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Oblivion Patch Causing Issues
The much anticipated patch for Oblivion is here, but it has come at a cost. 1up reports on complaints from users about lockups, lagging, and some curious technical problems. From the article: "Even though the patch cleans up a number of glitches quests, many are still upset because it doesn't solve their existing issues. If you've already run into and experienced a glitch quest, there's a good chance the patch will do nothing to fix it; the patch can't fix contaminated saves. Consequently, Bethesda employees have been recommending fans start new characters if they want to experience these quests."
I found another patch that is causing issues with my Oblivion gaming experience. I installed the Topless Females patch, but now I can't play the game without my pants feeling excessively tight :-( Is it wrong to be attracted to a topless, female, Orc barbarian who is trying to kill me? Oh, and those Khajiit women *froths at the mouth*
I have experienced a glitch quest and it actually caused me to stop playing the game, since I had spent an hour on it, then realized the quest was broken because I had done somehting out of order (accidentally) and now I can no longer complete the quest. It distressed me to the point that the game just sort of stopped being fun . . . the same way that it can happen if you play for an hour wihtout saving on TESIII Morrowind and then die, only to have to REDO your hour of play . . . which then becomes more like work than play. It is unfortunate that this patch cannot fix these types of glitches.
Has anyone else tried to help the Fisherman in Weye by killing enough slaughterfish for him, but accidentally already killed one of the slaughterfish in the lake in the quest area before you took on the quest? That is what happened to me and now when I get to the slaughterfish I already killed in the quest order, a dead fish is there (because I killed it), but I can't move on to the next slaughterfish location! Anyone know how to fix this?
Most highly open-ended games are like this. Think of how difficult it would be to play test a game like Oblivion versus a typical FPS.
I haven't got sympathy for anyone on Slashdot of all places, that wants to complain about a broken quest. Particularly anyone that runs Linux. One of the great strengths of Oblivion, and Morrowind before it, is how far under the hood you can get. Got a broken quest? Then get in the editor and fix it. That should actually be *fun* for most of the people here. I've spent about a month so far not actually playing the game. I've been immersed in the editor, having just as much fun (while admittedly missing the beautiful scenery - the other reason I bought this game), and Morrowind was the same way for me. Either game would be less fun if I couldn't change it up and mold it to my liking. Your mileage may vary, but if you come in here flashing geek creds you can't stop to complain that you need to fix your game. Have FUN fixing it, and improving on it, that's what we do, isn't it?
If you have a problem with something like killing a creature before you *find out* that the creature is quest related, go into console(~key) then type "help" and it will show you a list of commands. The command to use in this case would be "spawn(creature_id)" Problem solved, resume saving Tamriel, the end.
Think of how difficult it would be to play test a game like Oblivion versus a typical FPS.
It can be avoided.
I'm serious.
The problem is that game companies are some of the most behind in state-of-the-art testing. I'm not talking about QA process, either. I'm talking about Model Checking. It's the kind of thing military contractors do with their code to make sure missiles never accidentally blow up in the wrong spot.
(It was the topic of an article on Slashdot a few weeks ago - which, I'm sorry to report, nobody here actually understood, thinking it was about automatic code generation. Talk about not RTFAing.)
Here's how it works: you model your quests and quest variables as finite state automata. (Remember discrete math?) You use a very expressive language for this, which makes it easy to read. A character, say, killing a certain fish would change a boolean quest variable. Then you define properties that your FSM should have, so that if a quest becomes unsolvable, one or more properties fails. Throw it at a model checking system and in a few minutes, it tells you whether a quest can be made unsolvable and how to get into that state.
It's extremely simple with quests, most of which are totally independent, leading to a relatively small global quest FSM.
Someone competent in Model Checking could add a new quest to the system and check it in less than two hours.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.