8 réponses à ce sujet

[Dazaster Dellus]

Whatever happened to cloaks?
 

 Unless I am mistaken Kotor 2 was the last game of this type to have cloaks. I don't recall them being in anything else(at least off the top of my head). Why they weren't in DAO is beyond me. Are they in Awakening? I haven't played that one yet. If not.....GET ON THE BALL BIOWARE!!!  Add some bad ass cloaks, capes, cowls, etc, etc for DA2.

[David Gaider]

Dave of Canada wrote...
It's an extra model that requires a lot of extra work. They don't need it for the game to work, so they remove it and add something extra with the funding they could use with it.

This is pretty much it. Cloaks are like horses, in that they would be really cool to include-- and it always comes up, and we always try to include them-- but they're very firmly on the "nice to have" list. Not only are they "nice to have" but they're part of a unique group which manages to be surprisingly expensive to do properly, as expensive as many things we need on the "must have" list.

So inevitably at some point we have to set them aside in favor of our "must haves" and any "nice to haves" that we can get to which are less expensive. This is why you tend to see things like this in sequels (where many of the "must haves" are already done).

Had we not revamped the graphical system for DA2 (which we felt was very much needed) I'm sure we could have included them. Hopefully this is the sort of thing we can get to in the future, because in my opinion they'd add a lot of flavor.

[David Gaider]

Dazaster Dellus wrote...
That is crazy! lol! It really is that expensive to do? Some company out there needs to get creative and find a good, easier way to make them.  BTW, I am very glad you guys opted to upgrade the graphics. lol! I'll just leave it at that.

It's expensive to do properly, yes, because you either need a solution for cloth physics which covers the entire game or you'd need to combine cloak animations with every other animation you have (of which there are a lot). I'd think cloth physics would be an easier and more encompassing solution, but my view of it is pretty simplistic so I tend to trust the programmers who tell me there's more involved than I think.

Or you could just say we're lazy, as one poster above mentioned. Yeah, we were gonna but... nah. That would eat into our cheetos time.

[David Gaider]

Ryzaki wrote...
The fact that I'm being ignored isn't assuaging my fears though.

That's not the topic of this thread, and insofar as your question goes I'm not the one to answer it. It's one of those things that will require more than just a short answer, as otherwise it'll just create a lot more questions.

[David Gaider]

DaerogTheDhampir wrote...
Just answering like that brings up more questions and fears and assumptions and whatever.
Although, it is more a designer or technical question than one for the lead writer.

Yes, I imagine my vague response will just prompt some to fear the worst. But, yeah, it's really not my explanation to give-- and on this front, I think we'd want to be absolutely certain that what we're presenting is the final implementation and not a "maybe".

[David Gaider]

Hello There wrote...
Of coarse i do, thats why i said "Seriously Bioware, if Obsidion can do it with KotOR 2, then why cant you?"

And the answer to that is "because Obsidian was working with a sequel engine in which there were few changes, and thus their 'must haves' were largely already complete." As I'd already pointed out. People shouldn't assume that all projects are equal and that features from one can be transferred easily to another without any trade-offs-- that's overly simplistic thinking, I'm afraid.

[David Gaider]

Brockololly wrote...
guh...I'd have gladly kept the non "hot rod samurai" graphics "improvement" of DA2 for horses and cloaks and who knows what else. Its just a tad disappointing with DA2 as I was thinking it would take the BG2 route of a sequel and build on what Origins established and add more cool stuff, instead of ripping out the foundation and starting over.

It wasn't just making it "hot rod samurai", though. We did proceed with exactly what you suggested at first, but part of the problem with DAO was that it spent so long in development and thus its graphics were pretty behind the times in terms of newer releases. Happily that didn't have a big effect on its sales (or so we assume), but that situation was only going to get worse as time passed-- even for those of you that don't personally assign much value to graphics, you have to admit this is true. From our perspective it was either feel the pain now or feel it even more later when and if we made a third game.

[David Gaider]

Dave of Canada wrote...
So, IF there were to be a third Dragon Age there could be stuff like Horses / Bowstrings and Cloaks considering you've essentially nailed the graphics engine down?

Barring any further changes. I don't pretend to see the future.

[John Epler]

Let's pull this back on topic.