Dragon Age Forum News

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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.

Derek French, Technical Producer

alot of players?
No decision has been made at this time.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

DAScript: script parameters?

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Nice, but how is the toolset supposed to be functional without haks if data is not editable from the toolset itself and somehow included/associated with the mod file?

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Is .2da editing (i.e. main game data editing) support still under discussion?

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It's a pretty sure bet that you still can edit 2da files in DA, probably a lot more than in NWN. I also think that 2da files as you know them today are not the same type of .2da files you will see in DA and that the issues a lot of people have with NWN 2da modification will not be a problem in DA (i.e. padding out, merging, need to exist on the client). That said, while .2da editing is likely possible in DA and probably more game data is exposed to modding, it will most likely be "unsupported" as in NWN.

However, you should note that there is a difference between design 2das (such as the example rewards.2da) and game side 2da files. Game side 2da files have the potential causing a lot of trouble when modified in a problematic way and as such there is not much incentive for us to make them easily modable, Design side 2das usually just cause a design subsystem to break and that's usually easy to fix. The Jade toolset has an integrated 2da editor as well as special editors for some important subsystems (i.e. global variable manager). Also keep in mind that the game resource and campaign structure is likely to be different from what you know from NWN, "hakpak" as you know them or the need for important 2das to be mirrored on the client might not even exist anymore.

Is Neverwinte Nights 2 a threat to Dragon Age?

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Initial sales, I'd say both will do well. Ask me what's still selling two years after release, and I'd probably reply NWN2--DA is not shaping up well for multiplayer, and I don't just mean PWs.

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I think you will just have to wait and see. Considering that we really didn't release anything about how exactly multiplayer is going to work, it's not really the time to call that decision. We just don't have enough specific things to talk about at the moment, and more important, there is not much merit in discussing things now that might be subject to change later, so you are more likely to get no or rather negative responses (i.e. unlikely) to any related subject at this point, because what we don't want is people with expectations in a totally different direction from what the game is going to be running around the internet and crying "promise" once the game is released.

If you are thinking "not so promising for PWs", that's probably a good approach, so we all can avoid the NWN scenario where people continue to claim that they were promised offical PW support ever since the game was released. If it happens to be possible to create a nice PW with DA when it is released, that'll be nice, but it's not one of the features we can or will promise you now. As for multiplayer being essential for strong long term sales, they help, but they are not mandantory. The BG saga has been selling for a couple of years pretty now, and the multiplayer component wasn't really that stellar