May 2004
Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Sunday, May 30, 2004 - 16:44 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. 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.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Faces In Games
All I can say is that after using facial expressions in Jade, I wouldn't want to miss them. You replace the "*angry*, *laughs*, *hahaha*" - style emotes from the dialog and instead select the appropriate "emotion" for the line and it really makes a difference in the game.
Dongles
Hang on a sec... why is it a "failed" idea? I've seen many commercial applications using that system. As I noted earlier, it does begin to look silly when you have 4+ parallel or serial dongles connected in tandem, but with USB... it really shouldn't matter. They're small, inobtrusive, and can fit on a keychain. The pricepoint is an issue, however, I've seen them in the ~$15 range for quantities of 1,000... imagine 10,000 or 100,000.. that'd have to make a huge dent in the price-point.Don't forget, the idea of "copy protection" isn't to prevent it from being cracked/hacked/etc., rather to make it difficult for the majority of the public to participate in.If the game itself was designed to employ the protection, then wouldn't that prevent a lot of the problems that generally occur with publisher-based protection?
Because you just need to write a driver that simulates the dongled device on the USB port or to remove the USB check from the main executable. You can't afford to put significant code on the dongle as it will degrade performance (as will highly complex encryptiong), and games do not have a lot of CPU time to spend on this. Finally, you need to put the decryped information into memory somehow if you want to avoid constant, performance degrading access to the USB device. It's easy to listen to data on the USB bus, it's easy to read process memory on your computer and a skilled person can find whatever calls to protection routines on that USB chip and rip them out of your executable. Even if you put parts of your program code onto that chip (which is unlikely for games because of performance and maintenance concerns - patching your game would become a bad bad nightmare), it will still end up unencrypted in your PCs memory at some point - and someone is either going to grap the executable image from there and create an unencrypted one or write a driver that emulates the responses from that dongle.My point is: it will be about as hard/easy for Joe Average to find a crack for USB dongles than for any other offline protection scheme.That said, it's expensive, about as annony as changing CDs , will probably cause another layer of potential incompatibilites with various hardware devices / exoctic usb chips, multi function hubs, etc - no you'd pay more for your games because of manufacturing cost but it wouldn't solve a single of those problems. Instead of changing CDs, you'd have to change dongles, that is less damage resistant than a CD can.
Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales
Seriously, if you (or your distributor) spends tons of cash on developing things like unique serial imprints (or hires a third party to do this) on CD/DVD disks and the involved research to come up with this and on customer support because the crap isn't working anymore again + replacement of disks because people are simply not aware that their drives are too old...And the alternative is so simple, so elegant. Sure its more difficult to produce nice addon material and multiple handbooks and cloth-maps. Ok, not as easy to ship because a simply bigger/heavier case, but actually WELCOMED by the players...And what do we get ? DVD-cases... thin, noninformative handbooks... good thing NWN came in a normal box...*crap*No-cd patches take usually 2 days to show up. Playing through the game to find out if contend from the handbooks is needed and WHERE (of course its somwhere in the games code, good luck in searching - as long as you don't use the same sheme for every game, but nobody would be that dumb, right?) usually takes much longer, EXTREMELY long in the case of game with the depth of ultimaIV for an example.Someone from Atari wants to save a few pennys again i guess ? THERE IS YOUR COPY-PROTECTION SOULUTION. They can ignore it as much as they want, its still the best way to do it, period.
Back in the "good old days", piracy was as rampant as it is today. Only a small portion of dedicated game cares for nice boxes, manuals and trinkets, the majority of people care just for the game, regardless what is in it. The internet has made it easier to get pirated games, but nice manuals, cloth maps or code wheels or whatever will not help significantly. But again, the discussion on this board is mood, publishers require the copy protection and this is very unlikely to change. I can see them embrace DRM or other verification schemes in the future if they get a significant market penetration (i.e. as part of a new windows operating system), but till then, it is likely that we will be stuck with whatever is available in the realm of software based protection. If you do not like that, I'd suggest to contact the PR department of your favourite publishers and lobby against it.
Tim Smith, Tools Programmer
Beta volunteer!
From the FAQ:
1.15: When will Dragon Age be released?A release date for Dragon Age has yet to be announced.
No release date has been announced. We have not said the game will be released in 2005.
Scott Meadows, Programmer
Scripting language - OO?
Does that mean that we'll get GetCameraFacing in DA? Along with SetCameraPosition and GetCameraPosition of course?
I don't know. My statememnt was that of a principle nature.You will have to wait.
Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer
Dragon Age Licensing
Suck it up David. Write the show and in the First Episode Kill Darcy Pajak as the bad guy.
Yeah Pajak could be Deekin's nemesis. An evil vicious and dim-witted Kobold. Craig.
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IPLYE.OB Down to 0.045
Posted Saturday, May 29, 2004 - 17:02 CET by chevalier
Interplay shares have further fallen and the current price is $0.045 per share.
Check Interplay's summary at Yahoo Finance.
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Interplay Keeps Lagging Behind with Paychecks
Posted Saturday, May 29, 2004 - 17:00 CET by chevalier
According to No Mutants Allowed, checks haven't been issued and Herve Caen won't answer any calls. Here's a snip:
IPLY was supposed to give out payment checks to the IPLY employess today, but according to our sources those weren't issued today. Herve isn't returning any calls or taking any, guess he was out driving his expensive car or golfing..
Read the whole thing at No Mutants Allowed.
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Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Saturday, May 29, 2004 - 16:43 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. 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.
Scott Greig, Project Director/Producer
Voice-over
OK, here are my thoughts on the matter.
One of the ways of looking at things is to treat text, VO and animations as information channels. Trust me this will make sense shortly
In the BG days, our writers had to convey all story and characterizations through character dialog. If they wanted to give the impression that the character was angry, they had to write angry words:
"No! damn you".
They didn't even have the option that a novelist has of adding non dialog descriptors:
"No!" he said angrly.
I don't think that very many people realized how much of a challenge this was and of course one of the side effects of this type of writing is that it can become quite "wordy".
When you have full VO like in Kotor, you now have a second channel to convey information about the player:
"No!" (VOICE DIRECTION: Shouts in angry voice)
If you have full VO and a sophisticated animation system, you now have three channels of information
"..." (ANIMATION DIRECTION: Snarls and shakes head)
The net effect of having this systems is it allows the writer more flexibility. It will also have the effect of reducing the total number of words, but not necessarily the number of dialog options.
David Gaider, Designer
Romance Options: A poll from the Community
# 2. I don't think same-sex relationships are that viable, even in real life. I am so going to get burned, roasted, and flamed for not only possibly offending many gay couples out there but also doing a serious nose-dive off the edge of this topic and off into Morality and Ethics Land, but here goes:I do not think same-sex relationships are right. I mean, look at our physical genitalia. Men are meant to be with women. Of course, if a person is gay, he's gay, and I can respect his/her choice to be gay. But same-sex relationships are just . . . *shudders* Where would the world be in everyone was gay? We would never have any kids!! The human race would be extinct!!!!
I've been watching this thread with some amusement, but on this I have to comment.If the point of the romances were to procreate, I might concede that you have a point. It isn't, however... it's about love. Say what you like, there's no way you can claim that gay people don't love each other.I've always maintained that gay romance has no place in a Teen-rated game and not much of a place in fantasy in general... but given the proper rating and a mature enough story theme, I'd certainly be willing to give writing one a whirl.The only thing I will not do, ever, is simply insert a script so an NPC romances either sex the same way. The world wouldn't see it as such and neither should the NPC. That's not to suggest that gay couples don't love each other the same way as everyone else (thank God Alberta will soon join most of the rest of Canada in recognizing marriage equality), but that if I were given the task to include such a romance in the game I'd want to give it the treatment it deserves.Don't like that idea? As with every game we've made with romances, there is always the option to simply not pursue it. I personally see it as a goal to strive to make the romance stories deeper and more believable as time goes on, whether they are gay-themed or not, but since we don't force it upon any players I see no call for any players to dictate that they should not exist in the first place.And that's my two cents.
Books!
David: By asking how long the books were in Morrowind, I take it you haven't played Morrowind
No, I did play it. I simply did not get very far through it before I set it aside.
it seems that Gromnir is out too far on the fringe to be palatable to the gamer masses.
Gah. Okay, apparently you're not going to let that one go. I said some of the things you were suggesting were curiously high concept, Grom. Not all. And you are certainly not alone. I apologize.
Voice-over
Ooooooo... I *loved* the Buffy musical episode! A jazzy demon casts a spell that forces everyone to express themselves in musical numbers...
Hmmmm...
Books!
Since this is a world of our own creation and there's bound to be plenty of information in the history and docs that we really can't squeeze into the game, yeah, I'd imagine we have a lot of resource material to use if we so choose. I guess it's just a matter of who's going to write all that out. How long are the books in Morrowind, incidentally?
more work for dave
nevertheless, as 'tween blind faith and insane rants, we will take the insane rants. at least sometimes something good may come from the rant.
I'm not so sure about that. The problem with both those things is that they are not very constructive. And it is only by being constructive that some actual good may come out of it. "Good" as in affecting the design of the game by actually convincing someone who works on it, I mean. If someone's "good" is just to be the center of attention for a while or feeling better about getting whatever off their chest, then yeah I suppose an insane rant is just dandy.
Voice-over
BTW, David, is music really related with sound? Wouldn't that be separate??
Is that a trick question? Normally we would out-source the actual music creation (to someone like Jeremy Soule, for instance), but the insertion of all music and sounds and VO is the responsibility of the sound department. Which is, essentially, David Chan.
Linux client?
