So, trying to play FO3 this afternoon; get my companions mod lined out so I can tackle the other set of saves and see whether the Nos' Adventures game is recoverable.
I've gotten in around an hour of play, had four random crashes... and now the game won't let me back out of my Springvale "Survivalist House" into the wasteland.
I am now forcibly reminded why I hated FO3 with a passion and was quick to jump ship to NV, never looking back.
And, to top things off the categorized containers that I've gotten such wonderful utility out of in Oblivion and FNV? Yeah, they don't work at all. FO3 won't let me remote-activate a container at all, whether it's in the same cell as me or not. As well, the 'stay close' option that I've been using in NV to keep one of the girls with me during combat while the other two roam free? It doesn't work either. Apparently, the "continue during combat" flag is just there for decoration. Either that, or the game is refusing to allow any updates to the plugin without clean saving first; which gets real old real quick.
Wonder if anyone would notice if I spiked what's left of my Rockstar with Stolichnaya...
Showing posts with label ranting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ranting. Show all posts
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Vacationing in Skyrim
So... you may have noticed (or not) that I randomly went dark before actually finishing my series of posts on the greatest FNV mod you'll never get to play (never miss an opportunity to twist that knife, Kiddies!).
To the considerable chagrin of several people, I didn't die. After nine odd weeks of heavy modding, I was just burning out on FNV something fierce.
About a month or five weeks ago I decided to pick Skyrim back up. I got to play it for all of about a week on 1.5, which worked beautifully... before Bethsoft "upgraded" to 1.6 (and Steam helpfully auto-updated it despite being told not to); which is a steaming pile of shit, and just goes to prove the notion many of us have that their patch team either hate our guts, or are the most incompetent bunch of fucks to ever be employed in the software field. How they managed to break something that was already fixed is beyond me... but hey! We have mounted combat now! Sometimes, sorta, with most races; for people who ride horses in the game. I don't, so it's a total waste to me; but I'm sure some mid-level manager considers it an accomplishment. Personally, I'd rather have a construction set that worked worth half a shit... but that may just be me.
Since upgrading to 1.6, though... the game experience went to hell. I've lost five sets of saves now to corruption (average save-game life is about ten to fifteen hours' play time). Framerates dropped from an uninspiring but playable 20 - 25 to five to ten; and there was about a twenty percent chance of BSoD on every cell change.
I've since begun a purge on my data folder. Dropped from over fifty mods to thirty-five; and aggressively removed anything and everything not actively required to run my game with the mods I kept. The big kicker seems to have been scripts; which are a clusterfuck in Skyrim. Rather than being contained inside the esps as in previous games, scripts are now separate objects that sit in their own folder. Between the mods that "improve" scripts they shouldn't, and the ones that are just plain badly written; that script folder seems to be the lion's share of my issues. I've cleaned out what I could; but since most people don't care enough to tag their custom content to make it easier to identify which plugin it belongs to... I've got to now go through each archive in my downloads folder, and check each one for scripts -- then delete any scripts not found to be contained within said archives.
My initial purge included removal of Deadlier Dragons and Jaysus Swords. With just those two gone, FPS have returned to over 20 and last night I managed over eighty minutes of play before the game hit an infinite loading bug on fast travel and had to be manually killed via Windows task manager. Which sounds bad... but is an immense improvement over five minutes of stuttering followed by a BSoD or hard lock. I'm hoping when I work up the giveafuck level required to finish the purge, it'll return things to the three-hours-at-a-time play I used to have. Not holding my breath; as 1.6 seems to be a horribly buggy patch... but anything will be an improvement over last week.
Heard an interesting note on Skyrim performance several days ago, too. The theory was professed that shadows in the game are so problematic for framerates and reliability in general because to make it console-friendly, Beth hard-coded the engine to run all shadows through the CPU, rather than GPU. So not only do shadow-heavy areas tend to cause CPU clogging, but when you hit an area with more shadows active than your CPU can render all by its lonesome, it just says fuck it and refuses to try. Sadly, the refusal to try does not end in shadows simply not being rendered -- it tends to result in more sinister things and then profane yelling from my direction.
Not something I have the resources to run down and verify; but it certainly fits the symptoms my PC has been experiencing since day one trying to run the game -- and would also explain why my craptastic little eMachine here will handle other higher-drain games with aplomb; but crashes and burns with regularity where Skyrim is involved even at low settings. Rather a hope-killer if true; since combined with its piss-poor multi-core and large RAM support, that means you effectively cannot upgrade a computer enough to provide good, stable performance with the game.
After finding out about the shadows, I hit on an idea. Disable them. I don't mean through that hand-holding kiddie-shit launcher and its sliders that may or may not actually do anything; I went into the ini files and disabled all shadows -- set all distances to zero, all radii to zero.
And... it worked. FPS through the roof; no more stutter; load times were fast, and no crashing. Well, at least during my limited play-test session -- crashing would probably have resumed eventually; it seems to mostly be a matter of when the game fills up my cache, so no shadows should equal slower filling.
Sliiiight down side that it also killed most lights. Not quite sure which setting labeled 'shadow' affects dynamic lights... so I reverted the ini files to backups (see? this is why we always make backups before editing ini files...) until I have time to go through setting by setting and see which caused the issue. Considering that even with the mods purged, the engine itself still has Beth's trademark memory leak... checking all those settings one by one will take awhile.
But since I know none of you come here for my pseudo-philosophical prattle, have some screenshot posts...
To the considerable chagrin of several people, I didn't die. After nine odd weeks of heavy modding, I was just burning out on FNV something fierce.
