Oblivion's Missing Physics Acceleration

An anonymous reader writes "An article on GamesFirst discusses how much better Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion would be if it supported true physics acceleration. From the article: 'Oblivion lacks Casual Physics, and the result is a splendidly beautiful world that still requires a blind eye in order to buy into the environment...' How would Oblivion be different if there were more than just Rag-Doll physics, if bad guys reacted to the swing of your sword, or if mist realistically moved around you as you walked."

Comments

"Lacking" isn't the right term.

[ivan256]

I don't know how you can possibly call the physics in Oblivion anything but "comic". It has nothing to do with 'Casual' or 'Targeted' physics. The fact of the matter is that well done targeted physics are more than good enough if your goal is a good game. We're not doing nuclear simulations here, and 'casual physics' with hardware acceleration is only required to check a box on the marketing list. The reason Oblivion's physics stand out as lacking is that they're so rediculous. Crumpled up wads of paper interact with other objects as if they weighed hundreds of pounds... as does every other type of object. Enemies that die are seemingly uneffected by anything you hit them with... except for the killing blow, where your .1lb arrow sends even the biggest, heaviest enemies flying so far that it makes a Kung Fu movie seem realistic. When you jump... Oh let's not even get into it.

Casual physics can actually subtract from a game, because it prevents you from making the obligitory tradeoffs between realism and fun. You don't wany full realism in a fantasy setting, quite honestly. If you're not going to use them though, please, pay attention to balance and details. It's that lack of attention to detail that makes the physics stand out in Oblivion. Stand out in a bad way, that is.

As an aside, this guy says that Oblivion is close to perfect in visual presentation. I'd disagree. It's great, and shaders are nifty and all, but... Well, let's just say that more notes being played doesn't mean it's a better symphony. Use discression with the shaders, guys. Just because you can is no reason for you to make every single thing shiny.

Also, all the Oblivion fanboys out there can hold off on flaming me. I'm totally addicted to the game, and I think it's great. It's OK to see negatives in something. Just because you spent $60 doesn't mean you'll be less of a man if let somebody give honest criticism.

Re:"Lacking" isn't the right term.

[spyrochaete]

Does the prospect of realistic physics really ruin a game?

Is it really more fun when it takes 30 sword slashes to cut down an opponent in an RPG? Is it more fun when you hack a guy 15 times in the face with a dagger, then stab him and the knee and he dies? Is it fun when you block a swinging mace with your wooden bow and you don't even get knocked backward? Or how you can carry 349 of 350 pounds, and then pick up a coin and be completely immobilized?

Yes, many of these are gameplay mechanics that can be fixed without buying a $250 PCI card, but they are also elements that accelerated physics could really spruce up. Just because Oblivion in particular is a good game, doesn't mean it wouldn't be better if the world were more believable.

Does physics really add that much to an RPG?

[Inoshiro]

I've played through Half-Life 2, with its (in)famous physics engine, and I've also put a couple of days into Oblivion. One of these two games has a lot of content to go with its eye candy, and is a game I'll likely replay again. The other is Half-Life.

Except for some of the silly physics (like being able to run the horse along a steep cliff without falling), I don't think Oblivion would gain much from being super-real-istic. I don't play Oblivion because I'm interested in real-world physics.

Re:Does physics really add that much to an RPG?

[The-Bus]

"The more realistic the fantasy world, the more clever and interesting your adventures would be."

That's ludicrous. The statement should read: "The more realistic the fantasy world, the more of a real world it becomes."

If Oblivion's engine was realistic, then there would be no point in locks or lockpicking as I'm sure a fireball could set any door on fire and windows could be broken to crawl into any area. Also, item prices would change as supply and demand affect the worldwide economy. And you know what else?

There'd be no fucking monsters made out of ice cubes or perky, nubile spider-women who can shoot lightning.

I think the word you're looking for is not "realism" but "consistency" which has nothing to do with the physics engine and everything to do with how that engine (no matter how realistic or fantastic) is applied to everything. BUT... in video games, as in movies, you need to have something called suspension of disbelief. Otherwise, if I decided to just keep walking east, I wouldn't hit a magic force field that says, "You can't walk over there." Otherwise, I'd be wondering... where exactly are all the kids in Cyrodiil?

Personally, I prefer being able to walk up to a group of guards and hit them with a sword to send them flying like so many Agent Smiths. For every moment I have where I say, "Oh, that's stupid, why can't I carry this candle across the room" I have another one where I jump off the side of a cliff and get a one-shot kill mid-air on some bandit 80 feet below me, then land on the ground and eviscerate his companions while I simultaneously pick flowers. That is what Oblivion is about.

As far as the original submission, they asked: "How would Oblivion be different if there were more than just Rag-Doll physics, if bad guys reacted to the swing of your sword, or if mist realistically moved around you as you walked?"

I wouldn't care. It's already a fun game. This is what saddens me about the tech demos I'm seeing lately: "Look, the car falls apart realistically!" While that gets me to geek out for a few minutes I wonder if so much effort will be put into gameplay.

One look at the current quality of the average game and I think I have my answer to that question.

Re:Does physics really add that much to an RPG?

[NichG]

The problem is tradeoff. Lets ignore development time, since putting in an actual physics engine can actually speed that up if it means you don't have to explicitly program stuff, the same way that putting in random generation stops you from having to tweak each individual NPC's name and appearance.

