464 réponses à ce sujet

[Felix_Domestica]

Stop feeding the troll allready... x)

[ABCoLD]

Cloaks are retarded. I want them implemented as much as I want poleaxes and canes implemented.



Now give me some varied models for the leather armors, some more unique clothing models and alter mage hats so that they're lyrium circlets and I'll be willing to drop money.

[sidion77]

Cloaks are awesome I'd love to see them but I understand realistically as others have mentioned, they aren't necessarily feasible.

On another note HAHAHAHAHAHA is what I did when I read some of Gaider's posts. I love seeing this kind of engagement. People getting miffed because their responses get questioned or they feel someone from BW is being rude to them. I'm sure when some of the Bioware staff reads some of our whiny elitist ****fest threads they really just want to pop in and say "shut the **** up" after working their asses off to produce a high quality product like this. Hence VGA best PC game of 2009. They made this game not us and if they want to throw down some smart remarks good on them.

[Somehing]

RageGT wrote...
Now, you say to my face my music is "ridiculous" and I'll punch you in the face! No matter how bad it is, really. You don't like it and want to criticise it, do it constructively!

It was. Reasons were given, insulting behaviour was not. Which is more than can be said for the initial response.

And you say you're brit? Well, in Henley-on-Thames, couple of decades ago, best friends used to punch each other in the face for fun, while waiting for their take-away order in some burger joint. Brit thing I guess... not everybody I know would consider a guy as a friend if the guy punched him in the face!

a) 20 years ago but more importantly personalised communication is common between friends. I doubt it was a customer support situation. Keeping your arguments in context often makes them more credible. Also, I'm not trying to be nationalistic here, it was a light comparison/correlation. What I meant was perhaps sarcasm is much more prevalent in the US, even to the point where customer support uses it in a derogatory fashion on you (and it's somewhat more normal). Here that is practically unheard of and most certainly an outrage.

Perhaps the BW guy didn't like to have his work labeled as ridiculous when in fact the ridiculous is that someone would request capes for the game from a dev team starting with that stupid line!
If you really think you can insult someone's work and just be patronized for it, you're taking for granted your right to not be punched in the face! And OP just got "slapped with a soft gloves" as we say here, if that makes any sense in english.

No I'm sorry that made no sense whatsoever to me. Must be another American thing. Gaider admitted to taking offence where not applicable (see far below). Also, addressed:
"

RageGT wrote...

DragonAgeNeedsCapesOrCloaks wrote...
I don't really see how you got that from my post.  I never said the game was ridiculous and its kind of annoying that your saying that i said that.  When i said that I think it's ridiculous the "it" i am referring to is the situation.  I am referring to the fact that they are left out being ridiculous.  I actually like the game.

Oh, english is not my primary, I'm sorry I misunderstood you... but Gaider is what, Canadian? Perhaps he did too? I still think you could have had a better choice of words...

"

This is saddening as I knew exactly what was meant from the first read and English is not my primary either. It was clear from the beginning to me this was not meant as an insulting topic. I think it's easier to understand when you're not walking around looking for something to take offence at. As opposed to Gaider's response which left little open to interpretation.

Now, "England national football team is ridiculous because it can never beat Brazil!" How does that make you feel?

Indifferent. If it's true it's true, if you think so you think so. But the OP's declaration of non-offence makes this irrelevant anyhow.

Stronghand wrote...
Many of them visit these forums on their free time you know? It's not like they have a responsibility to do so.

No, I did not know. See, now this was perfect. Something explained simply without degrading the person.
I'm sure most who actually bother reading this sentence properly would prefer to not be contacted back IF THEY WERE TO BE RIDICULED THEMSELVES and have their questions/opinions ignored like the OP. If he'd given a responsible response, he'd be working overtime. But as it was self-gratifying disrespect, it was more of a free hobby choice, rather than something he had to do that the OP should be grateful for. Respect where it's due, and more importantly in this case none where it isn't.

David Gaider wrote...

Then I apologize as well. I was no doubt snippier in my initial response than I needed to be, having read more acrimony into your post than you perhaps intended.

