Bethesda’s game engine is, indeed, shit

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With the release of the terrible Fallout 76 come the cyclical complaints about how terrible and ancient is the game engine Bethesda uses.

Some guy who thinks he has a better insight ended up writing this:
https://kotaku.com/the-controversy-over-bethesdas-game-engine-is-misguided-1830435351

This is what I wrote on a forum:

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This is funny because, very obviously, Jason Schreier doesn’t know what he’s talking about and he’s way too dumb to realize it.

A “game engine”, as used in discussions in forums and articles, IS NOT A PIECE OF TECH. Nor it is a “collection”, as he says.

A game engine is a heuristic. It’s a term in language that works like an umbrella and that encompasses the overall “look and feel” of playing a game. *Playing* it, not building it.

Of course the look of Morrowind or Oblivion doesn’t PRECISELY correspond to the look of Skyrim or Fallout, but the analogies and the general feel are absolutely there. You could make an experiment and let someone play a Bethesda game without knowing it’s Bethesda and he’ll know, if he’s competent, within minutes. And certainly not because that game would be very complex.

If an engine is an engine, then it provides a structure. No matter how much you WRESTLE it, the structure is a structure and by being structure it imposes itself and will create limits.

No matter how many times Bethesda explains how they rewrote everything in their engine, PLAYING those games will always reveal the truth. And the truth is that they are too scared to abandon the pipeline they used until this point because they cannot afford to wipe everything clean and restart from zero. Because IT IS indeed an engine, and they don’t want to discard it.

For Fallout 76 we have changed a lot. The game uses a new renderer, a new lighting system and a new system for the landscape generation.

And yet it’s the same shit, as glaringly obvious to anyone who played even for 5 minutes. All Jason Schreier says falls apart right there because it is PROVEN by playing the game and realizing how the “””engine””” is still the same.

What Jason Schreier says is only vaguely correct in the sense that “engine” is not a word used precisely in this context. But it’s only a discussion on the specific use and meaning of that word, and it doesn’t even remotely touch the actual discussion that takes place when players criticize this “engine”.

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Ship of Theseus. It’s basically a new engine. I hate that word.

Ship of Theseus is how to nail the philosophical problem yet without understanding it.

The Ship of Theseus means you are different, not that you can become anything. Of course Bethesda’s games have greatly changed, since Morrowind. Yet they still cannot shake from those roots.

Even when you replaced all the parts, the way you have replaced them influences the outcome. It’s not freeform.

In the same way, the moment all your hair cells get entirely replaced doesn’t correspond to the moment you get blue or purple hair. The “engine” is still the same.

—
EDIT: This slightly blew up on twitter. But who am I to NOT go down the rabbit hole?

– when people refer to Bethesda’s game engine in the discussions they refer to the feel that links all their games, and that has its root in the underlying tech. That’s why it’s a heuristic. I perfectly underlined it’s a semantic problem.

My car’s engine is a heuristic for the smell of petrol, the screeching of tires, the warm leather seats, the gamers in the back seat screaming ‘are we there yet’.

– more or less, yes. More accurately your words are heuristics, as is all human language and representations. Jason wanted to use technical language, I used neuroscience. It’s a semantic problem.

– in fact, your car’s engine isn’t a heuristic. But your “car’s engine” is. Metalinguistics are the sixth function of language according to Jakobson and reason why we can talk about language with language.

I appreciate this from an academic standpoint, but if you tell your mechanic that they didn’t fix your engine and you actually mean the seat warmers are still too hot, they’re going to say you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.

– yes, context. That’s why all this was spawned from an article that decontextualized the way the term “game engine” was used. Players don’t see code, they see output. So they blame a “game engine” because it’s their heuristic to link experience to tech.

– when someone “feels” Fallout 76 uses the same engine of Oblivion they are observing a heuristic of a link they cannot analyze in detail. Because they lack the precision of vision and information. Hence a heuristic is used.

