121 réponses à ce sujet

[Enigmatick]

Can more thought being put into to loot this time? I'm looking over Dragon Age 2 and man is there a lot of "Wild animal has armor piece that you need"

 

Not to mention the horrible junk items and the small gold bars being sold for around 20 silver.

[Bob from Accounting]

If it was 'logical,' it wouldn't work.

[Enigmatick]

If it was 'logical,' it wouldn't work.

There are degrees of logic, you don't kill Deathclaws in New Vegas and find a energy weapon and the last piece to a high tier armor on it's corpse do you?

[Allan Schumacher]

I agree about junk items (not sure the entire philosophy regarding junk loot for DAI, sorry).

 

Dragon Age 2 and man is there a lot of "Wild animal has armor piece that you need"

 

It's been years since I last played so I don't really recall.  I do know that there are some aspects of our loot that will be catered towards specific systems, such as crafting.  So I'd be surprised if it is as much of an issue as it was with DA2.

[Enigmatick]

 I'd be surprised if it is as much of an issue as it was with DA2

 

You've played some of the game yeah? Shouldn't you be able to tell if it's as bad as DA2's junk already?
 

 

[Bob from Accounting]

Hmm. I suppose that is true.

[aTigerslunch]

Well, the Mabari is a sword swallower.    I think some of it can be alright, and other things not so much. Full plate armor inside a mouse would be really crazy but didn't you know its a giant space mouse? 

 

 Apperently its looked at already.

[Allan Schumacher]

You've played some of the game yeah? Shouldn't you be able to tell if it's as bad as DA2's junk already?
 

 

I actually haven't played that much of the game proper - mostly only the earlier bits.  Right now most of the work I do is creating apps and/or scripts that help other people in their testing.

 

My big task right now is creating a webapp that lets QA quickly swap out any armor piece (and some extra things that I cannot talk about) onto a character to verify its look.  It can be done slowly at the moment (typing in console commands) but I'm getting the webapp to talk to the game so that we can use a quick, searchable ListBox so that someone can quickly select the armor and click "equip" and it will do so.

 

Extra side benefits of this that I can leverage the data lookup to determine if there are any art assets that haven't been referenced (i.e. something that should be in the game, but isn't.  Sometimes there's a bug where an armor asset is incorrectly referenced in a place where it should not be).

 

 

Armor is the first piece, but the idea is that it will likely be extensible to weapons/shields without much additional effort (they are treated slightly differently than armor in the game, but the tool itself will work the same).

 

Other things I have been working on are support tools to help content QA test the various permutations of conversations/cinematics more efficiently.  Some stuff is already in place, but there's other areas we have identified as places for improvements.  We also noticed some minor bugs with console commands which don't affect the game, but affect testing.  For instance, there's a console command to quickly set the party in a certain configuration.  Very useful for "how does the conversation go with the following party members?"

 

But as we learned, it's not actually setting the PartyManagerProxy reference, so it works fine until you level transition.  Since we sometimes have conversations that happen immediately after the level loads, this causes a problem for testing quickly.  On the level load, the current party is taken from the PartyManagerProxy data, which is whatever the party was the last time it was "properly" set (i.e. through the party picker).  So I'm also working on a solution for that - I'll likely just create a console command that pops up the Party Picker, but am touching base with some of the programmers/designers to make sure that I'm not missing anything when I set up the logical prefab to ensure we're still testing the party in a valid way (it really sucks when you find a bug and you realize that it's not a legit bug, but something that only happens when using a debug tool that makes an incorrect assumption about how a system works).

 

 

So short answer... nope!

[NoForgiveness]

I do like when dragons drop armor/weapons cuz it's like they ate those people. Lol

[Enigmatick]

I do like when dragons drop armor/weapons cuz it's like they ate those people. Lol

When it comes to those situations a junk item like 'skeleton' or 'skull' would actually be welcome.

[Allan Schumacher]

What about torn trousers?

[Shelondias]

When it comes to those situations a junk item like 'skeleton' or 'skull' would actually be welcome.

I'm reminded of The Underfrkte Matron from Oblivion.
Chock full of half digested nord.

[Enigmatick]

What about torn trousers?

Only if the cloth is used for crafting

[Schreckstoff]

Look DA seems to have some of it roots from DnD, given Bioware made Forgotten Realms games quite frequently, you might be used to a Elder Scrolls approach but DA is not a TES and it shouldn't be.

[Nyeredzi]

No more spiders that drop boots. I mean, how can a spider have boots? Honestly?

[aTigerslunch]

Spiders need their feetsies warmed too, boots are fashionable.

 

It's going to have some elements not be like TES. They mentioned if to make a map to go to Orlais from Ferelden, it would need to be 40,000 miles. That would take too long.

[Basement Cat]

Spiders need their feetsies warmed too, boots are fashionable.

 

It's going to have some elements not be like TES. They mentioned if to make a map to go to Orlais from Ferelden, it would need to be 40,000 miles. That would take too long.

What? Is that square miles? Canada is less than 4000 miles wide and it would take over 3 years to cross that on foot, just to give an idea of the sort of distances we're talking about. There's no way Orlais is that far away from Ferelden. Nobody could make that kind of trip!

[aTigerslunch]

I might be off a zero or it was 10000 miles instead. Could been square miles, I need to go look it back up. I maybe confused with some numbers at work, I know it was thousands.

[Basement Cat]

I might be off a zero or it was 10000 miles instead. Could been square miles, I need to go look it back up. I maybe confused with some numbers at work, I know it was thousands.

It's ok. I'm sorry if I came across as overly aggressive, I just had a massive WTF moment. 40 000 miles is a long, long distance! Actually, it's longer than the circumference of the Earth! 25 000 miles... 400 miles would be much more realistic. I'm thinking this trope is coming into effect: writers have no sense of distance

[KaiserShep]

I'll be damned if I want to play a game that doesn't let me find sacks of garnets in a wolf's stomach.

[Fast Jimmy]

I actually haven't played that much of the game proper - mostly only the earlier bits.  Right now most of the work I do is creating apps and/or scripts that help other people in their testing.
 
My big task right now is creating a webapp that lets QA quickly swap out any armor piece (and some extra things that I cannot talk about) onto a character to verify its look.  It can be done slowly at the moment (typing in console commands) but I'm getting the webapp to talk to the game so that we can use a quick, searchable ListBox so that someone can quickly select the armor and click "equip" and it will do so.
 
Extra side benefits of this that I can leverage the data lookup to determine if there are any art assets that haven't been referenced (i.e. something that should be in the game, but isn't.  Sometimes there's a bug where an armor asset is incorrectly referenced in a place where it should not be).
 
 
Armor is the first piece, but the idea is that it will likely be extensible to weapons/shields without much additional effort (they are treated slightly differently than armor in the game, but the tool itself will work the same).
 
Other things I have been working on are support tools to help content QA test the various permutations of conversations/cinematics more efficiently.  Some stuff is already in place, but there's other areas we have identified as places for improvements.  We also noticed some minor bugs with console commands which don't affect the game, but affect testing.  For instance, there's a console command to quickly set the party in a certain configuration.  Very useful for "how does the conversation go with the following party members?"
 
But as we learned, it's not actually setting the PartyManagerProxy reference, so it works fine until you level transition.  Since we sometimes have conversations that happen immediately after the level loads, this causes a problem for testing quickly.  On the level load, the current party is taken from the PartyManagerProxy data, which is whatever the party was the last time it was "properly" set (i.e. through the party picker).  So I'm also working on a solution for that - I'll likely just create a console command that pops up the Party Picker, but am touching base with some of the programmers/designers to make sure that I'm not missing anything when I set up the logical prefab to ensure we're still testing the party in a valid way (it really sucks when you find a bug and you realize that it's not a legit bug, but something that only happens when using a debug tool that makes an incorrect assumption about how a system works).
 
 
So short answer... nope!

Side note... would any of your applications have upstream applicability to the Frostbite engine, or would it be focused solely to Inquisition as a project?

[Deflagratio]

Can more thought being put into to loot this time? I'm looking over Dragon Age 2 and man is there a lot of "Wild animal has armor piece that you need"

 

Not to mention the horrible junk items and the small gold bars being sold for around 20 silver.

 

While I'm not necessarily against it, I will point out that there's a lot of psychological precedent for seemingly illogical drops being more gratifying than what would be perceived as sensible.

 

It depends on how much nonsense you're personally willing to put up with for sake of gratification, and that threshold is surely individual. Some people are fine having suits of armor and fully formed weapons spray out from animal corpses, other people are adamant about only NPC's with the equipment on, dropping the equipment, while animals and monsters only drop crafting components related to their species.

 

I personally am somewhere in the middle. I'm okay with Boss/Elite level animals and monsters dropping fully formed weapons, but not so much your standard fodder enemies, except of course NPCs which would have a chance to drop equipment that makes sense.

 

As for junk, I feel that a robust crafting system will be solving this problem for the vast majority of items, but I myself am not necessarily against junk if it serves the purpose of contextualizing the enemy or place. Of course, if it's just drawn from random lists with absolutely no purpose except to land in your inventory we definitely have a problem.

[Fast Jimmy]

While I'm not necessarily against it, I will point out that there's a lot of psychological precedent for seemingly illogical drops being more gratifying than what would be perceived as sensible.

It depends on how much nonsense you're personally willing to put up with for sake of gratification, and that threshold is surely individual. Some people are fine having suits of armor and fully formed weapons spray out from animal corpses, other people are adamant about only NPC's with the equipment on, dropping the equipment, while animals and monsters only drop crafting components related to their species.

I personally am somewhere in the middle. I'm okay with Boss/Elite level animals and monsters dropping fully formed weapons, but not so much your standard fodder enemies, except of course NPCs which would have a chance to drop equipment that makes sense.

As for junk, I feel that a robust crafting system will be solving this problem for the vast majority of items, but I myself am not necessarily against junk if it serves the purpose of contextualizing the enemy or place. Of course, if it's just drawn from random lists with absolutely no purpose except to land in your inventory we definitely have a problem.

My biggest complaint with DA2's loot system was its complete disconnect of value.

A gold bar was considered Junk and would be sold for a silver piece. A GOLD BAR. FOR A SILVER PIECE.

Not to mention quest rewards like Maerthi's "priceless tome" being a junk item worth only a few coppers was a real WTF moment for me. What kind of backward, depressed economy does Kirkwall have that solid gold and priceless books aren't worth much more than what you tip the bartender to hear about local rumors?

[Deflagratio]

My biggest complaint with DA2's loot system was its complete disconnect of value.

A gold bar was considered Junk and would be sold for a silver piece. A GOLD BAR. FOR A SILVER PIECE.

Not to mention quest rewards like Maerthi's "priceless tome" being a junk item worth only a few coppers was a real WTF moment for me. What kind of backward, depressed economy does Kirkwall have that solid gold and priceless books aren't worth much more than what you tip the bartender to hear about local rumors?

 

 

That is dumb. It smells like the result of a procedural broad stroke to me, only way I can think of that would happen. Especially since DA2 was a closed economy where, as Laidlaw said, you can "Sterilize The world".