Dragon Age Forum News

Remove all ads!

(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.

Darcy Pajak, Assistant Producer

Limits to number of PCs in party
At this point in time, we're thinking between 4~6 people in the party, with additional "tag-alongs" as needed for escort or follow missions. Summoned creatures may or may not be under the player's control, we haven't decided that yet. In multiplayer we expect the "party" that one player controls to be smaller. This is because it may be too difficult to control many people and not be able to pause the game.

What we "DO" know so far...
I'd actually be perfectly happy if the designers don't go into that much detail about this. That way people making modules in Dragon Age have more freedome to do what they think best. In fact, we may use the best user content to define the world over time.

Don Moar, Tools Programmer

DA Toolset Suggestions
Hey, You already have the ability to share packages of scripts across multiple modules - use a .hak pack. Using Torlack's external script compiler, you can make a change to a script, recompile them, package them back up in your .hak and see the effects across all your modules without having to open and / or modify any them. This is even easier now that NWN supports multiple .hak packs.

Reply from Georg : Hey Don,

Forgot about BioWare's external scriptcompiler, eh? (clicompile.exe in the utils folder)

More: Uh... Not at all, Georg. I'm just trying to recognize the amazing work that the people in our community have done (and will hopefully continue to do). Just like how we have our own Plot Wizard, the Script Ease utility and Lilac Soul's Script Generator are awesome, too! Yeah, that's it.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

More words from the Great One - 1st Level Assumptions

---------------
Fusion, GURPS, Circe, The Window, Prism.
Now, name one class-based system where it was possible for everybody to accurately represent their characters to the gameworld.
---------------

I think a valid question would be "Is that what we want to do?". How much freedom do we want to give the player?

On the first glance the answer is "as much as possible", but I believe this is not it, I believe the answer is "much, but only to the point where it stays predictable enough for writing and balancing". If we were to make a game with a design premise like Morrowind, the answer would be different, but BioWare games are traditionally more story centric and DA is the spiritual successor to some of our previous games, so it is safe to assume this has not changed.

I'm not a writer, I can only guess on how hard it is to come up with decent plots and stuff for everything when working under pressure and tight schedule, but my guess is that the less you can assume about the character, the more unknown variables there are, the less personal the story will get.

I am don't think skillbased systems can't work or that you can not create a AAA game using a skillbased system - I'm saying that it is, by my understanding (as technical designer, not writer), harder to create a balanced skillbased game than it is with the tool of classes at hand ... And I think, because our technical and commercial experience with previous games, it is the right choise to make DA class based (if you have a working recipe, I think you should only change so many ingredience from it at a time to avoid upsetting the gourmets or confusing the other cooks).

Still, keep in mind that DA classes might very well be very different from what you are used to in D&D.

More: I played UO for a couple of years when it came first out, and I vividly remember that it tooks more than two years before the most glaring balancing issues with the skill system had been resolved But yes, these are MMORPGs, they don't need to worry about story

More:
---------------
we thinks that geo mighta' overheard writers mention how difficult it were to write for an ill-defined protagonist and maybe he heard that da were gonna focus story development choices on handful of archetypes and he somehow got confused... extrapolated that class were somehow easier/better than skills for character development. HA! Good Fun!
---------------

Bull***. I think I explained quite extensivly why I believe doing a class based game easier earlier on and that I think writing for a skill based game would be somewhat harder than for a classbased game.

It's always easy to claim people with a different opinion are confused, just quit trying to explain how I don't know what I'm talking about and how confused I am- try instead to live with the fact that we are of different opinion on certain matters and there can be more than one opinion in this world, none of them needs to be right.

More:
---------------
i think the main issue is simply that the game designers dont want people creating medieval seamstresses and then complaining that they cant complete the game with their character. you give people the option and those people will expect that their choices mean something. people just dont seem to want to deal with the reality that not all choices are good ones.
---------------

If you exchange "game designers" for "georg", then you are in line with what I (and probably other people around here) think. The balance of the official campaign is a major technical design importance for our games and decisions in the core ruleset will be made to accomodate that (and other things). Depending on how open the game will be for modification, this might not be an issue for thirdparty module designers, as they *could theoretically* define as many classes as they wanted to, if the framework allowes for this. RPGs are no longer reserved for the hardcore gaming audience these days, if you want to be a commercial success, you need to appeal to the mainstream gamer as well, on a certain level. I think KotOR was a good indication how this can look like, but not necessarily comparable to DA, which is probably a bit more "hardcore".