About a month or five weeks ago I decided to pick Skyrim back up. I got to play it for all of about a week on 1.5, which worked beautifully... before Bethsoft "upgraded" to 1.6 (and Steam helpfully auto-updated it despite being told not to); which is a steaming pile of shit, and just goes to prove the notion many of us have that their patch team either hate our guts, or are the most incompetent bunch of fucks to ever be employed in the software field. How they managed to break something that was already fixed is beyond me... but hey! We have mounted combat now! Sometimes, sorta, with most races; for people who ride horses in the game. I don't, so it's a total waste to me; but I'm sure some mid-level manager considers it an accomplishment. Personally, I'd rather have a construction set that worked worth half a shit... but that may just be me.
Since upgrading to 1.6, though... the game experience went to hell. I've lost five sets of saves now to corruption (average save-game life is about ten to fifteen hours' play time). Framerates dropped from an uninspiring but playable 20 - 25 to five to ten; and there was about a twenty percent chance of BSoD on every cell change.
I've since begun a purge on my data folder. Dropped from over fifty mods to thirty-five; and aggressively removed anything and everything not actively required to run my game with the mods I kept. The big kicker seems to have been scripts; which are a clusterfuck in Skyrim. Rather than being contained inside the esps as in previous games, scripts are now separate objects that sit in their own folder. Between the mods that "improve" scripts they shouldn't, and the ones that are just plain badly written; that script folder seems to be the lion's share of my issues. I've cleaned out what I could; but since most people don't care enough to tag their custom content to make it easier to identify which plugin it belongs to... I've got to now go through each archive in my downloads folder, and check each one for scripts -- then delete any scripts not found to be contained within said archives.
My initial purge included removal of Deadlier Dragons and Jaysus Swords. With just those two gone, FPS have returned to over 20 and last night I managed over eighty minutes of play before the game hit an infinite loading bug on fast travel and had to be manually killed via Windows task manager. Which sounds bad... but is an immense improvement over five minutes of stuttering followed by a BSoD or hard lock. I'm hoping when I work up the giveafuck level required to finish the purge, it'll return things to the three-hours-at-a-time play I used to have. Not holding my breath; as 1.6 seems to be a horribly buggy patch... but anything will be an improvement over last week.
Heard an interesting note on Skyrim performance several days ago, too. The theory was professed that shadows in the game are so problematic for framerates and reliability in general because to make it console-friendly, Beth hard-coded the engine to run all shadows through the CPU, rather than GPU. So not only do shadow-heavy areas tend to cause CPU clogging, but when you hit an area with more shadows active than your CPU can render all by its lonesome, it just says fuck it and refuses to try. Sadly, the refusal to try does not end in shadows simply not being rendered -- it tends to result in more sinister things and then profane yelling from my direction.
Not something I have the resources to run down and verify; but it certainly fits the symptoms my PC has been experiencing since day one trying to run the game -- and would also explain why my craptastic little eMachine here will handle other higher-drain games with aplomb; but crashes and burns with regularity where Skyrim is involved even at low settings. Rather a hope-killer if true; since combined with its piss-poor multi-core and large RAM support, that means you effectively cannot upgrade a computer enough to provide good, stable performance with the game.
After finding out about the shadows, I hit on an idea. Disable them. I don't mean through that hand-holding kiddie-shit launcher and its sliders that may or may not actually do anything; I went into the ini files and disabled all shadows -- set all distances to zero, all radii to zero.
And... it worked. FPS through the roof; no more stutter; load times were fast, and no crashing. Well, at least during my limited play-test session -- crashing would probably have resumed eventually; it seems to mostly be a matter of when the game fills up my cache, so no shadows should equal slower filling.
Sliiiight down side that it also killed most lights. Not quite sure which setting labeled 'shadow' affects dynamic lights... so I reverted the ini files to backups (see? this is why we always make backups before editing ini files...) until I have time to go through setting by setting and see which caused the issue. Considering that even with the mods purged, the engine itself still has Beth's trademark memory leak... checking all those settings one by one will take awhile.
But since I know none of you come here for my pseudo-philosophical prattle, have some screenshot posts...
Monday, March 12, 2012
It Still SuCKs...
Ended up drifting back towards the RR Companions Vault, and within a day had remembered why I quit supporting it in the first place. Of the "issues", one was a feature that had nothing to do with me, was not written by me, and I had no idea how worked; and the other was someone flat too lazy to read the fucking manual I wasted thirteen hours writing.
Needless to say, this killed my urge to mod for the public quite soundly. Then someone else came along and announced that it would be a better mod if the companions were all voiced. Gee, never heard that one before...
I did resist the urge to make with the snarky reply though. Don't get me wrong, I can manage it in such a way that the moderators wouldn't have anything to use against me... I just feel like it would be opening a can of worms, and I don't need another ulcer at this point.
Anyway. I tabled the NosCo Weapons Collection beta I had been working on and getting ready for release; and turned my attention towards Skyrim... 'cause hey, I was that bored, and I had a couple of ideas I wanted to test.
I have to say, it's a mess. A mess so grand in both visage and scale that if the Greeks of classical history still existed? They would write epic poems about their heroes triumphing over the game's laughable "toolset".
Worked in the SuCK about six, maybe eight hours. In that time, it crashed three times, corrupted my plugin once, hard-locked my PC once, and handed out more errors than even the Oblivion CS could manage on its best day.
It's truly amazing. There's so much... that just doesn't work. And no patches in sight; proving once again that Bethsoft hates modders.
The way companions work is apparently as much voodoo as anything now; as the scripting I'm used to using has been removed from the engine for reasons known only to a couple devs and the Dark Lords themselves.
Anyone who's cracked open one of my companion mods will note that I belong to what I call the "CM school" of companion creation. I use a technique pioneered by Blackie and the Cutthroat crew some years ago for Oblivion.
