100 réponses à ce sujet

[Malkut]

David Gaider wrote...

There are horses in Ferelden.

There are no horses in the game because we had time for a limited number of models, and engineering a way for NPC models to ride horses when we weren't going to use it for PC models seemed like a waste -- as nice as it would have been, yes. Loghain's men were supposed to be cavalry originally, for instance, and a charge on Denerim at the end would have been cool (even if a tad Helm's Deep-ish, I suppose). But such is how it goes.

Oh.

Well, there goes my "Fereldeans breed invisble horses" theory.

[soteria]

I know, Atmosfear, 5 years was clearly too fast. What the heck were they thinking, not implementing every last idea they had?

[Mnemnosyne]

Atmosfear3 wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

There are horses in Ferelden.

There are no horses in the game because we had time for a limited number of models, and engineering a way for NPC models to ride horses when we weren't going to use it for PC models seemed like a waste -- as nice as it would have been, yes. Loghain's men were supposed to be cavalry originally, for instance, and a charge on Denerim at the end would have been cool (even if a tad Helm's Deep-ish, I suppose). But such is how it goes.

To be honest, the more responses I read from Bioware staff regarding things they could have done just sounds to me like the game was rushed.  What ever happened to releasing games when they are DONE?
 
Perhaps we have EA to blame for this

There are always going to be things you could have done that you didn't implement.  No matter how much you actually get into the game, there's going to be things that the devs were all thinking 'it would be really awesome if we could do this.' but they didn't have time to get it in.

If you try to include everything, you end up with Duke Nukem Forever.

[Dinlek]

ChickenDownUnder wrote...

This would be where calling up friends who work at Blizzard, or even Bethesda comes into play. NWN didn't originally have horses that weren't ride-able as well, but later figured it out and released in DLC. In Oblivion horse riding was implemented very nicely, including retarded cost of horse armor.

So its not like it hasn't ever been done, or that DA doesn't have a model base that couldn't be manipulated into a horse (ox model), it just takes a few well-placed phonecalls and a desire to learn.

First thing...

Businesses don't just give away unique product features for free, especially not to their competitors. Regardless, it had nothing to do with them not knowing how, it has to do with it not being worth the resources necessary. Coming from the perspective of a person who loves new features in a game, Dragon Age has no need for mounted combat. Would it be more realistic? Of course. However, when you have an entire race of hellspawn beasts that somehow manages to subsist on rocks and itself, realism goes out of the window.

Since realism alone isn't an effective reason to add it, what other mtoivations would their be? The maps are all designed to be traveled on foot, they're rather linear, with passages of vastly varying width. Even the Kocari Wilds zone would be able to accomodate four horses galloping in formation at full speed without ridiculous collisions. You'd only get mileage out of the mounts in cutscenes, and I don't think that justifies implementing them.

[xeno_cws]

While I find it odd with all the references, I dont mind. They wouldn't add much to gameplay (this isn't mount and blade) and implementing it would have eaten up a too many resources with little gain.



That said, I would like to eventually see them in a download so mod creators have them to work with in their stories.



"To be honest, the more responses I read from Bioware staff regarding things they could have done just sounds to me like the game was rushed. What ever happened to releasing games when they are DONE?"



I would rather have the game released after 5 years of waiting without horses and a few other items then have to wait another year for them to be implemented but barely used or seen.

[ChickenDownUnder]

Dinlek wrote...

ChickenDownUnder wrote...

This would be where calling up friends who work at Blizzard, or even Bethesda comes into play. NWN didn't originally have horses that weren't ride-able as well, but later figured it out and released in DLC. In Oblivion horse riding was implemented very nicely, including retarded cost of horse armor.

So its not like it hasn't ever been done, or that DA doesn't have a model base that couldn't be manipulated into a horse (ox model), it just takes a few well-placed phonecalls and a desire to learn.

First thing...

Businesses don't just give away unique product features for free, especially not to their competitors. Regardless, it had nothing to do with them not knowing how, it has to do with it not being worth the resources necessary. Coming from the perspective of a person who loves new features in a game, Dragon Age has no need for mounted combat. Would it be more realistic? Of course. However, when you have an entire race of hellspawn beasts that somehow manages to subsist on rocks and itself, realism goes out of the window.

Since realism alone isn't an effective reason to add it, what other mtoivations would their be? The maps are all designed to be traveled on foot, they're rather linear, with passages of vastly varying width. Even the Kocari Wilds zone would be able to accomodate four horses galloping in formation at full speed without ridiculous collisions. You'd only get mileage out of the mounts in cutscenes, and I don't think that justifies implementing them.

• Bioware made Neverwinter Nights.
• This thread is about horses for cutscenes.
• The game designer community is pretty small; there is always going to be that one guy who knows somebody else at a different company.
• Game designers rip off other game designers all the time. It just can't be a blatent copy/paste.
• The form designers have to sign to not give away secrets usually only lasts till the game is released, unless there is some special clause regarding the source code. Every form is different, but game companies are not as uptight as say... Disney with its animators.

[Chragen]

ChickenDownUnder wrote...