– so when a player speaks or writes it can only be about the experience and not about the tech. Even if the center of the message is the existence of that link between experience and tech. Because they aren’t independent.

– Funnily, it’s not “academic”. It’s a dualistic problem like mind/body separation. Here it’s tech/feel, engine and experience. We see two things where there’s only one thing. They are one and the same. The tech is what generates experience. There’s no experience without tech the same as there’s no consciousness without a brain.

– It’s as if I say “my hand hurts”, and you, doctor, tell me, “Nope, your brain hurts. Pain can only be a mental construct.” That’s obviously true, but it’s also missing the point.

– RDR2, God of War and Skyrim are all sorta open worlds. Do you think their tools and engines are generic enough that you could perfectly recreate one in the other?

– That’s why people complain. Because the “scaffolding” that on one side allows Bethesda to produce relatively fast some huge games, on the other side ultimately feels archaic and clunky. With its advantages it also inherits its disadvantages, and players are demanding a more radical detachment from those old (but well known and convenient) roots.

– Btw, many times Bethesda has declared they completely renovated their engine.

– Yet players know it “feels” the same. The heuristic proves the underlying tech hasn’t changed in meaningful ways. As someone wrote in the forum: the proof is in the pudding.

Also this: https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-controversy-over-bethesdas-game-engine-is-misguided-kotaku.80983/page-6#post-14984524

Red Dead Redemption 2

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This is stuff that was popular in the 90s style game the design and that was progressively parsed out because it was just a “chore”, getting in the way, and not fun.

This is where you learn game design is not progress, but just cyclical repetition. (and trends that shift back and forth like waves)

It’s like UI design, moving from simple and minimal -> complex, elaborate, decorated -> simple and minimal and boxy -> whimsical, shiny, colorful -> minimal and smooth and rounded -> etc…

Illusion of progress like everywhere else. Like the weather. Like seasons.

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Serena Williams and the logical fallacies

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I’m not going to summarize what happened.

I only want to point out a couple of specific aspects. One is the logical fallacy that lies as the basis of many discussions.

The main objective fact (including the controversy) is that the umpire gave Serena a warning for coaching, coaching that was admitted but that Serena claimed not having seen (but that is irrelevant for the rules). The problem here is that this rule is not applied consistently (or claimed not to be applied consistently), and so it depends on the sensibility of the umpire whether to enforce it or not. I do agree that the match could have been handled more gracefully, because in the end these decisions led to worse outcome for everyone involved and no one directly benefited from that choice, but the umpire still applied the rules as they are written.

Now the topic is whether or not that decision was “sexist”. The logical fallacy is to consider that topic relevant for the match. It’s relevant for a discussion, afterwards, but it’s not relevant for the match itself. I’ll explain why.

In sport there are quite often different rules for men and women. I’m not an expert but I think the height of the basket in basketball is set differently? In any case we’re quite used to having slightly different rules, we also have some slight different rules in tennis. Whether we agree or not with this practice, what’s important for sport being sport, and fair, is that once the match starts the rules are applied uniformly to everyone who participates in that match.

In tennis, for example, we have different rules if the surface is hard or clay. As long the rules of that specific match are applied to both players, the match is fair. This to say that rules change all the time, what’s important is that in a match between two players the rules are applied uniformly, and not that those rules are applied uniformly across all matches and all players. Different tournaments, different rules. Different years, different rules. Even rules against doping change over time.

In the case of the match of Serena Williams she was playing another woman POC. If anything, the only trace of possible bias is that her opponent was Asian, and that the match was taking place in New York, so Serena had the favor of the public supporting her A LOT MORE. A lot more loudly. This is a definite, objective advantage. It is NOT applied uniformly to both players, but we still also widely accept it as it is. It’s just part of the game as it is part of most sports. Yet it still is an objective bias and it’s important for an objective analysis of what happened.

