@\NightandtheShape/@

Waking up must have sucked.

No, but it points to some sorta sloppy garbage collection. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I suppose they could use a garbage collector for the end stuff. I suspect they don't during the gameplay, as I find they are too slow (relatively) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I was thinking more of general cleanup than a "garbage collector". Something is probably not being closed correctly, and the like. Hence sloppy shutdown procedure, could be anything.

People speak of Blizzard and "High Standards" but I haven't played a single Blzzard game and enjoied it to the point that I was impressed, and sucked into it.

No, but it points to some sorta sloppy garbage collection.

Can you do me a favor? Go to My Documents\My Games\Oblivion and send me a PM with any and all items found here? Additionally, are there any .dmp files in your main Oblivion installation folder?<C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion> If there are tell me. I was going to PM you with this query, but this goes to anyone who experiences a crash or hardlock. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I've crashed a few times. Mostly in a certain DB mission And when I ALT-TAB out and stay out for a little. or click on something, if I come back, the game's always locked up. So if I get a pop-up...have to restart. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'll look into the crash in this mission. Alt+tab crashes aren't unheard of in any game. Its pretty much caused by memory thrashing, I believe. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> yup, you gotta pretty much destroy and reload the entire games resources, tand setup the GFX card again.... The input devices, the sound card... It's a nightmare! Though I would guess that the coders at beth's will have an extremely ingenius system for this. It's a bad idea to alt-tab out of any game! Thankfully DX10 will pretty much in 99% of circumstances do away with the need for this process.

Oh no, I like the cold, it fits my personality. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah but ICELAND? Geez <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Those cold-hearted Icelanders do nothing more than leech off their Danish neighbors! Just Kidding. The Icelanders are a kind and industrious people with a rich cultural heritage. And did you know that Iceland gave us the brilliant explorer, Eirikur

Oh no, I like the cold, it fits my personality. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Yeah but ICELAND? Geez

which is pretty much what I mentioned earlier... with LOD AI.

It can be done and has been done in NWN for multiplayer as previously stated, but that doesn't exactly work in the exact same fashion. I also seriously doubt oblivion would be running full AI routines for the entire world.... That would be lunacy.

what dhruin said... really, FPS games are NOT CRPG games. not in the least. the amount of side tasks devoted to things other than graphics in a CRPG are astounding. constant checks on every NPC or trigger in the area among other things. not so with FPS games. sure, they have AI, but they don't carry around the luggage of all the previous conversations you've had, nor your associations, or demeanor, or... got it? in other words, there just aren't as many CPU cycles to devote to a CRPG's graphics as there with a FPU. unfortunate, and it won't ever be solved. as graphics engines advance, so do the requirements for the rest of the game. CRPGs will likely always lag behind the latest and greatest available FPS. taks <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Depends how it is structured. CRPG's usually suffer on the GFX engine because there is so much that goes into making them in terms of resources, not because there ain't enough ticks. That luggage is based upon memory requirements and only needs to be processed fully for characters in the vicinity, other than that it's basically sounding like a huge graph(as in computer science graph). I will reiterate that it is dependant upon the structure in the software, and if oblivion is running full AI for unseen characters in the same way as seen characters then the dev's are infact idiots and wasting tick, I really don't think they would dream of doing this without some major speed overhauls on searching and sorting of each AI bots memory so to speak, and the surrounding world.

Not sure how the AI works exactly but I'm pretty certain that the level it'd be running at for NPC X in Town Y where you aren't situated because you're in Town X will be lesser. LOD AI, it was used in NWN and I expect the theory would be used here also, dunt waste what you don't have to waste, I imagine alot of ticks are saved because NPC don't have to pathfind on the same level. The reason most likely has to do with progressive meshes, and verts on screen + the power of respective GFX card.

I see. So no game ever is going to feature unlimited draw line aside for those made by Crytek? Is that what i'm being told here? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No, that isn't what is being said... Just that a company must research of gather such technology. Now technically you can make the draw distance as I have said as big as you like, as big as your memory will allow infact, the problem comes when you render it, there are alot of common algorithms for altering meshes so that they're progressive. You also have spatial partitioning etc... it's a complicated field and without knowing how either engine fundimentally works i cannot answer the question fully for you. crytek may have developed an in house coding trick which allows them to have say double the draw distance without loss of performance, if that was the case from a business perspective would you sell technology that puts you apart from the crowd? You'd be an idiot if you did... So until someone else from another company figures it out(likely) or someone from crytek who coded it shares the secret(unlikely) then to an extent it will be property of that company. Ususally things like this stay very private for a short while and become common practice later on X amount of years after release.

setting up the draw distance is easy enough in code, the hard part is getting everything to scale correctly to distance.... Brute force can only get you so far before you have use tricks. So basically it's not the draw distance at all that is a problem. Far cry != Oblivion ^ Not even close

My car was stuck in a freakin' traffic jam! And it's 10 o'clock at night. If I could see him coming, I would have at least had a glimpse at his license plate. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Motorbikes have headlights! "

Specifically between traffic.

So that they could cut through a traffic jam. Some idiot once knocked off my sideview mirror doing that. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well you should have used your mirror to see him coming and made room for him to safely pass... As a result you lost a wing mirror and I'll bet money he chuckled all the way home.

Kewl bike. I don't own the pictured bike (Ducati Sport 1000). I just have a baby Duc, a 1999 Monster 750. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ahhhh Very nice indeed, nippy little street fighters are awesome. I take it that you lane split? To my understanding that is legal in CA?

I agree with you totally, also the book that it came with was piss poor. A current assignment requires us to use bluejay, personally I'd sooner use notepad and a cli... I don't know why the hell they require us to use it, the latest version is slightly more stable but still a pile of steaming crap!

Didn't know you liked motorbikes... My desktop, and What I ride...

I'm there! Its a plan. Kalfear skips Oblivion, I skip JE, Sniper skips both and Hades skips the werewolf. Everybody wins! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> LMFAO hades an the werewolf...!!!

refresh times have been improved if that's what you're meaning... The update speed is much quicker.

Darque is a requirement for an rpg to be an rpg without darque it is not an rpg! Feargus is flawed in the case of diablo in that it has neither darque which is required, and is not an RPG but a CRPG...

Feargus stopped actually being a dev many many years ago, now he sits in an expensive chair looks and sounds important, generally tortures the average employee and does little else (j/k). He's more manager than dev in truth... Diablo is not an RPG.

The ultima gaming machine, Diamond!!!! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> :'( <{POST_SNAPBACK}> In it's day man, it really was a good gaming laptop.... Don't cry!

Already got some Geforce 7's that are duel core.