Looking kind of empty huh?

Yeah, cities really need lots of NPCs in them to make them feel alive.

towns like Balmora are being expanded. This will result in some new NPCs being added to the game. Additions padding is an option if worked in correctly, but this is not being considered right now. Too early to see if it will make sense or not. Just having them leave their houses (which they will) will add quite a bit of liveliness in Skywind.

Quantity over quality, that is what everybody likes....

I didn't really mind the ambient generic NPC's in Skyrim... In real life I'm used to that not everyone I meet wants to have long, intricate conversations, quoting Wikipedia articles about their city, trade, and everything else I could ask :P Having some additional characters with only one or two lines they chuck at you without engaging into a dialogue would be fine. It does equal quality, in terms of how cities feel. With what's planned for Vivec we really need it more crowded up and busy.

Am I really the only one who doesn't prefer quantity over quality?? I would prefer things remained the same rather than just adding things because some think it feels better.

NPCs are the biggest CPU and memory hogs in Beth games, that's why there are not a lot of them around. It is a technical limitation, not design decision or lazyness of developers.

Well, the technical limitation is due to laziness, but I get your point.

GrumpyCatQuantity over quality, that is what everybody likes....

Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim take it to the extreme. More often than not, every character you see is important for something. It doesn't make very much sense.

Not every NPC should be a quality NPC. Hell, I'm pretty much useless where I live. I only ever leave my house to work and buy groceries. If I were in a game, I wouldn't have any lines of dialogue at all.

Look at some of the early Assassin's Creed games. There are a ton of NPCs. All the cities actually look like cities, and the games maintain that quality feel even when there are such large quantities of things and people that are really nothing but filler.

NPCs are the biggest CPU and memory hogs in Beth games, that's why there are not a lot of them around. It is a technical limitation, not design decision or lazyness of developers.

The only reason NPCs are the biggest CPU and memory hogs are because Bethesda continually makes the choice to stick to an engine that isn't built to handle what they're throwing at it. That's laziness. They definitely made enough money off Oblivion and both Fallout games to afford to license a better engine or even build one from scratch (which they don't have the talent for, really).

In the civil war quest line in Skyrim, there are plenty of NPCs on your screen at any given time. There are many more in the area around you. It was entirely feasible for Bethesda to add more NPCs to cities and villages, as well as the roads between Holds. They just don't not to. Not because of technical limitations, but because they just didn't want to. Or perhaps because they needed to meet their 11/11/11 release date, but that comes down to being a design choice as well. Zenimax chooses the release dates for their games. If they can't be bothered to keep a game in the oven a bit longer so that it's far better when released, it's entirely on them.

Hell, if NASA came up with the same excuses that Zenimax and Bethesda are now, the US would have never made it into space because of technical limitations. Instead, they chose to circumvent those limitations by coming up with new methods and technologies. There's no reason Bethesda couldn't have done the same thing. As far as Skywind goes, there are several mods that add random NPCs to the cities and villages of Skyrim. None of them burden the CPU more or take anymore memory than other vanilla parts of the game.

[External image]its the way the game is in real live skyrim would be way way biger whit many more persoons but its al scaled down afcourse there are way more  but u dont see those  if u want somthing like that go play elder scroll 2 dagerfall thats the size it should be but is that realy that intresting ?

 

Schwerpunkt

They just don't not to. Not because of technical limitations, but because they just didn't want to.

Your opinion is very valuable for us, and I'm sure for Bethesda too.

zilavYour opinion is very valuable for us, and I'm sure for Bethesda too.

I realize you're being sarcastic, but there is definitely value in my opinion. It's inherent because my opinion, in this case, is fact.

Bethesda chooses to use the same engine for all their games. The only reason they have technical limitations is because they choose to have them. They could just as easily migrate to another engine, but that wouldn't make them as much money because they'd need to invest in training their developers how to use it effectively and efficiently (not that they do that now).

I understand you guys love Bethesda, but you're really not helping anyone by refusing to see their many faults. The Creation Engine is nice on the surface, but it's flawed for the type of games that Bethesda wants to develop. The same goes for Papyrus. The community shouldn't have to fix all the problems in Bethesda's games.

