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.

David Gaider, Designer

BioWare: do we have any impact?

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I'm only asking because I'm wondering if it's even worth engaging in these huge debates over skill and magic systems, races, campaign flavor, the role of the Hero, etc. Some subtle guidance, such as participation in threads relevant to ongoing internal debates, would be hugely rewarding and confirmatory.
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It's difficult to trot out a list of things that have been changed at the community's behest because except for very minor things it's simply not a matter of the community requesting something and we directly change it. It's a matter of influence.

If someone from Bioware comes here and hears a persuasive debate on a topic, it will influence our thoughts on the topic as it might influence anyone else. When we make a decision on it later, can we directly say "the community is responsible for that decision"? Not really. But they had a part in it. We have to take a lot of other things into consideration than your average community members might even be aware of, so I'm not sure that the community could play a larger role than that... but that doesn't make them insignificant.

We will also look for feedback on the things we've already done. Voice your opinion. I would be willing to say that an example of where this worked was the extra mile that was taken to put robes into NWN... I don't think they would have made it had it not been apparent the community wanted it. Mind you, for those who think otherwise we can tell the difference between general consensus and a few very loud voices. And in this respect especially, one well thought-out argument is worth more than a hundred whines.

Insofar as influencing some of the broader topics like the general game systems, that's a tough one. Many of the more general things are at least already partially hammered down, as I've said before. We couldn't have proceeded past the early stages of rules-making without doing so, after all. Some things could change (we've done massive changes to the rules on short notice before) but most will not... but we're also not ready (yet) to start saying what's set and what isn't. So if you argue a general topic about which little has been confirmed, you're taking your chances.

How you feel about that level of influence is up to you. Obviously the game isn't being made by committee. We do, however, listen to our forum-goers more than some companies and look forward to having an active and participating community ready for the post-release era where things really get exciting. I hope that answers your question.

More : I think the process involves re-using the infrastructure from another engine to save time, but the guts are entirely ripped out and replaced. With entirely new guts, similarities between such engines are mostly superficial, so that may be a distinction that's more apparent to programmers than end-users I guess.

is it possible that dragon age will be an epic saga

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Bioware obviously doesn't agree with me on this, it's selling point and reaoning seems to be; "why be a king when you can be a god".
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And why do we obviously think this? Please explain. I'd be interested in hearing what our thoughts are.

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because your reasoning seems to be "why be a king when you can be a god"
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Is that our reasoning? Oh. I guess we shouldn't vary from it if it's a rule or something, then.

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Quote: or is just me who ends up being a God in all of your games?
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I'll assume by 'god' you mean 'a very powerful character' since you actually become a god in only one of our games.

But maybe you don't mean 'very powerful', as that's a pretty relative term. Maybe you mean 'ridiculously powerful', in which case I ask (speaking from the level-based standpoint, as that's been our MO to date) what would be appropriate for the stories we've done? 5 levels? 10? Would it have been a better story if the PC had been 8th level by the end of Throne of Bhaal?

If the answer is yes, then what about the gameplay aspect? Isn't that equally important? Don't some people find character development fun? Aren't rewards necessary?

I have my own thoughts on the matter, as well as to why in the NWN OC in particular leveling was uber-quick, but since you seem to know what they are please do explain them to me. I'm curious.

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do we get a cookie?
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Yep, you get a cookie.

And I'd also have to agree with the comment bumf made about it sometimes being too much of a good thing. We go on and on and the leveling continues until, by necessity, you are fighting overly-powerful opponents. Especially in a scheme where level 20 is (well, at least it was back then) the be-all and end-all. We could end the story earlier, and I agree that often shorter would be make for a tighter and better story (BG2 should have ended in the Underdark, in my opinion, or skipped the Underdark completely and ended in Suldanessalar) but ask some folks around here about shorter games and you're likely to get heart attacks as a response... to many, game length == game quality.

So to a point, it's story considerations battling against gameplay considerations (and, in the case of D&D, game system considerations). But no, we're not attached to the "god-like" power levels as a rule, and considering we not only are not obligated to follow the 20-level scheme anymore but also are back to the party of NPC's whose leveling up you (maybe) will control, a lot of that pressure is removed.

About the only reason to achieve high levels of power in the Dragon Age OC that I can think of would be to display as much of our new game system as we can... but how far that takes us remains to be decided: we're writing the story through first and will nail that part down later. So this is a good time to comment on the subject.

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Surely the story would, to a significant extent, dictate the level of power achieved?
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To a point. Just because epic deeds are in the offing does not necessarily mean godly power must be possessed (that's rather the gist of this thread, I think). Regardless, we have rough ideas of how powerful the player should be at any given point in the story... but nailing down exactly what's fun and what's excessive is a job for later.

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why not let the PC witness some really high level characters duking it out, and add the option to interfere even though the PC is facing certain doom (you did something to that effect in Kotor with that bounty hunter). it's a nice touch
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That's certainly an option. As was pointed out as well, there's also the consideration of leaving room for further possible sequels down the line. It's not an easy decision, we don't want to paint ourselves into a corner but we also don't want to underwhelm, and you never see it quite so clearly until after it's done (hindsight being what it is. )

As for game length == game quality, perhaps that wasn't the best choice of words to illustrate what I meant. Certainly there are many people who expect a long game, period, outside of other considerations.

Dynamic wildlife in DA?
For the concept demo, I believe that was scripted. Mainly to show more of the whole "look! facial animations!" thing (that's no small change, ya know, not that anyone mentions it).

Not that we couldn't do more wildlife AI, I suppose. It all depends on how important it is in the campaign.

Derek French, Technical Producer

BioWare: do we have any impact?

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My understanding is that Dragon Age does use the NWN engine
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Pretty much no.

The main problem in understanding things like this is that people have trouble (including myself ) between what is the engine and what is not.

We have used BIFF files, talk tables, 2DAs and the like since BG1. Yet we constantly read on our forums on how KotOR used the NWN engine, because people saw BIFFs, talk tables, and 2DAs. There is more to an engine that just data file formats.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Pay to play?

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...
Yeti
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Hey,

While nothing has decided yet as far as I know, I am very sure Dragon Age will have the same/similar restrictions.

As for some of the legal issues, please refer to my previous post, I think someone linked to it. I'm not a lawyer so I can't/won't talk about specific legal issues and how they might impact the game, that's what we have lawyers for and that's why publishers have an army of lawyers.

Like I already said, the problem has multi facets, not just legal:
- Negative impact on the community
[A creates a module with custom content from B and C decides to host it and ask for cash. A & B are pissed because they created the stuff for the community, not for commercial exploitation, etc (see previous post)]
- Publisher level (Some might remember the month long discussion about the EULA for NWN here)
- Support (if we would sublicense PWs, we would have to officially support them, which is not in the scope of DA)
- Legal (see previous post)
- User Experience/Consistency [people buy your game for 50$ and suddenly find out that they can't play on 80% of the servers they try to join because people want cash for it, people get pissed at BioWare]

Short: The chances of buying DA for i.e. 50$, building your own PW and getting rich are virtually non existent. There might be other solutions for module builders associated with our DD initiative - but I doubt they will have impact on the PW sector.

Yes, it may be hard to assemble a good team without using cash to keep them reliable, but believe me, it also opens a nightmare of other problems, including fraud, distrust, legal and tax implications and possible lawsuits - because as soon as you start paying people, you are running a business and the rules change dramatically.

It is possible to run huge scale teams without cash for a long time, feel free to discuss this with the larger community projects like DLA, SMP or CEP. Adding cash sounds like a magical way to make volunteers reliable and solve your motivation problems - believe me, it isn't.

More :
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Simple solution: GPL. (open source "general public license"). If it works for Linux, it'll work for Dragon Age.
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Uh, I don't think that would work.

a) If it's "I put so much work into my PW, I want to make some cash with it", being forced to open source your module will not be very well received.

b) If you have a successful PW module and open source it, people will grab it, run a server as well and collect cash with it as well. I doubt many PW builders would agree with that. Just check out the complaints about "stolen PW modules" we already have on these boards. Add money to the equation and it will get exponentially worse.

c) It cuts out the creative people in the community that make the content. Since they can't charge for their content, they will have to watch how others make cash from their work (i.e. that cool werewolf script or that cloak model) while they can't make anything themselves.

d) It will alienate a part of the community. Before I joined BioWare, I scripted a lot of generic scripts and objects - http://gulbsoft.de/phpBB2x/g_viewcat.php?f=23 , at some point I would find these scripts in nearly every single module published or PW I joined. I personally would not have liked to see anyone making money of my work. I contributed it to a non profit community for global use, not for commercial exploitation.

e) It would collide with our approach to make the game modules open source as well. We could never release any part of our work under a viral license like GPL.

No, using the GPL will not solve the trouble that money will incite into your community, in fact it will aggravate it.

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Aha! But that leaves an opening for buying the "DA Developer's License" for $500 building my own PW and at least trying to break even. Doesn't it?
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I wouldn't rule anything out at this point, but I doubt it's very likely

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"- User Experience/Consistency [people buy your game for 50$ and suddenly find out that they can't play on 80% of the servers they try to join because people want cash for it, people get pissed at BioWare]"

Well, again, I'm not talking about the servers, I'm talking about selling modules. As for consistency, (also) again, you face that issue whether or not the modules are free.
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NWN was very successful with the open module approach. I doubt that the community we have right now would exist in this form if the open module approach was abandoned.

However we are investigating the possiblity of contracting some of the talented members of the community to create modules for our Digital Distribution project, you can read more about it in the Witch's Wake Forum.

BioWare: do we have any impact?
I can give you some things that were added to NWN after release and Hordes of the Underdark as a direct result of the forum community:

- the Robe system (which is far more than just robes, as you will soon see

- The whole item property merging thing for the Shifter Class (quite some impact on this class) came from a board suggestion.

- A whole load of engine changes to make things more accessible/hakable for modders. The "average gamer" wouldn't really care about these. More of those to come in 1.63.

- New scripting commands like SetAppearance, SetDeity, SetSubrace, ...

- Disable the "edit character" functionality in HotU for Server Vault games.

Not so sure:
- A certain drunken halfling in SoU
- A certain dialog between goblins and kobolds in SoU

That's very specific things I remember to be a direct result of community input - the biggest impact of the community however is probably that they supply team members with convincing arguments for their favourite features for use in feature/team meetings, etc.

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I was wondering about the issues that are more about trade-offs and the concomitant difficult and (dare I say it) philosophical choices. I doubt anybody actually _complained_ about robes and secret doors being added, whereas the decision to remove in-round target-switching in HotU was far more controversial. (At least for me!)

Yeti
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Hey,

Keep in mind that every decision is a conflicting one. Adding robes may have meant not adding horses or cloaks

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you may not be aware of all the nasty cameo nonsense that has gone on with these boards, but please don’t even suggest that cameos is somehow given as a result o’ fan suggestions.
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What about the " " part was unclear above?

This thread is titled "do we have any impact?", so if we add cameos of certain boardies, that's some kind of impact, through not neccessarily a very useful one, I have to agree with you on that one.

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"The "average gamer" wouldn't really care about these."

if geo thinks that we is suggesting that bio only makes changes if they think that the Average Gamer would want, then you is misreading again.
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right "if" I think that. You got it. 100 points.

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For that matter I'd rather have horses or cloaks than robes, since I tend to play Paladins.

--Yeti
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Wrong decision Robes lead to cloaks and robes ( http://www.dladventures.com )

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Even IF they would choose to use an expanded aurora engine, whats so wrong with that ? I never understood why every game has to start from scratch consuming huge resources for the development and then they are short on zots when it comes to designing the actual game, not merely the envelope. It seems strange to me. Why not develop it further ? Why always start by zero ? Is that so bad ?
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You rarely start with zero anyway, it would be stuipd and a waste of time. An engine is defined by it's capabilities, the framework/workflow required to use it and it's main features. The file formats (.2da, .bif,...) are just one way to store data, if it works, there is no need to change that - you copy over the appropriate classes from your previous project.

For graphics it's a bit different - every new generation of graphics cards offers new features and ways to do thing better, faster, more efficiently, etc - and in order to make use of those features, you usually need significant rewrites.

The "game engine" is a complex thing with hundreds of components, and some of those components (i.e. basic file IO) rarely change at all, while things like the graphics or the rules engine could be scrapped and redone (obviously since we are not going to use d20).

Radial Menus

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As long as the menu is intuitive and the controls easy to use, I am all for them. I too prefer good old fashion text over icons however.
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Text is problematic as it will cause localization issues (different length of text in different languages).

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As long as the menu is intuitive and the controls easy to use, I am all for them. I too prefer good old fashion text over icons however.
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Text is problematic as it will cause localization issues (different length of text in different languages). Unless you allow the user to enter the text (if they choose to have text instead of icons).

Hehe good idea, "localize it yourself" - I'm sure some publishers will be jumping with joy when hearing that idea

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Appearance of cloaks and such
If we were going to include something like cloaks, I don't think it would be a horribly large stretch to imagine that we might borrow (in some form) any related technologies we might need from Jade...

Will there be a physics System?
Ignoring the fundamental issues with using physics engines in a multiplayer environment...

Whether damage is calculated from a physics based perspective, force, collision, penetration of materials (density)... etc. or as a simple roll of the die, would you as a player be able to tell the difference?

(Aside from the simple fact that in one case it's incredibly difficult to know (as a player) how much damage you'll do in a given swing...)

If we were going to do a fully realistic simulation of real life (tm), your character would probably die quite often and quite quickly... a lucky slip and your character is breathing through the hole in his throat. Reload time! In other words... un-fun.

Personally, I just can't see the benefit of having a full physics engine in the game (assuming we could even do so in a MP environment). Especially as if we need to do something physics-like we can usually implement a simulation for that specific feature.

Example: I want to implement a system where arrows ricochet off of walls/rocks properly then fall to the ground in a realistic manner... do I need a physics engine for that? Nope.

Additionally, addressing one of the issues of emergent behaviour and environment interactivity... would you really want a fireball to light a house on fire? As a module maker, what happens then when some psychotic PC sets off a blast in the centre of town? Uh oh... city burns down, all the NPC's die (except children and quest NPC's). In the meantime a burning, physics-based wall has probably fallen on the PC and their party... killing them instantly .

I'm overstating the issue... but basically, you generally don't want unforseen things to occur. You want your world to be able to react to what's happening; the people that live in it to be able to respond intelligently... meaning you have to know what the possibilities are. Emergent behaviour kind of flies in the face of that.. as the very definition of the word means behaviour that the game designers did not anticipate or predict.

Having small things that can't directly affect the plot be affected by some sort of physics simulation isn't bad... and visually can be quite appealing.

A wave of force blasting back from a fireball flattening grass or blowing leaves/small brush for example... or the wind fluttering the character's hair (or *gasp* cloak?