It certainly is gratifying, as well, to see that there are always third parties about to cluck their tongues and wag their fingers at me in disapproval of my insufficient corporate responsibility whenever I respond to someone else in a way that they don't like. I suppose it is worth remembering that I am supposed to be above other human beings and always respond to obnoxious behavior in kind, vague platitudes that don't ruffle any feathers.

To some extent yes, you are supposed to be above some types of other human beings (as "other human beings" is a somewhat broad reference), as bullying and idiotic behaviour would not be ideal for customer support, so yes it is worth remembering. But I'm sure I shouldn't have to tell you that. In case you hadn't noticed, explaining things tends to cull the sort of future response that might offend you so much, rather than rocking the boat more and making attempts at witty sarcasm. This post is in unexplained contradiction to mine and the other further clarifying post, again, ignorant with slivers of communication, what a shame this makes it a vague platitude either way. Also the minor, almost inconsequential fact that the OP's behaviour was not obnoxious, as they explained above makes your justification of your own behaviour a little bit entirely erroneous.
It's disappointing my message was apparently too hard to understand or actually address.

This may not be obvious but as I cannot be expected to respond to all people that ignore the information in previous posts, take what is said out of context, criticise something without reading it or/and make inaccurate observations for reasons of their own (+e.g. most of Felix_Domestica's input)...I won't.
Let me reiterate: I find ridiculing an innocent to amuse oneself and their followers to be quite the opposite of the apparent preferred behaviour on these forums. This is bullying, and is, contrary to general belief here it seems, immoral. Then again, he is BW, and example does say more than hollow forum rules. So change them..?
Using sarcasm is fine, but not to the point where you forget how to read what people are saying literally and prematurely take offence. That is quite the opposite of intelligent behaviour.
As Mr. Gaider has at least apologised and it seems any sort of logical argument is pointless here (even with a mod!) I'll probably stop there.

[Tarante11a]

"No! No Capes!!!"

[abnocte]

foil- wrote...

Yes. I was refering to movies here.  And its probably more expensive to do in a movie.  You might be overestimating what they are paying game programmers a tad.   Just delinting Russel Crow's cloak probably costs more than implementing cloaks in Dragon Age.  And this after it becoming pretty clear that the video game industry is pulling way ahead of the movie industry as an entertainment media where gross sales are concerned.  If they can't afford to pay a programmer another year of wages to implement cloaks, then they are yanking your chain.  This game was as near to a sure thing as games get these days.  If they can fly 30 people to london, rent and set up the space and all the staff and actors, and pay a 50k reward, that amount of money would likely pay two programmers for a year.  I'm not one for unions, but if there was ever a group of overworked people that need to bring their wages more into line with their expertise and work load, its game programmers.  I have a feeling though that the BioWare people are in the upper percentile of wages for the game industry.

English isn't my mother tongue, so may be I shouldn't have used the word "costs" in my previous post.

I wasnt talking about money here, but about time, and resources needed to integrate properly cloaks in the engine, and I assure you that is not as simple as taking a single programmer to do it. 
So since its no trivial matter I really doubt we are going to see cloaks in DAO, someday in another Bioware game.... maybe

[zorbik]

Sarcasm : Zorbik approves (+25)

[DragonRageGT]

@ Somehing

So, he did saw a little acrimony in first post after all...

Now, english is such a funny and amazing language... that you really should not take it that seriously!

The english language - A Bit of Fry and Laurie




I so love this one!

Modifié par RageGT, 15 décembre 2009 - 10:53 .

[Lughsan35]

Give it up cloaks are no where near as important as SHOES!

[AsheraII]

Gena Mafer wrote...

Why BW finds cloth physics (or dynamic lighting or savegames that aren't 5+ MB each) such a technical challenge, I find puzzling.

EVERY developer finds cloth physics a challenge, it's not just BW. Especially with the variable character meshes present in game, you'd need a more than just a "top notch" computer to get them to an acceptable grade. It is the very same reason why the hair on most characters is short, or at the times it is long enough to cover the neck, it is attached to the shoulders. The calculations required to make hair or cloaks follow proper physics (in other words, actually falling down in case the character is horizontal or upside down and fluthering behind the character while walking) without them clipping through their neck or through other characters are still exponentially more than what your computer can handle, no matter if you have an octacore with whatever graphics card attached.

For movies, this problem is a LOT simpler, because the cloak and hair models are tailormade to the character, the instances where cloaks and hair have to behave natural are all pre-rendered, which may still take a renderfarm a few HOURS to compute a few minutes of footage, and the footage still being retouched after rendering. A gamers computer simply can't handle such a thing, unless you find a frame rate of 1 frame every 2 hours acceptable (and I'm being rather generous towards your computers' abilities at that).

Games with limited models (like the Batman example someone posted earlier) also have an advantage, that because of these limited amount of models (only Batman himself), all cloth physics on the cape can be pre-rendered and placed into an animation file for the cape, which simply plays the proper animation when required. For Batman, the cape was a core part of the game as a whole, and pre-rendering was worth the time and effort. And the programmers new in advance about every single position that the cloakwearing character would find itself. For DA, this simply isn't the case. The cape isn't a core asset, the game is not about using your cape properly, and the programmers do no know every conceivable position that your character may take while wearing that cape.
Also, every character model would require its own modeled and pre-rendered/pre-animated cape (and that's 6 times more characters requiring animation there, unless you want to give Dog and Shale their own capes too?).
Not to mention that it IS possible in DA:O to import your own character meshes, which basically means that all the work done on capes will be obsolete to anyone importing a new character model. The cloak meshes simply won't fit all new character meshes. So the time invested simply isn't worth the effort.

[DragonRageGT]

I was going to ask you why get so technical at this point of the thread but you made a brilliant post and I like it very very much!



And I only posted the Batman video to counter the Incredibles one... I do love cloaks but I could care less if DA has them or not. Perhaps I even like it not having. It is not ridiculous at all not having them. Oblivion mod adding cape&hood was cool for a couple of days before getting removed from my game... they ruined the char looks to say the least.

[Felix_Domestica]

Oblivion does not have char looks, it has "models that speak" looks...

[foil-]

AsheraII wrote...

Gena Mafer wrote...

Why BW finds cloth physics (or dynamic lighting or savegames that aren't 5+ MB each) such a technical challenge, I find puzzling.

EVERY developer finds cloth physics a challenge, it's not just BW. Especially with the variable character meshes present in game, you'd need a more than just a "top notch" computer to get them to an acceptable grade. It is the very same reason why the hair on most characters is short, or at the times it is long enough to cover the neck, it is attached to the shoulders. The calculations required to make hair or cloaks follow proper physics (in other words, actually falling down in case the character is horizontal or upside down and fluthering behind the character while walking) without them clipping through their neck or through other characters are still exponentially more than what your computer can handle, no matter if you have an octacore with whatever graphics card attached.

For movies, this problem is a LOT simpler, because the cloak and hair models are tailormade to the character, the instances where cloaks and hair have to behave natural are all pre-rendered, which may still take a renderfarm a few HOURS to compute a few minutes of footage, and the footage still being retouched after rendering. A gamers computer simply can't handle such a thing, unless you find a frame rate of 1 frame every 2 hours acceptable (and I'm being rather generous towards your computers' abilities at that).

Games with limited models (like the Batman example someone posted earlier) also have an advantage, that because of these limited amount of models (only Batman himself), all cloth physics on the cape can be pre-rendered and placed into an animation file for the cape, which simply plays the proper animation when required. For Batman, the cape was a core part of the game as a whole, and pre-rendering was worth the time and effort. And the programmers new in advance about every single position that the cloakwearing character would find itself. For DA, this simply isn't the case. The cape isn't a core asset, the game is not about using your cape properly, and the programmers do no know every conceivable position that your character may take while wearing that cape.
Also, every character model would require its own modeled and pre-rendered/pre-animated cape (and that's 6 times more characters requiring animation there, unless you want to give Dog and Shale their own capes too?).
Not to mention that it IS possible in DA:O to import your own character meshes, which basically means that all the work done on capes will be obsolete to anyone importing a new character model. The cloak meshes simply won't fit all new character meshes. So the time invested simply isn't worth the effort.

