177 réponses à ce sujet

[Bryy_Miller]

Has anyone brought up the difficulty of lip sync yet?

notepad will find and replace all instances of a word for you, hardly time consuming.

Contrary to what middle school has taught us: video game development is a BIT more complicated than HyperText and Click 'n' Play.

Wow. I totally dated myself with that HyperText reference.

I accept that I might not fully appreciate the ammount of work involved, which is why I've asked the question, as yet I haven't really had anyone tell me the ins n outs, just a lot of highly defensive people basically telling me to stop complaining and it's just too hard, when all I am doing is trying to find out something that I don't understand.

The fact that you don't understand it, and yet act like you do, is exactly WHY people are getting irrate with you. 

You also honestly expect someone to explain it to you in one nice little post? Like the viking dwarf said, people go to college for this stuff. You're acting like someone who wants to know how evolution works in a single post or else it is proof that God is real.

Modifié par Bryy_Miller, 03 septembre 2010 - 12:20 .

[Faz432]

Bryy_Miller wrote...

Has anyone brought up the difficulty of lip sync yet?

notepad will find and replace all instances of a word for you, hardly time consuming.

Contrary
to what middle school has taught us: video game development is a BIT
more complicated than HyperText and Click 'n' Play.

Wow. I totally dated myself with that HyperText reference.

I
accept that I might not fully appreciate the ammount of work involved,
which is why I've asked the question, as yet I haven't really had anyone
tell me the ins n outs, just a lot of highly defensive people basically
telling me to stop complaining and it's just too hard, when all I am
doing is trying to find out something that I don't understand.

The fact that you don't understand it, and yet act like you do, is exactly WHY people are getting irrate with you. 

You
also honestly expect someone to explain it to you in one nice little
post? Like the viking dwarf said, people go to college for this stuff.
You're acting like someone who wants to know how evolution works in a
single post or else it is proof that God is real.

Yes because I actually think they made DA in notepad...way to take an example out of context...

How am I acting like I know it all when in the very quote you used I admitted I don't?? anyway what are these things you are talking about? what extra things do they need to do that they either have not already done or are not capable of doing?

The only real possible reasons so far people have offered for Bioware not doing this, are that it might be essential to the continuation of the story beyond DA 2 that Hawke be human or that the game would be drastically increase to a size requiring an undesirable amount of space.

Your argument that it's because the devs would have to preform some kind of almost magical and insurmountable task of programming is absolute rubbish, they do it on a daily basis, they could probably whip up a piece of code to do something awesome just as easy as I'm writing this now. More importantly they don't need to, because everything that is needed to do it already exists, they don't have to go about rewriting the game engine or the toolset to add a charater type.

Modifié par Faz432, 03 septembre 2010 - 12:40 .

[Wishpig]

Faz432 wrote...

@Wishpig what you're failing to realise is that the processes that you're concerned about have already happend, almost everything needed to make it work already exists, it would just be a case of tweaking certain things to allow for it.

I'm not failing to realise it, I *along with most people here it seems* realise that it is not just a case of "tweaking certian things*

It is not that SIMPLE. It is not a copy and paste situation. It is not a just tweak it a bit situation... it's not a biowares' a bunch of lazy slobs situation (although I'll say they might be rushing a bit to much)... it's a difficult thing to implant, to late in the process, you obviously just don't get it, situation.

Faz432 wrote...

How am I acting like I know it all when in
the very quote you used I admitted I don't?? anyway what are these
things you are talking about? what extra things do they need to do that
they either have not already done or are not capable of doing?

You can say you don't but it seems to me like your saying "I don't get it" and then when someone answers your question you seem to say "you don't get it!" Not as simply and straitfoward obviously... but thats what your coming off sounding like.

Listen, you have NO experiance in game design. I have a limited, but two years worth of schooling in game design (albiet those two years have long since passed). Many people who have responded to you have MUCH more then me. Yet your still acting as though your right and its simple, when people actually know what their talking about say otherwise.

Modifié par Wishpig, 03 septembre 2010 - 12:51 .

[Bryy_Miller]

Faz432 wrote...

How am I acting like I know it all when in the very quote you used I admitted I don't??

Replace how for why. 

anyway what are these things you are talking about? what extra things do they need to do that they either have not already done or are not capable of doing?

There could be so many reasons: budget, corporate mandate to be more like Mass Effect, story.... or all three. 

The only real possible reasons so far people have offered for Bioware not doing this, are that it might be essential to the continuation of the story beyond DA 2 that Hawke be human

I don't understand why this sounds unreasonable to you.

or that the game would be drastically increase to a size requiring an undesirable amount of space.

