Dragon Age Forum News

chevalier · Jan 3, 2018

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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.

Derek French, Technical Producer

What about an API?
Nothing has been decided yet, but I want to jump in quick and say that it probably won't happen.

will DA be available for download?
Its also important to remember that most of us in this thread are very tech savvy. We can jump through any number of hoops to download anything, restart the download, get parts from other servers, you name it, we can work around it.

The digital sale of a game must be as simple as the CD installation of a game. Customers can't worry about anything after they press the "Install" button. The whole system must be bullet-proof and idiot-proof and I believe there is only 1 delivery system like that right now.

For the most part, the download time is not the issue.

OpenGL or DirectX
No decision has been made yet. You will find this is the answer for most things, this early in development.

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the two biggest obstacles for portability are Direct3D and DirectPlay(networking)
Last time we used DirectPlay was the BG series. We didn't use it in NWN.

David Gaider, Designer

Religion

I think Bioware's hints about backing away from religion in DA is a bad sign though.
Backing away from religion? We are not backing away from religion, especially not in regards to the setting. Religion is one of the dominating elements of the world's history. Unless you mean backing away from religion in terms of gods not being quantifiable super-beings whom you can say "Hi!" to on Sundays with the right spell. Then, yes, there's none of that.

Let's make classes ambiguous!

I suggest that we, instead use a open skill system, which contrasts with the class system as follows: You do not choose a class. You have a whole bunch of skills avalible to you for you to allocate points into. You thus have a character gradually shaped by the way you put in the points. Characters have an option to at any time, type in the name of their own class."
Except that we have already stated that we are using classes. A class-based system as opposed to a skill-based system, so you would choose a class.

New Race

I do believe that Bioware once referred to something being in the Wheel of Time series as "instantly, irrevocably, defeating a proposed point".
I believe that was just in reference to Wheel of Time-like elements being quickly discarded by the design team. The Wheel of Time certainly shouldn't be singled out in that regard, either: we were quick to eliminate any elements that could be quickly identified with any major recent fantasy series.

Silly little people

Come on, do you Honestly believe Bioware will let a game like this slip by without putting in some canadian humour?
Of course not. We don't necessarily need midgets-as-comic-relief to do it, however.

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So we're getting a race of blood-thirsty androids instead?
Maybe. Got a problem with that, meatbag? I thought not.

Feelin Stale???

Why do so many threads in the DA forum who's purpose is discussion on the game and suggestions for BioWare, start out with "this and this and this about Neverwinter were terrible" and the only mention of DA is this "Will Dragon Age be different?" Please, if you are mentioning something you dont like, say what you dont like about it, and how it could be better in your opinion. Saying it was bad and will DA be different doesnt help.
One assumes because NWN is the most recent game they've played that we've done. So therefore it is easy to assume that DA might be more of the same. In answer to the original question, DA will be based as much on Baldur's Gate and KotOR as it will NWN. We learned a lot from NWN and are not proceeding from a "NWN is bad" viewpoint at all, though there will be numerous things different such as the lack of tiles in the art and the use of a BG-like party system. Whether that makes the game less "stale" by your view remains to be seen, I suppose.

How NPCs are built in DA compared to PCs
Err... all the NPC's in NWN do work on the same model as PC's. The only difference is how they're leveled up. With NPC's, leveling up during the course of the game would need to be scripted. That said, NWN was not initially intended to even have henchmen at all, never mind the one we eventually did assign. Leveling up henchmen was not a function that was part of the design, period. Dragon Age is intended to have a party system from the get-go.

Silly little people

If we are going to depart from D&D, I would love to drop the elves and dwarves as well, personally. Why include them?
You certainly could drop them. The dwarf and elf are, however, expected fantasy staples. Not for everyone, certainly, but for many the elf and dwarf occupy a fantasy niche that one expects to see. Even if those races didn't exist one would expect to see something elf-like or dwarf-like in their place.

Now, you could also veer wildly away from what's expected as well, but how different do you want to get? There is an advantage to having things be different yet familiar enough that the player can mentally fill in the blanks on the unexplained and not be overwhelmed by strangeness. And would you be doing something different just for the sake of doing something different? If you are, you run the risk of missing the point in the first place and taking your creation into the realm of the unpleasantly bizarre. Just food for thought.

Cutscenes and music in DA

I think that the cinimatics that this dude is talking about is to hard to pull off becasue in any good crpg there should be many different plot twistes and your choices will alter the story so having long cinimatics would not work because they would have to make a different one for the different choices they made. A good one in the begining and a good one at the end that finishes the story by the choices the player made is more resonable.
That really depends on what you mean. People use the word "cutscene" interchangeably to mean what are really two different things: the "in-game cutscene" and the "pre-rendered cutscene".

The pre-rendered cutscene is something like the movies shown at the beginning and the ending of the game. The number of these you can do are limited and it's not something a lot of mod-makers can do, period.

The in-game cutscene is something that we originally didn't intend for NWN to do and didn't include in the NWN OC (although I think there was one attempted scene that broke a lot) and it turned out to be a severe limitation. In-game cutscenes do not have to be frequent or long, but when used properly they can be a vast help in telling the story. Having better functionality for them is a focus for us, as was mentioned. That said, we're not going to twist your arm and threaten to kick you in the shins unless you make them for your own modules, as well. That would be rude.

DA and homosexuality...

It would be an interesting challenge to write a homosexual romance, I think, but on the other hand it would REALLY grate on me if every time I had Party Member X in my party he started hitting on me. The easy solution, I think, is to ensure that the _player_ is always the one who initiates the romance.
That's the only way this could be done, I think. And I agree. I think it would be an interesting challenge to write a likeable, non-cartoonish, non-stereotyped gay character that the PC could romance. We've already done it once with a lesbian character, after all. And I really don't think Bertam is the model to follow here, either, to be honest.

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Another appeal for sex to be added to our violence!
I don't think any advocation was being made for sex, merely for a gay romance.

Quote: Hell, why stop at romance amidst the carnage? Why not allow us to beat our significant others to a bloody pulp? Or subjugate the NPC "better half" to insignificance?
Because even gay romance can be tasteful. Abuse and gore and titillation, however, is quite something else.

Quote: In fact - I'd be quite pleased if ALL ROMANCES could only be pursued after the PC intiates it. Like someone else said - it would get grating after a while, if right during every "Oh @#$@" moment when the hordes are bearing down on you, some NPC starts making googly-eyes at you.... to say nothing of the perpetuation of the odious connection of warfare and sex, which let's face it, is never pretty or romantic.
First off, while we have had characters initiating dialogue with the NPC, since BG2 we've never had it happen randomly and we've always allowed the PC to cut the dialogue off until later if it's not a good time to talk. So the comments about romance dialogue being pursued in horrid combat situations is a bit dated. And I don't think it's so much of a connection between warfare and sex, it's a connection between people who go through an arduous experience together. Men in the military who go through battle together often form bonds that go beyond friendship, and it's not so unreasonable to believe that a man and woman who adventure together, who face the adrenaline of life-or-death combat togather and who place their lives in each others' hands might start to feel an attraction for each other, even a sexual one. That's not to say the character should be panting in your ear every time you turn around, but it's certainly a believable enough facet of the story and there's evidence a lot of people like it as the same element is present in lots of other genres besides fantasy... and for a good reason.

How NPCs are built in DA compared to PCs

DA won't require that, as you'll personally select feats and skills for your party members a la BG2.
Is this confirmed? I assumed it would be like that because KotOR worked that way.
No, that is an assumption. We do not know how that is going to work just yet, but at the very least the design is not excluding henchmen and the leveling of henchmen as we did in NWN.

Silly little people

In my opinion, it's just stupid in fantasy settings when humans can be as diverse as night to day while everybody else are and must be a specific mindset.
I don't disagree. I don't think, however, that you need to include racial diversity just for the sake of doing so. If it makes sense, then it should be a part of that race.

If homogenization is an element of the race, however, then it should be reflected in the rest of that race's culture and attitudes. Racial homogenization is a weakness and not something to be ignored when convenient.

DA needs elven cities! And waterfalls, and butterflies and... well you get the picture.
If our elves are like that and our dwarves are like that and we have a reason to include something like that in our campaign, then you certainly may get something like that out of the box. Otherwise you may have to look to the community for custom work later, I suspect.

NPCs and parties
Considering how many party NPC's there were in BG1 (25? Something around that number?), there was simply no room for them all in BG2 considering what we did with the NPC's in BG2.

The BG1 characters were little more than stats on the page. They had voice-over lines to match various situations and one or two spontaneously-spoken lines (and not even all of them had those) but that was it. BG2 had banter between all party members, interjections in dialogue and plots for most characters, not to mention the romances.

