Shades Of Twilight

Eversince I got this new PC I have been installing all my older games back into the PC and just having a go at them and trying to see if there are any visual improvements. One of these is Oblivion.

Starting a new character, I just ran around and played the game “normally”. Oblivion is smoother, and graphics details are higher as compared to the older PC (of course). I am constantly amazed at how my new, budget PC, is outperforming my older “top of the line” one. Oblivion auto-detected my settings as “high” as compared to the older PC, where it was generally “Medium”. This time on this new PC, I even turned up some of the graphics detail just to see how far I can go without bogging the PC down. Yes, I could turn up plenty of the details.

In all my previous playthroughs of Oblivion, I did complete the “Corrupt Watchmen” quest while in the market district in the Imperial City. However, this time around, I was physically around to see the actual arrest in action. I made a video capture of it here.

It does seem that the Radiant AI is pretty good in Oblivion after all, even after a couple of years (Oblivion was released in 2006 if I remembered right).

Ah well… my Oblivion savegame for my main character is very likely to be corrupted, so I have started over with a new character.

This time around I’m playing a stealth-based character, so it’s slightly harder actually. No longer can I just stand my ground and take the incoming hits, and then just slash away at them. Now I have to move – run, dodge, backpedal etc… and it’s really taking a toll on the Fatigue!

Somehow I just can’t seem to play a more “balanced” character, ie one that uses more magic to balance out my melee attacks. I have even made a mage character too, but I left him at level 1 just inside the market district since 2006

Perhaps I might stop my current character – after all he’s only level 15, not too far into the story to abandon now. I’ll see about reviving my mage guy, and see where he’s actually at (in terms of quests). I bet it’s gonna be damn hard though, cos I’m very used to pulling out my blades and slashing with ‘em.

Hmm I seem to have found a sort of incompatibility between games.

I have Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter loaded. This game uses the AGEIA physics engine, which required a separate install of the engine itself outside of the game. Now, apparently this seem to clash with the Oblivion physics engine, which is Havok engine.

I noticed that things seem to be a bit wonky when playing Oblivion with the AGEIA engine running in the background (it’s a separate thing by itself, unlike Havok which is part of the game). Spell effects either get stalled or go in slow-motion in Oblivion. Doors open in slow-motion. Fires either stop burning or burn in slow-motion.

Removing the AGEIA engine fixed this problem. So I’m guessing 2 physics engines running at the same time is not a good idea.

Edit: – OK I was mistaken. It seems that the cause of this problem is my savefile for Oblivion, which seemed to become increasingly corrupted as I play my main character. I think I might need to search on the forums for a resolution to this…