Mr Georg, you're now forced to reply about this thread as it is obvious that you now have took knowledge of it
There is no reply to make. We are not ready to talk about whether or not there will be any ports for the game at this point.
Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer
Gender differences
There will be no gender differences in Dragon Age. Does that mean that men can have breasts and women can have beards?
hardy har har My last post was a bit short so I'll expand on it a little; I meant that as far as the base rules go gender will make no diffrence. There will be some diffrences with romance options and NPC's you meet.
Derek French, Live Team Producer
Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales
I understand the spirit of what drunkle is saying, but the consequences of something like this would be most people thinking that they have now paid there "warezing tax" and are free to pirate all games with hell-bent abandon.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Scripting language - OO?
Well, you've answered Enigmatic's question, I suspect, but there is another problem with calling GetEnteringObject in a script. You can't use the same script in an OnEnter script or a OnDamaged script.How about a function like: GetTriggeringObject, or maybe a GetPrimaryTriggeringObject and GetSecondaryTriggeringObject. The meaning of these functions would then vary depending on where the script was placed.I can't really argue that this would be more "modern", though. It's simpler and more elegant, but it might also be more confusing for a newbie scripter. Perhaps you'd want a #define GetEnteringObject GetPrimaryTriggeringObjectsomewhere.
actually, if you want to, you can easily use one script for all events. Just message everything to a single OnUserDefined event and do the code thereint nEvent = GetUserDefinedEventNumber()
if (nEvent == 1){
oTarget = GetEnteringObject
}else if (nEvent == 2){
oTarget = GetExitingObject
}
and so on.
Scripting language - OO?
I can understand the desire to reduce the retraining required of your developers and not re-inventing the wheel now that you have a fairly bedded down script language like NWScript.With this being the case I would say your main goal should be an evolution of that scripting language where you reduce the flaws of the original (lack of arrays, no parameters, missing functions) while bringing the language up into a newer generation.This whole concept of having to execute functions like "GetEnteringObject" inside a script just to retrieve a parameter of what triggered the call in the first place flies in the face of most modern programming languages.
You need to call GetEnteringObject about 1 time per trigger. So what would be the advantage of typingoEnter = this.EnteringObjectto oEnter = GetEnteringObjectthere is no advantage to it. Yes, it looks more modern and such, but that's hardly anything that would justify framework rewrites and retraining people.
D&D or not D&D? THAT is the question.
I think the question is: Why is D&D so "good"?I mean, does everybody like D&D just because it's popular and/or because it's the only (or almost only) the rule system they've played with? Or does it actually have advantages over other game systems?
It is a simplistic system that still offers enough complexity to simulate/resolve most situations that come up using just a few dice and a piece of paper, and that makes it beautiful.
But then again it doesn't translate to well from PnP on the computer, at least not for the real time based games BioWare makes. If you make a turn based game it works fairly well, but not for a real time framework. Also, by translating a system tailored to the mathematical capacity of the average human mind, you may sacrifice things you could present better in a computer system that can handle highly complex calculations in a blink. (Through humans like systems they understand, so making it overly complex might not be a good idea as well).
Also, and that's true with any licensed system, when working with a license, you need to make changes to gameplay in order to ensure license integrity. I.e. if the license holder establishes that there is no kissing (or further things along that line) in the licensed world because they are not appropriate for the company's target audience or public image - you can't have romances that end beyond holding hands and walking into the sunset. Another example: In D&D it is established that there are certain classes and what their properties are (i.e. A paladin gets his special mount). In NWN there was no horseback riding, so the paladin would not get this special mount - but we could also not invent anything new to balance out the loss of this ability, because that would have violated the spirit of the paladin classe and thus damaged the license. There are countless other examples like this, often originating from either engine limitations or design decisions (i.e. to use a real time system, allow multiplayer without DM, etc). With our own IP, we can make sure that classes useful within the abilities of the game engine.
Of course licenses come with a benefit as well, i.e. a certain amount of people know the brand and are probably more likely to buy your game when it makes use that license (be it StarWars, D&D or whatever) and don't having to worry about the background for your game, as you have most likely a huge reference library to access. Don't get me wrong, it is cool to work with a license (which geek hasn't dreamt of making a StarWars or D&D game) and if the project is "make a cool StarWars RPG", you are happy to work with a license - but if the project is about "A character shaping he the fate world nobody has been to before" a license is probably not a good idea, as licenses usually don't mix with permanent changes to the gameworld and new worlds, gods, races radially different from things that have been established before. So, working with a license has pros and cons and it needs to be evaluated on a per project basis. For DA it was decided that we wanted to do "our" world in the way we want it to be, tell "our" story with as much as creative freedom for our writers as possible and that rules out using an established license.
Scripting language - OO?
Your core game framework needs to be built from the start to support a certain size of game areas, modules, worlds, whatever you call it.
A game that supports 1-500 players or 1-1000 areas requires different structuring / systems than a game that runs with 1-20 or 1-50 players or 1-100 areas. It's not as simple as saying: "Build a game that scales indefinitly", because systems that have "unlimited borders" are more complex, and cost significantly more to build and maintain than systems that are build to run well within certain limits and you might very well want to use the additional manpower for things that are more beneficial to your core audience, because those are the ones you are selling the most copies to.
MMORPG architecture is very different from architecture you would use in a story driven game, even if it has multiplayer.
Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales
you are wrong, the picture is from the normal version - that i bought. it costed 70sFr. at that time in switzerland (80 DM or 40US$).now talking about the dragon edition pal...
Normal Edition:-Ultima IX install CD-Ultima IX play CD-Ultima Online: The Second Age Game CD (with one month free membership)-The "Journal" booklet (all about the ultima universe, the avatar, history and so on)-The "Book of Magic" booklet (all about the magic in the ultima universe)-The Install booklet (the regular game booklet)-8 Virtue Tarot Cards-40cm x 40cm Cloth Map of Britannia (i guess made out sinthetic fibres, because it looks and feels very silky)-"Gobelin of Time" (a mirrorfinish piece of paperboard, with the gobelin of time on one side, and help about the game controls on the other)
Dragon Edition:-all the content from the normal version-the "journal" and "the book of magic" have a sinthetic leather cover-an ankh pendant that can be attached to a necklace and worn-the ultima collection CD that contains Ultimas I through VIII, including Ultima VII add ons: Forge of Virtue and Silver Seed-The Ultima IX Soundtrack-A high quality illustration reprint of the ascending avatar-a certificate from richard garriotwhat do you say eh?
I wasn't aware of that, guess that's for the US version only. I saw a "Normal Edition" a friend of mine bought, but it didn't have anything like the stuff in the Dragon Edition I bought - probably the usual "European Version", sigh. However, the trend towards cutting distribution and manufacturing costs by the publishers remains. Most games in europe come in DVD boxes already, while the US market to have settled for those smaller cardboard boxe for now - not much space for anything special in there (unless you create a special edition).
Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales
that's probably because FADE (that was the name of the protection system) was never confirmed to be active in the game by anyone else than Codemasters. In the end, it seemed like a huge marketing gag to scare off pirates. Try a google on that matter, i am sure you'll find tons of discussions as to wheter FADE was in the game or not.Interesting concept, but i don't think they really implemented it.
I came to the conclusion that it was a nice marketing ploy. It has a drawback however - people will start to blame any gameplay problem they have on faulty copy protection (even if there is one). And even if there was a copy protection that would work that way in your game, you would get swamped with technical support requests by people who were running it off nocd cracks, etc and found gameplay deteriorating (most likely not even knowing why). So while the whole thing sounds like a good idea on the first glance, it has the potential to cause far more support trouble than worth it.
Scott Meadows, Programmer
Scripting language - OO?
I have only one simple request for the scripting language. Symmetry.By that I mean - if we can GET a value, let us SET that value.Carl
Sorry Carl,I will have to disagree a bit with you on this one.In MOST cases I agree you should be able to Get and Set, however, there are certainly cases where you are only allowed to perform a Get.I will say that where there is a SET you absolutely have to have a GET but not the reverse.
Toolset GUI
Wow Gecon,
I am not quite clear on what you want the toolset to do.
That is what I love about this community
PASSION
There is no lack of passion here.
Keep the posts and ideas coming....
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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Saturday, May 29, 2004 - 16:01 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. 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.
Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer
Red Dragon Disciple:
There were two separate bugs that would make RDD's illegal. Both have been fixed in the latest patch 1.62).
The first:
Your character would become illegal at RDD level 10. This was fixed and the fix will retroactively fix already existing characters.
The second:
If you lost a level of RDD at a level where you had received a stat gain, the stat gain wasn't getting properly removed. This was fixed, so that the stat gains are now correctly removed. This fix does not retroactively fix existing characters, but will stop new RDD's characters from becoming illegal.
Haste:
There are currently no plans to change the way that Haste & AutoQuicken work.
Dwarven War Axe:
Quote: Can i find Dwarven War/battle Axe(s) in neverwinter nights?
The Dwarven War Axe was added as a new weapon type in the HotU expansion pack. You can find them in the HotU campain, or make them in the toolset.
Don Moar, Tools Programmer
Screenshots:
Don't forget - you can press F11 to hide pretty much all the UI panels so you can get an unobstructed view of your area.
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Atari Cuts Down on PC Games
Posted Saturday, May 29, 2004 - 2:25 CET by chevalier
According to an article in Financial Times, Infogrames, whose US subsidiary is Atari, is going to reduce the percentage of PC games from 25% to 20%. A year ago it was 35%, so we have every right to expect further progress in this falling tendency. However, they're also going to focus on Dungeons and Dragons and since they aren't going to abandon the PC sector altogether perhaps we will still hear from them in the future. Here's a snip:
Mr Bonnell said he plans to cut the number of releases by 20 per cent to enable Infogrames to invest more in its main franchises such as Dungeons and Dragons and Dragon Ball Z. "Why bother having 20 per cent more titles when they don't reach the threshold of profitability?" he asked.
