Open Cities and Crowded Cities

[Flamingtaco]

Two of my favorite mods for Oblivion were Open Cities Reborn and Crowded cities/crowded roads. The crowded mods added generic and randomized npcs under the names of hunter, farmer, mage, etc. They had realistic equipment for their names and the mod was pretty well done. I felt that in the underpopulated world of Cyrodil having some generic npcs to flesh out the world was quite nice. Also they were good targets for crime as you didnt know them and they had no relevance to any quest. So, having gone over that, is that a mod that you guys would like to see for Skyrim, or would you prefer to leave it with fewer but more developed characters?

The other mod I'm going to talk about is Open Cities and its newer iteration: Open Cities Reborn. Open Cities removed load times for the major cities except the Imperial City by placing the cities in the main world instead of separate cells which require loading. Reborn took this further by redesigning the cities and some of the surrounding area to make it fit a lot better. This completely changed gameplay for stealth type characters by adding in new entrances in and out of cities. Combined with a sprint mod and in some cities you could jump right over the lowered walls. The mod was quite well done, adding much more immersion and making Cyrodil more unique, along with some gameplay changes and very little slow down. The main problem with it was that a lot of quest ai, especially for custom quests, although some did have compatibility patches, was not properly implemented so you had to use a hidden door to take you back to the orignal city which defeats the purpose of the cities being open. Would this be a mod you want in Skyrim since it has been confirmed that the big cities will have loading times? If the ai works this time around, I would certainly like to see the cities designed to seamlessy blend into the environment like they did with Reborn. Please share your thoughts and suggestions. I probably won't be the one to make such mods but you never know.

 

[Demut]

Well, it would certainly make sense to see some more people in big cities. However, hamlets and the like should keep the small population. This is a medieval setting and so you have to keep in mind that they were not able to support as much people per square kilometer as we can today.
Regarding the open cities, how exactly did that mod work? I mean why would the devs include loading times when a bunch of modders can remove them just altogether?

 

[hexperiment]

Oh man, I would really love the open city mod but that sounds like it will conflict with a lot of other mod... It's a shame Skyrim couldn't get to open cities but instead we get closed doors that will never open and just brings us to loading screen.

crowded city/crowded road seems like an ideal mod for me. The imperial city was too underpopulated. As for smaller towns and cities, I don't think we really need more people since they are supposed to have that small community feeling. I'm guessing there could be traveling adventurers drinking in the tavern and traveling mages visiting potion/book shop while traveling mercants will come in to restock some of the local stores. In terms of interactions with them, they could be your victim of choice but I don't see any other meaningful way of doing anything with them, other than using their presence for immersion.

 

[Flamingtaco]

The reason for loading screen is that the cities are not actually in the game world. If you no clip through the walls youll see empty terrain and placeholder houses. Using the door transports you to the separate world where the city is. If you noclip outside you will see empty terrain and not the actual world. Modders were able to recreate the cities in the main game world, but this resulted in conflicts. In obligion there was little slowdown because of this, but perhaps in skyrim theyre afraid there would be. Other than that, i dont know why cities are closed.

 

[Tusck]

I agree, I also used mods that increased the population of the world and it was definitely needed. However, I've seen plenty of Skyrim videos where the dev acknowledge this issue and said they actively tried to improve this issue in Skyrim cities. It will be interesting to see if they did enough.

 

[Demut]

Which issue are you talking about? Too few people? Or closed cities? Because the latter seems to be still an issue.

 

[Vimalamitra]

Correct me if I am wrong, but even capital of ancient Rome had population about million. It would be awesome to see something similar to that! However, I know it is just hopeful thinking. No way our hardware would be able to cope with that kind of processing.

 

[hexperiment]

well, we can't be having millions of people in one city. it's kind of sad since 'war' we witnessed in Oblivion had only like 3-4 fighting at the same time. It would be impressive if it had like 50 but that would be deadly laggy... Also, it would be hard to design a whole full-sized city that will fit 1 million people in. not to mention, you'll have difficult time finding significant people to start some side-quest 0_0 I'm thinking like going with limited city approach. The city is too big for you to explore so you get to visit certain sections of the city to give an illusion that you're in a bigger place. It would be like campaign maps for left4dead. You are in a huge city of philadelphia but you can't go anywhere you want. Having a sized-down city is pretty bad. It gives me an impression that Tamriel isn't a big place even though I know it is.

I hear that closed city is due to console limitation. I don't know where that accusation is from though.

 

[Demut]

That would be incredibly frustrating seeing how us PC users would have to suffer from that as well despite having the superior hardware which could do without those silly restrictions. I hope this is not true or otherwise it would be another sign for Bethesda’s “We care less about our customers than about money” attitude.

 

[Flamingtaco]

Correct me if I am wrong, but even capital of ancient Rome had population about million. It would be awesome to see something similar to that! However, I know it is just hopeful thinking. No way our hardware would be able to cope with that kind of processing.

