BioWare Forum News

Remove all ads!

(Originally posted by chevalier)

Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by Neverwinter Vault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

David Gaider, Designer

run away!

am not privy to testing results... not stood over the shoulders of play testers as they bang their head 'gainst wall over and over, but we does not like to accept the fact that if you gots multiple dialogues that make apparent that you gotta get past The Dragon, but that the Dragon is Immortal and Unkillable, that any but the most inconsequential number of folks will try to kill the dragon. (is probably true, but we not wanna accept.) no matter what you is gonna get savagely beaten or impoverished getting past the Dragon. just no way to get by w/o taking your licks, and success is measured by how little pain you suffer.

Well, now, that's not quite what I said. It IS perfectly acceptable to provide alternate solutions to combat... just like telling the player that they should sneak by the dragon and not try to kill him. And if they do... well, better reload that game, pally.What I said is that you don't want to present a situation to the player where fleeing is the best or only option... because it will not happen. When presented with a fight (meaning the player is attacked/encounters hostiles) a player simply will not back down.I remember a plot where a first-level player was put in a single hallway and the door at the far end burst in to admit a large group of monsters. The NPC with the player ran the other way and said "Quick! Run this way!" as the monsters advanced and attacked. The idea was that the player was supposed to retreat down the hall to "fall into" the next part of the plot and not fight the impossible-to-beat monsters.What do you think happened 9 times out of 10?

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

Ships

Ships are a cool part of some fantasy fiction, Sinbad and Ulysses come to mind. In this chapter of Dragon Age we are less focused on sea fareing adventure, and more in the traditional fantasy settings. So don't hold your breath for controllable ships.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

Toolset GUI

Hey,

Keep the suggestions coming, guys. While I'm not working on DA, I know that Tim Smith and his tools programmers will appreciate the input.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Toolset GUI

In the same range of idea, giving us a command line compiler would be useful, especially now that Torlack has turned cloak.

Last time I checked NWN came with a commandline compiler, which, btw, is great in combination with your favourite editor

Toolset GUI

Another request: a more robust script editor, even if it's still text-editor based. With all the standard geeky stuff, like color-coding, regex search-and-destroy...err...replace, hiding rows, Find Next Bracket... etc. (E.g. UltraEdit )And even more! A built-in .2da editor (or editor for whatever type of file you will be using to store tabular game data).

The NWN script editor has color coding...

new 3D engine

1) normal mapping: It's a technique that improves image quality for low resolution models. Already available in FarCry and UT2004.2) complex physics: The time of engines with sphere-based collision detection and animation playback (such as NWN) is over. Everything now works with dynamic inverse cinematics and complex dynamic ligthtning (such as soft colored shadows). We realy want that! See UT2004 to know what I'm talking about.3) complete 3D ambient freedom: No excuses for any Z-axis limitation. If a mage or monster can fly let him do it.

Ok, not related to DA, but here are my thoughts/predictions.1) We will see normal mapping become a standard feature in most 3D games in the future2) Physics only make sense if they add to gameplay. Physics wouldn't make sense in NWN, as you interact with your environment in a different way than you do in your average shooter. I think we will see a move towards using physics engines to add/support gameplay, not just to say "uses a realistic physics engine" on the box. It still depends on your game: In Jade Empire (http://jade.bioware.com) we use detailed collision volumes for models - because it makes sense in a real time combat system. In games like BG, NWN there is no need for detailed collission detection - wouldn't make sense as where/if you hit is not determined by your reflexes but by the random generator.3) Again, this depends on your genre. There are a lot of reasons why you would not allow player movement on the Z-axis, but these have been discussed in other threads already.I don't know if and how this all applies to DA.

Screenshots: Realtime or Pre-rendered?

2nd one defly look pre-rendered to me. First one, I dunno, I think it's a engine shot.

They are both "in engine", not prerendered. I think the widescreen bars are causing your impression that the second one would be pre rendered.

Random Treasure vs. Planned Treasure

Not all random treasure is bad. I enjoyed looking thru the possible class treasure found in certain locations in HotU, as each class design may differ somewhat. One such highlight was for my Monk; enhanced gloves that powered Unarmed Attacks or enchanted gloves that aided weapon fighting. But generally, random treasure scattered about the area in multiple containers made me cranky... or crankier, depending upon POV.

We had the opportunity to experiment with a range of different treasure systems in NWN - The OC's random/class specific type treasure, - SoU's area specific treasure lists (yay, no more +5 swords in the rainwater barrel at the docks) and - Hordes with it's random low level treasure (potions, kits, etc), placed high level treasure and class specific special items.Personally I prefer the Hordes System (through I may be slightly biased), but it would be interesting to know what everyone else is thinking about about loot distribution systems. (I'm not talking about loot balance)

Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales

I don't think this topic has any merit right now. Release dates for foreign language versions are usually set by the publisher and we don't know what kind of media (DVD, CD, etc) games will be distributed when DA is finished (Let's hope it's DVD, but this is usually up to the publisher as well) and what kind of protection mechanisms will be available when DA comes to the shelves (Product Activation, DRM, etc).

