Oblivion : Levitation is possible.

[Brendan]

I have no idea what I did. I bought a painted horse in Bruma and rode it
through the wilderness back down the mountain. I dismounted to go look
at an Elven ruin, ran down hill then ran above my horse.I found I was
stuck at the same height when I ran back down to my horse. When running
"Down" the mountain I'd stay at the same level in the air. I got an
awesome view for a while but was then perforated by arrows fired from
below. When I died I proceeded to fall back to the ground.

I have no idea how that happened. The view from up there is awesome
though...

[Maciek]

Do not tell me that there is no levitation in Oblivion!
Please do not tell me that.
One of the reasons I am playing this game is to fly and sit on the top of
the cathedral, and enjoy the city view.

Maciek

[Maciek]

Ok made some research. Huge disappointment.
Dammit there should be levitation in this game.
I guess we have to thank Xbox one more time ...

Maciek

[Highlandish]

Post by Maciek
Ok made some research. Huge disappointment.
Dammit there should be levitation in this game.
I guess we have to thank Xbox one more time ...
Maciek

yup, they had to limit the crowded towns to a new load cell, so if you jump
over a wall from the outside, or levitate over that wall, all you will see
is a dead town as nothing in it has been loaded. thqt keeps the memeory
requirements low on consoles. so they disabled flying/levitating to hide
that fact

[Maciek]

Post by Highlandish
yup, they had to limit the crowded towns to a new load cell, so if you jump
over a wall from the outside, or levitate over that wall, all you will see
is a dead town as nothing in it has been loaded. thqt keeps the memeory
requirements low on consoles. so they disabled flying/levitating to hide
that fact

They should make levitation banned close to the cities.
It should be allowed in cities but banned outside them, close to the walls.
Suppose the emperor gave such order to prevent spying - all citizens must
approach cities on foot and enter by gates or risk being shot down by
incredibly accurrate magic 88mm AA cannons outside the walls.
(Or cities could be surrounded my magical non-levitating silencing zone)
Flying in cites would be permitted until you fly over the wall. Then you get
the AA cannon blasts.
Simple and elegant isn't is? :)

Oblivion reminds me of SF story I once read. In this story everyone that is
pretty has to wear ugly masks - just to make the ugly people feel better.
And clever people must wear noisy headphones that make thinking harder -
just to make stupid people feel better.

Maciek

[Shawk]

Post by Maciek
Oblivion reminds me of SF story I once read. In this story everyone that
is pretty has to wear ugly masks - just to make the ugly people feel
better. And clever people must wear noisy headphones that make thinking
harder - just to make stupid people feel better.
Maciek

SF story? We have political parties that have similar things on the
manifesto now... no competitive sports in case the loser feels bad etc..

[TheSmokingGnu]

Post by Maciek
all citizens must
approach cities on foot and enter by gates or risk being shot down by
incredibly accurrate magic 88mm AA cannons outside the walls.
Simple and elegant isn't is? :)

Hehe, I had a laugh at that.

Post by Maciek
Oblivion reminds me of SF story I once read.

You're thinking of "Harrison Bergeron", by Kurt Vonnegut. A delightful
tale of the pitfalls of true equality.

TheSmokingGnu

[Greg Johnson]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:28:50 +1000, "Highlandish"

Post by Highlandish

Post by Maciek
Ok made some research. Huge disappointment.
Dammit there should be levitation in this game.
I guess we have to thank Xbox one more time ...
Maciek

yup, they had to limit the crowded towns to a new load cell, so if you jump
over a wall from the outside, or levitate over that wall, all you will see
is a dead town as nothing in it has been loaded. thqt keeps the memeory
requirements low on consoles. so they disabled flying/levitating to hide
that fact

Not just that, flying would also make the puzzles in the Oblivion gates
largely ignorable, and they wouldn't allow that. Bethesda couldn't bear
that a sufficiently powerful mage might just float over their clever
traps and make them irrelevant.

[Maciek]

Post by Greg Johnson
Not just that, flying would also make the puzzles in the Oblivion gates
largely ignorable, and they wouldn't allow that. Bethesda couldn't bear
that a sufficiently powerful mage might just float over their clever
traps and make them irrelevant.