Whereas Bethsoft companions are created with all their packages on them from the start, with conditions set up to only run if a script variable is this or that; my technique involves brute force -- packages are forcibly added and removed from the NPC as needed, insuring that none are ever available for the NPC to use until and unless it's necessary. It's less elegant, but vastly more reliable in my experience.
With the AddScriptPackage and RemoveScriptPackage functions removed from the engine (I do so love getting a big, fat, dev-middle-finger like that), I had little choice but to revert to the way that was deemed proper in FO3/NV; but is now old-school for Skyrim: the pre-added, conditioned packages.
I create my packages; go to put them onto the test companion... and they won't add. No drag and drop, no add via menu option. It flat will not take them. I cruise the forums; no mention of the issue anywhere. Typical. I kept trying, but it actually got worse as I went -- eventually refusing to take even a single package, let alone the entire "stack".
On top of that, there are problems creating custom races; problems adding dialogue; NPCs with edited faces often won't show up in game; even "correctly" created companions are prone to vanishing when you load a save game... The toolset gave me shit about custom armor pieces, textures, factions; virtually everything I did.
It's probably not the most fucked game in history, but wow are they trying hard for the title. I didn't think it could get much worse than the FNV-GECK... but I stand corrected.
I did, however, at least figure out why it kept trying to load a Microsoft image viewer whenever I'd attempt to edit a script externally: it seems that Bethsoft, in their infinite wisdom, selected the file extension .psc for their scripts -- the same extension as an image format used by Paint Shop Pro, I believe it is. My computer was attempting to load the viewer because it thought I was opening an esoteric image file.
And the community!
I'm not going to name names, since I don't want to come down on (what I hope to hell are) new modders... but wow all over again. I grabbed a couple publicly uploaded companion mods to see how they did it... only to find out the uploaded mods were incomplete and didn't work right. Worse, the plugins themselves were loaded with filth -- unintentional edits, deleted references... one of the tested companions was named "(Moddername)CompanionMageCopy0000Copy0000".
...I know I'm a perfectionist, but I would so have to kick my own ass for actually uploading a mod with an NPC named that way...
Did you ever get the feeling, that you're standing on a plateau; a cliff, whatever -- and you're looking down into the valley, and watching the hordes of barbarians advance unstoppably towards you? I know now how Hadrian felt.
Some of these plugins I look through... and I swear I can see the end of computer gaming. Modding, at least.
Even accomplished modders don't seem to be doing well, this time around. I picked up Apachii's (of Oblivion fame) hair pack; and tried to load one of the hairs into my plugin, only to be yelled at by the SuCK for trying to use an "empty tri file". I have no idea whether the tri file was corrupt to begin with, corrupted during download, generated with an old version of the program that didn't play well with the new engine... or if the SuCK was just sucking again. Hell, for all I know the game may not be able to read tri files that aren't packed into BSAs. And to answer your question: no, just ignoring the error did not work; as without a proper tri file the hair appeared six feet or so above the NPC's head.
Another hair pack by a different author had no tri files included at all.
As I said, the forums were even less help than usual. Where weren't impotent complaints about SuCK crashes or lack of documentation, I found petulant complaints; that the "people who know how to create companions are keeping the information to themselves for their own mods".
As if there's some grand conspiracy -- cloaked men in high towers, laughing maniacally...
Yes! Now none of them will be able to create their own followers! Mwahahaha! ...What's that, Steve? No, we shouldn't be taking over the world, instead. This is obviously far more important!
...Actually, now that I mention it, that would be kind of cool; if only to hear the cries of the people who can't create their loli-neko-vampire-child-rapeslave "companions".
So. Until a couple patches come out of the works, it appears Skyrim isn't worth my time to mess with -- and from what I've seen, no companion system we're familiar with will work in it anyway; so even once the SuCK does work half-assedly well, something new is going to have to be designed from the ground up, I fear.
Regardless, spending Saturday in the SuCK sent me right back to the NVGECK. Better the devil you know, I suppose. On the up side, got some cool stuff done for the Mojave arm of NosCo's weapons division; but I think I'll leave that for another post...
Needless to say, this killed my urge to mod for the public quite soundly. Then someone else came along and announced that it would be a better mod if the companions were all voiced. Gee, never heard that one before...
I did resist the urge to make with the snarky reply though. Don't get me wrong, I can manage it in such a way that the moderators wouldn't have anything to use against me... I just feel like it would be opening a can of worms, and I don't need another ulcer at this point.
Anyway. I tabled the NosCo Weapons Collection beta I had been working on and getting ready for release; and turned my attention towards Skyrim... 'cause hey, I was that bored, and I had a couple of ideas I wanted to test.
I have to say, it's a mess. A mess so grand in both visage and scale that if the Greeks of classical history still existed? They would write epic poems about their heroes triumphing over the game's laughable "toolset".
Worked in the SuCK about six, maybe eight hours. In that time, it crashed three times, corrupted my plugin once, hard-locked my PC once, and handed out more errors than even the Oblivion CS could manage on its best day.
It's truly amazing. There's so much... that just doesn't work. And no patches in sight; proving once again that Bethsoft hates modders.
The way companions work is apparently as much voodoo as anything now; as the scripting I'm used to using has been removed from the engine for reasons known only to a couple devs and the Dark Lords themselves.
Anyone who's cracked open one of my companion mods will note that I belong to what I call the "CM school" of companion creation. I use a technique pioneered by Blackie and the Cutthroat crew some years ago for Oblivion.
