101 réponses à ce sujet

[Allan Schumacher]

was disappointed not to see BG or BG2 make any of the dev's desert-island-games list


As for my question...if you could change one thing about one game you worked on previously, what would it be?

Haha, it's interesting because I consider RPGs my favourite genre, but the nature of strategy games typically lets me get more actual playtime out of it. So if I'm marooned somewhere, there's a bit more interest in having longevity (something I don't always qualify as being necessary for a game to be highly regarded. Portal is one of my favourites, but is quite short!)

[Allan Schumacher]

Did you wash them down with some clips from the most awesome cartoon ever?

No.

[Allan Schumacher]

It's easy to piggy back your answer, as I do think that that game was criminally underrated...

[Allan Schumacher]

As far as I know, Chris has always been evil. There is no beginning nor end to it.

[Allan Schumacher]

Mary Kirby wrote up some responses in this thread. Click on the "BioWare" logo underneath the thread to see only Dev posts and you should be able to find it reasonably quickly.

[Allan Schumacher]

Not sure if srs! Haha.

[Allan Schumacher]

I read the forums!

[Allan Schumacher]

brushyourteeth wrote...

He's pulling our legs. Surely it's opposite day in Canada.

Get back to work, you hooligan!!

Hah.  I just got a "thanks for everyone's hard work on getting this done.  Go home!" email right now

[Allan Schumacher]

Oh god yes....

Though we had a worse snowstorm last November, but it was pretty insane yesterday. Drove 20-30km/h pretty much everywhere.

[Allan Schumacher]

I've never been stuck at work.  I have been stuck at home (my parking lot is not exactly awesome sauce).  But that was November.  Almost got stuck at lunch yesterday, but had 2 other people in the car so I wasn't really worried


And yeah the accident was intense.  The big highway out of the city, south, was completely closed off both ways.

[Cameron Lee]

Last Vizard wrote...

One question, how in depth will the skill customization and leveling be? I miss Neverwinter Knights 2 and it's level of customization, everything is so casual today.

We're still working on the progression system and all that entails (level up, skills, talents, equipment customization etc). Ultimately we want progression to be meaningful and visual with strong fantasy fulfilment so you feel your character is truly your own.

[Cameron Lee]

SeismicGravy wrote...

Windows or Linux?

Game Boy Advance

[Allan Schumacher]

You're right, they aren't guarantees.

I'd prefer to not state something as a guarantee at this point because a lot of work is still being done on nailing these sort of things down.

I'm actually not a fan of having clearly "broken" player builds however. As far as I'm concerned that means we didn't do enough during design.


Note that the following is unnecessary:

just that marketing it to casual gamers who either don't have time to think or just don't use their grey matter much more than to regulation of bodily functions.

[Allan Schumacher]

A monkey randomly assigning skill and stat points shouldn't result in a build that can perform just as well as one that was made after a great deal of thought into what the player wants to do. It should be possible to have builds that don't work otherwise you don't have the depth to make different customizable builds.

Deus Ex (the original) is a pretty shining example of how investing into different skills can result in different ways to play through the game.

A player should be able to take a skill distribution that has been randomly assigned, and see some worth to it. If there is a clearly optimal build, then you actually undermine customizable builds. What good is there to have customizable builds if only a subset of them are actually viable?

[Allan Schumacher]

But different builds should require different methods of play to be as viable as another. For example, one build may be ideal for short confrontations by burning through their stamina/mana in moments, while another is more geared towards passive abilities that allow one to better survive a longer battle. Both are viable, but require different styles of play to optimize.

I mostly agree. Although there's also the idea that skills are a reflection of character customization as well, so some level of equivalence between some skills also works for me (i.e. if someone were to choose between a fire mage and an electricity mage, and for the most part they still play the same way with maybe minor differences, that is still a positive contribution to the game).

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 24 mars 2013 - 06:51 .

[Fiddzz]

BouncyFrag wrote...

Do you ever read the meme thread?

Every day, I stickied it so I could find it faster.

[Fiddzz]

BP20125810 wrote...

What is your favorite blend of tea?

Coffee

[Allan Schumacher]

Faster Than Light actually had that problem for me when I first played it. SimCity has caused some issue but no overtly obvious lack of sleep days. XCOM did too... haha. Oh man... Basically check Red Bull stock price... if it goes up I probably stayed up too late.

If you were contractually required to cosplay one DA character, who would you be and why?

Alistair. I just relate to him really well IMO.

If you could choose one other staff member's mandatory cosplay, who would you choose for whom?

This will only get me in trouble....

[Allan Schumacher]

The cheese.

I'm far too smrt to lick lampposts in winter!

[Allan Schumacher]

Surreal. I was given orientation and once that was done, I was walking around on the DA floor and I was seeing the names of so many people I used to interact with years ago on the forums (Derek French, Gaider, Georg, and so forth).

From there they plopped me in a smaller office with a fellow contract tester. After some more orientating, I was told to set up DAO on the PC and start playing through it, and that my first two weeks is to just play and get familiar with the game.

[Allan Schumacher]

themikefest wrote...

Thanks for answering.
Just a follow up question.

How many playthroughs did you do in the 2 weeks?

Just one, and actually I didn't quite finish it (finished it the following Monday).

Here's something: How's the family-culture at Bioware?

Are most
people married, or is the life of a Bioware dev to be geeky and single?
Is it common to invite families to come by to show off the cool stuf, or
are kids kept away lest they blab?

Hmmmm.  I actually don't really have any stats on "are most people married" or not.  There are a LOT of married people though.  If you were to make me pick, I'd probably wager that >50% are married.

Tours happen somewhat regularly.  I actually had to walk through one today

I believe usually it's just "Want to see the place?  Cool, stop by and we'll fill out some paperwork (NDAs) and I'll take you around."  Although in most cases it's just a fairly standard walk around and go "This is the artists.  These are the designers."

Some guy actually asked me what I did and I showed him (on DA2) and he seemed to think it was pretty cool (I was working on an early prototype for a bot that could playthrough singleplayer DA2 on its own).

[Allan Schumacher]

I personally do not. Too expensive haha.

[Allan Schumacher]

You can't just stroll around the BioWare offices without access, so I'm not that worried about it.

I did not know Brent Knowles. I joined late in DAO and never really interacted with him at all.

[Allan Schumacher]

That is pretty good motivation. I will likely need one today as I stayed up too late playing SimCity and have a Game of Thrones season 2 marathon to attend.

[Allan Schumacher]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

That is pretty good motivation. I will likely need one today as I stayed up too late playing SimCity and have a Game of Thrones season 2 marathon to attend.

The night is dark and full of... sleepy yawns?

It's Game of Thrones.  While I did consume caffeine via cola, I doubt it was necessary.