Include all the BG1 NPC's? At best we could have put them in the first dungeon and then killed most of them off. Alternatively we could have included none.

But we selected a few NPC's that we thought had promise and spent the time to develop them further, continuity be damned. Considering the results, I am quite happy with that decision.

Silly little people

So, to stop that from being a problem, we might need some hints dropped from Bioware about the world and the races within it.
Well, that's not easy to do. If you were to ask me what our elves were like, for instance, I'd have to ask which elves you wanted to discuss. Trying to generalize elves in DA would be like trying to generalize humans... they have a cultural context that, without knowledge of that context, makes them difficult to discuss in anything but the broadest stereotype (which is what is specifically being objected to here, isn't it?). So in order to do it justice, it's more or less got to be all or nothing. If we just hint, then half the forum will assume the hints are all there is to the race and will start moaning more than a pack of goths at a white sale. I certainly don't want that.

Races, New races!
Just out of curiosity, is having even plausible genetics and evolution of concern to anyone? And I mean plausible in the sense of a magical environment... where a race could be magically altered or created. Does having races being rationally explained and having a place in the world and a reason for their continued existence actually have any bearing?

Or is it more important that there just be sentient cat-people and pixies and orcs and such who have all somehow developed concurrently? Is there any number of sentient cultures which is too many? Or in fantasy is it preferable to throw rationale to the wind? I'm simply curious. The various threads asking for new and multiple races make me wonder whether the priority should be to provide unique, playable races (no matter how weird) or a coherent setting.

DA and homosexuality...

I'd expand this and say that platonic friendships need more attention, period, whether same-sex or opposite-sex. In KotOR, my biggest disappointment was the totally underdeveloped bond between Bastila and the female PC, and in BG2 the same was true for the relationship between Jaheira and the female <CHARNAME>. "Romance" isn't everything.
Actually, this interests me.

What would you like to see in a more-developed friendship with an NPC? It doesn't have to be with the same sex, but if you think that deserves special comment then let me know. What sorts of interactions would it entail? Deep heart-to-hearts? Sharing jokes? I need to know what, specifically, you are picturing occurring for those people asking for actual friendships that goes beyond the usual party banter. It is not, after all, like you can go out together for a beer and a movie.

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There must be a world of REAL men and beautiful women. Girls may have fun, if you like, but please: NO GAYS!!!
Perhaps we can give your character a 'denial' button.

DA and homosexuality...

Then people who don’t want to be ‘confronted’ with homosexual relations in the game won’t have to, children can be protected from all sexually oriented content (including romances) and those that do enjoy such things and are mature enough for them have to opportunity to enjoy them.
I really can't see putting some kind of toggle anywhere. I mean, how much importance do we want to place on this really? If gay themes are in the game at all I can't see it being much different than its appearance in, say, Fallout 2. Either the player initiates that kind of behavior or they don't. It's not like we would ever have the PC being come onto constantly by every same-sex NPC until their sexual self-image became so challenged they run into the hills screaming.

But in that it's no different than with any other kind of potentially controversial issue. I mean, would we start putting in "slavery" and "racism" toggles and so forth, covering every issue that someone somewhere might find potentially offensive? Nonsense.

Like those other potentially offensive issues, the real requirement for us as a developer is that if we are going to put it somewhere in our game that we do so responsibly and because it fits the mature theme of the story.

And as far as protecting children goes, either the game has an appropriate rating for its content or the content shouldn't be there. I don't think it should be anyone's role to start protecting children from seeing things in a game that isn't rated for them to begin with... down that road just lies silliness of all sorts (and I know whereof I speak).

More: A few good thoughts about PC friendships.

The problem with having NPC's comment on things like a romance the PC is having with someone else is mainly time. You don't want to include too much writing that is only going to be seen in certain specific instances. Although perhaps it's one of those things where a little goes a long way... if Deekin had even piped up once or twice and commented on a romance in progress that might have added a lot to the illusion of his awareness of your activities.

What else could an NPC comment on? Keeping broad globals tracking the PC's doings is quite difficult. It would have to be more specific than that. I remember in BG2 some of the NPC's would initiate dialogue when your reputation reached a certain low, like Minsc scolding you for your incresingly evil ways. Reputation was a distinct stat I could track, though, and not ambiguous at all.

I like the "blood-brother" type of comrade-in-arms idea. "Us vs. the world" is also cool. I also think the idea of the player being able to do things for their party member is a good one... but what kinds of things could you do, specifically? And I mean things that wouldn't require a whole plot, like re-uniting their family or something.

