100 réponses à ce sujet

[DLAN_Immortality]

If horses are so important for you, there's always Mount&Blade, in which they play a pivotal role.



If you have horses in this game, you'll want to use them, and that would have meant making the deep roads a pasture, maybe, if you catch my drift :-)

[bobsmyuncle]

Why isn't there a miniature giant space hamster in this game? One has been in TWO previous games, why are you cutting features BIOWARE????

[Lotion Soronarr]

GmanFresh wrote...
i was talking about cutscenes only. you the ostagar charge instead of dogs or with dogs

No.
What we need is a custscene of the Dead Legion riding into battle on Mabari war hounds. LET LOOSE THE DOGS OF WAR!

[Lotion Soronarr]

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

And? that was the best game ever!!! Don't belive me? check this review:

www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/748-Duke-Nukem-Forever

[Adria Teksuni]

More cut scenes? Really? I'd rather have more quests.



Go for the eyes, Boo! Go for the eyes!



*squeak squeak squeak!*

[Curlain]

bobsmyuncle wrote...

Why isn't there a miniature giant space hamster in this game? One has been in TWO previous games, why are you cutting features BIOWARE????

Quoted for awesome truth

[TemplarofSteel]

horses = waste of time. This game wasn't really meant to have horses. The cut scenes would have been a waste too since theres no need to have them in gameplay.

[Valmy]

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.

That's fine because you are adding mounted combat for the sequel amiright?

[Valmy]

DLAN_Immortality wrote...

If horses are so important for you, there's always Mount&Blade, in which they play a pivotal role.

If you have horses in this game, you'll want to use them, and that would have meant making the deep roads a pasture, maybe, if you catch my drift :-)

Don't play Mount&Blade because you will have so much fun you will miss your mighty steed everytime you play another game.  Man nothing is more fun than charging the enemy flanked by Swadian Knights.

[The Angry One]

Valmy wrote...

DLAN_Immortality wrote...

If horses are so important for you, there's always Mount&Blade, in which they play a pivotal role.

If you have horses in this game, you'll want to use them, and that would have meant making the deep roads a pasture, maybe, if you catch my drift :-)

Don't play Mount&Blade because you will have so much fun you will miss your mighty steed everytime you play another game.  Man nothing is more fun than charging the enemy flanked by Swadian Knights.

Or conversely, nothing's less fun than getting to a later round of the tournament to find yourself equipped with a bow and arrow and no horse while the AI gets lances and horses. D'oh!

[Aedan_Cousland]

Darielle wrote...

I'm sure I remember of the party banter convos (I think between Zev and Oghren) mention that there are no horses in Ferelden, or at least that they are rare or something.

If you are playing as a human noble when you visit the Dalish camp, your character may tell the Halla tender that your people raise horses much the same way. That statement implies that horses are common in Ferelden, as the Dalish were obviously very dependent on the Halla.

[Adria Teksuni]

If you have read the thread David Gaider said that they didn't get to cut all the horsey references.

[Jax Sparrow]

I believe people might benefit from thinking much of the visuals in the game are metaphoric and a euphemism, or whatever you call it, for more than what is literally in the game. Aedan seems to say the same thing with the singular point of horses being referred to in the script. There are more things in heaven and Ferelden than just what you 'see'.

[Tatooine92]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

GmanFresh wrote...
i was talking about cutscenes only. you the ostagar charge instead of dogs or with dogs

No.
What we need is a custscene of the Dead Legion riding into battle on Mabari war hounds. LET LOOSE THE DOGS OF WAR!

WIN!

[ignantus]

i like dirty pantaloons. just thought i'd throw in something OT.

[The Angry One]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

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

And? that was the best game ever!!! Don't belive me? check this review:

www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/748-Duke-Nukem-Forever

Ah Yahtzee, can still be quite funny despite being such a biased putz with some things.

[amrose2]

I'll never understand the draw to mounted combat. In the games I've played with mounts, like Oblivion, it just felt stiff and awkward. In WoW, with the jousting thing they came out with, it made me dizzy going around in circles so much.

[The Angry One]

amrose2 wrote...

I'll never understand the draw to mounted combat. In the games I've played with mounts, like Oblivion, it just felt stiff and awkward. In WoW, with the jousting thing they came out with, it made me dizzy going around in circles so much.

You played the wrong games, obviously. Hell in Oblivion there is no mounted combat, Bethesda came up with the brilliant idea of having you mount horses then have to dismount to fight, since clearly one is unable to swing a weapon from a horse. Mods have tried to change that but it doesn't work too well.

Mount & Blade is pretty much the definitive mounted combat game, it's a bit iffy in parts (especially in the bloody tourneys) but it's leagues ahead anything else.
Of course Mount & Blade's engine is entirely built around mounted combat. The lesson there is if you're going to do it, do it right or don't do it at all. That puts both M&B and DA ahead of Oblivion. M&B does it's best, DA doesn't try at all, Oblivion half-asses it.