The fact is: Serena was not playing against a man. Whether or not rules are applied not uniformly to men and women isn’t an issue here (regarding the match being played, not the cultural discussion, which is legitimate). It isn’t an issue because Serena plays on the women side of the tournament, exclusively against other women. So even in the case “men play by different rules” IS IRRELEVANT as long those rules are applied uniformly to the TWO players engaged in that match (and the rest of the tournament they played). At no time in the tournament Serena crosses her path with a man, so the application of the rules just can’t technically be sexist simply because the match is between two women. She’s not playing against men, so she can’t technically be subject to bias and favoritism as in the case she was playing against a man, and so treated differently compared to her opponent.

To be fair the rules of that specific match have to be applied uniformly to both players, they don’t have to be applied uniformly TO THE REST OF THE WORLD. The match is its own entity, and what matters is that the rules are applied to those players who participate in that match, not everyone else who’s not part of that match.

This before any sort of personal opinion or cultural discussion can take place. It’s just analysis.

Of course the discussion doesn’t stop there, it starts. But on the internet things completely fall apart because every opinion is then weaponized, factions are built, and then it’s just a war.

I’m not on one side, I’m not on the other, and I’m not in the middle either. I’m precisely positioned regarding the considerable number of aspects that build this overall complex issue. I won’t pick a faction. But we’ve seen the debate degenerating, to the point I’m not really sure that bringing up these themes actually leads to an improvement of our society. What I observe is a push for extremism. A will to entrench personal beliefs and identity.

You cannot just cleave these complex problems in two halves, and what I observe is that as a society we absolutely have zero defenses. We have no way to handle this, and it only leads to that extremism that makes everything worse.

Taking a step back, you can see how emotions are what build opinion. For example:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/serena-williams-us-open-mistreatment-op-ed

As I watched Serena repeatedly ask for an apology, I sat up a little straighter, glared at my television and felt a knot slowly forming in the pit of my stomach. I tweeted the words, “Oh no,” and started to cry. In that moment, Serena voiced something that I could relate to so deeply, something that often goes unsaid: the many times in my life as a black women, I have deserved an apology and haven’t gotten it.

Can you say this sentiment is not legitimate? Of course it is (legitimate).

But just because you can recognize yourself and empathize with an aspect of a story doesn’t mean the whole story is yours and that the appropriation is itself legitimate. Serena didn’t deserve an apology. She threatened, accused and offended the umpire, reiterating this behavior over and over. It wasn’t one time. Even in the possibility the umpire enforced a too bland rule, he cannot “apologize” for applying that rule too firmly, because that’s his job.

Your mind has sliced a part of the story that moves you. That part is legitimate (I do believe you had those experiences when you deserved apologies and didn’t get any), but this one is not your story. And if you then transform Serena’s story in your story then you’re wrong. Because these stories are not the same.

This simplification, where different stories become one story, is both extremely powerful, extremely important, but also dangerous. Because that simplification compresses and cuts away aspects of the story that are not irrelevant at all.

Yet, in order to bring change to our society you cannot use differentiation. You need a story, a symbol, a flag. One movement that pushes the sentiment as one and whole. Not fragmentation, not differentiation, not complexity. You need things simple.

Beware of things being simple.

Raph Koster has a new book out you probably shouldn’t read

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Following Raph on twitter means I already knew this was coming, but I had no reason to say anything about it until I saw this:

This is my corner of the internet and I can say what I want without consequences, negative or positive.

Look at that.

Science fiction adds a particular challenge to combat design. I spent quite a while reading up on military tactics

For Star Wars Galaxies? That great game with exceptional ranged combat design?

You mean the one where you deliberately didn’t model terrain collision so that you could shoot and being shot through entire hills?

Oh yes, you definitely have to be a military expert to know that ground cover and terrain in general should matter in ranged combat…

Raph continues to be one of the most brilliant minds and at the same time completely inept at “getting” game design. I’m sure this book is just a further proof of that. And one of the things he does the worst is figuring out what he did wrong, “postmortem.”