Whereas Bethsoft companions are created with all their packages on them from the start, with conditions set up to only run if a script variable is this or that; my technique involves brute force -- packages are forcibly added and removed from the NPC as needed, insuring that none are ever available for the NPC to use until and unless it's necessary. It's less elegant, but vastly more reliable in my experience.
With the AddScriptPackage and RemoveScriptPackage functions removed from the engine (I do so love getting a big, fat, dev-middle-finger like that), I had little choice but to revert to the way that was deemed proper in FO3/NV; but is now old-school for Skyrim: the pre-added, conditioned packages.
I create my packages; go to put them onto the test companion... and they won't add. No drag and drop, no add via menu option. It flat will not take them. I cruise the forums; no mention of the issue anywhere. Typical. I kept trying, but it actually got worse as I went -- eventually refusing to take even a single package, let alone the entire "stack".
On top of that, there are problems creating custom races; problems adding dialogue; NPCs with edited faces often won't show up in game; even "correctly" created companions are prone to vanishing when you load a save game... The toolset gave me shit about custom armor pieces, textures, factions; virtually everything I did.
It's probably not the most fucked game in history, but wow are they trying hard for the title. I didn't think it could get much worse than the FNV-GECK... but I stand corrected.
I did, however, at least figure out why it kept trying to load a Microsoft image viewer whenever I'd attempt to edit a script externally: it seems that Bethsoft, in their infinite wisdom, selected the file extension .psc for their scripts -- the same extension as an image format used by Paint Shop Pro, I believe it is. My computer was attempting to load the viewer because it thought I was opening an esoteric image file.
And the community!
I'm not going to name names, since I don't want to come down on (what I hope to hell are) new modders... but wow all over again. I grabbed a couple publicly uploaded companion mods to see how they did it... only to find out the uploaded mods were incomplete and didn't work right. Worse, the plugins themselves were loaded with filth -- unintentional edits, deleted references... one of the tested companions was named "(Moddername)CompanionMageCopy0000Copy0000".
...I know I'm a perfectionist, but I would so have to kick my own ass for actually uploading a mod with an NPC named that way...
Did you ever get the feeling, that you're standing on a plateau; a cliff, whatever -- and you're looking down into the valley, and watching the hordes of barbarians advance unstoppably towards you? I know now how Hadrian felt.
Some of these plugins I look through... and I swear I can see the end of computer gaming. Modding, at least.
Even accomplished modders don't seem to be doing well, this time around. I picked up Apachii's (of Oblivion fame) hair pack; and tried to load one of the hairs into my plugin, only to be yelled at by the SuCK for trying to use an "empty tri file". I have no idea whether the tri file was corrupt to begin with, corrupted during download, generated with an old version of the program that didn't play well with the new engine... or if the SuCK was just sucking again. Hell, for all I know the game may not be able to read tri files that aren't packed into BSAs. And to answer your question: no, just ignoring the error did not work; as without a proper tri file the hair appeared six feet or so above the NPC's head.
Another hair pack by a different author had no tri files included at all.
As I said, the forums were even less help than usual. Where weren't impotent complaints about SuCK crashes or lack of documentation, I found petulant complaints; that the "people who know how to create companions are keeping the information to themselves for their own mods".
As if there's some grand conspiracy -- cloaked men in high towers, laughing maniacally...
Yes! Now none of them will be able to create their own followers! Mwahahaha! ...What's that, Steve? No, we shouldn't be taking over the world, instead. This is obviously far more important!
...Actually, now that I mention it, that would be kind of cool; if only to hear the cries of the people who can't create their loli-neko-vampire-child-rapeslave "companions".
So. Until a couple patches come out of the works, it appears Skyrim isn't worth my time to mess with -- and from what I've seen, no companion system we're familiar with will work in it anyway; so even once the SuCK does work half-assedly well, something new is going to have to be designed from the ground up, I fear.
Regardless, spending Saturday in the SuCK sent me right back to the NVGECK. Better the devil you know, I suppose. On the up side, got some cool stuff done for the Mojave arm of NosCo's weapons division; but I think I'll leave that for another post...
Sunday, February 12, 2012
BURN COMMA CRASH AND
Got a couple hours testing in on a new FNV game this morning.
Was initially pleased -- as we were finishing up the "tutorial" with Sunny (which I always play through to get the extra ammo) the girls stopped me, each in turn notifying me that she was thirsty, but had a drink on hand.
The code fired.
Once.
Never happened again. Nor did the hunger state ever appear at all.
I know the code is valid... but I have no idea why it's failed this time.
Slack-ass pieces of shit actually drew a salary for coding this engine...
Anyway. Now I get the fun of running up diagnostic scripts, to figure out whether the counter isn't running, or the variable checks are stuck, or what.
From as long as it took to get the one successful appearance, I can tell you that their object scripts are not running every frame like they're supposed to -- the girls' timer started running before mine did, and it was still five solid minutes after I got the first dehydration notice before they did.
Once, just once, I would like this game to obey it's own goddamned rules.
So, bets are off for the inclusion of a working HC mode for NCCS in the near future, until I figure out what in the unholy fucking shit is going on this time.
Was initially pleased -- as we were finishing up the "tutorial" with Sunny (which I always play through to get the extra ammo) the girls stopped me, each in turn notifying me that she was thirsty, but had a drink on hand.
The code fired.
Once.
Never happened again. Nor did the hunger state ever appear at all.
I know the code is valid... but I have no idea why it's failed this time.
Slack-ass pieces of shit actually drew a salary for coding this engine...
Anyway. Now I get the fun of running up diagnostic scripts, to figure out whether the counter isn't running, or the variable checks are stuck, or what.
From as long as it took to get the one successful appearance, I can tell you that their object scripts are not running every frame like they're supposed to -- the girls' timer started running before mine did, and it was still five solid minutes after I got the first dehydration notice before they did.
