The Oblivion Thread

[Solver]

I am for some weird reason getting a slowdown whenever I see a soldier on a horse. Heh.

[Quillan]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Does anyone have experience playing the game with a GeForce 6600GT 256MB AGP? That seems to be the best option for the price.

No, but I have an alternate suggestion for you. Assuming you can afford and are willing to spend about $235 on a new card, go find the EVGA 6800 GS card, either CO or Superclocked version (CO is the old name; they're called Superclocked now). It runs at the same core and memory clock speeds as the 6800 Ultra, and with the AGP version you have a possibility of unlocking all 16 pipelines and 6 vertex shader units. That's the card I have, all the pipelines unlocked just fine, so I effectively have a 6800 Ultra now for $225 plus shipping.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
My card is ranked as a "very low-end", so looks like it will need to be upgraded again. Does anyone have experience playing the game with a GeForce 6600GT 256MB AGP? That seems to be the best option for the price.

I do. It seems to run the game ok (not great though), but I didn't get into real trouble yet. I'm going to upgrade it anyway, not for this game, but for the Vanguard beta. So if you'd not live on the wrong side of the globe, you could have had mine.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
I got it yesterday and like the story and environment. The interface is very clumsy though, at least for the PC. I expected something like the NWN interface, which is not perfect either but at least suffices minimum needs. Needless to say, that I was disappointed. Digging through the menus to select a spell and then pressing c to cast it, what the ...? And only 8 hotkeys is an insult too (I have 36 in NWN and still think that's not enough).

I agree, especially on the hotkeys. I wonder if an advanced keyboard interface could be used to map specific spells/actions/whatever to other keypresses? Something like a ZBoard or whatever they're called.

[snoopy369]

Interesting. Apparently the reason for only 8 Hotkeys is because on the XBox360, the DPad is the hotkey controller (so 8 DPad directions).

More evidence they created this for the XBox360 first and PC second

[Asher]

Originally posted by Quillan


No, but I have an alternate suggestion for you. Assuming you can afford and are willing to spend about $235 on a new card, go find the EVGA 6800 GS card, either CO or Superclocked version (CO is the old name; they're called Superclocked now). It runs at the same core and memory clock speeds as the 6800 Ultra, and with the AGP version you have a possibility of unlocking all 16 pipelines and 6 vertex shader units. That's the card I have, all the pipelines unlocked just fine, so I effectively have a 6800 Ultra now for $225 plus shipping.

I'd recommend the 7800 GS instead, which just came out.

It's a full-fledge 7800 GTX with stuff disabled (16 pipelines, 8 ROPs, 6 vertex shaders vs 24 pipelines, 16 ROPS, 8 vertex shaders); it's still completely badass.

I'm planning on upgrading to one of those as soon as they're available here. I think it's the fastest card AGP will ever see.

[Asher]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Interesting. Apparently the reason for only 8 Hotkeys is because on the XBox360, the DPad is the hotkey controller (so 8 DPad directions).

More evidence they created this for the XBox360 first and PC second

Get used to it.

Even John Carmack, of PC game fame, is developing games on the Xbox 360 and porting them to the PC now.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
As a warning to others, the GeForce FX 5500 runs the game badly. Even at the lowest resolution possible and everything turned off, there were delays between when I moved the mouse and when the cursor on the screen moved. With multiple AIs in the area, it is impossible to do anything.

You need to upgrade past hamster power I'm afraid.

[bonscott]

Just got the game installed yesterday, only played for about a half hour, mostly tweaking the graphic options. I only have a 9800 Pro ("only"....this was top of the line when I got it a few years ago).

At least in the first dungeon I've got it at 800x600, 2X AA, no bloom with the other options set to the default it detected "medium" and it runs quite well, very few dropped frames if any so far. When I finally get outdoors we'll see how it really performs.

Can't believe my 2.8 ghz, 1 gig ram rig is now near the "low end" of bleeding edge gaming. Crazy.

[Quillan]

Originally posted by Asher

I'd recommend the 7800 GS instead, which just came out.

It's a full-fledge 7800 GTX with stuff disabled (16 pipelines, 8 ROPs, 6 vertex shaders vs 24 pipelines, 16 ROPS, 8 vertex shaders); it's still completely badass.

No argument from me on that point, however it's damned near $400 for that card. It sounded like Skanky is on a budget to me. I bought my 6800 GS about a week before the 7800 GS came out.

[Harovan]

Btw thanks Asher - I found Starlight as spell (not scroll, that'd be ~20g per minute light) and can cast it now freely whenever I want. It's not great but better than nothing.

[snoopy369]

SirRalph, one suggestion I read when looking after HDR in the official forum, was to change these settings in the .ini file (in the mydocs/mygames/oblivion/ folder):

[BlurShader]
fSunlightDimmer=1.0000
fSIEmmisiveMult=1.0000
fSISpecularMult=1.0000
fSkyBrightness=0.5000
fSunBrightness=0.0000
[b]fAlphaAddExterior=0.3000
fAlphaAddInterior=0.9000[/b]
iBlurTexSize=256
fBlurRadius=0.0300
iNumBlurpasses=1
iBlendType=2
bUseBlurShader=1

The interior and exterior alpha settings are what are changed here.

I set it conservatively - they suggest .4 and 1.1, which is insane.

[snoopy369]

Skanky, you might try this thread from the TES forum. This is someone with a 5700 getting it to work nicely, whose instructions helped a 5200 work reasonably ...

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Does anyone have experience playing the game with a GeForce 6600GT 256MB AGP? That seems to be the best option for the price.

I have a 6600GT with 128 MB. Resolution is 1024x768, most settings at medium, self shadows are off, viewing distance is at the max. Works beautifully, only slowdown is if I'm outdoors and there are several creatures attacking.

The interface is really terrible compared to what it could be, I hope it is moddable. I was wondering what the deal with the hotkey "wheel" was... I'd like to use the scroll wheel to select spells from a list of maybe ten quick spells and press the wheel to cast them, and use 1-0 for items and weapon setups. Using an important control point like the wheel for the POV, which there's really no need to change anyway (and is easily done with R already) is silly.

OTOH, pressing Tab before each encounter to ready a spell and weapons gives me a moment to ponder strategy, but that's just me trying to find some usefulness out of the UI.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Jaguar

If this were a Bioware game, the twist would be that you are that guy you have to find.

actually I was thinking that soon as I read it. Or if it was a Black Isle/Obsidian game.