Sales of games for PCs, which represented 35 per cent two years ago, should fall from a quarter to a fifth this year although Mr Bonnell said he wanted to remain in the market, which could benefit from the future take-off of online gaming.
Read the rest at Financial Times.
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Interplay Creditor List at Raging Bull
Posted Saturday, May 29, 2004 - 2:16 CET by chevalier
Raging Bull have posted an articled copied from Orange County Registry. It is, basically, a list of Interplay's creditors. Here's a snip:
IRVINE – PC-game developer Interplay Entertainment Corp. is running out of cash and may not be able to continue operating, according to company filings.
Two employees have filed complaints with the state because of bounced paychecks. The company also faces a lawsuit from its landlord seeking three months of unpaid rent, plus other lawsuits from entertainment companies that say the Irvine-based company owes them money. An additional $179,000 is owed in payroll taxes and penalties, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Read the whole thing at Raging Bull.
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Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Friday, May 28, 2004 - 22:53 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. 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.
David Gaider, Designer
more work for dave
Cynicism is very safe. If the game is bad, everything he's said looks justified. If it isn't, then obviously all the kvetching did some good. Win-win situation. It's combining that with an inability to understand that we (meaning all of us here) might in fact be okay with him not liking the game that makes it irritating.
Voice-over
Because V-O is expensive and time-consuming.
But, as I already said (and was apparently ignored, because apparently what would I know about such things?), it is not the same people who write who do VO. The time being spent is being spent elsewhere.So less VO does not equal a longer, deeper story. At best, the money could be spent elsewhere... more game sounds and music, likely, since that's sound-related. If you want less VO, do it on that premise than on the fallacy that you'd somehow have more dialogue.
Non-Player Characters (NPCs)
You could do a limited version like this in a game, but making it as open-ended as you are describing it would be... pretty hard, to say the least. Just trying to account for the one relationship you describe would take a lot of effort in order to script it and have all the paths written ahead of time (since the writing must be necessarily linear all paths must be fully developed even if the player only chooses one... therein lies the bulk of the work.)
Barbie & Ken ?
I'm all for customization, but there's a reason why the non-beautiful portraits were almost universally not used by players. Players like their characters to be beautiful. A generalization, yes, for which there are always exceptions, but one that you and I both know is largely true when you look at the issue objectively. It's not just us forcing our desire for beautiful characters upon you all. That said, the preference would be for that level of customization to exist anyway for the sake of NPC variety even if nothing else. But I think that kind of consideration is usually secondary. Maybe that shouldn't be the case? A point to argue, I suppose.
Voice-over
The trouble with full VO is that the writers will find themselves suddenly limited to what they can write. For example, specific references to the PCs race/gender/class etc. will have to be avoided as each change would require different VO. What would have been a simple engine-handled substitution becomes expensive multiple VO recordings.
This is true. However, read ahead... This is not necessarily true. It was not true in KotOR, for instance, and for a very good reason. Would you believe that KotOR had a first draft? It was a completely written game at one point, with the shortest dialogue we could possibly get away with because we were under a very draconian word count limit due to the cost of VO. It was also terrible. Awful. If a character had more than one line it, out of necessity, both introduced itself and gave it's quest by the time the second line was done. When you have a 10,000-word limit on a chapter, though, there's not much wiggle room.And the Powers That Be acknowledged the problem. That version of KotOR was scrapped and we started over... with complete carte blanche to write dialogues as long as we felt were necessary. I think it showed in KotOR's writing and we're doing DA the same way. Indeed, we're actually going out of our way to make extra paths the standard.And while we can't do character names, we *do* intend to do such references as he/she and him/her, only sparingly. As you can imagine, doing one of those requires two seperate lines, but when you have another line for an elf and one for a nobleman and one for a barbarian and... well, you get the picture... then it doesn't seem like such a big deal.In short, I would agree that VO can be a huge limiting factor on the writing... but only when it is done cheaply. If the Powers That Be are willing to put the writing first and the VO second there really shouldn't be a problem (beyond having no NPC ever actually say the player's name, which is a bit of a trick to get around... but they didn't do it in KotOR, either, and I don't think it was actually missed.) It should also be noted that less VO does not equate to more writing/more story. Us writers do not work on VO, so it's not as if having less VO means more time for us to write.
Hey, DA Devs ... what have you been reading?
What do you have against spellfire? It's certainly better than you make "The White Gold Wielder" sound, and better than a lot of other books too!
Oooo I don't know if I should get started. "White Gold Wielder", while depressing, is still at least well-written. "Spellfire" reads like a bad transcript of the kind of D&D campaign I had when I was twelve.
I agree that "On a Pale Horse" is great though, along with the rest of the books in that series.
Really? I found the Time book moderately good and the ones after that pretty poor. I heard the last book about Evil was good but I didn't read it at that point.I remember really liking Piers Anthony's "Split Infinity" series, especially the way the adepts were set up and their system of magic... very cool. Even though that series exemplifies all the annoying tics that Anthony has (mass nakedness, clueless main hero ends up sleeping with everything... in this case, even his horse... I swear Piers Anthony is such a perv...)
Hey, DA Devs ... what have you been reading?
I thought the "A Man of his Word" series by Dave Duncan was great. I just started reading "the Gilded Chain" recently (also by him) which I hear is excellent (it's been recommended to me by several other designers). I really disliked the Thomas Covenant "White Gold Wielder" series, though more because of the man's complete passiveness rather than his whining per se. Seven books and it took until the final book for him to actually do anything. It was also relentlessly depressing, and while the "Hope, Memory and Sorrow" series by Tad Williams (of which "To Green Angel Tower" was mentioned above) was similar in tone I actually found it enjoyable. Except maybe for that interminable section in the tunnels underneath the castle... oh, god, I never want to read that part ever again so long as I live.
I stopped reading the "Wheel of Time" series about half-way through the "Path of Daggers". Just... no. I swear every single woman in that series is one sentence away from 'boxing your ears'. I think Robert Jordan has a thing about aggressive women. This series actually influenced DA's story a lot... in that "I think that's in the Wheel of Time series" was a statement that defeated a proposed plot point instantly and irrevocably. I confess to liking Peirs Anthony's "Magic of Xanth" series, too. Mainly the first trilogy, though. After "Dragon on a Pedestal" it became completely unreadable. Or I grew up, one of the two. He probably was the author who most influenced me while I was growing up, though, which makes me a bit sad. I never did get why everyone had to run around naked at least once in every novel of his. "On a Pale Horse" still stands out of all of his books, though, even if it isn't fantasy. I know there are relatively obscure fantasy books that I've read and enjoyed recently that I should recommend, but I forget now. Grrr. Oh well. I will go on record, though, by saying that "Spellfire" is the worst fantasy book I have read in my entire life. And that's saying a lot. Don't try to read it to find out if I'm correct, just trust me.
EDIT: Just remembered one, a duology of all things: "The Mirror Of Her Dreams" and "A Man Rides Through", both by Stephen R. Donaldson of "White Gold Wielder" infamy. I forgave him after those two.
Thieve's Cant in Dragon Age?
Not that we would particularly want to do a Narlen Darkwalk NPC, good or no.
more work for dave
I didn't find it annoying at all. I found it as being normal for a dungeon crawling. I mean haven't you guys ever done so in PnP gaming?
Indeed. We would say, "We want to leave the dungeon and camp." And the DM would say "Done!" and it was so. He did not spend the next ten minutes laboriously describing our journey back through all those parts of the dungeon we'd already explored. If he had, we would have hit him.
more work for dave
David, Watcher's Keep was lame. It is the worse dungeon I have ever came across in a game. The Puzzles made no sense, the critters were laughable, and the challenge was nil. Where did it rocked?
Because it was fun. Durlag's was fun, too... except when I had to drag my sorry *** all the way back to the entrance just to rest. Then not so much.But I take it you disagree. Ah, well, there's a shocker.
Instead of having priests and divine magic..
Just as a comment, there's no particular reason to have a seperation between the magic that priests and mages would use unless the background story fits it. Indeed, there is no reason for priests to be spell-casters unless that's what you want, nor for priests to be healers per se.
I know that some of you have said precisely this, I'm just saying that we have the same thoughts. You'll see precisely what we've set up eventually.
more work for dave
1: No city under siege stories. We have seen it done in Saradush in ToB, we have seen it done in Neverwinter in Neverwinter Nights, and we have seen in it done with Waterdeep in HotU. NO MORE!
You know, this almost makes me want to include a city under siege just because. If it fits the story well enough, I see no reason not to do it again.
Quote: 3: The moderately annoying male character. We had Ajantis in BG1, ANomen in BG2, Carth in KotOR, Tomi in NWN, Deekin in SoU, and both TOmi and Deekin in HotU. ENOUGH ALREADY! Grr... Argh...
Everybody is always annoyed by NPC's. I can guarantee you that everyone will find some of the NPC's in DA slightly annoying and at least one incredibly so.
Quote: 4: The big dungeon. I like big dungeons and would like to see one of Durlag's Tower quality put into Dragon Age. Watcher's Keep in ToB blew major chunks of kibble. Being able to leave at any moment really killed the tension and fear for my characters' lives.
Watcher's Keep rocked. I would love to do a dungeon like that again.
