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KeRaSh

I left my heart on Atropos
Member
Oct 26, 2017
10,270
I don't get the mod support defense for the creation engine.
People are acting like it's the only engine that has mod support.
Sure, existing modders already know their way around it but if the engine allows it, there will always be mods. It might just take a little longer to get them running. I feel like people will defend the engine until Bethesda themselves decide to create a new one and then suddenly that argument disappears.
 

Deadset

Banned
Apr 27, 2022
131
If any engine can do these things, why is Bethesda and their engine the only company to actually do it? Surely other companies would try and copy considering the success of Bethesda games, no?

I think The Outer Worlds is a good shout. It's made in a style similar to Bethesda games by a company that has experience with Bethesda's engine. But it lacks a lot of what makes those games because it doesn't have the same type of permanent interactivity.
Why would they? They make more money than Bethesda. Alot of Bethesdas games just break even. Or simply they don't want to make that kind of game at that budget when you can make a GAAS and potentially make more. Fallout 76 was all about trying to get in on this.

How do you think creation kit came into existence in the first place? They took gamebryo and turned Into what they wanted. Same can be done with any engine.

How many people made OW, what was the budget? It's a smaller scale, smaller scope game.
 

TyrantII

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,369
Boston
Holy cow that's beautiful. I wish the Creation Engine weren't so freaking outdated (it's still got Gamebryo DNA).

Obviously Bethesda's engine is designed to allow for the mods and the interactivity with objects that Fallout is now known for (which I took advantage of and made several mods in the New Vegas era), but it's always gonna have roughness as long as it's tied to it.

I just wish Bethesda would take all that Skyrim cash and build an engine and toolset from the ground up that does what they need, but based on modern tech and methods like REengine, or Unreal 5, ect.

I get it's a risky, but it's a bet worth it. Especially with how different their games tend to be from others.
 
Nov 14, 2017
2,334
I don't get the mod support defense for the creation engine.
People are acting like it's the only engine that has mod support.
Sure, existing modders already know their way around it but if the engine allows it, there will always be mods. It might just take a little longer to get them running. I feel like people will defend the engine until Bethesda themselves decide to create a new one and then suddenly that argument disappears.
"Mod support" is an incredibly vague category. Yes lots of games/engines have mod support. As far as I'm aware, no other game has the tens of thousands of mods, and hundreds of millions/billions of downloads that Oblivion/Skyrim/FO3/NV/FO4 each have. This isn't just because of their popularity, but because the engine and tools enable such a wide range of mods spanning the full spectrum of ease of development/complexity.
 

Raigor

Member
May 14, 2020
15,149
I don't get the mod support defense for the creation engine.
People are acting like it's the only engine that has mod support.

It's by far the best engine for modding, no other engine comes close in both quantity, quality and "accessibility" for modding.

CryEngine, RedEngine and several other engines have "mod support" but they are all extremely limted compared to Creation Engine and it shows.

Look at the Nexus mod manager page for games sorted by download, see how many are made by Bethesda and millions of downloads?

 

Aaron D.

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,334
I see Era's monthly, "I don't understand software development and engines, I just want the games to look more purty" thread is live.

Developers eyes must be rolling hard, yet again.
 

EpsilonEagle

Member
May 9, 2018
264
Peachtree City, GA
You saying what is or isn't meaningful to the people who play these games doesn't make it so.

I remember I the first time I stacked items in front of something I wanted to steal from a shop (Fallout 3) and got away with it. As my librarian build in Skyrim would have been hella boring in games with less interactivity.

Your "librarian build" comment gets to the heart of what makes Creation Engine games special, I think. The role-playing potential goes beyond standard aspects like character stats and dice rolls; you can actually manipulate the environment in the way your character would.

A bibliophile can lay out their collection of rare tomes on a bookshelf. A cook can arrange ingredients for a recipe. A serial killer can stack corpses in the basement.

