Oblivion
 

I'm sure some of you are like me, played Morrowind to death, and have been eagerly awaiting TES Oblivion. I am going to get it today, hopefully.

I built my machine with the plan of playing the next Elder Scrolls game, hopefully it won't disappoint me.

Most of what I am seeing posted in other places is that
1.) the grass (or what have you) is in a visible radius around your character.

2.) the textures of some objects, most notably the emperor's face, could have been done better

3.) the text print is too large

4.) the inventory is hard to navigate

None of these are show-stoppers for me, especially after plowing through half of Morrowind prior to the patch that let you know if you were damaging your opponent at all. Several of these problems will likely be fixed in a week or two.

Any thoughts?

Re: Oblivion
 

Grass around you in a visible radius, that's a feature. It's so that your graphics card doesn't go wild rendering ALL of the grass around you ALL of the time. Grass is very graphics intensive.

Re: Oblivion
 

It's a bad feature. Grass should _never_ be so complicated that it is a major strain on resources... its grass!

Re: Oblivion
 

Unless, perhaps, you're playing "SimMower"

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No, it's not really outrageous. Grass is usually done by the simple method of a double-sided quad, with transparency. Newer games use stuff such as multiple polygons so that the grass can use the physics engine to move as the player walks through it.

Re: Oblivion
 

But its grass! Unless it has a major impact on gameplay, why should it take up a major chunk of your resources?

Re: Oblivion
 

Because it looks pretty. That's why.

It's the same reason why games aren't just stick-people made out of blocks with triangular ground, and blocky models. That may be efficient, and gets the job done, but it doesn't look nice.

Re: Oblivion
 

*A major chunk of resources* is the key.
If its not going to impact the playability, fluff is fine, and some is good.

But if you're spending a multidigit percentage of the system resources on a particular bit of fluff, rather than on important things, that's a bit crazy.

Re: Oblivion
 

Grass around a little bit of the character isn't very intensive. But as you render more and more grass, then the requirements to render that grass rise exponentially, as it's more of a job to use the transparency.

Re: Oblivion
 

Actually, it would be proportional to the square of the radius. If a circle of radius 1 has N blades of grass to render, then a circle of radius 2 has 4*N blades of grass to render. As long as you're not doing something silly like keeping the camera *inside* the grass, there should be no problem with computing overlapping transparencies.

And something like rendering grass should take up very little system resources. Nearly all the memory and computation used would be in the graphics card, not the system itself.

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Graphics card resources are still system resources... You over-render grass, you slow down the rendering of everything else.

Re: Oblivion
 

The problem here is not whether the grass is rendered or not, the problem is that it's easy to see where it stops. A properly executed rendering would effectively "fade" the rendering so the only way the player would see the rendering edge is to actively look for it - otherwise, it'd be relatively unnoticeable.

Re: Oblivion
 

bingo! atari_eric hit the bullseye...

however, I don't know why we're debating an issue based on the hearsay in the first post. I shall refrain from grass arguments until I try the game and see for myself.

Re: Oblivion
 

Well, I played for about 3 hours last night.

I can understand all the criticisms that people have brought up - in my original post.

The grass radius is noticeable, so I will see about turning it off when I get back outside the dungeon I am in. The first dungeon (outside the tutorial) that I stumbled across is HUGE. Something gratifying in watching a mindless skeleton stumble into swinging blades.

The textures are not bad on my machine AMD 3700+/Radeon X850, but it depends on the lighting. The second time I talked to the emperor - lighting made his face look ghastly, but again that was because of ambien lighting.

I have never been much of a "sneak attack" kind of player, but I am enjoying the bow/marksman part of the game - in "sneak" mode 3x damage from afar, 6x damage if you can stab/slash them before they notice you.

Anyway, much too early to give a full review. I am on the default settings the program set for me - the quality is on high, I think, with a resolution of 800x600, which looks fine. You can set it on letterbox, which I think I might do.

I'll let you know what else I think.

Re: Oblivion
 

Grass distance even has got its own optional settings:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...owtopic=277929

Unfortunately the screenies of the initial post are too large, but it looks like you can customize almost everything about graphics.

Re: Oblivion
 

I know, I am not dead-set on photorealistic gameplay. I played Zork, Sword of Glass and Bard's Tale I, for goodness sake.

I'll play with it when I get home. Although that will be put off as the wife is having a bad dog and bad toddler day.

Re: Oblivion
 

I pity you.

Re: Oblivion
 

My copy has been shipped. Details to follow, probably after I'm over the cold.