Yes, nice post to put in perspective cloth physics.  A BioWare dev actually made brilliant explanation of what was required to implement cloaks/hair and it was extremely well written.

However...
Real time cloth physics is being done now without the need for a render farm.  It does however require very powerful graphics cards.  I can run decent looking cloth physics on my 4870 ati card fairly well.  For the new ATI5000 series they should be a breeze.  But for bioware's purposes, it was not very practicle to meet their target audience.

But there are realistic alternatives that were being used almost 10 years ago.  What could be done today should be magnitudes of scale greater.  This movie will blow you away and its from 2002 (see time 3m50s):

http://www.archive.o...erquest_2_Movie

Modifié par foil-, 15 décembre 2009 - 05:53 .

[foil-]

Oh, by the way. This is the video I was referring to when talking about immersion. Start playing at 50s and at 3min25 too hear what I was talking about.

http://www.archive.o...erquest_2_Movie

Modifié par foil-, 15 décembre 2009 - 05:51 .

[foil-]

Weird: the embed video didn't work and the page will no longer allow me to see all the gobilty ****** in my above post in edit mode (BBCode or otherwise). So I can't get rid of it and its screwed up the page format. A web head will have to edit this embedded code out of my post above if he can.


Nevermind: Fixed.  Had to highlight blank space to delete it.

Modifié par foil-, 15 décembre 2009 - 05:55 .

[Adria Teksuni]

Someone win the lottery and give Bioware the millions to put cloaks into DA:O.



Problem solved.

[foil-]

Adria Teksuni wrote...

Someone win the lottery and give Bioware the millions to put cloaks into DA:O.

Problem solved.

BioWare already won the lottery with DA:O.  Maybe in DA2 we will see just that.  But if it costs any where near 1 million, then that programer(s) is going to have to spend more time programming and less time playing with nerf pop guns and taking cat naps.

[iw4o]

[malicious content removed]

[blazin130791]

ignore this post lol

Modifié par blazin130791, 15 décembre 2009 - 11:07 .

[Adria Teksuni]

foil- wrote...
BioWare already won the lottery with DA:O.  Maybe in DA2 we will see just that.  But if it costs any where near 1 million, then that programer(s) is going to have to spend more time programming and less time playing with nerf pop guns and taking cat naps.

That's just it, they'll just take their DA:O money and blow it on silly things like new characters and areas and items and junk.

They need specifically earmarked funds!!!!!

And yeah, to quit playing chairball, too.

[blazin130791]

new characters and areas>items

[the_one_54321]

winning the lottery would be having sales and subscriptions on the level of WoW. blizzard is the only developer that has license to make whatever the heck they deem worth of pelting with rolls of $1000 bills.



games like DA:O turn reasonable profit. that's all.

[foil-]

the_one_54321 wrote...

winning the lottery would be having sales and subscriptions on the level of WoW. blizzard is the only developer that has license to make whatever the heck they deem worth of pelting with rolls of $1000 bills.

games like DA:O turn reasonable profit. that's all.

That post shouldn't be taken too seriously.  Its a bit in jest.

And 500,000 sales in the first month is a little more than reasonable, its excellent.  Just because you win the lottery doesn't make you Bill Gates rich.

Oh, and your signature:  I'm a horrible speller so no big deal, but "dose" should be "does".  Not a big deal except it shows up on all your posts so...your welcome.

[LeStryfe79]

I think the real issue with cloaks is a matter of hardware efficiency, not company resources. NWN2 has cloaks and that game runs quite poorly on most systems. I personaly would like to see cloaks as a neck slot item, or an alternative to amulets for certain characters. It's one of the few good design decisions to be found in 4th edition dnd as well. Note that I said "one of the few" , lol.

[Darpaek]

Bleh.



I'm playing FFXII atm. All their outfits, even their hair, blow in the wind as they move or even standing still depending on the weather.



On the PS2. My chubby 10 year old PS2.



Don't give me this "hardware can't handle it" crap.