Now days even bugs have spin!
Bethesda Softworks is probably best known for their Elder Scrolls line of games. If you look around out there, there's reviews for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I found their last game in the series, Morrowind, to be intriguing, if not excessively open and shallow at the same time.
So I can't help but be moderately curious as to what they will do with the next one. At the very least, I expect an impressive world, dynamic weather and the like, from Morrowind. Let's just hope they can make interacting with NPCs a bit less like interacting with a dictionary.
Reading one review on Gamespy, I laughed at the following quote:
"In fact, one of the interesting problems that the team has had to face came about precisely because the AI is so good. According to Howard, the AI has caused guards to decide to eat and go hunting deer, only to get themselves arrested for attacking something. When they fight back against the arresting guard, the other guards see a fight and try to join in. In not too much time, every guard in the town was involved in the scuffle, which left the rest of the town open to thievery by other NPCs, resulting in empty stores. Much of the team's current effort is going into putting sensible governors on the AI's behavior to avoid situations like empty stores that would result in situations that wouldn't be fun for the player."
Yeah, so the AI is so good that it's BUSTED? That's a great spin on what amounts to a serious, game breaking bug. I hope I can start using that excuse on my bugs...
Yeah, the inventory system is so advanced that it deletes items that it determines you don't want that much for you automatically! I'm still optimizing the selection process, so in the mean time it may seem like it's just deleting random items.
Our game is so consumer friendly, it determines when you should take a break from game play and freezes up your game to force you to take a breather. This is a feature and is intended to prevent players from engaging in really long gaming sessions that may have unhealthy side effects. While some data may be lost, this is considered acceptable in light of looking out for our customer's health.
Our AI is so cutting edge, it's already evolving to the point of trying to work out peaceful solutions instead of always fighting to the death. As such, enemies may sometimes seem to just stop attacking and stand still for no reason. This is to represent the internal conflict taking place in their AI controlled conscience. We hope to eventually add functionality to have them start up UN Peace Talks with the player instead of attacking.
Wow, my bugs list is starting to seem a lot lighter when I look at how they're really all just features in progress!
-Akari
So I can't help but be moderately curious as to what they will do with the next one. At the very least, I expect an impressive world, dynamic weather and the like, from Morrowind. Let's just hope they can make interacting with NPCs a bit less like interacting with a dictionary.
Reading one review on Gamespy, I laughed at the following quote:
"In fact, one of the interesting problems that the team has had to face came about precisely because the AI is so good. According to Howard, the AI has caused guards to decide to eat and go hunting deer, only to get themselves arrested for attacking something. When they fight back against the arresting guard, the other guards see a fight and try to join in. In not too much time, every guard in the town was involved in the scuffle, which left the rest of the town open to thievery by other NPCs, resulting in empty stores. Much of the team's current effort is going into putting sensible governors on the AI's behavior to avoid situations like empty stores that would result in situations that wouldn't be fun for the player."
Yeah, so the AI is so good that it's BUSTED? That's a great spin on what amounts to a serious, game breaking bug. I hope I can start using that excuse on my bugs...
Yeah, the inventory system is so advanced that it deletes items that it determines you don't want that much for you automatically! I'm still optimizing the selection process, so in the mean time it may seem like it's just deleting random items.
Our game is so consumer friendly, it determines when you should take a break from game play and freezes up your game to force you to take a breather. This is a feature and is intended to prevent players from engaging in really long gaming sessions that may have unhealthy side effects. While some data may be lost, this is considered acceptable in light of looking out for our customer's health.
Our AI is so cutting edge, it's already evolving to the point of trying to work out peaceful solutions instead of always fighting to the death. As such, enemies may sometimes seem to just stop attacking and stand still for no reason. This is to represent the internal conflict taking place in their AI controlled conscience. We hope to eventually add functionality to have them start up UN Peace Talks with the player instead of attacking.
Wow, my bugs list is starting to seem a lot lighter when I look at how they're really all just features in progress!
-Akari