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Game Informer has a two page spread about the Creation Engine, the game engine behind The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. So long Gamebryo, there's a new engine in town and it sounds spectacular.
There are two pages of information there and each paragraph is packed with tons of additional details than the little bit seen above. Beyond the visuals, NPC AI is discussed including random mission generators, dialogue options, and tons more.
A lot of the environments are dominated by the untamed wilderness, which look great thanks to Bethesda's overhauled foliage system. In previous games the team licensed the SpeedTree middleware to render the forests. For Skyrim, they've created their own platform that allows artists to build whatever kind of trees they want and to dictate how they animate. Artists can alter the weight of the branches to adjust how much they move in the wind, which is an effective way of, for instance, actualizing the danger of traversing steep mountain passes with howling winds violently shaking branches.
Given its northern location and extreme elevations, Skyrim's climate is more prone to snowfall than Cyrodiil. To create realistic precipitation effects, Bethesda originally tried to use shaders and adjust their opacity and rim lighting, but once the artists built the models and populated the world the snow appeared to fall too evenly. To work around this problem, they built a new precipitation system that allows artists to define how much snow will hit particular objects. The program scans the geography, then calculates where the snow should fall to make sure it accumulates properly on the trees, rocks, and bushes.
Given its northern location and extreme elevations, Skyrim's climate is more prone to snowfall than Cyrodiil. To create realistic precipitation effects, Bethesda originally tried to use shaders and adjust their opacity and rim lighting, but once the artists built the models and populated the world the snow appeared to fall too evenly. To work around this problem, they built a new precipitation system that allows artists to define how much snow will hit particular objects. The program scans the geography, then calculates where the snow should fall to make sure it accumulates properly on the trees, rocks, and bushes.
There are two pages of information there and each paragraph is packed with tons of additional details than the little bit seen above. Beyond the visuals, NPC AI is discussed including random mission generators, dialogue options, and tons more.
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