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."

requirements change?

[skankinny7]

Right, and then the game would probably only run on the top 20 supercomputers in the world :)

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.

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...

Wow...who cares about Oblivion

[Cornflake917]

The /. article title and summary cover the least important topics about the title. It really has nothing to do with Oblivion except that they talk about how cool Oblivion would be if more physics were added and these physics were processed by a PPU (physics proccessing unit). I think this is a very interesting idea. Having a physics accelerator card that is completely dedicated to the physics of the game would add huge amounts of realism without performance drops. I think this could be cool. It might even change the way games are made. However, I'm not sure how many gamers will be willing to add another expense when they upgrade their system. But I think retailers would love to have another periphiral to sell that will increase a computer's performance.

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

[Gulthek]

Does physics add to gameplay? Yes. Immersion is key. Role playing games are all about immersing you into a fully realized world and allowing you to run around and do as you please. The more realism that world has, the more it can pull you in. Is this a really hard concept to understand? How could making our escapist gaming worlds more cohesive and realized be bad? Should we just go back to playing Adventure for our RPG satisfaction?

I don't play Oblivion because I'm interested in real-world physics.

No, you play Oblivion because you want to adventure in a cool fantasy world! The more realistic the fantasy world, the more clever and interesting your adventures would be.

Gaming is all about gameplay, yes. But good graphics, physics, sound, and all the other advancing gaming technologies add to the game developer's toolbox. Using the new tools provided by increasing technological capability developers can create better and better gameplay experiences. Sure the tools can be abused by hacks to develop games that exploit a tool rather than use it, but is that a reason to stop advancing altogether?

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

[AuMatar]

Does physics add to gameplay? Yes. Immersion is key. Role playing games are all about immersing you into a fully realized world and allowing you to run around and do as you please.

Disagree. Role playing games are about experiencing a story and the lore of the game. Realistic physics wouldn't add to it, and it would suck up developer time instead of working on what actually does make the game fun. Unless the game's primary mode of gameplay requires it (for example, a newtonian space sim), realistic physics is a bad idea for ANY game.

No, you play Oblivion because you want to adventure in a cool fantasy world! The more realistic the fantasy world, the more clever and interesting your adventures would be.

I don't play Oblivion because TES has yet to make a game that doesn't suck. But ignoring that- a more realistic fantasy world wouldn't make better adventures. For that matter, part of the fun of games is that they *aren't* realistic. It would be realistic to make us shit every couple of hours too, but I don't want them to add that either.

As a side note- immersion sucks. I don't play games to be immersed. I have never been immersed in any video game, movie, etc. I play games to have fun. Most of the stuff devs put in crying "immersion" are not fun, and actively detract from the main point of the game. The devs time would be MUCH MUCH better spent improving combat, improving the storyline, improving balance, and actually working on what makes the game fun.

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

[danpsmith]

Having played Morrowind, I understand why they made this game behave the way they did, but I can't say that I agree with it. In Morrowind, it was very simple to amass large quantities of wealth by stealing everything in houses and going off to the nearest trader, who would give you money in exchange. This was certainly much easier than killing the overpowering monsters that attacked you (especially as a thief) and then getting 5 gold for their pelts. I think, however, that they thought this was _too_ easy and too tempting for ordinary classes. I'd argue that while it is pretty easy, it is necessary. It's unrealistic to have people steal things and get caught by the simple fact that the item is "stolen." It's an invisible flag that doesn't make any sense. I think that the creators of Oblivion were bothered by how easily you could get away with stealing in the first game and decided that this was the way to curtail that. I believe that they should've just made the shops more strictly guarded. They should've made stealing harder, the penalties for getting caught maybe more severe. A lot of the ability to steal in Morrowind stemed from the fact that most shops had other rooms with no guards, no locks, or a petty lock and stuff sitting out everywhere with nobody looking after it. But yes, the stolen flag does indeed cut down on realism quite a bit, and I totally disagree with that decision. Part of what made Morrowind so fun was the ability to steal without getting caught in a realistic way.

