Oblivion, modding related

[Tiger Ace]

A recent article on Gspy, a great read.

There has always been a strange division in the world of RPGs between "console-style" and "PC-style" titles. Console-style RPGs tend to be created by Japanese companies and are visually most influenced by the anime model of spiky-haired youths wielding absurdly huge swords. PC-type games, on the other hand, tend to be a more direct descendent of the pseudo-medieval Europe style of classic Dungeons & Dragons designed by Western developers. The result of this is the commonly received wisdom that the one type of RPG doesn't do well on the other platform. A Final Fantasy on a PC? Ridiculous. Like most bits of "conventional wisdom," though, the truth may be very different, and sometimes it takes a company taking a risk to prove it.

"We were really surprised by the success of Morrowind on the Xbox." Pete Hines recalled when we sat down for my demonstration of the latest Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion. "We sold over four million units of Morrowind on the Xbox and the PC combined," he said, "and the split was about 50/50." Since we'd already discussed the overwhelmingly impressive demo shown at E3 in expansive detail, we decided instead to take this opportunity to talk with Bethesda about an issue near and dear to the hearts of most PC gamers that most console gamers probably haven't given much thought to -- modding.

Building Block World

Our discussion about modding began, ironically enough, with a discussion about bricks. One of Bethesda's key principles when starting a new game, but especially a new Elder Scrolls title, is to blow up the previous title and put it back together as a completely new product. They try to discard what didn't work and emphasize what did. Beyond the fact that the game will be extremely freeform and take place in the world of Tamriel, there is virtually no connection to the previous titles in the Elder Scrolls series. In fact, when I asked, Hines confirmed that players in Oblivion will not be able to reach any areas that they explored in Morrowind. The only other thing that remains consistent from game to game is that the game always starts the player off in prison.



One of the elements of the Oblivion visual demonstration consists of the player moving the main character around the room, showing off the game's extraordinary lighting, visuals, and physics. As Hines moved around the room in what has no doubt become a very familiar pattern, I was struck again by the bricks that make up the prison. Every brick I saw on the wall looks completely different, with bricks of different sizes and colors, and, thanks to the way their seemingly wet surface reflects the torchlight, some of them seemed to stick out from the wall in different directions. As I watched them, I asked Pete if each of those bricks was an individual object. He almost laughed when he replied.

"No." he said, "Those walls are actually a flat texture. We use spectral mapping for the shininess and reflectiveness, normal maps and a variety of other techniques on a per-pixel basis as well to make a completely flat texture look like a group of individual 3D objects." According to Hines, one of the key elements in the game's visual beauty is modularity. All of the information regarding the game's visual and physical properties is "baked into" the texture map or skin itself. When these maps are then layered over any sort of 3D object, they seamlessly interlock with both the item and whatever maps are around them, much like LEGO building blocks -- sharing the data so that it all works properly. This was how the world designers at Bethesda put Oblivion together.

"That'll be a huge help for modders," I said. "Oh, yes," agreed Hines. "If anything, Oblivion is going to be even more mod-friendly than Morrowind." According to Hines, the construction set for Oblivion, while the same general design as the previous one, underwent extensive modification while Oblivion was being built. The idea was to bring the same "baked-in" characteristics that the texture maps shared with things like the lighting engine to every aspect of the game world. World blocks will be available to be stacked up just like LEGO blocks. Every object in the game has their own defined physics so players can just drop an item into the world and whether it's made of metal or wood or cloth, it will react properly. Then proper textures can be painted on, making a world that looks just as good as Bethesda's own (barring differences in artistic talent, of course).

The commitment to customizability extends beyond mere physical objects. One of the dev team's big design goals was to create a world where players wouldn't be confronted with a thousand NPCs that shared the same three or four faces. The result was the development of a powerful facial and body customization toolkit that allows tweaking an extraordinary number features on a character. The technology features the standard sliders that can alter things like eye slant, nose length, and forehead width. Should that not be distinctive enough, though, the faces and bodies themselves are malleable. If a character's cheekbones aren't high enough, just grab and pull to make them higher. This customization technology was then distilled down into a character generation system that makes sure that not only will every player's character look different, but that the characters created by any one modder will be completely distinct from any other.