Everyone knows that gravity distortions in Oblivion would prevent Levitation
casting :)
(If levitation was in the game)

Maciek

[Wolfing]

Post by Greg Johnson
On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:28:50 +1000, "Highlandish"

Post by Highlandish

Post by Maciek
Ok made some research. Huge disappointment.
Dammit there should be levitation in this game.
I guess we have to thank Xbox one more time ...
Maciek

yup, they had to limit the crowded towns to a new load cell, so if you jump
over a wall from the outside, or levitate over that wall, all you will see
is a dead town as nothing in it has been loaded. thqt keeps the memeory
requirements low on consoles. so they disabled flying/levitating to hide
that fact

Not just that, flying would also make the puzzles in the Oblivion gates
largely ignorable, and they wouldn't allow that. Bethesda couldn't bear
that a sufficiently powerful mage might just float over their clever
traps and make them irrelevant.
--
Greg Johnson

Although I did pretty much that by going through them invisible :)

[Memnoch]

Post by Wolfing

Post by Greg Johnson
On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:28:50 +1000, "Highlandish"

Post by Highlandish

Post by Maciek
Ok made some research. Huge disappointment.
Dammit there should be levitation in this game.
I guess we have to thank Xbox one more time ...
Maciek

yup, they had to limit the crowded towns to a new load cell, so if you jump
over a wall from the outside, or levitate over that wall, all you will see
is a dead town as nothing in it has been loaded. thqt keeps the memeory
requirements low on consoles. so they disabled flying/levitating to hide
that fact

Not just that, flying would also make the puzzles in the Oblivion gates
largely ignorable, and they wouldn't allow that. Bethesda couldn't bear
that a sufficiently powerful mage might just float over their clever
traps and make them irrelevant.
--
Greg Johnson

Although I did pretty much that by going through them invisible :)

That's the other way of course.

[Highlandish]

Post by Greg Johnson
On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:28:50 +1000, "Highlandish"

Post by Highlandish

Post by Maciek
Ok made some research. Huge disappointment.
Dammit there should be levitation in this game.
I guess we have to thank Xbox one more time ...
Maciek

yup, they had to limit the crowded towns to a new load cell, so if
you jump over a wall from the outside, or levitate over that wall,
all you will see is a dead town as nothing in it has been loaded.
thqt keeps the memeory requirements low on consoles. so they disabled
flying/levitating to hide that fact

Not just that, flying would also make the puzzles in the Oblivion
gates largely ignorable, and they wouldn't allow that. Bethesda
couldn't bear that a sufficiently powerful mage might just float over
their clever traps and make them irrelevant.

they might have just disabled flying in oblivion, some kind of magic
dampener or something.

[Memnoch]

Post by Greg Johnson
On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:28:50 +1000, "Highlandish"

Post by Highlandish

Post by Maciek
Ok made some research. Huge disappointment.
Dammit there should be levitation in this game.
I guess we have to thank Xbox one more time ...
Maciek

yup, they had to limit the crowded towns to a new load cell, so if you jump
over a wall from the outside, or levitate over that wall, all you will see
is a dead town as nothing in it has been loaded. thqt keeps the memeory
requirements low on consoles. so they disabled flying/levitating to hide
that fact

Not just that, flying would also make the puzzles in the Oblivion gates
largely ignorable, and they wouldn't allow that. Bethesda couldn't bear
that a sufficiently powerful mage might just float over their clever
traps and make them irrelevant.

All you need to do is run if you have a reasonably decent athletics or speed
skill. Totally ignore the bad guys and run to the top. Easy peasy and no
levitation necessary. But true that would have made it even easier. I hate it
when you can spot things like this. It ruins the immersion for me to know that
I am not allowed to do something in game because it ruins the designers plans.
They should have left it in and wrote a better game, and perhaps even not
written it for the console!!!

[Memnoch]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:28:50 +1000, "Highlandish"

Post by Highlandish

Post by Maciek
Ok made some research. Huge disappointment.
Dammit there should be levitation in this game.
I guess we have to thank Xbox one more time ...
Maciek

yup, they had to limit the crowded towns to a new load cell, so if you jump
over a wall from the outside, or levitate over that wall, all you will see
is a dead town as nothing in it has been loaded. thqt keeps the memeory
requirements low on consoles. so they disabled flying/levitating to hide
that fact

Consolitis. "More accessible". Pick one, but its still a great game. It could
have been so much more however. <sniff>

[Brendan]

Post by Maciek
Ok made some research. Huge disappointment.
Dammit there should be levitation in this game.
I guess we have to thank Xbox one more time ...
Maciek

I'm so glad I've never played Morrowind. This way I don't have to worry
about any "gameplay features" I may be missing.

At the moment I'm playing as a sneaky wood elf who specializes in
illusion, conjuration and bows. This time through I'm not touching the
main storyline, instead my goal is to become head of the Dark
Brotherhood and the thieves guild. This should take me about as long as
a normal RPG, if not longer. I'm about 1/3 through the Assassins guild
path and I've just started the thieves guild. (I've been playing a lot)

My next game I play I'm going to play a big old Nord specializing in
bashing the living snot out of stuff with a HUGE warhammer. I'll do the
main storyline and the fighters quild with him and I'll probably not
have to do a single thing over again.

That's what I'm enjoying about Oblivion. It's a sandbox with a huge
amount of content. I can play it the way I want and set myself my own
goals. What recent single player RPG out at the moment allows me to do
this? Levitation is a trivial concern not worthy of concern.

[Maciek]

Post by Brendan
Levitation is a trivial concern not worthy of concern.

You say that because you are not playing / not indent to play a mage
character.
And beacuse you did not fly in Morrowind.

Maciek

[Brendan]

Post by Maciek

Post by Brendan
Levitation is a trivial concern not worthy of concern.

You say that because you are not playing / not indent to play a mage
character.

I'm sure I'll get around to playing a mage, sometime... (After my fiance
has left me and my friends all stop calling...)

Post by Maciek
And beacuse you did not fly in Morrowind.

Well as my original post mentioned, I've flown in OBLIVION. Have you
ever had the dream where you're walking along, you jump and you just
don't come down? Well that is what the bug I found gave me in Oblivion.
It was great and the view was awesome.

The ability to levitate would be good but to condemn the game for
something that minor when it has so much going for it is a little short
sighted. There are far bigger negative issues that I'd prefer to see
addressed.

Just don't hold off on buying the game because of the levitation issue.
The game has so much more to offer.

[WDS]

Post by Maciek

Post by Brendan
Levitation is a trivial concern not worthy of concern.

You say that because you are not playing / not indent to play a mage
character.
And beacuse you did not fly in Morrowind.

I just finished the main campaign as a mage. I played Morrowind 100s
of hours. I noticed Leviate was missing (you could never "fly" in
Morrowind) and thought, meh, no big loss.

[Memnoch]

Post by Maciek

Post by Brendan
Levitation is a trivial concern not worthy of concern.

You say that because you are not playing / not indent to play a mage
character.
And beacuse you did not fly in Morrowind.

It has to be said that although it is great fun it is rather like playing
Morrowind Lite with better graphics.

[Marut Escabel]

Post by Brendan

Post by Maciek
Ok made some research. Huge disappointment.
Dammit there should be levitation in this game.
I guess we have to thank Xbox one more time ...
Maciek

I'm so glad I've never played Morrowind. This way I don't have to worry
about any "gameplay features" I may be missing.
At the moment I'm playing as a sneaky wood elf who specializes in
illusion, conjuration and bows. This time through I'm not touching the
main storyline, instead my goal is to become head of the Dark
Brotherhood and the thieves guild. This should take me about as long as
a normal RPG, if not longer. I'm about 1/3 through the Assassins guild
path and I've just started the thieves guild. (I've been playing a lot)
My next game I play I'm going to play a big old Nord specializing in
bashing the living snot out of stuff with a HUGE warhammer. I'll do the
main storyline and the fighters quild with him and I'll probably not
have to do a single thing over again.
That's what I'm enjoying about Oblivion. It's a sandbox with a huge
amount of content. I can play it the way I want and set myself my own
goals. What recent single player RPG out at the moment allows me to do
this? Levitation is a trivial concern not worthy of concern.

Reminder, finishing the Main Quest does not really end the game. You
can go on doing other quests.

--
==== Tecknomage ====
Morrowind & Oblivion
Guild Master, Mages & Fighters Guild
Captain of Blades

[Wolfing]

Post by Brendan

Post by Maciek
Ok made some research. Huge disappointment.
Dammit there should be levitation in this game.
I guess we have to thank Xbox one more time ...
Maciek

I'm so glad I've never played Morrowind. This way I don't have to worry
about any "gameplay features" I may be missing.
At the moment I'm playing as a sneaky wood elf who specializes in
illusion, conjuration and bows. This time through I'm not touching the
main storyline, instead my goal is to become head of the Dark
Brotherhood and the thieves guild. This should take me about as long as
a normal RPG, if not longer. I'm about 1/3 through the Assassins guild
path and I've just started the thieves guild. (I've been playing a lot)
My next game I play I'm going to play a big old Nord specializing in
bashing the living snot out of stuff with a HUGE warhammer. I'll do the
main storyline and the fighters quild with him and I'll probably not
have to do a single thing over again.
That's what I'm enjoying about Oblivion. It's a sandbox with a huge
amount of content. I can play it the way I want and set myself my own
goals. What recent single player RPG out at the moment allows me to do
this? Levitation is a trivial concern not worthy of concern.

