha transparency to make up for lack of object shadows.
Eldron on 15/12/2010 at 15:23
Quote Posted by Judith
It has something to do with the visual quality in terms of lightning and shadows, and this is quite poor element of this engine. Outdoor lightning is awful, especially in Fallout 3/NV. If you take a look at any editor (TES/Geck), you'll see that a lot of meshes have planes or other outlines with gradient black to alpha transparency to make up for lack of object shadows.
Gamebryo is fully capable of having full shadows, and the environment lighting setup is always up to the artists, being a lighting artist in a game is actually an entirely seperate type of profession which requires skill.
Bethesda opted to drop shadows though even though they had it planned for oblivion, they were chosing between having vast landscapes with long distances or having the shadows still in due to drawdistances.
If you want to say that gamebryo is not the fastest rendering engine, then I'd say you're right, but there are far worse ones out there, the issues at hand was mainly that bethesda lacked some artistic capabilities in their character and animation department, and facegen wasn't used properly at all, they've always had some nice environment art though, especially with morrowind's environmental design.
Digital nightfall, no, bethesda just have more people on skyrim compared to fallout3 and oblivion, and they have hired some new talent where it was needed (animation department especially) and they've most likely have more software engineers working on the new engine.
Judith on 15/12/2010 at 16:58
Sure, I guess that was their choice then. But the outdoor lighning, the sun/daylight system was bad right from the start, I mean (
http://cdn.steampowered.com/v/gfx/apps/22380/ss_b898b51f69d795b804374bb6396c7c24b23545d3.1920x1080.jpg?t=1289584476) too simple. Sun passes through everything, even if there's a solid object between. You can't do much about it on the world design level, I guess.
But of course you're right about animations and facegen. Other departments have their sins as well. In the field I've got some experience: I've found quite a lot of sloppy texturework, like not bothering to remove texture seams on a cuboid (!) column (as you know it's a simple task) or meshes with simple UVWmap and stretched/distorted tiling textures instead of proper unwrap.
Eldron on 16/12/2010 at 01:07
Quote Posted by Judith
Sure, I guess that was their choice then. But the outdoor lighning, the sun/daylight system was bad right from the start, I mean (
http://cdn.steampowered.com/v/gfx/apps/22380/ss_b898b51f69d795b804374bb6396c7c24b23545d3.1920x1080.jpg?t=1289584476) too simple. Sun passes through everything, even if there's a solid object between. You can't do much about it on the world design level, I guess.
But of course you're right about animations and facegen. Other departments have their sins as well. In the field I've got some experience: I've found quite a lot of sloppy texturework, like not bothering to remove texture seams on a cuboid (!) column (as you know it's a simple task) or meshes with simple UVWmap and stretched/distorted tiling textures instead of proper unwrap.
Yeah, lack of shadows have that effect, and we're so used to having shadows in games now.
Even lack of ambient occlusion indoor can make things flat, since you miss out on shadows from the sunlight in there.
I'm betting skyrim will have full sun-shadows this time around though, it's not rocketscience these days, and considering how outdoors the elderscrolls games are, they can really use it.
Interrupt on 17/12/2010 at 05:57
Quote Posted by Eldron
Gamebryo is fully capable of having full shadows, and the environment lighting setup is always up to the artists, being a lighting artist in a game is actually an entirely seperate type of profession which requires skill.
Bethesda opted to drop shadows though even though they had it planned for oblivion, they were chosing between having vast landscapes with long distances or having the shadows still in due to drawdistances.
If you want to say that gamebryo is not the fastest rendering engine, then I'd say you're right, but there are far worse ones out there, the issues at hand was mainly that bethesda lacked some artistic capabilities in their character and animation department, and facegen wasn't used properly at all, they've always had some nice environment art though, especially with morrowind's environmental design.
Digital nightfall, no, bethesda just have more people on skyrim compared to fallout3 and oblivion, and they have hired some new talent where it was needed (animation department especially) and they've most likely have more software engineers working on the new engine.
I've never quite understood the hate for Gamebryo. Yes, it's not the fastest or fanciest graphics engine around but it's still not responsible for the many sins people attribute to it. I've seen people on reddit and the official forums complaining about Gamebryo because of the bad player physics in the game - that's not tied to the rendering system in the slightest.
Eldron on 17/12/2010 at 15:27
Quote Posted by Interrupt
I've never quite understood the hate for Gamebryo. Yes, it's not the fastest or fanciest graphics engine around but it's still not responsible for the many sins people attribute to it. I've seen people on reddit and the official forums complaining about Gamebryo because of the bad player physics in the game - that's not tied to the rendering system in the slightest.
People hear it from people who hear it from people, and suddenly everyone is screaming "gamebryo!"
Judith on 17/12/2010 at 16:31
Actually, I never had any problems with Gamebryo being slow (at least not when I met/exceeded system requirements). For me it's mostly about the sunlight/textures/meshes, lame normalmap compression, etc. But it's just me.
