From the discussion going on at QT3 – Kathode and Ashileedo are from Bethesda:

HRose:
Okay, maybe the NPCs will move around, eat and go to sleep. But what about the details? They’ll just sleep randomly everywhere? Or they will discern between their own bed, their own bread etc..? Do the commodities are in a finite number? Do they respawn at will or the game will reach a point where all the NPCs will finish the supplies and die of starving?

Kathode:
They’ll discern between their own possessions and other people’s possessions. We have a crime system and thus, ownership data on just about everything. No dying of starvation, NPCs dying offscreen at random = bad.

HRose:
Okay, you have a physic engine but how it will be implemented? Are you modeling each candle, bone, plate, goblet, plate, fork, spoons etc..?

Kathode:
Every object on top of the table in the picture you linked has physics applied, save the candles (actually I’m not sure about the candles come to think of it). Every fork, plate, piece of armor, yada yada. Yes. Believe it. If you throw stuff around, people get annoyed, but it is not game breaking, because that would suck.

HRose:
An unrelated curiosity if you can answer: which engine the game is using? It’s still Netimmerse/Gamebryo or you moved to something else?

Kathode:
Gamebryo is the renderer, most of the rest of it is our own stuff.

QT3 habitue:
I’m really curious as to whether Oblivion will be as moddable as Morrowind, and specifically whether the AI packages will be moddable. Because then — whoa.

Kathode:
Yeah, absolutely. PC users will get the same tools we have, just like in Morrowind. All the AI functionality is done through menus with normal drag and drop and list style interfaces. And unlike the tools we’re using now, the tools you get won’t be in a constant state of development :)

I fully expect lots of amazing AI mods to come out.

QT3 habitue:
When I read that, it sounded like the packages responded to attributes that could fluctuate, like hunger. However I can’t see how what you’re describing would have caused this situation to happen. Could you explain how the Radiant AI system caused these particular (and humorous) situations to develop? It would clarify matters for me

Kathode:
They have a single hunger state which amounts to “go get food.” Usually we tell them where they should go get food if none is immediately available. In that instance we didn’t, and the guard discerned that the most immediate source of food was a nearby deer. Now what should have happened is that he should have realized that killing the deer would be a crime, and done a check vs. his responsibility score, and gone to look for other sources. But that process failed at some point, and he went off and killed the deer.

HRose:
The reason why I asked if they are going to model all the objects on that table is because I KNOW that they WON’T.

In every game with a physic engine till today only a few selected objects have been modeled. We have crates, cans, bottles, ammo clips and not much more. It’s not important to figure out why the physic engine has been only marginally used. The point is that only a few lesser environmental garbage will have a physic model. Even in Oblivion (traps, bones, arrows for all we know. For sure not much more).

This is why I’m sceptic when they give the illusion that all the world follows those rules, like the arrow in the bucket. That’s again a specifically scripted event to demonstrate a POTENTIAL, not the effective game.

I’m just saying that they put on display their “intention” and a nice graphic engine. But this doesn’t really give us any idea about how the actual gameplay of the game will work.

I’ll run in the street naked if the final game will really model all the objects on that screenshot.

Ashileedo:
Hi, just popping in here. I’m going to hold you to this. Remember the screenshot you posted. Everything on that table right?

I expect to see a picture of you running around naked in the street after we’ve finished the game and you’ve gone out, bought it, played it, and knocked every object off that table.

Tom nailed this right on. What is a demo but the potential of what a game could be?

…owned?