26 réponses à ce sujet

[Teron]

Not getting that atm. I read about the Creator in the Wiki nad tried to understand it, but descriptions seem vague on that point. There is no tutorial on this so my gut would say: No, you cannot create your own area as in NwN2.
It seems i can only take a base area from the game and then start to modify it with placeables and NPCs, but cannot really change any geometry. Is that perception right?

[Adinos]

Indeed you can. But the terminology is a bit different ... the terrain shaping tool is used to build "levels", not "areas".

On one hand you build a level with landscape and static (non-interactive) objects, and then you create the area, (on top of the level, so to speak) which has all the stuff you interact with.

If you are used to the NWN2 toolset , it shouldn't take you too long to get used to level/area creation in DA:O, although the workflow is a bit different.

Modifié par Adinos, 23 octobre 2009 - 11:12 .

[Laxon]

I believe he is asking whether there is a landmass generation/creation tool. As far as I know this toolset doesn't ship with one.

That being said you or someone can create an area model in a 3D program.



I could be wrong on the first point though so don't quote me on that.

[CID-78]

your wrong. the toolset ships with a level editor and a area editor. So you can create your own areas from scratch. but if you want you can certainly also create it in max.

[Teron]

Ahh good to know. Glad this is possibel and I was mistaken. I suck at area creation, But if "prefabs" in form of Landscape models are possible sooner or later we will hopefully have some to select from and then modify as we see fit.



Thank you all!

[Adinos]

Quite likely there will be some people with artistic talent (but perhaps lacking in programming ability) who will make sets or levels, ready for use by others, who in turn may contribute sets of useful scripts, or new models, music, textures, whatever.....

[Beerfish]

Some terminology here. Previously in other toolsets of the NWN variety we thought of creating an 'area' and populating that 'area' with things like creatures, encounters, etc



In Dragon Age you create 'levels' and 'areas'



The level is the actual setting of the area so to speak. You can use the level editor to create your area and the level editor is closer to the NWN2 area creation (painting down texture, raising and lowering terrain) than the NWN1 tilesbased system.



Once you have created your level you create an 'area' and assign the 'level' to that area. you can then populate your area with things as normal.



A 'level' is considered a art resource like a head morph and an actual file exists for it.



An 'area' is a database resource and thus does not have a specific file for the area.



Does that make sense or does it create more questions?

[Shealladh]

So basically what you're saying Beerfish is that this is like the NWN2 ToolSet yet using mesh deforming tools on the landscape, and all the other bits of the area are like placeables?



I would also like to know more about the landscape mesh and how you can create areas and what tools are available. If it's just a simple deform then it's gonna take WAY too long to create anything worth looking at or adventuring in.



And I seriously hope those videos trailers released so far are the console version of the game or prerendered, they're horrendous and not very good. If this is a sign of what the game is, I'll be looking elsewhere!

[OwenM]

I personally would have expected the game to ship with a terrain editor, just like NWN. Good to know that my gut was right.



@Shealladh, they can be a bit questionable on the quality, yeah. But this is not about graphics, it's about quality of story. Perspective-based games are never as flashy as first-person (particularly shooters) are. I'll take story and depth over graphics any day.

[Adinos]

There is a bit of a discussion of the level editor in this thread in the old forum: http://daforums.biow...87524&forum=140 It should answer some of the questions.

[Beerfish]

Shealladh wrote...

So basically what you're saying Beerfish is that this is like the NWN2 ToolSet yet using mesh deforming tools on the landscape, and all the other bits of the area are like placeables?

I would also like to know more about the landscape mesh and how you can create areas and what tools are available. If it's just a simple deform then it's gonna take WAY too long to create anything worth looking at or adventuring in.

And I seriously hope those videos trailers released so far are the console version of the game or prerendered, they're horrendous and not very good. If this is a sign of what the game is, I'll be looking elsewhere!

I can't speak about the NWN2 and Da comparisons too much as I only usd the NWN2 tooslet for a wee bit but in both you deform and shape the landscape and change textures and such.

As for the actual look of what is created I also can't make a judgement on what your standards are.  I will say this, take a game you own now. boot it up and look at the terrain in game.  Then go and look at screen shots or 2nd hand movie footage of the game.  The quality of the look is always much better live and in person so to speak.

[MightySword]

Heh, this sounds like a lot of making a map with the Unreal Editor.



So you mean the process now instead of playing with tile and block like NWN, you first messing around with the geometry data, lightnight, texture layers and create a gemoetry map ...etc... That would be cool, I think you get more variety this way, and the maps can be reused and applying different layers between mods without much redundant.

[Myazuid]

This is great news, hopefully will end up with a shed load of content here... there's soo much room for modding here!

[LordJared88]

I know someone already answered it, but I just want to be one more source confirming that you can make your own terrain, with the same ease you did in Neverwinter Nights 2.

[Fester Pot]

Not sure about the ease in NWN2 as I come from the NWN1 scene but during the builder event held in July, after a week, I felt very comfortable building an area in DA, just as much as I do building in NWN1. It's very promising and I'm confident folks will pick it up rather quickly.

