jaxa

Looks like you should copy Oblivion/Skyrim's goal based AI and call it DarkRadiantAI. I feel like door opening needs a big rework. It's advanced from where AI would get stuck or start opening and closing the doors multiple times, but the animation looks clunky (no contact between hand and door) and the speed does seem to be a problem. I'm thinking that the AI that wants to open the door fast should kind of fling it open with a swift jerking motion. Maybe the door needs its own physics in this regard so that it can roll itself open (or look like that anyway)? I remember AI doing pretty bad against stacked crates and other obstacles that I put to block their path. They would kinda walk against it until they had forced through.

With my character I just use archery+sneak combo to kill giants from a distance. It's also a good idea to move out of the way if they don't detect you immediately. Poisons can also be applied to arrows. I was concerned about this before traveling with Lydia but when I gave her a trial run I sneaked a lot and didn't notice her attacking unless I did or we (probably just her) had been seen. You sure? For Lydia, picking the dismiss option (the last one) should send her back to the Jarl in Whiterun or straight to your home in Whiterun, Breezerun. I was hesitant when I picked that option because it sounded like I was firing her. I'm pretty sure all of the optional (post-quest) followers in the game will travel with you and return to their starting locations as needed like this. She starts out with steel right? Maybe you tried to give her light armor or the wrong kind of weapons? I tested this out just now and observed that she wasn't wearing the Elven Armor (strong light armor) I gave her but happily equipped the Dragonplate Shield. If the equipment you give her isn't better, she won't use it, apparently skill choice affects that as well. This brings up a question I have. Do followers get stronger in terms of skills and stats by fighting with you? This will always be a problem. Even with the increase from 6 -> 70 voice actors from Oblivion to Skyrim. Even TDM can't get enough vocal responses and sets. I still think the ultimate solution will end up being real time vocaloid style speech synthesis. At that point, maybe we'll decry that the vocal scripts are still tens of thousands of responses short, and we'll need to invent AI. After you play TES X for 24 hours you'll find that the real world completely changed! In Oblivion I remember followers kind of mimicking your movement paths, going where you go and jumping at around the same times. In Skyrim it looks like they decide their own path to where you are, but with predictably bad jumping logic. Obviously this becomes a problem if you like to "climb" up mountains in order to get a nice point of entry into some location. Your follower will eventually catch up with you though, and I didn't have much of a problem with it since I spent most of the game self-sufficient sans follower. If you want your follower behind you all the time, look for the easier slopes, take circular routes around mountains to find the actual paths, and mill around once in a while to pick up alchemy ingredients or something. Haven't heard about the Morrowind team but I guess it was a similar story to Oblivion.

Would this interfere with "press attack to start" (more accurately, would "press attack to start" interfere with this)?

You can't damage others while ethereal.

Thanks for mentioning Ustengrav. I wanted to test out this trick:

Holy shit that is high res. I can't wait to see UESP's google maps version though.

I've explicitly waited in cases where I hadn't played the mission yet and the author publicized a v2. I'd play Dragon Claw v2 since I didn't get too far, but I still need to play all the missions for voting, so I'll probably finish v1 and judge it based on that.

Yup, real life is probably not like Stargate. Luckily, the Story Channel has turned "probably not" into "could be".

An answer on 1.08 release, anybody? If the source was released tomorrow, would you unfreeze 1.07 instead?

Yeah I noticed that it seemed to use even less than 1 gig of RAM. Kind of a waste on my 8 gig system.

I guess when you put it that way the only way to upgrade equipment is through the player. All the loot I've seen was in base form, and the only NPC service I've seen is training. So to get the theoretical max weapons and armor you need to perk up the Smithing tree (the perks reduce the required level for uptiering, and unlocks two otherwise inaccessible tiers, Epic and Legendary). I'm guessing my strategy of ignoring it will be well made up for by maxing out other skills, like +100% bow damage and the other kinds of stuff I'm aiming for. As infuriating as it is to not be able to max out everything, it does let you customize your play style in a way not seen in Morrowind/Oblivion, where you could be jack of all trades, master of all trades. Radical gameplay changes have proven to be good for TES V.

Boy, hitting a dragon with an arrow when it's circling is almost impossible. I generally arrow them when they hover or hit the ground, take their fire attacks head on, sneak attack when possible, hit them with a couple of shouts. I also find myself missing Thief/TDM's lean, since I'm sneaking almost 100% of the time and like to check out around corners. I don't miss mantle though, Oblivion trained me well in the art of spam jumping up mountains, and this engine is a little more forgiving with them. Giants are just ridiculous, one hit KOs right up into the stratosphere. Dragons are a piece of cake comparatively. In fact I find that dragons do a lot less damage to me than a lot of bosses and even the meatier bandits. Whatever the case giants got me freaked out big time. I thought that some of them would let me into their camps peacefully but I never had that experience so I will just avoid them like the plague and slaughter them big time later on. @Baddcog - clarification, you need to spend a perk to be able to smith up magic items. 2 in the smithing tree and lvl 60 smithing. Not only is the max theoretical level about 70 but I'm told that leveling slows down a lot for 20+ (I just reached lvl 20). Smithing is fun but I'd rather just buy stuff or find artifacts to save on the perks. The gold/silver jewelry is an easy and accessible way to use up all those gems though for some quick cash.

