Dragon Age "Limitations"

[420]

Too many games to place too little time.

Dragon Age will be coming out in Nov.

Before you decide to get Dragon Age you should check out what the devs posted to the Dragon Age forum.

DavidSims
Technical Designer

Posted: Thursday, 20 August 2009 04:19PM

First, if you’re looking at making custom content, I would advise not straying too far from the main campaign in terms of setting. Modules don’t necessarily have to be set in Thedas, but if you have a vision for your world that is very different from Thedas in terms of creatures and architecture, you’re going to have to make a massive amount of custom resources at a much higher graphical fidelity than NWN. We’re only providing the assets we needed to make the game. There wasn't much thought given to what creatures and placeables might be useful to a community module.

In terms of limitations, here’s what I can think of.


The following aren’t in the game, probably as no surprise to anybody at this point:

-Multiplayer/DM client.

-Climbing.

-Jumping.

-Swimming.

-Mounts.

-Pushing/grabing objects around in real time.

-Path over path. You can do this but the pathfinding doesn’t support it. In drive mode it works fine, but if you move with point and click or use scripting to move a creature it fails.


The following can be done, but only in hacky ways and were rarely done in the main campaign:

-Day/night. This can only be done with area transitions. No real time

-Placing/picking up objects in the world. Unlike NWN, you can’t drop items into the world, or pick up anything that’s not in a container. For picking up you have to put placeables into the world (and no model exists for most items). For placing you’d have to put an invisible placeable into the world which you click on, which spawns another placeable.

-Destroyable environments. Placeables can be destroyed, but they tend to stick beucase the lighting is different, especially large ones that you’re trying to disguise as part of the background level art. Our artists have found ways to bake the lighting texture into the diffuse texture to pull a decent blend off, but it’s hacky and hard to maintain.

-Ambient usage of objects. You can’t hook an extra object up to an animation. So for instance, outside of a cutscene, you can’t have people drinking from mugs, or working a forge with tools. We actually figured out too late that you can do this with visual effects, so hopefully the community can do a better job of it that we did.


Things that were in NWN that are different/missing from DA:

-Runtime local variables. All variables stored on an object have to be declared in a 2da.

-Custom equipment. NWN was more flexibile in allowing outfits to be made piece by piece and selecting different colours. DA’s armors are one piece and the tinting is limited.

-Accessing objects. You can only grab/effect objects which are in the player’s current area. If you want to change things in other areas, you set plot flags and update the other area in the area load script.

-Beam Effects. DA doesn’t have beam visual effects.

-Using items. Plot items can’t be usable in DA, and generally making items that are not consumed when used is a bit painful.

-Instancing. NWN allows you to modify any property of a placed object. DA has a much smaller list of instanced properties, and expects you to use more templates. I quite like the system, but it might take getting used to.

-Scaling. Creatures and placeables have a fixed size. NWN didn’t have scaling, and neither does DA.

-Putting items into containers. DA doesn’t let the player drag items from their inventory into a container. This functionality is actually included in the engine and can be accessed by changing a parameter in the function call to open the inventory, but users of the custom content probably won’t realize they can do this.

-Placeable actions. Unlike NWN where the player can pretty much do any action on any placeable, DA only supports one action per placeable at a time. The state controller has a list of states and each one has an action. So a placeable can be bashed, or it can be examined, or it can be used, or it can be a container, or it can be an area transition or it can be locked, but it can’t be multiple of these simultaneously. We did at one point have a second action accessed by shift-click, but I think we cut every place we used it in the main campaign and we might have cut the functionality from the engine. It’s something to look into, but even then you’re looking at two actions per placeable and not a radial menu.

I’m sure there are other differences and limitations, but that’s what comes to mind. I have no doubt once people get their hands on the toolset, they will start running up against unanticipated walls.

All that said, it's a very powerful tool that can do a lot of things, especially when it comes to conversation staging and cutscenes. I hope people don't find my list discouraging.

-420

[Mo]

Well I think we knew it wasn't going to be a successor to NWN in terms of multiplayer potential.  Which is fine because games like D3 and GW2 are coming.  I am looking forward to a very rich single player campaign in this one.

[420]

Well I think we knew it wasn't going to be a successor to NWN in terms of multiplayer potential.  Which is fine because games like D3 and GW2 are coming.  I am looking forward to a very rich single player campaign in this one.

No multiplayer is the least of the limitations listed there. You really think there will be a rich single player campaign in a game that has no real time day/night cycle?

Why not just play The Witcher, at least that's got real time day/night cycle and weather effects. In fact, time of day is an important part of some quests.

Also, it seems to me that if placeables can't be destroyed the DA world is going to seem awfully static. Even the NWN OCs had puzzles and challenges involving destroying/recreating placeables.

Also, this disturbs me:

-Scaling. Creatures and placeables have a fixed size. NWN didn’t have scaling, and neither does DA.

Last time I checked, NWN did have scaling. This dev doesn't know shit about his company's own products.

-420

[Mo]

The scaling in NWN was accomplished through changing the actual model around no?  There was no inherent scaling in the toolset.  I couldn't drop a red dragon in my mod and scale him to 200% in any way.

Well your points are valid, but I believe in Bioware so here's hoping.  I'm gonna get the Witcher when it's released on PS3.

EDIT:  Looks like the console version of the Witcher has been canceled.  Too bad it looked really nice.

[420]

The scaling in NWN was accomplished through changing the actual model around no?  There was no inherent scaling in the toolset.  I couldn't drop a red dragon in my mod and scale him to 200% in any way.

Nope, turned out scaling was inherent to the tails when they were added in HotU. Someone got the bright idea that if tails scaled to the model size whyy not just make the appearance the tail and make a bunch of null models of different sizes.

As far as dropping in a dragon and scaling it, I made a tool for CEP v2.3 called the "CEP Creature Wizard" that lets a DM scale creatures that are spawned from the creature palette. It just matches the current appearance to the matching tail and sets it to the default scalable model which you can then adjust to be larger or smaller.

I included instructions for exporting the tool and using it in a mod with no haks. In fact, I'm using it in Smith Hold as one of the custom feats for my DMs.

Well your points are valid, but I believe in Bioware so here's hoping.  I'm gonna get the Witcher when it's released on PS3.

EDIT:  Looks like the console version of the Witcher has been canceled.  Too bad it looked really nice.

Lame, it's a really stunning game, amazing graphics, music, storyline, NPCs, and combat system. The dice mini-game is a lot of fun to play too, not like that damn Pazaak.

-420

[Talon]

You should rename this thread "REASONS NOT TO BUY DRAGON AGE". Its not the game it should have been.

[Meclar]

You think the marketing department is looking to assassinate this guy?  The one thing you don't do to promote new product is give a list of what it can't do!

[Soul Sojourner]

Perhaps this guy doesn't like it just as much as everyone else, and this was his way of venting.

[Mo]

Game will be released in 1 week.  Who's getting it?  PC PS3 or Xbox?

[Calia]

maybe for the xbox considering besides L4D and band games like GH and RB I really dont have much to play on there as I am holding off on playing through Fallout3 again seeing as I finished the main story unexpectedly yeasterday even though I was told because of the expansions I had it wouldnt end after the main story .... >.<

Calia

[420]

maybe for the xbox considering besides L4D and band games like GH and RB I really dont have much to play on there as I am holding off on playing through Fallout3 again seeing as I finished the main story unexpectedly yeasterday even though I was told because of the expansions I had it wouldnt end after the main story .... >.<

Calia

The Broken Steel DLC is the one that allows you to continue playing after completing the main storyline.

-420

[Calia]

Yup I have operation, The Pitt and broken steel though my xbox is acting strange I had to send mine out and they sent me another one back and i had to re-dl all my dlc and it was freezing up alot and I have ahd to re-dl the stuff 4 times now with cache wipes and such so idk what is wrong with it broken steel is the first one i downloaded >.> i baught a disc that had ancorage and the pitt on it :S

-Calia