That excerpt cannot make it more obvious.

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Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (NextGen)

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“Milkshake Duck” is a meme that everyone uses and no one understands, and that’s exactly where its power is, and why it became a meme in the first place. It’s not in its explicit meaning, but in what’s implicit.

This is a logical fallacy, a non sequitur.

There are two observations, made in two different moments in time. The second observation is meant to overwrite the first, but it’s not.

Observation 1: there’s an image of a duck that looks cute.
Observation 2: the duck is racist.

This becomes a meme because it carries an afterthought. On the superficial level it’s obvious that the second observation overshadows the first with its value, but it’s also implicit that this mechanic is supposed to induce guilt: you have to regret loving this duck in the first place.

But, hey, it’s still a lovely duck. Isn’t it?

What makes it a powerful meme is specifically this retroactive effect that makes the observer feel repulsion about the original observation. We’ve been wrong, it really wasn’t a lovely duck. It’s the feeling of having been personally sullied by going through this process. It creates a contradiction, a paradox.

It happens because there’s a logical fallacy at the origin, so let’s solve it.

The image of a cute duck drinking milkshakes remains still cute after we realize this duck has racist ideas. The repulsive ideas this duck might have don’t intersect with its physical image and the way it looks.

A Nazi isn’t a bad person because this Nazi looks physically ugly. That’s a very simple human error of simplification: wanting to reduce everything to one single dimension that is easier to parse and handle. But the world is complex and defies simplification: you can still find terrible ideas even in individuals that look very pretty.

If tomorrow we find out that John Carmack is also a molester, this cannot intersect with the fact he’s a good programmer. The “good programmer” skillset doesn’t intersect with being a molester. A disgusting molester can still be a great programmer. I can still learn important things by studying this guy’s code, even after I know he’s a molester. This has *nothing* to do with “death of the author” principle. And it also doesn’t mean that my eventual appreciation of his coder skillset might diminish my condemnation of him as a molester.

These are two observations, and they are separate.

Observe reality as it is, instead of coloring it through your own biases.

World of Warcraft fails to please (me) yet again

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I was following online the last Blizzcon because there were rumors about stuff I was very interested about. It was all a flop, sadly.

I left World of Warcraft shortly after Cataclysm, and after being very excited about it, because my idea of an ideal virtual world is one that doesn’t fall into obsolescence but keeps getting updated and improved. Cataclysm was supposed to be just that: an overhaul of old content to make the whole package more seamless and up to date.

The result, though? Exactly the opposite. They made all content obsolete systemically. As I’ve written in the past, they completely broke the progression. They sped up the leveling in order to make players reach max level faster and enjoy the bleeding edge content, but in the process they utterly destroyed any sense of quest flow. You cannot even follow the shortest quest chain in a zone without outleveling it. You run a dungeon once, and you’ve already outleveled whole zones outside.

For someone who’s chasing the treadmill power creep and wants to just collect better loot, it’s all ideal. But for someone like me who’s in no rush to reach the top and just wants to enjoy and explore ALL the content at my own pace, reading all the little stories that the zones have been written around, then this new skin of the game is completely unplayable. Unless you accept to remove from the experience all loot and all challenge and doing just grey quests all the time. But I don’t. I want an experience that is well balanced, otherwise it’s simply not worth it.

The recent rumor was about a feature that I think was already implemented for the content of the latest expansion, and it’s basically the only way to salvage the experience I want without redoing the whole game: content that dynamically rescales to your level.

It’s a feature now common to most MMORPGs and even single player games use it. I’m actually contrary to it, conceptually (it’s much better to remove levels completely and design a game around a flatter skill system), but it’s the only practical way to save WoW, at least for me.

Just scale the content (quests, monsters, dungeons, possibly rewards) to a challenging default (or scale the character to the content), and I’d jump right in.

