155 réponses à ce sujet

[Beerfish]

The biggest problem with the toolset have been the problems on start up. The problems with conflicts with official campaign. The unable to connect to database and a few other sundry things. There would be far more tutorials and more work being done if those problems did not exist.



Things in some areas are more complicated but the power of some of the tools makes up for it. Things will only get better as some of the stability and install issues are corrected and more people are actually using it.



More tutorials will come out. The wiki will become better and the knowledge base of the community will be much improved.



One thing that is a must as far as I'm concerned is to have sub forums on here. Just lumping everything into the 'toolset forum' is rather chaotic. At the very least there needs to be sub forums like for the other toolsets we have seen.

[Astorax]

Yeah Beerfish, I'm already chatting with folks about changing that...stay tuned, I hope to get some order to the chaos soon.

[Dmuse]

Mersozz Yelo wrote...

And to clarify, I reject the argument that a powerful toolset cannot also be easy to understand. 

As do I, but having worked as a developer of application tools, I also understand the amount of work it takes to get a powerful development tool working, stable and user friendly outweighs the amount of time it takes to produce the origional product (the game in this case) with it. Moreso while the game is being developed -- because the requirements of the toolset are ever-changing and the timeline for a release date is always approaching. 

While I doubt we will see a lot of UI improvement anytime soon, I do think they will at least clean it up and streamline it a bit rather quickly. Eventually, it would be great to have a polished toolset, but I'm not holding my breath.

 I'm not going to argue that this toolset lacks complexity and potential; my point was that the learning curve is akin to cliff-diving.

Haha... I couldn't agree more. Start with small cliffs until you start understanding what you are doing or you are really going to hurt your head!

[embrace eternity]

I'm a web designer and unfortunately an intuitive learner, the tool set in the original NWN was no problem, this one however is probably going to require a lot of reading I don't know I'm having trouble getting started with it...it's not very intuitive.

[Asceiron]

I for one also miss the nwn toolset, this new thing is really not for beginners- and the wiki doesnt really help that much

[-Semper-]

Asceiron wrote...

I for one also miss the nwn toolset, this new thing is really not for beginners- and the wiki doesnt really help that much

the toolset itself is not that hard to understand, especially if you ever used a windows based editor in your life. to begin with i found it easy to start with the area editor. the next step would be to create your own level. these two wiki tutorials are well written and enough to get you going.

also the forum is full of helpful people

[Wisermyzer]

Hard enough for me. The Custom Item totrial by webkk or h/e was amazingly simple. One go, process learned.



I got 3 tuts on making a custom area work, no go. I KNOW its a simple process so why isn't it working **** my life lol (throws keyboard out the window - in his mind)

[EJ42]

Plenty of people think the toolset sucks. Plenty of people also think many complex software tools suck. That doesn't make it true, though.

Powerful does not typically equate to simple.

[Wisermyzer]

Its a lovely toolset, doesn't mean they couldn't have streamlined it for US.

[Scarmiglion]

I have a feeling those who think it would be easy to make it easier to work with are overestimating the resources that Bioware can throw at it. If you look at the tools with a developer's eye, it has pretty much everything you need. They built the main campaign in it, afterall. And because they used the same tools to build their own work, the tools are designed around their own development process. It follows their priorities. Sometimes that takes some getting used to, and not everybody will be able to get used to it.



Unlike NWN1/2 tools, it's not something you can just dive head first into and expect results immediately. There are definitely some parts, like custom items, that don't take much in the way of complexity to do, and it's a great place to start. A lot of what I see when I'm reading is people getting flustered with stuff like the level editor, which is probably one of the most complex tools (and the least like many other toolset parts, being an art tool and all). Just look and use it for what it is: a developer's internal toolset that they decided they wanted to make available to the public. Making it available and eliminating the complexity out of it for end-users are very, very different things.

[seramiran]

-Semper- wrote...
the toolset itself is not that hard to understand, especially if you ever used a windows based editor in your life. to begin with i found it easy to start with the area editor. the next step would be to create your own level. these two wiki tutorials are well written and enough to get you going.

also the forum is full of helpful people

Really? I started with an area .... eventually found advice (not in the area section of the wiki of course) that says you need to do the levels first. Then import it or something. Maybe it was export it first ... then combine?

EJ42 wrote...
Plenty of people think the toolset sucks.
Plenty of people also think many complex software tools suck. That
doesn't make it true, though.
Powerful does not typically equate to simple.

Neither does complicated equate to powerful. As often as not, it indicates poor planning at the beginning.

Modifié par seramiran, 17 janvier 2010 - 07:56 .

[Wisermyzer]

Im still boggled on just changing monsters around midgame.
Honestly if I could just get the process template for throwing in a custom monster into an area to take effect midgame that'd be a third of my needs. I don't intend to go nuts, I just like creating monsters and items to put into some game locale.

Pretty sure as I keep trying i'm doing more damage than good The one how-to says "straightforward to override", but i've tried a couple different ways. Aint happenin.

Slay me

EDIT: almost up to Witherfang, made him an elite boss as opposed to a normal. That's the basic change im hoping i can make work. Cant test without actually fighting him, though, lol..

Modifié par Wisermyzer, 17 janvier 2010 - 08:12 .

[Harelda]

I'd like it better if it didn't have the capacity to break my game and force me to reinstall. I'd probably like it better if I'd backed up my game saves too. Would like a safe mode; "Hey, you nub! This is kinda tricky, might wanna go back to making prettier headmorphs!"



Also, found my third type of "Unable to Connect to Database" error. Please Toolset, why won't you love me?

[Wisermyzer]

Witherfang is a normal boss.



******. Oh well, reboot and have her nom the elves I guess i won't settle for a fight less than an Elite.

[EJ42]

seramiran wrote...

EJ42 wrote...
Plenty of people think the toolset sucks.
Plenty of people also think many complex software tools suck. That
doesn't make it true, though.
Powerful does not typically equate to simple.

Neither does complicated equate to powerful. As often as not, it indicates poor planning at the beginning.

Which is not the case here.  Any issues with this toolset are failures of the user.

[seramiran]

EJ42 wrote...

seramiran wrote...
Neither does complicated equate to powerful. As often as not, it indicates poor planning at the beginning

Which is not the case here.  Any issues with this toolset are failures of the user.

I think you are wrong. Both times.

[AmstradHero]

The toolset is not unnecessarily complicated.  It is a very powerful tool, once you get used to way it works.  Anyone who has come straight from the NWN1 toolset is probably going to have a fit.  NWN2 had more power and more complexity, and people who used it are possibly a little better prepared for the way DAO's toolset works.

You can't just plonk down a single creature, modify it and make a whole bunch of unique creatures.  Each unique creature must have their own blueprint.  Is this more time consuming? Arguably yes.  But once you've got those unique templates, you can dump down as many instances of that unique template as you'd like.

DAO's toolset rewards planning.  If you try and build on the fly, you are more than likely going to get burned badly, either because things don't work, don't work the way you intended, or bite you later on with unexpected bugs.

It also has features that blow the capabilities of NWN1 and NWN2 totally out of the water.  The most obvious of these: Dialogues and cutscenes.  These are simply magnificent.  The ability to automatically have lipsynced speech, not to mention the ability to greatly customise the character animations... As I'd consider interactions with characters the bread and butter of an RPG, the power of the DAO toolset/engine in this regard is nothing short of phenomenal.  This alone means I would struggle to go back to other toolsets, simply because of how easy it is to make great looking conversations.

[Delryin]

Just spent 2 hours trying to make head or tail of the various texture tutorials from the wiki.

I'm rather frustrated right now, so I'll do my best not to insult anyone (even though I strongly believe it would be entirely appropriate a that time).



To make a long story short, I'm a freaking 3D designer... but can't understand whatever logic was put behind the texturing in the toolset. I'm trying to change the green part of the ancient elven armor into purple (starting small)... I have about a dozen pages on my browser opened, each one containing a half baked tutorial supposedly helping designing my own textures and put them in the game.



http://social.biowar..._existing_items

is close to worthless. I do appreciate that someone spend time on it, and I am really grateful that someone did, the contributors deserve a beer for trying to translate the whole into something comprehensible... key word here being "trying". Half the needed information are to be taken from a different place, and how on earth do we go from:

"Open the tint file for the object you are coloring"

to

"Change the color as desired"

'cause I'm sure as hell not have any of the options mentioned (and I did have a bunch of time to make sure that everything was made right). Then the whole "tint override" thing don't seem to work on that particular set of armor.



And as if the whole thing wasn't disastrous enough, I get to do yet another tutorial in order to be able to convert into the 2Da thingy (kuddo for the author to mention it and give a link).



Sorry, that's not the way things should be, you can call me stupid as much as you want, the whole procedure is a disaster and there are no justifications for it.

And before flaming me, think that if the whole procedure becomes easier for us (especially beginners), it will assuredly become easier for the dev at Bioware too... we may not have to wait an indefinite amount of time for a 30 minutes add-on....

[thebigMuh]

Texturing / Modelling for DA:O, especially armor/helmets/boots/gloves, is deeply non-trivial.



