As I said before, creating some kind of more useful debug output would be something we can subscribe to as it makes a lot of things easier for modders.
The actual output of combat calculations is still in the scripts, but you'd have to recompile all scripts with #ifdef DEBUG defined (sys_debug_h I think) and override all scripts - which will degrade performance quite a bit as all those resources will be now read from disk (along with pushing a good amount of strings through 2 VMs). Memory usage and loadtimes will also increase somewhat due to debug strings bloating the size of the compiled bytecode by 20-40% depending on the level of logging we left in there.
One possible solution would be that we would reenable the Log_Trace command and route it to some kind of output - text file or socket, it would hold a number of exciting features for the community.
One truth about game development is that there is very few things that are 'too hard'. In fact, 'too hard to do' is unlikely to ever be brought up as a reason for not doing a feature during development deliberations. A skilled programmer can do anything given enough time and resources.
The reason why 'well, just make it an optional toggle and everyone will be happy' is not the solution for everything
is that ultimately you can not cram into the game every feature every subset of fans would want without compromising the product and shipdate. Features, especially optional ones, create a new permutation for QA to test, always reduce the amount of time and resources available to the core product, and somethings just do not fit the vision the developers had for their game.
The combat log was deemed a non necessary feature for the game with many other features holding a higher priority and a bigger impact on the final product. As elaborated before, we knew some people would see this as a dealbreaker, but we also knew that not having certain other features would be a bigger dealbreaker to other people.
Making RPGs is a funny business, because unlike other genres, most of the audience are also closet designers that have very strong opinions about what features make an RPG succeed or fail for them. As developers, we have to rely on our experience and gut feeling which one of those thousands and thousands of features are actually essential and with every decision we know we are making someone unhappy:
* Some hate that there is regeneration instead of resting
* Some hate that Mages are powerful in our IP.
* Some hate Mana and want memorization mechanics.
* and some really think there should be a combat log.
* Some really want turn based combat and auto pause.
* Some will really dislike tactics.
With each decision we make, we knowingly drop certain people from the target audience of our game that see a specific feature as a dealbreaker in order to create a product we think will succeed on the market.
One of the hardest things I had to do during the development of this game is to take a game I absolutely adore - Baldur's Gate II and try to identify which features were not essential to the game experience or should be replaced by different features in order to make a game that succeeds on the modern market. Is perma death really essential to the BG experience? Resting? Combat Log?. Again, the answer to that lies with everyone themselves, but in the context of Dragon Age, the people who got to answer those questions was us.
People can agree or disagree with the calls I and others make - that's their right as a customer - and I can sure understand that it does not make people happy when they are told 'sorry, if that feature is really really essential to you, this game was not made for you', but do not ever assume we make these calls lightly or without fierce deliberations. And unless you now what the alternatives for a specific feature were, it's really hard to say if the decision was worth it.
Consider some theoretical matchups:
Save anywhere vs. Combat Log.
BG style Auto Pause vs. Grab attacks on monsters.
Overhead view vs. Overlapping walkmesh.
Tactics vs. BG style spell sequencers.
and try to answer for yourself what you would chose. The answers will wildy vary from person to person of course, but someone will ultimately have to make that call.
jacobmsn wrote...
Statue wrote...
Ooh you star jacobmsn!
That answers my question about whether multi-lined floaties are possible at the same time 
Glad u r workin on it and makin such progress so quickly - do you have a separate thread to discuss your add-in in (or if not could I ask you to make one so it can get more of a focused discussion on it). Post a link to a thread about it here please
No I don't have a separate thread.
Unfortunately I am now kind of stuck - since I don't know how to proceed. So I don't think I will continue on this in the short future. But my point here is just to prove that the information is in fact there in the system. Bioware are not hiding anything from us - the rules and game mechanics are very visible when reading the script code. So to the people who says that Bioware is hiding a broken system from us - that is simply not true. Almost any question about combat, stats, ability, item, or spell can be found in the toolset.
So, in conclusion, it really shouldn't be so hard for Bioware to make this feature.
For me the real problem is to create new GUI/dialogs and/or a window to print in. Other modders has had minor progress in the department but it is not easy. Making new GUI elements seems unreasonably hard with Dragon Age compared to, say, World of Warcraft, but maybe it is just because I don't know Flash and ActionScript.
Oh and multilinefloaties are not possible - they will be overlapping - so I wrote a word wrapping routine to split them up to avoid this problem
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PS: I am in fact my self a game dev working as a programmer at Io Interactive (mostly known for the Hitman games) on a yet unannounced game.
Modifié par Georg Zoeller, 22 novembre 2009 - 08:17 .
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