Hmmm. Maybe this needs a thread of its own.

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BTW, why I hope someday threads like this are not needed, this thread will go nowhere in effecting game design. The minority of gay gamers that will be enticed to buy the game will be more than offset by the reactions/problems such a plot will cause. No dev will risk blowing up a million dollar plus production to placate an insignificant audience.
Oh, certainly. As such a swirl of controversy has been caused by such things in games past.

You know, if I didn't want to include such a theme before, this particular upswell of ignorance would certainly make me want to now.

Aaaannnnd we're done, as per usual.

Silly little people

It would be refreshing to see elves based on some of the original myths rather than Tolkien's complete remake. Some mythical descriptions of elves are rather sinister, and would make some interesting characters.
I've always been fond of certain elements of White Wolf's Changeling, myself, that follow the classic legends of the Fae, which I believe are what you are referring to. Some of the Unseelie Court faeries are positively frightening and capricious and very... alien, which I rather appreciated.

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So, if such elves showed up in DA, it could be a good thing. Particularly, if there are several sub-races of elf -- as has been implied elswhere.
Nope. The fae were not a source of inspiration... not for the elves, anyhow. Though I do find them very intriguing. And there are no "sub-races" of anything. There are different cultures and such, but that doesn't give them blue or green skin or antennae or anything.

DGs NPC friendship thread

As a romance essentially is some extra dialogues and a few side quests, why is it any different to write a deepening friendship in the same way? In fact the first few dialogues of the romances in BG2 could equally apply to a friendship and a romance (with a less flirty tone).
Actually, that's what this whole thing grew out of. Dialogue that is intended to build into a romance just doesn't work very well as friendship dialogue, even though in the past that's what we've done (marked a point in the romance dialogue beyond which a non-romantic PC could not go). The tone is just different (as you yourself note) as is the purpose.

I know when I wrote Carth for KotOR, as a for example, I had a female target in mind. Some male players have noted that his dialogue with them seems... odd. Mainly because, I suppose, it's written as if Carth deep down has an attraction for the person he's talking to. (Excuse me while I take a moment to smirk. Okay, done.)

So having different dialogue where the intention is to build a comraderie rather than an attraction would be noticeable, I think. Look at characters like Deekin or Minsc or Keldorn... characters that (comic relief or no) were built to be your comrades and not romantic partners and therefore were very successful in that regard.

Part of the spirit of adventuring, after all, is the building of close bonds between comrades... true friends fighting back to back against unsurmountable odds, placing their lives in each others' hands... and that's just a much a part of the theme as romance, right? And one we haven't really explored very purposefully, probably, and I think that's what's being discussed is ways to facilitate that. Whether or not I can use it for Dragon Age we'll see, but it's certainly intriguing.

DA's potential. . . the ultimate fantasy game?

After all isn't a predecessor meant to be more evolved, more advanced, more versatile, more fun, just simply more.
Ummm... I think you mean successor, don't you? BG and NWN and KotOR are the predecessors to Dragon Age... meaning they precede it. I get nervous when a fan says things like this, that at a bare minimum DA must include every single thing that NWN/BG2/KotOR didn't plus a bag of chips.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Any chance we could see the E3 preview video?
It doesn't work that way. If you say "may be in the game", it will be heard as "will be in the game, promised" by a good percentage of the audience. Don't believe that? Just do a search for the word promise on our forum archives.

Same for the demo that was shown behind closed doors at E3. Hell, even if you didn't attend the demo, you still notice that some of the articles written about the DA demo are contradicting ("there will be elves" . "there will be no elves" . "there will be elves but not called elves"). I f it's problematic for journalists to keep their facts together, it's certainly not going to be much better with the boards. Where is the benefit of dedicating resources to create a video for the fans now that will most likely have nothing in common with the game that comes out way into the future? It's not that there is a lot to see right now anyway - except for concept art. There are no finished levels, textured creature models and more important, no running engine that could show those things yet.

I suppose a video of some untextured polygons warping around in a box art level could be made - but would that be a smart move PR wise? Most people would see some screenshots on a webpage with just the word "Dragon Age" below them and think "wow, this looks unfinished". They don't visit our boards, they don't know how long the game is out - they don't care, all that would stick in their heads would be a screenshot from an early engine and that's the latest thing you want to people remember when talking about your game when it comes closer to release.

DA Toolset Suggestions

- More walkmesh support. Perhaps a system to bake in the walkmesh after putting down placeables? Or periodically calling it after destroying placeable objects?
This sounds awesome I think. Often NPCs get stuck in tiny gaps between crates, or spend alot of resources to calculate how they should navigate a cluttered area. Once I was working on a module I thought it would have been nice if you could paint non-walkable areas the same way as you paint a trigger... painting a smooth shape around a cluttered heap of barrels and crates would improve pathfinding a gazillion times, if pathfinding then would ignore all the placeables and only consider the painted shape.
(NWN)
The walkmesh itself is not directly used for pathfinding - path nodes (defined in the .set file) define movement rules for a tile.

So even if you could paint a smooth walkmesh shape around those barrels, if the barrels are placed in a way that no path based on the rules defined for the tile can be found around them, pathfinding will fail. Mobile objects, such as creatures can also block or bump up the cost a certain path causing creature try something else instead.

In fact, placeables are not the problem most of the time, it's placeables in connection with creatures (i.e. barrels that block everything but a small path and a creature is blocking it) that cause the visible trouble.

Since DA is not going to use tiles, the system that will be use could be completely different. I.e. in Jade the walkmesh is defined by the artists and a "hex grid" for pathfinding is generated when exporting from the toolset placeables cooked right in.

When is dead, really dead?

Beg pardon, but just how does KotOR's system (when everyone is dead the game is over) work in multiplayer? If DA has no raise/rez, and a character dies due to lag, a bug, or crash (or whatever), can I tell that player, who now believes he has just wasted three months of his life (I've heard that before, as we have harsh death penalties) to forward his complaints to you?

First: I don't know what system DA is going to use, I don't even know if that has been discussed yet.

Now to they "theoretical" question how KotOR's system could work in the multiplayer campaign:

If there is a party, there's not problem as long as one person survives, he would use his "medikit|heal skill|whatever" to revive the rest of the party. Alternatively they could be revived once combat is "over" - however that is defined. There are other options as well, Put in a "respawn" button that runs a script where the builder can determine the consequences (i.e. age the character by 5 years until he hits his age limit, take cash, take xp, whatever the builder wants). Remember that DA is not going to be "like NWN", so it is very possible that there could be different systems in place to handle multiplayer and singleplayer death. There is no need to pick the solution for singleplayer death based on what works/works not for multiplayer.

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I hate that as it makes death meaningless (especially after getting rid of the constitution penalty from 2E), but if experience tells you that 95% of all players just save and reload once a party member dies, the question is "do you spend more money on nice loadscreens", "do you frustrate the player by taking away the load ability" or "do you play along".
Dear Georg, the difference between "save/load" and "resurrection" is that the latter tells the player death does not have any consequences in your world, while the option to save/load is out of character experience and does not brake the immersion of fantasy world where death is to be feared.

They both basicly do the same thing, BUT seeing your character wake after dying just like if he was only sleeping is NOT same as seeing him die followed by end screen/movie and then save/load option.

I'd like to see DA take the save/load & permadeath aproach.
A save/load dialog/screen rips the player right out of his immersion into the game itself - it's far worse IMO if you see it too often than losing your fear of death because it has only minor consequences.

KotOR's approach is nice in that regard that it eliminates the players need to reload a savegame when a henchman dies in combat - something about 90% would do if there is any negative effect attached to death (i.e. permanenty stat penalty ).
As long as one is standing, everyone can be healed. If all are dead, load/save. That way you get rid of excess save/loading and the need for resurrection type spells/background in the game.

Seemless Area Transitions and Multiple Servers

Multi-Player is definitely the future of gaming. I just hope that Bioware stays on the fore-front and recognizes this.
I can point you to statements exactly the same about 12 years ago during the height of BBs gaming....

Yes, multiplayer certainly adds to a game, and that's why DA is going to have multiplayer, however it does, at this time, not replace singleplayer. It doesn't even come close. And if you are talking about "massivly multiplayer", the numbers are actually not really favourable for that genre at this point - growth is stagnating and projects have been dying like flies during the last year.

Games like sims sell 32 million copies without multiplayers while games like Sims Online tank. People buy Doom3 in masses, even if they know that multiplayer is not the focus of it at all.

For each wildly successful Everquest or Counterstrike out there, you find about 10 games without or with minor multiplayer component that are wildly successful and critically acclaimed (KotOR? GTA? ).

There used to be a time where I wouldn't buy a game if it didn't have multiplayer and I thought "who's going to buy these games, multiplayer is the future..." - but that was about 5 years ago, and people still buy singleplayer games today and I don't see that declining...

So again - multiplayer adds a lot replayability and a social component to your game and for DA it was decided that it is justified to invest time to have both multiplayer and toolset, which shows that we think multiplayer is an important enough component to have, even in an RPG - BUT it is by no means anywhere as important as having a solid singleplayer campaign. We are talking about RPGs not FPS (but as doom3 shows, you can make an FPS with minor multiplayer features and still sell well).

will DA be available for download?
Digital Distribution for large scale game projects on the internet is still in it's starting stage. It will be very interesting to see how the Halflife 2 launch on steam will go. DD is not going replace shelf sales in the next couple of years, that's certain, but I'm sure we will see a couple of developers/publishers setting up additional ways of purchasing a product, such as digital distribution. How and if that would affect distribution of DA is not possible to say today.

I'm the center of the world...

In the Gothic series of games, the NPCs could be attacked by wolves and defend themselves even if you're not present at the scene. The world is alive not only when the main character walks around and a script is triggered.
While I agree that having some level of ambient simulation in the world is good for immersion, I don't think doing stuff when the player is not around is a good use of cpu time.

It doesn't add anything if guy A goes home to sleep, pathfinding his way to the house at night when you just as easy can teleport him there as long as the player is not around. The only ambient simulation that matters is the one that the player can see, everything else you can fake. There is no difference for the player whether the game randomly puts a guy and a wolf somewhere in the forest when the player comes near or realisticly simulates movement of players and wolves in the background and have them duke it out while the player is not around... There is a huge difference in CPU/Memory between those two approaches however.

As for DA, there will likely be ambient simulation around, to what extend or how it will be done... we will see Having an interesting and immersive world is certainly one of the goals. By the way, did you play Hordes of the Underdark ... we had a little "two parties competing for a goal" thingy in there

How about... ahem... riders?
Darcy just said you need to find a better reason for why we should have horses

As for area loading ... keep in mind that this does necessarily not mean "exactly like BG" or "exactly like NWN" - too early to tell how it's going to look like (i.e. in Jade areas exist in a way that you can enter many buildings/inside areas without an area transition).

Can DA try and stay from immunity driven situations?

Why is it necessarily a bad thing that certain characters / classes have a hard time against certain foes?

Doesn't that just kinda make sense?
Nothing - through I think complete immunity is indeed problematic for all sides. It's justified for certain quest purposes (the you can't kill that guy because he got the gem of immortality, but you can destroy the gem and that kills him kind of stuff) but in a global rules system, it's a very dangerous thing.

What about an API?
One big problem with providing an external programm API is security.

The last thing we would want is that you download a module that contains code to spy out your CDKey, steal your banking data or reformat your harddrive. There might be solutions to that issue, but they are a major headache to implement and just hoping to educate the user to only use trusted modules wouldn't work either, I just need to check my spam mailbox to see that there are still enough people out there that click on executable files they get by mail, after all these years of warnings....

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Only malicious files hosted by Bioware itself would cause them any headaches. And Bioware wouldn't do that. But then again, there is talk of opening up a lot of the stuff we couldn't edit in NWN to nwscript, which would almost eliminate the need for it.
It's not the legal trouble that's problematic - it would be easy to stand here and say "look, it's your own fault downloading bad binary code" - but that wouldn't help the person that just got his harddrive formatted and it wouldn't help the support people who get swamped with "that mod stole my cdkey" messages.

It would be possible to create plugin technology to override engine functionality I guess - but that would not be what the original author of the thread asked for - an API with functionality similar to NWNX2, File I/O, etc.

DA is likely to expose more of the inner engine workings to the builders (scripting and data wise), so the need for external tools to do some of the stuff you couldn't do in NWN will hopefully be reduced, but for the security implications alone - like Derek I would rate the chance for an API to run external third party binary code low. It's too early to make any definite yes/no statements right now, but I wouldn't get my hopes up too much for it.

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On the other hand, that is exactly the situation with all the exsisting NWNX-based solutions or any other NWN related software (charbuilders, TCP-listeners, watchdogs, editors, etc).
The overwhelming majority of the userbase does not use those tools as they are server related. Server admins who use NWNX are likely (hopefully) on the more eductated side when it comes to security.