One of my favorite parts of these games is when currency is "physically" represented in the environment: A couple of gold coins on a dungeon alcove in Oblivion, some bottlecaps sprinkled over a desk in Fallout 3. Grabbing each one and hearing the satisfying "clink" as it adds to your total is so great!
 

Deadset

Banned
Apr 27, 2022
131
What? They make the most succesful RPGs out there, skyrim is probably the best selling non nintendo single player game ever made, and fallout 4 had GTA tier launch sales
You realize that bgs makes more than skyrim and fallout right?
What? They make the most succesful RPGs out there, skyrim is probably the best selling non nintendo single player game ever made, and fallout 4 had GTA tier launch sales
What??? You realize that bgs isn't only skyrim and fallout right? When a game breaks even or falls short the profits from a successful game has to help anchor the rest. Do you see a lot of companies making an Uncharted game? A last of us game? A spider-man game at that budget... A GTA clone to that level?
 

AImalexia

Prophet of Truth
Member
Aug 31, 2021
2,426
You realize that bgs makes more than skyrim and fallout right?

What??? You realize that bgs isn't only skyrim and fallout right? When a game breaks even or falls short the profits from a successful game has to help anchor the rest. Do you see a lot of companies making an Uncharted game? A last of us game? A spider-man game at that budget... A GTA clone to that level?
No they don't? Name one that isn't starfield
 

astro

Member
Oct 25, 2017
56,988
I don't get the mod support defense for the creation engine.
People are acting like it's the only engine that has mod support.
Sure, existing modders already know their way around it but if the engine allows it, there will always be mods. It might just take a little longer to get them running. I feel like people will defend the engine until Bethesda themselves decide to create a new one and then suddenly that argument disappears.
Bethesda creating a new one wouldn't be an issue for these people because it would be created to work like Creation works and allow all the same things.

The issue people have is the suggestion to jump to an engine like Unreal 5.
 

Deadset

Banned
Apr 27, 2022
131
No they don't? Name one that isn't starfield
Who funds BGS games? Zenimax does..bethesda softworks publishes them and other Zenimax games. The money budget etc...is determined by zenimax and how the parent company is doing financially as a whole. So if arkane has a flop where does the money come from to help them?
 

AImalexia

Prophet of Truth
Member
Aug 31, 2021
2,426
Who funds BGS games? Zenimax does..bethesda softworks publishes them and other Zenimax games. The money budget etc...is determined by zenimax and how the parent company is doing financially as a whole. So if arkane has a flop where does the money come from to help them?
But arkane isn't bgs is it?

Why would the performance of sister studios impact wether or not competing developers try to make a game inspired by TES or fallout? You think they go hmmm fallout 4 sold 12m copies in 3 days, but then again, dishonored barely broke even so I guess a fallout clone would sell poorly?
 

AImalexia

Prophet of Truth
Member
Aug 31, 2021
2,426
Same shit...they get their money and budget from the place...one's success and failure affects the other.
Performance of sister studios has no relevance to the topic at hand... It's like saying developers wouldn't look at GTA or minecraft for reference because WWE2k or Grounded sold poorly
 

Raigor

Member
May 14, 2020
15,149
Who funds BGS games? Zenimax does..bethesda softworks publishes them and other Zenimax games. The money budget etc...is determined by zenimax and how the parent company is doing financially as a whole. So if arkane has a flop where does the money come from to help them?

Bethesda Game Studios =/= Bethesda Softworks

Bethesda Softworks is the publisher, Bethesda Game Studios is the developer of TES/Fallout/Starfield.

Performance of sister studios are nowhere near related as people might think, the expectations from Arkane are not the same as the ones from BGS.