Once, just once, I would like this game to obey it's own goddamned rules.
So, bets are off for the inclusion of a working HC mode for NCCS in the near future, until I figure out what in the unholy fucking shit is going on this time.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
On Skyrim, Part II
According to the handy-dandy save counter, I'm up to 46+ hours on the game now, so I thought I'd throw out a few more observations -- as well as stuff I missed in the last run-down (hate it when I get rushed during a post).
Being who I am, and playing the game the way I do, I'm primarily interested in companion NPCs -- their capabilities, functions, and the AI in general.
And it seems that AI is alive in well in this new iteration of the engine.
Bullshit!
Uhh... anyway, so this is Lydia in her default outfit:
In an interesting departure from previous games, Lydia reverts to her default outfit whenever not in your party. Any equipment you give her stays in her inventory; but she's forced to equip the iron armor and shield, and no helm -- though she'll continue carrying the best weapon she has regardless of where it came from.
I had complained before about her generally piss-poor behavior, but I'm happy(er) to note that the behavior is improving as I log hours. Lyds has begun to actually use her shield, and with good armor and an armload of healing potions, her staying power in a scrap is greatly improved. She's particularly good at using a bow for harassing fire to keep a dragon's attention off of me while I kill it...
Bullshit, I say!
...Maeva, what the hell are you going on about?
Don't "what" me, Master! You know perfectly well what my problem is.
You haven't found a bishie to brutally rape lately?
No -- and you're still an asshole, by the way -- you want to know what my problem is?
I'm assuming you're not going to let me get back to my post until I ask, so sure.
Look at me!
Looking. Let me know when to start wolf-calling and offering singles...
I'm six-six, red haired, and am quite capable with a Big Fucking Sword! I am a Viking wet dream!
Don't forget the raging alcoholism and ability to devour an entire side of beef in one sitting.
Point. Get to one. Please.
Why am I not in Skyrim?!
Probably because it's kind of hard to add NPCs to the game when the fucking toolset hasn't been released yet, genius.
A likely excuse.
She's telling the truth, you know. No construction set, no TESVEdit -- you can use the old version of TESSnip to read the Skyrim.esm partially... but as far as I know I've got no means of adding NPCs at all; to say nothing of writing scripts or editing faces. Plus there's the little detail of your hair and eyes not being ported over, no custom bodies, your textures won't work...
...I suddenly haz a sad...
Look, I've been clearing out bandit caves and shipwrecks and shit; I've got a decent sized stash of mead built up. It's yours if you let me get back to my fucking post.
...Nordic honey-booze, you say? Gimme!
Ooh, that's good. Give me the rest of the case and I'll go sexually harass Natasha and leave you guys alone.
Fine, it's yours. I don't drink, anyway.
Hee. You know, she still hasn't forgiven me for the elf-rape I was making allusions to in that post you deleted. Tonight's going to be fun after all...
...
There, there. Would tits help?
Not while I'm trying to type, thank you...
So, as I was saying before I was interrupted.
Lyds' AI does appear to be getting its act together for the most part; though she (and all other NPCs) seem to have huge pathfinding problems. Trying to walk over, or through solid objects when sandboxing; and in the wilderness, she flat refuses to follow me through nearly all rough terrain -- even between rocks that the gaps are wide enough to walk through easily.
While I obviously can't fire up the suck and check it out, it feels almost like many areas aren't navmeshed.
To her credit, Lydia will plot another path to get to wherever I am -- oftentimes a very circuitous route -- so the problem obviously isn't that she's losing her follow package... it's pure pathfinding; that she can't figure out how to get to where I am the way I got there. It's annoying though, since it's not unusual for it to take close to five minutes for her to get to me; and more than once she's caught up to me after picking up an enemy or two along the way.
I'm thinking viable companions in Skyrim are going to require distance based teleporting code. Blessedly, there doesn't seem to be any delay in follower NPCs following through cell-change doors; so it won't need that block of teleporting code, at least. Maybe... ten thousand units' distance, trigger the teleport? It's rough; determining proper teleport distance without breaking combat behavior...
On the up side, at least some of the new armor is great. I dolled Lyds up in ebony:
I swear, I've seen armor that looked almost exactly like that -- right down to the color -- in an anime somewhere. A cyborg bad-guy, I think... but it's been so many years I can't place it. I want to say in the AD Police/Bubblegum Crisis universe, but I'm not sure; I think it may also have been one of the Patlabor films. Not that I mind them reusing the look, it's great and all... it just annoys me when I can't place something. Damned steel sieve of a memory.
The new glass armor isn't bad looking either; though I wish they'd fire whoever keeps insisting it be green.
Is smoky quartz glass armor too much to ask? Nice, neutral, slightly translucent gray.
Thankfully, I maxed out my smithing skill last time I was playing, and could finally make use of the dragon scales I'd been collecting:
The armor rating isn't that much better than glass, but it looks less elf-y...
Elf rape! Woo!
...God damn it, I'm going to have to taze her by the end of that case, I just know it...
That helmet/mask, by the by, is not part of the dragon scale set:
On the whole, I still really like the crafting system. Daedric equipment is frustrating, as each piece requires a daedra heart to craft -- and we don't get Oblivion gates to go find the owners of said hearts. The only place I've found them regularly is for sale at alchemists, and they're not cheap. I foolishly used the first two daedra hearts I came across as alchemical components; should have saved them for creating top-end weapons -- I ended up using the last one for a daedric bow, and it is indeed quite the murder machine.
