@dr_insane: For a lot of people the surprise and delight when you discover your first environmental puzzle is THE moment which makes the game. Doesn't matter whether it's by accident or because you got suspicious about some rounded shape and tried to interract with it. For those people, and I count myself among them, showing that in the quick look would've been an unforgivable spoiler. But hey, if seeing it convinced you that it's for you after all, than it's all for the better.
@amyggen: I think it has potential to be pretty pretentious if people interpret the audio logs to actually have a deeper meaning in the context of the game and a message the game is trying to send when actually there's no narrative at all.
Do you actually think that a person capable of conceiving Braid's puzzles and known for being incredebly demanding of others (but most of all himself) would be content with creating a game filled with bullshit red herrings for his sycophants? Give the man some credit.
Imagine you are working on a piece of art/entertainment/whatever, through which you would be viewed for many years to come. Surely, an idea of playing a prank on the audience for your own amusement would come to you some time in the first week. It would also be one of the first ones to be forgotten and buried.
Listen to Blow's interview with Steve Gaynor (TONE CONTROL #9) and tell me that a crass idea like that gels with the man you hear.
@qrdl: genuinely a great song in a video game, and one using only a voice and plucked strings. Better in Polish though
Haha, you know it's not.
What I found powerful about it is that it comes so unexpected. You think you're just about to simply start another part of the main quest (was this the main quest, I forget?), you enter the tavern and this sequence starts. As the first notes sounded I noticed how tense this overbearing depressing world had made me. It's like puncturing a mental boil that has grown thanks to all you've been through up to that point. Within those walls, for a while, some good remains. It's a masterful moment.
Goood, goood. I'm satisfied with the recognition Witcher received from the crew. Although, as far as particular moments go, I would choose the Priscilla's song. I'm almost used to crying when I hear it by now.
I stress again that you don't have to find Bethesda systems "worth it" to appreciate the complexity in what they do.
But what are those mythical systems that are so numerous and interconnected? All I see in this discussion is people praising them to the heavens and yet I still fail to see how what I actually see differs from other RPGs.
I saw mention of crafting and base-building. This does require some additional work for the UI guy (who failed badly, I think), the 3D artists and probably somebody to assure it gels with the physics. What remains is balancing the desirability vs. availability and prices of components. Do you think the problem is in any significant way different and Bethesda's solution more clever than THIS ? Also, this system didn't seem to be in any way dynamic in F4.
Character affinity is a joke of a problem really. You do some action that could change affinity, for every companion within a certain radius call the method passing the action ID, the method changes or doesn't a single ranged variable. Writing interesting characters with backstories and preferences that go along with them is much harder than this.
Addendum to my item location claim from before:
Information about an item:
item ID (4 bytes)
type ID (4 bytes)
pointer to a separate data structure holding the names of special objects, like unique guns or NULL if not special (4 bytes)
owner ID (4 bytes)
sub-world ID (it can be in the main world or in any interior) (4 bytes)
location in regards to the global coordinate system (12 bytes)
X
Y
Z
rotation (12 bytes)
X
Y
Z
This is all I can think of on the spot, there probably is quite a bit more. 44 bytes assuming the use of 32 bits for all the variables. With 32-bit fixed point numbers you can remember the location of an object with a precision of 1mm on a 4300km x 4300km map (or 4 times smaller if you don't use the negative numbers), so yeah, a continent. You can also rotate it by a stupidly small fraction of a degree.
I don't know how programmers tend to store such data in games, but with a static array 1MB could hold information about almost 23,000 items. The actual implementation is probably something like a vector of objects, so there would be some overhead.
The bigger problem for me is how to determine which objects should be acted upon by the physics engine at a given moment, but that is present in all games and probably solved optimally decades ago. I point you to the aforementioned Crysis.
EDIT: You would also need a variable for the ID of an NPC carrying the object and another one for whether it is equipped. You can do the calculations yourselves, but they might not be neccesary, because you can code this informarion into the coordinates. A carried object has no location, so a <-1, 0, 0> for X,Y,Z for example. It depends on what you prefer: memory savings or clarity and CPU cycles.
BTW, my actual problem with F4 are not the technicalities. The only bug that forced me to use the console commands was the Cabot's sister missing from where she should be. It was significant but not game breaking. My biggest gripe is the false pretence of choice and influence on the story. A simple story fork is a simple story fork, no matter how much verbal fat you use to cover it up. And this comes from a guy who preferred F3 to NV.
qrdl's comments