Oblivion Physics suck...

[SacremPyrobolum]

While I know a physics engine is hard to code and a game like Oblivion is very massive I still think they should have done a little something to address the horrid physics engine in the game.

For example, today I was placeing an hour glass, three quills, three ink wells, six different weights and a scale on one of those large rich people desks. I come to the cell after a while and I see the quills and inkwells disapered (sunk into desk) with the weights, scales, and hourglass only half submerged. When I go to pull them out, everything on my master-placed desk goes flying across the room. Now I am contemplating if I still want to play the game for the 80 billiont playthrough.

It may sound silly but after going thru the game so many times, you start to notice every little unimersive thing in the game from the neckseams to the horrible physics. Hell, I would have rather instead of making Chydenhall (a rather useless town) gettting rid of all those immersive breaking bugs.

Its like Yahtzee says Immersion can make or break a game". Here is to a better Skyrim.
P.S.: If you knnow of any mods that make placeing easier and more consistant plz leave it in the comments.

 

[kampori]

It is for this exact reason why I cannot stand Oblivion. I have tried over 20 times to play this game, I just can't get over the absolutely appalling mechanics.
Fallout was much the same, but something in that game helped me to latch on at least

 

[Enkidu88]

Welcome to 5 years ago. That was one of the first things I noticed, they had made such a big deal about their physics engine I was eager to try it out. I tried moving something a shop shelf, only to have all the contents of the shelf explode in my face. It was like a poltergeist was in the room. I was impressed however, that heavy stuff actually sunk to the bottom of water and lighter stuff didn't. That said, I still enjoyed the game.

I hope they fixed that sort of stuff in Skyrim.

 

[WrongSprite]

You realise how old this game is? There wasn't a whole lot of games out at the time that had full on physics engines, in a way, it was the start of a trend.

It was hardly game braking anyway, I tended to just enjoy the gameplay.

 

[AWDMANOUT]

Cheydinhall was not useless! Isn't that where the Dark Brotherhood hideout was?

I loved Oblivion, but I do see where your complaints have credit. Then again, the game is getting pretty old, so there's not much room to complain since it was all done so long ago.

I heard Skyrim is using a different engine or something. Looking forward to it soooooo much.

 

[burningdragoon]

You kinda summed it up in your first sentence.

But anyway, counterpoint:

<youtube=UyHiIeBsc9E>

Granted it was done with the construction set, but still.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

hehehe oh yeah... forgot aobut that. Still, bloody Dark Elves...

 

[Daedalus1942]

While I know a physics engine is hard to code and a game like Oblivion is very massive I still think they should have done a little something to address the horrid physics engine in the game.

For example, today I was placeing an hour glass, three quills, three ink wells, six different weights and a scale on one of those large rich people desks. I come to the cell after a while and I see the quills and inkwells disapered (sunk into desk) with the weights, scales, and hourglass only half submerged. When I go to pull them out, everything on my master-placed desk goes flying across the room. Now I am contemplating if I still want to play the game for the 80 billiont playthrough.

It may sound silly but after going thru the game so many times, you start to notice every little unimersive thing in the game from the neckseams to the horrible physics. Hell, I would have rather instead of making Chydenhall (a rather useless town) gettting rid of all those immersive breaking bugs.

Its like Yahtzee says Immersion can make or break a game". Here is to a better Skyrim.
P.S.: If you knnow of any mods that make placeing easier and more consistant plz leave it in the comments.

It's not just the physics, the gameplay the quest journal, the characters, the supposed plot, the enemy level scaling. I honestly could go on. there really aren't enough bad things I can say about Oblivion.
Even people who rave about the game say it's only good when you mod it.
No-one likes vanilla.
-Tabs<3-

 

[DustyDrB]

I liked how heavy items actually fell harder. Did anyone else have mindless fun tossing around the Ring of Burden?

 

[Kortney]

It was one of the first games of its genre to use a dynamic physics engine. Give it a break.

 

[AceAngel]

First game to be massive RPG solo game, which had pretty much dynamic everything (as opposed to GTA-esque games, which amassed to nothing more of a few loading/unloading of specific textures).

So yeah, while I do see complaints in this thread which borderline 'haters' for the game, all of them are moot since no one bothered doing any type of research nor is in the game industry or played at least with the editor to have a valid argument other then opinion.

Cheers and ciao.

 

[Dogstile]

It's not just the physics, the gameplay the quest journal, the characters, the supposed plot, the enemy level scaling. I honestly could go on. there really aren't enough bad things I can say about Oblivion.
Even people who rave about the game say it's only good when you mod it.
No-one likes vanilla.
-Tabs<3-

Tell that to my 300 hour save games

-happily keeps playing vanilla-

Edit! Forgot an OT

OT: It was 5 years ago. It was brilliant for its time and to be honest, I thought the glitches were rather endearing.

 

[zfactor]

For example, today I was placeing an hour glass, three quills, three ink wells, six different weights and a scale on one of those large rich people desks. I come to the cell after a while and I see the quills and inkwells disapered (sunk into desk) with the weights, scales, and hourglass only half submerged. When I go to pull them out, everything on my master-placed desk goes flying across the room. Now I am contemplating if I still want to play the game for the 80 billiont playthrough.

Explanation: The physics engine is OK. It does not properly take into account gravitational acceleration, but that is the only problem I have with it. This exact thing happens to me (stuff gets stuck in other stuff), but it is not a physics engine issue, it is an enviromental state and engine optimization issue (that sounds wrong, so let me explain...). When you place an ojbect on the desk, its collision mesh falls until it hits the desk collision mesh and then the object stops. All this is happening in real time and the object has zillions of x, y, z coordinates to exist in. Unfortunately, it takes quite a bit of memory to record the positions of every collision mesh in that much detail, so when you leave the room, the game approximates where everything is by rounding the collision mesh coordinates. When you enter the room, it load up this smaller amount of data and quickly positions everything. It also disables the physics for those objects (because if you walk past without interacting, why bother processing the physics if you are not going to use them?), which is why they sometimes end up inside of things. When you pick an object up, it reactivates the physics for nearby objects, but they are inside of another collision mesh, so the game ejects them with surprising speed.