Devs do not have an unlimited amount of space to work in. They cannot create new places out of thin air to store information. Dragon Age was one of the longest RPGs that we've seen in a while, and it was buggy as hell. If this is what they want to experiment with, why not?

Your argument that it's because the devs would have to preform some kind of almost magical and insurmountable task of programming is absolute rubbish,

No, that's not what I'm saying. At all. But if you want to throw strawmen in order to justify why I'm wrong, be my guest.

they do it on a daily basis

Which is why it takes years to make a game.

they could probably whip up a piece of code to do something awesome just as easy as I'm writing this now.

Oh look, another strawman.

Modifié par Bryy_Miller, 03 septembre 2010 - 12:49 .

[Faz432]

@Bryy_Miller - I'm sorry I meant those were reasonable explanations but I'm not sure what strawmen are..

@Wishpig - Why didn't you just say that at the start? why didn't you just say it's not hard it might just be a bit of a pain/unreasonable to do it so late in development? that's a fair enough answer.

------------------

Trying to make it sound as though it would be an almost impossible task sounds a bit ridiculous don't you think?

Modifié par Faz432, 03 septembre 2010 - 01:02 .

[Heimdall]

Faz432 wrote...

The only real possible reasons so far people have offered for Bioware not doing this, are that it might be essential to the continuation of the story beyond DA 2 that Hawke be human

Incorrect, it is the story of DA2 that being human is essential to.  Not beyond DA2 to our knowledge.  It's more than just the programming difficulties.  What we have been told is that the story only works for a human character. Given the way other races are treated in Thedas unless they're grey wardens, this realy isn't hard to imagine.  To implement other races they would have to rewrite the story itself, not just do some tweaking to make the character model an elf and rerecord dialogue to have others refer to you as such

[Wishpig]

Faz432 wrote...

@Bryy_Miller - I'm sorry I meant those were reasonable explanations but I'm not sure what strawmen are..

@Wishpig - Why didn't you just say that at the start? why didn't you just say it's not hard it might just be a bit of a pain/unreasonable to do it so late in development? that's a fair enough answer.

------------------

Trying to make it sound as though it would be an almost impossible task sounds a bit ridiculous don't you think?

I give up

[Bryy_Miller]

Faz432 wrote...

@Bryy_Miller - I'm sorry I meant those were reasonable explanations but I'm not sure what strawmen are?

Strawmen are arguments that are a complete exaggeration of the current discussion. They are used mainly as diversion tactics, because there's utterly no way to respond to them.

Trying to make it sound as though it would be an almost impossible task sounds a bit ridiculous don't you think?

Well:
1) It is an almost impossible task at this point.
2) No.

If this interests you, Faz, you may want to read a book on this subject or take classes. 

[Faz432]

Lord Aesir wrote...

Faz432 wrote...

The only real possible reasons so far people have offered for Bioware not doing this, are that it might be essential to the continuation of the story beyond DA 2 that Hawke be human

Incorrect, it is the story of DA2 that being human is essential to.  Not beyond DA2 to our knowledge.  It's more than just the programming difficulties.  What we have been told is that the story only works for a human character. Given the way other races are treated in Thedas unless they're grey wardens, this realy isn't hard to imagine.  To implement other races they would have to rewrite the story itself, not just do some tweaking to make the character model an elf and rerecord dialogue to have others refer to you as such

Right another good answer, lore defined social attitudes towards specific races might prohibit the CoK being an Elf or Dwarf.

Modifié par Faz432, 03 septembre 2010 - 01:10 .

[yummysoap]

Faz432 wrote...

One of the reasons I'm bringing this up is because I personally found the replayabilty in DOA was in the fact I could play with different Races, what's the replayabilty going to be like in DA2?

I can play as a male human Hawke and be good or bad

I can play as a female human Hawke and be good or bad

That's it..

I know this was on the first page but you're kind of contradicting yourself here. You're saying all that's required is altered dialogue that changes "human" to elf/dwarf (which just about anyone can dispute), then you're saying that DA2 is not going to replayable because the characters are more or less the same. Thing is, difference races would be exactly the same as well considering there are no individual origins and the only dialogue changes would be those that reference the PC's race. In essence, it's:

I can play as a male/female human Hawke and be good or bad

I can play as a male/female elf and be good or bad, but the content is going to be exactly the same as if I were a human with just a few dialogue fixes

I can play as a male/female dwarf and be good or bad, but the content is going to be exactly the same as if I were a human with just a few dialogue fixes

It doesn't add replayability at all, it just masks non-replayability behind a bad guise.

