For some reason I thought you had hair. :$ I'm not even sure who I was confusing you with.


I found a video showing 80 presents, and which links to screenshots of all 200 presets, for example.

At least it's not quite the clumps stuck to the head I was expecting, but it's still really bad, and no doubt looks shit when moving (or rather, when it's not moving despite running along, probably :().

Out of all that lot there only one hairstyle that goest a bit past the shoulders... which is one more than I was expecting, but it's also only on men, which isn't particularly realistic, even if it's nice that they're not sexist about men being required to have it short.

It'll be a loooong time before we get realistic hair in games I think. I've seen physx demos of proper modelled hair and even when it's just one character, and the whole GPU is dedicated to doing the hair physics and they've reduced the number of hairs people have from like LOTS to a couple of hundred it still looks pretty shit.

Still, being a historically accurate game set in the middle ages, it's probably quite apt. I don't suppose hair was all that clean :Y

Also, most people you meet are wearing hats/helmets/hoods anyway, so fuck it.

S'interesting though. We've got such a high degree of visual fidelity now by getting good at faking it but hair really does stand out because it just can't be faked. Whichever route you take is computationally expensive.

Though as GPUs get better at fluids, maybe there'll be a way to do it with that. Treat the hair as a blob of fluid so it moves around in a swooshy swingy way and then do some clever texturing to make it look right.

I'm not entirely fussed about completely realistic hair, but they could at least put some effort into it - if they used cloth dynamics, or just a number of preset animations, it'd still not look realistic, but it'd be much better than where we are.

But what bothers me is the lack of ranges - and the excess stereotypical RPG styles. There's some of those hairstyles which are instantly recognisable, because I can open up any similar game and select the exact same style, which is irritating.

And the fact that they've got gender-specific hairstyles. (It looks like they've at least not got race-specific hairstyles, for the human/elven races anyway.)

Hmmm, I don't think gender specific hairstyles are a bad thing. I think it's reasonable to expect that some users who choose a male character are going to want more masculine styles (by which of course I mean adhering to cultural archetypes of masculinity, whether they are a good thing or not is a separate debate) and one who choses a female character may well want to look 'feminine'.

Of course you can say it seems like more work to not include all styles for both genders than to do so. But I dunno, maybe the models are significantly different or it's an animation problem or something.

Stereotypical RPG is kinda... I mean, RPG is stereotypical. It's a genre which relies on stereotypes for its language. An RPG which strayed too far from stereotypes wouldn't make a lot of sense in the same way that a crime drama with no crime wouldn't.

Having said that, I think you'd be a bit surprised, the styles are far less stereotypical RPGey than Oblivion for example. There are a lot of the styles from Fallout 3 in there too (or similar ones at least). Angular and asymmetrical and rough ones and stuff.

But yeah, if you'd like unrestricted customisation you'd love Saints Row 2. You can make monsters in that one. Probably the same in SR3, I've not yet played it.

Oblivion did have a hair length slider which is missing this time, though. I guess it's just much simpler to provide stock styles. Anyway, I certainly didn't feel restricted in choice and that's what matters. And there are beards! I'd really rather Bethesda concentrated their efforts on the game itself and leave fleshing out this sort of thing to the modders, which they undoubtedly will do.

As a default/common choice there's nothing really to disagree with there. But limiting choices, especially to a narrow set of archetypes, is a different matter. I probably wouldn't object if there was a checkbox that said "enable (opposite of current gender) hairstyles" or whatever.


RPGs are better when they're a bit different whilst remaining internally cohesive. They don't need grumpy dwarfs and mechanical gnomes and so on to make sense, and there's no reason it can't break out of certain other clichés too, (when doing so makes sense).


Saints Row is some gangstery thing? Don't know that I'd enjoy that, and I'm not going to look into it because I should already be asleep by now and you keep distracting me! :@

Aye you're right about the hair.



Skyrim is definitely that. It's more like Morrowind was in that sense and far far less like Oblivion. Thank fuck.

I meant arrowing. Which is much more fun than narrowing.

With my somewhat tired Geforce 8800GTS I was getting significant slowdown in busy (especially foliate) scenes on a tweaked 'high' setting, so I imagine a room full of hippy NPCs with complex flowing girlieman locks would slow the game down to a crawl on all but the most ninja PC.

Given that Skyrim water is still just a bunch of tricks lashed together, albeit pretty effectively, I have to agree with Xen that the processing overhead that fine wafty hair would demand means its still a looooong way away yet. Jeez, I'm still grateful that Eidos got Lara's tits to jiggle.

I attach a photo of my current coiffure in order that you might not take needless offence should I make a pass at you in a public lavatory at some time in the near future.

Did you attack him? I met one and stood in his way and he just stopped and looked at me with what I took to be existential ennui.

They will attack you if you trespass into their (poorly defined) camps. Well, they and the mammoths will kinda gesture at you angrily and grunt for a bit, and then they'll attack.

Annnnd ... Not 1 but 2 DLC packs announced already.

Really now, announcing DLC for a game as large as Skyrim the day after it's release? COD:MW, sure why not, most people will have that licked in 5~6 hours, but this... uhh, yeah.

Also, it has to be said. I'm really hating what the games industry has become in the last few years with the blatant holding back of content that previously would have made it into the game. Damn you Microsoft (and Sony) for inventing points / console downloads.

I'll still buy them though :$

I kinda don't care. Bethesda DLC is always shit. I will just play the game (for many many hours) and ignore all the DLC.

I'm not sure it's accurate to say they're holding back content, though it's arguable either way. I suspect this content would never have got made if they didn't know they could subsequently make money from it. Bioware DLC on the other hand...

Before the Xbox 360 and PS3, it would only have existed on the PC of course and either made it into the game or have been released as a more substantial add-on 6-9 months from now.

But these days we get horse armour.

Aye. At least Valve still do it right (usually).

Ok, another entire waking day spent playing this. Excellent. Goodnight.

My picture of the day:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/132841/TESV%202011-11-12%2009-19-36-76.jpg

quote:

How far do you have to get into the main quest before dragons start turning up?

Well, the one i fought last night wasn't very far in. I'd been doing other various bits and bobs in the mean time but as far as the main quest goes it's escape from that first town with some solder dude, go to little village to see Soldier dude's blaksmith friend, go to nearest proper town to request aid from the Jarl, earn Jarls trust by going to a dungeon and kicking fuck, OMFG THE DRAGON'S BACK KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT.

Whether dragons start turning up randomly after that or if you have to go a bit further in don't know


That's my problem right there, i'm just no good at that sort of play style. I know how to do it, it's just that i personally aren't quick and nilble enough with my keyboard and mouse to avoid getting twatted in the face with a hammer. I think i will restart with an Orc and come back to my Redguard at a later date.

I'm still going to keep using destruction magic though, as the dual spells thing is fucking awesome.

There are specific hairstyles for the Orc. All but two of them have ponytails.

Sinky the black Nord* woman, just like real life.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8436858/ScreenShot5.jpg

It's a very pretty game
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8436858/ScreenShot3.jpg


^{*Or Breton? Can't remember what I picked}

I'm just going to torrent the DLC, that's what i did last time. (with the exception of Shivering Isles and Kinights of the Nine, which i got other people to buy me as presents)

You look very glam.

I love the salmon thing. I saw them doing that in mine, so I jumped in and tried to join in :Y