This would be where calling up friends who work at Blizzard, or even Bethesda comes into play. NWN didn't originally have horses that weren't ride-able as well, but later figured it out and released in DLC. In Oblivion horse riding was implemented very nicely, including retarded cost of horse armor.

So its not like it hasn't ever been done, or that DA doesn't have a model base that couldn't be manipulated into a horse (ox model), it just takes a few well-placed phonecalls and a desire to learn.

Don't think you realize just how long it takes to make a well made model. Going from making the actual model to rigging to skinning and texturing and finally over to animation. 

It all eats up a lot of time and if I had to guess Dragon Age had a somewhat difficult development cycle so wasting resources on something that is going to play a very small part in the game is just not worth it. 

[Rhys Cordelle]

Ridable horses would be utterly pointless in DA, but would be great for cutscenes definitely.

And there were horses in BG, just not ridable ones.

Ulicus wrote...

Just out of curiosity: Blight Horses. Yay or Neigh?

Big Yay. I'm always in favor of evil horses.

[Vormaerin]

Not sure how your replies are applicable to anything said... Its not a matter of the art and animation staff not being able to make horses. Its purely a matter of "there's other stuff we'd rather have them do with the time and money that we have." As David Gaider said, it was a waste of effort to make models just for the cutscenes of NPCs.

[Rhys Cordelle]

ChickenDownUnder wrote...


[*]The game designer community is pretty small; there is always going to be that one guy who knows somebody else at a different company.

You mean in like a Six Degrees of David Gaider kind of way?

[ChickenDownUnder]

Chragen wrote...

ChickenDownUnder wrote...

This would be where calling up friends who work at Blizzard, or even Bethesda comes into play. NWN didn't originally have horses that weren't ride-able as well, but later figured it out and released in DLC. In Oblivion horse riding was implemented very nicely, including retarded cost of horse armor.

So its not like it hasn't ever been done, or that DA doesn't have a model base that couldn't be manipulated into a horse (ox model), it just takes a few well-placed phonecalls and a desire to learn.

Don't think you realize just how long it takes to make a well made model. Going from making the actual model to rigging to skinning and texturing and finally over to animation. 

It all eats up a lot of time and if I had to guess Dragon Age had a somewhat difficult development cycle so wasting resources on something that is going to play a very small part in the game is just not worth it. 

Actually I do know. Creating a high poly horse + rigging is one of the things you learn how to do in both Maya and 3DSMax at an Art Institute. Since DA already has four legged creatures (ox) it'd take a day to push the polygones around to make it a horse, then possibly several more days to adapt the rigging, skin, bump maps, and so on. The animation may take a full week to do, but the only hard part would be implementing the coding needed. And setting up an invisible dummy character to set as the horse rider, that registers what armor and textures the npcs getting on the horse is wearing... but I'm getting sidetracked. Depending on how Bioware devides the work, you really only need one dedicated worker who knows his stuff.

Come to think of it, I could probably import the models I've made in the past myself once they get the toolset fixed. >.>

The basic point I've been trying to make is that no, it wouldn't take long to implement, except for possibly the coding part, and even then Bioware already has access to a past game of their's that did include horses.

You mean in like a Six Degrees of David Gaider kind of way?

Exactly! ;P

Modifié par ChickenDownUnder, 05 décembre 2009 - 08:42 .

[The Angry One]

Atmosfear3 wrote...

To be honest, the more responses I read from Bioware staff regarding things they could have done just sounds to me like the game was rushed.  What ever happened to releasing games when they are DONE?
 
Perhaps we have EA to blame for this

You should play an Obsidian game and find out the true meaning of the word rushed.

[Rhys Cordelle]

The Angry One wrote...

You should play an Obsidian game and find out the true meaning of the word rushed.

What's this? A disparaging remark about NWN2? Perish the thought.

[The Angry One]

Hey I like NWN2, I also like KotOR2 for that matter, but both were rushed as hell because Obsidian lacks any sort of backbone when it comes to dealing with their publishers.

[tmp7704]

Atmosfear3 wrote...

To be honest, the more responses I read from Bioware staff regarding things they could have done just sounds to me like the game was rushed.  What ever happened to releasing games when they are DONE?

Releasing games when they are "done" can happen when you have solid source of income to cover your operating expenses, which lets you take as long as you please without worry that the money is going to run out at some point.

Where exactly do you think this sort of unlimited and never ending money streams come from? (hint: investors don't have unlimited patience and short of juggernauts like Starcraft and the Sims the income from your previous games is only going to last you so long)

[DeathWyrmNexus]

Fieryspirit wrote...

Think about it, those soldiers would have to buy the eventual horse armor DLC...

I lol'd until I raged over Shadowmere...

[Palesblade]

Koyasha wrote...

If you try to include everything, you end up with Duke Nukem Forever.

Talk about lost potential .  

[David Gaider]

Atmosfear3 wrote...
To be honest, the more responses I read from Bioware staff regarding things they could have done just sounds to me like the game was rushed.  What ever happened to releasing games when they are DONE?