You could try assassins creed brotherhood. It takes place in Rome and has tons of unique looking npcs on screen at a time. The problem with that in Skyrim is that the coding for npcs is a lot more complex because of the kind of interactions taking place, and the way ai is handled so its a lot harder to have as many characters on screen.

 

[Vimalamitra]

That would be incredibly frustrating seeing how us PC users would have to suffer from that as well despite having the superior hardware which could do without those silly restrictions.

That's one the reasons why I do give a HUGE amount of kudos to DICE in my neighbourhood. (It's right across Baltic sea) They made BF3 support 100% PC, unlike many other developers on the market, who make games first and foremostly for consoles. I hope we don't get anything similar to crappy interface of Oblivion. But let's face the facts, most of gamers have a console background, and are not used to do le "difficult stuff" what for example Witcher 2 has.

I, for start, had almost a positive heart attacl when I noticed there wasn't any tutorials at all in Witcher 2. It just blatantly threws you in the middle of action to figure things by yourself.

 

[hexperiment]

That would be incredibly frustrating seeing how us PC users would have to suffer from that as well despite having the superior hardware which could do without those silly restrictions. I hope this is not true or otherwise it would be another sign for Bethesda’s “We care less about our customers than about money” attitude.

Even if it is true, I don't think Bethesda deserves such accusation. I guess I am being a Bethesda fanboy in general but I think I'm just being careful on this matter.
I mean, they are doing this because they care about console gamers (assuming that closed-city is in fact, due to console limitations). I don't see how 'not having an open city because of console limitation' has to do with 'we don't care about our fan-base'. It just sounds like a typical engineering problem; knowing your limitation and build from there for maximum efficiency. And no, it would be ridiculous for Bethesda to make a special version for PC gamers. They could do it but they would have to start from scratch in terms of map layout(i.e. the inside might be bigger than the outside) and loading algorithm and etc. They got deadlines you know. Also, creating a huge disparity between pc version and console version isn't a great idea either. pc community will be happy but console community will have an outburst of rage if that happens. pc gaming community will always have to put up with any technical limitation set up by consoles, if there is any.

 

[Tusck]

That would be incredibly frustrating seeing how us PC users would have to suffer from that as well despite having the superior hardware which could do without those silly restrictions. I hope this is not true or otherwise it would be another sign for Bethesda’s “We care less about our customers than about money” attitude.

Yep, all console players should start PC gaming to see what they are missing.

 

[Flamingtaco]

Yep, all console players should start PC gaming to see what they are missing.

Console gaming is cheap and easy. A lot of people don't really care about graphics and controls as much and dont even lnow about modding. I know some people dont even realize how powerful pcs can be and that they have the same games like COD on them. I think in general consoles fit modern culture the same way as say mcdonalds does, especially in america.

 

[Demut]

pc gaming community will always have to put up with any technical limitation set up by consoles, if there is any.

That’s really not the way it’s supposed to work. They should rather use the full potential of the PC and then downport as much of it as the consoles can handle. They already have to recreate all the models for the consoles versions because the consoles can’t handle as many polygons so coming up with another loading algorithm shouldn’t take all that time. Yes, of course there are deadlines but they know that years in advance so including this in their project plan shouldn’t be impossible.

 

[hexperiment]

That’s really not the way it’s supposed to work. They should rather use the full potential of the PC and then downport as much of it as the consoles can handle. They already have to recreate all the models for the consoles versions because the consoles can’t handle as many polygons so coming up with another loading algorithm shouldn’t take all that time. Yes, of course there are deadlines but they know that years in advance so including this in their project plan shouldn’t be impossible.

That would be an ideal way for PC gamers like us but really, that's really impractical for development. I mean, console gamers are the majority (at least in terms of profit) so it's not really worth the effort in terms of cost/effect. However, pc gaming is growing bigger, I believe so perhaps reverse will happen some day.

 

[Vimalamitra]

Console gaming is cheap and easy.

I beg to differ. Console gaming is no way cheap, if you consider how much the same hardware what's inside xbox, would cost in a PC rig. It has only 512mb RAM (700mhz) and an outdated graphics card. Price for that hardware is incerdible, if you look it from that perspective. And it's not easy, if your console starts to glitch or have some problem. Thanks to numerous so called anti-hack systems, it's almost impossible to recover your xbox once it's broken down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems

 

[Demut]

That would be an ideal way for PC gamers like us but really, that's really impractical for development. I mean, console gamers are the majority (at least in terms of profit) so it's not really worth the effort in terms of cost/effect.

So you agree that Bethesda doesn’t care about what would be best for their customers but instead what makes them the most money, yes?

 

[Vimalamitra]

To comment on this one, I think they do care about their customers. And it sells more to make that kind of statments in public. Having said that, most of the customers use consoles, not PC. It's a strong argument why they should favour consoles over PC. Game industry is business just like music industry. It's not a charity.

 

[Tusck]

So you agree that Bethesda doesn’t care about what would be best for their customers but instead what makes them the most money, yes?

Demut you have a lot of angst direction toward corporations.