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Fallout 4 - Prepare thyselves

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by tiggus, Nov 1, 2015.

  1. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    I seem to be getting pretty impressive mileage out of it. I was initially concerned at the size of the map, because physically it's pretty small, but it's really densely packed and the quality bar seems set pretty high.

    The graphics and art are great, but there's... something... missing? I think it's the lighting, potentially a lack of ambient occlusion and/or really dark places. Things seem to be lit just a little too uniformly when not in shadow. It doesn't make the game look bad by any stretch, it just perhaps doesn't have the dynamic range I'm used to seeing in most bleeding edge games.

    One thing I'm really enjoying is that the game does seem to have a reasonable challenge level so far. I've died a fair bit. This is partly from being bull headded and deciding to do things that I'm clearly not properly equipped for, but the thing I'm enjoying is that I get that opportunity. In earlier Bethesda games I often felt that the auto levelling was a bit too generous and took away the sense of danger. It meant that there were rarely situations where I made choices based on evaluated danger, it was almost always about available resources. Coming back to my first paragraph point, I think that's why I'm getting more mileage out of a smaller map. The fact that there is significant difficulty modulation between areas means that a) I have to work to be able to properly explore some areas and b) when I'm exploring areas on the limits of my character's ability it's more challenging and thus takes longer.

    So, while the game still misses out on the original's sense of scale and distance and desolation (you could literally be miles or days from civilization in FO1/2, where in FO3/4 it's usually just over the next rise, often in sight on the horizon), FO4 definitely has the sense of danger to go along with it's cool places to explore. The writing is often cringe worthy, but the quests are pretty cool so far. So overall, while I was expecting a decent game in any case, I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised.
     
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  2. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    There is ambient occlusion, however it is quite rough compared to what is usually used in games (Could post a screen, but that would be major spoiler).

    The main issue with lighting is lack of subsurface scattering on character skin, also as far as I can tell there are no indirect lighting of any kind anywhere. In outdoor areas that works - because sun is bright, there are no clouds, and god rays soften the effect, but indoors you get Doom 3 lighting style (except they use shadowmaps instead of stencil shadows). Modern PBR-based lighting system usually take greater care about ambient lighting pass, and use either some sort of hemisphere lighting or PBR shader can use reflection probe data to add some softer lights on edges.Well, I haven't seen noticed anything like that in the Fo4. It is actually strange, because there are some quality materials, for example, "Red Dress" item has great shader on it.

    Regarding difficulty, as I said, apparently I accidentally stumbled upon overpowered perk combo and at this point it is possible to one-hit anything as long as you can sneak up on it.

    It gets quite ridiculous sometimes.

    For example I found this guy:
    Behemoth.jpg
    who was strolling through the map destroying anything that moves. That was unexpected/surprising encounter... until I managed to kill him in one hit by punching him in the butt (well, someone else brought his health to 75% first, but still). That killed feeling of awe I was starting to have.

    In the end the game is awkward. There are some great places, but areas feel cramped, and settlement babysitting gets annoying over time ("HALP! Our settlement has impenetrable wall of turrets surrounding with 100+ defense, but raiders still give us trouble and kidnap people somehow!"). I completed main story a while ago, and while It had some good moments, it is not very "convincing" and some choices near the end feel forced/railroaded.

    I think Bethesda was trying to go after Minecraft, Mass Effect and Dragon Inquisition, but why would they do that, I'm not sure. Bethesda games usually worked great when it was just you your rifle/sword/spell/whatever and the world to explore. I do hope they won't be continuing this direction and go back to their original style instead.

    The game sorta makes me remember Egosoft's disaster with X: Rebirth (Fo 4 is not a disaster, but if they keep moving in that direction, they can get one). Basically in case of Rebirth developer misunderstood what fans love about their game and released title that had crippled all the favorite elemens people wanted to see. I hope it won't be the case with next bethesda title.
     
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  3. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Based on FO4, what do you think Bethesda might "cripple" with their next game?

    As far as I can tell, the core of what makes their games entertaining is still very much there. They've added stuff on top that's not to everyone's taste, but that's cool, because they haven't removed anything to make it happen. (I guess arguably some of the RPG elements are lessened. I can let that slide since many of them weren't that beefy to begin with.)

    This is what I'm referring to. The flat look of scene lighting.
     
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  4. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Wouldn't surprise me if it was a bug. There are at least one or two bugs right now that massively increase melee damage.

