Why are Bethesda games so unstable?

[SacremPyrobolum]

I can play Deus Ex HR on highest graphics with no problem, never got a single crash.

I can play Witcher 2 with some mods just fine with high graphics.

I can play Medieval Total War Stainless Steel mod and Napoleon All in One mod with no sweat.

Then why, oh why, cant modded New Vegas or Oblivion stay up for longer than three cell changes?

This seems to be a staple of all Bethesda games, and I hope and pray that new engine for Skyrim will be much more stable. I'm sure the people at Bethesda are competent.I mean they released one of the best received RPGs in gaming and sucsefully re-released an old classic twice.

How can they keep messing up so bad with the bugs and crashes?

Also, if your feeling helpful: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/538.314761-Fallout-NV-Load-Order#12774530

 

[Vrach]

Then why, oh why, cant modded New Vegas or Oblivion stay up for longer than three cell changes?

I spy with my little eye...

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

Then why, oh why, cant modded New Vegas or Oblivion stay up for longer than three cell changes?

I spy with my little eye...

I mod nearly all my games as you can see above and Vegas and Oblivion are the only ones that crash.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

Please refrain from bumping your own thread, or quoting people or yourself without inputting discussion, SacremPyrobolum is not getting a warning for this, next time it happens though Kill.Switch will be engaged ~ColdStorage

I can play Deus Ex HR on highest graphics with no problem, never got a single crash.

I can play Witcher 2 with some mods just fine with high graphics.

I can play Medieval Total War Stainless Steel mod and Napoleon All in One mod with no sweat.

I modded the hell out of Dragon Age Origins and never gotten a stutter.

Then why, oh why, cant modded New Vegas or Oblivion stay up for longer than three cell changes?

This seems to be a staple of all Bethesda games, and I hope and pray that new engine for Skyrim will be much more stable. I'm sure the people at Bethesda are competent.I mean they released one of the best received RPGs in gaming and sucsefully re-released an old classic twice.

How can they keep messing up so bad with the bugs and crashes?

Also, if your feeling helpful: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/538.314761-Fallout-NV-Load-Order#12774530

 

[Chezza]

My two cents involve: Different Budget, different quality control, different time-frame for milestones, different engine and different range of employees and skills working their talents with whats given with them.

 

[Nazgual]

Probably because their games have massive environments and complex AI and gameplay systems. Also they probably don't leave themselves much time to bug test.

 

[RanD00M]

Because they use a bad game engine that they don't really know how to use.
Risen is not what I would call the most stable game in the world and it uses that same engine, but it is a little bit more stable because Piranha Bytes has more experienced programmers.

 

[Smooth Operator]

That would be due to the Gamebyro engine, it is somewhat shite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamebryo#Games_using_Gamebryo

Actually reading through the titles... I know Divinity 2 is alot more solid so it may just be Bethesda pulling a fast one on it's releases.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

Because they use a bad game engine that they don't really know how to use.
Risen is not what I would call the most stable game in the world and it uses that same engine, but it is a little bit more stable because Piranha Bytes has more experienced programmers.

How could a minor studio like Piranha Bytes have more experienced programmers?

 

[oplinger]

The problem isn't bethesda, it's the fact that they use Gamebryo as an engine, on top of about 6 other third party softwares. They can't edit the engine itself, they get SDKs with each software, and they try to make it play nice.

All those softwares make it work radically different on different hardware, which causes really strange bugs, and even bugs that only happen to one person...

It has nothing to do with their skill, or their QA, it's just their ambition, and the fact that they didn't make the engine itself, and gamebryo was obviously very limited for what they wanted (at the time they wanted to use it anyway..I guess..)

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Because they're so big and complex, would be my guess. Plus you're modding.

 

[Rawne1980]

If you hover around the Nexus forums there is a mod/patch that fixes somewhere around 2000 issues with Oblivion including mod stability.

New Vegas is just a bug riddled nightmare, we've been trying to fix issues with that since it's release but we keep finding new ones. I gave up but I know some guys are still releasing fixes.

As people said above, the Gamebryo engine isn't the greatest and isn't universally famed for it's stability .... thats why a lot of places don't use it. Bathesda seem to love it though.