I'm thinking this isn't an exhaustive list though. For instance Belethor (general shop) in Whiterun and Madanach (find him yourself), among others. http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=137445

I thought so too but there were a couple of times where I seemed to die from taking an arrow headshot. Maybe it's just the engine messing with my head.

Stephen Russell voices Mercer Frey, Clavicus Vile and Barbas.

By holding E on a body you can also activate body drag. Not as good as TDM, but it's there. Might actually be useful in quests or just doing a stealth kill among wandering bandits.

They said it had 3 levels of detection but it's more like a creamy suspicious center. Either that or its actually a suspicion timer, the eye can be 3/4 or a sliver open, when it's a sliver it will slowly close and display "Hidden" when fully closed... anyway you can bow kill a guy with 2x bonus and maybe have time to get the guy next to him with these new mechanics, because killing one bandit does not mean the bandit next to him knows where you are. In terms of AI smarts, in caves I've noticed that you can kill a bandit, the other bandits will hear something and investigate, find the body and go all "AHHH how could this happen" and then when you go completely hidden they won't go to where you are, you do a slight unhide, hide again and they will comment "guess it was nothing." More testing is needed but it's safe to assume a master sneak will play around with NPCs like cattle. As far as perks go I will probably max out the archery and sneak trees, anything else is up in the air. Basically there are 250+ perks, and you can get only about 70 max. So you might be able to max out 4.5 skill trees (18 skills). It's interesting to note that there seem to be more pure stealth skills this time around - lockpicking and pickpocket are now separate trees. Archery perks are (1-5) x 20% more damage, press block while holding bow to zoom in (expends stamina), one I didn't even see - zooming in with a bow slows time by 25+% (2 levels), critical shot - small chance to get a critical bonus of some kind, recover twice as many arrows from dead bodies, arrows stagger opponents, draw bow 30% faster, move faster with drawn bow, 15% of paralyzing target for a few seconds. Stealth perks are 5 levels of % harder to detect when sneaking (looks like 20-40%), 1-hand sneak attacks do 6x, bow sneak does 3x, dagger sneak does 15x (!), noise from armor reduced 50%, you won't trigger pressure plates, sprinting while sneaking does a silent forward roll (as opposed to default - no sprinting while sneaking), walking and running does not affect detection, and crouching stops combat for a moment and forces distant opponents to search for a target. I hope that includes dragons. Lockpicking: novice locks are much easier to pick, apprentice locks easier, pick locks without being noticed (seems a bit too easy), make a key out of the lock if it has one, adept easier to pick, find more gold in chests, +50% chance of finding "special treasure", expert locks easier to pick, picks starts close to lock opening position, lockpicks never break, master locks easier. The tree is shaped like a lockpick and I don't think you would want to waste perks on making it super easy, it already is pretty easy so far as I can tell. Pickpocketing: 1-5 levels of pickpocket bonus (20-40%). It notes that item weight and value reduce odds. +25% to pickpocket sleeping, place poisons in enemies' pockets, extra pockets - carrying capacity increased by 100 woot, pickpocketing gold is 50% easier, pickpocketing keys almost always works, pickpocket equipped weapons, pickpocket equipped items (i'm assuming rings and necklaces, not plate mail). Alchemy includes poison enhancements, speech has coercion and bribery, and if you're willing to commit 4 perks in Illusion you can get Quiet Casting which works with all spells.

I would add that they believe no credit card info or passwords were compromised. I thought I read conflicting statements on the info leaked so I would recheck the latest PR. I heard talk that emails were compromised, and that some got a scam email from the hackers advertising "steam hack programs" or something.

Actually I hear the crack is already out, and it's no surprise seeing how it's such a big single-player title. I went ahead and made a Steam account though. Maybe they'll give a free game out because of their little forum/account hack a couple days ago (says a friend).

the Russkie talks big, but frankly, we think he's short of know how

I don't think we've had enough maps to have the moment where that feature is useful O_O. I'll try it thanks

And then you've got Nehrim, a total conversion, unofficial patches, script extender, plenty of other mods. If we judged TDM, Oblivion, Skyrim, etc. by its crappiest mods and missions, we might have a problem.

Second mission so far of the Halloween missions.