Dragon Age Forum News

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Here are today's Dragon Age 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

Age Distribution of CRPG Players
We're nowhere near the point where we would consider what actual kind of ESRB rating is required.

I don't think an M rating is being ruled out at this point, though neither are we aiming for one. It certainly could be a T rating. A T rating encompasses a lot, though... BG2 has a T rating and its subject matter was pretty risque at times.

It's a very different thing, however, to have a game with a T rating and aim at also making the subject matter suitable for children.

And I have nothing against skepticism. I said in another thread just the other day that skepticism is quite healthy... in the end, the proof will be in the pudding (as the saying goes). You are not being a conscientious skeptic, however, when you call me a liar and hijack every thread you can by deliberately provoking everyone into an unresolveable argument over your own effete tastes. This forum does not benefit from it and I don't really care to see it, and should I continue to I shall quickly to endeavour that it stops. Permanently.

Enough said on that subject.

NPCs as non mindless robots: Loyalty Stat
There are some people who like having full control over their party (a la BG2) and some who want their party members to act independently (a la NWN or Fallout)... although those last people want them not only to act independently but to essentially also act like human beings and with human motivations, ideally.

But this is a game philosophy question that in DA's case has already been answered: we're going with the full party control. Realistic or not, as has already been mentioned it's a tactical abstraction. Whether there will be AI on top of this, I've no idea at this point.

As for a loyalty stat that affects whether or not a party members stays with you, that's quite a seperate thing altogether.

In my opinion, it's something that sounds like it would work in theory but probably wouldn't go over so well in practice. Like it or not, the part members are there partly for a utilitarian purpose. Unless you have a plethora of NPC options available, their function cannot easily be replaced. And while I am all for having more recognition of the player's actions by the NPC's, I would prefer the idea of them actually leaving your company or not as a story consideration and not a statistical one. Maybe I might track their opinion of a few of your major decisions if there was a story reason later on for them to make that kind of choice... or if you discovering that your goals were at odds with theirs was a story consideration... but making it just part of the gameplay?

It has some merits, I suppose, but my experience suggests it would be incredibly difficult to make such a system not frustrating primarily due to the fact that there isn't a human mind behind that party members. You take one of their items away and their Loyalty rating goes down... and is low enough for them now to leave. But you meant to give it back, or needed it for a good reason, how do you tell them that? How many people complained that our attempt to track alignment changes in SoU didn't encompass all the various reasons that someone might want to perform an act... and you want to codify that into the NPC behaviour? Again, such a thing is an abstracted system and has to be.

Will Dragons be a possible player race?

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Well, I hope this stays true though if memory serves one of the four races you were going to put into the game was lizard like. Is that still being planned or did you guys decide on something more mammalian.

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"Lizard-like" was the interpretation of the reviewer. Another reviewer thought it looked draconic, as I recall. Personally I don't see either, but there you go.

Regardless of the race's appearance, it still doesn't mean that race has outlandish powers like a dragon or a lich.

More:

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e.g. despite 50+ years of hollywood special effects and near-but-not-quite-flawless CGI, i can't think of a single instance of the so-called 'uncanny valley' onscreen.

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Really? Off the top of my head, I think of the characters from the "Final Fantasy" film a few years back. All that effort made to make CG characters more realistic than ever before and the end result? You couldn't empathize with them. There was something indefinably inhuman about them despite their apparently near-perfect mimicry of humanity. Perfect example of the "uncanny valley".

I didn't make the quote up and I thought it applied perfectly to the situation where I used it. I'm not sure what your issue with the phrase is, exactly. It's a bit off topic, though, so if you wish a discussion of it in relation to DA, you might want to start a new thread.

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I'd say a game for a mature audience requires characters with more depth that defy cliche stereotypes. Give me Bad guys that use their procedes to support orphanages. Good guys that accept colateral damage because it is for the 'greater good'. No more black and white hats. Make them shades of grey.

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I agree with this. And it is, in fact, something we very specifically have tried to focus on with the story. My favorite types of tales are those where paladins are as frightening as the Spanish Inquisition and the road to Hell is paved with good intentions... while evil, real evil, is a force all of its own.

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Quote: Also, I would like to not have the story force fed down my throat. Give me hints and let me piece it together. It's like the designer is worried that the player won't understand what is going on unless he has an occasional NPC give him a lecture on it.

Maybe we should be discussing a minumum IQ level vs a minimum age level or maturity level.

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Now here is where I will take a bit of an issue.

People have different experiences in the story based on the path they take, which is why it's difficult to make sure everyone receives the same volume of information. Some will get more, some will get less... and some will understand what they receive more of less because of the order and/or pacing with which they receive that information. It's often a fine line between too much and too little foreshadowing.

And, yes, there are some people who just aren't going to clue in as quickly. That's true. BUT to say that the game should be restricted only to those "smart enough" to play is a form of elitism I simply can't support. Say what you like about things being dumbed down for the mass market, as soon as you start down the path of "oh you don't appreciate this story like I do because you're not as smart as I am" and you're guilty of what I think to be a far greater crime.

Yes, having a more nuanced and refined story would be a plus. And while I agree that a more mature audience is one that needs to be handheld a lot less, let's not start down the "let's make it for smart people only" road, shall we?

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

I just suggest on one crucial thing in inventory.
We are attempting to make a different inventory system that is easy to use in a party based situation. It will not be like NWN, nor diablo. It's not working at the moment, and we'll be testing it once it is done. The GUI is a very important aspect in any game design and we're takeing it seriously.

The One Feature I would most like to see in DA is . . .!
I like this Topic. I want to keep this around for a bit and get some suggestions.

Derek French, Technical Producer

Stable Game Engine
Really, this thread can go nowhere. There are literally thousands of reasons for any software going wrong for any reason, despite the fact that all other software on your machine works. For example, I recently ran into a game that simply wouldn't run on my system no matter what I did. None of my other games are having any problems. I am fairly confident that I will resolve this situation at a later date, but I am not going to waste my time on it now.

GUI question - User configurable? Possible?

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And PLEASE make the run/walk toggle (assuming it's an issue in DA) a real, honest to goodness toggle and NOT a hold the stupid key down all the time thing!

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Please refrain from trying to hijack other people's threads. This thread is about the GUI and you are bringing up controls. No decision as been made about the GUI at this time, but I wouldn't get your hopes up about an end-user configurable one.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Scalable Models discussion

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I'd love scaleable models though. If they only look good scaled down up to 40%, you could make all models tall and then we can go from above average tall(120%) to small (80%). So we can have for humanoids a range of 6 feat to 4 feat. That's good enough even for dwarves.

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That's what we have for in Jade (which does NOT mean that it would be available in DA however since the games are using different engines and have a different design focus).

I just suggest on one crucial thing in inventory.
I think that's fallout from the special "languages" designed for DA Maybe we should use them for the manual as well, just to be consistent

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Scalable Models discussion
Small variations in size probably wouldn't be much of an issue. Larger variations aren't too feasable - mostly because of animation concerns. For synchronized animations, if you reduce the size of one model to 40% of it's original size it isn't going to look very good. The option might be there but the amount of work required to make it look good isn't really worth it.

ActionUseItem() scripting command: is it possible?

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2) Adding/Removing effects/druation type spells from a PC/NPC should be made easier.. as it is now with NWN you pretty much have to loop through a list of them to find if its on the PC/NPC then specifically remove that effect...

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There will be better ways of dealing with effects in DAScript, though I probably shouldn't talk too much about that yet.

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personally I believe each effect should simply have a pre-definied variable on the PC.. and if it is currently 'active' on the PC, that variable should be directly accessable.. kind of like the x/y/z/ components of a location.. for example:

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While you probably won't see something like that... I think everyone should be quite pleased with some of the changes.

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Demetrious wrote:

The best idea for this IMO is the (the idea isn't mine):

GetTypedText();
SetTypedText(string sText, color sColor, font fFont);
GetTypingObject();

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Hmm... we'd have to look at how easy something like that might be. Good idea though.

Scalable Models discussion
We're currently looking at a +/- percentage variation of some sort. Hopefully things will work out on that end, however don't take this as an admission that model scaling will definetly be in the final game.

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What, it's not like someone will repeat this quote 20 months from now as proof of model scaling or anything. Not like anyone we know has done anything like that in the past. *copies off Brenon's post while no one is looking*

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If I wasn't so sure you were right, I'd laugh.