Skyrim Discovery ends with a ten-year mystery

by

A ten-year debate between The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim fans are finally done, courtesy of a former Bethesda developer who worked on the game. This week, Bethesda has surprised fans with the revelation of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition, the latest version of the game for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X with lots of new content. That said, this was not the only surprise Skryim fans have gotten it this week. Coming to Twitter, the aforementioned developer, Joel Burgress, finally confirmed the suspicion of many fans, which is that foxes lead players to treasure themselves, but not by design.

In a long Twitter thread, Burgess explains that when gamers began debating this theory shortly after the release, the game’s development team quickly launched an “informal investigation” to deduce who made the foxes do it. That said, what this investigation found was that no one did it. Not only did no one confess, but there was nothing about it in the game’s scripts. So what was going on? Well, the team finally realized that it involved an artificial intelligence navigation technology called Navmesh, “an invisible 3D sheet of polygons that is placed around the world, telling AI where it can and can’t to go”.

“In most situations, you see the AI ​​decide what to do (run against the player, hide on the cover, etc.), use navmesh to make a path, and navigate that path,” Burgess said. “Foxes are no different. But their artificial intelligence is very simplified: they can basically * just * run away. If you scare a fox, run away. So the foxes run away. Why would they run away to the treasure? That’s where it’s done. interesting “.

Burgess continued:

“If you are near an AI, it is in” High Process “” or is the most elegant and CPU intensive route. It uses the full navigation network and will do things like visual and vision distance controls. By contrast, there is also “Low Process”, which is used for things like NPCs who travel a trade route around the world. These are only updated every several minutes and the position is tracked very loosely. The bandit who stabbed you in the face, however, is running navigation stuff many times per second. There’s a kind of “middle ground” for the characters nearby, but they didn’t need the complex battle path. Because of the way the fox’s AI worked (always run away!), It basically ONLY uses this process. This is where you understand how Skyrim uses navmesh. Bands from the outside world have simple navmesh. It is not necessary to add many details in a space with basic topography, little clutter or with few possibilities of combat. Therefore, the desert = small number of large triangles. However, when you come across something like a campground, navmesh is much more detailed. The added visual detail means more navmesh details and, if we put NPCs of any kind, we also tend to add even more details. Therefore, Points of Interest = large number of small triangles. Do you see where this is going? The Fox does not try to move away from 100 meters; is trying to get 100 * triangles * away. Do you know where it is easy to find 100 triangles? The fields / ruins / etc with which we filled the world and filled them with treasures to reward your exploration. So foxes don’t take you to a treasure, but the way they behave leads them to areas that tend to have a treasure, because booty POIs have other attributes (many small naval mesh triangles) that chase foxes. . For the players, though, it’s the same. “

Burgess goes on to point out that none of this was intentional, but is simply the product of the bubbling boiler of superimposed systems.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is available on almost every modern platform you want to play on, including the latest PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles, as well as PCs. Whatever platform you choose to play on, be sure to follow all the foxes you see.

.Source