New Elder Scrolls IV Screen shots

[Grumpy Old Fart]

TeamXbox have posted three new screen shots of Elder Scrolls, see the attached thumbnails below, and here's the link...

LINK

[pApA SmerF01]

Originally Posted by Grumpy Old Fart

TeamXbox have posted three new screen shots of Elder Scrolls, see the attached thumbnails below, and here's the link...

LINK

that's a nice find. just got online, first thing i saw, was gonna post it, but you beat me!

....i sense a competition! lol!

[korphaeron]

Very impressive, imagine Fable 2 then :P

[pApA SmerF01]

Originally Posted by korphaeron

Very impressive, imagine Fable 2 then :P

frankly, in my opinion, fable sucked monkeys when it came against morrowind.

[CaveMan]

Like the pics can’t wait for it to come out. Looks great, but still has some jagged parts. I Hope that’s not going to be in the finished product.

: Oh Smerf. I have fable its not that bat, short, but not bad.

[MH_prophet]

What I'm confused about is Fable: The lost Chapters. Is it a Fable 2, or just an extension kind of thing?

[Grumpy Old Fart]

It's more of a directors cut to be honest, rather than an expansion pack or new game or sequel.

Anyway, came across quite a good interview with Gavin Carter, the Producer working on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion!

Heres the link......LINK

[Grumpy Old Fart]

Here's another interview, this time it's a video interview by TeamXbox...

LINK

[Grumpy Old Fart]

Another interview this time with Gavin Carter, Producer on Oblivion...

LINK

Lots of info regarding the game and the improvements they are implementing over Morrowind.

[Kabone]

all the screen shots look sweet but fable has nothing on morrowind

[zCraven15]

elder scrolls 4 looks like the best launch title visualy. Fable 2 is gonna b awsome also

[Grumpy Old Fart]

Came across this article posted on onthebox.com regarding Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's AI...

We spoke to producer Gavin Carter about the future of AI.

The Elder Scrolls series from Bethesda has always sold itself on open-ended gameplay: whether you’re building your own weapons, or taking over guilds, or just wandering through the woods picking flowers, you could kill hours in the game world without sticking to the main plot.

2002’s The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind continued that experience, but one part fell short: the non-player characters (NPCs) were dull as dirt – especially the run of the mill city- and village-dwellers, who shuffled around saying nothing but factoids and niceities. Next to the elaborately scripted characters of competing RPGs, like the Baldur’s Gate series, the people of Morrowind were about as interactive as vending machines.

The newly announced fourth game in the franchise, Oblivion, intends to fix that; in fact, its new artificial intelligence system will be a crucial selling point. "Improving the AI of our game’s characters was a huge priority for us from day one,” says Gavin Carter, producer for Oblivion."It was definitely something our fans wanted to see in the next game."

You can’t enjoy a role-playing game without other characters to cheat, kill, or flirt with – or at least, to ask for quests and tips. Most developers take one of two approaches. Some games, such as BioWare’s Jade Empire or Knights of the Old Republic I and II, feature scripted characters with rich – some say 'long-winded' – dialogue, but limited actions. (Half-Life 2’s Alyx may fight alongside you, but you can wave that crowbar at her all day and she still won’t go out with you.) On the other extreme, massively multi-player games let their thousands of human players entertain each other, while the NPCs are either scripted, or performed by live events coordinators (like the team at Matrix Online).

Defined roles

But the third, and most difficult, route is to create NPCs with autonomy and artificial intelligence, who follow defined roles in a story but who can also make their own paths and surprise you with their decisions. For Oblivion, Bethesda has made a significant investment in the new, proprietary Radiant AI engine. "A tremendous amount of effort went into setting it up and making sure it runs well," says Carter. "We have one programmer devoted exclusively to it full-time, while several others help out when needed."

Explaining their decision, Carter says, "Scripting tends to be very limited in its ability to adjust to a situation. With scripts, the character plays out the scripted actions exactly the same way every time. Radiant AI allows for varied responses based on the situations and the characters. For instance, a hungry character might steal, a lawless character might kill, and a fearful character might run. We have random conversations that will change based on a number of factors. With our continuing world of full day/night cycles and NPCs with real character arcs, players expect characters to behave like real people. Radiant AI accomplishes this goal much better and more easily than scripting ever could."

"The Radiant AI system dictates the daily lives of all 1000+ NPCs in Oblivion," Carter explains. "They all have 24-hour schedules which include activities like sleeping, eating, going to work, and reading to name a few." While some characters will have more depth than others, the team strove to reduce the gap between the important, story-driving NPCs and the average peasant. Also, every character can act independently, and they all have a chance to get in trouble. "Once I was working on a demo scene and ended up accidentally making a change in a general AI package that dictated when people in a town should go to find lunch. When I loaded up the game, every single person in the town showed up at a single lower class tavern to try and get some food. Of course there was only enough food on hand to feed a few of them, so one shifty character began pick-pocketing everyone else before they had a chance to eat!"

Construction Sets

Players can also use the Construction Set, the game editor that ships with Oblivion, to create their own NPCs. "All the very same AI tools that we’ve used to create the game are included with the Construction Set. Players can trade these and any other mods in the same way they could with Morrowind through our plug-in system."

While the NPCs can act and react of their own accord – meaning that a given character can like or dislike you, and help or harm you, based on how you behave – that doesn’t mean that your interactions will radically change the game world; the individual quests will have many solutions, but the overall storyline won’t change. And as for how cozy you can get with the NPCs, Carter says that "we don’t go down the full romance road" – so if you were planning to spend the game holed up with a plate mailed fetish object or a lizard in a bikini, save your money.

This investment in artificial intelligence stands out at a time when most games focus their research dollars into physics and, of course, graphics. For example, the other notable game AI projects that have been demoed this spring include noncommercial projects, such as Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas’s Facade – where the player interacts in natural language with a married couple, like characters in a one-act play – or NERO, a simulation developed by a team at the University of Texas at Austin, where the player 'trains' a squad of rookie soldiers controlled by the computer.

The potential for fans of role-playing games is tantalizing; as non-player characters grow more independent, they tease out the potential of games with 'emergent narratives,' where the players’ experience changes meaningfully and significantly based on the made-up people around them. We’ll have to wait for Oblivion to hit the stores – it’s scheduled for XBox 360 and the PC in Q4 2005 – to see whether it creates a vibrant, surprising population, or if the NPCs behave as mechanically as a world full of Tamagotchis. But handled well, they could give you the same depth and surprises as playing with real people – and with none of the hassle of real human contact.

[aceboogie129]

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