"One of our commitments to our fans has always been that we'd never stop the players from doing anything that we can do." Hines said, "We built Oblivion using these tools, the players can rebuild it using the same tools." There are, of course, a few limits. The kit will require players to use the Oblivion master file which means that using mods will require a copy of the disc. There's also the inherent difficulty of trying to get the engine to do something that the developers didn't put in any underlying code for. One example is that Oblivion doesn't really do much with destructible terrain, so it might take a more advanced coder to, for example, be able to tear a sconce off a wall and have it available as a makeshift weapon, but there's certainly no barrier to trying. "Other than that," Hines said, "the field is wide open. Players can just delete everything in the game and start over. If they want to create a new world in the style of a Saturday morning cartoon, they just have to create and import the art themselves."

Rebuilding the 360

All that, naturally, is par for the course for PC gamers, and Bethesda has built itself a neat little operation over the years supporting the legions of fans that have created new content by modding Morrowind. "People who aren't involved in the Elder Scroll community might not realize just how big a community this is." Hines said. According to Hines, Bethesda has helped facilitate tens of millions of downloads of mod files over the years, some of which go far beyond what even they ever dreamed of in terms of complexity and polish. While the company expects such a community to develop around the PC release of Oblivion, and is supporting its loyal PC fans, they have an eye on an even bigger prize -- the Xbox 360.

According to Hines, there really weren't many technical hurdles to modding Morrowind on the original Xbox. If players were able to take a plug-in and load it up on the Xbox, it should technically work. The hurdles at the time were mostly ones of access and security. Since Xbox Live launched in November of 2002, five months after the release of the game, Morrowind had no Live code. Even if it did have such code, though, there were too few gamers, and no Live architecture to support such a scene. Things have changed pretty dramatically in the last few years -- and Bethesda is determined to take advantage of it.




"We're definitely planning on doing downloads to Marketplace." Hines said, "along with quite a few other things that we're investigating we can't really talk about yet." While Bethesda's content will obviously be "official" and available through officially supported Microsoft channels, There are other questions that have yet to be answered -- namely, will the arrival of Oblivion mark the true arrival of a mod scene in the console world? "That's one of the biggest questions we're looking at right now." Hines said. Apparently there are more than a few technical hurdles to overcome. Is there a way to translate the construction set so that people can use it on the console and create their own mods? The Oblivion construction set is far more than just designing a few levels for a Tony Hawk, and the team is currently hard at work designing solutions that work within the 360's hardware and controller requirements. Then, once a level is created, where are players allowed to store it? Where can they trade it and can they make it available to others?

The biggest hurdles to mod sharing on the Xbox, though, seem to be regulatory and business-oriented. Microsoft has said many times that they want people to be able to use the 360 as a multimedia device, which inherently means allowing people to store and send their own media on the system. There is however, a perception on the part of consumers that what comes through a console is somehow vetted or "endorsed" by either the maker of the console (in this case Microsoft) or by the creator of the original title.



This is a particular nightmare Bethesda is very sensitive to. "We don't want to get involved with policing the mod community" Hines said. First, getting involved means an implicit endorsement of whatever projects they touch, and they have no intention of alienating their fans by seeming to judge their work. Second, it would mean taking responsibility for testing and supporting them, as well as being liable should anything go horribly wrong.

After that, there's the even bigger question of whether or not the PC and Xbox 360 markets can or should be able to communicate with each other. Such a solution, while filled with massive upside potential, is also fraught with dangers. Just how open to the wilds of the Internet does Microsoft want to make the Xbox 360? Regardless of the language they put in the EULA, will they be held responsible when somebody attempts to engineer a 360 virus, or creates a mod with truly objectionable content? After all, it isn't the "360Dem0NLordZZZ" Web site logo that parents will see when they slide the disc out of the 360 tray -- it'll be Bethesda and Microsoft's. Oblivion's being built to overcome the technological hurdles -- for the rest of it, we'll just have to wait and see.

That is fucking sweet.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

"360Dem0NLordZZZ"

Almost as good as deathstriker6666.

[lPeregrine]

*does a little celebration dance*

Finally! Confirmation that normal maps are in!

*goes off to make a few changes to his mod project's feature list*

[Tiger Ace]

Your an Elder Scrolls modder? sweet.