Quote: 5: Instant Get out of Jail free cards are just annoying and should be removed completely in Dragon Age. I hated it in ToB, it was worse in NWN, KotOR, SoU, and HotU. It really kills the challenge of the game and that is why the majority of us play the game. We play for the challenge as much as for the story.
We? Is that the royal We? Or by that do you mean to imply Everyone? On whose behalf are you speaking?
Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer
Gender differences
There will be no gender differences in Dragon Age.
Why not D&D rules?
i mean multyplay like in nwn
Dragon age will have a multiplayer campaign designed for a group of people to play through together. When playing this, the party will play as a team to complete the game.
Why not D&D rules?
& why its not masive multyplay?
There are many reasons why this chapter of Dragon Age is not a massivly multiplayer roleplaying online game.A MMORG doesn't need an indepth story and personal character involement. One thing crtitcs consistantly say about our games is that the stories our writters create are fantastic, and the NPC's are interesting and deep. I don't know any MMORG that can make one person feel the world revolves around them.They are like theme parks. Pay your ticket, enter and ride the rides, take in the shows, and you're treated like the next guy.In our games you are the most important person. You and nobody else can do what needs to be done. Each plot, each character was designed for you to find, complete, talk to and witness.Each type of game serves a purpose in entertainment. We choose the story side.
Barbie & Ken ?
All I know is that if i'm going to be playing a game for hours and hours, I want something nice to look at. Call me shallow but for me, and all those people who like hollywood movies, that means supermodels.
Derek French, Live Team Producer
Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales
How about a hole punched CD? I specifically made CD that has a hole on the side which if the computer cannot detect it won't run the game.
Just like the dongle and CD check, it is just as easy to crack. Because the code to do all these checks are in the game executable, the game can be cracked.
Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales
How to stop piracy to almost nillcreate a USB device like a cartridge drive.
This is the failed 'dongle' idea from 10+ years ago. It comes with hardware incompatibilities and is just as easily cracked as a CD check. This would also drive up manufacturing costs significantly.
Don Moar, Tools Programmer
Toolset GUI
Hey,
First of all, the aerospace industry analogy as you describe, khazar-khum, is not quite accurate. You would never put a full compliment of 217 passengers on the Boeing 7E7 for its first flight. Similarly, you would not hand over untried / unreliable tools into the hands of artists and designers working on your project; they are _not_ test pilots. Their work is not testing the tools, it is using the tools to make the game. Just as passengers on airplanes have a reasonable expectation of safety and reliability so too, do the users of our tools. Continuing with the aerospace analogy, there is another saying "Never marry an untried engine to an untried airframe." It is all well and good to build tools using game and graphics code that is more or less final. It is an _entirely_ different matter to be developing them simultaneously. This introduces not just one, but several additional layers of complexity that must be managed in order for development of the game to proceed as smoothly as possible.
The simple fact is, there is a (slightly) higher failure tolerance for the game than for the tools for most of the project. That is, when the game goes down, it's bad but not critical because you can always restart / reload without loss of work. When the tools (using the same game and graphics code as the... game) go down, you have now introduced negative work into the project. Ignoring the cost of finding the bug for now, the basic cost is that the content creator must now reimplement whatever work has just been lost. This means the content creator is no longer moving the project forward, he or she is trying to recover lost ground. Now imagine an entire team of artists or designers who can't work because of an unknown data corrupting or crash-inducing bug. Don't think it doesn't happen.
Let's actually look at the cost of finding that bug. If the bug occurs only in the game, you are losing time the game or graphics programmer could be polishing existing or adding new features to the game. This is bad because it impacts the product our customers are purchasing. If the bug occurs in the tools, the tools programmers are usually the first ones to begin the investigation. This means that the tools programmers are no longer polishing existing or adding new features to the tools. When you consider the value that a new tools feature could add to the project in terms of allowing the artists or designers to complete some task faster (and the corresponding ripple effect benefit that could have on the final product) this can quickly multiply into a huge loss. Now, good testing and change management practices help to mitigate that risk, but when it's your work that's just been flushed, it doesn't make you feel any better that the tools programmers saved a little time by reusing that code. When a project is developing the game and graphics engine systems and tools simultaneously, any sharing of code should be considered very carefully because the "issues" that you avoid later may be outweighed by the "issues" that you face today.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Must have flying
For G2, had the setting been changed accordingly, say from an island, to a valley surrounded by impassible mountains, I think the game would have more or less been equally enjoyable (with a couple appropriate plot alterations, of course). It's really about the setting and the methods of movement complimenting each other.As far as U9, unfortunately, I didn't manage to play very far through the game, as I simply didn't have a system that could handle it, and I was in university at the time too - I didn't have the time to dedicate to playing on my slow computer (and was unable to afford a system upgrade).
I played Ultima 9, at least as far as it was possible.Levitation control itself was ok but not as good as Morrowind in that regard. Combat could be easily exploited. Swimming was ok but you would drown/take damage whenever you got too far from the shore. I liked the way they shut off parts of the world against further exploration early on, it didn't feel too forced. However Ultima 9 did not have followers because they couldn't get a party to work in the 3D environment.
Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales
as i said before stuff like this Click Here is imo one of the best ways to prevent warezing.
That's a picture of the Ultima Ascension Dragon Edition, which cost about 120USD at the time it was released. I paid significantly more than that to get one of those in europe. Your average player is not going to shell out much money for a game. Keep in mind that game prices have been stable stable/lower over the last few years while production costs are significantly up. I recently (about a week after the official release date) bought Splinter Cell, Unreal Tournament and Far Cry for 39 CDN each, thats about 28 USD for a triple-A game. One reason for stable / lower prices is the larger market as games become more mainstream, the other reason are publishers reducing distribution costs by making lighter / small boxes as well as cutting down manufacturing costs.You will probably still see things like cloth maps, etc in the future, but only in more expensive "special editions".
Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales
Plus punching holes in CDs will cause them to spin less harmonic causing significantly increased wear and tear on both CD drive and cd.
Voice-over
I don't like full voice overs. I find myself being able to read much faster than what is being spoken.
As long as you recognize that the market demands otherwise, that's fine. You can always turn down the speech volume and skip-click through conversations.
Scripting language - OO?
While you will no longer have all the D&D related functions dealing with ability modifiers, AC, and other D&D system specific things, the general framework of the language is unlikely to change significantly as it has nothing to do with the D&D license.
Scripting language - OO?
Second it is extremely uncomfortable, especially since there was no Button 'recompile all scripts'.
That is strange, I have the option to recompile all scripts in my NWN retail toolset using Module->Build .
Game length
Has C++ changed so much over the years ? Does it now take 2 artists to draw 1 concept art and 2 designers to write the lines of 1 NPC?
To answer the question:To create (concept, model, skin, animate) a single creature today you need probably about 5-10 times the manpower you needed to create a single creature for BG 2.Do you really think all the eyecandy, normal, shiny and bumpmapping high resolution textures and motion captured animations don't come at a price?Manpower requirements are significantly up for all departments since BG2, but Art/Animation probably had the largest increase. I stand by my statement that the days of 200 hours story driven games are over and are not coming back for a long long time, if ever.
Toolset GUI
Reader 1: The one thing I would like to see with the toolset is :SPEEDThe toolset and the game should be considered 2 very distinct and seperate entities, and reusing the module format for the toolset is in my opinion a bad idea...
Reader 2: **NNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!**Please go read any and all articles related to NWN postmortems on gamasutra.com. (Registration is free and relatively painless, and I've received no junk or spam from them)Unless I'm misinterpreting it, because they kept the Toolset and the Game as separate builds (and on separate compilers no less), it contributed to a large number of bugs, plus the inability to port the toolset to Linux and Mac platforms.I would imagine the performance would actually be quicker if both projects were more closely knit. Regardless, I think there exists be a better way of making the Toolset performance quicker in comparison to NWN, *WITHOUT* having to complicate the project production screen with muliple projects and/or multiple compilers.
Yepp, the more shared code / resources you have between toolset and game, the less problems you will have to fight later dealing with "issues".
Scripting language - OO?
No, I won't adapt. I'm sorry but I'm not payed for developing scripts in NWNScript, so I don't see the point in using a language that is simply an insult to my programming skills.
That's a very simplistic view. I would say that "skill" in this case is defined as the ability to apply your knowledge about structures and algorithms with the tools available to you to achieve a result, not the ability to use the most advanced available language. One could argue that it takes "skill" to write code in ASM, even if it is not OO. Yes, OO would be more comfortable, but is it needed to get the job done? No - BGScript is a good example that you can create an AAA game with a simplistic scripting language (compared to nwscript).
Nathan Frederick, Lead Quality Assurance
Must have flying
nathan, do you really think that Gothic 2 would have been as good without being able to swim?I think it added a lot to immerse the player in the game and the world. I wouldn't miss it, despite of the awful controls.Did you play Ultima 9? Great controls, even underwater. And you could fly/levitate.
For G2, had the setting been changed accordingly, say from an island, to a valley surrounded by impassible mountains, I think the game would have more or less been equally enjoyable (with a couple appropriate plot alterations, of course). It's really about the setting and the methods of movement complimenting each other.As far as U9, unfortunately, I didn't manage to play very far through the game, as I simply didn't have a system that could handle it, and I was in university at the time too - I didn't have the time to dedicate to playing on my slow computer (and was unable to afford a system upgrade).
Must have flying
Whew. This is a long thread to read through
I'd like to put in a few comments on some of the posts in this thread, and I'll echo Brenon on the 'this is not indicative of whether or not any particular feature is in the game or not', and add in a 'this reflects my opinion on these features'. There's been several comments in this post on assorted games which have flying/swimming/z-axis. I've actually played almost all of them, and would just like to provide some feedback, and some comparisons across them.
