Dragon Age Forum News (Jan. 05, 05)

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Here are today's Dragon Age 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

Day and Night Cycle!!!!
I assume you mean a day/night cycle, right?

Ideally we'd have one, but it's certainly not guaranteed. It depends on whether it really adds anything to the gameplay. KotOR, for instance, did not have a day/night cycle... and the reason for that being a reduction in the art resources needed to create each area.

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Is that attributable to limited console memory?

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No, by art resources I mean the time it takes to create a single area. If you aren't setting up all the light sources and such to include both day and night appearances (I don't know how it works, really... I'm assuming the transition would be handled by the engine, but the extremes would need to be set up ahead of time) then you've got the ability to produce more unique areas.

That's the trade-off. Day/night cycles means less areas in the game, meaning either a smaller game or more re-using of areas. Either way I don't think it's something that's been finalized yet.

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Setting up an area to work with both day and night isn't necessarily that difficult.

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In NWN, perhaps, but DA is using a somewhat more complex lighting system.

I'm in favor of day/night cycles, myself. Even if we don't have them, however, it doesn't mean every area will be automatically locked into bright, sunny daylight. We will use whatever looks best or is thematically appropriate.

Using Jade Empire as a comparison, it actually had to be pointed out to me recently that there was no day/night cycling, and I was surprised. If there is no time cycle, you're not going to put gameplay features in that take advantage of such and so it doesn't come up. Again, personally I'd rather have those features than not... but I'd also like to have more areas. Can't have it both ways.

Spirituality in DA
Mmm... just a thought, as well, that even if there was a central text in the game we probably wouldn't consider it being available in its entirety for the players to peruse. If the focus of the first story centered on religion, perhaps, but otherwise it's unlikely. We go into a lot of detail on many subjects, but there are limits as to how much writing there can be right at the outset.

The freedom to explore and do what I want

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Of course when you confined gameplay to only a few limited areas, cries of "too linear!" will start to surface, IMHO.

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I think the trick is in what Nikodemus said. It's in the suspension of disbelief. Make the mechanics of the situation too apparent and the cynical little player suddenly starts disbelieving the illusion of the world you've set up.

This is, however, rarely as easy as it sounds.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

Another PC upgrade? Or, grovel, Xbox release?
Plan to upgrade your computer if you want to see all the cool graphical bells and whistles.

Magic : It's Mana Based

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The most common iteration I have seen is one where you have "mana" that regenerates over time

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To which I must say, as I've done before:

No, please, no! Regenerating mana = staring stupidly at your screen between battles, waiting for the little mana meter to fill up. Like watching paint dry, as the saying goes.

- Nikodemus P

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I don't think you should have to sit and wait for mana to regenerate. You should be busy controlling the rest of the party to fight in the mean time.

James Henley, Technical Designer

The freedom to explore and do what I want

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What _did_ I like about NWN?

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I know what I liked about Neverwinter Nights: It got me this job. For that reason, coupled with the hours upon countless hours of amazingly in-depth multiplayer gaming on Neverwinterconnections.com, NWN will continue to be one of my all-time favourite games until I wither away into dust.

Day and Night Cycle!!!!

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All very true, and it's somewhat silly for me to second guess what the artists are reporting back. I don't have a clue what sort of lighting system DA has - some are "baked in" and the intensive calculations are done at level creation. Others are dynamic, though more CPU intensive. Each has their trade-offs.

There were certainly some NWN areas that I set to a fixed time of day, though I was able to justify it within the story. It always saddens me a bit when story decisions have to be changed to accommodate those pesky game engine limitations. Sniff.

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The module I most frequently ran on Neverwinter Connections spanned a "single night" in the story, and the areas were done in day, dusk, and night versions accordingly. I tend to lean towards removing the day/night cycle in my work, since it can seem so amazingly unrealistic if you end up standing around RPing for a while.

Dragon Age - Multiplayer

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My main interest is in having the freedom to play a 6 player party by myself if I want, and I must have control over the NPC's.

If it is like NWN, I will not even buy it.

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Dragon Age will be more of a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate, in the sense of party control.

Dan Whiteside, Designer

Spirituality in DA
I remember when I wrote the crazed prophet in SOU, we had people tell us that we were anti-christian. You can bet that people would react if we had a religion based too closely on, for example, the Hindu religion. Any negative portrayals of the priests would anger some Hindu people, while positive portrayals would anger fundamentalists of other religions.
It's always a difficult path to walk, drawing inspiration from the real world, without copying it.