There's always things that are cut, from every game. I could write a litany of things that were cut from BG2 or KotOR or NWN that would break your heart. Why it would break your heart, however, is because you imagine the perfect thing it could have been rather than what it probably would have ended up as -- or you can't imagine what we ended up doing that we would have had to do differently (or not at all) if we had forged ahead with the thing we cut.

The reality for any game development, from any company, is that cuts are necessary. There comes a point where you have to finish a game, even though there's always ten more things on that list that you'd really really kinda want to include. "But couldn't we just...?" "But it would just take a little bit...?" That's how you get feature creep, and buggy games that get harder and harder to test because they're never feature complete. It's the lesson that modders rarely learn, and why so many big mod projects end up three-quarters done and then abandoned.

The game *is* done. And pretty polished, considering the monumental effort that went into it, if I do say so myself. It's always going to seem rushed if you're aware of all the things (the very normal things) that we had to cut -- usually with much teeth-gnashing and heavy hearts -- just to get it done. The alternative, I suppose, is simply never to speak of these things in public so that fans don't end up wistfully wondering about what might have been. "What might have been" is a pipe dream.

[MBirkhofer]

David Gaider wrote...

Atmosfear3 wrote...
To be honest, the more responses I read from Bioware staff regarding things they could have done just sounds to me like the game was rushed.  What ever happened to releasing games when they are DONE?

There's always things that are cut, from every game. I could write a litany of things that were cut from BG2 or KotOR or NWN that would break your heart. Why it would break your heart, however, is because you imagine the perfect thing it could have been rather than what it probably would have ended up as -- or you can't imagine what we ended up doing that we would have had to do differently (or not at all) if we had forged ahead with the thing we cut.

The reality for any game development, from any company, is that cuts are necessary. There comes a point where you have to finish a game, even though there's always ten more things on that list that you'd really really kinda want to include. "But couldn't we just...?" "But it would just take a little bit...?" That's how you get feature creep, and buggy games that get harder and harder to test because they're never feature complete. It's the lesson that modders rarely learn, and why so many big mod projects end up three-quarters done and then abandoned.

The game *is* done. And pretty polished, considering the monumental effort that went into it, if I do say so myself. It's always going to seem rushed if you're aware of all the things (the very normal things) that we had to cut -- usually with much teeth-gnashing and heavy hearts -- just to get it done. The alternative, I suppose, is simply never to speak of these things in public so that fans don't end up wistfully wondering about what might have been. "What might have been" is a pipe dream.

Game of the year edition:1.8 Now with horses?

Rpgs should have a long term sales model.  Updates will boost sales of boxes periodically.   Probably more profitable then DLC even.

It is a little silly there aren't even npc background horses.   Theres non manbari dogs, cats, chickens, etc. 
Torchlight had a budget of like 30k and has a horse.

Modifié par MBirkhofer, 05 décembre 2009 - 08:17 .

[Ponce de Leon]

Oh, c'mon, the all horse thing seems a bit drastic for me. I'd rather be angry at the lack of bowstrings! (which in the end, wasn't even that dramatic).

Still, I'd really want to know what was cut from BG2, if you'd like to tell us, mr. Overlord of teh writerz!

[Kileyan]

First of all, I fully understand the devs talk about feature creep. This is a great game, and I really don't miss horses/mounts.

That said, I've seen this scene play out dozens of times over more years than I want to admit playing and following rpg and mmo releases.

Devs: top feature you would like to see?

Fans: Mounts and a house! Mounts and houses! Mounts and houses! MOUNTS AND HOUSES!

Devs: Sorry, the want for these features was unexpected, we don' t have the time or the technology in place to add those features in. Maybe post release!

I know this doesn't apply to DA, just comment in general on this repeating cycle in RPG games.

Modifié par Kileyan, 05 décembre 2009 - 08:49 .

[Curlain]

Forget horse armour DLC, I want Mabari armour DLC, I want my spikey iron-clad Dog dammit!!

Modifié par Curlain, 05 décembre 2009 - 08:53 .

[RunCDFirst]

David Gaider wrote...
There's always things that are cut, from every game. I could write a litany of things that were cut from BG2 or KotOR or NWN that would break your heart. Why it would break your heart, however, is because you imagine the perfect thing it could have been rather than what it probably would have ended up as -- or you can't imagine what we ended up doing that we would have had to do differently (or not at all) if we had forged ahead with the thing we cut.

It would be interesting to hear that litany, just to hear some of the ideas that were brainstormed during the development group. Also, the community could benefit from some of the ideas since they aren't constrained by production costs or time.

As for the topic, the lack of horses didn't impact the game at all. Though, it's kinda funny assuming that Bodahn and Sandal carry their cart around by themselves. 

[The Angry One]

Heck, I believe the project to restore the mainland of Morrowind that was "cut" in that game is still ongoing (it wasn't really cut, rather all the content of Morrowind was relocated to the island we go to in-game early in development. But that doesn't stop modders!)

[tmp7704]

RunCDFirst wrote...

Though, it's kinda funny assuming that Bodahn and Sandal carry their cart around by themselves. 

What a silly idea. The cart is ENCHANTED!