    Yao Guai Roast is one of them. It's supposed to add 10 damage, but it's multiplying by 10 instead.
     
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  5. MaxieQ

    MaxieQ

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    I don't have anything to back this theory up with, but it feels like Bethesda is trying to differentiate between Elder Scrolls and Fallout, to Fallout's detriment. They're moving Fallout toward something like Far Cry - a shooter with RPG elements. They'll do the RPG stuff in Elder Scrolls.

    The 'make shooter' theory is based on the fact that the player is railroaded into shooting everything. Charisma builds aren't really possible in this game because you can't convince anyone not to fight.
     
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  6. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    They can grab their next title and turn it into call of duty. Shooter on rails, basically. They're definitely going into that direction right now. The beginning of the game and the fact that something like that made it into release indicates pretty much that.

    They removed quite a lot from game mechanics and keep simplifying them with each iteration, actually.
    In Daggerfall there was climbing skill. It was removed in Morrowind.
    In Morrowind there was unarmed combat and unarmored fighting.
    They were removed in Oblivion.
    In Oblivion there was highly configurable spell crafting system and equipment deteriorated over time.
    Both were nuked in skyrim.

    In Fo4 they removed skill system which was present in previous fallout titles, also, your stats no longer affect dialogue in any way.


    The settlement relationship level is also gone.
    In Fo3 they reduced number of targetable areas on enemies, and removed ability to target body parts in melee. Also, also, it was no longer possible to knockdown enemies or make them faint for a long time, as far as I remember.

    The trend isn't good, because they're slowly killing away the core of their games.

    Oh, and then there's ending cinematic. Compare it to previous titles, and the difference will be obvious.

    It is more likely a design oversight.
    Blitz increases melee damage with distance. (Basically, your character teleports about 50 meters ahead and hits the enemy)
    Ninja gives you 10x sneak attacks (by the way, it reports 4.5x sneak attack in my case, which is definitely a bug).
    Also, there's line of perks that will slowly raise damage you deal (up to 2x times)
    If you combine the two AND land a critical hit with power fist on top of that, you can one-hit anything. Without Yao Guai Roast.


    Yep, exactly. There aren't that many significant choices and in few situation when you feel like you could've changed course of the story by applying your awesome personality, you'r very harshly railroaded in one predetermined outcome that doesn't always make sense. I think there were two significant choices total over course of main quest.

    After looking at that, I sorta remember Planescape Torment, where you could unmake one of the game bosses by applying raw willpower (well, that's magical universe, after all).
     
    Last edited: Nov 27, 2015
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  7. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    I have saved and reloaded on some occasions that seemed to be set up as opportunities to talk your way out of a confrontation. I have charisma 6 and wear items that give a +3 charisma boost total (or maybe even +4 [glasses, fedora, green shirt and army boots, and a legendary armor item]) and still most times it seemed that no matter what combination of dialog options I choose it ends in a firefight. Today I actually had an encounter that I could resolve with talking, but it involved me clicking on a red persuasion option (are those evaluated with RNG?) and another orange one after that. What I dislike the most about that is that the dialog that belongs to the successful persuasion choices by no means was more convincing than the options that lead to confrontation. The persuasion dialog was almost literally "Come on, give me a chance!".
    The way everything is currently handled I think they might as well abandon all the RPG elements and make it a proper openworld shooter with heavy survival elements, inventory management, exploration, basebuilding and proper difficulty balancing. I have to agree that the RPG elements have been handled better in the other Fallout games. I still enjoy Fallout 4, but it's like you get 2 games in 1 and one of them appeals far more to me than the other.
     
  8. Martin_H

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    If I remember correctly Ninja gives 3.5x on stealth ranged and 10x on stealth melee. Take Lone Wanderer, Mr. Sandman and suppressed weapons on top of that and you get 5.3x (or 5x? 5.5x? can't remember) damage on stealth ranged attacks without any buffs through drugs or the damage buffs from Gunslinger/Rifleman/Commando. And I just got a suppressed rifle with 200+ base damage so a ranged stealth attack should be 1000+ damage. The combat balancing is pretty broken and imho the game would benefit from making the damage/health escalation a lot flatter and restricting ammo a lot more. Imho a single .50 cal rifle headshot should kill every living thing that is smaller than maybe a deathclaw, but I would be totally fine with it if .50 cal ammo was very rare and had a carry weight. High level human NPCs without a helmet that can take several headshots, from something that actually exists and can cut down trees, is just immersion breaking for me.