Not much you can't do about char builders I suppose, but there is a clear line between downloading a program (active) and running the setup for it and a module (passive) you plug into the game and start from the games main menu. The perception "this is a part of the product" is only there for the latter one.

Dragon Age QuickLinks

A german Website you could find here, but it´s still under construction. http://www.rpguides.de/da/
Schoenes Seitendesign, wirklich

Tim Smith, Tools Programmer

DA Toolset Suggestions
Yes, tilesets a dead. They where just too limiting when it came of level art creation.

As far as other information about the toolset, we haven't released very much. It is really too early to talk about features. We have said that DAScript will look a lot like NWScript.

More:

From the bottom of my heart and in all seriousness. You guys REALLY need to trust that 99% of the developers KNOW when they are breaking past normal game specs,...
Based on what evidence?

I've been doing open ended, user configurable tools for most of my programming life and the attitude of "if it lets me setup X, then X better work" is very common. By far, more tech support money was spent dealing with customers who configured the system far beyond reasonable expectations than users who bumped against imposed limitations. It was also very common to have customers request for limitations to be removed only to then complain that the software did not perform as expected after they where repeatedly warned that software was being taxed far beyond the limitations imposed on it by the hardware (i.e. the polling rate on a 802.3 network where collisions greatly reduce the actual bandwidth of the network far below the 10mb/sec).

I have run into many modules where the developer tested the module on a local network only to find out that it was a lag monster on the internet. So the idea that nearly all designers inherently know the limitations of the game engine isn't true. However, I am sure there is a significant number of designers who take great care in developing all aspects of the software. There are many designers who don't realize that performance is one of the aspects of developing great modules.

As far as imposed limitations in the DA toolset, we don't know to what extent we will try to prevent designers from producing bad content. But as has been pointed out, allowing people to produce content that doesn't even run in the game is counter productive. But there is a difference between allowing someone from creating a 2 trillion triangle landscape and allowing them to create a monster which attributes outside the normal specs. Where we draw the line between "crash and burn" content creation and "just acts funny" has yet to be decided.

More: Changing creature color is not something the toolset can not do without game side support.

Tom Ohle, Public Relations

Feelin Stale???
Just to chime in real quick on something.

Quote: and the reason Hordes & NWNgold is still on the shelves as we speak, while Jade Empire and KoTR are not... at least not where I live
While I'm by no means devaluing the community contribution to how well NWN is doing, I do need to quickly note that KotOR is still for sale in pretty much every store I frequent, and Jade Empire isn't on shelves because it won't be out until Q1 2005

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

DA Toolset Suggestions
Hey, Adding support for changing creature colours as you describe (and many of the other suggestions that require modifications to the core game itself) is beyond the _responsibility_ and _authority_ of Tim & Co. not their ability.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

How about... ahem... riders?
Sacred needed horses because of their world/map system. If you want to get to location X, you need to walk, or ride there. Dragon Age will have area loading like Kotor, BG, and NWN. We don't need horses to make transportation quicker.

BW trademarks "Eclipse Engine"
The "Eclipse Engine" has very little to do with Dragon Age. I'm afraid this subject is off topic.

Brent Knowles, Co Lead Designer

Is it possible to play Solo (no party)?
Anything is possible but the game will be balanced for a party of adventurers. We have an exciting and interesting storyline and the joinable NPCs are a vital element towards telling that story. With that in mind, the combat in the game will be balanced for a diverse party. Just like BGII though, those are truly intent on playing alone probably can. It just might be very difficult

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Combat without the yes/no
*nods* They've been cut.

Weapons for all!
Unfortunately, at least in my experience in Rapier... large differences in range generally tend to win out over how quickly a dagger wielder can move their body..In other words, my rapier will always move faster than you can move your body and feet (which is the determining factor when attempting to close with a big knife).

In terms of parrying, a parrying blade (being smaller and lighter) will move faster... and has a definite use. As an actual stand-alone weapon though... not so good.

I'm not sure if this applies differently to heavy fighting as I've never done that or studied it much... but in light fighting (unarmoured combat with sharp blades) my money will almost always be on the fella with the sword.

Now, that's not to say that all weapons shouldn't have a certain amount of usefulness... I could see someone with throwing knives being potentially dangerous, as it precludes the need to get close enough to get cut by the aforementioned fella with the sword. Choose the right tool for the job, ne?

[ August 08, 2004, 15:29: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

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chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran