475 réponses à ce sujet

[Bryan Johnson]

A bunch of DAI devs moved over to the new IP just recently. I'm guessing it's now full speed ahead in development.

Yes a bunch did move over some moved to MEA and some moved to new IP, given new IP is almost entirely Edmonton right now it makes sense the developers in Edmonton moved to it. I know more of us (self included) are going there in October

[Barrett Rodych]

Let's not go down paths of discussion which will lock this thread.

[Jos Hendriks]

I said the same about the soup I cooked today.

 

I mean, seriously?!, such tweets could mean anything! Why bother?

 

That tweet was for me, to tell myself and allow myself to say that I did something good. Sorry it doesn't tell you anything.

[Jos Hendriks]

Too bad you missed that Pyro Vorcha on Archangel's mission.

  

Oh believe me, I still give the designer who built that mission and stuck that vorcha there **** for it when it is relevant to a conversation. That pyro was the worst.

Dear Jos,
 
Be careful not to frustrate the hell out of players with clever use of obstacles and courses.  A few instances in DAI made me want to pull out my hair and claw out my eyeballs.  "We will put something the player needs up on a ledge, we will make it seem as if they can take this course and jump up top get it, but we will make the last jump too far and not let the person target the item.  We will have them walk around the bottom of a mountain and try an additional 5 ways of getting the item.  And we will do this for a fetch a one of 10 kind of item, not a core important item that should be though to get."

Not going to happen for stuff I work on. I like adding cool stuff that makes players feel smart, not frustrated. Enjoyment of a level/sequence/combat far exceeds my need to be a jerk to the player, priority-wise.

[Jos Hendriks]

Where's the line between "interesting gameplay challenge" and "****ing the player over," anyway?

 

The answer to how difficult things need to be changes depending on the exact objective of a mission, sequence, or encounter. But regardless of that, the objective is never to screw the player over. The goal is always to present a surmountable challenge that makes use of mechanics in the game. It's not hard to make changes to make things unfair, but that's just no fun.

[Jos Hendriks]

This reminds me of something I've wanted to ask: Do you guys always turn up the difficulty curve towards the endgame regardless of story? I mean, if, say you had a story where the strongest foe is beaten in the middle of the game, would you then still try to make the enemy encounters harder towards the end?

I know that's a strange question, but it's just to ask whether there's a part of Bioware that dictates where the story can go because of difficulty/gameplay requirements, or if difficulty/gameplay is always based on plot.

Well, hypothetically speaking, you would work your way towards a crescendo towards the end, both in gameplay and narrative. I can't at the top of my henarrative any game that had its peak encounters in the middle of the game (on purpose).

I'm not a writer, so that's a big caveat to my answer, but generally games have narrative build-ups, twists, setbacks, and the like, that provide a great basis to stack gameplay challenge against.
It can be pretty frustrating to have the dissonance of narrative context and gameplay challenge not quite lining up in terms of intensity.
There are of course moment to build up partway through the game, and having a signature encounter that is more difficult, followed by a bit of a ramp down and some slack before it builds up to the next (and hopefully slightly more challenging) signature encounter. It isn't, and shouldn't be, just a straight line going up.

As far as BioWare is concerned, from personal experience, narrative gets established prior to a mission's combat encounters, and the difficulty for encounters is generally directed by the place of the encounter in the overall structure of the game.

ME2's Horizon mission was a guaranteed point in the game's progression, so it could offer a signature encounter that was super tough. The missions prior to Horizon were generally less challenging than the ones after.
I think the benefit of having the structure to have key points of progression in a game is that if is more manageable to scale encounters throughout the game.

TL;DR: Gameplay intensity is dependent on narrative, and generally narrative builds up towards a peak closer to the end of the game.

[BioMasika]

Just to clarify, schematics is the term for the visual scripting language used in the Frostbite editor.

[Jos Hendriks]

Wait, did I wander into a different thread? Oh, no, it says it's the Twitter thread. Huh.

[Jos Hendriks]

Ohhhhhhhhhh. I see now. Sleep depravity is getting to me, sorry! 

 

Part of me really wants to know what sleep depravity means. But then part of me really doesn't.

[BioMasika]

Graham is a level artist, so he could be building Andromeda environments, not necessarily MP.

Actually I am a level/tech designer. There is another Graham at the company who is an artist though.

I was responsible for much of the scripting and level design in DAIMP... but my current responsibilities are very different on MEA;)

[Jos Hendriks]

Actually I am a level/tech designer. There is another Graham at the company who is an artist though.

I was responsible for much of the scripting and level design in DAIMP... but my current responsibilities are very different on MEA;)

 

DUN DUN DUUUUNNNNN

[BioMasika]

Hmmm, wonder if they're alluding to something being in the E3 trailer that went unnoticed or they're just being silly?

... I have my reasons...

[Jos Hendriks]

Twitter thread, Twitter thread, does whatever a Twitter thread does, 

Reports on tweets, that's no lie, 

Wanna know tweets, this thread's your guy, 

Look out! Here's the Twitter thread.

[Conal Pierse]

Yeah I'm going to be there. I know Jennifer Hale and David Gaider are speakers/attendees. Anyone else from BioWare coming? 

One of our sound designers, Terry Fairfield, along with senior cinematic designer Dan Plunkett will be there. All three of them are giving a talk on Sunday morning at 10:00am, so you should definitely check it out.

[Jos Hendriks]

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*snip*

Say, Jose, perhaps you can advise/suggest to your writer about banter between the squad members about a previous mission where one of them did something awfully stupid or brilliant. I think this would add some continuity / bonding.

We target the mission we're working on specifically. There is a lot of information to share, and banter is the most convenient way to do that. And of course the stuff that's just for fun.
(and my name is Jos)

[Jos Hendriks]

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I believe FB3  will generate the 'rough" terrain and then the artists swoop in to carve out the map area and make the scenery much, much better.

 

And please pray that hopping like a Hare stays with DA:I.

 

Note: I wonder if level design, maps and combat elements are collaborate efforts and place on a "story board" before final approval.

 

Level design process is informed by the engine we develop things on, but not dictated. I would recommend you don't assume Frostbite's terrain tools dictate how we design our levels. I'm not designing my missions differently from the way I did on ME2 and 3, which is to say that it is very much a collaborative effort between writing, art, and design to build on things.

[Jos Hendriks]

I just want to know how you guys captured the emotion in the series? It goes from "Yay I'm a hero" to "Man we have a huge problem" to "Omg we are so doomed. Screw having a soldier title Im nothing compared to these guys. Screw it lets get drunk one final time before we die" to "LETS GO KICK SOME REAPER A**! AHHHH!" lol

 

Our writers are dark sorcerers from another time and place, who have mastered the arcane arts of extracting emotions out of stone.

 

EDIT:

It was done far beyond story telling in a video game but it wasn't just the writing either. It was, as I said before: Music, SFX, level design, combat etc. It all set the tone perfectly.

It is a collaborative process. Writers figure out the narrative arcs for the game, and the missions, which are basically chapters to tell those stories, are broken down and figured out by a writer, a level designer, an artist, and a cinematic designer, to ensure we hit the narrative and emotional beats we want to hit for that part in the narrative. This has been our process in one form or another for Mass Effect 2 and 3 as well.

[Jos Hendriks]

It's not just the writing Jos, it is all of the work you guys contributed to the project that added that sense of happiness, depression, inevitable doom etc. that set the emotion. 

I, myself, always had this thing when I'm writing a story or thinking of other departments to build within a project, I always wanted to know what can bring out so many emotions within the player and use their emotions against them. 

For example:
Give a player a character and allow that player to go through the entire story with that character, then force that character to die. A love interest, companion etc. Much like how you guys done with the series to either make the player angry or very sad. 

And you guys done that. When you kill a character that a player loves, you must also add some music behind that death to make the player feel angry. If the music has an up beat melody and rhythm the player may feel angry. Make it sound sad and the player will become sad. Taking control of how a player feel is very important to me and that is what I think made this series so great.

The SFX of the reapers are so terrifying. It's like this, "So what it is a huge machine out there, big woof, we fought plenty of those before in other games." But add that powerful heart throbbing SFX to those machines and it is like..."OMG They are so powerful!" 

Same with level design. "Big woof I walked within this corridor before, so what? But wait...I walked this same corridor earlier in the game and it is destroyed." things like that is what I love about you guys. 

Hey man...all I can say is PLEASE keep that same passion about this series and many other projects you guys will build with future games. A lot of western players are turned off by RPGs but the games that you guys make sucks them in and there has to be a reason for that right? 

 

See my edited previous answer.

[Jos Hendriks]

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Thank you for the unexpected clarification.
I was basing my view on past Bio comments about how FB3 can generate awesome terrain graphics.

You're welcome. I cannot talk about much, but I don't mind to when I can.

[Jos Hendriks]

Anyway, re: banter.. I always always ALWAYS hate it when banter either cuts off important dialogue, or dialogue cuts off banter.  So hopefully, the banter has enough spacetime to execute and complete before any other dialogue or cutscene, or anything, can interrupt it.

 

Me too. We try to account for it with logic failsafes but sometimes that just doesn't work. Part of pacing and spacing the banter is trying to anticipate the potential overlap problems.

[BioMasika]

Don't ask me why, but whenever I see his name I always see Masuka from Dexter.

https://apa340.wordp...owtimes-dexter/

Lots of people see my username and read it as ma-see-Kah

Buy for the record I read it as Ma-Sih-Kuh (I hope that translates correctly). Kind of like a drunk cowboy saying massacre.

[Jos Hendriks]

Actually, bantears is what happens when you cry out of frustration at the sheer volume of banter.

 

Actually, bantears is what happens when you get banned for making horrible word jokes on this forum.

[Jos Hendriks]

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Jos Hendriks ‏@Sjosz

At this point I've got banter coming out of my ears. #space

 

Since you are doing missions, how about a patrol mission in a contested area? Saw this from an article about The Division Alpha game.

"..Me and my buddy just patrolled for hours because the small firefights we got into were so much fun. Doing the one mission over and over again never got old and always looking forward to that reward in the end was the topping on the cake.
-The simple animations of how they walk and vault over objects is so smooth. It feels like I AM this person and that is hard to do in a 3rd person game. I feel like an actual soldier where just how they hold the gun to when they slouch down when combat is near..you just feel like a freakinmarine in a real firefight...."

 

Now, the above may be over hype, but the idea looks good. Oh, seems like walking animations have improved. Is Bio doing anything about it with ME:A?

 

Anyone interested in the article: http://wccftech.com/...ingly-stunning/

 

You mean like repeatable scenarios that focus on combat?

[Jos Hendriks]

Did Jos work on the Mars mission in ME3?

He did not.

[Jos Hendriks]

...

 

 

...

 

 

properly?

 

Hmmm.   I take it that he means how we'd play it.   If so, I'm getting a tad disheartened at the pace of this game.  Of course, we do still have another year.

 

Why disheartened?