Too realistic means unplayable

[Animats]

You don't really want realistic physics in your combat games. You don't have enough control to use it. If game combat had real physics, game players would have to have real martial arts skills. "No, no, your lead knee must be slightly bent before you start that throw". "Yes, sensi". Few gamers put in the dojo time to get those skills. You can't express them through a game pad, anyway. (A DDR pad and full VR gear, maybe. But even then you lack physical feedback, which is about 5x faster than eye/hand coordination.) Then you need an AI good enough to do real martial arts, a tough problem in itself.

Just insisting that swords actually hit a vulnerable point with enough force to cause damage makes play too hard. Guns, yes; we can do guns. (Basic problem of video games: players can shoot well and move adequately; little else can be done well through a game pad or keyboard.)

We know how to do much better game physics. What we're actually getting, though, is mediocre physics for everything in the environment. Which is all Ageia delivers; it's not better, you can just use it on more objects at the same time.

Question: If we had a first-person combat game that took two real joysticks to play, and considerable practice to learn, but let you do real martial arts, would you play it?

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

[drsquare]

Is it a good game if you have to hunt down and install countless mods, all with unknown side-effects, just to make the game enjoyable?

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

What if I want to play a game, rather than write and exchange mods?

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

[Echnin]

Final Fantasies are about telling a story; The Elder Scrolls are about immersing you in a sandbox-like game-world. There are different types of RPGs. Apparently you don't like the immersive kind, so what are you doing posting about what an immersive RPG should or should not be like?

Yes

[SmallFurryCreature]

But then your talking to a Grand Prix Legends player here. So perhaps I am not entirely normal.

GPL for those who don't know is a very though historic formule 1 game that focusses on realism. It was so realistic that it took fans a lot of time to realise that all the setups of the cars had been done wrong. Modern F1 games are made to ride as low to the ground because of airodynamics BUT the F1 cars in the era simulated do not even have wings.

So while all the players tried to get the cars as low as possible they were in fact making the cars impossible to handle. The cars instead needed lots of clearance in able to fully use their shocks to get around corners.

GPL is harder then most driving games as you need to special controls of being able to break and accelerate at the same time. So the usual joystick setup of only one axis for both just isn't good enough.

GPL is also a game in wich you shouldn't mind loosing. You probably just won't be good enough to beat the AI drivers. Then again the thrill of coming 10th in that game is infinitly greater then coming first in lesser race sims.

So I would like to play a game with more realistic combat, not to realistic offcourse (just as I can pause GPL for a bathroom break and don't actually have to fit enough to handle a high performance car) but giving me a real challenge in actually having to do some fighting and not just push a button.

I liked Oni. While not realistic you could at least use all your different moves to great effect. Far better then the regular hit or block. Still love that move where you ran to the side of badguy then swung around his neck kicking his companions in the face before snapping his neck.

But why can't we have both? GPL has lots of helper functions wich if all turned on make the game a lot easier. No fun, but a lot easier.

In fact all the really though sims do this.

Morrowind in fact had three different attack moves. Probably considered to complex for console players but there is no reason it couldn't have been an option in Oblivion.

So yes, I would buy such a game and I think I am not alone. True for every Operation FlashPoint fan there are plenty of gamers who could not handle the fact that bullets arc BUT that can be a selling point as well.

To me Oblivion is a nice game, just as soon as I got the instant kill mod because the current fighting get to bloody boring. Especially those damn gates. Endless non roleplaying level with boring enemies dropped around the place. Yawn.

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.

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.

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

[mrchaotica]

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.

And that's why the article is talking about supporting hardware physics acceleration, with one of those special chips.

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.

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

[Godeke]

I picked up the recompiled version of Plane Scape: Torment (that works under XP). Those 1999 graphics are not going to blow anyone's mind.

But the game is immersive. The *story* is immersive, to be specific: you actually can enjoy the interactions of the characters and your choices do make a difference.

Meanwhile, making the "game world" a FPS with a physics engine is no guarantee of immersion. The story can still be poorly written and artificial stupidity can ruin the experience.

People who think that high end technology is the only way to achieve immersion must have never picked up a good book.