This is like comparing Naughty Dog and Media Molecule or Mojang with Complusion Games.
 

disparate

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,904
Who funds BGS games? Zenimax does..bethesda softworks publishes them and other Zenimax games. The money budget etc...is determined by zenimax and how the parent company is doing financially as a whole. So if arkane has a flop where does the money come from to help them?
lol what is this fantasy nonsense
 

Deadset

Banned
Apr 27, 2022
131
Performance of sister studios has no relevance to the topic at hand... It's like saying developers wouldn't look at GTA or minecraft for reference because WWE2k or Grounded sold poorly
He asked why did other companies not copy Bethesda. Those things factor in, also factors into the decision to not to switch engines etc. Pay attention
 

Deadset

Banned
Apr 27, 2022
131
Bethesda Game Studios =/= Bethesda Softworks

Bethesda Softworks is the publisher, Bethesda Game Studios is the developer of TES/Fallout/Starfield.

Performance of sister studios are nowhere near related as people might think, the expectations from Arkane are not the same as the ones from BGS.

This is like comparing Naughty Dog and Media Molecule or Mojang with Complusion Games.
Yes it does.
 

RR30

Member
Oct 22, 2018
2,268
He asked why did other companies not copy Bethesda. Those things factor in, also factors into the decision to not to switch engines etc. Pay attention

Yes, and you didn't answer my question. Just moved the goalposts to other Bethesda studios success with a bizarre point acting like Skyrim and F4 weren't absolute commercial monsters.
 

Henrar

Member
Nov 27, 2017
1,913
With other teams pushing the envelope it just feels like Bethesda are being left behind more and more with each title. At some point having a good story just isn't going to be enough to counter all the negatives, at least for me.
other developers still haven't reached the interactivity levels of 2006 Oblivion, the only thing they push is world size and graphics.
 
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Deadset

Banned
Apr 27, 2022
131
Yes, and you didn't answer my question. Just moved the goalposts to other Bethesda studios success with a bizarre point acting like Skyrim and F4 weren't absolute commercial monsters.
I answered your question...they are all intertwined. It's not one simple answer, not one simple thing...as well this game sold a ton...many factors are at play when it comes to business, budgets, engines etc
 

Tigress

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,157
Washington
You want to know what about BGS features are better than The Outer Worlds besides the things that were better than the other worlds? The game died because it didn't have the world mutability, state permanence, dynamic NPCs that TES/Fallout games do. Characters and wildlife can and do act independent of the player and often collide in ways that create natural and sometimes hilarious scenarios that never required player input and creates a dynamic world that makes other titles trying to mimick it in other engines looking like walking in a world of cardboard cutouts.

To be fair rockstar has done a pretty good job of making their npcs feel real even though they are randomly spawned in. But they spend a lot more with a lot more people making their games and imho rockstar and Bethesda are kings of the open world games because their worlds feel so lifelike and no one else does near as good a job.
 

disparate

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,904
To be fair rockstar has done a pretty good job of making their npcs feel real even though they are randomly spawned in. But they spend a lot more with a lot more people making their games and imho rockstar and Bethesda are kings of the open world games because their worlds feel so lifelike and no one else does near as good a job.
Rockstar is as close as it gets, though they go for more reactive fidelity than dynamic options.
 

Tigress

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,157
Washington
I answered your question...they are all intertwined. It's not one simple answer, not one simple thing...as well this game sold a ton...many factors are at play when it comes to business, budgets, engines etc

I can't even. Your logic makes absolutely no sense. Companies aren't going to decide an engine isn't worth it cause other companies not using that engine that are related by publisher only (and aren't using the engine or even have the same people working on the game) are not doing as well. They are going to look at the success of the games using that engine as a reason to or not to mimick it.

Your logic is saying don't do what this really popular game does cause the people who own it own another company that has games that do not do what that game does and don't do so well. So you would really not want to mimick the popular game cause there was examples of games that didn't do what it did not doing well? Where is the logic in that? You would make a horrible business person with that logic.
 

Deadset

Banned
Apr 27, 2022
131
User warned: Trolling over a series of posts
I can't even. Your logic makes absolutely no sense. Companies aren't going to decide an engine isn't worth it cause other companies not using that engine that are related by publisher only (and aren't using the engine or even have the same people working on the game) are not doing as well. They are going to look at the success of the games using that engine as a reason to or not to mimick it.