The only reason I'm continuing this discussion is because of the comment you made, zilav. In regards to Skywind, it certainly is possible to add more NPCs without overburdening even low-grade PCs. Obviously you can't just throw 50 NPCs into a small area and expect everything to be fine, but the cities and villages are large enough that many NPCs could be spread throughout them without affecting performance or stability. The same goes for adding NPCs to wonder Morrowind, explore caves/ruins, make pilgimages, etc.. Despite what you think of the above, zilav, your technical limitation excuse is utter bullshit and doesn't apply.

Schwerpunkt

They could just as easily migrate to another engine

That single line killed all your arguments and just showed that you don't have even a slightest clue of what you are talking about. Throwing random "NASA" arguments and calling other people opinions "bullshit" made it even worse.

You have your opinion, you believe and defend it, and that's your right. But this doesn't change the fact I wrote above about memory and CPU bottleneck. This is my last reply, so you can go on arguing with yourself here...

Inconsequential NPCs adds a total of 94 NPCs. It has very little impact on CPU or memory, if any that's even noticeable.
Interesting NPCs adds 250+ NPCs all over Skyrim. It has very little impact on CPU or memory, if any that's even noticeable.
Really though, nice try with that "fact" of yours.

And yes, they could just as easily migrate to another engine. Or create one from scratch to support the things they ultimately want to do with their games. They're going to have to do it sometime. Todd Howard already stated the next Fallout will likely be the last game to use the Creation Engine, so they're going to be moving on after that.
Whether he's talking about a new engine entirely or just another repatching of Gamebryo, no one really knows (although we should all hope that it's the former, not the latter).. but the fact is that Gamebryo and its iterations over the years haven't been sufficient for the games that Bethesda develops, especially with how oblivious and lazy the developers have been and how impatient the publisher and executives are.

[External image]make your own game lets see u do beter i think bethesda is is good at what the do there are game makers ho just release  broken shit for sake of money

and the not even saying the making a fallout game so howe can the say this wil be last 1 to use this engine 

cant we lock this topic its anoying and got no real use 

You think Bethesda is a good game developer that doesn't release broken shit for money? http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/Unofficial%20Skyrim%20Patch%20Version%20History.html

They don't bother supporting any of their games after they release them. They do a few patches that fix a handful of "serious" issues and then completely ignore everything else, all for the sake of money. You know what the vast majority of those bugs in Skyrim are a result of? Lazy developing. It's painfully obvious the developers didn't look twice at what they were adding to the game. There are thousands of bugs that would have easily been fixed had they given the game a second look before release.

The community is doing what Bethesda should be doing. If you're going to sell a product, you need to support it. It's that simple. And no, just because Bethesda makes "huge, open" games doesn't justify it. That's like a cop complaining about being shot at while on the job -- get used to it, it comes with the territory. If Bethesda can't support their games after release, they shouldn't be developing the types of games that require it. Honestly, the only thing that saves Bethesda is the fact that we can, as a community, mod their games and fix all the broken shit.

Many of the other bugs are the direct result of Bethesda continually choosing to use the wrong engine for their games. Gamebryo is no longer up to the task of bringing what they imagine to life. It's just not a capable engine for TES and Fallout games. They need something else, something that's cross-platform from the start, something that can scale as large as they need it to.

@Shwerpunkt please give it a break. We are all aware of Bethesda's engine's limitations, trust me, we grapple with them daily. Your argument is turning more into a rant of everything that has ever been wrong with Bethesda's development, although true to a subjective extent, is off topic. Please don't take offence by this, we've all been guilty of ranting about Beths cons before, I know I have.

As I highlighted earlier we are simply not at a stage where anything like this could even be considered in terms of city design (new, generic NPCs). If you have issues with Bethesda's engine, the best place is to take it up on their forum as we can't change anything about it (although we're trying :D ). If you truly feel like Skywind needs some NPC padding when it comes out and we haven't taken this route, it is very possible for someone to make a mod to add this feature. Zilav is right though, our cities will already be a bit intensive on moderately powerful computers, adding a bunch of NPCs could make the game far less playable for people with lower end machines unless done carefully, especially since we may be adding a few NPCs to cover the expanded nature of the cities. As I said though, mods for Skywind is a real possibility upon release.

@Schwerpunkt

Yeah, I agree with taerkalith. This is quite offtop. It doesn't lead us anyway. I agree with some points but it doesn't help this project.