The problem with games like Oblivion and New Vegas, especially when you add mods into the mix, is the open environs are massive and when you hop zones it tries to go through all that data as fast as it can and sometimes it gives itself a headache and passes out. If you hop zones in rapid succession it generally has a heart attack and dies.

There are some player made fixes that you can find if you have a scan around that try their hardest to stabilise the problems those games have but for the most part it's simply a case of quick saving before every fast travel or zone switch (like going through a door or into a closed town) that way you won't lose anything apart from your temper.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

If you hover around the Nexus forums there is a mod/patch that fixes somewhere around 2000 issues with Oblivion including mod stability.

New Vegas is just a bug riddled nightmare, we've been trying to fix issues with that since it's release but we keep finding new ones. I gave up but I know some guys are still releasing fixes.

As people said above, the Gamebryo engine isn't the greatest and isn't universally famed for it's stability .... thats why a lot of places don't use it. Bathesda seem to love it though.

The problem with games like Oblivion and New Vegas, especially when you add mods into the mix, is the open environs are massive and when you hop zones it tries to go through all that data as fast as it can and sometimes it gives itself a headache and passes out. If you hop zones in rapid succession it generally has a heart attack and dies.

There are some player made fixes that you can find if you have a scan around that try their hardest to stabilise the problems those games have but for the most part it's simply a case of quick saving before every fast travel or zone switch (like going through a door or into a closed town) that way you won't lose anything apart from your temper.

Can you point me to some of these mods please?

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

The problem isn't bethesda, it's the fact that they use Gamebryo as an engine, on top of about 6 other third party softwares. They can't edit the engine itself, they get SDKs with each software, and they try to make it play nice.

All those softwares make it work radically different on different hardware, which causes really strange bugs, and even bugs that only happen to one person...

It has nothing to do with their skill, or their QA, it's just their ambition, and the fact that they didn't make the engine itself, and gamebryo was obviously very limited for what they wanted (at the time they wanted to use it anyway..I guess..)

I thought that Gamebryo was just a rendering software.

 

[Rawne1980]

Can you point me to some of these mods please?

Yep not a problem at all bud.

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=oblivionmods.detail&id=1417
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Must_Have_Mods

That second one has links in for all major 'unofficial' player made patches including the mod patch that deals with the stability of most mods for Oblivion.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes4Mod:Unofficial_Oblivion_Patch

Thats the details of the massive unofficial patch that fixes literally thousands of bugs. The actual patch is the first link I gave you just thought i'd put this in aswell so you can read up on it and you know i'm not trying to break your game.

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=38326

Thats the community bug fix patch for Fallout New Vegas. Someone spent a long time gathering up every fix made to date and put them all in this .esp to make it easier to use.

Those 'should' deal with most known problems but, as I said in my first post, Gamebryo isn't the most stable so you may still have the odd crash but it shouldn't be as much as a problem with less issues within the game itself.

I hope those help bud.

 

[The_ModeRazor]

Because you are unfortunate. My New Vegas is so modded out the ass that you'd have to dig through gigabytes of chaos to find the original game, but it runs just fine. (the fact that I made some mods myself and further modded the mods themselves doesn't help clear up the confusion) I can't remember when it crashed last time, and that's not because I have Alzheimer's. It's because it didn't do so in a very long time. Bethesda must like me, I guess.

 

[Exterminas]

I never had any problems with the said games.

 

[Rawne1980]

I thought that Gamebryo was just a rendering software.

http://www.gamebryo.com/Gamebryo/

Thats the website for it.

It's an actual game engine. Quite a lot of games use it to be fair rangine from games like Fallout and Oblivion to MMO's like Warhammer Age of Reckoning and Rift.

It 'does' do the job and isn't an overly terrible engine it just isn't as stable as some of the others out there like the Unreal and Quake engines.

To be fair, unless you actually go looking in depth at some games it isn't overly obvious what type of engine they use. Some problems are down to developers misuse or underuse of an engine than the actual engine itself.

 

[DJswirlyAlien]

Bethesda didn't work on New Vegas, they just published it. Obsidian Entertainment developed F:NV. AS for why they are so buggy, most likely because of how large and detailed the games are. It would require a massive amount of man hours to find every single bug in the game. As for stability, I would go along with the idea that the engine is crap.

At least Skyrim is on a new engine. Hopefully it will be more stable.