Dragon Age Forum News (Nov. 10-19, 05) Pt. 2

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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.

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

More BS (back stories)

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There might very well be the ability to make modules with the DA toolset, I don't think it's been settled yet.

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06 November 2005!

OMFG! Who are you and where those kind bio-people who gave us NWN have gone! Have you been chained in a cellar writing stuff and condemned to vital information deprivation?

No wonder if there isn't a publisher yet if this kind of thing is not widely recognized as settled yet.

Wizbane

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I think there might be a bit of a misunderstanding. You can make modules, I just think the confusion might be around the definition of a module.

As we mentioned a ways back we're still examining possibilities for the creation of new assets for the game. ie: Ways of empowering end-user content without necessarily having to purchase high end modelling software.

We're still looking in to:
* Terrain Generation
* Indoor Area Creation

We have a few things in the works, but nothing is for sure quite yet.

More:

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Thanks, I think this part is clear. Even clearer now.

My definition of a module is more or less the NWN one (as supposedly is the definition given by everyone out there since NWN was released).

Regardless of how areas are created, a module is a standing-alone adventure created with a toolset (which is playable pending the presence of the original game of course). A .mod file. Modules as opposed to mods, from "modding" a game, where modifications to an original game are made possible by the developers (or hacked away by those who can).

On top of this add that I rapresent a small fraction of a small international audience that is still asking itself why the english language has mod- as the initial part of both the words modification and module.

So I think that the toolset (and thanks god there is one) should be functional to modules creation, not to modifications to the original game.

And I think it should be a settled fact.

How technically this settled fact/objective will be reached... ehy, get back to work everybody!
Wizbane

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*nod* Well, you will be able to make stand alone adventures. After all, that's basically what we're doing...

The only questions are as to what art you have to use or create. If things work out, you'll be looking at a NWN type situation... where you'll need art tools for new creatures/items/placeables.

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As long as you make a plug in or something for g-max that allows us to import and export models compatible with DA then all is good.

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I don't believe GMax is supported anymore, additionally I'm not quite sure if it can handle some of the higher end art requirements as the version it's based on is fairly old. (I'm not too sure on the specifics of that though, that's more of a question for the art-tools folks.)

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Something like the sims ...but better obviously. Drag and drop walls, doors etc for the basic shapes then different skins on top of them for changing a house from brick and stone to wood or dirt would be nice.

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I don't think things will end up quite like that... I can't say too much more until we've worked a few things out.

KoToR vs. NWN Feel

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Thanks for your reply Willpower-in-Japan.
So, the first person to reply disagrees with me. Great.
My system is not that different from NWN's. It's more like an addition to it. Pressing a hot key would change to the last spell used in that group. Pressing it again cycles through the group. There doesn't have to be a list from which to select with the mouse. That should be optional. Just like any visual representaion of the group appearing on screen. IF the spell was customizable, an icon representing the spell could appear along with sliders to determine strength, projectile velocity, AoE, and duration, where applicable.
Anyway, this system means I have to remember, say 12 groups of 3-4 things, instead of remembering 36 "groups" of 1. I just think the former would be easier. I also think pressing the F? key 2-4 times is both easier and faster than pressing shift-F? or ctrl-F?.
I bet you selected things with the mouse, right? That works fine once your spells are assigned, but I would have appreciated other ways to sort the hotkeys. By manually dragging them around each other, and by automatically sorting them by level, type, or most frequently used. Also, assigning spells from the spellbook by hovering the mouse over them and pressing the desired hotkey would have been nice.
On a side note, playing as a sorcerer(my favourite) in NWN, I actually ran out of hotkeys.

Even if none of this makes you think any better of my system, I hope it is apparant that the NWN system and my own are not mutually exclusive.

To bring my post a little closer to the original subject, all I can say is that choice is good. Things like Point of View, User Interface appearance, party member selection, and hotkeys should be fully customizable in my opinion. Is it too difficult or troublesome to put ie. both types of PoV from KotoR and NWN into DA and let the players decide which is better?

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Why not just group them yourself though? ie: Quickbar #1 is AoE spells, Quickbar #2 is healing spells, Quickbar #3 is buffs... etc.

The thing about a one item slot is that its use is immediately apparent. You don't really get much of an idea about how many things are in an arbitrarily sized group of spells or like actions.

Additionally, wouldn't it be a little confusing to not necessarily know what spells or abilities are in a group until you actually cycle through it? Also, what do you do with abilities or spells that might not fall neatly into a category (like AoE, single target, Direct Damage... etc).

Finally, it's not to say that you have to have everything in a quickslot to use it... we're still working on interface, but I'm sure there will be more than one way to cast spells and use abilities.

I know that personally, I tend to have one or two mixed quickbars that I put all my commonly used abilities and spells in, then a few utility quickbars.

More:

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S:
Actually, that is exactly what I want to do. I think my "Quickbars" would be the F-keys.
You make it sound easy, but I'm not sure 3 quickbars'd be enough.
It has been a while since I've played NWN, but as I recall it, my casters quickbars always got messy.

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Maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you're talking about then. I've heard something that I thought was similar mentioned before... basically it was the ability to assign multiple abilities to one button, then cycle through those abilities with a button combination and activate with yet another button.

So visually you'd only have one button or group visible, but there'd be multiple things in it that (in theory) you could assign various abilities to.

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S:
I think this is one of the reasons why I want more than 3 quickbars.

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*nod* Three quickbars is probably a bit small.

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S:
"More than one way" has a nice ring to it, I just hope it doesn't involve depression of keys that are too far apart.
KotoR had a fairly effective way of selecting actions, but it was perhaps not so visually pleasing. I like having as much of the game world visible as possible.

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Well, the quickbar is pretty much the only way I can think of that you'd get keyboard shortcuts to work short of binding specific keyboard keys to specific abilities.

Alternate methods will probably end up being through some kind of context sensitive menu or gui or something along those lines.

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I wanted a system that didn't use the mouse to select spells, and pressing shift-F6 is quite difficult to do with one hand.

Cheers

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Yeah, the additional quickbars that existed in NWN weren't exactly ideal from a keyboard usability standpoint. Things will probably be a bit nicer for DA.

What can DA learn from NWN2 ?

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What does 'Party in a pocket' mean ?

You have a lot of people, but have to choose some of them ?

Ummmmm.... dunno if I like that one too much. Its ok from the perspective of the party effectivity, but from the roleplaying aspect I prefer having a fixed party...

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Party in a Pocket is a term used for games where you can't actually see your party in normal circumstances.

Then when you fight, you 'whip out' your party (presumably from your pocket ). It's an easy/cheap way of solving some issues with NPC pathfinding/control.

Misc Ideas, Requests, Etc...

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But how about making the appearance of characters equiptment improve as they go up in levels?.

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Wouldn't it be more appropriate if you were shown wearing what you had put on that morning?

In other words, why not have that kind of progression shown visually as you upgrade your equipment. So for argument's sake, let's say you start off as a peasant in a village.

You're wearing rags and you have a hefty stick. Not very exciting.

You stumble upon a battle a while later and find some mail, take the patches and attach it to your rags. Still not too exciting but definetly better.

Later on you find some rusty spikes and shove them through your hefty stick... scary!

As you progress in your adventure you're fairly likely to find better equipment, sharper swords more protective gear.

Personally I like that kind of progression a lot better than something tied to my skill. It doesn't really follow (logically) that just because I can swing a sword better, my sword would suddenly get a heftier pommel and maybe some flaring on the cross guard.

Anyways, that's my take on it.

More:

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What I should have said in my original post was that I feel my character often relies on powerful weapons more than skill - once you've got your Holy Avenger, you're about as good & powerful as you'll ever be. So these items become 'essential' to your character, but played no part in building your character up.
So even though its a cosmetic change, if the Holy Avenger started to change its appearance to suit my armour, or it moulded an emblem of the God I worshipped on the pommel, it would give me the sense that it was my weapon and part of my character.

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But would you prefer that that sort of thing be something that you initiate as a player? Or just something that magically happens?

So if you gave the same sword to a different character it would look drastically different.

I don't believe equipment has a huge effect on things, it seems to be more of a character skill type of thing. That could change though.

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For instance, if I have a hulking barbarian with 'rough&tough' outlook and a paladin with the 'sleet&shiny' outlook, and they both put on (game mechanically identical!) plate mails, the barbarian's plate is going to look darker, have smudges and maybe spikes on the armor, while the paladin's will look shiny and worn in a more proper way.

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While this does sound like a neat thing... I don't really know that it's going to happen.

Art requirements what they are, there will probably not be class and race specific variations on a given art model unless it's actually a different piece of equipment (ie: different model).

So, a sword will always be a sword regardless of who's holding it.

That said however, there should be a fair number of variations available per piece.

If you find something that you don't think your barbarian would wear... don't wear it.

If the look of your character is something that really matters, then obviously you're going to give equipment that fits that image more weight when it comes time to make a decision of that nature.

Or, better yet... if your barbarian didn't like clean armour... why not dirty it up with some gore and dirt... and then never clean it...

More:I'm sure I'm not saying anything.

(Don't read too much into what I said)

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You didn't understand what I meant. I'll try to reword it.

Let's say in one of your past games you had X different sword models. Maybe you had several variables for different parts of the sword object, but in total X different models.

Now, when your designers were creating the game, they chose a model from among the X models any specific sword had. If the player picked up a sword in place a, it always had the same model.

However, what I'd want to see in a game is this: You have the same X amount of different sword models. No extra art resources spent here. But instead of the designer choosing what model to use for each specific sword, you leave that option to the player. Maybe there's an option somewhere in the GUI that lets the player choose among general outlook descriptions, such as the 'rough&tough' and 'sleet&shiny' I mentioned before.

The point is: Let the player choose the look of his character and equipment, instead of being predefined by the designers.

(It would probably be better to have a combination of the two ways to actually make items seem unique too, but I still think the choice should mostly be the players.)

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A couple things then (I think I understand what you're saying now).

* You would always have the same weapon, as there would basically be no visual progression for equipment. You'd start off at the 'awesome' phase and stay there. Players like progression.

* There's no way for design to reinforce that a particular piece of equipment may have more value than it may appear according to stats. Generally bad weapons don't look as neat as the good ones. So in theory, looking at two different weapons you could get an idea of their relative utility.

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If you find something that you don't think your barbarian would wear... don't wear it.

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Why should I be punished for it, when there's an obvious way to do this without punishing?

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Whenever looking at features we need to keep a few things in mind... who our audience is and what the project vision is.

My answer up above was a bit snarky, sorry if it came off as insulting at all. In PnP for example if my appearance is something that really matters (if I was RP'ing a dandy or something) then things that look nicer are going to have more weight at decision time than things that might be "better".

That's all I was attempting to imply.

As I mentioned up above, people like progression. I don't really think we'd do away with visual progression for characters as it's something that we know folks enjoy.

Even if we used some sort of limited system where we let people pick styles on top of their equipment or something, that's still limiting the gradient of equipment progression as well as potentially increasing art + programming time for a fairly minor feature.

Chris Priestly, Quality Assurance

NPC Depth
I say kill them all. Nasty things NPCs. I hope we allow the PC to arbitrarily slaughter anyone who crosses paths with the... huh?

*David Gaider whispers*

What?

*Whisper*

Oh. DEPTH. Sorry, I misread that. Carry on.

I have yet to hear about the subject the game is pretty much named after, Dragons, any thoughts?
No love for the concept of a "Komodo" type dragon? Something rather large and kinda fierce? With poisonous slobber that infects the people they bite?

Not scary enough?

Did I mention they have deceptively fast land speed and can take down creatues as large as a deer?

Crud.

Pandemic & Logo?

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Until the game is released, everything is up in the air.

However, that is the current logo.

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As Torlack mentions, it is the current logo, but things could always change between now and when it ships.

As far as the question of will Pandemic get involved in Dragon Age, possibly, but if they do, not in a big way. Part of our merge with Pandemic and Elevation is that we continue to make the games that we already have in production. So they keep making their games, like Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers and we keep making Dragon Age (and Mass Effect).

It is possible now that we are partners that some of their staff could transfer to BioWare and join the DA team (if they want to leave sunny California for an Edmonton winter) or some of us could go there. It is also possible that we could consult with them for ideas or technology (although I am not aware of any plans to do so yet). So, as I said, there is a chance they could be involved in some way, but it would be pretty small, just like we're not stepping in and working on FSW:Ten Hammers.

More: They have enough trouble making us wear pants, let alone ties.