Everquest (I play EQ):
-Swimming exists, and underwater combat exists. It
is horrible to do, with the players having to adjust to height, and position constantly. Horrible to watch, as there simply aren't animations that look good for it (probably because the resources were better put to use elsewhere). The underwater zones aren't visitted unless people have to go there for a quest of some sort. Control method: First person view. You can go into third person, but you can't control it with any degree of control. Levitation exists, but only allows downward drifting, while moving. No actual flying, and no creatures fly. Game overall has some AWFUL z-axis range issues when it comes to combat (creatures have an infinite reach on the z-axis, possibly to prevent people trying to exploit the z-axis by attacking from somewhere a creature cannot reach).
Gothic2 (just finished it last weekend actually):
-Fully 3d world with followers and swimming (even underwater). AWFUL controls in that game underwater. Can't fight underwater. No player flight, and no creatures actually fly (there are several dragons which sort of 'levitate' a few feet over the ground.
Sacred (Playing through it in my spare time in the evenings, including in this post only because it was mentioned):
-2D world faked to look 3D (like NwN). Wyverns which 'fly' have ground circles while they are in the air (and you can hit them by attacking the circle). Tiny rock on the ground - gotta walk around it. No swimming.
Morrowind (played partway through it):
-Has a pretty good flight model. Control mode is first person view, or very awkward in third person. Allowed combat to be horribly exploited (as someone else mentioned). Didn't do a whole lot of swimming, but it more or less functioned the same.
City of Heroes: Haven't played, I'll have to check out someone here flying. Won't comment on it as such.
Overall:
Morrowind is the only singleplayer game on the list which has flying and swimming. The others are MMORPG's. Morrowing has often been described as feeling like a "MMORPG without the MMO". They all lack a solid story (MMO's have 'background', and Morrowind was more 'open').
Flight fits well into these games, because there is very little that occurs as a result of the player. There's conversations, but no cutscenes, and very few scripted events (other than combat style events). Flight adds to these games, because part of these games is simply about going out and looking at things. They are all controlled in first person primarily too.
There have been comments along the line of 'if the designers know it exists, they can design with that in mind'. With flying, that is almost impossible. The majority of events and cutscenes are scripted knowing where the player will be. You drastically reduce your options on where events can take place, or start putting in a lot of artificial restrictions on flight itself (invisible walls, everything of note takes place inside, etc, etc), or start creating 'handle everything' events, which have to be very generic to handle all the possibilities. And the possibility of having bugs introduced from that is VERY high.
If a player is flying, the player could be almost anywhere. For instance, rather than walking into town through the gate, the player could come in over the wall, or in through the back side of the town, or over the wall at such a high altitude that the wall is hardly identifiable. Scripting a plot critical encounter with the city guard who questions the player, and tells them that entrance to the city is restricted is nearly impossible to do well at this point, and is probably avoidable by a clever player.
A large part of creating a compelling believable story, is knowing where the player is, and will be, in order to create events that are tailored to that situation. Generic solutions, tend to be, well, a tad generic, and somewhat bland, and very subject to being broken by a clever player going someplace that was never intended to be reached.
Player flight is cool. I won't argue that. But it only really fits 'open' environments, where a solid, story-driven, event-driven game doesn't exist. It suits the MMO scene nicely, and it fit Morrowind's open-ended gameplay style. Swimming is situationally cool. Gothic2 would have been as good without swimming. EQ would probably be better if I never had to deal with underwater combat again.
Sydney Tang, Programmer
Toolset GUI
what's the name of that debugger program? I found the commandline compiler.
The Script Debugger is DebugServer.exe in your utils folder.To use it, just double-click it. You will get a small window that sits around waiting for the game server to connect to it when the game hits a SpawnScriptDebugger() command. It will then pop up a window that lets you step through the script and inspect the values of local variables.Also, make sure that in the toolset, under Tools | Options | Script Editor, you have checked the box next to the label "Generate Debug Information When Compiling Scripts".On the machine on which you will be running nwmain.exe or nwserver.exe, open up nwnplayer.ini. Under [Server Options], make sure you have settings that look something like this:Debugger Port=5122Debugger IP Address=127.0.0.1The port in the DebugServer window should match the port in the INI file. If you will be running DebugServer.exe on the same machine as nwmain.exe or nwserver.exe, then leave 127.0.0.1 as the IP address. Otherwise, you will have to specify an appropriate IP address.
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The Temple of Elemental Evil Patch 2 Released
Posted Friday, May 28, 2004 - 21:08 CET by Sorcerer
Atari has finally released the second ToEE patch. The patch details reveal a number of bugfixes, but the last time I checked the bug lists on the official boards, there were about ten times as many remaining bugs listed there. Oh well, anything is better than nothing, I suppose.
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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Thursday, May 27, 2004 - 20:29 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by NWVault. 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.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Patch 1.63:
1. That can never happen as some of the cutscenes in the official HotU campaign rely on the exact position of the dialog windows, and probably other modules as well.
2. A follow radial command is on our list of "nice to have" things that could possibly be added at some point
3. Sorry, but we can not deviate from the D&D rules in this case. Plus, making spells "instant cast" would open a can of worms in regards to balancing issues.
4. Changes to the GUI at this point are highly unlikely.
Derek French, Assistant Producer
European CD-Keys For SoU:
If you have recently purchased Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide in the European market and are having problems playing online or registering your CD Key, you will need to submit your key for validation. For those of you having this problem, please use this to submit your CD Key for verification. If you have a legitimate issue then we will be able to resolve this for you. If your CD Keys do not display this issue, you will not get any help. Please post any questions about this here in this thread, but stay on topic and I will be culling any off-topic threads.
More:
Quote: Uh, do we also get messaged whether we might have sent the wrong keys?
No. The wrong/ incorrect/ just-trying-to-rip-us-off key submissions outnumber the valid issues by about 10 to 1 and I don't have time to send out 100 messages a day. If you haven't heard back from us in 2 business days, then you should send your CD Keys again. I know this isn't the best solution, but it is the best we can do in the light of this fairly large manufacturing error.
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Cornflower Glorwing RP PW Interview at NWVault
Posted Thursday, May 27, 2004 - 1:43 CET by chevalier
Neverwinter Vault have posted a Hall of Fame interview with Cornflower, the author of the Glorwing Persistent World. Here's a clip:
3) Your Persistent World is called "Glorwing RP PW" was recently inducted into our Hall of Fame. Could you give us an overview of what it's all about and the unique setting you have.
Glorwing is based on a PnP world that I made up in 1985 or so. It was all handwritten on a white substance called "paper", you may have heard of it. Anyway, I adapted it to be a "meltingpot" where you can play your character regardless of which PnP ruleset you fancy. Glorwing is a transitpoint between multiversa where just about anyone can appear. We used to have a bunch of Scotsmen in game. Currently we have two Vikings running around. I chose that setting since I got tired of "You can't do that if you're an elf. It says so on page 187 in the rulebook". The original story was that Glorwing was discovered 100 years ago by a mage who accidentaly created a dimensional rift while trying out a new love-spell. I tried to create the "frontier" feel of old Wild West or Australia 200 years ago. Lots of wilderness, only one big city.
Read the whole thing at NWVault.
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Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - 23:59 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by Neverwinter Vault. 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.
David Gaider, Designer
Betrayal in Dragon Age
In a vain attempt to get back on topic, betrayal from one of those two would have been interesting. Especially if it was caused by their love for the PC, instead of being in opposition to that love. Does this make sense to anyone but me?
I think I understand. Your loved one betrays you because he loves you, not in spite of it. He does it because he believes it to be in your best interest, or because the enemy is threatening you in a very real and specific way that you cannot defend against and is blackmailing him with that threat.I don't think it's that cliche... it's a better motivation for betrayal than most, and it's hard to hate someone for doing it, too, which is the kicker. Whether or not you could forgive would be a big question, and one worth exploring.
Races, Culture, Architecture
The artists are definitely developing a particular look and feel to architecture and clothing based on the races and cultures in our world. I was in a meeting on just that thing a week ago. How much of that will translate into being useable by those who use the toolset, though, I've really no idea. The process is not the same.
Betrayal in Dragon Age
If it's all just a matter of what Mr. Gaider and his minions
Minions? I have minions? Actually, it's James Ohlen who has minions... of which I am one.I wouldn't mind having minions. If anyone wishes to volunteer, I promise to keep you warm and well-fed... though only so long as no ideas of "random betrayal" cross through your little henchman brain.
I wrote him. And I am not embarassed by that romance in the slightest. I only wish we had identified him as a romance lead before the rest of his dialogue had been written... had I known, I would have softened him so he was more appealing. Once you get past that initial part, however, he changes considerably... and most of the women I've spoken to who have gone through it all enjoyed it very much.I can understand why you might have disliked him enough to begin with not to continue, though. But embarassed? Nope.
Hmmm. Maybe. I prefer to write something we haven't tried before, that's for certain, and I'm definitely getting the chance now.
more work for dave
it is much safer to keep doing traditional stuff though… can’t fault you for playing it safe... just saddened
Well, as you said yourself we have not discussed everything we are doing yet. It's a bit early to be "saddened" by our lack of innovation just yet. We're just not ready to discuss it.And we don't object to everything as being too risky or not traditional enough, though I can see how it might look that way from the forum-goer's perspective, considering the nature of some of these requests.
more work for dave
'course, you can prove self right simply by never trying.
