Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion

[GT2000]

So i'm getting ready to check this out later today if i have the time..been out a couple weeks i guess..anyone given it a go yet? Saw people complaining about recommended hardware, blah blah, hdr this, whatever. My rig can do all that.

So yeah, anyone tried it yet? Post about your obliviously obvious oblivion experiences..or something.

[raublekick]

You have no idea how badly I wish I could play this right now. I was gonna pre-order it, but I know it will absolutely consume my soul, and I can't afford that until finals are done.

[testtubebaby]

snore-o-thon

rpgs need a swift kick in the ass and to get out of all of the time periods that seem interested in hosting rpgs. i'm thinking we need an rpg set in colonial american times or possibly in the caribbean during the pirate's rule.

[raublekick]

Originally Posted by testtubebaby

snore-o-thon

you've gotta be fucking kidding me... morrowind was one of the most captivating RPGs i've ever played, and oblivion has even more of what made morrowind so amazing.

[Torre82]

Sid Meier's pirates and Pirates of the Carribean.. admirable but not altogether RPG's in the epic, somewhat linear sense.

Morrowind was great to start with. But it gets too easy too quick. Too annoying. Cliff racers. Steal everything at the beginning, sell, buy sell buy sell bam. A couple thousand.

Constant Effect enchant Health on 1 ring. Fatigue on the other. Game finished. Doesnt matter what difficulty level you're on. Now the expansions tribunal/bloodmoon were excellent. Plenty more quests in a small area. Not so much silt-striding or running around. Difficult enemies. Nice.

Another thing about morrowind was the horrid engine used. Absolutely no poly culling. If it was on screen, within draw distance.. it got rendered.

Pretty much the only gfx option was to turn water shaders on. Which.. looks okay but then you cant see under the water to check for those (also annoying) fish. The music was okay but had sparse variety.

I'm just looking for the MMORPG experience in a single player game. Morrowind was very close to that, and I appreciate the lack of noobs talking in /general about chuck norris.

coc toddtest

[F a C e]

I got it and beat it in about 24hrs. Pretty good game, but a lot of the quests can get bugged.

Go here if you play it and find the same:
http://www.cheathappens.com/show_boa...11583&onPage=2

The graphics look pretty damn amazing, but even on a somewhat-high-end machine (two 7900GTs, AMD 4000+ OC'ed to 2.81GHz, 2GBs of DDR466), the game still chugs. :|

Recommended, tho.

[Torre82]

Would you say its the most hungry game ever or just not optimized?

[F a C e]

Oh it's definitely one hungry beast, but I think it was also rushed a bit and not optimized fully. :\

[GT2000]

The game still chugs? My experiences with it so far in like 3-4 hours of play on my machine, smooth gameplay, but yes..very buggy game, it likes to lock up during an alt-tab, once you come back in the cursor will freeze 50% of the time, quests, I've seen a lot about them getting bugged, even heard things about getting trapped in places and pretty much ending the game for people (save often), I haven't personally experienced a bugged quest yet (my character is only level 3).

They definitely have many patches ahead of them.

Running on an Opteron 165 dual core, 2 7800gts (not currently running in sli mode either), 2gb ram currently running at pc3200 speeds.

[F a C e]

Well, you have a dual-core processor which helps. I have the game set to 1152x864, HDR ON, AF 16x, image settings in Nvidia control panel set to high-quality, Vsync ON (this reportedly slows the game down quite a bit, but I can't cope with screen tearing), 84.25 ForceWare (have since changed to XG's 84.22 v2 after I beat the game). All fade distances are set mid way through bar, everything else high except shadows.. only shadows I have on are tree canopy shadows. FPS inside of dungeons was typically great (ie. 60+), but the game starts to croak around Oblivion gates and other points on the world map. Also, I am running most of these tweaks that up the eye candy at the expense of some performance:


"These tweaks are straight from a Oblivion developer:

DISCLAIMER: Use at your own risk. Back up your Oblivion.ini first. Please do not request official troubleshooting support with any changes to your .ini file.

Here are some tweaks I play with:

uGridDistantTreeRange=15

Raise to increase area in which LOD tree billboards are drawn - looks quite nice doubled if your comp can take it.

uGridDistantCount=25

Raise to increase the number of LOD tree billboards drawn - looks quite nice doubled if your comp can take it.

uGridsToLoad=5

Raise to increase the X/Y dimension of the number of high detail exterior cells loaded - should be an odd number, 3 or greater. This is quite a performance hit with anything above 5. If there are 25 cells loaded at a time with a value of 5, then there are 49 cells loaded with a value of 7 and so on. I would not recommend going above 7 or 9, but terrain looks nicer if your comp can take it.
uExterior Cell Buffer=100 (default 36)

Grids must be an odd number. It can be higher, 11+ for e.g., but this starts to cause odd effects like water disappearing and hovering mountains. Fun. The Cell

Buffer will raise to match, as grids influences the minimum number of cells loaded. Loading times increase, but it's well worth it.