No, the tradeoff I'm talking about here is system specs. Oblivion is a good game, immersive, fun. It was a good game back when it was called Morrowind and ran on computers that would be laughable by today's standards.

Now, I'm not saying they should have kept the graphics the same in Oblivion. But I'm saying they could have and if the rest of the game is solid, that wouldn't make it a not-fun game. Since systems have gotten better, then they can choose to improve the graphics and thats great. But the sort of casual physics they're talking about in that article isn't something that could realistically be done on modern systems. I was even surprised that the physics in Oblivion could be done until I realized that they had an on-off switch for it, so stationary objects weren't simulated. Meaning they had to do at most a couple dozen nodes at once - not a big deal.

Or, to put it another way. I can make a game that solves compressible Navier-Stokes to derive the weather patterns so that the player can influence the weather via the butterfly effect. Or I can stick in a random distribution. If its free, I might as well do the former. But it isn't, so if I want anyone to be able to play my game, I choose to do the latter which is almost as good. Putting in by hand swirling smoke gives you something which takes you as a developer more time to do, but the benefit is that the computational difficulty drops and you have spare cycles to do even more interesting stuff. I'd rather have my cycles used for a really clever AI, or even an evolving world, than simulating the grass. And since I have a finite computational power, thats a choice that must eventually be made.

Physics Realism? Pfft. There're bigger problems.

[Valdrax]

Physics realism in the game is nothing compared to the lack of social realism especially with regard to crime. If you steal something anywhere in the game, everyone in the game knows that it wasn't yours and may take steps to punish you for it.

You can steal a horse in one town and ride it to the furthest town away that you can get to, and everyone will know that it's not your horse. You can pick up an alchemy book to read it with no one in the room and put it back down when finished only to be accosted as soon as you open the door. If you kill a guard in an alleyway, every single guard in town will come straight for you to kill you.

Until the game gets social realism down, a few odd-looking collisions means nothing for my immersion.

waste of time

[tengennewseditor]

Jesus christ, the physics are fucking impressive for an RPG. They can only put so much effort and manhours into Oblivion, and with the ENORMOUS AMOUNTS OF GAME CONTENT I'm surprised they even got a physics engine that is as fun as it is. True physics would have been nice, OK, but not worth the time. I mean, developers will release a game solely on the merits of its physics engine (see: Black) so it's not something that's trivial to add...

Smells like a press release

[cgenman]

So they claim that Oblivion would be much better with AGIA brand physics acceleration hardware support. And if they had just supported AGIA, then so much more realism and immersion would be possible.

'smells like a press release to me. Nobody has an AGIA physics accelerator card yet. That's like saying the game would be better on a blue-ray disk. I wholeheartedly hope that physics acceleration will become a more standard piece of gaming kit at some time in the future, but nobody has one yet.

The success of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion makes it the perfect example of what's missing from our current conception of next generation games... Oblivion lacks Casual Physics, and the result is a splendidly beautiful world that still requires a blind eye in order to buy into the environment.

Or maybe the success of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion shows that Casual Physics are not necessary for a great game.

Re:Physics Realism? Pfft. There're bigger problems

[chanrobi]

Besides the physics issue, anything that can be modded script wise (such as the stealing thing), has been modded already. There is a big community out there with a great number of mods for almost anything imaginable already. The stealing issue has already been fixed, as has the "psychic" guards.

Here is one among many: http://www.oblivionsource.com/

If you can't find a mod for it, mod it yourself and let everyone else enjoy it!

Easy, actually.

[ichigo 2.0]

1. Pour gasoline on hands.
2. Ignite said hands.
3. ????
4. Profit!

Re:Physics Realism? Pfft. There're bigger problems

[Osty]

Part of what made Morrowind so fun was the ability to steal without getting caught in a realistic way.

If you're getting caught stealing in Oblivion, you're doing something wrong. Use sneak mode and make sure nobody sees you taking stuff. If nobody sees it happen, you get no bounty. If you have no bounty, guards won't try to arrest you. Sure, you still can't sell stuff to normal shops, but it's easy to join the Thieves' Guild to get access to fences (you have to advance in the guild to get access to better fences).

In all, I like Oblivion's theft implementation a little bit better. Sure, I have to seek out a fence to sell my stuff, but at least I know exactly what stuff is stolen and I don't have to keep track of who I stole it from. In Morrowind, the same "Stolen Property" flag was there, but hidden. If you didn't keep good track of what you stole and kept, you could find yourself weaponless or armorless if you ever got caught by a guard (because they took all of your stolen merchandise, just like in Oblivion). More importantly, if you stole an item from a shopkeeper, you could never sell that type of item to them again (whether it was the same item you stole from them or not). Even worse than that, some NPCs would even refuse you service if you ever stole from them (most notably enchanters, where they would refuse to enchant items for you if you stole from them -- whether you were caught or not).

Is it realistic that guards know exactly what you've stolen at all times, even if it was something you stole many game-months before? No. Does it hurt gameplay? Not really. Not nearly as much as it did in Morrowind.

If you want a real physics model

[cafn8ed]

If you want a real physics model, go outside, pick up a rock, and throw it. For bonus points, you can throw it at your own window. You'll get a physics model, a destructible environment, and full stereo sound, all at once. Soon to be followed by an all-to-realistic economics model based on a goods and services, skilled labor market.

Meanwhile, um, Oblivion is a magical fantasy-based role playing game. I can't speak for anyone else, but I play games like that because they're NOT perfect models of reality. When I want reality, I turn off the computer and take a walk with my dog.