475 réponses à ce sujet

[Barrett Rodych]

How many do you have?

(my Twitter & Facebook header)

 

I'm also really curious what's being shown at SDCC. I've heard a little bit from one of the guys, but haven't actually seen anything myself. Intrigued!

[Barrett Rodych]

 

Hey Barrett and Jos, what are your opinions about the save file transfer? Should ME: Next have it or should the next game be a completely past-game free starting point?

Depends how much flavour text we put into Krogan Kart Racing.

[Jos Hendriks]

 

 

 

Depends how much flavour text we put into Krogan Kart Racing.

 

+1.

[Jos Hendriks]

It's not my goal to try and over-sell or over-promise or over-anything. It's also not really my job to be communicating with you at all, but I think it's nice to have some interaction and some communication. I really don't want to over-sell San Diego Comic Con and what we're doing there for Mass Effect, because I don't want anyone to be disappointed with the information we share, so please keep your hype levels in check, everyone. We'll talk some more about it when it's out there.

[Jos Hendriks]

But given what we've received since we were made aware of the next Mass Effects existence its somewhat disappointing there's not more out there given you blokes are apparently well over 'halfway through development' and have playable versions already floating around the office.

 

We keep our build playable, it's a natural course of development reality, regardless of where we are in development. We did it for ME2, 3, DA:I, and now the next Mass Effect too. It's so anyone internally can load up the game and play it and get an impression of where we're at. It doesn't at all correlate to what information we release. (I doubt any of you really want to see a bunch of white boxes and stubbed in characters and conversations as a representation of the game)

[Barrett Rodych]

We'll project a holographic image for you.

[Barrett Rodych]

Watching this thread is great Saturday afternoon entertainment.

[Barrett Rodych]

which doesn't make any sense he wants us to stop calling it ME4 yet refuses to tell us its name.

TBH, totally agree.

 

A friend: "i think they are really employing that campy art style from TOR, where everything is engored and accentuated and gotesque... hope to be wrong..."

Back to the feed.

I'm curious what gives this impression?

[Barrett Rodych]

 
I believe he sees the Mako's wheels as like Lego vehicle wheels, and the environment in the Mako driving screenshot as like a SWTOR barren level with similar style (can't tell much from a screenshot like that though imo). And maybe even the Hero as more of an action figure than before.
 
Things looking like toys, I think.

Fair nuff. It's a very first pass materials/texture on the vehicle there, so not particularly representative yet. Far as I can tell our art direction hasn't been stylized at all like TOR.

[Barrett Rodych]

Honestly, what I need right now is for one of the devs to reassure me that this is going to be a Mass Effect game. That even though the Mako is now a Salarian land-rover with no guns, even though Shepard is gone, that this is going to feel like a Mass Effect game and that instead of drastically changing everything they just build upon and improve.

It's going to be, and feel like, a Mass Effect game. I hope I can say this as a a dev who's also a fan, who loved ME1 to pieces even before ever thinking I'd become a BioWare employee for ME2, 3, and beyond.

[Barrett Rodych]

My only issue is with PR strategy, and that's not your department anyway. 

I can only try assure quality to X many things!

[Barrett Rodych]

Good luck with testing Frostbite 3. 

 

You'll need it, lol. 

MORE THAN YOU KNOW. The asserts.. so many asserts...

[Barrett Rodych]

Mako without super weird driving physics is no real Mako.

We'll see what eventually ships, but there have already been bugs like being able to drive straight up a flat wall. It's had a pretty entertaining development life so far.

[Barrett Rodych]

As great a ring "nME" has to it, now I'm starting to dig ME:Dentist, if just so I can say I take my MEDs every day.

[Barrett Rodych]

Jos is clearly having a productive morning.

[Jos Hendriks]

I figured I'd bring a little Mako cheer to you all. Who doesn't like a little Mako cheer? #MakoCheer

[Jos Hendriks]

Reinstalled ME this morning just to drive around in the mako and get all nostalgic AND inspired for the future.

 

#TakingMyMEDs

 

#MakoLife

[Jos Hendriks]

So concepts from the Mako existed 10 years ago? I was 7 years old at the time... Has time passed or what?

 

These are in-fiction tweets, so the Mako's 10th anniversary is well into the 22nd century.

[Jos Hendriks]

Tweet.

[Barrett Rodych]

Tweet.

Retweet.

[Jos Hendriks]

Retweet.

 

Favorite.

[Barrett Rodych]

Why wouldn't you want the MAKO to drive like this? Do you understand how powerful we'll be. We'd be able to break the laws of time and space, bringing each and every enemy to their knees.

I'll put in the feature request.

[Jos Hendriks]

How is that doodle a spoiler? It's a doodle!

[Barrett Rodych]

Sounds like someone doesn't have proper ssd.

I do, but I hadn't build the entire project's debug binaries before on this machine, so there was a lot of stuff. IT'S SUPER PRODUCTIVE. I think building/compiling is mostly CPU-bound, mostly unrelated/unbottlenecked by HDD? Not sure.

QA workstations are not the best pieces of technology.

[Barrett Rodych]

With all the builds, versions, content etc. that QA goes through, shouldn't you guys (along with programmers) be getting the better tech? Or is that even modern CPUs, like a 4 GHz Intel Core i7, take some time to do the job?

Programmers get first dibs, as they do need the powerhouses for the constant code compiling. Level art and sometimes other art also need some powerhouse for render and lighting building/baking. Design's kind of in a middle ground as they need to run the game in debug from time to time, and needs are less so for most other departments I think unless I'm forgetting anything.

 

For QA, it would indeed be ideal to have high end tech since we do deal with a fair bit of stuff similar to programming. But on the other hand, if we're nowhere near minspec we're not going to be running into the issues a lot of our players will out there. So it's a tough balance. Best case, we get two workstations to cover both sides of things, but QA is also unfortunately last dibs on stuff usually.

(departments don't actually call dibs at all, it's just budget priorities. QA are pretty skilled scroungers and make-do-ers though)

 

It's also a bit of modern tech still taking a long time dealing with Frostbite/FrostEditor/The Build, as we're continuing to improve processes and pipelines where/when able.

 

Also also, today was rough in particular because I was compiling numerous binaries and builds I hadn't used before, so they'll all be much faster from now on. (where's some wood to knock on...)

 

Edit: Also also also almost anything technology I touch or use is subject to #QACurse and will likely fail gloriously or absurdly in some form or another.