i do not know if this would be possible...
BUT... i think it would be cool if when walking around middle earth, you could see other people having fights that do not include you...
for example you could be walking neer a town and see some guards fighting off some orcs that had tried to raid the town...
or you could enter a pub and see some drunk bloke trying to start a fight with someone elce...
i think this would add a certain depth of realism to the mod... and would show that you are not the only person around who fights. This was unfortunatly left out of the origional morrowind (as far as i can see).
I guess you have probably already thought of the idea... but thanks for reading anyway.

>>I'm quite new though I have been reading for a long time and must say it looks like it's gonna be an awesome mod<<

Yeah, that would be great.. that is also what dissapointed me about MW is that when you join the Imperial Legion it turned out to be like another fighters guild except that you had to wear a uniform.. I had expected to be able to march in deep ranks against an overwhelming enemy of rebel Dunmer.. especially with the enormous castles and fortifications there is in morrowind.. but enough of that, is it going to be any major battles in MEMOD that you may jpin or at least watch. it wold actually be a bit boring to be the only one that could start fights..

One more thing (I don't know if this has been asked before but since I'm writing here I just happens to slide a little bit OT), is there going to be any "realistic" killing in MEMOD? Like that when you slahses an npc with your sword then they will die or will it be like in morrowind that you can suffer loads of hits before even getting damaged??

/callme n00b if you want but I'm "not listening, not listening!" :whistling:

Noone will call you noob and there will not be any major battles (i think) because have you played attack on Onys mon? there are many large battles with many people and the game bugs like hell. The morrowind engine is not made for a large battle with many people moving at the same way.

Okay, this post contains spoilers for anyone who hasn't played Tribunal.

I was playing MW today and came across something just like this, I was in Mournhold (Tribunal EXP) and the plaza got attacked by Fabricants. You could see them fighting the royal guard all around the plaza. The guards ask you to join in the fight, but you don't have to.

And then a little later when you go under the plaza you see Fabricants fighting Dwemer (spl?) robots. If you try and join this fight both sides will start to attack you!!!

Is that kinda what you meant Dagsby? Neither fight had a massive amount of people in it (Maybe 5-10 a side) but it still looked really cool.

Ok. Firstly, I've already answered the question about large battles multiple times. I know some of those answers are from the old MWC forums and might not yet have had the chance to re-post them here.

There will be large battles.

There will be battles not involving you as the player.

Please, unless you are a Senior Dev who knows the answer, or a Teamster who knows the answer for sure, or can find the post in which a Senior Dev or Teamster answers this question; please don't respond with any definitive "there will not be..." or "there will not (I think)" style of posts. It confuses people who do not know to look for the Senior Dev or Teamster symbols.

-- D

Yeah, I got a stern rebuttal from suze about using definitives...<_<

But I had it coming, smarmy bastard that I am ^_^
Never assume it makes an...oh hell that's cliche, forget it.

Anyway, back OT. How will the large battles be accomplished in terms of fitting all the NPC's in to a cell? And doesn't the FPS get slogged down horribly because of the number of NPC's AI? So would the FPS kill our machine if we were in a large battle due to the emmense amount of NPC's? How do you plan on going about this? I'm interested to hear...

I remember hearing... *brings up the Way-Back Machine*

The devs said something about putting big battles in, and it would be possible because of *something they did* and they wouldn't tell us until MEmod came out

I guess we'll have to wait then...

-val

When you say "large", what kind of numbers are you talking about. Could this range from a skirmish to a huge army vs. army battle?

Here a leaked screenshot of a battle... its MeMod







okok... its from Morrowind Summit

Damn.. you almost had me.

Well that's an impressive picture, but what happens when all of those elves start moving and fighting? :blink:

I imagine that must be wicked slow for crappy PC's... But that would be awesome to see to armys of that size fighting!

S... o... m... e... t... h... i... n... g... l... i... k... e... t... h... i... s...

T... i... m... e... s... t... a... n... d... s... s... t... i... l... l...

Or there's just a LOTTA lag.

-val

EDIT- Option 3 is, your FPS flops into the negatives, your game crashes and Microsoft tells you to send them info about your PC. :angry2:

Sounds 'bout right, Valdir! But maybe if the army was toned down to about 1/3 (of whats on the screen in that pic) it might be doable for the crappier PC's. Well maybe 1/4...Or 1/5....

They wrote that there were 900 NPCs in this scene.
May someone could rebuild it with the FPS on the screen :whistling:

But battles of that size would be impossible... cause for a battle you need 2 armys
(900 NPCs*2=1800 NPCs)
:blink:

Holy crap. Uh, ME-Mod please dont put huge battles! Please! My PC would not enjoy that... :whistling:

I'd be content with 450 vs. 450.


If its the AI which slows everything down, then I just discovered how Daerk can make a huge battle. 200 men against 200 orcs means only 200 AI characters, orcs don't have any intelligence

*crosses fingers, hoping that's enough of a provocation to get some real info.*

i remember Daerk saying that npc AI is a major cause of slowdown...i'm also pretty sure he said that AI is hardcoded...so i'm wondering if there is a way to "dumbdown" the npcs...or maybe he plans on using super low polly creatures npcs in the battles.

HUGE battles would be nice...
but i would prefer just small scirmishes say 5 on 5 or about that many people...
just enough to show that there are other people in middle earth who don't agree with each other
hopefully little battles like that wouldmn't slooooow down the game all that much

What if you use the script from Bloodmoon to spawn those Warriors when you enter the cell. Using a script similer you could have a huge battle in which you'd have to hold off just a few NPC's per cell but make the battle over 20 cells. Maybe you could also have to build forifacations(sp?) after you take over a cell to try to hold back the enemy.

Interesting idea, perhaps your sucess or failure could depend on where you built fortifications, and where you reinforced your line.

This is just a reminder, but any large battle or prolonged campaign must be true to Tolkien, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, I was just giving that as an example.

i gotta stop trying to imagine what this mod will be like....its all too much....help please....give me more info..............

Can anybody tell me when all those small Landlords existed in Eriador (the same dudes as the ones from the barrows, but now more..... dead). They had lots of fights and seen it wheren't great kingdoms battles where small. Then again in a RPG a battle of 50 vs 50 would already look immense.
About the 'spawn' script, I have though of that before and I would like it if there where citys attacked over the .....min so there would be a continuous flow without having too much creatures/NPC's on the screen. If it's possible I don't know. AND WHEN DOES DAERK SHOW UP! IS THERE EVEN MORE PROVOCATION NEEDED THAT FEANOR'S MIGHT BE POSSIBLE IDEA?

Ëlwe

Ahhhaaa, don't scream my name. I was just joking about provoking Daerk

I have a feeling that Daerk reads all these threads, yet chooses carefully which to answer. If he doesn't want to give anything away, the best thing he can do is not get involved in the discussion.

Not that I'm happy with that, but life goes on ^_^

The spawn script sounds good...
hmm... i wonder...
what happened if the guards failed to hold out againsed an invasion of the town...
would it become an enemy town...?
and would you be able to help in a counter attack to re-capture the town...
OOOH if you could that would kick soo much arse...
that would be awesome :o

Reading through the posts on here, it seems that people are torn between wanting massive battles that will cripple all but the PC's NASA uses, and small skirmishes like the Firemoth mod, which in my opinion was the closest the game came to making me feel like i was battling a real army, or at least a company, compared to just running through a cave getting sporadically attacked.

Myself, i'd prefer the latter option with more people. Perhaps (as a very, very crude analogy) something like the Moria battle in the films. To have a small band of skilled fighters against a load of undiscipled enemies would be a nice feature, that not many mods or the game pulled off.

I don't think Orcs are into occupation. They'd probably burn the town and kill the inhabitants. Then again, if it went the way of Minas Morgul and Osgiliath, it may become a staging ground for future attacks.

Dont worry about the battles, I've talked to Daerk. And it wont kill your fps...

I think your kind of missing the point. We were wondering why it wouldn't kill our FPS, not if it would.

I don't think Daerk will answer this question till Memod comes out. Otherwise, somone will probably catch it here, post it on the official boards, and you'll have a million battle mods coming out, leaving no suprise when Memod is released. I know we all want info. but it couldn't hurt to wait

Speaking of that I wounder how many half-bit MODs will be coming out after MEMod using MEMod's technology.

example)
Real effects MOD by Somecopieingl0ser(using MEMods envirormental things)
Build A House Anywhere by Idiot(Using MEMods house thing that D talked about.)

Well, I guess many people would like to have some general MEMod features in regular Morrowind, so someone will definately make something like this.

Well, he has told me while dusciussing scripts, but, as you said, I dont think he wants to answer this yet to the general public...

He never wants to answer anything to the General Public, not unless you guess it yourself, or if he's in an unusally good mood...otherwise you'll get

'Wait and See'

Makes me feel like a five year old asking about my Christmas Presents all over again...feh...<_<

You'll appreciate that once the Mod comes out and you discover all those things for yourself.

Trust me, it's more worthwhile to "wait and see" than to know it beforehand. The surprise is much better.

If there are battles in the time line you could be lets say a sargent or even the equiv of a conel but any higher I doubt that you will not be violating the time line so I doubt greatly that you could choose to build fortifications but you could head covert missions behind enemy lines or just help fight the battle. But who knows (EXEPT Dear ol' Daerk) maybe ur comander liked ur advise and chose to take the honor for himself.

In addition even very skilled warriors cannot take a camp of enimies remember no UBER Characters.

Actually you could know quite a lot about what is planned for MEMod if you researched the Third Age. Meaning major battles and citys...

Yes indeed, as Minas Ithil still was Minas Ithil in the beginning of the 3e age. Only thing is we don't know exact timeline yet and the devs are not going to tell it either so if you have the list of battles wich ocur between the beginning of 3e age and the fellowship you still don't know wich battles are actually in the mod. I actually don't really care wich battles are goin to be performed becouse I know there WILL be some, that is a great fact on itself, isn't it? Though it would be fun to take a look at the siege of the dwarves in Moria (Balin and his men gettin packed up) :nazgul: .

Ëlwe

ok so i am new to this forum but i have been reading these posts for awhile. even if the army vs. army would be too much for lower comps wouldn't it be worthwhile to upgrade your comp. hell id upgrade to be part of a huge army vs army attack. the only other problem i can see is pathfinding. i know u guys hate talking about the movies but there are good examples there. when they animated the 2 towers they didn't individually write the code for each soldier they made it random. i saw some of the outtakes, there were times when orcs where skipping lol, anyway what im trying to see is it would look stupid if each enemy was in sync w/ each other and doing the same thing so maybe some variation could be used. i dunno just my thoughts.

`hewy

ps* i don't think the memod members get enuff of this so here it is: good job people i think tolkien would be proud.

Morrowind should have came with some option where many NPC's are put under the one AI so that the game doesn't have 900 AIs but 1 of which 900 NPCs respond to.
Would that work? <_<

I'm not really good at PCs, but doesn't anything that moves need an AI? I saw a post earlier that asked why one AI couldn't handle all 900, or Orcs not getting an AI. Logically - if all members of a side had the same AI, wouldn't that mean that they would take a step together, swing together, choose targets together, etc? I would hate to be the single target of 300 orcish bowmen in a 500 on 500 battle.

Also logically, if something doesn't have an AI, doesn't that mean that it can't react to anything? In Morrowind, don't nix hounds and the like have to have their own AI to determine what paths they walk, when they spot you and attack, and all of the other stuff that nix hounds do?

Just a thought from a newbie.

Well I think that's possible, simply put orcs in the creatures section, make em able to wear armor and weapons like skeletons can and you have a LESS complicated AI for I suppose every 'living' being should have AI to function, so it seems impossible to me to simply don't make AI for orcs.

Ëlwe

As I know, putting an AI will not make that all the orcs make the same because they have the same AI.

It means that all the orcs reacts by the same way to the same events.

It will mean that if an dwarf sees and orc alone walking happy with his elven clothes on (), the dwarf will atack the orc, and it is the same for all the dwarfs who have tha same AI.

But in a battle every orc have a big amount of events and everyone will react diferent but in a similar way (running when the captain is dead, for eg.).

And please, correct me because I'm informatic but I only can say what I think an AI do. I Never worked with an AI. With the exception of a program I did consisting in a ball that turns left when it's near a wall, but it fails when the variable containing "degrees" goes up 360 , it wasn't finished.

Arg!!!!, If anyone has read my post on "When the beta is coming" (or something similar ), It's 4:00 Am and I'm still reading posts :____, dawn 9Kbps conection!!!

about the AI:D hope we wont see things like this...
Everything wants to kill us....

I am currently under the impression that the comment about orcs not needing AI was a joke, based on the idea that orcs are stupid.

I am not sure what other people consider an AI to be, to be honest I don't truely know myself, but I think that it is a script that takes into account the current situation of the NPC it is attached to. For instance, it "sees" how far the orc must run to reach the nearest cover, if it's deemed too far then the orc will take another course of action. Every creature needs a script, this script could be the same as the script of the creature next to it, to tell it what to do but, this does not mean every creature will do the same thing(AI: Artificial Intelligence, making decisions for oneself) because each creature has a different situation.

Alright, first of all, hello everyone! I've been reading on the boards for a LONG time, just never had an urge to post. Right now, however, I'm in the mood for some wild speculation and banter regarding the battles....

Lets take what we know:
I seem to remember devs stating that they calculate the amount of resources in any given area, and adjust polycounts and other resource intensive variables to reach a playable level...

I'm not aware if anyone else here has any fighting/sparring experience, but when in this situation, awareness of things further out (background occurences) drops significantly... generally one is only aware of oneself, and one's nearby opponents...

Next, think of when you stand in a BIG crowd.... you don't have a birds eye view, so you only see the people immeadietly around you. Whether there are 100 or 10,000 people, you generally can only see 10-30 at a time...

Now, consider that wonderful program fps optimizer, which drops the draw/ AI calc down to managable distances in a resource intensive situation.

So already, we have the facts and tools to run a large battle... you march in with your comrads... you can only really see the first ranks of enemy if you are in the front, otherwise, you only see the back of your leader ahead of you. As you move in to engage the enemy, the proverbial 'fog of war' envelopes you. All you can see is the body of your slain captain, lieing at your side, and the three orcs moving towards you with bloodlust in there eyes..... ooops, got a little carried away there....

so really, all it would take is a little creative spaw/kill scripting to determine what happens outside YOUR field of vision, and this itself wouldn't be to complicated, (just placing bodies, wounded soldiers) as the overall outcome of the battle is already available in the histories of Middle Earth... the only thing in flux is how YOUR actions affect YOUR small place of the battle. Which, by the way, is what makes MeMod so cool... to be able to just live out one persons role, in something so much bigger.


Well, I hope that wasn't so longwinded that everyones' eyes glossed over... to those that made it to the end of my post, thanks for reading!

And dev team, keep up the awesome work, I'm so excited to see something so amazing coming together! I think its safe to say the community appreciates it immensly... even if we seem a little anxious sometimes

I do have experience fighting in medieval pitched battles of up to (and actually over) 1,000 on a side and much of what you say is true about having to focus on those around you and not seeing the big picture.

However, you must have an ability to be able to judge further out. If you are pressing the advantage, which of the targets do you hit? How many ranks are available to fill in? While you only see those around you once the fighting starts, there is usually more than plenty of time to see much more before the combat actually starts.

One of the problems arises in trying to have the realism of the battle, while judging what many creatures will do. From a single starting point of many on a side, you go down to being able to see several. What is happening with the others is just as important as what is happening with the ones around you. What happens when you take out the shields and spearmen around you? What has happened that would allow or disallow others from filling in the holes? You may be winning your little segment of the battle, but what about the segments two or three segments away? Have the orcs broken your line? Have you broken the orcs' line? Is there a hole that needs filling, a weakspot developing where your forces can do some good? All of the above are very difficult to handle, though you have the right idea that you will not be able to turn the tide of an already fought battle.

If the time period were right, for example, and you could play as an orc, you could not turn the defeat at Helm's deep into a victory for the forces of Saruman.

Well, that's my soapbox.

One of the key policies of this mod is that the timeline constructed by Professor Tolkien should not be disrupted, is it not? This means that the idea given by bmaiskse could work as, ultimately, you cannot change the course of the battle*, this will also mean that you cannot lose(save by dying.) Unless your goal in the battle is to make the it pan out the way it did in the books, in which case failure would screw up the timeline(So that can't be allowed) so failure may(via a script) cause an ENDGAME anyway.


* One of the slightly surreal things about this mod is that we actually know the future(or some parts of it) but, try as we undoubtedly will, we cannot change it.

Lol.....It's called "fate."

Yeah, it makes you think........

maybe you can make two versions of memod 1 with npc battles wich you dont have to join and 1 without?

Who says you have to join in? Just desert.



~Kagura