Dragon Age Forum News (Feb. 03, 06)

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Here are today's Dragon Age forum highlights, taken from the Dragon Age Official Forum. 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.

Chris Priestly, Quality Assurance

Why doesn't Dragon Age have a publisher yet?

Well, there's all sorts of reasons, none of which will be talked about here. Only the people in charge know for sure and I doubt any of them will be stopping in here to talk about it. Rest assured that there is lots of interest in Dragon Age and, when we have something like the name of a publisher, you will be able to read about it here.

Since this thread can't go any further, it gets closed now.


LOCKDOWN!

WOW!

Yep, pretty much what the Ldy or Draken said. Once we have a publisher set up, then more information will be released. Work on both Mass Effect and Dragon Age are ongoing and do not interfere with each other. Stay tuned.


Since this has been asked and answered once or twice now, this thread gets closed.


LOCKDOWN!

Screenshots

Wow, way wrong here Fulgore. There has been a team working on Dragon Age for years now. We are not waiting for Mass Effect or anything else to finish as work has been progressing well for quite some time now.

All new information like screenshots, release dates, etc will all come around eventually. But before anything does we will have to announce a publisher. So stay tuned.

Same old spells?

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So yea, lightning bolt is a bit unoriginal, but if it can jump from one target to another nearby target (like Fable's lightning blast among others) then it's quite fun.

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Isn't that essentially "chain lightning" or whatever thay call it?

Now, I'm all infavor of new creative spells or effects, but I'm also pretty sure that many people will want some of the old standby spells. I'm gonna guess that a mage will want some sort of "spell armor" thing and a magiacl "missle" spell. And a ball of fire. Etc.

Or does everyone want "all new, never-before seen" stuff that is all new? I'm interested to see what people think should be in the game. Variations on already known spells (with maybe a new visual effect, but basically what you already know) or all new stuff that is totally different from D&D or other systems magic? What say you?

David Gaider, Lead Writer

How do backgrounds work?

That's about right. Once you've chosen your race and class, you get to choose your background from amongst the options that apply.

More:

No. Backgrounds are race-specific or class-specific.

Some little things...

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People should definitely react to your stealing things from their houses etc...

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Either that or not having houses that you can wander into without knocking, ignoring the residents while you search through their stuff for minor bits of treasure. Breaking into a manor because you intend to rob it during the night is much different (and much cooler) than running amok through every house in the village without so much as an invitation.

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Recall items seem cheap to me. I'd accept a teleportation spell much more, but that would require your having a suitable party member to cast one (and it wouldn't be available at the lower levels)

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In fact, it's not available at all. There is no teleportation possible with DA magic, period. Nobody does it, not even (gasp!) the bad guys. There might be a way to jump past areas you've already explored, though, but that's not quite the same thing.

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Perhaps try to avoid too much potion-ing. I feel that health potions should be something used in a tough battle to turn the tide, rather than downed by the dozen in anything that's somewhat challenging. I guess that's down to personal taste though.

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There are neither health potions nor mana potions, not in the sense that they instantly refresh your health bar or mana bar. The closest we come is a potion that lets you stretch what mana you have a little further, but it has drawbacks to consider as well, making it more of a tactical consideration instead of a no-brainer.

*SoU spoiler* Quest rewards

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So I did a long, complicated quest for the stupid dwarf in Shadows of Undrentide, and expected a great reward to compensate for my effords. And what did he do?

"I'm sure you have found a lot of treasure on your quest. That should be reward enough."

This might not be his exact words since I haven't played it since this quest, but is this something we can expect in DA?

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Since you weren't "hired" to do that particular mission, I'm not sure why you were so upset that the dwarf didn't pay you. It's not like the game didn't reward you for doing the quest, it just didn't come from him -- and, frankly, we would rather head away from the kind of thing we did in the NWN OC where you could bully money out of people whether it made sense or not.

So, yes, I suppose you will see more of that in DA.

More:

The problem with a story that allows the protaganist to be anyone at all is that it can't be about the protaganist. It always has to be about someone or something else... who the protaganist is can't matter, they come into being out of a vacuum.

The more you define the protaganist, the more you can make the story about their character -- though obviously the more you do that, the more you restrict the choices the player has. Unless it's a complete sandbox, the player can't just approach the game without knowing anything about the story and decide "I want to play a character that does martial arts and is really evil and never wants to work with anyone." It's the same as playing a PnP campaign where your GM has planned a whole campaign that starts with you as, say, a town guard -- why you're a town guard is up to you, but if you tell your GM that you want to play a nasty thief who would never work as an authority figure, well then unless the GM is willing to re-craft his entire story to suit you it's simply not going to work and you're either going to have to make a character that fits or not play that game.

Saying that unless he makes a story to fit the character you wanted it isn't actually role-playing doesn't really follow. Whether the story allows for any character or is more defined, there's going to be some give and take on how personal it feels. The role-playing is based on how well the world reacts to how you play your character and how much you personally buy into the setting, not only on how much freedom you have.

If you didn't dig the amount of definition the SoU story required, then that's fine -- some people prefer the sandbox. That's not what DA is going to be, however, and with the exception of the NWN OC it's not the type of game we do.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Utilization of new processors

Most programmers use dual core machines these days, so it's likely that the game will run fine on those. Whether or not there will be optimizations toward a specific CPU or feature can most likely not be answered at this time

Scott Meadows, Programmer

Utilization of new processors

This may not be the best analogy but at least it gets the point across.

Imagine that you are one person having to move to a new place using a single vehicle. It might take you 4 trips to move.

Now lets assume you aquire another vehicle that you can operate via remote control, now it only takes you two trips.

Can it be done, sure.
Can it be done easily?
Can it be done without experience?
What happens when the remote control car has to stop at a light and you have to wait for it?
etc...

So in summary, what Georg said.

More:

I did qualify my analogy with "It may not be the best"

Also, I never implied we were or were not doing it.

I was just trying to help others put it into perspective that it isn't just as easy as hey more processors lets use them.

Anyone can drive a car but only the top drivers can race a formula 1 to success.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Combat Animations and their Relationship to Actual Damage Dealing Attacks

It comes down to a fairly simple question.

Is the system animation/visuals driven, or is it rules driven?

If the answer is the first, then you can probably make things work in most cases (though enemies will probably have to play nice and delay attacks a bit sometimes). In the end you'll end up with a non-deterministic simulation.

If the answer is the second, then you're looking at having to limit your simulation to what you can reasonably display visually as constrained by the rules. You will find situations where targets will not be able to play full reactions.

Another thing to take into account, is how much you will actually be able to see. For example, is it worth it to have a character arch an eyebrow and sneer at an opponent before wiping sweat from their forehead?

Sounds pretty cool... but with the camera where it is, are you even going to notice most of that?


NWN had reactions, there were probably around a dozen reaction animations that could be played.