I had to put in a few facepalms when I noticed the amount of redundant data flying around. Example:



I made a new version of the templar armor, called "Knight Champion's Armor". I didn't want to use the standard templar armor again, so I retextured it, changing a few things here and there (blue kilt instead of purple, similar stuff).



As you probably all know, a DDS file contains mip maps - lower resolution versions of the full res texture. So, you'd think that a single DDS file is enough to satisfy all texture resolution and detail settings - but no:



My diffuse texture map is 1024x1024, and contains mip maps down to 1x1. This texture map goes into textures\\high. Then there's a 50% downscaled 512x512 version of that for the medium LOD mesh. And there's a 50% downscaled 256x256 version of THAT for the low LOD mesh. But not enough - there's also a textures\\medium directory for when you select a lower texture resolution in game. That directory also contains a full LOD (512x512), medium LOD (256x256) and low LOD (128x128) version of the diffuse texture. That's 6 different .DDS files all containing redundant data, just for the diffuse/alpha channel!



But even better are the meshes:



I've modded several games, including the Elder Scrolls games, and it's normal that there are two meshes for each armor - one female and one male. Dragon Age takes that to a new level, however, since there are not only separate meshes for the genders, but also for each race. There's a male human mesh, a female human mesh, a male elf mesh, a female elf mesh, a male dwarf mesh, a female dwarf mesh and a male qunari mesh for each armor in game. That's 7 almost identical meshes so far - the only thing that changes are the proportions (a bit taller, a bit wider shoulders, a bit smaller, etc...), things that could easily be done through the animation skeletons in game.



But even better - there are also medium and low LOD version of each of those meshes, which means that a single piece of body armor takes no less than 7 race/gender combos times 3 LODs = 21 meshes!



So, if you want to add a new armor variation by reskinning an existing armor, be prepared to create a LOT of data, most of it just slightly rescaled or renamed variations of each other.



/rant



Delryin: If you make a new thread somewhere in this forum I'll be happy to help you with your reskinning woes.



Ciao, muh!

[thebigMuh]

Oh, and my answer to the original toolset suckage question:



No, I think the toolset is awesome, and the engine is awesome. There are soooooo many times when I modded Oblivion, for example, and the extremely limited scripting language made me pull my hair out. Dragon Age is rather elegant compared to that, but extremely newbie-hostile.



Ciao, muh!

[Bibdy]

Its really not THAT difficult to get to grips with, it just takes time and patience. Use the wiki for tutorials on the basics, and the forums to search for help with problems you're having (although the search function only looking through subject titles is incredibly limiting - FIX THAT PLEASE, WEB-MONKEYS!) and don't be afraid to ask! Chances are there's someone who's having the exact same problem you are and can help you out.

And I'm not kidding about time and patience. Its taken me about 2 months of free time (after your typical 40 hour week) to become rather adept at making level layouts and lighting, and have been able to make headway on Area creation with creatures, head morphs, stages and conversations with cinematics, animation, placing sound effects, music, maps and some basic scripting. About the only thing I haven't got my claws into yet are full-blown cutscenes.

Modifié par Bibdy, 18 janvier 2010 - 05:22 .

[Wisermyzer]

Care to share how to make a custom creature to drop into an existing area in the single player? The how-to's on this don't seem to be doing me much good.



Got my high dragon duplicate (made it unique of course) and im tryin to drop it into the lothering field to fight but ach, no good EVER.



So does this toolset suck? For me maybe. But the, i'm just a rookie.

[Bibdy]

Adding stuff to the existing game is kind of dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Probably best to create your own Area, using one of the existing layouts, put the dragon in there and then travel to it from the world map.

This tutorial explains how to do that without going into too much confusing detail.

[wyvern14]

This toolset doesn't suck, it's actually very powerful and intuitive, once you can make the switch in your brain to "think DAO toolset". Yes, it was complete chinese initially when I opened it, I mean, my only experience was to make a spy level in Unreal 3 with cutscenes and triggers, and then this... Woa, headache!



Do I regret opening this and skimming through scripts? Hell no! Is it documented enough? Not yet, but the community as a whole will make that happen. Is it powerful! You bet it is!



My only gripe is where some stuff is being controlled from, sometimes it's a pain to make it work or you're just not sure on which level to call for something. Testing, more testing, printtolog and eventually we get it to happen though.

[Wisermyzer]

Bleh was hopin to avoid that but I guess i'll follow that one.



So just dropping a monster in the middle of the game is no-go? Like i'd like to make some bosses ELITE bosses as opposed to regular. Not doable?