Which is what? Your way of challenging us to meet your high standards? And if we don't attempt these things we just aren't trying very hard?Puh-lease. No offense, Grom, but some of these things you're suggesting I wouldn't even want to attempt, never mind think that they would make for a good (or fun) game.I'm not going into which are which insofar as Dragon Age goes, as we haven't even begun to discuss the details, but the idea of being tut-tutted because there's supposedly only one direction to take a game in order to make it "superior" is a bit grating.
more work for dave
Consider yes...Implement it, no.Common, David, I have played your guys' games since BG1 and the big bad guy has always been muscles and very little sneakiness. Not Sarevok, Irenicus, Melissan, Morag, that Medusa thingy, Valsharas, Malak, and that arch devil. Its all been pretty much the same in one way or another.No offense, but it looks like more of the same is coming.
Gromnir is talking about sneaky evil on the part of the player, Hades, not the villain (which, like many of the doozies Gromnir has come up with lately, I would quite safely label "high concept"... it sounds interesting as an idea, but isn't likely to go beyond that.)As for innovation beyond that, I'm sure we could never include enough to satisfy your jaded palette. Better reconcile with the fact now that whatever we do, it's going to look the same to you.
more work for dave
So, no sneaky evil?I take it then its going ot be more of the same then?
Right. It's going to be all more of the same just because we wouldn't consider doing sneaky evil quite like that.
Hey, DA Devs ... what have you been reading?
I really like George R. R. Martin's work, as do most of the designers on the project. As a "for instance", anyway.
more work for dave
Ummm... ...I'm thinking no. There's other neat stuff that can be done that is far less confusing, I think.
Betrayal in Dragon Age
Why can't we have more of this type of betrayal plots, where how you behave can actually change people's minds?
Oh, there's no reason we can't have more plots of this type. We just have to pick and choose where to spend our time, and if betrayal is a feature that fits into the story then maybe we'd do this.The reason you don't normally see it, however, is that having an NPC who you've had in your party all this time betray you or run off... well... kind of sucks, good story or no. If it's done, it should be done sparingly or at the very end of a plot (like ToB or HotU) where all stops can be pulled out.I would say, personally, that I like having NPC's who react realistically to your decisions. Have a paladin in your party, for instance, and he should really get upset if you start doing evil things. Unless you give the player a lot of alternative party members as options, however, you don't want to have every NPC running off like that, either, and while everyone automatically goes "yes! lots and lots and lots of NPC's! And all of them detailed with stories and quests and romances!" that isn't always an option.
Betrayal in Dragon Age
Judging from David's comments, I'm sure something diabolical is being planned for DA. Woo-Hoo!
Oh, I have quite enough writing on my plate without making every party member both romanceable as well as a potential traitor, thank you very much. Talk about your pipe dreams, sheesh!
Betrayal in Dragon Age
I kind of like the fact that every keen story idea that the fans come up with, like having every party member able to betray you, just happens to also involve working me to death.
Derek French, Live Team Producer
Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales
So, to prevent this, i have two words for you: Global Release.
It is also important to understand that this kind of decision is up to the Publisher, not the Developer, as you inferred. We have no control over this decision. It is a key fact that in many markets around the world, the game buyers (the people that place thousand lot orders for the retail store chain) always order an order of magnitude less copies of a game if the game does not include copy protection of some sort. Again, this is up to the Publisher and we may not have any control over this, but trust me when I say I understand the situation.
A true between Copy Protection and Backup Rights
Why can't you, (Bioware.) include a backup copy of the game CD in the box?
What you are talking about is something that has absolutely nothing to do with the Developer. Box contents (including the manufacturing of the actual CDs) is completely within the realm of the Publisher. Would a Publisher go for it? Probably not, as it directly affects their manufacturing costs.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Conversations as Scripts
That's a good idea. Well, it could be a good idea, depending on how accessible the integers are. Perhaps a better solution would be to create a GetConversationNodeObject function that would return an object that you could assign local variables to with both the toolset and scripting. When Hordes added the ability to add local variables in the toolset, it enormously reduced the number of scripts that I needed. I suspect the same thing would happen if you allowed local variables at the conversation node level.
With the current solution in Jade you *could* have two script per conversation - one for conditionals, one for actions, if you wanted. Setting variables on dialog nodes would cause a lot of trouble, least being memory creep
Conversations as Scripts
Localization would be very unhappy about this. Very unhappy. As for XML, translating .GFF files (like conversations) into XML is relatively easy, I think I saw a community tool that does that the other day. For Jade Empire we have something along the lines of "GetConversationNode", any node can get an integer assigned to it that can be read from scripting, which allows some nifty things. It is possible that the DA will have something like that as well.
Tim Smith, Tools Programmer
Scripting language - OO?
Then Mark B's compiler is a twopass compiler. Errm ... and your compiler is simply a funny design.
Doing an initial pass for globals and then a second pass to generate the real intermediate code isn't uncommon. However, it was a hacky design in this case since I didn't notice the requirement that global structures can be defined after they are referenced until very late in the process. Anyway, the whole concept of "passes" is very fluid. As the dragon book says: "In practice, there is a great variation in the way the phases of a compiler are grouped into passes, so we prefer to organize our discussion of compiling around phases rather than passes."I wish I had the time to fix that hacky two pass in my compiler.
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Neverwinter Vault Explore Dragon Age's Technical Side
Posted Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - 23:59 CET by chevalier
Neverwinter Vault have posted an in-depth article on Dragon Age technology. Here's a snip:
During the E3 demo presentation by BioWare, they mentioned that what we were seeing would be the game at it's lowest level of quality running on a mid level machine when the games comes out. They confirmed that there would be full dynamic lightning though this was not a surprise since NWN already supported it but the next generation version will undoubtedly be much better. While the characters shown in the demo were a huge step up from what we are accustomed to, they are still nowhere near what the final version will look like with all the graphic effects turned on, using a top of the line machine. They did however show a side-by-side split view of the warrior character which had the demo quality on one side with the source model on the other. The difference was definitely remarkable since the source models are over two million polygons. Whether we'll be able to run around with characters using those two million polygons is doubtful, but the end quality should be amazing. At one point during the demo, a huge lizard like creature rose out of the water and was far more detailed than the characters shown and was sporting full bump mapping, looking very wet as it emerged. While it's level of detail wasn't quite as high as this image, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to expect something similar, again considering we weren't seeing the highest level of quality from a finished engine.
Read the whole thing at NWVault.
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BioWare Wednesday
Posted Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - 21:45 CET by Sorcerer
(Only news relevant to SP posted.)
NWN Profile: Introduction To Persistent Worlds
Have you finished Neverwinter Nights? Do you still lust for adventure? Neverwinter Nights is far more than just the official campaign. An entire universe of quests, treasure, danger, and monsters await you in the many persistent worlds that have been created by the community. Not sure what persistent worlds are? Lycius, founder and owner of Brynsaar, explains what a persistent world is and how you can continue your endless adventures. Discuss.
Post HotU Contest Winner!
Craving more adventure after Hordes of the Underdark? Play the three entries of the NWVault's HotU contest where the goal was to create the best module that continues the story from the Hordes of the Underdark expansion. Congratulations goes to Sands of Fate 1 - Shadows under Heliopolis by John McA for winning the contest. Why don't you download all three modules and decide for yourself! Discuss.
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Latest Poll Results
Posted Wednesday, May 26, 2004 - 15:55 CET by Sorcerer
What we asked:
Q: Do you think coverage of the upcoming Dragon Age, the first non-D&D game on Sorcerer's Place, is a good idea?
(257 votes total)
Yes, definitely! (142) 55%
Undecided at this point (72) 28%
No, stick to D&D only! (43) 17%
Obviously there are not that many conservative D&D-only gamers around SP, since the majority of poll participants (55%) have voted in favour of covering the upcoming Dragon Age on Sorcerer's Place.
28% of those who voted are still undecided at this point whether covering Dragon Age is a good idea or not.
Only 17% of the people who voted think that SP should stick to only D&D games.
Current Poll
Previous Polls
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SP Happenings #51
Posted Tuesday, May 25, 2004 - 23:38 CET by Sorcerer
Nothing really new to report this week, as I've announced pretty much all of it in the previous SP Happenings. A new site update has gone up a few days ago, and work on the redesign continues, though at a slower pace now since I've got a full month of uni exams ahead of me, so I won't be able to dedicate much time to anything around SP apart from the regular maintenance.
An extra 512MB stick of RAM has been installed on the server yesterday, and I can definitely feel the improvement in loading times. This should also make the random blackouts we've been experiencing over the last few months a thing of the past.
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Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Tuesday, May 25, 2004 - 16:41 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by Neverwinter Vault. 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.
David Gaider, Designer
Lets have elves how they were meant to be
We didn't feel constrained. In fact, built-in preconceptions can be advantageous for several reasons.
Must have flying
While I love City of Heroes, I would have to comment that the cool flying/teleporting/super-speed not only is pretty integral to the whole superhero thing (integral as opposed to a nifty addition) we're also talking about a game that is purposefully massive to allow hordes of fellow players in at the same time you are and where you spend lots of time traveling. If flight were similarly integral to DA's theme and gameplay, it would pretty much be a given.
Having your own house/castle
If it makes sense in the overall context of the story that might be cool to consider. I always liked the class-specific stuff from BG2. If it doesn't make sense, however, there's no way we would put such a thing in... putting an urgent quest on hold so you can run an inn or shop around for a new castle only fits in certain campaigns. If it doesn't fit in ours we'll just have to find other neat stuff.
Lets have elves how they were meant to be
I think there are certain things people expect to see in any race that is called 'elf'. Some preconceptions can be done away with, however, but we've tried to do that in a way that is refreshing rather than jarring. I suppose some people will be jarred anyhow, but I expect they might just be those looking for the LoTR elf verbatim and nothing else... in which case they will be disappointed.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Does your own IP speed things up or slow them down?
Whoa... I've been asleep for a while. Just realized Black Isle disbanded and didn't even consider that Interplay died as well. Luckily I think the team at Black Isle are still doing something... forgot what that was.
Some of them founded Obsidian Entertainment and are working on KotOR 2.
Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales
I completely disagree that copy protection "works" if it violates copyright laws regarding making backups of the media. why should the copyright owner get to trample on other's rights in the course protecting their own?a solution where EVERYONE'S rights are enforced is good. letting EITHER PARTY GET SCREWED is NOT a valid solution. cd keys work. "cd copy protection" is conceptually broken, in that it stops one party from carrying out their rights as a consumer, to make backups of the media in question. in an age when publishers can knowingly sell faulty cds that crack or explode in cd drives and then refuse to replace them, it's very important that the consumer can make a backup of the media.
Torias, It is not up to BioWare to settle the conflict that currently exists between "fair use" and "copyright laws". Our own IP might give us a lot more freedom than we had when working with a license - but that doesn't mean we can change the laws of the market (such as "nobody publishes games without copy protection"). This conflict needs to be settled by lawmakers, not game development companies. Given the investment you need to put into the development of AAA titles these days and the number of jobs at stake should your product not meet projected sales, it is unrealistic to expect any developer trying to be idealistic and duke it out this against publishers/retailers/lazy lawmakers. Point is - the discussion whether or not copy protection works is useless here. I am sure our producers will forward our and our fans opinion to the publisher when it comes to the question "which copy protection". If other, less intrusive copy protection methods are available and accepted by the market in the future (i.e. cd key tied product activation like windows XP), they will probably be evaluated.Finally - this is no longer DA specific. Any discussion about the merits and flaws of copy protection should be continued in the offtopic forum.
Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales
Copy protection works, it may not deter everyone, but it is displeasure enough for the average IT noob to search through trojan and p0rn infested crack sites every time we release a patch / new feature to our game to convince most people to buy the software instead.
Retailers do not put games without copy protection into the shelves anymore - publishers do not publish games without copy protection anymore - so the question is not "copy protection yes or no", the question is which copy protection will be used - and that question isn't of interest at the moment, due to a variety of reasons outlined in my previous posts in this thread. You can expect us giving input to our publisher (whoever that may be) when it comes to decide this question, as it is our best interest that people can use our products without hassle.
It is an unfortunate reality, but even if we wanted to, we could not release a game without copy protection because the major retailers will not put it on the shelves and publishers don't publish games without copy protection.
My point is: If you want to discuss the viability of copy protection, you will need to go to the forums / websites of the global players in publishing and distributing and post your arguments there.
Toolset GUI
7) A visual debugger. Ideally a debugger that can tie into the game running in a virtual machine with the display sent to a resizeable window.
You are aware that there is such a script debugger in the util subfoldfolder in your NWN directory?
Must have flying
Some of the guys I work with are big into City of Heroes, and from what they say, the flight system is pretty amazing. One of the guys blathered on non-stop for almost a full day when he finally got his flying ability.
I agree, City of Heroes has the most fun implementation of personal flight (and teleportation by the way) I've seen so far on the computer. Damn, I spent hours just teleporting and flying around
Scripting language - OO?
The first and foremost reason for our scripting languages is to enable the designers to do their job in a fast and efficient way while preventing them (that includes me from crashing the game with their weird ideas.
Thus any feature that would be of use for the designers here at Bioware has a much better chance of ending up in the final scripting language and toolset than anything else. As said earlier, things that would lead to an extensive retraining of writers/designers before they can do their job are unlikely, so I would expect less major changes to the way scripting works, and more thoughtful optimizations and feature additions that increase productivity.
Also remember that there are several technical designers at BioWare that have been recruited from the NWN community, some of them had been working on the expansion packs, some are now working on DA. You can guess that all of them had their pet feature wishes to make their life easier and I'm sure Tim has his own nightmares about that
Jade Empire and its relationship to Dragon Age...
I think it is fairly safe to say that Dragon Age will not use the Jade Empire Rules system.
Jade Empire (http://jade.bioware.com) is an Action Role Playing game that features real time combat, Dragon Age combat will be very different from that, it wouldn't make much sense to use the same rules system.
Tim Smith, Tools Programmer
Is it a Canadian holiday?
Are you bragging?I am sure there were a lot of people at work today. Not all of us have the luxury of havng a day off. As for your behind, lets just leave it at that, behind us...
Nah, I wasn't bragging. It was more like whining.
Is it a Canadian holiday?
I was at work today.
No rest for the behind...
Hmm, that didn't come out right.
Toolset GUI
Things I would like to see:...
Many of these items are game side and not really tools issues.#3, #4, #5 and #7 depend on what game side wants to do. NWScript is a perfect example. The script compiler was written by a game side programmer. We just invoke it when we to compile scripts.
Scott Meadows, Programmer
Toolset GUI
1. Consider making parameter insight, code completion in the script editor activate automatically after a certain delay, preferrably adjustable delay too.2. Version control. Compiling modules for older game versions for backward compatibility without glorious hacks.3. Option for storing the module unpacked. Great for development, avoid repacking the module on every save and it will work well with CVS if each script belongs to its own individual file.4. All singing, all dancing debugger for code tracing so we don't have to start the game every single time we test out scripts. That's probably too much to ask for
It is never too much too ask for, just don't expect the world. We do hope that everyone will continue to make suggestions as we do read them and take them ALL into consideration.
Scripting language - OO?
This is the best news I've heard all day. This means I can spend the next 2-3 years prototyping things in NWN and not feeling like I have to rewrite the whole system from the ground up.Plus, I'm extremely comfortable with the syntax at this point, as I suspect many other people are as well. NWN was a great training system for Dragon Age. I'm sure that was your plan all along.
Just keep in mind that you will not be able to import your NWN modules into DA due to licensing issues.
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RAM Upgrade Complete
Posted Monday, May 24, 2004 - 22:42 CET by Sorcerer
The RAM upgrade went smoothly with no problems whatsoever. Hopefully, this is going to solve the problems with blackouts and long loading times on SP and our hosted websites. Thanks again to those people who have donated and made this upgrade possible.
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Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Monday, May 24, 2004 - 20:13 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by Neverwinter Vault. 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.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Patch 1.63:
Here's a list of *some* things the Live Team fixed during the last few month. Most of the stuff were already posted about on the board, but you might find one or another thing that has not been mentioned. The list is quite incomplete, and please do not take it as a "promise" (dreaded word), as long as the patch is not released, there is always a chance that we might remove things if we find them to cause trouble.
Shifter:
- Problems with server autosaves fixed
- Problems with direct switching between forms fixed
- Missing gargoyle hide added
- Epic Dragon hides now granting +6 DR
Red Dragon disciple:
- Now get correct d12 hit die in epic levels
Pale master:
- Deathless Vigor feat now behaving as it should.
Feats:
- Dev Crit now working with bows
- Fixed to defensive stance becoming permanent under certain conditions
- Death attack sometimes missing feedback strings fixed
Spells:
- Dispel magic code rewritten, among other things it will now take the casters level into account (as it should have)
- Tons and tons of fixes to spellscripts and creature ability scripts.
Scripting commands:
- Added GetPhenoType()
- Added SetPhenoType()
- Optimizations to several scripting commands
- SetSkyBox() added
- SetFogColor() added
- ResistSpell() now working with domain spells/subradial
- ActionCastSpellAt* now working with subradial spells
- DecrementRemainingSpellUses() problem with domain spells fixed
- OnStoreClosed() now working correctly
- Potential crashes in GetFactionBestAC(), GetFactionWorstAC(), GetArmorClassVersus() fixed
- GetCreatureHasTalent() stack underflow fixed
- Added DAMAGE_TYPE_BASE_WEAPON to GetDamageDealtByType()
- Fixes to GetIsImmune().
Custom Content Goodies:
- Added new column to VisualEffects.2da "OrientWithObject",
- Increased the limit on the max number of tilesets from 24 to 50.
- Added support for 8 new custom animation types:
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM3
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM4
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM5
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM6
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM7
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM8
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM9
ANIMATION_LOOPING_CUSTOM10
- Several new pathfinding node types added for custom tileset creators
Game Mechanics:
- You can no longer sell undroppable items.
- Several fixes to the AI include scripts.
- Touch attack code rewritten.
- Several fixes to inventory pages disappearing, items staying gray, etc
- Item properties "Immunity: Damage Type Positive Energy",
"Immunity: Damage Type Negative Energy" fixed
General stuff:
- Optimization to the games resource/memory management
- Several memory leaks fixed
- Security and stability related fixes
- Changes/fixes to the lootable corpse system (i.e. weapons now stay visible until looted)
- Changes to the games behavior to clear all actions when someone joins the party. Potentially problematic actions will still be cleared (to prevent hostility problems), but especially nonhostile actions like rest are not affected anymore
- Game no longer displays "Experience Points Gained: 0" messages.
DM Client:
- Fixes to the DM client (ie. portraits vanishing, quickbar becoming unuseable)
- DMs can now move undroppable (cursed) items between inventories.
- DMs can now drop undroppable (cursed) items.
- Added useful tooltips for all the DM Creator Quickbar buttons.
- Added ability for DMs to create items directly inside placeable
Server Admin goodies
- Bandwith profiling option
- Module description problem fixed
containers (e.g. chests) using the creator.
Finally, Craig just added this the other day, this will make a lot of people happy I guess :
- Added ini setting to nwnplayer.ini [Server Options]
"Saving Throw Automatic Failure On 1=1"
As already mentioned, this is only a partial and preliminary list (in fact, a very partial list) of the things that we plan to have in 1.63. If you don't see your favourite bug on that list, it doesn't mean we have forgotten about it - it might have been fixed already or could be fixed at some point in the future. You will probably find one or another thing I forgot in the list above when browsing through the Vaults news archive.
We know it's been quite some time since the last patch and we know many of you really wait for this one, but I think as you can see from the list above, the changes are quite extensive and the wait should be very well worth it.
The usual:
Q: When is the patch done?
A: When it's done. Sorry, right now we have no estimated release date.
Q: Will there be new creatures or other content?
A: Maybe, I don't know what the Live Team has planned.
More:
Quote: Is there going to be any consideration of Palemaster summons? Possibly a look at them and see if they can be made to be more powerful, appropriate to their level?
Unlikely, at least for 1.63. There's a reason for the summons (at least up to level 12) are the way they are.
Quote: However that doesn't mean that I should have to lke it the way it is. And, as a creator, and server admin I should have the ability to adjust the way it works in MY world and if you don't like it you're welcome to play someplace where you do.
As for Dev Crit, it this low priority. The feat is implemented by the book, the saving throw failure on 1 that some people felt made it too powerful has been moved to a server configurable setting and there are plenty of ways to design around it outlined in the custom content forum. The bottomline is: If you are complaining about a rule being implemented by the book, you are on very thin ice. I don't think we are going to touch this one anytime soon, changing things that work by the book is about the lowest thing on our priority list, there are plenty of bugs to fix above it. Plus we would probably have to get approval for this one. This does not rule out changes to it, it just makes them unlikely, at least for 1.63. Yes, the power to module builders and server admins, I'm all for that - but please don't forget that NWN's primary scope is "create your own D&D 3E FR module", NOT "create your own world" - the further you stray from that setting, the less likely it is that will be able make your proposed changes.
And More:
We hear you guys, we know you are really waiting for this patch and the Live Team is working hard on getting it out to you ASAP. However, sometimes "as fast as possible" is still pretty slow, there are still some issues to resolve before we can at least go into betaOn the positive side, a lot of the things mentioned in this and other forums have been fixed, server stability is up, security has been tightened, memory leaks have been squashed, resource and memory management optimized and several new features have been added. I really think the wait will be worth it.
Spell Effects:
Each tile that has a placeable or creature on it or is in the path of a creature will have data loaded into memory (i.e. the walkmesh for pathfinding purposes). If you use a large number of different tiles (and thus tilesets), this will eat up a lot of your servers available memory and cause disk swapping, which, in turn, will degrade performance. Another reason can be bad walkmesh data (pathfinding nodes) on user created tilesets (tilesets that have been created from the scratch) or blocked/crowded pathways (i.e. lots of placeables) causing pathfinding to eat up your cpu power.
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Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Monday, May 24, 2004 - 20:10 CET by chevalier
Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by Neverwinter Vault. 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.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Game length
As for VO: VO allows you to show emotions and tension much better than plain text. I doubt we could go back to "silent" storytelling. Facial animation to show expressions is another such thing - we use it in Jade and it makes a *huge* difference together with VO.
Does your own IP speed things up or slow them down?
Any chance since it will be Bio IP that you will have another NPC contest or entry from the community? I enjoyed the NWN one in theory, and was saddened that it was lost in the red tape of development.
Hmm, too bad "Torias" is now officially tied to the Forgotten Realms after he managed to sneak into SoU -- who knows, we might need replacement in the future
Races...
As for the half-dragon race idea - sounds great, with just one problem that I can think of. There are, how shall I put it... creation problems. Just imagine (or better yet, don't) how a dragon and a human would pro-create... Just a (distubing) thought.
Hey, a certain recently released animated movie features Donkey-Dragons, think about that...
Ultima-esque?
Yeah, my cousin did that all the time back then..., although I never cheated and always laughed at those who succumbed to the dark side of cheating.
I think in case of the Ultima Games you missed a whole lot of fun, it added quit some replayability to the game. Someone remember the room with the whole cheerleading team in Serpent Isle?
Full community realistic suggestions.
Hey,
just to give my $.2:
Of all ways to communicate your wishes and suggestion on this board, random "wishlist"/"post your ideas here" threads are the least optimal. Why?
- They usually have nonspeaking topic titles, so people are less likely to read them
- People avoid wishlist threads out of experience
- The good ideas you might have will get lost in a blend of bad ideas, plain impossible wishes and things that have already been asked a hundred times before
The best way to communicate your favourite feature / wishes / concerns is to create a dedicated thread about it. An (even heated) discussion is far more interesting to read than a mix of non related random thoughts.
I'm not deluding myself to believe that this post can spell universal death to every wishlist thread that is going to be spawned here in the coming month, but hey, at least I tried
hope that helps
Game length
Hi
I don't think there will be any 200 hours story driven games anymore. In times where people have come to expect full VO for all dialog, normal mapped creatures and large and lush areas to explore, 200 hour story driven games are just too expensive. To create a 50 hours game today you need already about 2-3 times the staff you needed for a game like BG2. Currently the trend is shorter but more immersive and replayable games. Compared with most games you can buy today, 50 hours is quite long. It's a bit sad, of course, but it's an inevitable trend as the industry matures.
Personally, I've actually come to like it - I hardly have enough time to play through a complex RPG anymore, a 200 hour game would probably last about half a year for me, when I would finish it, I probably would hardly remember how it started.
But also, games today often come with mod tools, full featured toolsets - which can give you a nearly endless supply of stories to experience.
Tim Smith, Tools Programmer
New languages? Ooooh ...
*Gets on the BioWare overhead paging system three days prior to ship*
"Does anybody speak Goktu? I can't tell if this VO file matches what is being said in this conversation."
And yes, I had to do that stuff with KoToR and the foreign languages. I had to bother Georg twice to check some German lines.
(P.S. Goktu isn't the name of a DA language. I made it up.)
Toolset GUI
Please allow us to open multipli windows in the toolset! It is annoying to do this: Hunt down Script, Find Tag to change, Forget Tag, Close Script, Check tag, Hunt down Script, Find Tag to Change, Change Tag.
There are a lot of usability issues we are looking at with the DA toolset. I can't comment on anything at this time, but usability not only affects the end user but also our designers. Thus we have a vested interest in fixing them.
Scripting language - OO?
In a single pass compiler that doesn't allow things to be defined after they are used can still support circular includes by placing the responsibility of proper ordering on the script creator.
Both Mark B's and my compiler for NWScript are multipass compilers. In the case of Mark B's, it creates a parse tree and then builds result (ok, not a true multipass I guess). My compiler actually parses the script twice (I got lazy). The only reason my compiler is two pass is because Mark allowed some things to be defined after they are used. If this wasn't the case, then my compiler would have been a single pass compiler and would still handle circular includes.
In NWScript, there is an implicit #ifndef/#define/#endif in every include file.
Brenon Holmes, Programmer
Must have flying
I'll take a peek at it Sancus, but since I don't have it on hand right now (and I can't seem to find the information on any news sites)...
How does the control scheme work while flying? Is it first person? Or does it play more like Freedom Force style flying (3rd person, static 'flying' height')?
Question on Parties
As it currently stands, you will create the main character... other NPC's you meet as you adventure may join at your discretion.
As to whether or not you'll be able to create your own full party, stay tuned for details.
Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales
Regarding copyright protection... a lot of publishing studios are now requiring certain forms of protection... and this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
The main idea (as was mentioned) is simply to make it difficult for the average person to copy the game... ie: Rusty McFinger shouldn't be able to pop a game in his burner, hit the 'copy' button and give one to his friend Steve.
Yes, there are cracks for every major game that comes out... heck, if they're popular there's usually something out within a day (at most) of release.
On the whole, I'm sure none of us (as gamers) enjoy the various methods that are used to secure a game from being copied, as in some cases they have some adverse side effects. However, as Georg mentioned... discussing copyright protection at this stage really isn't that useful.
* Negotiating encryption/protection schemes for the CD/DVD release are still quite a ways out (we still need a publisher )
* We already know how our users feel about it. It really really sucks when you can't play a game because of copyright protection.
* Copyright protection of some sort is a necessary evil. In an ideal world where we didn't have to worry about piracy, it probably wouldn't exist.
DA as a mmorpg
Let's keep the discussion civil folks... we're all friends here... aren't we?
Just a note:
Dragon Age is not a massively multiplayer game.
The current plan is for an extensive Single Player campaign and a seperate multiplayer campaign with the same core story elements, only optimised for multiplayer.
new 3D engine
One of the main issues with physics are that they are not normally deterministic in a multiplayer environment. Because clients can get out of sync and we normally don't trust the client completely, we'd have to run physics simulations on the server (our trusted source) and push data down to the client, which would be bad.
Now it's true you could probably have certain items that we don't care about, ambient fluff and objects you can't interact with, such as debris on the ground or something like that react to blasts and other forces... however, for things of this sort the simulation could probably be done without the use of a physics engine.
We haven't ruled out using a physics engine for certain applications... but if I had to guess, I'd say most likely you won't see any iteration of such a beast in DA.
As for glitzy new graphical features in the engine, I occasionally like to pop across the hall to the graphics team offices and see what they're up to... a lot of the features being added are 'very purdy'.
Races...
Humans, Elves and Dwarves will be in the game as well as one other playable race... possibly more. We'll be releasing more details r