    New Vegas had a system where wearing Faction Armor would make people from opposing factions hate you. That made a lot of sense to me, I wonder why it is gone.
     
  9. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    By the way, has anyone else noticed how toned down this game is compared to previous titles? It literally just occurred to me.
     
  10. Martin_H

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    What do you mean by "toned down"? Do you mean it is rather inoffensive and tame compared to earlier iterations where you could join a slavers guild and sell people into slavery etc.? If so, then I noticed this as well. Imho the Mad Max game captures the post apocalyptic wasteland insanity a bit better.
     
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  11. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Yep.

    In Fo2 you could kill children, sell your companion(s) into slavery, and you could also have shotgun wedding, plus there was the whole New Reno portion of the game. There was lots of black humor too (reading tombstones was fun).

    Fo4 looks rather sterile in comparison. Also, you cannot be a villain now.


    I think that New Vegas better captured original atmosphere. Perhaps I should replay it eventually. Wasteland 2 was also somewhat similar, but significantly sillier than fallout, and with a bit of "redneck" feeling about it.

    Haven't played it and haven't watched the new movie. Is it worth the time? I heard the movie is good.
     
  12. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    The movie is great, one of the best action films of the recent years in my opinion. I've played ~30 hours of the game and haven't finished it yet. I don't know if I even will because I have to admit that it gets pretty repetetive. But what I have played of it I liked very much. They try to stick to the lore and things that make sense in the Mad Max universe. Everything feels rather well thought out to me, pretty immersive and mechanics and story integrate well into each other. But the game has been called "the sandiest of sandboxes" and I can understand that as well. In the end it probably comes down to "do you like arkham style fighting on foot and vehicle combat with lots of explosions?". If the answer is "yes", I'd say give it a go.
     
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  13. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Thanks for the info.
     
  14. Deleted User

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    Lot's of fun still to be had then, I decided to make my own little RPG game in Unity again based on a fair few Mechanics from Fallout, I've not been feeling awesome / off work so why the hell not?.. Already have the base animation, event systems, AI / Navmesh, terrain / camera / controller / basic NPC interaction etc. set up.. Took me three days, not bad to say I'd forgotten a lot of the basics.

    I forgot how easy Unity is though which is cool, which is convenient because until you start trying to make something like FO you don't realise all the subtlties in the game you miss when just playing it.

    Like the chars head follows you whilst they walk past, I set up an Inverse Kinematics script to do the same. It again was really simple with Unity and Mecanim (which I never realised was so awesome).

    I still dislike the lighting in Unity with a passion, the amount of color grading I had to do and it still doesn't "look right". Here's hoping the GGX lighting system / SSR and hopefully the SMAA temporal hybrid they're working on fixes this. For outdoors I might try the Blacksmith Atmospheric scattering etc., I think they should include an "atmospheric fog" node by default you can drag and drop into the scene. The shadows in Unity aren't exactly "stellar" either, might try the Sunshine asset store upgrade. Also Scion seems to be getting a lot of popularity, so what the hey.!

    Again when you're outdoor during the day in FO4 and damn it looks good, I'm not focusing at all on graphics for the moment but if I could get those sort of results in Unity I would be exteremely happy.

    Doing it has actually re-lit my passion for games dev again, I might do a Fallout 4 type game as side project.
     
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  15. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    One nice thing about mecanim is that you can easily get GameObject/Transform that corresponds to specific body part from humanoid character ( See http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Animator.GetBoneTransform.html ). Also that it effortlessly retargets root motion movement, although with some glitches (UE4 currently can't do root motion retargeting).

    Once upon a time using that I wrote a script that could turn any humanoid skinned mesh in the scene into ai combatant with one click (The script slapped AI controller on it, calculated bounds for body parts, approximated body weight, set up collision volume for body parts using boxes, then placed sword into right hand while orienting it correctly).

    On other hand hand the problem is that default "HumanBones" type does not include bones for props and IK targets for feet/hands (UE4 does), also translation animation (like floating bone attached to root) for anything that is not attached to a body part will be lost during retarget process.

    Speaking of lighting, highly modular level setup is likely to produce a lot of minor artifacts (random tints, seams, etc). Something to keep in mind.
     
  16. Deleted User

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    I'm using HumanBoneID to adjust the chest / body rotation as the player "interacts" and brings up the UI, it's not perfect because unlike animator.setlookat which takes constraints and muscle position into account any humanbone transitions based on the animator don't which is a shame. Using a quaternion rotation which is clamped for the moment, but I need a better way to seamlessly transition interaction elements. I actually need to look at how Witcher / Fallout do it again, I think I'm trying to create problems for myself at the moment..

    I have the UI set up now which controls navmesh NPC's etc.. Not even used the new Unity UI before now, it's pretty cool.

    I'm having a bit of an odd issue with the Navmesh agents as well, when they get to the waypoint they kind of do a little jig or just turn round in circles. I've messed around with allsorts from the phsyics to the AI controller components / Navmesh and again not sure what's going on with it.

    Finally I need to get the Navmesh agents to seamlessly transition position / rotation when moving to for e.g. a sit idle animation..

    It's all these "niggly bit's" which is a pain in the bottom, I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually. I'm actually surprised at the lack of documentation / results from users on some more advanced issues. There's a lot of common basic scenario's used in AAA games covered in the UE doc's.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 28, 2015
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  17. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    I don't have any experience with this and only understand half of what you are talking about, but wouldn't that be a good fit for the FinalIK asset? Or are you exploring how far you can get with stock unity functionality?

    Maybe because so little AAA is done with Unity and so many of the games made with it are for mobile? That's probably different for UE4, right?
     
  18. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    I hope you're doing that through animation IK layer, as described here: http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/InverseKinematics.html

    NavAgent had couple of overrideable methods, including the one where you could handle transition between meshes. Been a while since I used it, so I forgot the name.

    As for niggly bits, expect to encounter 10 times more of them. That kind of issue is fairly common - you want to do something, you find feature, it is either completely undocumented (good luck without source code) or broken.

    It would be great if there was a combined engine, with strength of unity and unreal, but that's not going to happen, so both of those will have areas that are pain to deal with.
     
  19. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    A little body orientation adjustment should be easy enough to deal with yourself.

    UE 4 has a lot of areas that are infuriatingly annoying to deal with. The engine (UE4) hates the idea of using root motion for locomotion, and making it work requires some derived classes. Also, it cannot retarget root motion, and treats animation asset as inseparable part of character's skeleton. However, default unreal skeleton contains bones for props and inverse kinematics, so you can, for example, ensure that hands stay on weapon's grip properly, and transfer sword movement between characters. Unity's humanoid skeleton lacks those, which will cause you a lot of grief if you ever decide any animation that uses a prop, like, you know, a weapon.
     
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  20. Deleted User

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    Of course I am, animator.SetLookAt can only be called when IK is active in Mecanim and you use OnAnimatorIK(). That's how I'm doing all the head following between the NPC's and Player Char's :), I probably would be better off with FinalIK sure.. But I like a challenge :D, if it annoys me too much I probably will just buy it.

    I've been doing "games" development a long time and worked in various roles for large dev outfits (Mainly on engine rendering side, but still been making games on the side for uhh can't remember). So I have some clue what to expect, point was you don't really appreciate all the little niggly bits that go into it as a player.. Even as a Dev I forget about the little things when I'm playing them.

    Another issue is I'm just so used to UE now, I've forgotten how to do a lot of this.. I can't remember half the limitations of Unity or how I fixed a lot of issues. It really would be interesting to see if I could pull off a Fallout / Skyrim game in Unity.

    Again, I love a challenge :)..
     
  21. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Well, Wasteland 2 was done in unity, so you'll be definitely able to recreate Fallout 2. For Fallout 3/4/NewVegas, I'd expect your game to have worse visuals (see unreal decision article), so you might need to go for stylized look of sorts. New Vegas look should be doable with current tech.

    It can be fun side project, of course, because some things are more intuitive in unity, so, good luck.
     
  22. Deleted User

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    Well I fixed all the issues, I just had to make a boat load of my own constraints and tags for bone items.. Didn't end up using the IK system for anything more than turning. Which is a shame again, but it seems the IK system is relatively new. Like SetBoneLocalRotation came in at 5.2.. Phsyx still touchy, but I worked around it..

    I really disagree with the graphics thing. That article shows they didn't really know what they were doing, take a look at this peep's work http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/graphical-stuff-by-jeydia.310430/page-2

    You can make a game better looking than NV without trying too hard, but there's no chance of beating Unreal ultimately. There's a metric ton of reasons why, from Unity just doesn't have the massive range of tech to the accuracy of lighting etc. the question is, how much does it matter?