FP!

Modifié par Fester Pot, 25 octobre 2009 - 02:40 .

[CID-78]

it's like NWN2 but not exactly the same some points are stronger in NWN2 while other are stronger in DA:O. there isn't a clear winner. if you used the brushes in NWN2 and didn't manually feed in numbers then it's as easy, if you heavy depend on manual input you will have harder working with it.

[Jassper]

I feel that it is just as easy yes - but different.



The best way to approch this is by telling yourself "This is a new toolset - it has different tools and different proceadures". i.e. You must learn a new curve. If you approch it with the attitude of "It should be just like NWN2" then you will frustrate yourself wondering why it isn't the same as NWN2. The answer is simple - It's not NWN2.



So keep an open mind, once you learn the new curve and toolset rules, you will see that it is just as easy to build in DA:O as it is in NWN 1 and 2.

[Ticladesign]

That raises some questions - well with me. The difficulty difference between the NWN1 toolset and the NWN2 toolset was pretty large. About half of the NWN1 modders could master the NWN2 toolset. It was one of the main complaints on NWN2 from the modders at least.



I managed, being part of a PW modding group helped, as we would share experences and tips more regurarily than you would on a forum. So i'm wondering to which toolset the DA toolset leans more, apart from the fact it's a different beast alltogether, off course.

[Beerfish]

As far as strictly thinking about level/area design? Closer to NWN2.

[CID-78]

if you had a hard time going from NWN1 to NWN2. I think you will have the same difficulty to move from NWN1 to DA:O if not worse, (alot more tools and some of them is quite intimidating) while moving from NWN2 to DA:O will be slightly easier. unless it was the lack of information that was the show stopper before. we hope that all the experience we have gained during the beta will help people getting a easier start.

[Jassper]

Ticladesign wrote...

That raises some questions - well with me. The difficulty difference between the NWN1 toolset and the NWN2 toolset was pretty large. About half of the NWN1 modders could master the NWN2 toolset. It was one of the main complaints on NWN2 from the modders at least.

This was largely due in part to the fact that most did not want to take the time to learn something new.
These people felt that NWN2 should be just as easy to use as NWN1 and some flat refused to try.

Another issue was the lack of documentation at the start as well as a very buggy toolset. I can't say that DA:O won't have any issues, but it will be at a lot lesser extent.

Modifié par Jassper, 28 octobre 2009 - 10:29 .

[Teron]

well, the problem with NwN2 method of creating terrain was for me at least, it took far to long to get any viable results. Of course that is a tradeoff for more creative freedom. It felt like the time to get an outdoor area working was not only double but 4-6 times as much as NWN1s. and that is just an amount of time I do not have to spare. I believe this was the main reason many Modders did not create in NWN2. In NwN1 I was able to create an outdoor area, village and a 3 level dungeon for MP going in 1-2 days. That is not possible if I have to handcraft the ourdoor area.

Also the Focus shifted, in NWN 1 the area itself was done rather quickly and you could focus on quests, NPCs and a bit of scripting. With nwn2 and upwards creating an area is much more work and from the least time intensive can really be the most intensive nowadays. They use totally different skillsets and as such many modders can´t compete anymore.

Its the same for all kinds of games though. While to HL1 times a peep like me could make half decent MP maps nowadays you need knowledge akin to using MAX. So my hope is that we will be able to use Heigtmaps or "areastamps" or something similar. The quicker I can get to the stuff that is fun (Quests, NPCs, encounters and such) the quicker I a m gripped and will be able to finish. If I need to spend a week on a damn forest ill just shelf it and say: good luck out there!

/rant

Modifié par Teron, 28 octobre 2009 - 11:06 .

[Adinos]

Well, I would not be surprised to see more cooperation - there are people who are pretty good at the artistic stuff, but suck at scripting or writing dialogue. Maybe they will enjoy making terrain, and creating area layout files, ready for others to add NPCs and so on.



Also, this is one reason why teams are a good idea - each person can focus on their speciality.

[indio]

NWN2 exteriors became a breeze, and quite beautiful, once the YATT plugin was out. I understand plug-ins can't happen in DA. With any luck there will be some custom system that generates exterior terrain via height map at some point in the future, although having written that, I seem to recall a dev suggesting such a thing will likely never happen.



It's going to be fun playing with the terrain builder. It will be the first thing I do I suspect.

[Ticladesign]

I dont know about YATT - never got to figure the proggy. And I did try, honest! =p



Just too many values, numbers and another external program I never heared off. I prefer the creative prosess of shaping the area myself and texturing it. But for me it almost seems as if Yatt is much more complicated. People who do understand it make great things with it, I agree.



Why NWN1 modders had issues with the NWN2 toolset, I think they were too impatient to learn it. But at the time (2006) a toolset of that nature was too resource heavy for the avarage computer specifcation durin that era. Virtually all my NWN2 toolset crashes disapeared when I upgraded my internal memory fro 2 G to 8 G.



This will also be so with the DA toolset, I think... though now we live in a time that there are stronger PC specs on most possible Toolset users.