injurai

Yeah, I can't wait to see the full ability descriptions. Right now I really want to make an "Ancient Blood Mage."

Has someone been watching Gordon Ramsey?

Yooooo, YOOOOOOOOOO!

Apropos to Arcanum. I wasn't under the impression this would be a isometric game, but I guess that's just me reading into the fact Obsidian reached for Unreal 4 for Project Indiana.

Yeah, Luminous engine became a disaster. But that's mostly because the lead engineer jumped ship. Capcom's Panta Rhei as well. I haven't necessarily heard nightmares about that, but they still seem to be on MT Framework which still seems like a solid engine compared to a lot of what is out there. Maybe that was used more for research and mocking? Maybe whatever Deep Down was supposed to be is still in the works? Who knows...

Now I'll be disappointed if this doesn't happen... thanks.

I was thinking Golden Age of Sci-fi as well. A more whimsical take on extraterrestrial life forms could be interesting. Not an rpg, but I always thought the Ratchet & Clank universe had a lot of charm for a lot of the same reasons the Golden Age of Sci-fi did. I think a less grand space opera and more of that campy rag-tag style space opera would be really fun. Less Mass Effect more ST:TOS.

Asking the real questions.

YES! Finally a highly distinct Wizard mechanic that doesn't just gut the base class.

Me three.

Yeah... I'm gonna need a source on that. As far as I'm aware they simply forked the project and rebranded. It will take a while for them to transition away from the underlying architecture of the library and the game logic built around it.

I know how this story ends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okja

Yeah, Gamebryo is already setup to favor the modder. It actually takes a lot of effort to build a proprietary engine that is partially closed off from the user, but another portion is open for easy interfacing. Engines that favor the internal team and prioritize highly tuned optimization like what id, Naughty Dog and others push above all else, are not going to be modder friendly unless the entire source is open. Even with engines that have an open source like other idTechs and Unreal, you aren't getting far with any practical modifications at that deep of a level with the code base, especially not without picking the brains of the internal dev teams. Stuff like Brutal Doom is the ideal state of modification but not has that source been available forever, it's also taken a long time for those sorts of projects to get off the ground.

You can write code with extremely non-deterministic behavior, but the art of programming once you know how to tell the computer to accomplish a specific thing, involves writing code that is modular in relation to how other code is used in relation to it, and further disallows improper use of these modular abstractions. Well, often times that very last bit is not accomplished so you end up with either very rigid code that is tightly coupled to other rigid code. Or you end up with highly modular code where either issues propagate, or weird corner cases arise as people interface with abstractions in ways that were overlooked. So improper use is not being sufficiently guarded against. All this added abstraction layer can hide bugs or propagate them deeply through the system. Even highly modular systems can become deeply "rigid" as the code becomes increasingly self-referential with interconnected dependencies. Then the larger issue is that in maintaining a code base, you need your team to have the proper institutional knowledge to manage the code. But people leave, or forget things. So then you establish a large amount of overhead to maintain this knowledge, but that knowledge will always be out of date and incomplete. This problem plagues every old code base and is worse when the code base as so much momentum that the older work of the past is paying for the incredibly inefficient maintenance teams. IBM and Oracle are notorious for basically being drug dealers getting companies hooked on their legacy software, where they mostly sell support contracts. Basically Gamebryo is old and not sufficiently modular at the levels of abstraction that matter most. Guerilla games for example if the designers need something, the engine people roll out the solution to their creative teams. Bethesda uses the extension architecture provided by Gamebryo to bolt their own extensions on, at the expense of lacking control over the abstractions themselves. All the abstraction and compatibility layers additionally build in overhead and opportunities for bugs. A large "surface area" of code means that some bugs will go forgotten or will lack any expert who would understand the system enough to fix the bug on the teams budget. Bethesda really needs to hire a small passionate team to start something brand new from scratch, using the best in-house technologies of all their studios as "reference implementations" for a future engine. CDPR did this with the REDengine, it's not like it's impossible. Rockstar's engine probably share's a lot of similar issues with Bethesda's but at least that is entirely in-house. Short of building something new, unless idTech is really not suited for asset streaming in a large open-world game I'm surprised they just don't retrain up on that engine. Zeni acquired one of the finest engines in the industry and are even already sharing it among most of their studios. Honestly with the amount of "content ambition" Bethesda has, and the fact they are building this all out using someone else's engine. I'm not surprised they spend most of their time on the game build on top of the engine as opposed to prioritizing the foundational tech. That was never part of that studios make up. I think it's time for it to become part of it.

They basically just build out the new features that they need and update some of their engine extensions to keep their code-base somewhat competitive with the wider market. The core architecture is long been locked in on the Gamebryo side, evident by the data mesh, texture, and animation rigs all being constants. Plus the well known nature and open documentation of Gamebryo have facilitated modders delight. Bethesda have tuned their maps construction logic to efficiently build scenes out of memory cheap assets, and have made some improvements to the render (which is usually one of the easier parts to make custom modifications to as you just push your data out into the GPU and let a GPU kernel pump out the pixels to the video buffer.) The creation engine's big change was an improvement content publication pipeline that interfaced with the Steam Workshop. The core of Gamebryo is an ECS which is what any great game engine worth it's salt would use anyways. It's the whole coupled structure of an engine designed to be licensed and fitted with custom extensions making for a cumbersome architecture, mixed with Bethesda's own mountain of cruft and deeply seated architectural logic that leaves each "new engine" feeling more like the last than anything truly different. It's the same reason why strafe-jumping and bunnyhopping from 1996's Quake is still around in TF2 and GS:Go even if in drastically curtailed forms. The games code is intricately coupled to the underlying architecture.

Like the brand "new" engine every game? Sure

So Guard Dog, you seem to read a lot history books. What have been the most revelatory and eye opening reads that you have encountered over the years?

Yeah, Bethesda's success is directly correlated to id and Arkane being given second chances. I just think they could do so much better, but I guess that cuts into profit margins, and those margins certainly help fund what little progress we do get from them.

Imagine a Vita 2 with SOTN HD as a launch title.

Sony should make a Vita 2. Also they should release it AFTER they launch the PS5 and make it a companion to the console. Also Parasite Eve 4? Yes. Also, when Zenimax's acquired studios are doing well and maintaining solid consumer good will. Why is Bethesda Games Studio itself a mess both technically and when it comes to delivering what they promise. Also FO76 is the ultimate low of this studio's entire history.

Look at this chrono fascist, dehumanizing future generations! Our #1 rager against fascism has gone fascist!

Wow, project Hades is an obvious mistake. Even the Souls genre is niche and waning. Let's hope project Fenris isn't canned.

Well, it's only 3 weeks away... but I want to theorize now!!!!

Is there supposed to be major patch release after Sanctum? Or are you just referring to a final bug patch?

Hey, being open about defense contracts and oil price negotiations is factual.