    I was experimenting with GGX / a free PBR framework / particle shader infrastructure upgrades and post / dynamic lighting / shadows back in Unity 4. I couldn't do it with acceptable performance, but hell I tried (due to needing access to stuff maybe? Can't remember long time ago). I'm not saying it's perfect but damn it's better than NV..

    Picture attached, I was trying to make Unity look more like Unreal:

    $Caves1.jpg
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 29, 2015
  23. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    In the screens you posted, pillars that support ceiling aren't casting any shadows.

    It can matter a lot, depending on the project.

    We had issues with highly modular setup where throwing fireball caused floor/wall tiles to flash. As far as I can tell, that one couldn't be fixed at all, due to the way lighting pipeline operates.

    Also, I hit this unresolved issue with lighting generating random tints on objects somehow.

    Also, there's long-standing and still unsolved problem where dynamic objects cannot cast shadows when affected by baked or mixed lights.

    I also tried to make order-independent transparency rendering (and it worked), but then I hit significant problems in the way lighting pipeline organized. Making standard shader pass shadowmap into transparent pass is a big problem (basically required lying to the shader about rendering type, and it won't work on smoke particles if they're rendering against skypbox with no geometry behind them), and then there were OpenGL/DirectX rendering difference in handling multiple rendering targets (worked in DX, but not in GL).

    Speaking of precomputed lighting, lack of support for transparent glass (while precomputing lighting/shadows) is very annoying.

    There's also not enough control in rendering subroutines that handle replacement shaders. You can't tell the renderer to render this object with replacement shader and another one with default shader. The bonus fun part is that if you try to split objects into several passes, then rendering a pass ALSO causes full recalculation of shadomaps, so you can't, say, prerender full shadowmaps, then render scene in several pasesses.

    That one could've been easily solved with source code access, by the way. Why the heck can't I specify what kind of object should use what shader using a delegate?

    The whole standard shader-related stuff in cg includes badly needs refactoring, because, say shadow-map related macros pass parameters via hidden variables. Meaning if you want to customize anything, you're screwed.

    Then unity team went ahead and released update which broke the way animation events are handled, so they were firing twice (when within animation clip, and then another time when it is transitioning away from it). That one was a deal breaker.

    That's basically the reason why I work using UE4 right now.

    In the end, it is a HUGE mess, and experience was largely negative. Which is a shame, because there are a lot of great ideas there, in unity engine. It is possible that the situation will improve over a year or so, but as far as I know, the thing is that it is very easy to get started with the engine, but over the course of doing something interesting or unusual you're very likely to hit many issues and it will be very hard to make proper workaround for those issues.

    Yeah, I could scrap the entire lighting system and write my own, then do occlusion culling, rendering and shadowmaps myself, with proper passes and all, but in that case what would be the point of using the engine in the first place?

    So, as I said, good luck. It can be a fun project, but just expect to hit a lot of issues along the road.
     
  24. Deleted User

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    I'd given up on trying to make it look correct by the end of it, I agree with what you're saying. I did move our main project to Unreal for a reason, in 4.3 the editor wouldn't even open due to the size of the project. Yes the rendering pipeline is much to be desired but all I'm saying in terms of graphics Unity ain't THAT bad.

    I'll be honest, I wouldn't try to release a commercial product of any grand stature unless I was on BFF terms with Unity having a massive priority support access contract.

    Again I don't think Unity is bad in fact I've always had a soft spot for it, it's nice / simple and a welcome change to the fury I suffer constantly with Unreal. UE is a AAA engine out the box and you get all the AAA engine annoyances that come with it..

    Plus I'm glad I'm not trying to build an MMO with UE..
     
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  25. neginfinity

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    Yep, there are some great portions of the game engine. Getting started with it is easy, asset management is easier, mecanim retargets root motion (statemachine for animation is worse, though), object model makes sense, etc.

    All you say about UE is true too. The learning curve is steep.
    --EDIT--

    I checked FO:New Vegas again, and you are right about graphics. The game looks extremely dated by now, simple PBR setup is very likely to provide better visuals. Now, you'll obviously hit all the numerous standard unity lighting issues, but most likely you'll be able to make something that'll look better than new vegas.

    IIRC Line Age 2 used Unreal 2 engine. A lot (if not most )of the work in usual MMO is done server side, so it can be done. Writing the server, though... that'll be major pain.
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2015
  26. Ryiah

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    Yes. They've successfully created another sandbox game where the player can either choose to follow the goals set by the game or strike off on some hair-brained scheme. This video is a great example as the creator decided he wanted to see what happens to Dogmeat after he instructs him to head back home.

     
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  27. Martin_H

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    So, it's been almost a year and I think it would be a nice time to revisit Fallout 4. I read your post again because it was on the top of this page, and it happens to be quite relevant to what prompted me to revive this thread. I was a bit unhappy with the balancing of vanilla Fallout 4 when I played it, because everything felt too bullet-spongy to me. I always planned to give it another try with balancing mods, and that time has come now. I use this one:
    http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/11657/?

    Now small 1v1 shootouts usually last ~1-2 seconds, at the end of which one of you is dead ^^. On this new playthrough I play the game in survival difficulty, so no quicktravel (makes the map feel a whole lot bigger if you have to go everywhere on foot), saving only when you sleep, need to drink, eat, sleep, and micromanage more health aspects. And I never use VATS.

    The raised stakes of many enemies being able to insta-kill you even at full health (when you can see a grenade flying towards you 9/10 times you're dead), and not being able to save any time, really influence my ingame decision making. It adds a whole new level of emergence to the combat, that I like very much. I'll "get rested before a fight" (save), fallback and regroup when outnumbered (wait for stimpaks to heal me up, lose followers, approach enemy group from another angle), choose my loadout more carefully (ammo and meds have weight now), and often I'm legit scared by unexpected encounters (half an hour since last save and hauling my loot back to base, when suddenly a legendary Deathclaw bursts out of the ground -> Ruuuuuuun!).

    Combat imho feels so much better now. Yesterday I cleared the toughest raider camp so far, which took me about half a dozen tries, and I had fun the whole time. On this playthrough I treat the game as an open world shooter and largely ignore main story quests and settlement management. I try to stick to areas I seem to have missed on the first playthrough and so far I feel like I see more new than familiar content.

    How much tweaking just a few parameters of the game-balance, changes the overall feel of the game sooo much for me that I'd describe it as "eye opening". It's almost like I'm playing a different game. To me everything now feels more satisfying, meaningful, powerful, immersive, challenging and rewarding. I kind of whish this had been my experience right from the start. But I understand how this kind of balancing could be very offputting for more casual players. I've got thousands of hours of FPS gaming under my belt and I play with mouse and keyboard (probably wouldn't be able to survive some situations with a controller). Many situations that are an exciting "close call" for me, probably just would have been a frustrating death for a more casual and RPG-focused console gamer. It's not quite Dark Souls difficulty yet, but it certainly goes a bit more in the direction of what I like about Dark Souls.

    Though one thing really sucks on that new balancing: landmines and traps. Before I got the perk to not trigger those anymore, I think I died more often to landmines than to enemies. Which is super extra frustrating when it happens twice in a row after a long walk to a new settlement (starlight drive-in), I'm looking for a bed to sleep(save) in, and well hidden landmines kill me before I could save and I have to start again from Sanctuary. For me it's an example of a mechanic that would have needed to be cut or significantly changed/rebalanced to work with the other parameters (insta-kill + can't save whenever you want).

    P.s.: and bugs like getting stuck behind an asset, unable to escape by quicktraveling away, or the framerate in an area suddenly dropping down to 1, are made 10 times worse by the harsher save intervals.
     
    Last edited: Oct 6, 2016
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  28. Dustin-Horne

    Dustin-Horne

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    I'm actually still playing without any mods. I don't play constantly, but I'm an OCD explorer... I take the perks where I can run and fast travel while overencumbered. I horde everything... every tin can, every battered clipboard, every cow magnet and stuffed sloth in Nuka World. With all of this I have about 9 1/2 days of play time in and I'm only 38% done with the main story quest but I've explored about every nook and cranny.

    I do it more for the "adventure", exploration, crafting than I do the battles so I don't mind the mismatched balance.
     
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  29. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Bethesda seems to be trying to head down that route with Survival but they just don't know how to do it properly. I'm almost tempted to approach their games with the mentality that I won't be able to play them until mods of this sort are available.
     
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  30. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Wow. It's been a while since this thread had any activity. I thought about creating a new thread but this one seemed good enough to post the new trailer and past comments may be relevant to future discussions.

