Dragon Age Forum News (Feb. 27, 06)

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Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, taken from the Dragon Age Official Forum. 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, Lead Writer

What is a Persistant World?

I was meaning that once the OC is written and released, it's finished. No adding bits, changing bits etc (bug fixes aside).

Strictly speaking, that's not true.

The single-player game can be expanded later on a la "Tales of the Sword Coast", where encounter areas were inserted into the campaign. These needn't be via a purchased expansion, either, these could be downloadable.

You also have the option of continuing the single-player campaign with serial story additions, also possibly downloadable. These can be small or large.

Not to say that these are what DA plans, just that they're possible. One needn't have a wide-open sandbox world like MMO's have in order to facilitate expansion of the game.

As for PW support, we'll see what comes down the pipe but I seriously doubt it will be possible. Whether that means financial doom and a plague upon our house as AM suggests... well, we'll just have to take our chances, I guess.

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Please don't do that. It's very annoying to buy a game on it's intitial release, only to find out down the road that there's a more complete version available. It's a disturbing recent trend for game companies to release these "special editions" with "bonus" content. The people that get screwed here are the most loyal fans that buy the game when it first comes out, and then have to pay more for something that should either have been in the original game, or saved for a real expansion. I know it makes good business sense since your real fans will buy pretty much anything you try to sell us, but still.. that's just not very nice..

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I don't know if I agree with some of this, the idea that added content should have been present in the original version of the game. Not that you specifically say this, but I've seen the sentiment expressed elsewhere -- as if the added content was cut from the original game and simply dressed up with minimal effort to be added later. It's likely not the case.

I can see how added content would be of less value to someone who's already played through the game and has no intention of playing through again, but I suppose the idea is to provide incentives to replay as well as for new players to come and play a larger game.

Not that I don't see that it's more valuable to everyone to do all-new stories -- probably why we haven't revisited the "Tales of the Sword Coast" type of expansion since we did it way back.

Hope and Fears while waiting on DA

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According to David Gaider, for BG2 a romanceable character was given 2 weeks of development time.

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That's 2 weeks of WRITING time, and it doesn't include the prep that comes before-hand. That figure also doesn't include Jaheira, who was a much longer romance.

We almost ended up cutting the romances completely in BG2 because of the sheer amount of bugs they produced and the incredible amount of testing and scripting time they swallowed up.

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A modder for BG2 generally writes/codes/tests a Jaheira+ size romance and full char dev in about a 6 month period while having various RL obligations. I think that it is reasonable to expect from a professional to write a good romance in about a month. They are writers and they are paid to produce texts as their day jobs. It's very reasonable to expect high quality and variability from them.

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To say nothing of what it would take to implement and test such a romance, especially since doing your projected 3+ romances for each gender would obviously take me at least 6 months of writing time alone (minimum).

I notice that you consistently refer to the modded BG1 as your perfect game. Which makes the BG1 you refer to not only your idealized memory of it, as Grom points out, but also a game that was never made by us and never could be.
I made the Ascension mod for Throne of Bhaal, so it's not as if I'm a stranger to modding. You're using an engine that is in its final form, and you work on it without any outside pressure and you only work on what pleases you. I took 4 months to make a mod for an entire expansion that it took 6 months to create in the first place -- and put a LOT of my personal time in during those months. It is not that easy to simply take a bunch of time spent tinkering away at a finished product and condense it down into the hours that I spend in team development with deadlines and say that the two things are comparable.

Saying that you want a BG1 as it is after it has been heavily modded with all attendant romances and character interaction that was never there in the first place is completely meaningless to me as a developer.

Yes, I completely understand that your enjoyment of BG1 is subjective and that what you want is to re-create the magic you felt when you played it. As has been mentioned, it came out at a certain time and there is a certain amount of novelty attached to it that even BG2 didn't have -- I'm not sure that even if we could take every feature we've mentioned and put it into DA that it would be the game you remember. And you might try to tell me that's not what you want, but that very clearly is the case.

Developing games partly consists of us making games that we want to make ourselves (and, yes, sometimes this involves trying new things and not making the exact same game every time out -- as much as this might make some NWN fans howl or made BG2 fans howl before when NWN was being made) and partly of making games that we think want to be played. And the latter is not an exact science, to be sure, because as has been mentioned if we simply made a new BG1 it would not fly. And updating any part of that (such as making it 3D) means making changes which I suspect would be sacrilege to you.

Every fan has to approach a game like DA and wonder if it's their cuppa. Sometimes it is and often it isn't, and that's fine -- trying to make it something everyone will like doesn't work well, either, and we learned that lesson too. But I think occasionally some fans who are asking for something so very specific, whether related to BG1 or BG2 or NWN or whatever, must also sit back and consider the fact whether or not they are actually open to something different.

Such is the nature of being a fan, I guess. We love -- sometimes we love so much that what we're asking for is not necessarily what we want. And my job as a developer lies somewhere between being open-minded enough to listen and arrogant enough to know when not to.