One thing that's continually giving me a WoW-vibe from the game is how you gather components for crafting. You can buy metal from smiths, of course, but you can also gather it yourself:
There are ore veins all over the game world, in various types of metal; and you can enter some actual mines and mine there. Ore veins are pretty hard to see from a distance though. Essentially, they work by having a pick-axe in your inventory, and hitting "use" on the vein. The camera skips out to third person, and your character is shown chipping away at the vein. The animation goes on ten or twenty seconds, and you get a random number of ore chunks (usually two to three) before the vein is depleted and changes to another texture that shows only the rock remaining. Unlike plants, I've not seen the ore veins respawn yet, so it looks like there is a limited number of ore hunks to recover from the world without buying it from merchants. Mining ore also nets you random gemstones sometimes, for selling or jewelry making.
I've read tell that you can have your companion mine, as well. Skyrim's default followers have a new dialogue option: "I want you to do something for me" or some such. Once used, they interact with the next world object you "use" -- if they have a pick-axe they'll mine, a wood cutter's axe will let them chop wood, presumably they can convert animal hides in their inventory into leather if told to use a tanning rack. I haven't tried it myself yet, so it may just be rumor; but if we can use such functions without a script extender this time around, it promises to make companion systems far more versatile.
One of the interesting things about merchants this time around is how often their inventory respawns. It seems to do it daily, now. I've gotten stuck in a smithing loop in Whiterun more than once now -- spending the day "grinding" my smithing skill with components bought from the blacksmith shop there by the gate; go to bed in my place to start adventuring again the next morning; hit the shop again to see what they got in, find a big enough stash of ingots and leather to get me started on the day's work all over again...
It's good for my skill level, but bad for getting much accomplished quest-wise.
Another new feature this time around will probably seem familiar to Morrowind players:
While it's not the same as TESIII, they did give us a transport service this time. You can hire a carriage at any town stables to carry you to any of the major cities (for a fee, of course). This is an interesting way of getting the fast travel markers without having to walk everywhere once; and for players who don't believe in using fast travel, it lets you get to questing spots faster without breaking "immersion" or whatever. Though I -- as usual -- run a reduced from default timescale in the game, I've noticed that the carriage still takes several hours worth of transit time once the screen fades back from black. Going from Riften to Solitude took like six hours, I think.
Sadly, we don't get to see your follower climb into the wagon to ride with you; but they're still there when you appear at your destination. It's a small thing, but I'd like to see that changed someday. No idea what scripting would be involved, though, so it may not even be practical.
I've killed several dragons now, and I'm pretty disappointed in them. They're billed as the big scary monsters of the game, but the last one I fought would've had trouble killing me if I weren't fighting back. I took his breath weapon full-on two or three times in the fight, and it barely caused my health bar to move. It was so bad I didn't even have to fight -- Lydia (unmodified, remember) could have killed him while I held his attention. Her arrows ended up eating more than half his health bar. Steel arrows and a Dwarven bow -- not even anything special.
As I also predicted, Shouts are pretty crappy. Flame and Frost breath won't even kill bandits; the super dash shout is stupid and pointless; I have no idea what the "throw your voice" shout is supposed to be good for other than getting NPCs to look somewhere else when you're sneaking... about the only useful one is unrelenting force, which at words one and two shove your enemy away and stun them. Word three blows them fifty feet back -- which sucks because by the time you've reached them to melee attack the stun has worn off. Like I said in the last part of the review: gimmicky. Shouts are a tarnish on an otherwise solid combat system.
The quests also, are a black mark on the game. I don't mean their content, I mean how poorly they're coded. I forgot to bitch about it the last time, but I actually ended up dying during the tutorial, the first time. Not to spoiler too much, but you start the game in line to be executed. A dragon attacks, scattering the Imperial bastards and saving your life. While your hands are still tied (can't use anything, search corpses, or fight) you have to follow an Imperial soldier to someplace safe. All well and good, except the blowhard led me into a clearing the first time, and just stood there. The quest marker didn't change, the log didn't advance... he's just standing there. After a couple minutes, a dragon comes along and turns me into a Nos-kebab.
Second try, it was even worse. At one point in the flee to safety, the dragon is supposed to destroy the wall of a tower; thereby allowing you to jump into the next building over. The dragon attacks... flamey flamey... the wall collapse animation never triggers. My quest marker updates, telling me to jump... through a solid wall. Had to TCL past that one. When we reached the clearing, soldierboy hung again and didn't tell me where I was supposed to keep going; but I had a fair idea and went on anyway, avoiding scorched death. Once inside, it seemed to run okay; but their ability to precisely set up and trigger scripted, animated events is apparently still just this side of complete shit.
Lastly, I figured I'd close with screenshots of some of the nature-y goodness I raved about before.
Loathe though I am to upgrade my PC, I have to say again this game would be fucking amazing in ultra high.
I also noted with more than a slight grin that one of the things the guards say to you in this game is "watch the skies". I know they're talking about dragons, but still... between that line, and the reintroduced Dwemer ruins...
Welp, that about exhausts my list-o-talking points this time around; so I'll shut up now.
Edit, next morning:
Despite my attempt, it looks like I did forget something again after all.
You may notice in the helm-less screenshot, that Lyds' irises are visible and do not look like shit. This is because I installed a new eye textures mod. I've actually installed a few:
Colored Map Markers -- changes the color of your quest target marker to green, and cities to blue; making them stand out on the map. A small detail, but a very nice one.
A Wench Outfit retexture -- retexes one of the barmaid outfits to be predominantly red, rather than filthy used-to-be white. Another small detail, but looks much better. I recommend the "Less colorful" version, that's a bit more subdued and seems to fit the society of the game a bit better.