[Faz432]

yummysoap wrote...

Faz432 wrote...

One of the reasons I'm bringing this up is because I personally found the replayabilty in DOA was in the fact I could play with different Races, what's the replayabilty going to be like in DA2?

I can play as a male human Hawke and be good or bad

I can play as a female human Hawke and be good or bad

That's it..

I know this was on the first page but you're kind of contradicting yourself here. You're saying all that's required is altered dialogue that changes "human" to elf/dwarf (which just about anyone can dispute), then you're saying that DA2 is not going to replayable because the characters are more or less the same. Thing is, difference races would be exactly the same as well considering there are no individual origins and the only dialogue changes would be those that reference the PC's race. In essence, it's:

I can play as a male/female human Hawke and be good or bad

I can play as a male/female elf and be good or bad, but the content is going to be exactly the same as if I were a human with just a few dialogue fixes

I can play as a male/female dwarf and be good or bad, but the content is going to be exactly the same as if I were a human with just a few dialogue fixes

It doesn't add replayability at all, it just masks non-replayability behind a bad guise.

Perhaps it is but maybe some people would like the choice to role play a elf or a dwarf, and I'm not saying all that's required is changing 'human' to 'elf' or 'dwarf'...is that a strawman Bryy_Miller?

[Bryy_Miller]

Faz432 wrote...
is that a strawman Bryy_Miller?

No.

"If we let gays marry, then we'll also have to let dogs marry humans" < ------ this is.

Modifié par Bryy_Miller, 03 septembre 2010 - 01:26 .

[Faz432]

Right I see.

Have you got one for when someone makes it seem as though you're saying something your not?

Modifié par Faz432, 03 septembre 2010 - 01:31 .

[ProudNegro]

Can i get you a ladder? So you can get oof my back!

[Dr. wonderful]

ProudNegro wrote...

Can i get you a ladder? So you can get oof my back!

Dawrves have very large ladders

[Morroian]

Faz432 wrote...
Perhaps it is but maybe some people would like the choice to role play a elf or a dwarf, and I'm not saying all that's required is changing 'human' to 'elf' or 'dwarf'...is that a strawman Bryy_Miller?

You are implying its just about as easy as that. You say you're not arguing when in fact you are, people are giving you perfectly reasonable broad explanations and you don't listen and ask for more detail when in fact we can't give it because we're not the game designers.

And quite frankly I'd rather be restricted to human than have the same VO for all races, IMHO that would sound stupid. Plus someone said a few days ago that by restricting the race means they can put resources into other areas and give the game more depth as opposed to more breadth.

[Faz432]

If that's what it seems like I'm implying then I apoligise, I just assumed that certain things were obvious and went without saying. I will try and make this post a clear as possible.

I accept some resonable explainations offered to why Bioware would choose not to implement a choice of playing an Elf or a Dwarf like -

* Lore defined social attitudes towards specific races might prohibit the CoK being an Elf or Dwarf.

* It might be essential to the continuation of the story in DA 2 and even have a purpose beyond DA 2 that Hawke be human.

* The game would be drastically increased to a size requiring an undesirable amount of space.

* It's too far along in the production process to make last minute changes

Even so these don't touch on the technical difficulty involved, I take exception to and reject claims like "It's too hard" because when I ask why? they respond 'It just is!', that's not an answer that's just an uninformed statement.

In my opinion if the resonable answers to why they don't add the choice to play as a Elf or Dwarf (like the ones listed above) aren't the real reason, then it wouldn't be hard or technically out of Bioware's grasp (as some have incorrectly suggested) to add it.

Most of the work and raw information already exist, Engine, Toolset, Models, Animations, Script, Voices, Textures etc.

The work they probably would have to do is as follows  -

* Starting location - Initially I though they might have to create locations for the Elf or Dwarf Hawke to start from instead of Lothering but then I realised that in DO:A refugees from all over Ferelden fled to Lothering so not a problem.

* Characters - Obviously they would have to redesign the pre-existing default Hawke and family to be Elfen or Dwarfen.

* Script - The would have to go into the script and where ever it references Hawkes race as a human they would have to add corrisponding script to either Elf or Dwarf, also change sayings like greetings and whatnot that are applicable to Elfs or Dwarfs and maybe NPCs responses and attitudes towards them.

* Voice acting - As with script they would have to get the VAs to come in and re-record any lines referencing Hawke as Human. They could keep the voice track as it is for each race but they could also take the tracks into a studio software and alter the pitch and pace to make it sound different.

So thats all I can think of at the moment, if you can think of others then please add to it but don't tell me it's technically beyond their capabilties because that's simply not true.

Modifié par Faz432, 03 septembre 2010 - 12:50 .

[Saibh]

Faz432 wrote...

If that's what it seems like I'm implying then I opoligise, I just assumed that certain things were obvious and went without saying. I will try and make this post a clear as possible.

Okay, here's my problem:

I don't know jack about programming.

And, evidently, neither do you.

You are asking--honestly asking--for people to explain to you why it's so hard. Why should they? Why should they try to tutor you in Computer Programming 101? If you can't accept that they have whole teams of people working on this, that devs have explained what is or isn't hard, and some of these people are telling you that is, then do your own research and stop bugging everyone else to make it simple for you. They don't want to.

You do not have any idea how important Hawke's being human is to the story. None. Bethany is an apostate mage--for all you know, Flemeth kidnaps and possesses her, or she gets hunted down by templars, or whatever. Garrett Hawke appears to be a mage, as well. It could be important that they lived in Lothering, that they were part of Ferelden society. In fact, Flemeth visits them in Lothering to make them deliver a package. And where did you get that refugees from "all over" fled to Lothering? We saw one family of elves, and no dwarves. Wherever they fled from, it was in human towns, probably the ones nearer to the Wilds.

You think the script and voice acting wouldn't change exponentially? In DAO, you're a Grey Warden. Lore has it that it doesn't matter where you're from, a Warden is a Warden. People are treating you generally the same because of that. In this case, maybe they wouldn't accept a Champion who was a non-human. Maybe people wouldn't even be willing to talk to you.

You're talking about altering every single individual line in pitch and tone? That sounds mighty damn hard to me. Besides that, dwarves and elves have American accents, humans have British. I honestly think it would be easier to hire new actors then it would to alter lines to try to mimic an accent. And, when they did alter those lines, it would shrink the size of the game down as if they'd hired two (or four) new VAs.

Modifié par Saibh, 03 septembre 2010 - 12:52 .

[Faz432]

It's almost as if you didn't even read what I wrote...

I'll pick you up on some points though then you can go back and re-read my post if you wish.

* Programming - I'm not asking for a tutorial in game programming here but when people incorrectly say it's too much programming work to be done, it's reasonable for my to ask why? if they don't have a proper answer because they don't know themselves then they're just guessing aren't they? they have no idea how much or little programming actually has to be done. As most of the things you would associate with programming already exist I say it wouldn't be much.

* Voice acting - Again you're assuming it's too hard based on nothing apart from that you don't know how to do it. To a professional it wouldn't be. Also 'Dwarfs and Elves have American accents and Humans have British'....what!? that's rubbish and nothing in DA states or supports that.

Modifié par Faz432, 03 septembre 2010 - 01:07 .

[Saibh]

Faz432 wrote...

It's almost as if you didn't even read what I wrote...

I did, but I ignored what I found to be flat untrue, or reititerated some points because you didn't understand them.

* Programming - I'm not asking for a tutorial in game programming here but when people incorrectly say it's too much programming work to be done, it's reasonable for my to ask why? if they don't have a proper answer because they don't know themselves then they're just guessing aren't they? they have no idea how much or little programming actually has to be done. As most of the things you would associate with programming already exist I say it wouldn't be much.

Because they do not want to try to teach you, in one post, what some people go to college for. Why should they? People are trying to tell you in layman's terms--like, this would take up a lot of space, which is something the devs themselves have said. I can't believe you'd honestly ask them to explain to you exactly how programming works, exactly what would need to be done to achieve what you want, and then how to implement that into the existing programming--which, by the way, we don't exactly know how everything works with DA2's engine. Part of what everyone is saying is taken from the devs themselves.

* Voice acting - Again you're assuming it's too hard based on nothing apart from that you don't know how to do it. To a professional it wouldn't be.

To alter sound enough to make it sound natural? To alter every individual line? Hoping that it sounds like a different person talking, and not like a synthesized King Cailan or whatever? That sounds pretty difficult to me. How are they going to alter the lines of people talking to them and referring to them as elves? Should their responses be the exact same as a human's? 

Also 'Dwarfs and Elves have American accents and Humans have British'....what!? that's rubbish and nothing in DA states or supports that.

No, this is Rubbish, and I am right.

Actually go play DAO, and then we'll talk. Seriously, maybe you just didn't notice, but Fereldans have British accents, and dwarves and elves have American/Canadian.

[Maverick827]

Quick Programming Tutorial: All of the code to support a multi-race protagonist exists; little would have to be written if BioWare wanted to allow Elves and Dwarves to be playable.

It is not a programming issue, but instead one of logistics. There would be too much dialog to record and BioWare would need to find at least two more great voice actors (male and female American accents) capable of handling such a versatile role and also pay both a great sum for their rare talents.

The point of DA2 is to provide a more in-depth storyline for the player character and this can only be done when choices such as race are not an option; to achieve the same gameplay BioWare would have to write, in effect, three separate games. This is also a logistics nightmare.

Finally, BioWare simply doesn't want to. If it required only pushing a single button to achieve and BioWare didn't want it in game, then they wouldn't even push that button and there's nothing you can do.
/thread

Modifié par Maverick827, 03 septembre 2010 - 02:20 .

[Count Viceroy]

Maverick827 wrote...

Quick Programming Tutorial: All of the code to support a multi-race protagonist exists; little would have to be written if BioWare wanted to allow Elves and Dwarves to be playable.

It is not a programming issue, but instead one of logistics. There would be too much dialog to record and BioWare would need to find at least two more great voice actors (male and female American accents) capable of handling such a versatile role and also pay both a great sum for their rare talents.

The point of DA2 is to provide a more in-depth storyline for the player character and this can only be done when choices such as race are not an option; to achieve the same gameplay BioWare would have to write, in effect, three separate games. This is also a logistics nightmare.

Finally, BioWare simply doesn't want to. If it required only pushing a single button to achieve and BioWare didn't want it in game, then they wouldn't even push that button and there's nothing you can do.
/thread

There we go.

[AlanC9]

Faz432 wrote...

I'm not being funny but it sounds as though we're discribing the same thing but in different ways.

If your condition comes back as 'true' what happens? it retrieves the information that's for the elf?

How is that different than my switch (true/false) retrieving the resources (information) for the elf?

You're using a seriously bad metaphor here.  Everyone you can talk to in a game has a single conversation file, which must be worked on as a unit. While I suppose those conversations could be restructured so that they're all separate branches for different types of PC, that simply isn't how the system is arranged now.

(Note that while there is a single conversation for a person, sometimes there are multiple instances of a person with different conversations. IIRC the characters in the epilogue are different instances than the ones you've been seeing in the rest of the game, which is why your companions have different outfits .)

For instance, King Cailan has one conversation with two main branches, one for the strategy meeting and one for when he meets you and Duncan. In the latter he says different lines depending on whether the PC is male or female -- one of the two lines checks gen00pt_class_race_gend to see if it's GEN_GENDER_MALE, and if so that line is said and otherwise the female line is said. But both of those lines proceed to the same node in the conversation, so there is no branching. There is a separate branch afterward for human nobles since Cailan knows you and so doesn't need to ask questions, and the PC needs to tell him what's happened

Following that, the PC gets his first chance to respond. There are two possible lines for everyone, one line that only humans see (this means magi at this point since nobles are in a different branch), and one line that only nonhumans see ("I'm no friend of yours, human lord"). Incidentally, Cailan has some lines here that will never be spoken, since they refer to the cut Human Commoner origin.

Following this, both branches reunite until Cailan goes off, and the conversation ends.

Modifié par AlanC9, 03 septembre 2010 - 03:14 .

[AlanC9]

Saibh wrote...
 I can't believe you'd honestly ask them to explain to you exactly how programming works, exactly what would need to be done to achieve what you want, and then how to implement that into the existing programming--which, by the way, we don't exactly know how everything works with DA2's engine. Part of what everyone is saying is taken from the devs themselves.

Actually, the DA2 toolset is apparently an upgrade to the DAO toolset, according to Mike Laidlaw. In any event, the DAO conversation editor is fairly similar to NWN2's, which was like NWN1's but with better handling of variables and constants. This is just how the current generation of tools operate, so anyone who cares to know how DA2 designing will work can find out without too much trouble.

Modifié par AlanC9, 03 septembre 2010 - 03:18 .

[AlanC9]

I didn't explain why Faz' metaphor was bad. It's bad because it makes it sound like you could add different races without a management nightmare. The system simply isn't set up to do that. Teams can work in parallel on separate areas of the game (and in fact the data structure shows that's how Bio works). But they can't work in parallel on separate kinds of PC without tripping over each other.



Sure, Bio could have built multiple PC races in if they had written a different game in the first place. But they didn't do that.