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.

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager

Ratings
As we have mentioned before BioWare is trying to make a good game with its own IP. We are not so concerned about ratings at this time as we are still early in the life development. Previous BioWare games were rated Teen which meant a certain level of violence, suggestive content and harsh language was not acceptable. We also wanted to respect our publishing partner's desire on the presentation of their IP be it D&D or Star Wars. Since Dragon Age is a new IP we do not have any guidelines and so we are creating a game and then seeing where the ratings people place us on their scale.

Will DA be difficult and long enough ?
I can be pretty sure when I say the game will not be BG2 in length. 200 hours is a pretty crazy long game. In this day and age of high gloss graphics nearly taking over how a game is developed creating a game that long would be an unrealistic amount of time before you guys got it in your hands. I believe the big trend in replayability over extended playing time.

The Graphics NEED!!!
I think I may have heard of these "normal maps" you speak of. I am guessing they are different from the regular hard-to-fold-up kind I buy while driving to small town in Alberta Rest assured that the world-class graphics guys we have hired will let go of the 2D sprites they are currently attached to and branch out.

Tom Ohle, Public Relations

First person available or dont make it
While we definitely haven't locked down anything regarding viewpoint, it just might end up being a bit tough to have a first-person view in a party-based RPG... that said, once we have locked down our viewpoints, we'll let you all know.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

DA Toolset Suggestions

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As an example, have you ever looked at Bioware convo node code for scripts in the OCs? Don't they all pretty much do the exact same thing, but with a different variable? GetLocalInt(GetPCSpeaker(), "nInsertQuestHere")
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Jade has the ability to set an ID to each node accessible from scripting, so for plot reasons, you only need two scripts per plot now - one to set and one to check conditions. I'm sure something along those lines will end up in DA as well.

More:
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This is incredibly handy! I can't say how many times I've had players pick from a list of items, requiring one script for every dialog choice.

In a sense this allows for dialogs to be programmatically created, looping through the same dialog branch repeatedly while just changing custom tokens. I suppose you could do it now, but this makes it much easier.
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Yupp. Want to play a VFX? Create a play VFX script and use the number field to determine which. Want to give out an item, create a single "handout item" script and use the number to determine which ... you end up with *a lot* less scripts on the long run...

First person available or dont make it
Let's ask Dups to put an order form up where people can order RPGs customized to their vision for reasonable prices (something around a couple of millions).

Interesting article on game publication
Especially around Xmas the possibly largest part of sales happens from impulse buyers who spot your game on the shelf of a major retailer. Moving "digital" would make your game vanish from this market because people wouldn't just magically stop going to the stores or chains (i.e. Walmart) and shop on the internet. This might look different a couple of years into the future, especially with major games such as HL2 pushing digital distribution concepts into the spotlight, but as of today, digital distribution is nowhere near being a competition to the shelves.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Different Weapons = Different Fighting Animations

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But on to the real issue. Yes, I think it would be great if the whole RPG genre could get a make-over. More specifically, if it could go back and time and restore the depth that existed in those old text-interface games. Now I'm not saying that the sweet graphics, voice acting, music, and action of today's games is bad.

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That's the sort of ironic thing about games and technology... as it improves, the players have to imagine less... so they expect more... etc.

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Anyway, I fear I may have just further derailed my original post. To sum it all up: If the combat in Dragon Age is similar to NWN in style (i.e. point, click and watch) I would LOVE it if the developers would add some great new animations for each weapon type. If the action is "twitch" (i.e. Ninja Gaiden for Xbox) style, then BRAVO for taking a chance in the RPG market!
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As we've mentioned before, DA will not have 'twitch' based combat elements. The results of an encounter will depend on your strategic choices, not how quickly you can do a combo... or hit the 'p' key.

As for animations, we are planning on including a fair number of different animations for combat. There should be a fairly large amount of variation if we can get everything done that we'd like. However, in all likelyhood there will not be a unique animation set for each and every weapon type.

Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance

Dragon Age title

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That doesn't preclude you from naming sequals after the world once it becomes well known. Think of the naming of the Rambo movies.
Quote: Tam:
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And the Indiana Jones movies.
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Neither of which, I might add, had franchise names, originally.

The movie y'all know as "Rambo" is really "First Blood, Part II", and the first Indiana Jones movie was "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

Then you have titles which intentionally start a potential franchise. I mean, how unwieldy are "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of hte Black Pearl" for the first movie of a franchise?