Your logic is saying don't do what this really popular game does cause the people who own it own another company that has games that do not do what that game does and don't do so well. So you would really not want to mimick the popular game cause there was examples of games that didn't do what it did not doing well? Where is the logic in that? You would make a horrible business person with that logic.
I'm not reading all this...good luck tho
 

Leo-Tyrant

Member
Jan 14, 2019
5,106
San Jose, Costa Rica
I really like the Bethesda-created world experience, but I don't believe Fallout or Starfield can only exist within it.

How was Fallout 1 able provide the full RPG experience while also having a consistent world …. back in 1997 in a non-Bethesda engine?

A person killed remained dead. A door lockpicked remained open, your karma didn't refresh after a while.

I appreciate the overall interactivity perception the Bethesda engine grants, but a lot of you are talking about it in abstract terms, like it really does things UE or even Ubisoft engines can't.

A person asked for more granular examples and the response was "enemies respawn in other engines". Changing this specific behavior (keeping track of the asset status) doesn't seem to be an insurmountable task in the top tier engines.

Mods are probably the real answers/differentiator, but I would really like further examples of things that can only be done in this engine.
 
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Tigress

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,157
Washington
Mods are probably the real answers/differentiator, but I would really like further examples of things that can only be done in this engine.

Can I put a bucket on a shopkeeper's head and block his sight? Can I place any object I find in the world in my house and place it anywhere and not just designated places even if it is just for flavor text and not set to be displayable in my house? Can I place any of those same objects some where else In the world? Are most objects actually their own individual objects and not just part of the backdrop and totally not interactable with? Even objects that have no use except to fill the world?

Can I pick up objects and when I drop them they are the objects again (not just a a description in a loot bag)? Can I pickpocket the items the npc is using or when they die do they have the same armaments and weapons as they were using and not just random spawn loot. Can I reverse pick pocket things on to them. Can they take items that are around them and use them and you'll find the item on them?

Maybe you can, I admit I'm no developer. But for some reason no other game using a different engine does that and seeing as people love those things you think they would. I mean they live it enough Todd made sure to comment at least about objects in starfield are still Interactable. And it just would not feel as right and part of why Bethesda games are so unique to me if you couldn't. And as I said, obviously there is enough people who feel like me that Bethesda even acknowledges it.
 

ragolliangatan

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Aug 31, 2019
4,488


The artist is talented, but it all looks a bit too shiny and lacks the grittiness you'd expect. These type of videos are all fine and well but a game is more than it's shiny graphics - it's easy to have something looking amazing when you don't have all the game subsystems running under the hood eating up processing time per frame.
 

Rosebud

Two Pieces
Member
Apr 16, 2018
43,626
Mods are probably the real answers/differentiator, but I would really like further examples of things that can only be done in this engine.

In Skyrim I pickpocketed every single NPC (that all have day/night routines), and with the key to their houses I could enter at night without making a scene
 
Apr 4, 2018
4,516
Vancouver, BC
Can't move that bucket though.

In this trailer that's probably true, but you can definitely use nanite for a form of physics objects. For example, the cars in the Matrix Awakens demo are able to move around.

The only catch right now, is that if you wanted to transform or warp that object, you'd either need to swap it out to another nanite model on the fly, or swap it in for a standard mesh.

So in theory, it wouldn't be hard at all to say, have a bucket or a bunch of objects you could kick around the stage or shoot and knock around, but you'd need tricks to make it deform.

The biggest downfall in that trailer is the framerate. Likely largely due to the intense ray traced lighting, shadows with Lumen.
 

-Tetsuo-

Unlimited Capacity
Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,600
I don't get the mod support defense for the creation engine.
People are acting like it's the only engine that has mod support.
Sure, existing modders already know their way around it but if the engine allows it, there will always be mods. It might just take a little longer to get them running. I feel like people will defend the engine until Bethesda themselves decide to create a new one and then suddenly that argument disappears.