High Quality Eyes -- Must-have mod. This one redoes the eye textures so that they don't suck. With this installed, you can actually discern eye color without a magnifying glass.
No More Blocky Faces -- this mod reworks the faces slightly, making them smoother and less crappy looking. Another small detail; but to me it helps greatly with keeping the faces from subconsciously feeling "wrong" when looked at.
Being who I am, and playing the game the way I do, I'm primarily interested in companion NPCs -- their capabilities, functions, and the AI in general.
And it seems that AI is alive in well in this new iteration of the engine.
Bullshit!Uhh... anyway, so this is Lydia in her default outfit:
In an interesting departure from previous games, Lydia reverts to her default outfit whenever not in your party. Any equipment you give her stays in her inventory; but she's forced to equip the iron armor and shield, and no helm -- though she'll continue carrying the best weapon she has regardless of where it came from.
I had complained before about her generally piss-poor behavior, but I'm happy(er) to note that the behavior is improving as I log hours. Lyds has begun to actually use her shield, and with good armor and an armload of healing potions, her staying power in a scrap is greatly improved. She's particularly good at using a bow for harassing fire to keep a dragon's attention off of me while I kill it...
Bullshit, I say! ...Maeva, what the hell are you going on about? Don't "what" me, Master! You know perfectly well what my problem is. You haven't found a bishie to brutally rape lately? No -- and you're still an asshole, by the way -- you want to know what my problem is? I'm assuming you're not going to let me get back to my post until I ask, so sure. Look at me! Looking. Let me know when to start wolf-calling and offering singles... I'm six-six, red haired, and am quite capable with a Big Fucking Sword! I am a Viking wet dream! Don't forget the raging alcoholism and ability to devour an entire side of beef in one sitting. Point. Get to one. Please. Why am I not in Skyrim?! Probably because it's kind of hard to add NPCs to the game when the fucking toolset hasn't been released yet, genius. A likely excuse. She's telling the truth, you know. No construction set, no TESVEdit -- you can use the old version of TESSnip to read the Skyrim.esm partially... but as far as I know I've got no means of adding NPCs at all; to say nothing of writing scripts or editing faces. Plus there's the little detail of your hair and eyes not being ported over, no custom bodies, your textures won't work... ...I suddenly haz a sad... Look, I've been clearing out bandit caves and shipwrecks and shit; I've got a decent sized stash of mead built up. It's yours if you let me get back to my fucking post. ...Nordic honey-booze, you say? Gimme! Ooh, that's good. Give me the rest of the case and I'll go sexually harass Natasha and leave you guys alone. Fine, it's yours. I don't drink, anyway. Hee. You know, she still hasn't forgiven me for the elf-rape I was making allusions to in that post you deleted. Tonight's going to be fun after all... ... There, there. Would tits help?Not while I'm trying to type, thank you...So, as I was saying before I was interrupted.
Lyds' AI does appear to be getting its act together for the most part; though she (and all other NPCs) seem to have huge pathfinding problems. Trying to walk over, or through solid objects when sandboxing; and in the wilderness, she flat refuses to follow me through nearly all rough terrain -- even between rocks that the gaps are wide enough to walk through easily.
While I obviously can't fire up the suck and check it out, it feels almost like many areas aren't navmeshed.
To her credit, Lydia will plot another path to get to wherever I am -- oftentimes a very circuitous route -- so the problem obviously isn't that she's losing her follow package... it's pure pathfinding; that she can't figure out how to get to where I am the way I got there. It's annoying though, since it's not unusual for it to take close to five minutes for her to get to me; and more than once she's caught up to me after picking up an enemy or two along the way.
I'm thinking viable companions in Skyrim are going to require distance based teleporting code. Blessedly, there doesn't seem to be any delay in follower NPCs following through cell-change doors; so it won't need that block of teleporting code, at least. Maybe... ten thousand units' distance, trigger the teleport? It's rough; determining proper teleport distance without breaking combat behavior...
On the up side, at least some of the new armor is great. I dolled Lyds up in ebony:
I swear, I've seen armor that looked almost exactly like that -- right down to the color -- in an anime somewhere. A cyborg bad-guy, I think... but it's been so many years I can't place it. I want to say in the AD Police/Bubblegum Crisis universe, but I'm not sure; I think it may also have been one of the Patlabor films. Not that I mind them reusing the look, it's great and all... it just annoys me when I can't place something. Damned steel sieve of a memory.
The new glass armor isn't bad looking either; though I wish they'd fire whoever keeps insisting it be green.
Is smoky quartz glass armor too much to ask? Nice, neutral, slightly translucent gray.
Thankfully, I maxed out my smithing skill last time I was playing, and could finally make use of the dragon scales I'd been collecting:
The armor rating isn't that much better than glass, but it looks less elf-y...
Elf rape! Woo!...God damn it, I'm going to have to taze her by the end of that case, I just know it...That helmet/mask, by the by, is not part of the dragon scale set:
On the whole, I still really like the crafting system. Daedric equipment is frustrating, as each piece requires a daedra heart to craft -- and we don't get Oblivion gates to go find the owners of said hearts. The only place I've found them regularly is for sale at alchemists, and they're not cheap. I foolishly used the first two daedra hearts I came across as alchemical components; should have saved them for creating top-end weapons -- I ended up using the last one for a daedric bow, and it is indeed quite the murder machine.