To be quite honet, Melirinda, I have no idea whether DA will be something you'll enjoy. It seems to have many things in it which we haven't done since the BG days which you liked in BG1, but you apply so much annoyance on the mechanics that have changed since BG1 that I'm not sure whether those things, if they appear in DA, would be enough to ruin it for you. Perhaps it might be modded into something more of your liking, but modding is no more our focus now than it was for BG1 (and how you mod that I'll never guess) so it is completely out of my hands.

Well, that went on so much longer than I thought it would. I guess I'm in a rambly mood today. Please take no offense by what I've said -- I'm talking more from my experience of fans in general who have said things like you are as opposed to you specifically, since obviously I can't know your mind.


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Well, they probably are... it's easy to be less convoluted when there's nothing there. Someone can present Valygar's background in whatever fashion they wish, at least he had a background (which actually was part of a larger plot, no less).

If you want to plot the DA NPC's on a line that goes from more NPC's/less dialogue on the far left and fewer NPC's/more dialogue on the far right, then DA would fall further to the right than BG2 did. I, for one, am quite happy with that.

Derek French, Technical Producer

Updates / Patches

Yes, right now its only missing the download of the revert patch.

We have plans to make the updating system for Dragon Age better than in the past. We have learned a lot from doing NWN.

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I knew what you meant, no problem. (I need to use more smilies ) And I agree with you. There is a certain part of game development that puts updates and installation and uninstallation as a third class citizen. There are many ideas that we are working on for Dragon Age and for pretty much any PC title coming from us in the future. We have learned a lot and we want to make the system so good that noone even notices it.

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I would rather that the game gets noticed and that the update/install system doesn't anger or impede you.

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I am fully versed in BitTorrent - it has numerous advantages for large file downloads. Its something we are looking into for general downloads for the future.

As for integrating BitTorrent downloading directly into our applications, that is a whole other kettle of fish (does anyone know what the %$*# that means?).

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I understand your point, but I would be horribly embarrased if DA was known for its program utilities. Please don't mistake the desire for a lack of notoriety as a lowering of the bar or a target of mediocrity.

Along the same lines, what, if any, installers or updaters have you encountered in a retail game that has made you go "Wow, that's that cat's pajamas! I feel like a whole new person because of it!" (You know what I mean )

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I wouldn't mind hearing what Derek French has to say about that.
Why exactly are we supposed to shut everything else down?

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The theory is because of potential conflicts with other programs and for the lowest common denomenator running the installer.

If Joe Average is running the installer, nobody wants him to run another installer at the same time or launch another game or do anything else that might torpedo the current installer. Its just easier to say "shut everything else down" because this way, he should be safe. If you said "shut down other installers or games" and forgot some other conflicting application, then you are just about as screwed.

Now, I know pretty much what is safe to do when running an installer and what is not. In my personal experience, I just minimize the installer and go do other things on my computer or away from my computer.

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The idea of spicing up the installer with other things to pass the time for people that do actually sit in front of the installer an stare at the progress bar has merit.

There was one installer that I remember flipped through various images on its background during the installation. It took me until the third image to realize that what there were doing was showing images starting with concept sketches and moving on to test renders, level test images, editor shots, to final shots of the game. It was pretty neat. It was like a silent tour of the making of the game.

Do I think something like this is required? No. There are plenty of people that just minimize the installer like me. Full screen installers? Theme music that you cannot shut off? Ug, keep that stuff away from me.

Now, if done right, it could make for an intersting experience to gear people up for the game. It probably shouldn't be part of the installer, but perhaps a separately launched Tour. Hmmmm.

Trivia game? (Just how evil is Chris Priestly?)

DA Flash mini game?

Hmmmm.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Updates / Patches

There are certain aspects of games that only ever seem to stand out when they're bad.

For example, sound... people don't normally notice ambient tracks unless they're abysmal... same goes for voice acting. You usually only take notice when it's like nails being drawn across a chalkboard.

If these things are done well, they should contribute to the gameplay experience and the game will be better as a whole... but unfortunately they probably won't be noticed.

Chris Priestly, Quality Assurance

Anybody like Lovecraft?

I know it's a cop out, but both. And I do mean both, because we have the equivalent of playwrites AND authors. At BioWare we have both writers and scripters to get the design of the game across to the player.

The writers write (I know it's a shock) the story, the dialog, the characters, etc. Anything that is spoken or read, like journals or puzzle clues or whatever, was written by a writer. They carefully plot out the game from start to finish to make it as enjoyable and well written as possible. The writers are more like authors as they control word.

How the player and NPCs move around in the game is the work of the scripter. The scripter takes what is written and makes it happen. So if a writer writes "The wizard enters the cave, moves to the altar and, after lighting a candle, is attacked by a skeleton" it is the scripters job to actually make it happen. And they work out the pacing, the timing, the speed and the atmosphere of the scene (HOW does the wizard move? Fast and recklessly or slow and carefully? When does the skeleton attack? Immediately? From the left?). The scripters are more like playwrites as they control action.

That's not to say that the scripters can't write or the writers can't script. A writer will work with a scripter to get the overall scene or section of the game as they both intend. They work together and pass ideas back and forth until teh scene is correct. Its just that each of them has their own strengths that allow them to make the largest contribution to the game.