Dragon Age Forum News

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(Originally posted by chevalier)

Here are today's BioWare 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.

Scott Greig, Project Director/Producer

Voice-over
OK, here are my thoughts on the matter.

One of the ways of looking at things is to treat text, VO and animations as information channels. Trust me this will make sense shortly

In the BG days, our writers had to convey all story and characterizations through character dialog. If they wanted to give the impression that the character was angry, they had to write angry words:

"No! damn you".

They didn't even have the option that a novelist has of adding non dialog descriptors:

"No!" he said angrly.

I don't think that very many people realized how much of a challenge this was and of course one of the side effects of this type of writing is that it can become quite "wordy".

When you have full VO like in Kotor, you now have a second channel to convey information about the player:

"No!" (VOICE DIRECTION: Shouts in angry voice)

If you have full VO and a sophisticated animation system, you now have three channels of information

"..." (ANIMATION DIRECTION: Snarls and shakes head)

The net effect of having this systems is it allows the writer more flexibility. It will also have the effect of reducing the total number of words, but not necessarily the number of dialog options.

David Gaider, Designer

Romance Options: A poll from the Community

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# 2. I don't think same-sex relationships are that viable, even in real life. I am so going to get burned, roasted, and flamed for not only possibly offending many gay couples out there but also doing a serious nose-dive off the edge of this topic and off into Morality and Ethics Land, but here goes:I do not think same-sex relationships are right. I mean, look at our physical genitalia. Men are meant to be with women. Of course, if a person is gay, he's gay, and I can respect his/her choice to be gay. But same-sex relationships are just . . . *shudders* Where would the world be in everyone was gay? We would never have any kids!! The human race would be extinct!!!!
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I've been watching this thread with some amusement, but on this I have to comment.If the point of the romances were to procreate, I might concede that you have a point. It isn't, however... it's about love. Say what you like, there's no way you can claim that gay people don't love each other.I've always maintained that gay romance has no place in a Teen-rated game and not much of a place in fantasy in general... but given the proper rating and a mature enough story theme, I'd certainly be willing to give writing one a whirl.The only thing I will not do, ever, is simply insert a script so an NPC romances either sex the same way. The world wouldn't see it as such and neither should the NPC. That's not to suggest that gay couples don't love each other the same way as everyone else (thank God Alberta will soon join most of the rest of Canada in recognizing marriage equality), but that if I were given the task to include such a romance in the game I'd want to give it the treatment it deserves.Don't like that idea? As with every game we've made with romances, there is always the option to simply not pursue it. I personally see it as a goal to strive to make the romance stories deeper and more believable as time goes on, whether they are gay-themed or not, but since we don't force it upon any players I see no call for any players to dictate that they should not exist in the first place.And that's my two cents.

Books!

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David: By asking how long the books were in Morrowind, I take it you haven't played Morrowind
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No, I did play it. I simply did not get very far through it before I set it aside.

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it seems that Gromnir is out too far on the fringe to be palatable to the gamer masses.
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Gah. Okay, apparently you're not going to let that one go. I said some of the things you were suggesting were curiously high concept, Grom. Not all. And you are certainly not alone. I apologize.

Voice-over
Ooooooo... I *loved* the Buffy musical episode! A jazzy demon casts a spell that forces everyone to express themselves in musical numbers...

Hmmmm...

Books!
Since this is a world of our own creation and there's bound to be plenty of information in the history and docs that we really can't squeeze into the game, yeah, I'd imagine we have a lot of resource material to use if we so choose. I guess it's just a matter of who's going to write all that out. How long are the books in Morrowind, incidentally?

more work for dave

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nevertheless, as 'tween blind faith and insane rants, we will take the insane rants. at least sometimes something good may come from the rant.
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I'm not so sure about that. The problem with both those things is that they are not very constructive. And it is only by being constructive that some actual good may come out of it. "Good" as in affecting the design of the game by actually convincing someone who works on it, I mean. If someone's "good" is just to be the center of attention for a while or feeling better about getting whatever off their chest, then yeah I suppose an insane rant is just dandy.

Voice-over

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BTW, David, is music really related with sound? Wouldn't that be separate??
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Is that a trick question? Normally we would out-source the actual music creation (to someone like Jeremy Soule, for instance), but the insertion of all music and sounds and VO is the responsibility of the sound department. Which is, essentially, David Chan.