One thing that's continually giving me a WoW-vibe from the game is how you gather components for crafting. You can buy metal from smiths, of course, but you can also gather it yourself:
There are ore veins all over the game world, in various types of metal; and you can enter some actual mines and mine there. Ore veins are pretty hard to see from a distance though. Essentially, they work by having a pick-axe in your inventory, and hitting "use" on the vein. The camera skips out to third person, and your character is shown chipping away at the vein. The animation goes on ten or twenty seconds, and you get a random number of ore chunks (usually two to three) before the vein is depleted and changes to another texture that shows only the rock remaining. Unlike plants, I've not seen the ore veins respawn yet, so it looks like there is a limited number of ore hunks to recover from the world without buying it from merchants. Mining ore also nets you random gemstones sometimes, for selling or jewelry making.
I've read tell that you can have your companion mine, as well. Skyrim's default followers have a new dialogue option: "I want you to do something for me" or some such. Once used, they interact with the next world object you "use" -- if they have a pick-axe they'll mine, a wood cutter's axe will let them chop wood, presumably they can convert animal hides in their inventory into leather if told to use a tanning rack. I haven't tried it myself yet, so it may just be rumor; but if we can use such functions without a script extender this time around, it promises to make companion systems far more versatile.
One of the interesting things about merchants this time around is how often their inventory respawns. It seems to do it daily, now. I've gotten stuck in a smithing loop in Whiterun more than once now -- spending the day "grinding" my smithing skill with components bought from the blacksmith shop there by the gate; go to bed in my place to start adventuring again the next morning; hit the shop again to see what they got in, find a big enough stash of ingots and leather to get me started on the day's work all over again...
It's good for my skill level, but bad for getting much accomplished quest-wise.
Another new feature this time around will probably seem familiar to Morrowind players:
While it's not the same as TESIII, they did give us a transport service this time. You can hire a carriage at any town stables to carry you to any of the major cities (for a fee, of course). This is an interesting way of getting the fast travel markers without having to walk everywhere once; and for players who don't believe in using fast travel, it lets you get to questing spots faster without breaking "immersion" or whatever. Though I -- as usual -- run a reduced from default timescale in the game, I've noticed that the carriage still takes several hours worth of transit time once the screen fades back from black. Going from Riften to Solitude took like six hours, I think.
Sadly, we don't get to see your follower climb into the wagon to ride with you; but they're still there when you appear at your destination. It's a small thing, but I'd like to see that changed someday. No idea what scripting would be involved, though, so it may not even be practical.
I've killed several dragons now, and I'm pretty disappointed in them. They're billed as the big scary monsters of the game, but the last one I fought would've had trouble killing me if I weren't fighting back. I took his breath weapon full-on two or three times in the fight, and it barely caused my health bar to move. It was so bad I didn't even have to fight -- Lydia (unmodified, remember) could have killed him while I held his attention. Her arrows ended up eating more than half his health bar. Steel arrows and a Dwarven bow -- not even anything special.
As I also predicted, Shouts are pretty crappy. Flame and Frost breath won't even kill bandits; the super dash shout is stupid and pointless; I have no idea what the "throw your voice" shout is supposed to be good for other than getting NPCs to look somewhere else when you're sneaking... about the only useful one is unrelenting force, which at words one and two shove your enemy away and stun them. Word three blows them fifty feet back -- which sucks because by the time you've reached them to melee attack the stun has worn off. Like I said in the last part of the review: gimmicky. Shouts are a tarnish on an otherwise solid combat system.
The quests also, are a black mark on the game. I don't mean their content, I mean how poorly they're coded. I forgot to bitch about it the last time, but I actually ended up dying during the tutorial, the first time. Not to spoiler too much, but you start the game in line to be executed. A dragon attacks, scattering the Imperial bastards and saving your life. While your hands are still tied (can't use anything, search corpses, or fight) you have to follow an Imperial soldier to someplace safe. All well and good, except the blowhard led me into a clearing the first time, and just stood there. The quest marker didn't change, the log didn't advance... he's just standing there. After a couple minutes, a dragon comes along and turns me into a Nos-kebab.
Second try, it was even worse. At one point in the flee to safety, the dragon is supposed to destroy the wall of a tower; thereby allowing you to jump into the next building over. The dragon attacks... flamey flamey... the wall collapse animation never triggers. My quest marker updates, telling me to jump... through a solid wall. Had to TCL past that one. When we reached the clearing, soldierboy hung again and didn't tell me where I was supposed to keep going; but I had a fair idea and went on anyway, avoiding scorched death. Once inside, it seemed to run okay; but their ability to precisely set up and trigger scripted, animated events is apparently still just this side of complete shit.
Lastly, I figured I'd close with screenshots of some of the nature-y goodness I raved about before.
Loathe though I am to upgrade my PC, I have to say again this game would be fucking amazing in ultra high.
I also noted with more than a slight grin that one of the things the guards say to you in this game is "watch the skies". I know they're talking about dragons, but still... between that line, and the reintroduced Dwemer ruins...
Welp, that about exhausts my list-o-talking points this time around; so I'll shut up now.
Edit, next morning:
Despite my attempt, it looks like I did forget something again after all.
You may notice in the helm-less screenshot, that Lyds' irises are visible and do not look like shit. This is because I installed a new eye textures mod. I've actually installed a few:
Colored Map Markers -- changes the color of your quest target marker to green, and cities to blue; making them stand out on the map. A small detail, but a very nice one.
A Wench Outfit retexture -- retexes one of the barmaid outfits to be predominantly red, rather than filthy used-to-be white. Another small detail, but looks much better. I recommend the "Less colorful" version, that's a bit more subdued and seems to fit the society of the game a bit better.
High Quality Eyes -- Must-have mod. This one redoes the eye textures so that they don't suck. With this installed, you can actually discern eye color without a magnifying glass.
No More Blocky Faces -- this mod reworks the faces slightly, making them smoother and less crappy looking. Another small detail; but to me it helps greatly with keeping the faces from subconsciously feeling "wrong" when looked at.
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