So you are asking them to be running phsyics for everything all the time and have super detailed (and super large) savegame enviromental states. Computers have gotten better over the years, so this might be possible in the future. Right now, they can only optimize the physics better and tweak it to run properly. Which you (or other modders) can do yourself if you feel like messing with the game engine. Or you can deal with it because it is an old game, well worth playing, even if the physics are not ultra-realistic. Cough it up to "Oblivion is coming, so the Higgs Boson is misbehaving."

 

[DustyDrB]

For example, today I was placeing an hour glass, three quills, three ink wells, six different weights and a scale on one of those large rich people desks. I come to the cell after a while and I see the quills and inkwells disapered (sunk into desk) with the weights, scales, and hourglass only half submerged. When I go to pull them out, everything on my master-placed desk goes flying across the room. Now I am contemplating if I still want to play the game for the 80 billiont playthrough.

Explanation: The physics engine is OK. It does not properly take into account gravitational acceleration, but that is the only problem I have with it. This exact thing happens to me (stuff gets stuck in other stuff), but it is not a physics engine issue, it is an enviromental state and engine optimization issue (that sounds wrong, so let me explain...). When you place an ojbect on the desk, its collision mesh falls until it hits the desk collision mesh and then the object stops. All this is happening in real time and the object has zillions of x, y, z coordinates to exist in. Unfortunately, it takes quite a bit of memory to record the positions of every collision mesh in that much detail, so when you leave the room, the game approximates where everything is by rounding the collision mesh coordinates. When you enter the room, it load up this smaller amount of data and quickly positions everything. It also disables the physics for those objects (because if you walk past without interacting, why bother processing the physics if you are not going to use them?), which is why they sometimes end up inside of things. When you pick an object up, it reactivates the physics for nearby objects, but they are inside of another collision mesh, so the game ejects them with surprising speed.

So you are asking them to be running phsyics for everything all the time and have super detailed (and super large) savegame enviromental states. Computers have gotten better over the years, so this might be possible in the future. Right now, they can only optimize the physics better and tweak it to run properly. Which you (or other modders) can do yourself if you feel like messing with the game engine. Or you can deal with it because it is an old game, well worth playing, even if the physics are not ultra-realistic. Cough it up to "Oblivion is coming, so the Higgs Boson is misbehaving."

Ohhh, so that's why sometimes when I walk in a room, all the items will simultaneously drop as if all the food, kitchenware, and books were having a party while I was out and didn't want me to know.

 

[The Furbinator]

The fact that you are noticing these things on your "80 billionth playthrough" really shows this was a dealbreaker for you!

It's not just the physics, the gameplay the quest journal, the characters, the supposed plot, the enemy level scaling. I honestly could go on. there really aren't enough bad things I can say about Oblivion.
Even people who rave about the game say it's only good when you mod it.
No-one likes vanilla.
-Tabs<3-

Tell that to my 300 hour save games

-happily keeps playing vanilla-

Edit! Forgot an OT

OT: It was 5 years ago. It was brilliant for its time and to be honest, I thought the glitches were rather endearing.

I've put 200 hours into the vanilla as well, I used to play with mods when I heard about them, then reformatted my computer and didn't think they were worth the effort of re-installation.

 

[darkcommanderq]

Dude if you already played the game so many times, dont you think you got your money worth after the 5th playthough?

Games take a lot of money to make. We all know oblivians physics engen is wonky, but at its heart its an RPG. Be thankful it has a physics engen at all.

Also as a game programmer, collision detection is probably one of the most processor intensive things you can do in a game besides shadows. (there are tricks to cutting this down, but if you leave an area dont expect everything to be the same).

 

[Jennacide]

As much fun as it is to laugh at Oblivion's physics, you can't ***** at Bethesda for it. It's Havok, plain and simple. Havok was NEVER that good, which is why it always baffled me so many developers used it. It's also why so many people were shocked by HL2 because the Source engine's physics are grossly superior, if only because it actually factors INERTIA. Seriously, pick up a body in Oblivion and put it on a hill, it will roll down any degree slope, no matter how shallow, and at a constant rate. Now do the same in HL2. Either it won't roll because it's not steep enough, or it will roll and actually GAIN MOMENTUM. (Which has made for some funny abuse)

But this is just one of the million items that "Creation" engine needs to resolve. Assuming it's not a renamed Gamebryo. And if Creation is a renamed Gamebryo, we as gamers need to unite and execute the people at Bethesda.

[edit] Forgot to mention. You want to ***** about anything in Oblivion, ***** about optimization. The fact I have a $2000 top of the line PC that runs Dirt 2 at max settings and looks phenomenal, but Oblivion still brings it to it's knees at top settings is WRONG.

 

[kickyourass]

Yeah it's kinda hard NOT to notice stuff like that, (Like when a deer who gets killed with magic for some reason sprouts a spasming tentacle of weirdness from where their tail should be[that will not stop until the corpse dissappears]) but I just think it adds to the game cause I find it really funny when stuff like that happens.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

Well throwing all those utterly useless bits of clutter into the nearest respawning barrel sounds like it would fix your problems. But not the crumpled pieces of paper, those are rare and valuable. Also this:

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Try dropping a paintbrush

OT: I don't see the problem, the game's 5 years old.