Even "The Rundown" was originally called "Helldorado" (the better name, in my opinion). But there are many factors to consider when choosing a name.

Think of your own role-playing experiences. Your character's name when playing single-player NWN is going to be way different than your name in a multiplayer NWN game with your friend. Then, in an NWN persistent world, you'll have a different kind of name. And those names will be different than your fantasy MMORPG character's name.

Why? Because of the audience, those people who will base their initial opinions of you solely on your name. When playing single-player, all that matters is your own opinion. In a group of friends, maybe you'll have nicknames and inside jokes in your name. In a PW, you want a number of people to respect your character and his abilities. In an MMORPG, you have potentially thousands of people you want to be unique from.

Now, compare this with a game that needs to reach millions of potential buyers and players. See the problem? It's more difficult than you'd think.

First person available or dont make it
Um... okay, we'll take your post under advisement, since you're the only one who has an opinion on how Dragon Age should be made.

Quick note: if you don't want to argue, don't talk like your opinion is the only one that matters. This entire forum is filled with people who have opinions on the "ideal" Dragon Age, and I'm sure most of them think their own ideas are pretty darn good.

Arnie, the 'Girlie-Man' comment and DA.

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I'd like a mature game as well: one laden with ambiguity and choices with consequences. Maybe even inconvenient responsibilities!
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I think this is the best response so far.

Are you actually going to test your game this time around Bio?
Ah, hotpants. I've missed your provocative posts and unique conversation style. Long time no see.

To answer your question: if you think that NWN was a bug-ridden mess, then no, the testing will not get better.

To everyone else:

Bugs are bad, but unfortunately, they seem to be a permanent fixture in this age of computer ubiquity and near-infinite combinations of hardware and software. There are many opinions about what a bug is and how to deal with it, and whether they're necessary.

Frustrated people will jump on every single bug as though it were glaringly obvious, saying that dozens of testers simply ignored it or should have found it. People like this have likely never completed a difficult project and sent it off to a large group (ie. tens, maybe hundreds) of people to critique. A million people will, of course, be able to find things that 1 person can't.

Those who think games should be (and can be) flawless will consider any bug to be a gamestopper and say that the testing department has failed. These kinds of people generally have never worked on any kind of collective software project before. Any software application is made up of thousands upon thousands of lines of code, written by more than one programmer. Incompatibilities or potential problems are, statistically, a certainty.

Those who think it's easy to make a game, or to test the kinds of games that are released these days, will state that a blind rat could have done a better job of testing, completely ignoring all the things that were done correctly in the game. Why do you think the best games these days come from a group of developers rather than a single guy?

These "accusations" and complaints are the kind of thing one should expect when one is a popular, successful, or prolific content developer. I'll bet everyone from Nicole Kidman to Avril Lavigne to Howard Stern to Dr. Laura to R.A. Salvatore gets the same kind of thing, from "you are a god" comments to "can't you do anything right?" type comments.

I can tell y'all from first-hand experience that the Quality Assurance department at BioWare is a talented, dedicated, passionate crew who, as much as anyone, wants every game that BioWare releases to be the best it can be. To that end, they work more than they should in order to give the end-user the best game experience they can.

In closing, I'll just say that I'm not going to convert anyone who's dead set on seeing the negatives of BioWare, game releases, or the entertainment software industry as a whole. My point with this post is that there are a lot of reasons for the final state of your favourite game, and everyone's got their own opinion on it. The BioWare forums are here for everyone to discuss one side or the other and/or everything in between.

We welcome intelligent discussions and all manner of opinions here, good or bad.

Thank you, and enjoy the Dragon Age forum.

More:
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a record number of excuses in one post Stan, congratulations. Anyway i'll bow out of this thread and let the Bioware lovefest continue.
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Just trying to back up my opinion with reasoned arguments, is all. Didn't mean to offend.

The Graphics NEED!!!
*puts away the box of Alberta road maps he's brought to the conversation*

I've seen the results of applying normal-maps, and I must say they do look impressive. It's a darn good thing I'm not scheduling the graphics department, because I would be normal-mapping everything. Also, they would kick me until I fell, then kick me some more.

I'm not a big fan of the ouch-hurting pain.

But I am a big fan of our graphics department. A group of very talented people. I have no doubt that, however we end up doing it, the graphics are going to look awesome-tacular!