I only went on that rant to prove a point. If anyone here is critical of Bethesda, it's me.. yet I'll also be the first to admit that the Creation Engine does indeed have its merits, and one of them is being able to render more than a few NPCs without drastically affecting performance or stability. Hell, I linked two mods earlier, one of which adds 250+ NPCs to the game, and neither are CPU or memory intensive. I can run both of them, together, just fine with my dated AMD CPU and 8GB of DDR3 memory running as the slowest possible speed. Yeah, you guys probably know more than I do about the engine since you're the ones developing this mod (or managing development), but those mods I linked to are actually completed and you can't argue your unfinished content against content that actually exists and produces results that are contrary to what you're suggesting.

I understand that you guys just want to get Skywind finished as soon as possible before thinking about additional content, but come on. In almost every thread on this forum, you're altering content left and right, even adding more in some cases, to create a Morrowind that fits your vision, not recreate the Morrowind that we all played years ago. There's very little vanilla content conversion going on without something being added, taken away, or changed altogether. That's all the OP is suggesting here, and that's all I'm asking for as well.

Morrowind had quite a lot of NPCs, but most of them are irrelevant with the new engine. Once almost all of them are given routines, Morrowind will seem almost as empty as Skyrim does. Adding filler NPCs is a great idea, especially if you have many of them travel throughout Morrowind to make a few places seem more lively.

I have been floating around the tesrenewal project for a series of months now, and have found  myself most impressed with the work that is being produced. I share a lot of opinions with Schwerpunk and am glad to hear someone voicing such concerns. I understand that this project is very concerned with who will be able to this and to make sure it's accessible to the greatest number of people. However we can't always have it that way, I'm not suggesting that those with lower specs should be left unable to play the game, but I feel it would be much better if the mod was released with multiple versions which could cater to those with different specs.

Another day another fight.... I want in!

We could easily add dozens of NPC's to every town and it wouldn't have a serious effect on how the mod runs. This game is over 3 years old and it was made for consoles. If your rig would suffer, you probably have dial-up. Actually, if your PC isn't stronger than a PS3 get off the internet, look in the mirror, and question what you've been doing with your life.

On the other hand, more NPC's means more work, more voice acting, more houses for integration, more nav meshing, more outfits, etc... People need to stop suggesting that we add more anything. Everyday it's more armor sets, more creatures, more this, more that, more cowbell.

We have to draw the line in the sand somewhere or this will never get done. I'm fine with doing only what was in the vanilla Morrowind. I also don't mind some extra stuff. After the vanilla stuff, or if I don't have to do it.

Oh and since we're dogging on Bethesda. That little Xbox exclusivisity deal with the DLC almost made me burn my collector's editions. They are greedy filth. I have never seen such blatant fan screwing in all my life. It's no way to build a brand or run a business.

You're right, Ashking. The more things that are added to the project, the longer it'll take.
.. so why is there even a forum for suggestions at this point? Why are new ideas being entertained? Why are plans always changing?
I could go a step further and ask why people are constantly criticizing models and textures as well, asking/demanding changes, but I know that's a fight that's already ongoing in some threads.. there's so much nitpicking going on that new content should be the least of your worries. Same goes for reworking mechanics or coming up with wild, new ideas for vanilla content (Kwama caves, I'm looking at you).

If you're serious about completing this, serious about not turning into Tamriel Rebuilt 2.0, then close off the suggestions part of the forum and consolidate things. Stop nitpicking every model and texture that's posted. Stop trying to rework vanilla content. Stop forcing sex into the game as well (for you, Dragomir). Otherwise, threads like this are going to keep popping up. You're apparently welcoming suggestions, so you'll keep getting them.

As for new NPCs, the idea of "inconsequential" NPCs is that they're just that: inconsequential. They don't need unique outfits, houses, a ton of voice acting, etc.. just look at the vanilla "Mercenary" NPCs in Skyrim. That's all you really need to add. Not every NPC needs a name, a back story, etc..

Hell. I don't know. I just make models here. And I love conflict.

I honestly don't know why we have public anything on this site; forums or chat. I used to say that it occasionally brought in good ideas and made people more likely to help, but that's a lie. People don't want to help, they just want want want. All the ideas are about how we can add some labor intensive this or the other and why they couldn't possibly turn on the CK and do it their f#@king selves.

The only reason I get on it is to jump into the arguments. It relieves the stress of working my ass off on this mod. So thank you public forums. You are like a chew toy.