Because they will create a new one that works for the specific game they like to make.
 

Leo-Tyrant

Member
Jan 14, 2019
5,106
San Jose, Costa Rica
Can I put a bucket on a shopkeeper's head and block his sight? Can I place any object I find in the world in my house and place it anywhere and not just designated places even if it is just for flavor text and not set to be displayable in my house? Can I place any of those same objects some where else In the world? Are most objects actually their own individual objects and not just part of the backdrop and totally not interactable with? Even objects that have no use except to fill the world?

Can I pick up objects and when I drop them they are the objects again (not just a a description in a loot bag)? Can I pickpocket the items the npc is using or when they die do they have the same armaments and weapons as they were using and not just random spawn loot. Can I reverse pick pocket things on to them. Can they take items that are around them and use them and you'll find the item on them?

Maybe you can, I admit I'm no developer. But for some reason no other game using a different engine does that and seeing as people love those things you think they would. I mean they live it enough Todd made sure to comment at least about objects in starfield are still Interactable. And it just would not feel as right and part of why Bethesda games are so unique to me if you couldn't. And as I said, obviously there is enough people who feel like me that Bethesda even acknowledges it.

In Skyrim I pickpocketed every single NPC (that all have day/night routines), and with the key to their houses I could enter at night without making a scene

Thank you both for your responses.

Those are 2 good examples of the sheer level of interactivity the engine provides, correct, but I could say that some of those are "circumventing" the game world logic a bit, by exploiting what we can do.

From a role playing experience, a real person would not allow you to steal things because you put a bucket in front of his face.

What you are both describing is certainly alluring, but its by no mean, a substitute of better role playing options. I was able to role play in Fallout 1 a lot more than in 3 and 4. And no movable or interactive object made up for that.
 

NCR Ranger

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,870
I really like the Bethesda-created world experience, but I don't believe Fallout or Starfield can only exist within it.


How was Fallout 1 able provide the full RPG experience while also having a consistent world …. back in 1997 in a non-Bethesda engine?
A person killed remained dead. A door lockpicked remained open, your karma didn't refresh after a while.


I appreciate the overall interactivity perception the Bethesda engine grants, but a lot of you are talking about it in abstract terms, like it really does things UE or even Ubisoft engines can't.

Because it is not true. Just like Bethesda modified Gamebryo to suit their needs, over many years, they can do it again for another engine. The argument that Bethesada must stick to this engine or their games will lose all their Bethesda-ness is a false dichotomy. The real question is will the benefits Bethesda gets from switching to say UE5 outweigh the cost of customizing UE5 to their liking or would those resources be better utilized improving the engine they have now?

Bethesda has clearly decided to do the latter again and again, but unless we are in their software engineering meetings we can only speculate on why. There could be solid objective reasons why they can't or don't feel the need to switch, but it also isn't unheard of for companies to stick to software for awful reasons as well.
 
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disparate

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,904
Because it is not true. Just like Bethesda modified Gamebryo to suit their needs, over many years, they can do it again for another engine. The argument that Bethesada must stick to this engine or their games will lose all their Bethesda-ness is a false dichotomy. The real question is will the benefits Bethesda gets from switching to say UE5 outweigh the cost of customizing UE5 to their liking or would those resources be better utilized improving the engine they have now?

