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.

Peter Thomas, Designer

First Person Perspective or not...and why
There was actually a quasi turn-based squad FPS game called Space Hulk that had a system that worked kind of ok. You could see out of everyone's eyes in little windows at the edge of the screen and the currently selected character was the main window. However, for large-scale tactical battles, this might be very limiting. It was very easy to die in Space Hulk and it ended up being almost a puzzle game in how to place your guys. In a real-time turn-based game, it could get very messy very fast. It would be an interesting experiment, but I think overall, more people would find it disconcerting than a more BG-type system. Which is also what DA has been announced as having.

And as an aside, you know how few people actually know what memetic means? It's a shame...

First Person Perspective or not...and why

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Would probably help if "memetic" WAS A WORD!
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Look up "meme". Perhaps they are similar and that was the original intent, but I like the concept of infectious ideas.

David Gaider, Designer

Cloaks, horses, swimming, wall climbing, magic carpet riding and everything that was missed out..
Insofar as the horse's involvement in fantasy goes, I wouldn't say that it is integral. When you think of the archetypal "fantasy moments" (a la 'slaying the dragon', 'delving into the dungeon', etc), however, the 'charge of mounted riders' and the 'knight's joust' are up there... so it's definitely an aspect of fantasy, if not integral. We must make other considerations, however, beyond whether something is or isn't an aspect of the genre. We must take into consideration that aspect's effect on gameplay and its cost to implement versus its benefit. Naturally these are not considerations the fans need to take into account. The fan just sees it as important and wants it... we get that, we truly do. Will there be horses in Dragon Age? We shall see. Do not assume that just because it was ruled out for one game it will be ruled out for all: not having horses is not our policy, it's just an expensive feature that must be justified in order to be included. Like with all expensive features however (and you can mark cloaks, swimming, wall climbing et al under this) we're still going to have to pick and choose where our focus lies. We may have more resources to apply but they will always be limited, and so we will never be able to include everything under the sun. That means that while we certainly may be able to include a lot more as time goes on, those folks who believe that any sequel (spiritual or otherwise) will naturally include every single desired feature that did not get included in the original are simply deluding themselves.

More: Uh-huh. And if not, well... tough. Can't have everything. But we'll see what we can do.

Do you think the "gods" are listening to us, in devlopin this game?
We listen. If someone believes that they aren't being listened to simply because we do not always respond to every single post or sit down with every visitor and nod thoughtfully while taking down a list of their desires as if we were taking their order in a restaurant... well, they are free to think that, as well. We do try our best, though. If someone believes that they aren't being listened to because we do not obey their demands and override our own judgement... heh. Well, that would be true, then.

Death Animations
Hmmmmm... *Imagines Hades_One being ejected into the vacuum of space, his eyeballs expanding until they explode like a pair of jellyfish thrown against the pavement, his soundless screaming cut off as all his capillaries burst beneath his skin at once turning him into a floating bruise and as his softer internal organs shortly thereafter are exhaled in a single gushy, bloody flow into the airless void.* ...you're right, that does have promise.

More: You see? Violence is always funny until someone loses an eye. Or two.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

scripting language - improving on nwscript

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Wait, you were talking about dlls. I may not have read your post correctly but didn't NWNX and the CoPaP/Avlis team figure out a way to use dlls to write out to a server database. I actually looked at the dlls and, although I never understood where they were getting their definitions from (probably Bioware dlls/exes) it looked like it was totally possible to add your own scripting functions and cool stuff like that. Sorry if someone has already said all that before, but I tend to get lazy sometimes and don't read the whole posts. Heck, I don't even read all of my own posts sometimes (it's the lack of sleep).
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NWNX2 (ab)uses debug mode to do what it is doing, I think people here are thinking more about "native" support for that. I can see a some barriers for something like that however, the potential for abuse is huge. "Hey, take this cool DLL, sure it's adding email functionality to the scripting language" - and, at the same time, emails your cdkey file to some hotmail addresss.... Same reason why there's no File I/O in NWN. Using NWNX2 isn't a trivial thing so most users who do it are technically savy enough to be aware of the implications when using third party binaries (and in best case are probably compiling it themselves), however if the game would allow third party DLLs on the same "easy to use" level as getting new modules or hakpaks, you can assume that a lot of users would download a third party dll with the same easy the click on every fancy email attachment they get (and judging from my spam box, thats unfortunately a lot). It is our obligation to protect these people, which means that not all features that would be technically "very cool(tm)" should be done. How, and in which ways this applies to Dragon Age, remains to be seen.

scripting language - improving on nwscript
An interesting solution to the whole trust issue could be to require some kind of cryptographic key signature with the key being branded to your NWN community account, so you would have to apply for a third party developer key that could be revoked in case it gets compromised (somewhat similar to SSL). Could solve some issues, would be expensive on the other hand

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Please Devs, can we get involved??
Just a comment - we do actually read threads, and often-times some really good ideas for the game come from you (the fanbase) or discussions that you have. We may not always post as such, but we *are* listening...

Realistic archery/ranged
Great ideas so far folks, a few interface questions for you relating to the suggestions/ideas I've read so far.

* Thrown weapons. Assuming you had the ability to throw any weapon and you could equip both a throwing weapon (offhand) and a melee weapon... how would you feel about throwing the 'throwing' weapon first if you chose the 'throw' attack option?

* If there was a called shot system, how would you specify different parts of the body? (Remember this is a real-time game, and though you can pause in SP you may not be able to in MP).

* If your archer can't hit the target he's aiming for, what would you think the desired behaviour should be? (Acquire a new target? Give up?)

* How would you want attacking with a bow while moving to work (interface wise?). The default behaviour for attacks is to move within range and begin attacking. Should you always fire on the run? Even if there are penalties associated with it? What happens if you're out of range when you attempt to fire on the run?

* On reload rates, if a crossbow takes a small amount of time (maybe 5-10 seconds, depending on how annoying it was?) - how would you feel about being stuck reloading (unable to move) until you're done?

* Would you want to be able to target specific creatures at range? How would you feel about an 'area target' or something like that (shoot at things in this area)?

Please keep in mind that none of this is any indication of what we may or may not be doing on the project. All of this is purely discussion, for the time being.