@Schwerpunkt, I've tried to address some of your points, hopefully they'll shed some light:

“…but those mods I linked to are actually completed and you can't argue your unfinished content against content that actually exists and produces results that are contrary to what you're suggesting.”,

-It is important to remember that the environments in which these NPCs will be found are not Skyrim. Skywind’s assets, city design, and if they’re in closed/open worldspaces all have tremendously variable impacts on how much they add to the cpu/gpu load. Skyrim maxes out at 4gb so anything above this doesn't come into play and Skywind is more demanding than Skyrim in some areas.

“I understand that you guys just want to get Skywind finished as soon as possible before thinking about additional content.”

I think you’ve misunderstood what has been said. We are open to additional content. This particular area, as I’ve repeatably mentioned, is not ready to be considered seriously due to the state of city expansion currently, we simply don’t have a solid ground to base an understanding on how this would affect the gameworld before the other changes have been finalized. When it is a possibility, it has shown to be enough of a divisive issue for players/additional work it would be best implemented as a mod by someone who is passionate about it. I.E. give the player the choice of if they want it or not. Having it separate from the .esm shouldn’t have any negative impact on its functionality. I am more than open to helping someone set this up in terms of VA so that the NPCs just recycle existing recorded lines, although I’m not personally interested in having it in my game or doing any direct work on it. However it is redundant to talk about this until we are farther along.
I also don’t know how you think most NPCs will somehow become “irrelevant” in the new engine? Giving routines means they’ll leave their houses, wander the streets, have conversations and make the cities seem more crowded than they do in Morrowind but this is subjective so let’s leave it be. In terms of traveling from place to place we have random encounters in the works that should add something similar to what you’ve alluded to in some instances.

“so why is there even a forum for suggestions at this point?”

-suggestions can lead to new ideas, discussion of said ideas, and sometimes through the process we end up with tasks that will really improve the game (idle banter I think is a good example of this as various forms of it were thrown around before we did it)
-there is no harm in suggestions, and often it is a place for people to become more informed about the state of the game. Not all ideas will be taken up though but I think it’s fair to say they will be entertained and the parties working on a said area will explore if they can or want to do it, and where it sits in their priority list for getting the game launch ready. If developers decide they don’t want to do it, then please respect their decision. Remember, no one gets paid for their work and it is only fair to not be belligerent towards them if they disagree with you. I’d advise learning how to do it yourself and creating it as additional content if you believe it to be critical to your playthrough, or finding someone who will, more modders the better.


“Why are new ideas being entertained? Why are plans always changing? (Kwama caves, I'm looking at you).”

-Kwama caves, like every other asset set we have in-game is being replaced. Concept art, exploring ideas, is integral to this process. Our videos I think do a good job of showing this evolution from concept to model. Kwama Caves are no different, they haven’t been touched yet seriously so they’re getting attention now. Multiple images will be drawn up to help narrow in on the final conceptual designs.

“Stop trying to rework vanilla content.”

-this is the whole point of the project, and in terms of assets, an absolute must due to legality.

“Stop forcing sex into the game as well (for you, Dragomir). “
- Please avoid making generalizations like this and making personal accusations/attacks, no one is forcing anything. Concept wise it is important to debate such points. Also, nudity /= sex.  

“You're apparently welcoming suggestions, so you'll keep getting them.”

-suggestions are welcome, snarkiness less so.

Ashking's point: “Public forum: I used to say that it occasionally brought in good ideas and made people more likely to help, but that's a lie. People don't want to help, they just want want want”

-I have to give a shout out to all the wonderful people who have been helping with idle banter, some of my batch sorting jobs, and most recently, facial emotions. This is why we have a public forum, public chat, and suggestions. Without a public presence monumental tasks like these are simply not possible. I know Ashking is just jaded, because we do get a lot of people that don’t know what planet they’re on but there are also excellent people who help out knowing that any small bit they do helps the project along. And well without it, I would never have had the opportunity to become involved.

I hope this helps address some of your points

Taerkalith, you are so adroit!

If someone ends up doing this when we are at this stage, I'll give them an appropriate list of voicetypes from our generic NPC VAs that have recorded already. There are a lot more than 6 lines for any NPC. Lots of combat, detection, dead bodies, tresspassing, thievery, some greetings, etc. Base amount is around 100 all said and done to not sound cookie cutter. Even without any PC-NPC direct interaction you're still looking around 80. Skyrim's VA system has a lot more to it than meets the eye.