That's what I did.
My first character, a pure mage. Did the mage guild quests, the arena
championship, all the non-guild related quests I could find in all the
towns, and finally the main quest.
My second character, a thief. Did the fighter's guild quests, the thief
guild quests and then the assassin's guild quests.
Not thinking of making a 3rd character, I don't want to do stuff I
already did before, so pretty much shelving Oblivion till a big
expansion comes out :) Still, those were some 100 hours or so right
there

[Zackman]

Post by Maciek
Ok made some research. Huge disappointment.
Dammit there should be levitation in this game.
I guess we have to thank Xbox one more time ...

Yeah, it's all the Xbox 360's fault, it wasn't a conscious design decision
or anything like that. Just like there was flying in the PC version of
Morrowind but not the Xbox version. Oh wait, there *was* flying in the Xbox
version! There goes that argument. You kids get off my lawn.

-Z-

[Morgan Sales]

Post by Zackman

Post by Maciek
Ok made some research. Huge disappointment.
Dammit there should be levitation in this game.
I guess we have to thank Xbox one more time ...

Yeah, it's all the Xbox 360's fault, it wasn't a conscious design decision
or anything like that. Just like there was flying in the PC version of
Morrowind but not the Xbox version. Oh wait, there *was* flying in the
Xbox version! There goes that argument. You kids get off my lawn.

Taken from a post by Highlandish:

"yup, they had to limit the crowded towns to a new load cell, so if you jump
over a wall from the outside, or levitate over that wall, all you will see
is a dead town as nothing in it has been loaded. that keeps the memeory
requirements low on consoles. so they disabled flying/levitating to hide
that fact"

Remember that Oblivion is a more complex game than Morrowind.

[Memnoch]

Post by Maciek
Do not tell me that there is no levitation in Oblivion!
Please do not tell me that.
One of the reasons I am playing this game is to fly and sit on the top of
the cathedral, and enjoy the city view.

I suspect there is no levitation spell for one reason and that is doing the
tower quests in Oblivion would be a piece of piss. Even without it though you
can just ignore the baddies and run all the way to the top and hardly take a
hit. I've tried it and it works. Levitation would be fun though but to be
honest with acrobatics high enough you can leap on top of houses where you
can't be got at anyway. But its true, flying around the cities would have been
nice but then again it would just show up the game engine. You can see what it
does to the outside world when in a city in Leyawiin or whatever its called.
If you are careful you can jump to the top of one of the highest buildings and
look over the city battlements. There is hardly anything out there. I once saw
the reverse at Skingrad. I left the city but it didn't load the outside
terrain properly and actually let me walk back inside the city. It was kind of
surreal, like a ghost town. It was the view you would see when overlooking the
city from the outside and nothing works. Anyway, what I mean by my inane
dribblings is that Levitation is not in the game because of game mechanics,
nothing more as far as I can see.

[Marut Escabel]

On the subject of why Oblivion has no levitation I never considered
the game engine, until now.

Now I remember Morrowind expansion Tribunal is the same way, you
cannot levitate into Mournhold, you can only teleport. Why? Because
Mournhold is outside the normal Morrowind game-world, it's a
game-world unto itself. Mournhold is like going into a building, the
environment must be loaded and is separate from the game-world
outside.

Oblivion, each city is an environment that must be loaded. So you
cannot have levitation because that would mean having the ability to
fly over town walls.

--
==== Tecknomage ====
Morrowind & Oblivion
Guild Master, Mages & Fighters Guild
Captain of Blades

[chainbreaker]

Post by Brendan
I have no idea what I did. I bought a painted horse in Bruma and rode
it through the wilderness back down the mountain. I dismounted to go
look at an Elven ruin, ran down hill then ran above my horse.I found
I was stuck at the same height when I ran back down to my horse. When
running "Down" the mountain I'd stay at the same level in the air. I
got an awesome view for a while but was then perforated by arrows
fired from below. When I died I proceeded to fall back to the ground.
I have no idea how that happened. The view from up there is awesome
though...

Sounds to me like a version of a Daggerfall holdover--you evidently found a
"crack in the world" and were walking atop it. Sometimes in Daggerfall
though, you'd never manage to find a way back in.

[Brendan]

Post by chainbreaker

Post by Brendan
I have no idea what I did. I bought a painted horse in Bruma and rode
it through the wilderness back down the mountain. I dismounted to go
look at an Elven ruin, ran down hill then ran above my horse.I found
I was stuck at the same height when I ran back down to my horse. When
running "Down" the mountain I'd stay at the same level in the air. I
got an awesome view for a while but was then perforated by arrows
fired from below. When I died I proceeded to fall back to the ground.
I have no idea how that happened. The view from up there is awesome
though...

