196 réponses à ce sujet

[tmp7704]

FurousJoe wrote...

 A major contributing factor is of course their inhouse engine which appearently isn't capable of crowds.

Except it apparently is, because they do have places with decent numbers of NPCs present in DAO.

[ROD525]

"if you can point out a game that is the perfect including combat, storytelling, and bustling crowds...along with graphics and anything else......than you may have a point."



AC2 and AC Brotherhoood....buts thats just my opinion. Dont get it twisted Im hyped for Dragon Age 2 but the AC series spoiled me.

[FurousJoe]

tmp7704 wrote...

FurousJoe wrote...

 A major contributing factor is of course their inhouse engine which appearently isn't capable of crowds.

Except it apparently is, because they do have places with decent numbers of NPCs present in DAO.

It was a hit and miss for me, during some fights my computer would lag, and I have a great computer. During others it wouldn't.

But I'm pretty confident it wouldn't pull off Anvil engine levels of crowds without melting the engine from the inside.

[Annarl]

Way too early to say. The game isn't out yet. But Bioware never seems to put much emphasis on the actions of the townspeople.

[Cuthlan]

This is something that Bioware apparently didn't focus on. I'll live with it.

terrordactyl1 wrote...

Well it has to run on console too. I imagine that hundreds of active npc's moving around a city would hit the memory and graphics chips very hard.

Assassin's Creed and Two World's II both have very packed, life-filled cities that didn't lag at all on consoles.

This isn't a console issue. Don't try to make it one.

[tmp7704]

FurousJoe wrote...

It was a hit and miss for me, during some fights my computer would lag, and I have a great computer. During others it wouldn't.

I think combat adds entirely another level of stress on the game engine, something that isn't really present when just walking around. How did your computer perform in Lothering, for example?

[Estel78]

For what it's worth, i agree with the OP, Kirkwall does feel empty and not lived in. Other games, including RPGs, do it better than Bioware. It is not a huge deal for me but it's unfortunate. They should hire better tech people who can write better engines, which would enable them to populate the game with more NPCs.

Modifié par Estel78, 17 février 2011 - 05:27 .

[Waage25]

TGFKAMAdmaX wrote...

FurousJoe wrote...

TGFKAMAdmaX wrote...

bloodreaperfx wrote...

Its Varric's storytelling. Selfish dwarf is selfish. No love for Kirkwall's inhabitants.

On a more serious note, they probably didn't include too many NPC's out of pure designing choice. The hardware power argument drops, as there are pleny games with a fair number of NPCs on screen at once. (GTA, Oblivion, Fable, etc).

I think The Witcher did an amazing job with idle NPC's. You can't really interact with them but they seem to go about their own buisness, hide from the rain ,etc.

Mind you, this is not a game-breaking or serious factor in whether I'll enjoy the game or not.

good point about reminding people that it is a story being told...i doubt that cassandra would want to hear about all of the normal people talking about the day.....
also silly to comment about AC/ GTA and there crowds...both have bustling cities but thats it...no one can argue that the shooting mechanics are the best in GTA. And as satisfying as AC's combat is it is just stabbing people in the gut over and over.....ill choose much better gameplay over crowds that gasp any day of the week

You understand we could go on all day about the things any of those games do better than the other right?

Simple fact is that one doesn't exclude the other, you can have both.

read my earlier posts.....i clearly say you can only do so much with ur given time....now if you had a time machine then maybe you could go back a year and a half and then tell the team that you would like better crowds at the expense of gameplay or  a later release date however i doubt you would...then you would be complaining about the later release date.....

and to say we could go on arguing about what those games are better in is only reinforcing my point.......if you can point out a game that is the perfect including combat, storytelling, and bustling crowds...along with graphics and anything else......than you may have a point. But what i am saying is this game is focusing on combat and story....AC on corwd immersion.....so stop ur bellyaching about crowds when we should be so lucky to have a great sequel coming out so soon

Or her is an IDEA.
We talk about it as much as possible so they do not screw this up for a 5th time.

ME. ME2. DA and now DA2 all lacked fluff NPC's and city's that felt like city's.
Or we can put on our blinds and act like HALO fanboys and scream at the top of our lungs that "EVERY THING IS PERFECT"

[FurousJoe]

tmp7704 wrote...

FurousJoe wrote...

It was a hit and miss for me, during some fights my computer would lag, and I have a great computer. During others it wouldn't.

I think combat adds entirely another level of stress on the game engine, something that isn't really present when just walking around. How did your computer perform in Lothering, for example?

Around 180 fps maxed out, but it's beside the point, if you think Lothering is crowded you haven't played games that do make a serious attempt at making crowded cities.

[tmp7704]

FurousJoe wrote...

Around 180 fps maxed out, but it's beside the point, if you think Lothering is crowded you haven't played games that do make a serious attempt at making crowded cities.

It's not uniformly crowded but it quite regularly puts 10+ characters on the screen, which is reasonable enough to create impression of "hey, there's actually people living here". Also as you note yourself, you get enough fps there to easily allow for greater density.

[TGFKAMAdmaX]

tmp7704 wrote...

TGFKAMAdmaX wrote...

at the expense of (..)  a later release date however i doubt you would...then you would be complaining about the later release date.....

I wouldn't mind if the game was announced from the start with say, half year later release date and certainly wouldn't see it as something to complain about -- that'd be still effectively what, less than two years after DAO and year and half after Awakening? When DA2 was initially announced people were actually surprised it'd come out so fast, if anything.

sorry then...read the tone of ur post worng

[TGFKAMAdmaX]

Waage25 wrote...

