Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, collected by NWVault (http://nwvault.ign.com). Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Derek French, Technical Producer</font>

Put It In A Box (http://forums.bioware.com//viewpost.html?topic=377769&post=3114096&forum=84&highlight=)
<hr />When it gets released i recon Bioware should stick DA in a box, a bit like the NWN's one. This would allow for a larger manual and maybe some area maps etc. I am fed up with all games these days coming in DVD cases, there is just no variety. I want it to stand out on my games shelf like the NWN box does.<hr />The Developer has absolutely no control over this. This is completely up to the Publisher, which we do not have at this time.

<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Brenon Holmes, Programmer</font>

Scalable Models discussion (http://forums.bioware.com//viewpost.html?topic=375073&post=3113995&forum=84&highlight=)
I have no idea where you're getting the idea that we only include things that are for the OC. There are loads of stuff both in NWN and (I'm sure) DA that will be for mod-makers that we will probably never use in the OC... so the intimation otherwise is frankly, quite insulting... especially since some of us put in quite a bit of extra work just so that you folks can have a specific feature that in most cases isn't very useful for us.

Don't even get me started on all the features the Live Team has implemented...

I'll listen to you if you're civil and state your opinions logically and thoughtfully. Anything else is more than likely to draw annoyance and a pass on your post. http://forums.bioware.com/_global/images/smiles/icon_rolleyes.gif

<hr />Posted By: PIPBoy3000

Since we have your ear for the moment, what's the cost of adding additional animations to cover a range of heights? For example, having a "kiss high", "kiss medium", and "kiss low"? Would there be any possibility of allowing animations to be loaded on the fly? That way adding animations is mostly a disk space issue and not as much a performance issue as long as there's not a lot in use at any one time.

I worry that having a more realistic animation system where people of arbitrary heights are grabbing levers and such will almost certainly require a RT IK system. One of the problems with ever more realistic characters is that people expect the animations to look realistic as well.<hr />As to the rest, we're currently playing with a system that might let you load animations in on the fly for any object.

As for producing variants on an animation, I'm not very certain. I know we can get a lot of animations from mo-cap as they're quite easy to generate... however I'm not certain how it compares to cost and what exactly *can* be mo-capped and what cannot. So, we don't know yet. http://forums.bioware.com/_global/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif

Scalable Models discussion (http://forums.bioware.com//viewpost.html?topic=375073&post=3114023&forum=84&highlight=)
Well... we were talking about mo-capping eyeballs and pupil dilation a little earlier... http://forums.bioware.com/_global/images/smiles/icon_razz.gif