A great thing that Blizzard is doing with WoW is that you get every expansion for free by just waiting a couple of years after its release. So I could play all the content I missed in the meantime. A boatload of content. I’d love to just do that and pay Blizzard the monthly subscription. But I can’t because the progress is broken and all that content has been pushed to the side and forgotten.

And what we get? Vanilla WoW? Did players really ask for this? I really don’t understand what’s interesting about it. The content was objectively lower quality, and fond memories are probably based on a more complex overall situation that doesn’t simply depend on rolling back the game.

WoW phase one was great and praised everywhere because it removed the grind of old school shitty MMORPGs, like Everquest or Dark Age of Camelot, where you’d sit in the same spot for hours, grinding a spawn point. WoW replaced that awful boring grind with actual questing, so that you were always on the move, visiting and exploring and enjoying the game world fully. Making it an interesting place. Reading, if you wanted, the stories in there.

Then WoW phase two came and put the grind right back: just a race to level cap and farming the same dungeon or raid over and over and over and over. Waiting for the next exp pack for years only to burn right through the content in the matter of a weekend, and go back at farming dungeons yet again.

If you like doing that it’s all good. WoW is big enough to accommodate for different kinds of players. But it’s 2017, and I’m still waiting for something that most other games with far less resources have gotten right…

EDIT:
And I’ve now read they announced level scaling shortly after. But my point stands, design wise.

I also don’t think their proposed solution isn’t going to fix my problem. Instead of full level scaling they are only doing a partial zone scaling, and even modifying expansions to overlap with each other.

The core problem is still that gaining experience is way, WAY too fast compared to the quest and zone flow. And just scaling the single zone to a level range won’t fix absolutely anything about the core problem itself: you could stay in a zone a little longer, but whole zones would still fall behind and into obsolescence. You would have a choice about doing a quest chain or running a dungeon once, but properly enjoying the content at a leisure pace would still be impossible.

—
If it was me I’d create optionally a special custom type of character where the level curve is super slow and tuned specifically around the content, flag them in some special way so players feel somewhat rewarded to create and play these “masochistic” types, and that’s it.

It could be implemented in a day. It’s just a redesigned xp curve. Or you could just apply to every level range the original value that it had for every time a new piece of content dropped. That would be already okay.

level 1-60: apply the vanilla xp curve
level 60-70: apply The Burning Crusade xp curve
level 70-80: apply Wrath of the Lich King xp curve
level 80-85: apply Cataclysm xp curve
level 85-90: apply Pandaria xp curve
level 90-100: apply Draenor xp curve

Me happy, here’s my monthly subscription.

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Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (Part ?)

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This is about NeoGAF and a political note.

Have you noticed how it’s especially this year that things are reaching a certain tipping point?

Have you noticed how it’s always the “left” that turns on itself and splinters?

If NeoGAF can be seen as largely an American forum, in Europe you can see how the political background is no different. The foundation of Europe itself is undermined (Brexit and similar), each nation pushes in a different direction, and nations are shattered from the inside (see Spain right now).

Bridges are being burned everywhere.

It does really look we’re just cultivation further division in preparation from some war looming in the near future.

And there’s nothing anyone can do about it. It just happens.

Things are accelerating.

The Failure of DirectX 12

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It seems I was for the most part right. DirectX 12 has been largely a failure.

Here’s a link:
http://wccftech.com/project-cars-dev-dx12-improve-performance-3040/

Project CARS developers have been quite open about the development of the game. They have taken to the forums to solve all the issues that the players have and had to face. From bugs to future releases, they have been quite open and cooperative to the fans about their plans and have hence received appreciation as well for it as well.

When asked about the impact of DX12 on Project CARS, the Head of Studios at Slightly Mad Studios, Ian Bell revealed to the fans that the new API will increase the performance of Project CARS by 30-40% which is surprisingly quite a major performance boost. The new API will be making its way into users hands with the release of Windows 10 which is a free upgrade to any PC running a previous version of Windows.

Project Cars 2 is released today. It has no support for DX12 at all.