Re: Oblivion
 

Upgrade to ADOM or TOME? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Oblivion
 

Huh?

Anyway, according to UPS my package is slowly making its way accross the country. In the meantime, I've resorted to re-playing NWN.

Now, I just have to figure out how to scribe scrolls...

Re: Oblivion
 

Give me Angband, or give me death! I spy with my little eye something begin with... D. And it kind of looks like a Valkyrie with "Nethack" written plain on the forehead.

Narf, PvK is just trying to convert you to rogue-likes proper. Now if I could avoid starving in Nethack...

Re: Oblivion
 

No need. I'm an Adom fan.

Adom tromps your silly nethack and angband. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Oblivion
 

I like ADOM (except for a couple of things), and so far, TOME (an Angband derivative which seems to me more interesting that Angband itself so far). I didn't really like Angband much because it seemed SO steeply balanced and repetetive - no risk at all for a looong time, and too much re-randomized infinite dungeons, and then WHAM!

I think they all suffer though from the steep balance and the automatic "the world gets tougher based on your character's level" nonsense. D&D has a lot to answer for...

Re: Oblivion
 

I love Angband, my favorite is a varient based on David Eddings books.

Re: Oblivion
 

If you have the PC version and are finding the inventory and related menu's too huge there is a mod called BTmod that does a lot of interface tweaks to the game. The current thread can be seen here: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...owtopic=310815

Im using it and it makes looking for spells and items alot easier.

Re: Oblivion
 

I probably won't tweak Oblivion until I have been through the main quest once. I am enjoying the game a great deal, if 3-4 hours every evening since 3/21 is any indication. I did restart when my first character got vampirism and I couldn't see an easy way to get around curing it.

Re: Oblivion
 

You people do know that the vampire disease is curable with a cure disease potion? If you wait three days for the disease to progress fully, it's your fault for letting the disease progress to vampirism.

Re: Oblivion
 

Well, I got ESIV...Now I just need to get a new video card. And my motherboard only supports AGP for video card slots.

Fortunatly, one should be in the store soon.

Re: Oblivion
 

I believe GS cards are AGP.

Re: Oblivion
 

Thanks.

Re: Oblivion
 

I haven't read spoilers so THHBBBBBTTTT!!!!

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...It's been that way since ESII, at least. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Oblivion
 

If it shows up in a loading screen, it ain't a spoiler. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Oblivion
 

$2.50 for some horse armor if you play the game on the xbox 360... Death to the proprietary consoles that don't allow free modding! Vive le PC!

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Not a suprise. The've been announcing that downloadable content, at least on the 360, is going to cost a 'few dollars' for months now. The stated explanation is so that they can continue to pump out downloadable content - Something along the lines of two a month, I think.

Re: Oblivion
 

Considering the stuff we get for SE4, even with a small user base?

That stuff is seriously screwy.
Unfortunately, there are too many masochistic console gamers out there who will pay.

Re: Oblivion
 

But horse armor? I'd expect new dungeons, new towns... not trivial stuff like horse armor. Vive le PC!

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There previous downloads ranged from a new dungeon to cosmetic stuff - Look at the plugins list for morrowind and you'll probably know what to expect.

Re: Oblivion
 

My completly descriptive, highly informative and well-thought-out review of ESIV...

...Coooooooooool.......

Re: Oblivion
 

As far as I understand, you will have to pay the same for the PC versions.
http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11318

Re: Oblivion
 

A great resource for optimizing: http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article....=36222&p=1

Unoficial technical faq: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...1&hl=speed

In case you don't know what 'coolbits' is or how to use it with nvidia: Long url (Helped me)

Improved UI and markers Optional mod: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...owtopic=300177
(Tested, I like. Makes the tab menu bigger, so you can see more of the map, and makes the inventory entries smaller, so you get a lot more on your list.)

Re: Oblivion
 

No matter. Someone will release equal or better stuff as a mod for the PC version. The problem with the xbox 360 is that you can't use all the mods that were half the strength of Morrowind, and are looking to be the same way for Oblivion...

Re: Oblivion
 

Apparently, Microsoft is afraid of being sued if an xbox mod angers someone. This is because the mod would have to be distributed over the 'xbox live' system.

(Note: Don't own an xbox, not entirely sure what that is, other than an internet something.)

Re: Oblivion
 

This is better. It has tweaks that don't reduce stability, like the one Narf linked to. And it has more stuff, like removing that keyboard movement bug, or making the standard interface closer to the edges.

Re: Oblivion
 

Thanks, checking it out.

Re: Oblivion
 

Me too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif