Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 20:14 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
Why reinvent the wheel, world-wise?
actually, we suggested that you might be trying to repackage baldur's gate, not d&d... though it weren't really a serious suggestion so much as raising a nightmarish spectre that we hope ain't true and was hopeful that biowarians might dispel.
Oh. Well, besides the fact that I think there are far worse things we could do than repackage Baldur's Gate, we're far from doing anything like that. You'll see.
Quote: come now dave. on this issue, you know we is right. kotor adopted characters, themes, and plot points from the original star wars trilogy... not simply "signature elements" from the star wars universe.
Whatever you say. The issue seems to me to be just one of semantics. I happen to think that those characters, themes and plot points we used from the movies *are* signature elements, but the difference is negligible in the end. I know you aren't accusing us of ripping off the movies or not being original (which wasn't the point anyhow), and I think it's that implication that Georg is reacting to, is all.
Gnome!
but they need good gnomes not the nwn crap i mean what the hell +2 to con what retard thought that up
Those would be the fellows who wrote the D&D ruleset (ie. 'the D&D crap' as opposed to specificially 'the nwn crap')
Now take off your pants for me.
is not whether we would want in a perfect world, is it? question to ask is: what would you be willing to give up to get customizable shoes or hair or tiaras?
Now that is a gosh darn good question.
So, to those people who want this level of customization (and I mean the high level being asked for... obviously there will be some customization regardless, and no doubt more than NWN anyhow), what's something roughly equivalent that you'd be willing to give up for it?
And insofar as things being "neat"... obviously we get to put "neat" things in all the time, and they are fun and good to have. Everyone wants a little bling, after all. You just don't normally put in scads of time and resources into something that is only "neat".
Derek French, Technical Producer
Max people in one server?
We really wouldn't have an answer to this until much later in the dev cycle.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Riddle me this my friend
Why not have riddles?
Sure
Why not have some(of all) of them require the answer to be typed in?
The industry moved away from type in answers a couple of years ago for a variety of reasons, including localization and spelling issues and accessibility
Why ot have Party members help you with them?
This could work as in game hint system where you, similar to KotOR, can ask NPCs about what they think of a certain situation, yes.
b) The Char's intteligence doesn't come in play. - people got so hung up on that stupid intellignce stat, only becoause it's name is intelligence. If it was nemed something else, they probably wouldn't have said anything.
Agreed. Who said we even have a intelligence stat? Even if we have, using it to determine the result to riddles doesn't make a lot sense, as the riddle is supposed to be a hurdle for the *player* so she can feel rewarded if she successfully figured it out. Putting it on the character would make it just a question of stat distribution on your character (and given that you are a party, even that doesn't count) and the original purpose of the riddle would be defeated.
More :
Let's for instance asume there will be no NIT stat, but rather something else (let's call it X). So, since there IS so intellignce now, would any of you mind the ridels NOW?
---------
c) A reason you don't mention for "typed-in" answers, is that due to the vastness of words in most languages, it would require a lot of effort to make all the correct answers work or you will force players to look up the solution in the forums, because they didn't state it in the same way as the developers, which would be bad.
Tunderscape handled it nicely. Riddles in english, answers in english, alwways one word.
the riddels were quite good and I loved them. Never had any truble with it(except for one). As I recall the answers to the ones I remember were "War", "Honour", "Life", etc... simple word, so no need for a dictinary.
It soo bugs me whn riddles are so easily solved (since you have the right answer in fron of you nose with several REALLY wrong ones).
Don't forget that a riddle that works in english and has a one word answer may not work in other languages, in many cases it will make no sense or have a sentence as an answer.
This would force us to create different riddles for different countries and generally throw us in localization hell.
More :
No intelligence stat? It's about time.
I didn't say there is none either, I just wanted to put in a reminder that everything is up for discussion.
Tell us more about this, Georg, eh?
Not now
Bioware: Can we get a name?
Let's wait for a really slow newsweek at a certain website and then release a totally unrelated codename
Visible Cloaks/Capes?
IMO cloaks are more than just a minor thing, I mean what's the point of wearing a cloak if you can't see it. And besides I don't think it would be that hard to implement.
Easy fix, just get rid of the cloak slot.
More:
No cloaks?
I didn't say that I said that if the argumentation is "it looks bad if you can't see the cloaks you equip on the inventory screen reflected on your character", then the easiest solution to fix this problem is to cut the cloak slot
A quote from the Great One concerning Henchmen
I know DA is not based on D&D, but this topic is nonetheless relevant. To quote from E. Gary Gygax's 1st Ed. AD&D PHB, page 39:
"Experience awarded to henchmen is usually much less than that which would be given a player character. This is because the henchmen are acting under the direction of their master or mistress. So you should expect that your character's henchmen will get about 50% of the experience points ... possibly even less if your character bore the brunt of the action and closely directed the henchmen."
And in a rare moment of redundancy (rare for Gygax, anyway), it is once again stated on page 107, shortly after the discussion of 0-level NPC's:
"Remember, character henchmen will gain only one-half of the total experience."
Hmmm, why would Gygax write this, and write it twice? And I recall long ago how BioWare was whining about trying to keep the focus of the game on the PC, as opposed to being overshadowed by the party NPC's. Hmmmm. Any comments, BioWare?
Who is this Gygax guy and what relevance has he for DA's game design?
I can't recall us "whining" on this topic either.
More: Personally I think it's a bad idea trying to make the PC the hero by making everyone else around him suck (aka giving them half XP).
In Pen and Paper this is a valid concern as the DM doesn't want to be hassled with a whole army at the disposal of a single player, but in a CRPG the story should drive the hero forward, not arbitrary rules that limit everyone else around him.
As for NWN, it was designed to be close to PnP, so the same concerns are certain valid and I agree that given the capabilties of todays AI systems (and that's nothing thats specific to NWN), not much else is needed to reinforce hero. DA is not based on a PnP system and doesn't need to care about the PC having multiple henchmen at his disposal as balancing will take the party into account (like in the BG Series), so I find it highly unlikely that we would see something like "a henchman only gets 50%".
Keeping your henchmen at 50% will open a can of problems you don't want to deal with in most game systems, especially when you are trying to make challenging battles that don't end with half of your party being killed every single time.
If your experience system is set up in a way that the following rule is valid
[henchman level] = [PC level -1]
I wouldn't be oposed (as we used this already in SoU and HotU) but that would be up to close balancing and dependent on how your XP system develops into higher levels.
I remember some discussions we had on the old BIS boards about this topic, but I don't remember them to be particulary "whiny" (unlike threads by certain half orcs trolls about dual wielding thieves...)
One thing I would like to know:
In HotU your Henchman Valen could develop into a kick *** fighting machine that could indeed take some of the glory away from the PC based on your class -
i.e. Player prepares mighty spell, aims at target, Valen hits critical and splatters body parts over the floor, player curses at Valen.
Was anyone bothered by this?
Did you get rid of him because he was too strong?
Did you keep him because he was valuable?
(*One* reason behind Valen's potential was to fix balancing problems created by the wide range of abilities certain classes get in epic levels. An epic weapon master could easily cut through most enemies, an epic rogue could , depending on how he was created, run into serious trouble in the campaign up to a point where it was nearly impossible to beat certain encounters and Valen was used to balance missing melee abilites off, so it would be interesting to know how you reacted to this when playing through HotU).
The Great List of (suggested) DA weapons!
Question. If you had to select 15 (arbitrary number) different weapons (ranged and melee) for inclusion into an RPG, which ones would you take (order by inclusion priority), and why.
More:
Well, ok if we assume that all weapons from NWN are included i would have some additions.
Such an assumption would be risky. While I have no information regarding what weapons are planned for DA, I would suggest not taking "everything that was in NWN will be in DA" for granted.
Which is the reason why I chose the number 15 in my previous post - to force you to make the decision which weapons you would like to drop.
Brenon Holmes, Programmer
Something I Thought Of While Playing NWN
Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 20:00 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
Level Cap
The game has data and coding for level 40 players and level 60 monsters/npcs. There are no plans for more levels, they are not needed.
[PRC] 2.1a RELEASED!!!!
Great news guys
Disappointed-- Hasbro & WotC
Therefore I have no choice but to no longer purchase Bioware games of any kind if this is the mentality and mindset of the Bioware company.
That is too bad, but I think you don't need to blame that on BioWare's mindset and mentality
However I think the final result will be that you will not be able to buy any computer based RPG game anymore with that mentality and mindset because second edition Ad&d is dead. It does not exist anymore on the market as you will only get a license for the third edition of the D&D setting. BioWare's next games (Jade Empire, Dragon Age, Secret Project Y) will not be using the D&D ruleset but instead use our own, in house developed rules systems.
Ray Muzyka Interview at GameSpy
Posted Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 19:55 CET by chevalier
GameSpy have posted a chat interview with dr. Ray Muzyka, one of the joint-CEOs of BioWare, together with dr. Greg Zeschuk. Here's a snip:
GameSpy: BioWare has come a long way since 1995. What would you say were the company's three biggest accomplishments?
Ray Muzyka: First, I think we've created a great place to work. We have a very low turnover rate -- three percent over the last ten years. We were able to hire excellent people and create a place where they love to work.
I'm also really proud of the community we've fostered. We have 1.9-million people that subscribe to our newsletter and voluntarily ask us for more information about games. We expect to have two million by the end of July. I feel very fortunate that so many people like our games enough to do that.
Another thing I would mention is that we were very fortunate to have some great publishing partnerships. From publishing Baldur's Gate with Interplay to Knights of Old Republic with LucasArts, and now Jade Empire with Microsoft, we've been very lucky.
Read the rest at GameSpy.
Latest Poll Results
Posted Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 16:35 CET by Sorcerer
What we asked:
Q: Do you think Interplay is going to survive and avoid bankruptcy?
(340 votes total)
Maybe, I'm not sure / don't know (154) 45%
No, never (145) 43%
Yes, definitely (41) 12%
The majority of poll participants (45%) voted either that Interplay might have a chance at survival, or that they don't know if it does.
43% of those who voted, however, believe that Interplay is never going to survive and avoid bankruptcy.
Only 12% of the people who voted are optimists, voting that Interplay will definitely survive.
SP Happenings #56
Posted Wednesday, June 30, 2004 - 13:51 CET by Sorcerer
With the last exam for the next two months behind me, I'm now finally free to do the work on SP that's been pretty much on hold for most of the year. You can expect a lot of things to change around here in the following weeks, among them the new design going up, followed by new message boards and a ton of content I've had on hold, waiting for the new design. Catbert, our web code genius, also sent me a message yesterday that he's still alive (whew!), but just on "vacation thing" till next week, when he should be back full-time. In the meanwhile, I'll be busy with converting the rest of the existing site to the new design, so that it can go live ASAP. I should also mention that Blackthorne TA will be away for nearly the whole next month due to his work, so it'll be just me and Beren policing the boards.
Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 20:50 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, DA Project Director/Producer
Riddle me this my friend
Here let me toss a little gas on the fire.
Why are riddles and puzzles good? Answer: They make the player feel good when they figure them out. In other words they provide a challenge for the player. No challenge, no fun.
Why are we seeing less and less riddles and puzzles in games? Answer: Because of the Internet No seriously, puzzles tend to be binary progress gates. That is, player either solve them and advance or they fail and are blocked.
In the olden days (you know, before the Internet), puzzle games were one of the most popular genres. When you were stuck, and I can't think of a single game that didn't I didn't get stuck in, you either kept banging your head on it, went to the store and paid good money for the hint book, or got a friend to help you. Some of my favorite memories of playing puzzle games were actual memories of a group of my friends sitting around the computer shouting out suggestions on how to proceed.
Now, if the average player is stumped by a puzzle, the solution is only a couple clicks away. I don't know of very many people who are willing to hammer away at a puzzle when they can simply pop over to a faq site and get the answer. I certainly do it, and I used to love puzzle games.
The net effect of this is to practically kill the effective challenge of any puzzle. If you make the puzzle too easy, everyone gets it and they think "what a dumb puzzle, that was too easy". Any harder and most people just look up the solution.
So, if you are wondering if there will be any puzzles in Dragon Age, then the answer is there will be some, but they will make sense in context of the story, rather than being added just as a challenge.
David Gaider, Designer
Gnome!
But when I discovered that all DnD gnomes were basically like Jan, it seemed a bit, well, lame.
Err... all DnD gnomes aren't like Jan. That's a trait that's peculiar to the Jansen family, more or less, I think. (Did we do any non-Jansens like this, too? I can't remember now.) I just don't think we had very many gnome characters, period.
At any rate, the DA races are pretty broad in their character. Not a lot of steretyping going on, though I guess they do have their common archetypes... but playing against archetype sometimes is the fun part.
Hey, we don't even have a female elf as a romance this time.
Why reinvent the wheel, world-wise?
Is it in fact more time consuming and resource draining to create a new rule system from scratch than it is to try and implement an existing pnp rule into a playable computer game?
Mmmm... you end up focusing your efforts on different things. You end up doing a lot more tweaking and testing, but are also free to change what doesn't work, and you end up spending a LOT less time figuring out how to implement something that needs a human mind to adjudicate but perhaps MORE time coming up with something that works acceptably in the first place but that still fits into our world and does what we want it to with gameplay.
I don't know how much time we save vs. how much time we expected to save, but it's certainly less frustrating work and a lot more fun.
And with regards to how much the rules system fettered the world creation and so forth... not as much as you might think. Occasionally someone would come to me with some rules issue that didn't fit into the world story and I would go "bleerrgggh" and James would waggle his finger at me for not reading the rules doc closely enough, but then we would haggle it out and come up with a compromise that was sometimes more exciting than I had anticipated. One of the classes was like that. It wasn't in the world and I was told to fit it in... and after hashing it back and forth for a while, suddenly this class became very exciting. It was a rather cool process. The biggest argument we had was how to retain the fun of playing a magic-using class vs. the restrictions placed on magic vis a vis the setting, and when we finally settled on it in the end it actually was a better story mechanism than I had hoped for.
The ability to just go in and make far-reaching changes when they are called for is a power that is not to be underestimated. I am not used to working like that (go figure) and whenever the possibility of doing so comes up it is a bit of a surprise (oh, yeah... I guess we CAN do that...) and has so far worked out positively.
More details to come, I guess.
More: I think what Georg is objecting to (though I may be wrong) is your choice of wording, Gromnir. You tend to come across as being more negative than you really intend to, and I only know that from long association with you.
"Repackaged" might be interpreted as it being a thinly-veiled copy of the original, which I don't think KotOR is either. But if you mean "repackaged" as in we very deliberately used many key elements from the original movies that made it "Star Wars" (including plot elements), then I would say you are correct. And I know you agree that was one of KotOR's strengths.
What that has to do with DA, however, I'm not sure. I guess one could think that we might try to repackage D&D into another form (with either definition), and I would say that's much less necessary than when one is trying to recall the essence of a movie setting & story. Naturally there are elements of fantasy which we intend to specifically use... some of which will, no doubt, draw the groans of some folks who are tired of/who dislike fantasy but who would be missing the point as much as those who criticised what they considered KotOR's derisiveness. What fantasy is, however, is much less specific that what Star Wars is. We have a lot more freedom.
How much of that freedom we intend to use is, however, a topic that we can't get into yet. Not for a while, yet, I would suspect. So while you can guess at what you think is likely you're going to have to be satisfied with saying your yeas and nays until we're ready.
Now take off your pants for me.
And, just to play devil's advocate:
If this sort of thing isn't put in, what exactly have we lost, game-wise?
Now, granted, some folks might have a different type of game in mind when they're picturing this, but I'm curious as to whether this level of visual customization has any actual merit beyond being "neat"?
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Random maps/terrain
Ugh, the D-word !!!
DA will not be organized in maps. It will be a 'one level world' like Morrowind.
Unfounded rumour
Why reinvent the wheel, world-wise?
why re-invent the wheel world wise... the answer is simple, freedom.
You forgot another answer: fun. What's more fun than spending your time in a meeting, trying to convince Dave that there is absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be 2 meter, fur covered, ball shaped creatures called Gnarves in your world...
More:
not having to ask for wotc permission is a nice advantage, but bio already imposed lots o' limits on their own freedom. is gonna be a traditional fantasy game with starting stories based on traditional fantasy archetypes. you got classic fantasy races, and we has seen what appears to be traditional crpg fighters and mages in screenies.
I have to disagree. The problem of freedom is *not* that you can't ask the license holder if you can introduce non-high-fantasy-elements - because if you want to create a high fantasy game, this question doesn't come up. The problems are on the level of being able to make permanent changes to the world use/kill/etc important characters, come up with your own locations/religions/gods/political factions, etc, etc without having to go through a longwinded approval process or even just canning the idea completely. (Don't try to read anything from this for DA, you will most likely be wrong).
Also, if we *wanted to*, there could be a major high tech alien invasion in the world of DA at any point, the freedom is there, but the question if it makes sense to use that freedom still remains. A good example for a game where introducing elements from another setting wasn't a really good idea is Silent Storm. Excellent game if you love turnbased combat, nicely done WWII setting and then suddenly ... . A lot of players, including myself were turned off by the impact their change in setting had (not only on the atmosphere but also on the gameplay).
Same with classes and races - sure we could do a classless system, and sure this was talked about in the early design meetings, but if there is a consensus that a class based system is the way we want to go for a variety of reasons, then not making the game a classless one is not a limitation to our freedom, it's just a design decision about the game we want to pursue.
So, the limits you are talking about might just be common sense (for a company publishing a game targeting a certain audience).
As for the issue being money - The initial investment for creating your own IP and setting is quite hefty, not only for establishing the new IP's name out there, but also for putting a lot of manpower into researching new systems, creating a background, new language(s), etc, etc. Sure, if it flies the reward is better and you get the freedom of creating action figures of your favourite character (i.e. a life-sized Gnarf for your living room!), etc, etc, but creating a game based on a license is probably cheaper and less risky than creating your own IP (at the expense of artistic freedom...).
More:
"Also, if we *wanted to*, there could be a major high tech alien invasion in the world of DA at any point, the freedom is there,"
sure you can... but you ain't, so your example is pointless.
Every decision you make limits the things you can do later, that's the nature of decisions. Without decisions your work will never be finished and end up as a huge pile of features without direction.
Not making use of your freedom to do stuff (because you don't like the idea, think it's stupid, whatever) doesn't mean you don't have the freedom to do it. Otherwise it wouldn't be freedom. So rather than seeing the "limitations" in the decisions we make (high fantasy, classbased system), we see the new options we have available for making the best classbased fantasy game. Since we decided for a classbased system, it obviously means we like this kind of system and don't want to do a classless one at this time.
Even if you make the decision for a class based system at one point and then get regrets about it, you could still later on soften the implications of a class based system by allowing multi classing, but then again you could have decided for a classless system in the first place
More:
explain how you will, but if you want freedom simply to do same old stuff then we ain't really moved by the pleas for liberty. claiming that you can do so much more with own world, and then doing stuff that is pretty much the traditional fantasy setting and characters makes us look at such statements with suspicion... changing the incidental details is hardly noteworthy.
I think you are just expecting us to do something different and are somewhat disappointed
We got the freedom to do the game we want to do, with the rules we want to do and the setting we want it to be - free of licensing issues and thirdparty approval processes. Is it so hard to understand that we could want to do this game the way it is?
By saying we are limiting us / restricting ourselves by selecting the setting/system we want for DA, you imply that another another setting/system would have been a better choise and express your disappointment that we chose the setting/system we did (which you, granted, don't know a lot about) - which makes the whole freedom/limit debate quite subjective and pointless - because we are talking about the absense of restrictions that come from licensing while you are talking about all the opportunities we are possibly missing because we are not throwing everything our games stand for overboard and start tabula rasa. You can assume a lot of that was discussed at early design meetings at BioWare.
More: Again...some people actually LIKE some aspects of the 'old stuff'. If you like them, than what is the point of changing them, unless you believe in change for the sake of change. They have the freedom to change what they want to change , and the freedom to retain what they want to retain . Whether you or I agree or disagree with those choices isn't really the issue.
(Just FYI, it is comments like the above which make me perceive you as pushing for 'change for the sake of change', a charge you felt unwarranted when I made it.)
When Carl said "SOME" people, he probably meant "most of our target audience", which is something I won't contest.
That still doesn't mean DA isn't going to be radically different from other fantasy settings in certain aspects of the gameplay/setting, but it does mean that any design decision that touches core elements of BioWare gameplay will be evaluated carefully because in the end we are catering our target audience, which the "why not change everything completely" kind of player might or might not be part of (as you can't please everyone).
A common example might be Morrowind - I had several people telling me that they couldn't get into the game because the world was just a bit too exotic for their opinion, lots of strange bug like creatures and strange names they couldn't remember later. While I personally didn't found that (except for the name problem, ugh), I can certainly understand that point of view.
btw, how many times has we heard developers say that it is sooooooooo much easier and less time consuming to create a new computer rule system as 'posed to trying to force d&d rules into a computer? raise hands if you has heard such?
Cheap evasive maneuver Gromnir
Just because a new system is classbased doesn't mean it is D&D or has to share elements or rules from D&D and you know that. i.e. Ultima IX, Silent Storm or City of Heroes is classbased and they don't suffer from any baggage attached to the D&D rules.
I guess this discussion has become so thin, it's time to end my involvement in this serious exchange of thoughts.
More: And just to make this clear, this does not mean that we are never going to make a radically different game at some point in the future - it just means that if you are looking for something radically different (i.e. turn based, classless RPG about spacefaring baby squirrels in a postnuclear world combating each other with insane superpowers while saving the universe from the wrath of an evil mutant squirrel) you will not find it in DA.
More:
a diplomatic response from gaider. you trying to get james ohlen's job? no doubt once da is finished we will get a much more definitive response.
am just recalling how da has been presented as, and this is a quote, "revolutionary." we not mind if it ain't, but so far there seems to be very little we might identify as revolutionary... and various developers seems to be noting that if people is expecting revolutionary then they is waiting for the wrong game.
is "revolutionary" just advertising puffery?
no big deal. kotor gave star wars fans what they wanted by repackaging the original star wars films/story. perhaps bio will try same thing with its fans... repackage bg1. then again, maybe bio does something completely different. time will tell.
Hrhr, if KotOR was a repackaged SW story for you, I'm sure you will find something that you can claim the DA story has been repackaged from.
More:
this is surreal. hey dave, wanna explain to geo all the parallels you had 'tween kotor and the original star wars trilogy? bah.
Let me see. Ah yea, Darth Malak was your father and, oh well, right, I forgot about that, Bastila was your sister. Oh wait, that would be kind of arkward, not to say violating certain laws in certain countries.
I think you are mistaking making a story set and fit in the StarWars universe (and critically acclaimed and awarded with tons of awards, including the IDGA Excellence in Writing award for Dave & Co) with an old story repackaged. If you buy SW, you expect a certain kind of setting, atmosphere and story elements, and that's what you should get when buying a game. Signature Elements != Story Repackaged. But hey, if that's your definition of repackaged, as said, I'm sure you will find some elements of DA in Monty Python's Quest for the Grail or Attack of the killer Tomatoes.
But as already noticed before, the whole thread is running thin now.
Bah
More: Please take your time to actually read my posts. I'm not assuming anything, I'm merily pointing out that Signature Elements are != repackaging. Calling that a knee-jerk reaction is hardly approriate.
Brenon Holmes, Programmer
Combat that looks like Combat
There shouldn't be "misses" there should be blocking dodging. How do you show a guy dodging/blocking multiple strikes simultanously or blocking one while getting hit by another? hmmm, maybe make it so it determines before the animations take place based off stats which order the attacks will come in and have everybody perform one at a time.
But then it's arbitrary, not rules based. That also means that if I get one attack per round (using DnD as a convention for this discussion) then my action can be delayed for an incredibly long time if I'm attacked by say... 50 goblins (ranged & melee).
Since I have to react to every single one of them before I can take my action, and that's even ignoring the fact that most of them will probably get another attack before we finish with the first 50, in the end it either looks odd (flintstones boxing, where everyone takes turns) or you have to make some concessions...
Or maybe just have one animation override the other, like the getting hit animation would override a blocking animation even though he did successfully block one of the attacks. As long as there is something and the guy isn't just standing there.
Even so though, you'll have problems parrying four near simulatenous attacks from various angles.
On a related note about interrupts in general... There was an iteration of the NWN combat system that used interrupts. Creatures could be stopped mid-swing if they were hit or needed to react to an attack from another creature.
There were a few problems with that... Whenever you were outnumbered it was extremely likely that you would get fewer and fewer attacks, as you were spending most of your time playing dodge/parry/damage animations.
While that may sound good at first... think about it for a moment. You're attacked by two creatures, you now get 1/2 of your regular attacks. You're attacked by three creatures, you now get 1/3 of your regular attacks... etc.
Additionally, after a certain point - you no longer got actions... because the order wraps and the creatures that attacked you first are attacking again. Essentially what I mentioned in the first part of the post.
More:
Ellderon Starsunder wrote:
That's excatly what I want. One CANNOT fight against 5 skilled opponents at the same time and expect to win easily,m or to be able to parry/dodge them all. This is just plain realistic. Now, you said there is a problem if swarmed - well then, don't allow swarming. Make a individual monster more challanging this way, rather than aving 50 pitifull monsters attacking you....
That may be something to consider, however getting mobbed is better represented by a bonus to hit or possibly damage for the enemy as opposed to penalizing the player by taking away their attacks.
No matter what, you should be able to take regular actions to affect the outcome of a situation. Taking away player control is a sure way to piss people off.
Also, just because I'm mobbed by five frenzied four-year olds doesn't mean I should die...
Well, I think we'd want to try to keep creatures taking actions concurrently... as it is supposed to be a representation of Real Life(tm).
If we did structure combat so that every creature took turns (no two actions took place at the same time) then you'd have to have some kind of filler for when the creature was not attacking. The longer the delay between actions, the more obvious it's going to be that that creature is doing nothing at all.
For example, in the case where you have a 3 vs 1 (fairly reasonable engagement) while O1 and F are fighting... what are the other two orcs doing? We can't fake attacks, since that brings us right back to our initial problem...
Players are somewhat forgiving if monsters are pumping (doing nothing), but switch it around... make it 3 party members against 1 orc. Now it's frustrating (my party isn't doing anything, what the hell!!).
We can, however, do something similar to what you're talking about with multiple animations from various states... only instead of creating custom animations for all of these situations we can look at fancy interpolation routines or blending systems, both of which are much less expensive in terms of resources.
---------------
In KotOR the fight was a cinematic 1 vs 1 duel when fighting humanoids. All other attacks were ignored (there was no reaction to them). But because the main fights were so flashy and exciting, you usually didn't notice that your character was ignoring the other combatants.
In DA, our viewpoint is a bit different - additionally doing custom synched animations for every attack for every creature would be a pain. There weren't many different rigs in KotOR (most of the humanoids were exactly the same size/shape), so animating the sequences between the various types was only moderately painful - in DA it would be much much more so.
Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance
Release Date: I'm opening the betting...
Let's get this out of the way, so y'all won't be surprised when I lay the smackdown on other, similar threads.
(b)Release date speculation is discouraged here because there is no actual discussion about the game in such threads, just posting of random dates.(/i)
Besides, the release date for any unreleased product of ours is always Febturday, Octember 37, 7 BCE.
End of line.
Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 20:39 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.
Derek French, Live Team Producer
NWN:SoU European CD Key issues
its pathetic that Bioware releases this with such a flaw.
Its important to understand that we, the Developer, have absolutely NOTHING to do with this issue. CD Keys are printed at a CD manufacturing plant under the supervision of the Publisher. We supply the Publisher with CD Keys, but after that, the entire process is out of out control. You need to get in contact with the Atari support division in your region.
Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager
Looking for expert NWN fans
Brilliant folks- keep them coming!
More: Subject: General Tips
Name: Jay Watamaniuk
Taking screen shots: Go into your game settings and make sure that all feedback is turned off. Feedback is the text that appears on screen to indicate damage, spell effects and so on. Go to advanced video settings and crank up your resolution, your anti-aliasing (try for 4X), Full shadows, full grass the whole meal deal. You are taking a screenshot not trying for smooth gameplay. If you are playing, use pause and rotate around to see if there any better angles for the shot. Obviously it is much better to edit out the pause icon (using Photoshop or something similair). For super-advanced screenshots create your scene with the toolset and use the DM Client to jump from creature to create during a pause to get the very best angles on the action.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Hacker Party in our Midst
Please send "demands" targeted to a single person using private messages. And while your at it, I think not using the word "stupid" generally improves the chance of a post being taken seriously. Last warning in this thread, I'm going to clean it of certain posts if it proves impossible to keep it civil. As for the topic of blacklists, as said, BioWare doesn't want to be part of it. We do however not care about server admins founding their own guild and use it to share the public cdkeys of people that they found disrupting gameplay on their servers, because those are *their servers* and they can do with them as they please and they can select the players they want to have on their servers. It needs to be noted that there are examples of successful, player run blacklists (i.e. for PunkBuster supported games) as well as examples where these lists were disrupted by griefers (Diablo I). As said, keep it civil or I'm going to make use of the delete button to remove overly aggressive/disrespectful posts in this forum. I have no trouble with this thread staying in this forum, but I would suggest moving future discussion about this topic into a guild forum.
Stopping inappropriate names
I think there is a namefilter.2da not sure if it would work in a hakpak however.
Tim Smith, Tools Programmer
What is TRUE and what is FALSE?
FALSE = 0
TRUE = 1
However, when NWScript tests for "TRUE" it does not do "x == TRUE", it does "x != FALSE".
For example:
if (FALSE) // clause not taken
if (TRUE) // clause taken
if (0) // clause not taken
if (1) // clause taken
if (2) // clause taken
if (0 == TRUE) // clause not taken
if (1 == TRUE) // clause taken
if (2 == TRUE) // clause not taken!!!!!!
Which is why it is a VERY BAD IDEA to do
if (x == TRUE)
Never test to see if something is TRUE, always test to see if something is not FALSE. This wouldn't be a problem if NWScript had a true boolean type. (IMHO, you should never test for TRUE or FALSE, use proper Boolean operators such as ! to not the boolean value and let the if statement implicitly test for not FALSE.)
Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer
nwserver.exe wont work
I've seen this problem (if I understand you correctly) before and it's caused by nwserver not finding the resources it needs, usually because you've started it in the wrong directory (you need to supply the correct 'Start In' directory otherwise it won't find the files it needs). Try checking the shortcut (if you used one).
This sounds about right. If the text labels on the controls are not showing up, it sounds like nwserver.exe can't find the dialog.tlk file (which contains all the button text information) for some reason.
Interplay's Q2 a Negative Number?
Posted Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 17:56 CET by chevalier
Interplay is left at 28K at the end of Q1. The drop ratio per quarter is around 40%. Apparently, Q2 is going to end at below zero. Here's a snip:
They have dropped about 40% with each quarter results release. Their market cap is now less than 10% of the previous year's revenues and also less than the "profit" of Q4. Then again, they pissed away about 1 million from their cash "hoard" and now are left at 28K as of Q1's end.
Q2 is gonna be less than zero?
Read the rest at Raging Bull.
Herve down $230000
Posted Tuesday, June 29, 2004 - 17:51 CET by chevalier
Noticed the trend? We have at least one or two Interplay failure news posts daily. Perhaps we should call it Daily Interplay Failure News? Today, however, we have something more comforting to communicate: Herve is $230000 down on the shares he bought on April 17th for $0.052 each, which is over twice the current last trade ($0.025). Here's what an Interplay shareholder says in Raging Bull IPLY forums:
The only thing still keeping me in, other than pure stubbornness, is that Herve is a weasel and a snake. Herve's back is against the wall, and he is heavily invested in Interplay. I'm thinking that with the help of SG Capital that he'll be able to figure out something that is in his best interest, which hopefully is also in other shareholder's interest. It could even be selling off all of the licenses, perhaps bringing in enough money to pay off their bills and make a small profit. I can't imagine Herve going down without a fight when he has 9 million personal shares. It's doubtful that whatever he does will be successful, but I'm betting he has one last card to play, hopefully providing enough time for us investors to earn back a little money and to get out then.
Or, quite clearly and straight to the point:
Herve down over $230,000
Herve purchased 8,679,306 @ .052 on April 17
Read the whole thing at Raging Bull. Don't forget to check Interplay's summary (now restored to IPLY.OB) for further break at Yahoo Finance.
Interplay Shares Down Again
Posted Monday, June 28, 2004 - 19:15 CET by chevalier
This time $0.024 and still falling.
Check out Interplay's summary at Yahoo Finance.
Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Monday, June 28, 2004 - 18:17 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
Combat that looks like Combat
We discussed this a bit before in the aforementioned parry thread... but it's a fun topic.
Combat is a tricky beast, because you can't take everything into account all the time. For example, how do you make someone parry two attacks that happen at almost the exact same time?
Unless you have a special animation to cover that case, you cannot.
Basically what I'm getting at is, unless we have an animation for every possible situation that could potentially occur in a fight, you *will* see creatures not reacting in some situations (because we don't use an interrupt system, like Diablo).
Our job is to make sure that the cases in which these sorts of things occur are minimal. If we do it well, hopefully, you'll rarely notice...
We do have some plans on how to deal with most of these issues, however I'm not going to talk about those until we've at least proven that they work.
Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Monday, June 28, 2004 - 18:15 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
sj_tilemagic_i 2.0
That sounds pretty cool, looking forward to test it.
DTS-Debug
DTS is HotU's Disposable Treasure System, this message only appears if you switch it on in x2_mod_def_start but do not supply proper configuration values.
AOO
There are no plans to change the way attacks of opportunity work.
Interplay's Debts List at No Mutants Allowed
Posted Sunday, June 27, 2004 - 17:44 CET by chevalier
Kharn of No Mutants Allowed has posted a long list of Interplay's creditors with due sums and short background information on each. Here's a snip:
[At] the time of filing, Bioware alleged that it was owed approximately $156,000 under various agreements for which it secured a writ of attachment over the Company's assets. If Bioware executes the writ, it will negatively affect the Company's cash flow, which could further restrict its operations and cause material harm to our business.
(...)
On or about April 16, 2004, Arden Realty Finance IV LLC filed an unlawful detainer action against the Company in the Superior Court for the State of California, County of Orange, alleging the Company's default under its corporate lease agreement. At the time the suit was filed, the alleged outstanding rent totaled $431,823. The Company was unable to satisfy this obligation and reach an agreement with its landlord, the Company subseqently forfeited its lease, and is in the process of locating another building for its operations. This suit and interruption of our operations could cause substantial harm to our business
(...)
Read the whole thing at No Mutants Allowed.
Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Sunday, June 27, 2004 - 17:39 CET by chevalier
David Gaider, Designer
Large Army Battles Possible?
I think we've said previously that we've been playing with having lots and lots of individual creatures on a single screen. I know I watched a big battle between elves and skeletons one day that one of the programmers was running in DM mode to test things and it all seemed very Myth-esque, almost, and quite impressive. I think part of the trick is also to find a way that each creature model doesn't have to run individual AI routines, as well, at least as far as I understand it. So, yes, big battles. Whether or not the RTS-like ability to control stuff on a unit level will be possible, I'm not even sure. Too early to comment much.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Linux client?
Wow, not looking good... nothing encouraging from Bioware about the Linux ports and heavy rumors about Micro$oft involvement abounding... In my worthless opinion, no linux server will hurt the community on a whole! But once MS buys a company integrity goes out the windows anyway... We'll just have to wait for another smaller more ambitious dev company to take their place and let Dragon Age sit on a shelf next to Dungeon Siege... Yet another PC game MS will ruin hoping we all magically get the urge to buy an Xbox, just cause PC gaming is not what it used to be.. Thanks again Bill... Alot of Mac users were looking forward to Halo at one time, nice how that turned out...
Err, in case you didn't notice, rumours != facts. I guess that was a typical "how a rumour builds" situation
User A: X could happen
User B: I heard X is a possiblity
User C: It would be soo (good|bad) if X happened
User D: Is it true that X happened? Must be, they didn't deny it. Thats (awesome|aweful)
User F: what??? X happened! What a (grand event|mess) [goes off and posts on other webpages]
That rumour came up before E3 (as every year) saying "Microsoft will buy BioWare and announce it on E3" and it was just that, a rumour. Well, E3 is over. I'm sure it will come up next year again. Dragon Age has no signed publisher at the moment, once it has one I'm sure everyone and their grandmother will come to this forum and find good reasons about why publisher [put random publisher name here] is a bad idea because they want to take over the world and your wallet, screw over [put group dedicated to a certain API or OS here] and force you to use [put name of random copy protection software here]. (note that it doesn't matter which publisher will be signed, there will be always people complaining about it). However posting it here will just serve venting frustration because it won't have any impact on the publishing agreement. But please, could we delay the above described situation until it has actually happened? That would be great.
You will not get any responses from us on the topics "linux" or "mac" support until we have decided to either do it or not and until we know if our publisher (which we don't have at this point) supports this decision. So please let's drop the "nobody has said something encouraging in the last 5 pages, it must mean X (because if they do not deny it, it must be X for certain)" game and wait until we make a public service announcement about the topic? And just in case somebody tries to read anything into my words here: "just don't do it", I'm working on a different project and I have no information regarding possible or not possible linux and mac (clients|servers|toolsets).
Brenon Holmes, Programmer
Toolset - Import Functionality
I'll answer for them. No. From engine to licensing issues this just won't happen.
What he said.
Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Sunday, June 27, 2004 - 17:33 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.
Derek French, Live Team Producer
NWN:SoU European CD Key issues
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 all of your CD Keys for validation.
Is this the same fix required for the gold double box set if you cannot even get the original version of NWN to install because the key (as printed) comes up as invalid?
No it is not. You have purchased a flawed copy of the game from the retailer and you either need to exchange it for a working copy through them or contact the Atari support in your region and have them solve it.
German Patch?
German HotU shipped as 1.62 - no update is required at this tim until 1.63
Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager
Looking for expert NWN fans
I am looking for expert tips from the best of the NWN community. What I plan is to have articles that detail the best tips from the community on the following topics:
Being a player
Character creation
DMing
Running a campaign in NWN
Running a persistent world
General tips
Keep your tips a reasonable length- such as under 150 words if possible although special consideration will be given to excellent longer tips.
Submit your tips here in the following format:
•What is your topic?
•What name would you like used if your tip is used?
•What is your tip?
For example:
•Character Creation
•Festilard the Mighty
•You can change the appearance of a pre-made character by clicking on customize button.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Hacker Party in our Midst
BioWare does neither endorse nor oppose what the people in this thread are doing. The community server admins can organize or police their own servers as they see it fit, it's their bandwith and hardware.
BioWare will never globally ban CDKeys based on reports or complaints from the community, cases of global bans/account terminations are very rare and usually only happen for serious violations against our Terms of Service and a few other selected offenses.
In a somewhat unrelated note, we are investigating the option (read: investigating, no promises) of having the game write public cdkey and ip address of people who try to exploit certain issues that are currently present in 1.62 to the logfile (before booting them) so admins can get better awareness of people repeatedly trying to cause havok.
The server admin community has been very helpful with their feedback during the last month and *a lot* of issues have been identified and fixed in 1.63 because of that (sorry, no ETA yet ) have fun.
sj_tilemagic_i 2.0
I'll see what I can do
What is HitPoint History ... George?
Your character stores a complete history of levelups so when you remove levels it knows which feats, skills to remove, how many hitpoints to take, etc
Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer
HotU and Original Play Disc
i recently, uh, stepped on my play disc for the original NwN game. i want to know if i buy HotU will i need it anymore?
Once you install HotU, you will need to insert the HotU play disk rather than the original NWN disk. However, if you ever have to reinstall the game for some reason, you'll still be out of luck. Hope that helps
Another GetNearestObjectToLocation Bug?
I believe all the following scripting commands:
GetNearestCreatureObject()
GetNearestCreatureToLocation()
GetNearestObject()
GetNearestObjectToLocation()
GetNearestObjectByTag()
Were designed in a way such that the object that you pass in can not be returned as a result of the "Nearest" test.
If you specify a location that no objects are currently at, then the game will find the closest object to that location and will not return that object as a "Nearest" object, but the next nearest object intead.
This makes sense in the context of a call to GetNearestObject(), since you want the closest object to the object specified (but not the object itself), but in the context of GetNearestObjectToLocation () where you've specified a random location in the area (which might not be near any objects) it doesn't make as much sense. Thus, it gives you weird unintutive results.
Although if you make a call like:
oObject = GetNearestCreatureToLocation ( CREATURE_TYPE_IS_ALIVE, TRUE,GetLocation(oPC), 1);
This will then return the nearest creature to the PC, but not the PC itself. I'm not really sure if this was originally the intended use of the scripting command when it was originally implemented or not. I'll have to do some poking around to find out.
Another GetNearestObjectToLocation Bug?
Thanks for the info Craig: you explained very nicely why it is happening but unfortunately as you implied it means GetNearestObjectToLocation is utterly useless.
To clarify: anytime we want to use it (predictably) we need to use an object's location so we might as well use GetNearestObject() instead. [snip]
Hopefully there is a chance that GetNearest..ToLocation can be made to work so that if no object exists at the generated location they will return the nearest object. A fix like that shouldn't have any effect on existing scripts since if ever it has been used it has (until now) required an object's location ... or those scripts are already broken!
In any event thanks and happy poking around.
Yeah that was pretty much my feeling when looking at these scripting commands as well.
I don't believe we've used those scripting commands much ourselves (other than one spot I found in SOU chapter 2) There is the possibility that we may have used these elsewhere in the generic scripts somewhere, if we haven't then changing the behavior shouldn't break any of the OCs. Which means that we may be able to safely make a change to the behavior of these scripting commands.
I'll have to investigate a bit more once I've cleaned a few other tasks off my work plate.
Sydney Tang, Programmer
Tools/Option doesn't work
Did you update to the latest patch? I recall that there was a bug with the Options dialog in an earlier version.
Interplay Announces Q1 2004 Earnings
Posted Saturday, June 26, 2004 - 15:53 CET by chevalier
Yahoo Finance has Interplay's Q1 2004 Earnings and Future Direction. Here's a clip:
For the first quarter ended March 31, 2004, the Company reported a net loss of $.9 million, or .01 per basic and diluted share, compared to a net income of $5.6 million or $.06 per basic and diluted share, in the same period last year. Net revenues for the first quarter 2004 were $8.4 million versus $18.8 million in the same period last year, a decrease of 55 percent. Finally the Company reported an operating loss of $.9 million in the first quarter as compared to operating income of $5.6 million in the first quarter of 2003. The decrease in net revenues and net income was mainly due to the sale of all future interactive entertainment publishing rights to the "Hunter: The Reckoning" franchise for $15 million in the first quarter of 2003.
Read the whole thing at Yahoo Finance.
Interplay Nearing Death
Posted Saturday, June 26, 2004 - 15:50 CET by chevalier
Despite Herve's amibitious plans, it seems Interplay is soon going to be out of business. Here's some info from Yahoo:
"The company anticipates its current cash reserves, plus its expected generation of cash from existing operations, will not be sufficient to fund its anticipated expenditures through the second quarter of fiscal 2004," Interplay said in the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
"Consequently, the company expects that it will need to substantially reduce its working capital needs and/or raise additional capital," Interplay said. "However, no assurance can be given that alternative sources of funding could be obtained on acceptable terms, or at all."
Read the whole thing at Yahoo Business.
Fallout MMORPG to Save Interplay?
Posted Saturday, June 26, 2004 - 15:07 CET by chevalier
Herve says that only several short-term obstacles are on his way back to making big cash. Such as only $900 thousand loss in the quarter ending March 31 and a just a mere $18 million in liabilities compared to $4.5 million in assets total, let alone problems with letting employees back at their desks. The Force is strong in Herve, but wonder if Herve is equally strong in the Force.
A new solid source of cash is going to be online multiplayer gaming and Fallout in particular. So, it seems that laying BIS off wasn't perhaps the best idea. None of the famed Fallout developers are currently working for Interplay. For this reason, given that a simple addition of a multiplayer protocol to existing Fallout material is not quite enough, it's hardly reasonable to expect the new Fallout MMORPG to have the atmosphere of the original Fallout. However, if they actually make it, that's going to be one of the brightest days in the history of the RPG genre.
Now, its plan is to enter the PC massively-multiplayer online market with what franchise assets remain to its name, particularly the post-nuclear RPG series Fallout. A third stand-alone RPG in the Fallout series was cancelled late last year when Interplay closed Black Isle Studios, but Interplay still owns the intellectual property rights to the series.
"Based on a detailed review of where our industry stands and the level of interest in the gaming community in taking some of our premier properties online, we are now pursuing several options to fund our entry into massively-multiplayer online gaming with titles including Fallout," Caen said. "Initial feedback from our investment bank and ongoing dialogue with others in the gaming sector appear to confirm that the combination of our valuable and popular intellectual properties with the rapidly growing online gaming community is the best way to maximize Interplay shareholder value."
Read the whole thing at 1UP.
BioWare Receives an Award at Discreet
Posted Friday, June 25, 2004 - 18:30 CET by chevalier
BioWare has received an award at Discreet. You can watch a video featuring some nice 3D animation. Jade Empire, which is made by BioWare but isn't covered by SP, gets the best RPG title.
Read the whole thing at Discreet.
Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Friday, June 25, 2004 - 15:44 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.
Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager
23 Jun 2004 - NWN Profile: NWTactics
I agree- damn good work on NWTactics.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Servers Going Strong?
There are usually between 2.5k and 6k players depending on day of the week and time of the day.
1.63 Patch
There are no plans to add epic spellcasting to bards.
1.63 Patch
Any plans for an option to turn off attacks of opportunity?
First off, attacks of opportunity are not an optional thing in D&D so there is absolutely no reason why we sould add an option for that. This thread is rapidly losing any value. However, you can already do it if you want. Set the difficulty level to easy or modify the appropriate .2da to disable attacks of opportunity on the setting you want to play on. There will be no options other than this.
Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Friday, June 25, 2004 - 15:43 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.
David Gaider, Designer
As a setting: Dragon Age compared to Eberron. What do you think?
How can you have anything but an IP vs. license debate here, considering you don't actually know anything about the Dragon Age setting?
Customizing Characters
Character models will certainly be much more customizeable. Just how much remains to be seen.
How would YOU spend zots?
The new David Gaider collector figure, with Extreme Procrastination Action!! ::hides::
Well, I guess they wouldn't have to make the "action" figure have much range of motion, then. Maybe just closeable eyes.
Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager
Concept Art
I am popping in here to make sure this does not wander too far off topic...or I will move this off-topic. Keep in mind the creation of concept art is not a static process it is dynamic. We have gone through many and radically different versions of characters in Jade for example before we settle on what we all like...and even then we are still changing costumes. The debate over the representation of female characters in fantasy literature and other media is an excellent conversation if appraoched from rational and mature point of view. Pray continue but do remember this thread is about a wallpaper for Dragon Age.
Any Idea of the system requirement (Specially W98SE)?
I would have to agree with Georg- if your still running Win98 by the time Dragon Age comes out you will have larger problems than this game to content with. The recommended specs in my completely fabricated and very untechnically sound cauldron of lies are:
Intel Buckrogers 3000
ATI-nVidia Das GroupenBlaster MMZ Overlord 10000 (comes in special space-themed box with fins!)
733t RAM-STEIN
OzZy SoundCard 230,000
Don Moar, Tools Programmer
The Tool Man
Hey, Tools monkeys, Georg? :) Just to set the record straight: When I started at BioWare, in February of '99, the tools team consisted of just two programmers, myself and one other. It now has 22 programmers and is still growing. When I started, we supported only one project, we now support five (currently they are JE / DA / Live Team / Localization / Unannounced).
The typical project requires anywhere from 20 to 50 individual pieces of tools software ranging in size from a few dozen lines of code to several hundred thousand and with purposes as diverse as content creation to bug tracking to asset management. Some tools depend upon game and graphics systems and require constant maintenance, others are built once and then used for months or years almost without modification. Some tools we know about at the beginning of the project or can anticipate and so design and construction starts as early as possible, but there are others that appear unexpectedly and can only be built later, as the need arises.
The advantage of having a dedicated team of tools programmers like we do at BioWare is that we can more easily apply the lessons learned on previous projects (What tools were required? How long did they take to design and build? When did we realize that they were necessary? etc.) to the current ones. The implication of this is that it should mean better (in at least one respect or another) tools for the community on those projects where they are included.
I'll let Tim & Co. go into the particular details for DA later. :)
Georg Zoeller, Designer
How would YOU spend zots?
True - but the toolset they use does not have to be one that is useful to amateurs not used to using professional development tools.
I tried the Silent Storm editor yesterday and found it quite unfriendly for a first time user, it took me quite a while to figure out how things work. can't really judge how powerful it is based on a couple of hours, but my impression is that our internal toolsets are by default more accessible and ergonomic than many tools used at other companies and even "enduser" editors that ship with many other games. I have no doubt that someone who was reasonably skilled with the NWN toolset *could* adapt to the Jade Toolset relatively fast, even if it is only an internal one.
Sure, you will miss a lot of the "make it easier" features and it might not be so tolerant on you when you try something you shouldn't do, but still.
So I guess when you say "no toolset", you say "spend no time on making the internal toolset user friendly/error tolerant/polished for the end user. Keep in mind however that saving time on that end wouldn't magically make the story longer, add a z-axis to the game or otherwise do stuff you would notice, because tools programmers are tools programmers and don't add z-axis or horses to a game, etc.
I'm not saying that it isn't a lot of work to make the toolset accessible and user friendly so it is easy to use for Trent's Grandma (it sure is *a lot* of work), but I'm saying that any "zots" you save there do not necessarily add up into new game features or a longer story as the free tools resources could also be allocated to other projects, improving our internal tools (which would cause a general productiveness increase for the rest of the team but not necessarily impact the game currently being worked on) and so on.
I think some of you guys should really stop trying to blame the toolset or multiplayer or the GM client for the fact that you didn't like how the NWN OC ended up, because the reasons why the NWN OC ended up the way it ended up are multi fold and complex and while those features have contributed to it, there were a lot of other reasons as well (i.e. you not agreeing with general design decisions - no party control like BG, etc - no amount of additional programming time would have changed that ).
Yes, by making the game use a tileset system (for easy end user modability), things like exciting unique places as seen in the BG story didn't make it for NWN and that had impact on the game's atmosphere (and we tried to remedy this for HotU by using specially crafted tiles for important places (i.e. well room, V's temple, etc).
DA is not going to use a tilebased system as a result, so it's not that we are not aware of the problems out there.
But anyway, the approach in this thread is highly flawed as it doesn't take BioWare's structure into account. Saying 50% zots for writing is a great idea, we just move all the programmers over to writing for a while and I'm sure we will get some wonderfully complex and challenging math puzzles
If you want to speculate, try something more like this
Art
* Animation
* Creatures
* Areas
* 2D Art / GUI, Portraits, Icons
* Cinematics/Cutscenes
* Concept Art
* 3d art, VFX
Programming
* Game Engine
* Game UI
* Network
* Graphics Engine
* Sound
* Goodies (Physics engine, etc)
Technical Design
* Game Rules (Classes, Combat, etc)
* Balancing
* Level Scripting
* Cutscenes
* Global Systems
* Goodies
Writing
* World Background (incl. Race backgrounds, etc)
* Story
* Dialog (NPCs)
* Dialog (Henchmen)
* Dialog (Romances)
* Origin Stories
* Goodies
Tools (project specific)
* Specific Tools (i.e.Art)
* Toolset (core)
* Toolset (enduser friendlyness)
* Additional tools (i.e external compilers)
Production
* VO
* Soundtrack
* Localization
* ...
Of course this is inaccurate and incomplete, but at least it gives you a bit better picture. Happy zot distribution!
What Kind of World is Dragon Age?
I wouldn't take anything for granted at this stage of development. If you insist on believing certain things are granted, I suggest taking the stuff in the FAQ.
Dragon Age Forum News
Posted Thursday, June 24, 2004 - 16:30 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
Why reinvent the wheel, world-wise?
At this point, I think they'd all rather have weekly colonoscopies than work with another license.
Heh... cute. I think it's been pretty much explained. Someone else's world is someone else's world, and no matter who that is or how cool they might even be, everything we attempt to do is going to have to be approved by them first... from the viewpoint of maintaining their own vision of and plans for their license rather than for the betterment of the computer game we're making. That's what makes it hard, and often frustrating. It's like having a bunch of chefs all in charge of making a single batch of soup, with half of them concerned not with how the soup tastes but what color it ends up being. And while I personally think some books like "Game of Thrones" and "Tigana" have wonderful worlds that would be cool to detail in a game... come on, who wouldn't give their right arm to put their own world up there instead? I bet a lot of you are DM's who have a world or two that you've created tucked away somewhere. How much better do you know that world, and how much does that improve how you tell stories in it? A lot, I'd expect.
New wallpaper...
I think this is just concept work for the character used in the E3 demo (who is a spellcaster, at least, and not wearing any armor). The barbarian man will be along soon, too, is my guess, just to make things equal. And I don't think this is meant to be representative of Dragon Age's eventual style.
More:
Don't you ever saw the pattern of Bioware's fantasy games since ToB? Melissan prominent feature was breasts. Aribeth's prominent feature was breasts. Valsharess' prominent feature was breasts. Can you see the pattern here or are you too freaking blind by your fanboism and modship?
Mmm... not that I don't admit we might end up with a scantily-clad female of some variety somewhere in the game, but it won't be THIS scantily-clad female. This was a generic concept for the demo. The actual Dragon Age world is much colder than the one in the demo appears to be. I would expect any bikinis we have to at least be fur-lined.
More:
It shows me that we are going to get more of the same. Oh well.
But you already knew that. I'm not sure there is anything we could show you that wouldn't confirm your suspicion that your overly-jaded palette wasn't about to be satisfied. I mean... we could suddenly show a giant space-ship firing lasers and disintegrating paladins left and right! "...oh, this again? Technology in a fantasy setting has been done to death. This doesn't excite me at all. Can't you do something new?" or, better yet, giant dinosaurs wearing armor and being ridden by angry elven bowmen! "...what is this? You should have called it Jurassic Age. (sniff!) I am unimpressed." We could even suddenly announce that the entire genre of the game has been switched to futuristic cyberpunk mixed with space exploration! "...I suppose this is better but I can't see Bioware doing a good job of it. Look how big the breasts are on the woman in that flight suit. I bet she's on the cover. How ugly I find her. (sniff!) Oh, look, laser guns. How original. I am SO disappointed in you, Bioware." So forgive me when I say that I hope you find our fantasy setting so boringly generic and full of ugly, big-breasted women that your jaded palette implodes and sucks your head into some weird fourth dimension where, eventually, chances are good you might find something new to appreciate. Ahem.
More:
If breast size ends up being customizable, how does Bioware see the possibility of allowing larger floatation devices to allow a bonus in water floating? Truly, i'm interested in the roleplaying possibilities.
Or, better yet, levitation!
More:
(Aside - I always wanted to know just which of the Firefly developers was a Traveler player/GM because I never saw a show so obviously based on a PnP RPG).
I don't know about that. I didn't see any Vargr or Aslan. Unless you mean a lone ship travelling planet to planet is specific to Traveler.
More:
I think he was refereing to the style it was presented and not actual content, David. I wouldn't mind seeing a Firefly styled CRPG. *hint hint*
He said "obviously". There are some similarities, perhaps, but not enough to point at Firefly and say that it is obviously based on Traveler. There was a big Traveler campaign book that had a similar theme (involving a crew aboard an old rustbucket ship called the March Harrier and having adventures while traveling from planet to planet) but I don't think that's such a specific theme that you could claim one was based on the other. A Firefly CRPG would be great. Actually, so would a Traveler CRPG.
New wallpaper...
I got some good replies of of David, thats for sure. I never get tired of these forums.
Yes. You tricked us all. Wow, are you every tricky. And here we all thought you were overly-jaded and intractable. Silly ol' us.
Intro Movie
I'd like to see an intro movie that deals with DA's primary focus: Unlimited adventures.
That's DA's focus? Really??
Is Dragon Age the product of one of the developers homebrew D&D campaigns?
Parts of the world are.
More:
Are you allowed to say which developer or developers?
There's bits and pieces from several, I'd think. I know there's a few chunks of my homebrew in there. Anyone in this position would do the same, I think.
More:
Plus it saves you having to come up with all new ideas that aren't nessecarily better. It also saves a bit of thinking things through.
I'm... trying to decide if this is meant in a good way or not... hmmmm...
Gnome!
This thread reminds me of my Aunt Milly. She used to come home to Uncle Hebert every night and, taking off her bloody gauntlets (she worked in a slaughterhouse), would say the same thing to him every day.
"I want a pony," she'd say.
And Uncle Hebert would always say the same thing in response.
"You can't have a pony," he'd say.
And sometimes, if Aunt Milly were feeling especially cantankerous (bashing in the heads of midget rabbits can do that to a woman), this would lead to an argument where Uncle Hebert would get very upset. Where would we keep the pony? How would we feed the pony? Why not get a dog? But Aunt Milly was always insistent and she would storm off and Uncle Hebert would have to cook his own dinner. Which was not especially a good thing as Uncle Hebert only cooked pasta and would make a terrible mess in the kitchen which Aunt Milly would just have to clean up afterwards, poor woman. This was during the soap shortage of '53, you understand, where women had to clean the floor with hard brushes and the birth rate dropped to a quarter of what it was.
Until one day Aunt Milly decided that, since she had slaughtered all those poor rabbits, she deserved to have something she wanted and she went out and bought herself a pony. Leading it through the front door of her home, she proudly showed it to Uncle Hebert.
"I got myself a pony," she said.
"Urrrrk!" he said.
He was, you see, allergic to horses and he died right there on the spot. And so Aunt Millie took his body and secretly put it in the big furnace where they got rid of the midget bunny bones. And she lived happily for a while and even married a nice, rich gnome. But then the authorities found her out and even though she claimed that Uncle Hebert never actually told her he was allergic to horses, she still got the chair. Which made us sad. Especially when Uncle Fritz insisted we bury her beside the damn pony, which incidentally starved to death because everyone forgot she kept it in the basement. Why she kept it in the basement we're not sure, but keep in mind this is a woman who slaughtered bunnies for a living.
I suppose the moral of this story is "buy what you want, because you might just get to marry a rich gnome". And that's all I have to say on the subject.
Tom Ohle, Public Relations
New wallpaper...
concept art. for the E3 demo. made into a wallpaper.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
A silly (or perhaps brilliant) suggestion: Multiplayer licensing
*hugs* Georg, Oh you know you love us social server people with our kinky leathers, and thanks for the whips. There's an idea for DA, some way for module authors and server admins to specify a 'adult' flag, could be anything from grose violence, sexual content or other stuff, so that if a parent has used the parental lock there children won't be able to connect to such servers, or load up such modules without editing them in the toolset.
Take notes Brenon
More: If something like this was to happen, the idea would probably more be along the line of "BioWare contracts a module maker or team in the community to create content for the game that would be available through a BioWare content distribution system", as this would guarantee quality content while offering legal safety to all involved parties.
As for runnning PW servers and charging players to play on them - forget about it, DA is not a PW toolkit and if we would collect cash from people who want to run their own PW servers, we would have to make it a supported feature, and that's not going to happen (plus another dozend of reasons already listed in this thread). As for NWN, people bought the game and payed a fixed cost and it doesn't mention any hidden costs attached with multiplayer.
If we would allow random server operators to charge for their worlds, this would not only create inconsistency in multiplayer, most likely confusing our regular customers, it would also cast a very bad light on us, make us vulnerable to lawsuits and would inflict serious conflicts on the community:
PW x is using script XXX from scripter k as well as new creature models from artist v and all those people would like to get a share of the pie as they contributed to the world and released their work unter the premise that it is not commercially exploited.
Finally creature model m that was used in agreement with artist w used textures ripped out of commercial product n and since the server operator was making money out of his server, company nn which owns product n sues him and possibly BioWare for damages.
I am sure that people like the DLA or CODI team who provide commercial level quality models, tilesets and artwork would have serious objections if they saw a random server charging money to play that was using their work they created for free over so many month. The resulting conflicts, finger pointing and fights in the community would be a very bad thing(tm).
We have no intention of inflicting such conflict our community to allow a few people who want the game to be more than just a hobby to do so. Yes, it would be nice to get a return different from "fun" for your hobby, but it's not going to happen, not this way.
I'm sure a system could be implemented that would allow content and module creators to get benefits for creating high quality content that is used by a lot of people and there are technical and legal solutions to many of the problems listed above, but whatever happens in the future, you can be sure that we would not go with anything that would cause serious damage to our community. If we were to do something like a "community marketplace", it would be balanced in a way that the core community would not suffer from this.
We are watching the market and we will evalute things like a "engine license light" if we see a merit in it at some point in the future.
Dragon Age Wallpaper!
Don't worry, I'm sure the fitting male wallpaper is only a matter of time, so everyone can feel happy again.
Multiplayer campaign? Why would it be worth the zots?
I look at David's comments in the light of what Rob said a while ago.
Essentially - that some of the flaws of NWN were caused by splitting the attentions of the design team onto BOTH trying to make a fully featured toolkit AND making a great Game. Thus that he thinks that the best approach might be to SPLIT these two focuses into two different teams, allowing the main design team to focus on making a great game (hence David's comment on the focus NOT being the mod community) while the tools team and the live team focus on making a great set of tools for us to use to make new adventures. In short - The Dragon Age design team has as its focus great SP and MP games. There will also be a toolkit and it will hopefully be at least as good as NWNs toolkit and likely better. But if sacrifices have to be made in one area or the other, that area will most likely be made in the toolkit with later patches being left to improve our ability to mod, leaving the primary focus being a great game. But, of course, that is merely my interpretation of comments made by many people, most of whom are not even on the DA team. Carl
Keep in mind that Bioware's tools department is now about 2000% larger than it was when NWN was started and that it's not the first toolset we are rolling out, there have been toolsets for NWN, KotOR(internal) and Jade(internal) in the meantime. I can't tell how the DA toolset will end up (feature wise) or what's planned for it, but keep in mind that an experienced team is usually able to create things lots faster the second, third, or fourth time around.
Why reinvent the wheel, world-wise?
a new setting is simply an opportunity to be creative is all. lest anyone forget, both Diablo and Dungeon Siege were new settings...
very true. Some game devs would be helped by using a crutch of a more well defined world to add depth. I think Bioware has shown enough potential for world creating creativity in previous games that they won't fail to create something new and exciting here.
I'm sure from blizzards perspective the diablo setting was a success. A series of books, D&D RPG product spinoffs, etc. And I'm sure they would be very upset if they had to ask and wait for approval each time the want to things in order to rebalance the game...
I trust DA will improve on the horrible camera in NWN!
I wouldn't call the perspective horrible, NWN was always supposed to be played from an isometric perspective which was the perspective of the time the game was planned/created. Today, 3D engines arefar more powerful and people really want to have a closer look at their characters, so there is a trend away from the isometric perspective, and given the cost to create those motion captured normal mapped high texture quality models you see in games today, developers are more than happy to follow that trend and make sure you get a close look at those characters. I'm not sure what's planned for Dragon age, but the camera options will most likely be based on what's found to be most functional and fun for gameplay.
More:
Georg: Yeah the NWN camera is fine if you use it in the original mode, where it can't go below 45 degrees (or something) to the vetical and therefore walls can hardly every get in the way. But with the HotU option to get close to the action, the in-ability to see through walls to get perspective on the character was a real problem. In that sense the chase cam mode is a kind of "hack". I'd expect DA to have a totally new engine, and I've seen it mentioned that it won't be tile set based, so I'm expecting that it will work well. Never tried CoH, but glad to hear there are other games showing it can be done!
Oh yes, that camera in hordes was self defense The increasing amount of customer support complaints about being unable to patch after applying a certain third party camera hack to the game was starting to get a real problem - plus we designers loved the camera angles for the cutscenes. But I agree, especially with the old non HotU tileset, the HotU camera was not the optimal solution.
More: The CoH camera is pretty good, through in those tight Circle of Thorns cave missions it is getting to its limits, I usually end up pretty disoriented.
What Kind of World is Dragon Age?
A very dark and very evil place ... wait, I've just read that somewhere else...
More:
Evil? In a Bioware game? What next, cats and dogs living together?
Is Evil as in "let's put out a real time game system and call it turn based so we can watch them suffer in agony for a couple of more years?" better?
More:
I don't think there was a need to take a rather simple jibe so seriously, was there?
Oh, I forgot the smiley, people seem to expect those these days
Any Idea of the system requirement (Specially W98SE)?
It's far to early to even think about system requirements for Dragon Age. However I doubt that many gamers will still be using Win98 by the time the game is out.
More: Apart from drivers (supporting Win98 with it's ancient memory and resource management and file system is a nightmare) I think a lot will depend on DirectX (don't try to read this as "they are not using OpenGL", DirectX is more than a graphics API and I can't tell what graphics API the new engine will use) and other "core products" being available. The trend seems to be sacrificing backward compatibility for security and from that point of view, Win9X looks pretty doomed. Sure, it will be around for a couple more years, but there will be very strong incentives to upgrade.
Multiplayer campaign? Why would it be worth the zots?
Two thousand percent more? Either you now have 20 people where there was one before, or all the free soda and pizza has had an effect on that poor, gargantuan person. In all seriousness, it is cool that there's a team of dedicated people working on toolset issues. I suspect we'll see things much more flexible and streamlined. Doing things for the forth time does make things go much faster and smoother. I'm personally hoping for more of the "guts" of the game engine exposed, ready for the Bioware designers, artists, and community to fiddle around with things.
Our tools department is supporting all current projects and lot more tools than just the "toolset", so don't get the impression that there is now a large horde of tools monkeys banging away on the DA toolset under master monkey tim's watchful eyes until it's released
New wallpaper...
I just want a bit of realism. I just can't see a scantily clad woman going dungeon delving.
It's not that you couldn't put a nice robe on your female wizard in HotU, right? And if you don't like the face, thank god there were no open faced helmets in NWN
Tim Smith, Tools Programmer
As a builder, 3 things that scare me about Dragon Age
One word of caution guys. To my knowledge, nobody has publicly discussed what will be made available for end user level art tools. What has been discussed by BioWare people has been possible implementations and not what will be in the game. It is very possible that what has been mentioned by BioWare people will be exactly what will be in the game. But many decisions are to be made and only a few people are even remotely up to date as to the current directions being discussed. If you don't hear it from Scott G's, Darcey P's or my mouth, I wouldn't bank on it being what will be delivered in the game. I just don't want our open discussions, public suppositions and hearsay to elevate to the level of BioWare made promises. It only ends up disappointing you guys and frustrating us when we start to receive the barrage of rants about missing features that we never promised.
Brenon Holmes, Programmer
A silly (or perhaps brilliant) suggestion: Multiplayer licensing
Take notes Brenon
My whiteboard is full already, but I'm sure I can squeeze some more on there somewhere... or maybe get a new whiteboard... *shoots a significant look at sys-admin*
Please, I beg you...
Unfortunately, DA looks like it will face the same problems. The graphics just look like a higher poly count version of NWN! It looks all right now, just imagine how bad it will look after the 5 years it will probably take them to make this game.
Oh for sure... because the concept demo we showed was the final engine with final art. Heck, we're almost done! The time we have scheduled from now until release is really just padding on the schedule... (/sarcasm) Drawing conclusions based on a demo at this early stage is a very bad idea. 'Cuz more than likely, you'll be wrong. Just a note for anyone who did not realize that the first paragraph of this post was actually sarcasm in action(tm)... please click here
Multiplayer campaign? Why would it be worth the zots?
Oh boy... you might be reading a bit too much into what David was saying... We are making a game too, after all... * There will be a toolset. You will be able to make your own adventures. * There will be support for custom content. * You will be able to host your own games. The theme of Dragon Age, you can see for yourself on the games page here. Or, to quote:
Dragon Age(tm) is a blockbuster fantasy role-playing game set in a world created and owned by BioWare. Dragon Age will offer a deep, party-based, roleplaying experience in both single-player and multi-player game modes. Utilizing a brand new game engine, Dragon Age will feature stunning visuals with a tantalizing blend of the exploration and combat of Baldur's Gate(tm), the multi-player gameplay and community support of Neverwinter Nights(tm), and a cinematic gameplay experience from BioWare, the developer of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic(tm). Explore vast landscapes, engage in massive battles, and experience the sights, sounds, and culture of the heroic new world of Dragon Age.
Key Dragon Age Features:
* Cinematic story-driven single-player campaign * Separate campaign designed specifically for a multi-player experience * Mod tools for great custom content * Set in a new fantasy world created by BioWare for fans of its past titles * Participate in massive battles * Party-based gameplay for outstanding tactical combat and immersive character interaction
Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Thursday, June 24, 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.
Rob Bartel, Senior Designer
What's the latest word on the WW series?
1] It's been nearly a month. Anything new to report? How about a best guess as to the quarter of release?
Nothing specific that we're prepared to report at this time but there has been substantial progress.
Quote: 2] Other DD goodies that you're hoping to release? How often do you create "goodies" that don't see the light of day?
Most end up seeing the light of day in some fashion or another though there have been cases prior to DD where we'd go as far as to gut something that's unworkable and either strip it for parts or rebuild it from the ground up. Due to the lower investment required for DD projects, we may be more tempted to scrap the project entirely should similar circumstances arise.
Georg Zoeller, Designer
Georg, any chance
Georg, please correct me if I'm wrong, but it isn't just a simple change to polymorph.2da. Polymorph Self and Shapechange use different scripts (nw_s0_polyself and nw_s0_shapechg) from Wildshape, Dragon Shape, Outsider Shape, etc. (nw_s2_wildshape). The former scripts do not include the item merge functions. So, to enable "equipment melting" for the polymorph spells, you'll need to update the 2da and add the item merge functions into each polymorph script.
You are right, you need to copy over that code to the spellscript.
Hacker Party in our Midst
Watch 'em go off-line and possibly to jail.
l.o.l, best joke ever
Copy Protection Rules
The SecuRom protection is mandantory by our publisher, Atari. Any questions regarding SecuRom or support for issues that you suspect are related to SecuRom should be directed to Atari Support. It is unfortunate but we are bound to use SecuRom. Atari offers their own feedback forums at http://www.ataricommunity.com, please continue this discussion there. Thank you.
1.63 Patch
The one thing I have in my override is the spells.2da because of the shadow magic bugs which were really hosing our game. Is that fixed in 1.63 by chance? Vyr
Craig fixed several issues with Subradial spells (like the shadow spells) bypassing spell resistance and showing otherwise unintended behavior.
How do you turn the "ESC" button off for conversations?
Unfortunately you can't. Thats one of the things in NWN that it won't be in our next games. No more exiting out of conversations at any time
1.63 Patch
So will the 1.63 be out this year
That's likely
1.63 will be taking long to make, maybe you could release what you've got now and put other fixes in 1.64?? Pretty please?
That unfortunately is impossible. There has been a significant feature addition for 1.63 and we can not afford maintaing several code branches for the game, sorry. The patch will most likely get an extensive beta once it is done.
1.63 Patch
Georg, can you explain a bit how these new VFX attachments to avatars work? Such as bows slung over the back, sheaths, etc? Can these be used to create things like hats or faceless helms (with no properties, just appearance)? Would have any of these things require a hak pak or would there be some default toolset stuff as well?
I think the DLA guys already developed a better system for scabbards and other character attachments, stay tuned The VFX change is a simple one. There was always a column in visualeffects.2da that would specify whether to align the effect mdl with the object it is attached to or not. Unfortunately that column never worked so the community was limited to a handfull effects that stick with the character's orientation: the flags. Craig unwired it so you can now just set the .2da entry and the effect will rotate with the character like the VFX_FLAG_* effects do. So if you create a VFX that looks like a quiver and attach it to the players neck node, it will now stay on the characters back. Without the 1.63 functionality, it would always face the way it was facing when it was spawened in, a rotating player would suddenly see the quiver on his chest or sticking from inside his arm. Hope that makes it clear.
Interplay's Shares Actually on the Rise
Posted Thursday, June 24, 2004 - 15:50 CET by chevalier
Interplay's shares cost $0.042 each, which is a whole $0.008 more than half a day ago when they hit the lowest of their low at $0.034.
See Interplay's summary at Yahoo Finance.
Dungeons and Dragons Online Chat Part 2 at WarCry
Posted Thursday, June 24, 2004 - 15:43 CET by chevalier
WarCry have posted the continuation of their chat with Cardell Kerr, Senior Game System Designer on Dungeons and Dragons Online for Turbine Games.
"In the example that you mentioned, where you feel and look like everyone else, our main goal is to try and give each of your quests a different spin, each of the interactions that you have with that quest is your choice, what you're going to do. You could help this guy, or betray this guy in the future – it's your choice from there, actually utilizing the NPCs in the world to reflect upon you as a character."
Read the whole thing at WarCry.
BioWare Wednesday
Posted Wednesday