Bethesda has clearly decided to do the latter again and again, but unless we are in their software engineering meetings we can only speculate on why. There could be solid objective reasons why they can't switch, but it also isn't unheard of for companies to stick to software for awful reasons as well.
They don't do it for the same reason Epic doesn't rewrite UE in a better language like Rust, there's little if any benefit in the end product either for the software it's designed to produce or the tools. UE isn't better than Creation Engine.
 

disparate

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,904
These discussions are exhausting when software engineering as a field already has spent decades discussing why just yeeting to a new software stack is a bad idea. (link and quotes found by Yeul )
www.joelonsoftware.com

Things You Should Never Do, Part I

Netscape 6.0 is finally going into its first public beta. There never was a version 5.0. The last major release, version 4.0, was released almost three years ago. Three years is an awfully long tim…
"It's important to remember that when you start from scratch there is absolutely no reason to believe that you are going to do a better job than you did the first time. First of all, you probably don't even have the same programming team that worked on version one, so you don't actually have "more experience". You're just going to make most of the old mistakes again, and introduce some new problems that weren't in the original version."
"The old mantra build one to throw away is dangerous when applied to large scale commercial applications. If you are writing code experimentally, you may want to rip up the function you wrote last week when you think of a better algorithm. That's fine. You may want to refactor a class to make it easier to use. That's fine, too. But throwing away the whole program is a dangerous folly, and if Netscape actually had some adult supervision with software industry experience, they might not have shot themselves in the foot so badly."
 
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ragolliangatan

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Aug 31, 2019
4,488
I don't get the mod support defense for the creation engine.
People are acting like it's the only engine that has mod support.
Sure, existing modders already know their way around it but if the engine allows it, there will always be mods. It might just take a little longer to get them running. I feel like people will defend the engine until Bethesda themselves decide to create a new one and then suddenly that argument disappears.

it's not just the ability to mod, it's also the fact that Bethesda provide modders with the same toolset that they use to develop their games. A lot of modding of other games often requires modders to write their own tools from scratch or use extremely hacky methods to support modding. Bethesda go out of their way to make modding easier for the community whereas a lot of teams it's just not something they see as important.
 

Briareos

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,041
Maine
In this trailer that's probably true, but you can definitely use nanite for a form of physics objects.
What does Nanite have to do with physics interactivity? The collision/contact manifold isn't related to the geometric representation for rendering in anything but the most naive of implementations.
I'm sure you can write an engine like UE5 in Julia, doesn't make a lot of sense to do.
Low-key best reply in thread. GUYS IM REWRITING COD IN SML/NJ AND EIFFEL, GET YOUR BODIES READY.
 

NCR Ranger

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,870
These discussions are exhausting when software engineering as a field already has spent decades discussing why just yeeting to a new software stack is a bad idea. (link and quotes found by Yeul )
www.joelonsoftware.com

Things You Should Never Do, Part I

Netscape 6.0 is finally going into its first public beta. There never was a version 5.0. The last major release, version 4.0, was released almost three years ago. Three years is an awfully long tim…

Well now you got me curious. Just to set a baseline I am don't really care one way of the other if Bethesda stays with their current engine or drops it tomorrow for Unity. Just putting that out there so you know I ain't arguing that if Bethesda switched to UE5 than all their problems would be solved and rainbows and butterflies would appear in the sky.

With that out of the way, isn't what most people are talking about and what that article are arguing two different things. I don't see many arguing that Bethesda should write a new engine from scratch. Using the internet stuff people aren't asking Bethesda to rewrite Netscape, but saying maybe it is time for them to switch to Chromium, following Microsoft's footsteps. I guess the question is what are the fields thought on when should someone decide that there is no need to keep improving the wheel when others are doing that and you should just use their stuff so your resources can be better spent elsewhere?
 

disparate

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,904
Using the internet stuff people aren't asking Bethesda to rewrite Netscape, but saying maybe it is time for them to switch to Chromium, following Microsoft's footsteps. I guess the question is what are the fields thought on when should someone decide that there is no need to keep improving the wheel when others are doing that and you should just use their stuff so your resources can be better spent elsewhere?
While Chromium and the original Edge rendering engine may not have been the same, Chromium was robust enough and more importantly open source allowing Microsoft to achieve feature parity out of the gate, whereas that's not the case switching entire tech stastacks with game engines. Bethesda's toolkit doesn't exist in UE or Unity.