     
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  31. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    So now that a new Fallout game has been announced, will you actually do this?
     
  32. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    I don't know. I do know that Fallout 4 came the closest to feeling like it didn't need mods out of the box to make it enjoyable for at least one playthrough (though I haven't completed the game as my hardware at the time just wasn't up for it). Skyrim, let alone Oblivion and Fallout 3, was a completely different story. That UI was just awful.

    I'm more tempted to just jump straight into the game when it comes out and avoid discussions about it until I have had a chance to go through it completely. Spoilers haven't traditionally bothered me because I don't play their games for the story but I am tempted to take a different approach this time to see how it affects my enjoyment.
     
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  33. Dustin-Horne

    Dustin-Horne

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    I loved Fallout 3... even with the UI and bugs. I'm not holding my breath on 76... there's a good chance it's going to be an MMO or something like Fallout Shelter on a larger scale and not a traditional Fallout game.
     
  34. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    With the new Fallout being sort of an MMO with PVP, you probably won't have a choice but to play without mods. And I fear that my personal complaints with the combat in FO4 (everything feeling too bulletspongy) can only be worse in a game with MMO-ish mechanics. They'll probably have enemies that are supposed to be only beatable in a small group of players or with gear that you need to endlessly grind for. I assume you'll have much less freedom in how you want to fight and going by the video powerarmor probably is mandatory for certain areas or quests, and I didn't really enjoy the whole powerarmor system in FO4 and almost never used it. They were just collectibles cluttering up my base. So, not super hyped about this game.

    I think I could deal with harsher survival aspects or even permadeath, but I don't want to be pushed towards non-bullet-based-interactions with other players, or forced into multiplayer at all. That whole launchcode/baseraid/pvp stuff doesn't sound like my cup of tea. I'm not even certain I wanna buy the game. If there's a free beta I think I'd check it out. If anyone see's a signup page, please post it here. I did play a bit of Rust solo, but that was only remotely fun on modded servers that minimized the grind by a huge margin and had active admins dealing with cheaters.
    How bad is cheating in Elder Scrolls online? I never played it.

    For now I'm more interested in the Roguelike DLC for Prey, called Mooncrash. That sounds like it could be fun. Haven't watched any videos on it yet though.
     
  35. kalamona

    kalamona

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    "So, not super hyped about this game."

    Same here. The one I am most afraid is that there WILL be players who grief, are toxic, or at least bunnyhop around while screaming obscenities. Completely kills the mood of Fallout.
     
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  36. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    Sounds like there will be no human NPCs (neither story NPCs nor enemies). All humans you see are other players. Since I tend to prefer fighting against organic humanoids, the game is getting less and less attractive for me.
    Beta signup seems to be for pre-orders only, so I probably won't be part of it.

    They say they don't want it to be griefy, but they want "some" drama in there. No idea how that's supposed to play out. Having played Rust and DayZ I remain skeptical. If there's something to be lost from dying, I'd imagine everyone goes for "Kill On Sight" for every player they see. You won't loose your equipment when you die, they said so much already. But it might be annoying in other ways, to warrant a KOS policy.
     
  37. BIGTIMEMASTER

    BIGTIMEMASTER

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    So IHOP inexplicably becomes IHOb for no intelligent reason, and now a great single player RPG series is to become a toxic playground for screeching 11 year olds. What's next!?! When will the big companies have enough money that they don't have to chase ALL of the money.
     
  38. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    My own completely random guess here, based on the way the games both pre- and post-Bethesda play, is that their idea of drama would be people starting factions and having interactions between them. It's very easy to imagine someone starting up the equivalent to the Brotherhood of Steel with the goal of seizing all the nuclear launch sites.

    There are already people joking about wanting to start the Minutemen.

    https://old.reddit.com/r/fo76/comments/8q9mn3/lets_form_the_minutemen/

    I'm cautiously optimistic. Before the presentation started there were rumors floating around about online play and I was very against the idea but now I'm going to wait to see what comes out of the beta (I'll likely pre-order to get access to it myself). It helps that I have a friend who has expressed interest in playing.
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2018
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  39. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    Friends to play with can make even Ghost Recon Wildlands fun. Let us know how you'll like it, I'm interested.
     
  40. LeftyRighty

    LeftyRighty

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    video above got pulled, here's the interview again, fallout stuff kicks in around 5:40

     
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