It's a long way until DA will be released and it will be up to a lot of different factors what kind of copy protection it will feature. Today, some important retailers in the US refuse to put games without copy protection on their shelves - when DA is done, this might no longer be the case, or, all retailers might require it by then.

Bottomline:
This topic is not interesting for a long long time for numerous reasons. General discussions about the viability of copy protections or DRM on games should take place in the "off topic forum".

run away!

I would seriously hope the DA campaign will be written for the average to intelligent player, not for the lowest common denominator.If you want to please Hack 'n Slash players then create an Icewind Dale style campaign as well as a seperate serious role player's campaign.Perhaps it's too hard to please everyone with a single campaign, so 2 will please many more people. And the remaining few will always have user created content to please them but that should be minimized.

I don't think the fleeing issue has anything to do with dumb players. I tried several years to educate my PnP party that sometimes fleeing is the best option. It rarely worked and each time they had more than a few successful encounters in a row, they grew reckless and forgot to flee when things turned dire. People playing CRPGs are so conditioned going head to head, even if you present them 5 hints in the tutorial, a good portion will still run into their death time after time only to give up frustrated.People get used to mechanism in computer games and it is very hard to break away from those. One of them is "if it is hostile, you need to kill it. There was a door in the 2nd chapter of Hordes of the Underdark that only certain classes could open. For all others it would stay closed and give them a nice lightning bolt every time they tried to open it. Feel free to do a search through the Hordes board to get an impression on how many people tried to open the door for hours and hours...Now I think it is nice to have "different" options in your game (i.e. the Rankor in SWKotor could be beat in a number of ways), but you need to be very careful with what you are doing unless you want to drown in support requests and angry posts...Usual Disclaimer: I'm not working on Dragon Age, I don't know what they have planned in this regard.

Nathan Frederick, Lead Quality Assurance

DA system style

Your comments on D&D's handling of strength falls into my comment on how attributes scale, and how they affect the rules. In that case, its a single attribute which has a large(uncapped) offensive effect (both in chances to hit, and in damage damage done) countered by a pair of attributes - dexterity (which is capped), and constitution (which only factors in per-level, rather than per-blow). A single attribute is much easier to raise than two, even if the two were of even weight (when combined) to the single. As the numbers get larger and larger, the effect becomes more and more pronounced. The system tries to deal with this by having the equipment try to balance things out, in combination with the effects of the classes (BAB for instance).

Unfortunately, the differing parts (Attributes, Items and Class components) of the equation don't all scale proportionately to the combination of the effects of said parts, and it results in imbalances.

Its these sorts of scaling issues that we are trying to address as much as possible in our system, so there isn't any single factor that at any point that will single-handedly decide combat effectiveness.

DA system style

The use of random elements is also something that comes into play with my combat/rules complexity post.

Too much randomness makes the non-random elements insignificant. Too little randomness makes the random elements insignificant. Making sure that the randomness is still relevant as the system scales is one of the components involved in balancing the system.

Rules are a beast, but a fun one to play with

DA system style

While a computer is indeed capable of handling much more complex rules than (most) people would want to handle in PnP, doesn't neccissarily mean that a more complex system is mandatory.

In general, the KISS theory is always something to stick to. The more complex the combat system, the harder it is to make sure everything is working correctly, is balanced, and doesn't cause problems with any of the other elements involved.

Combat systems have a large number of factors involved, beyond the basics of how an attack is done - such as scaling. Not just how the numbers involved in the rolls scale, but how skills affect things (and how the skills and said effects scale), how the a being's abilities (such as strength) or statistics (such as hitpoints) fit in, the inherent offensive and defensive capabilities of classes (how they scale, as well as how they fit into the formula), the progression of item calibre, the effects of magic, and so forth.

Its a pretty complicated beast, even without getting into complicated combat mechanics. And making sure its all working, and balanced, becomes a pretty massive task in iteself.

While a computer can handle extremely complicated systems, ensuring said complicated system is working correctly is something us humans have to do. And in a system that is being designed from scratch, we definately want to make sure it works correctly.

Tim Smith, Tools Programmer

Scripting language - OO?

No, a single pass compiler can avoid circular includes just like the compiler does now. All it has to do is maintain a list of files it has included. If a request is made to include that file again, the request is ignored.

Screenshots: Realtime or Pre-rendered?

My old userid (Torlack) isn't marked as being BioWare. The "Tim Smith" account is marked as such.

Screenshots: Realtime or Pre-rendered?

The battle in the background in this shot is also not prerendered?

Not prerended.

Scripting language - OO?

I don't know what their reasons for wanting their own scripting language were, but the reason Scott Greig gives of preventing runaway scripts seems to be all wet.

The instruction count didn't exist until v5. The performance of the other debug hooks might have been an issue.

Toolset GUI

1.63?Or - maybe - the actual tools that the designers will use, rather then the 'user-friendly' tools we will get. Carl

The designers use the same tools that the end user gets.