More:
---------------
Where's Winski been lately? We need someone in here who knows what they are talking about.
---------------

I was on the black isle boards as a community member back then, I remember certain conversations quite vividly ... I think I have some threads archived at home, have to dig, might be good for a laugh these days.

Please note, I never said it's impossible to write a story for an undefined protagonist, I said I think it's harder to do because most work tends to become harder the more unknown variables get involved. As for John, he's a designer on Jade too these days.

More:
---------------
this is back to the argument of skill based vs class based. what is a skill based system except just another interface for making a character? isn't it a refinement of rules to eliminate arbitrary class distinctions?
---------------

Well, one could argue from the other side around and say that classes are a more refined way to presenting the skill based complex character creation to the user, so this isn't really leading anywhere

Builder Background Support
I very much like the "builders guide" idea and I guess that the DA team will start to release background information on the world later in the development process, we are already doing this for Jade from time to time.

DA Toolset Suggestions

---------------
(*)A script debugger featuring breakpoints, line-by-line tracing, and variable watch-points. Well, this one might be a little challenging to implement!
(/list)
---------------

There is a script debugger that features breakpoints, line by line tracing and variable inspection packaged with NWN... It's invoked by calling the SpawnScriptDebugger() function call in your scripts (same as a breakpoint), all you need to do is activate the generation of debug information in your module options

More:
---------------
I do this all the time. It helps to set the game window size really small. After a while it tends to make my computer very unhappy, but the time savings are definitely worth an occaisional reboot.
---------------

Don't do it. Not with NWN. It can cause crashes to the toolset that lead to module corruption.

More:
---------------
i really think those are damning words for the crpg. valid from a business perspective, but why bother calling it an rpg then. gauntlet wasn't an rpg, neither was diablo, neither is magic the gathering. call it a fantasy game and do everyone a favor.
---------------

I wouldn't be too concerned about the whole "appealing to mainstream" thing, it does not necessarily mean dumb down or deathknell for the whole genre, it can also mean "refine".

Lots of things that made RPGs hard to access in the past were interface issues, and I believe that you can come up with a good interface for nearly everything, so you can still have a deep and complex system, you still need to invest more time to present it the right way. Just think about it, it happens everywhere - Remember us 2nd edition freeks complaining about how they got rid ThAC0 in 3E - the symbol of geekness? Looking back, getting rid of it was smart as it made the game more accessible without dumping it down (unless you think certain complicated mathematical calculations are required for the spirit of the game, even if the same effect (do I hit?) can be achieved by a less mindboggling solution). Yea, I know, ThAC0 was a good filter to prevent "mentally not suited" people from playing the game, but that mentality is not good for business. I don't even say it's not possible for us to do a skillbased game in the future, if we want to do it, we'll do it and we would try to do it right. For DA however, the decision was made to create a classbased game, so it's kind of a pointless discussion here.

More:
---------------
Of course = the module corruption issues Georg mentioned are an important cautionary. I don't mess with jumping back and forth between the toolkit and a windowed game - I let it run in full screen mode to avoid those crashes.
---------------

I lost my job application 3 times in a row to this before I could send it off, that taught me!

More:
---------------
Hmm . . . only Georg would write a job application in the NWN Toolset. Most normal people use a word processor.

I can picture it now:
"Dear sir or madame, if you would like to see my past work history, slay the orc behind the stone door. I have imprisoned my previous supervisor in the Dungeon of Woe - free him and hear him sing my praises. If you succeed in your quests, you may hire me and be greatly rewarded with fabulous magic items!"
---------------

So close

Tim Smith, Tools Programmer

DA Toolset Suggestions

---------------
Excellent point. It would probably help with documentation as well, detailing all the various tags and resrefs that have to be kept track of. I find myself frequently jumping back and forth between the script editor and looking up object tags and resrefs.
---------------

Next you will be wanting the toolset to not crash...