Dragon Age Forum News

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(Originally posted by chevalier)

Here are today's BioWare forum highlights, collected by Neverwinter Vault. 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

Betrayal in Dragon Age

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In a vain attempt to get back on topic, betrayal from one of those two would have been interesting. Especially if it was caused by their love for the PC, instead of being in opposition to that love. Does this make sense to anyone but me?
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I think I understand. Your loved one betrays you because he loves you, not in spite of it. He does it because he believes it to be in your best interest, or because the enemy is threatening you in a very real and specific way that you cannot defend against and is blackmailing him with that threat.I don't think it's that cliche... it's a better motivation for betrayal than most, and it's hard to hate someone for doing it, too, which is the kicker. Whether or not you could forgive would be a big question, and one worth exploring.

Races, Culture, Architecture
The artists are definitely developing a particular look and feel to architecture and clothing based on the races and cultures in our world. I was in a meeting on just that thing a week ago. How much of that will translate into being useable by those who use the toolset, though, I've really no idea. The process is not the same.

Betrayal in Dragon Age

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If it's all just a matter of what Mr. Gaider and his minions
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Minions? I have minions? Actually, it's James Ohlen who has minions... of which I am one.I wouldn't mind having minions. If anyone wishes to volunteer, I promise to keep you warm and well-fed... though only so long as no ideas of "random betrayal" cross through your little henchman brain.

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I wrote him. And I am not embarassed by that romance in the slightest. I only wish we had identified him as a romance lead before the rest of his dialogue had been written... had I known, I would have softened him so he was more appealing. Once you get past that initial part, however, he changes considerably... and most of the women I've spoken to who have gone through it all enjoyed it very much.I can understand why you might have disliked him enough to begin with not to continue, though. But embarassed? Nope.
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Hmmm. Maybe. I prefer to write something we haven't tried before, that's for certain, and I'm definitely getting the chance now.

more work for dave

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it is much safer to keep doing traditional stuff though… can’t fault you for playing it safe... just saddened
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Well, as you said yourself we have not discussed everything we are doing yet. It's a bit early to be "saddened" by our lack of innovation just yet. We're just not ready to discuss it.And we don't object to everything as being too risky or not traditional enough, though I can see how it might look that way from the forum-goer's perspective, considering the nature of some of these requests.

more work for dave

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'course, you can prove self right simply by never trying.
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Which is what? Your way of challenging us to meet your high standards? And if we don't attempt these things we just aren't trying very hard?Puh-lease. No offense, Grom, but some of these things you're suggesting I wouldn't even want to attempt, never mind think that they would make for a good (or fun) game.I'm not going into which are which insofar as Dragon Age goes, as we haven't even begun to discuss the details, but the idea of being tut-tutted because there's supposedly only one direction to take a game in order to make it "superior" is a bit grating.

more work for dave

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Consider yes...Implement it, no.Common, David, I have played your guys' games since BG1 and the big bad guy has always been muscles and very little sneakiness. Not Sarevok, Irenicus, Melissan, Morag, that Medusa thingy, Valsharas, Malak, and that arch devil. Its all been pretty much the same in one way or another.No offense, but it looks like more of the same is coming.
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Gromnir is talking about sneaky evil on the part of the player, Hades, not the villain (which, like many of the doozies Gromnir has come up with lately, I would quite safely label "high concept"... it sounds interesting as an idea, but isn't likely to go beyond that.)As for innovation beyond that, I'm sure we could never include enough to satisfy your jaded palette. Better reconcile with the fact now that whatever we do, it's going to look the same to you.

more work for dave

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So, no sneaky evil?I take it then its going ot be more of the same then?
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Right. It's going to be all more of the same just because we wouldn't consider doing sneaky evil quite like that.

Hey, DA Devs ... what have you been reading?
I really like George R. R. Martin's work, as do most of the designers on the project. As a "for instance", anyway.

more work for dave
Ummm... ...I'm thinking no. There's other neat stuff that can be done that is far less confusing, I think.

