Dragon Age Forum News (Oct. 01, 05)

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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.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Toolset
That is exactly what we've said.

There are no concrete public specifications on the scripting language yet.

I wanted us to release some scripting documentation a while ago, but as it turns out - we're not very close to being ready for that sort of thing yet.

Syntactically it will most likely be similar to NWScript, we're still discussing some of the aspects of the language though.

There are a bunch of nifty little things we'd like to include in the language that haven't really been hammered out yet.

Turn-Based Combat: A Reprise

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Off topic: Brenon, was anyone in your family named Sherlock, by any chance? I've always wanted to know...

Anyway, 'bout the spells: I'm in favor of having some "insta cast" spells, and some that take time to cast. The more powerful spells will take a long time, and maybe some really powerful spells would just be instant. It would also be nice to have a spell cooldown or something similar. That way, chain-casting certain spells wouldn't be possible, and more strategy would have to be put into choosing your spells. I remember in NWN, it was "Keep on chain-casting Isaac's greater missle storm till everything is dead". After a while, it got a little repetive.

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Actually, and this is true, the european side of my family used to be 'Sheepshank'.

There are five standard casting speeds as currently planned, ranging from 'Instant' to 'Ritual'. Of course, this could change.

We are also investigating cooldowns.

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The AI kicking in for BG2 waw annoying, it's best to gear people up with a ranged weapons until your sure the Wizard is going to stop blasting, then move in and stick to safe spells.

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Yeah, if we have any form of party AI - when it's off, it will be off. In other words, walking vegetables until you give them guidance (although there may be some character/story related exceptions to that rule).

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I'm getting the impression controlling a party is going to be as hard as BG2, except you won't have to wait for a virtual round to finish before they start with a different action.

Please no virtual rounds, they sucked.

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There are no rounds.

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Huh? Why? Those things don't need to be resolved before casting at all. Just have the spell autofail, or go off at it's maximum range if the player tries to pick someone out of range.

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Yes. They do. If we're talking about a standard spellcasting system, you have to be in range before you can cast the spell.

In a system like World of Warcraft's spellcasting system which the idea seems to be based loosely around you can only cast one spell at a time and it's resolved as soon as you start casting. Additionally (and more importantly) you can't queue spells up.

Toss in an action queue and the whole concept becomes very ugly, very quickly.

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As for line of site, there is no difference except for when the target is chosen. If you really, really wanted to make sure the PC had LOS the when the spell started, just flag everyone who is in LOS when the player starts casting and then you can even remove that flag if they move out of LOS. Plus you get the added benefit of not getting a spell to go off on someone who started in LOS, but moved outside of it by the time the spell ended.

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Doing LOS checks against all other objects within range would be expensive. Especially when you consider that what you're implying is that those checks should be done fairly frequently to keep an up to date list of what objects have a direct LOS to other objects... no thanks.

I appreciate that you like the idea, but trust me - for the type of game that DA is (party-based w. action queue) it's not as simple as you might think.

Which is why I suggested charged spells as a possible alternate solution.

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How about a go slow button? Then you could implement it into Multiplayer. Also watch deadly combat attacks in slow motion, watch the finishing blow to a boss in "bullet time".

As for spells and targeting. If you have a range of casting times, you don't have to worry so much about targeting. An instant spell is there, a longer casting time is more useful if it's going to be very destructive to a group of enemies.

Factor in cool down and you won't have to worry so much about micromanaging your casters.

Another annoying aspect of BG2, making sure your casters never loose time casting spells. With rounds thankfully gone, and casting times more defined, you can spend more time managing everyone in a party and making sure they're all doing what you want.

Slow and steady seems to be the best way to run thinks, what do you think Sherlocke?

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Not a bad idea, though as mentioned it would probably be nice to be able to localize the effects so someone in the weapons shop doesn't get a slow motion (but probably 'cool' looking if you tossed in a soundtrack) shot of them reaching into the coin purse to pay for a new dagger.

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I am kinda hoping, though, that there will be AI for party members and that if we choose to, we can basically control one character and let the others so as they will. I can imagine a fair number of easy encounters that could be waltzed through without having to micromanage, and then we hit the big fights, we can "take the reins".

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That would probably be ideal, though I know personally I'm probably not really going to like working with any AI... we should probably have the option there.

Of course if we have the type of AI we're currently looking at, it could imply all sorts of things...

But I really don't want to get anyone's hopes up yet. So suffice it to say "we're looking in to it".

David Gaider, Lead Writer

Plotline

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Would you consider Bioware to be a "craftsman" company like Blizzard?

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That sounds about right. You're not going to get much real innovation from a company of our size... a little, perhaps, but that will probably still fall within the category of pretty safe refinements. True innovation is going to come from smaller, hungrier developers who have little to lose.

You'd think that once a large developer was able to provide some level of funding for its own projects it would be able to split its time between "safe" A-list projects and smaller, riskier fare that is more different... but that's just not how the industry works, I'm afraid, so long as publishers hold the reins.

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The thing is that we don't really want innovation.

Very few people really do.

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It's true. The most extreme of the hardcore RPG fans fall into this category, while oddly at the same time claiming that they do want innovation. Yet time and time again you watch them tear apart any new release that deviates even slightly from, say, Fallout or BG2 or whatever other past title they hold up as the bar to measure all others by.

They would even probably angrily claim that that's not what they do, when it obviously is. But how can innovation also mean copying what has gone before?

Not that there aren't many worthy titles in the past and things from those titles that are worthy of being preserved and built upon in the present... but, as you say, that's refinement and not innovation. Like "immersion", "innovation" is one of those funny words that tends to get mangled on frequent usage.

Chris Priestly, Quality Assurance

10-04-2005?...
What? Something unexplained is on our main page? Where? Let me take a look.....

Weird. Very strange. I wonder what that is. We'll look into it and try to find out it's strange meaning. Stay tuned.