[Suron]

Brian Chung wrote...

ChickenDownUnder wrote...

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.

In my experience, having actually worked on the horse system for NWN, a lot of people rarely realize how long it really takes in game development, due to factors like iterative processes or changing systems.  But if you can pull it off in 2 weeks, I expect to see your resume and demo reel of horses in HR's in box before Christmas.  Don't forget, gotta do it from scratch, no cheating with reusing old assests.

It won't take a day to model a horse, no matter how good you are.  It took me about a month for NWN, incluiding when I ended up scrapping the existing model as the legs and body weren't structured properly to support the animation rig.  Part of the wasted dev time is realizing when something won't work and having to redo it, versus continuing on with an broken system.  And that was for NWN where things were "simpler" - for DA:O, you'd have to also worry about normal and specular maps.  Heck, a detail mesh for a horse would probably take the artist a couple weeks.

Animations will take much longer.  First off, ox move quite differently than horses, and you're not just animating one horse, you're also animating the rider too.  Add in combat animations for horse, sword, sword and shield, two-handed, dual-wield, bow, crossbow, and casting spells.  Oh yeah, and mounting, dismounting, forced dismounting, and ambient animations.  Oh, and if it's in DAO, now we have to do conversation cutscenes and check if they're mounted or not.  ALL of the conversations.  Oh, and now we also have to deal with different rider sizes, do we have dwarves on horses or shrink the horse to a donkey size so animations stay scaled?  Oh, and you also have to adjust all the regular combat animations to be angled upwards if they're fighting a mounted foe.

Add the jousting mini-game and getting exploding lances to work.

Part way, the system we were going to use for applying the horse to the rider changed (as robe to as tail), so take another week or two to redesign the models and adjust up all the necessary data files to account for this change.

That's just the asset creation, scripting would probably take the same amount of time, due to handling the horse AI, interaction in and out of combat, going from exteriors to interiors and checking that the work is involved in the scope of the game design.  The NWN module that features horses, WyvernCrown of Cormyr, was designed to make use of it for combat and quests and such, so there was a reason to make and use horses.

I, for one, tank you for the time you took to write this.  It's about time someone brought, sorry to say, short-sighted people (nicest way to say it) into line with the REALITY of the issue.  Everyone thinks doing something like this is so trivial...when in truth they have absolutely NO CLUE about the reality of the situation.  Sadly even those that "claim" they do modeling et al.

Honestly if anyone wants to argue the point with you after that, or just won't accept it, need to just take a good long walk back into the real world.

[TheGreenLion]

If map travel was done as Oblivion: had the option to auto-travel or hoof it...then we might actually need something speedier and at least a free-roam world to make use of them. Oblivion got closer with the inclusion of mounts but they were rather awkward...I still liked the fact that they'd attack critters attacking them.



In truth I'd like horses but it just doesn't out-weigh the time you'd spend to make it happen for the current area to area travel in DA:O....there'd be bits where even if you had a horse ya wouldn't be able to haul them with you (Circle tower etc.) but if the world travel somehow became tedious on foot I could see time being spent for mounts for travel, maybe even a combat buddy (when mounted he attacks front and back, you cover the sides kind of thing) Something to think about in the next title, thought I heard someone mention horses in a sequel...could just be heresay though.

[Elystia]

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.

So..were just left to clank coconuts together is that it?

"RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!"

[Kastigal]

need horses???

Hmm as I recall people cried for them for nwn...

I spent months implementing them into the mod the before 1.69 and after 1.69 patchs...

Fixing the damaged pcs on dismount or crash or log outs and come back fused to the horse...

Way too much time wasted to fix little issues for what...

After all the crying and wanting and need.. to get new complaints they cause lag.. I crash when the horse enters.. can we make non horse access areas.... another few months of repairs and coding later... horses... have em lots of shiny armour and beautiful paths and scenery... never used.. left in stables or hitch posts.. but we got em..



Horses are nice but in the context and scope of this type of game they are window dressings and to be honest. This game has it in spades already.



I for one am glad they spent their limited time and resources on other "bells and whistles"



Thank you the builders developers designers and writers for a game that can be enjoyed and simply marveled at. I look forward to seeing where you will take us in the future.

Now where did I put that plate of cookies.... STEN!!!!!

[tigrina]

There is something terribly wrong with this thread.

Where are my bronto mounts!?!!!!!!!!!11111

[Digital Freak]

reddragon567 wrote...

Well you have chickens in the game already! Geez, what's the problem with letting us ride them?!

They're saving horses for a $20 DLC pack.

[Genraku]

Modifié par Genraku, 13 décembre 2009 - 01:22 .