Linux client?

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Mr Georg, you're now forced to reply about this thread as it is obvious that you now have took knowledge of it
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There is no reply to make. We are not ready to talk about whether or not there will be any ports for the game at this point.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

Gender differences

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There will be no gender differences in Dragon Age. Does that mean that men can have breasts and women can have beards?
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hardy har har My last post was a bit short so I'll expand on it a little; I meant that as far as the base rules go gender will make no diffrence. There will be some diffrences with romance options and NPC's you meet.

Derek French, Live Team Producer

Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales
I understand the spirit of what drunkle is saying, but the consequences of something like this would be most people thinking that they have now paid there "warezing tax" and are free to pirate all games with hell-bent abandon.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Scripting language - OO?

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Well, you've answered Enigmatic's question, I suspect, but there is another problem with calling GetEnteringObject in a script. You can't use the same script in an OnEnter script or a OnDamaged script.How about a function like: GetTriggeringObject, or maybe a GetPrimaryTriggeringObject and GetSecondaryTriggeringObject. The meaning of these functions would then vary depending on where the script was placed.I can't really argue that this would be more "modern", though. It's simpler and more elegant, but it might also be more confusing for a newbie scripter. Perhaps you'd want a #define GetEnteringObject GetPrimaryTriggeringObjectsomewhere.
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actually, if you want to, you can easily use one script for all events. Just message everything to a single OnUserDefined event and do the code thereint nEvent = GetUserDefinedEventNumber()
if (nEvent == 1){
oTarget = GetEnteringObject
}else if (nEvent == 2){
oTarget = GetExitingObject
}

and so on.

Scripting language - OO?

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I can understand the desire to reduce the retraining required of your developers and not re-inventing the wheel now that you have a fairly bedded down script language like NWScript.With this being the case I would say your main goal should be an evolution of that scripting language where you reduce the flaws of the original (lack of arrays, no parameters, missing functions) while bringing the language up into a newer generation.This whole concept of having to execute functions like "GetEnteringObject" inside a script just to retrieve a parameter of what triggered the call in the first place flies in the face of most modern programming languages.
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You need to call GetEnteringObject about 1 time per trigger. So what would be the advantage of typingoEnter = this.EnteringObjectto oEnter = GetEnteringObjectthere is no advantage to it. Yes, it looks more modern and such, but that's hardly anything that would justify framework rewrites and retraining people.

D&D or not D&D? THAT is the question.

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I think the question is: Why is D&D so "good"?I mean, does everybody like D&D just because it's popular and/or because it's the only (or almost only) the rule system they've played with? Or does it actually have advantages over other game systems?
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It is a simplistic system that still offers enough complexity to simulate/resolve most situations that come up using just a few dice and a piece of paper, and that makes it beautiful.

But then again it doesn't translate to well from PnP on the computer, at least not for the real time based games BioWare makes. If you make a turn based game it works fairly well, but not for a real time framework. Also, by translating a system tailored to the mathematical capacity of the average human mind, you may sacrifice things you could present better in a computer system that can handle highly complex calculations in a blink. (Through humans like systems they understand, so making it overly complex might not be a good idea as well).

Also, and that's true with any licensed system, when working with a license, you need to make changes to gameplay in order to ensure license integrity. I.e. if the license holder establishes that there is no kissing (or further things along that line) in the licensed world because they are not appropriate for the company's target audience or public image - you can't have romances that end beyond holding hands and walking into the sunset. Another example: In D&D it is established that there are certain classes and what their properties are (i.e. A paladin gets his special mount). In NWN there was no horseback riding, so the paladin would not get this special mount - but we could also not invent anything new to balance out the loss of this ability, because that would have violated the spirit of the paladin classe and thus damaged the license. There are countless other examples like this, often originating from either engine limitations or design decisions (i.e. to use a real time system, allow multiplayer without DM, etc). With our own IP, we can make sure that classes useful within the abilities of the game engine.

Of course licenses come with a benefit as well, i.e. a certain amount of people know the brand and are probably more likely to buy your game when it makes use that license (be it StarWars, D&D or whatever) and don't having to worry about the background for your game, as you have most likely a huge reference library to access. Don't get me wrong, it is cool to work with a license (which geek hasn't dreamt of making a StarWars or D&D game) and if the project is "make a cool StarWars RPG", you are happy to work with a license - but if the project is about "A character shaping he the fate world nobody has been to before" a license is probably not a good idea, as licenses usually don't mix with permanent changes to the gameworld and new worlds, gods, races radially different from things that have been established before. So, working with a license has pros and cons and it needs to be evaluated on a per project basis. For DA it was decided that we wanted to do "our" world in the way we want it to be, tell "our" story with as much as creative freedom for our writers as possible and that rules out using an established license.

Scripting language - OO?
Your core game framework needs to be built from the start to support a certain size of game areas, modules, worlds, whatever you call it.

A game that supports 1-500 players or 1-1000 areas requires different structuring / systems than a game that runs with 1-20 or 1-50 players or 1-100 areas. It's not as simple as saying: "Build a game that scales indefinitly", because systems that have "unlimited borders" are more complex, and cost significantly more to build and maintain than systems that are build to run well within certain limits and you might very well want to use the additional manpower for things that are more beneficial to your core audience, because those are the ones you are selling the most copies to.

MMORPG architecture is very different from architecture you would use in a story driven game, even if it has multiplayer.

Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales

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you are wrong, the picture is from the normal version - that i bought. it costed 70sFr. at that time in switzerland (80 DM or 40US$).now talking about the dragon edition pal...

Normal Edition:-Ultima IX install CD-Ultima IX play CD-Ultima Online: The Second Age Game CD (with one month free membership)-The "Journal" booklet (all about the ultima universe, the avatar, history and so on)-The "Book of Magic" booklet (all about the magic in the ultima universe)-The Install booklet (the regular game booklet)-8 Virtue Tarot Cards-40cm x 40cm Cloth Map of Britannia (i guess made out sinthetic fibres, because it looks and feels very silky)-"Gobelin of Time" (a mirrorfinish piece of paperboard, with the gobelin of time on one side, and help about the game controls on the other)

Dragon Edition:-all the content from the normal version-the "journal" and "the book of magic" have a sinthetic leather cover-an ankh pendant that can be attached to a necklace and worn-the ultima collection CD that contains Ultimas I through VIII, including Ultima VII add ons: Forge of Virtue and Silver Seed-The Ultima IX Soundtrack-A high quality illustration reprint of the ascending avatar-a certificate from richard garriotwhat do you say eh?
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I wasn't aware of that, guess that's for the US version only. I saw a "Normal Edition" a friend of mine bought, but it didn't have anything like the stuff in the Dragon Edition I bought - probably the usual "European Version", sigh. However, the trend towards cutting distribution and manufacturing costs by the publishers remains. Most games in europe come in DVD boxes already, while the US market to have settled for those smaller cardboard boxe for now - not much space for anything special in there (unless you create a special edition).

Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales

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that's probably because FADE (that was the name of the protection system) was never confirmed to be active in the game by anyone else than Codemasters. In the end, it seemed like a huge marketing gag to scare off pirates. Try a google on that matter, i am sure you'll find tons of discussions as to wheter FADE was in the game or not.Interesting concept, but i don't think they really implemented it.
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I came to the conclusion that it was a nice marketing ploy. It has a drawback however - people will start to blame any gameplay problem they have on faulty copy protection (even if there is one). And even if there was a copy protection that would work that way in your game, you would get swamped with technical support requests by people who were running it off nocd cracks, etc and found gameplay deteriorating (most likely not even knowing why). So while the whole thing sounds like a good idea on the first glance, it has the potential to cause far more support trouble than worth it.

Scott Meadows, Programmer

Scripting language - OO?

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I have only one simple request for the scripting language. Symmetry.By that I mean - if we can GET a value, let us SET that value.Carl
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Sorry Carl,I will have to disagree a bit with you on this one.In MOST cases I agree you should be able to Get and Set, however, there are certainly cases where you are only allowed to perform a Get.I will say that where there is a SET you absolutely have to have a GET but not the reverse.

Toolset GUI
Wow Gecon,
I am not quite clear on what you want the toolset to do.
That is what I love about this community
PASSION
There is no lack of passion here.

Keep the posts and ideas coming....