Sounds to me like a version of a Daggerfall holdover--you evidently found a
"crack in the world" and were walking atop it. Sometimes in Daggerfall
though, you'd never manage to find a way back in.

I wish I'd had the sense of mind to save the game before I was killed so
I could take screenshots at a later date. At the time I was just
gobsmacked though. That Oblivion graphics engine is absolutely amazing.

[drocket]

Post by Brendan
I wish I'd had the sense of mind to save the game before I was killed so
I could take screenshots at a later date. At the time I was just
gobsmacked though. That Oblivion graphics engine is absolutely amazing.

If you want to get back up there to take a look around, just bring up
the console (tilde key) and type 'tcl' to turn off clipping. You'll
be able to walk through walls and fly. Use 'tcl' again to turn it
off.

And yeah, it is pretty up there.

[Memnoch]

Post by chainbreaker

Post by Brendan
I have no idea what I did. I bought a painted horse in Bruma and rode
it through the wilderness back down the mountain. I dismounted to go
look at an Elven ruin, ran down hill then ran above my horse.I found
I was stuck at the same height when I ran back down to my horse. When
running "Down" the mountain I'd stay at the same level in the air. I
got an awesome view for a while but was then perforated by arrows
fired from below. When I died I proceeded to fall back to the ground.
I have no idea how that happened. The view from up there is awesome
though...

Sounds to me like a version of a Daggerfall holdover--you evidently found a
"crack in the world" and were walking atop it. Sometimes in Daggerfall
though, you'd never manage to find a way back in.

That happened all the time in dungeons in Daggerfall. However if you knew how
to exploit it you could short circuit large chunks of a dungeon by leaping
outside the world into the void and walking on top of the passageways.

[WDS]

Post by Memnoch
That happened all the time in dungeons in Daggerfall. However if you knew how
to exploit it you could short circuit large chunks of a dungeon by leaping
outside the world into the void and walking on top of the passageways.

What was exciting was when you tried to jump from the top of one
passageway to another you could see below. if you missed you ended up
int he "world ocean".

[Highlandish]

Post by WDS

Post by Memnoch
That happened all the time in dungeons in Daggerfall. However if you
knew how to exploit it you could short circuit large chunks of a
dungeon by leaping outside the world into the void and walking on
top of the passageways.

What was exciting was when you tried to jump from the top of one
passageway to another you could see below. if you missed you ended up
int he "world ocean".

i jumped in a cave and hit "sea level". i had to hit TCL before i reached
the bottom as i didnt save for a while and didnt want to loose that progress

[chainbreaker]

Post by Memnoch
That happened all the time in dungeons in Daggerfall. However if you
knew how to exploit it you could short circuit large chunks of a
dungeon by leaping outside the world into the void and walking on top
of the passageways.

Yeah, I tried that--and it says something about how much fun <not> a lot of
Daggerfall's dungeons were that one would actually try it, especially
considering there was a good chance you wouldn't be able to find a way back
"into" the world again. :-)

[Memnoch]

Post by chainbreaker

Post by Memnoch
That happened all the time in dungeons in Daggerfall. However if you
knew how to exploit it you could short circuit large chunks of a
dungeon by leaping outside the world into the void and walking on top
of the passageways.

Yeah, I tried that--and it says something about how much fun <not> a lot of
Daggerfall's dungeons were that one would actually try it, especially
considering there was a good chance you wouldn't be able to find a way back
"into" the world again. :-)

As long as you were careful jumping around and could make it back to the exit
you could position yourself so you could click the exit through the ceiling!
:-)

[chainbreaker]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 16:13:26 -0400, "chainbreaker"

Post by chainbreaker

Post by Memnoch
That happened all the time in dungeons in Daggerfall. However if you
knew how to exploit it you could short circuit large chunks of a
dungeon by leaping outside the world into the void and walking on
top of the passageways.

Yeah, I tried that--and it says something about how much fun <not> a
lot of Daggerfall's dungeons were that one would actually try it,
especially considering there was a good chance you wouldn't be able
to find a way back "into" the world again. :-)

As long as you were careful jumping around and could make it back to
the exit you could position yourself so you could click the exit
through the ceiling! :-)

I don't remember if I ever did that or not. Probably did though, since I
tried about everything else. One thing I do remember is missing on during
some of those leaps and ending up in the void. :-)