TGFKAMAdmaX wrote...

FurousJoe wrote...

TGFKAMAdmaX wrote...

bloodreaperfx wrote...

Its Varric's storytelling. Selfish dwarf is selfish. No love for Kirkwall's inhabitants.

On a more serious note, they probably didn't include too many NPC's out of pure designing choice. The hardware power argument drops, as there are pleny games with a fair number of NPCs on screen at once. (GTA, Oblivion, Fable, etc).

I think The Witcher did an amazing job with idle NPC's. You can't really interact with them but they seem to go about their own buisness, hide from the rain ,etc.

Mind you, this is not a game-breaking or serious factor in whether I'll enjoy the game or not.

good point about reminding people that it is a story being told...i doubt that cassandra would want to hear about all of the normal people talking about the day.....
also silly to comment about AC/ GTA and there crowds...both have bustling cities but thats it...no one can argue that the shooting mechanics are the best in GTA. And as satisfying as AC's combat is it is just stabbing people in the gut over and over.....ill choose much better gameplay over crowds that gasp any day of the week

You understand we could go on all day about the things any of those games do better than the other right?

Simple fact is that one doesn't exclude the other, you can have both.

read my earlier posts.....i clearly say you can only do so much with ur given time....now if you had a time machine then maybe you could go back a year and a half and then tell the team that you would like better crowds at the expense of gameplay or  a later release date however i doubt you would...then you would be complaining about the later release date.....

and to say we could go on arguing about what those games are better in is only reinforcing my point.......if you can point out a game that is the perfect including combat, storytelling, and bustling crowds...along with graphics and anything else......than you may have a point. But what i am saying is this game is focusing on combat and story....AC on corwd immersion.....so stop ur bellyaching about crowds when we should be so lucky to have a great sequel coming out so soon

Or her is an IDEA.
We talk about it as much as possible so they do not screw this up for a 5th time.

ME. ME2. DA and now DA2 all lacked fluff NPC's and city's that felt like city's.
Or we can put on our blinds and act like HALO fanboys and scream at the top of our lungs that "EVERY THING IS PERFECT"

i dont believe everything is perfect... i just recognize that the biggest problem is the combat and they fixed that...or it seems like they fixed that.....complaining about the crowds seems to be nitpicking...

[TGFKAMAdmaX]

ROD525 wrote...

"if you can point out a game that is the perfect including combat, storytelling, and bustling crowds...along with graphics and anything else......than you may have a point."

AC2 and AC Brotherhoood....buts thats just my opinion. Dont get it twisted Im hyped for Dragon Age 2 but the AC series spoiled me.

great games but the combat was meh for me....i just got the dagger and never lost....was too easy

[tmp7704]

TGFKAMAdmaX wrote...

sorry then...read the tone of ur post worng

Hah, no worry. Who knows, maybe if we get the DA2 version of Toolset someone actually makes a mod to add some extra ambient NPCs like that (if these observations about city being rather empty turn out to be correct) If they aren't required to talk but just move around and whatnot then it wouldn't be all that complicated, i suppose.

Modifié par tmp7704, 17 février 2011 - 06:17 .

[FurousJoe]

tmp7704 wrote...

FurousJoe wrote...

Around 180 fps maxed out, but it's beside the point, if you think Lothering is crowded you haven't played games that do make a serious attempt at making crowded cities.

It's not uniformly crowded but it quite regularly puts 10+ characters on the screen, which is reasonable enough to create impression of "hey, there's actually people living here". Also as you note yourself, you get enough fps there to easily allow for greater density.

I'm not just talking about NPC's standing there that you can't interact with at all. They don't even move, many don't have anything other than a repeting voice over saying the same thing.

Would you honestly not like to have a city that actually looked like a place being habited by people and not statues?

[Rimfrost]

I'm thinking/hoping it will turn out much better then it has looked from sparse screen shots and mostly night time video. The decision to base a lot of it in a city means the city is a partial NPC and needs to be fleshed out to make you care enough about kirkwall. In my experience BioWare are master story tellers if not master engine makers so I'm sure they have a solution

[FellowerOfOdin]

I'd say it's the dated engine that can't handle so many NPCs at one time :/

[grregg]

Kirkwall was hit by a terrible plague known as Engine Limitation. It infects and kills nameless NPCs.

[FurousJoe]

grregg wrote...

Kirkwall was hit by a terrible plague known as Engine Limitation. It infects and kills nameless NPCs.

Poor Eclipse, it's just a couple of years old =/

[tmp7704]

FurousJoe wrote...

Would you honestly not like to have a city that actually looked like a place being habited by people and not statues?

Obviously, but that doesn't have much to do with discussion how perhaps the game engine is actually more robust people are giving it credit for, does it?

[pChar]

I too would like more people in that city. They dont even have to do anything, just stand still or sit somewhere, basically it would make the city feel far more alive but who knows, maybe we'll see more life in other parts of town(doubt it).

I also dont like it that the people there seem to walk aimlessly just back and forth...Who does that?? I mean in real life, you dont go outside just to walk 3 meters, then walk back and repeat, I would be happier if they just stood there...

In FO:NV there werent many people either, I used to walk around town and see only a few people and I also remember a bar or something and it was extremely well done, I only had one problem and I guess you already know what that is...Thats right, NO PEOPLE! What? Why?

Luckily I was able to find a mod that spawns more NPCs to make the world seem more lively.

I expect that this is something the modders can help with in DA2 as well.

[foam]

I like threads like this one. Even though this (most likely) isn't something that can be fixed at this stage, it gives bw an idea of what people want to see in future games.