Betrayal in Dragon Age

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Why can't we have more of this type of betrayal plots, where how you behave can actually change people's minds?
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Oh, there's no reason we can't have more plots of this type. We just have to pick and choose where to spend our time, and if betrayal is a feature that fits into the story then maybe we'd do this.The reason you don't normally see it, however, is that having an NPC who you've had in your party all this time betray you or run off... well... kind of sucks, good story or no. If it's done, it should be done sparingly or at the very end of a plot (like ToB or HotU) where all stops can be pulled out.I would say, personally, that I like having NPC's who react realistically to your decisions. Have a paladin in your party, for instance, and he should really get upset if you start doing evil things. Unless you give the player a lot of alternative party members as options, however, you don't want to have every NPC running off like that, either, and while everyone automatically goes "yes! lots and lots and lots of NPC's! And all of them detailed with stories and quests and romances!" that isn't always an option.

Betrayal in Dragon Age

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Judging from David's comments, I'm sure something diabolical is being planned for DA. Woo-Hoo!
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Oh, I have quite enough writing on my plate without making every party member both romanceable as well as a potential traitor, thank you very much. Talk about your pipe dreams, sheesh!

Betrayal in Dragon Age
I kind of like the fact that every keen story idea that the fans come up with, like having every party member able to betray you, just happens to also involve working me to death.

Derek French, Live Team Producer

Two simple ways to reduce Warezing and increase Sales

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So, to prevent this, i have two words for you: Global Release.
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It is also important to understand that this kind of decision is up to the Publisher, not the Developer, as you inferred. We have no control over this decision. It is a key fact that in many markets around the world, the game buyers (the people that place thousand lot orders for the retail store chain) always order an order of magnitude less copies of a game if the game does not include copy protection of some sort. Again, this is up to the Publisher and we may not have any control over this, but trust me when I say I understand the situation.

A true between Copy Protection and Backup Rights

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Why can't you, (Bioware.) include a backup copy of the game CD in the box?
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What you are talking about is something that has absolutely nothing to do with the Developer. Box contents (including the manufacturing of the actual CDs) is completely within the realm of the Publisher. Would a Publisher go for it? Probably not, as it directly affects their manufacturing costs.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Conversations as Scripts

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That's a good idea. Well, it could be a good idea, depending on how accessible the integers are. Perhaps a better solution would be to create a GetConversationNodeObject function that would return an object that you could assign local variables to with both the toolset and scripting. When Hordes added the ability to add local variables in the toolset, it enormously reduced the number of scripts that I needed. I suspect the same thing would happen if you allowed local variables at the conversation node level.
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With the current solution in Jade you *could* have two script per conversation - one for conditionals, one for actions, if you wanted. Setting variables on dialog nodes would cause a lot of trouble, least being memory creep

Conversations as Scripts
Localization would be very unhappy about this. Very unhappy. As for XML, translating .GFF files (like conversations) into XML is relatively easy, I think I saw a community tool that does that the other day. For Jade Empire we have something along the lines of "GetConversationNode", any node can get an integer assigned to it that can be read from scripting, which allows some nifty things. It is possible that the DA will have something like that as well.

Tim Smith, Tools Programmer

Scripting language - OO?

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Then Mark B's compiler is a twopass compiler. Errm ... and your compiler is simply a funny design.
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Doing an initial pass for globals and then a second pass to generate the real intermediate code isn't uncommon. However, it was a hacky design in this case since I didn't notice the requirement that global structures can be defined after they are referenced until very late in the process. Anyway, the whole concept of "passes" is very fluid. As the dragon book says: "In practice, there is a great variation in the way the phases of a compiler are grouped into passes, so we prefer to organize our discussion of compiling around phases rather than passes."I wish I had the time to fix that hacky two pass in my compiler.