There are a few side effects to the grids tweak: firstly, water reflections sometimes go astray where landmass meets water, but it's not too common and easily

ignored. Secondly, and more importantly, more memory is needed for the cells. Fortunately this is easily fixed with the following tweak, which also happens to be one

of the key performance boosters:

iPreloadSizeLimit=104857600 (default 2621440)

The value is in bytes. If you have a 1G or less machine and this causes troubles, set it to 52428800.

bAllowScreenShot=0

Set to 1 to allow the PrintScreen key to take screenshots.

bFull Screen=1

0 = windowed, 1 = fullscreen

iSize W=640
iSize H=480

Current screen resolution.

bUseWaterReflectionsMisc=0
bUseWaterReflectionsStatics=0
bUseWaterReflectionsTrees=0
bUseWaterReflectionsActors=0

Set these to 1 to allow these kinds of objects to reflect in water.

fDlgFocus=2.1000

Raise to pull camera back some in dialogue - I use a value of 4 or so.

bForceFullLOD=0

A value of 1 forces foreground trees to always render at the highest detail - I haven't found this to be a huge performance hit for the visual benefit, your mileage may very.

iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=2

Raise to allow more unique grass types per terrain texture - 4 should be enough to let you see everything possible.

More blood
The essence of every fight, and the marks of your hard won victories, blood is limited to 10 decals and disappears after 10 seconds. Don't they know that blood

stains?

fDecalLifetime=1200.0000 (default 10)
iMaxDecalsPerFrame=500 (default 10)

Sets 20 mins and 500 decals. Decals use up bugger all memory, so this is a simple and effective tweak.
Note: if you enter the Video settings in game, fDecalLifetime will be reset to 10, so don't go in there!

Skip Intro
SIntroSequence=

moves the status bar down ... this is good.

CODE
[Interface]
iSafeZoneX=20
iSafeZoneY=20
iSafeZoneXWide=20
iSafeZoneYWide=20

to

CODE
[Interface]
iSafeZoneX=5
iSafeZoneY=5
iSafeZoneXWide=5
iSafeZoneYWide=5"

[GT2000]

Eh, i see dualcore as it helping me multitask really, rather, many programs running in the background and, won't effect a damn thing, or the fact that i can rip/encode a dvd while doing anything.

I just know when i first config'd the game it automatically detected hardware and used maxed settings, @ 1368x760, i'll have to play around with everything later on sometime..and thanks for the tweak info.

[raublekick]

Oblivion has built in widescreen resolutions, right?

[GT2000]

Yes it does.

[Torre82]

Raub, dont tell me you're gonna laptop widescreen it.

Btw, most games these days have an inner sort of option (usually in the .ini or .cfg) to set the res and aspect ratio normally. For example in winamp since I'm running at 1280x1024, my ratio is actually 5:4 instead of the usual 4:3. Specifics aside, 16:9 or good old hardware workarounds for old games can get them playing in a pseudo widescreen. or playing at all. Hmph. :folds arms:

[raublekick]

Originally Posted by Torre82

Raub, dont tell me you're gonna laptop widescreen it.

Btw, most games these days have an inner sort of option (usually in the .ini or .cfg) to set the res and aspect ratio normally. For example in winamp since I'm running at 1280x1024, my ratio is actually 5:4 instead of the usual 4:3. Specifics aside, 16:9 or good old hardware workarounds for old games can get them playing in a pseudo widescreen. or playing at all. Hmph. :folds arms:

Yeah i've messed with that stuff for other games, i just don't play PC games much so i don't pay attention to things. there's some site dedicated to this sort of thing.

yes, i plan on laptop widescreening the game. my laptop is much better than my desktop, afterall.

[GT2000]

Why do you have to assume laptop right away anyways? My desktop monitor is a 26" widescreen lcd hdtv.

[Torre82]

It was an educated assumption. I know you're most likely not going to use a laptop for anything remotely related to gaming unless you happen to brag about some new alienware laptop. In which case we'd hear about it. But if someone has to ask about widescreen resolution.. well, its like asking what sex is like. The virgin alert lamp flashes quick on that one.

Also, widescreen resolution is only standard on one of two things as of this moment.. various apple monitors and laptops. The dell widescreen monitor is actually sorta sweet.. except its max res is pathetic. Still, its cheap.

Would you happen to own the cheap dell LCD, Don?

[heX]

..i have a 19" widescreen on my desktop

[GT2000]

My desktop monitor is a 26" widescreen lcd hdtv.

Unless things have changed in the past 3 months...dell only makes the 20" and 24" widescreens.

Lemme find a link to the exact model i'm using...

http://www.samsung.com/Products/TV/L...Specifications

[heX]

was the best bang i found for my buck.

19" widescreen flat 229.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824021045