64 ответов в этой теме

[Hexenkind23]

And the different game engine should not be an issue, if you just want to read a save game. If you need the graphics engine to read your save game, then I'd call that a major programming f*kup.

 

But it is an issue, like it or not. You must know: The frostbite engine isn't from bioware themselves, so it wasn't created with a save game import in mind. The engine is from Digital Illusions CE, the developers of the battlefield games. If it was biowares own engine, they surely would've added some feature regarding an import in the first place.

[Mumia76]

I'm sorry but are you stupid? Do you have any idea how hard it would be to program a save importer for 2 games (each with 3 or more expansions) across three totally different operating systems, which then gets imported to three ADDITIONAL completely different systems. Bioware spends a ridiculous amount of time and money just so you can have extra immersion in an already incredible game and you throw a tantrum because you have to tell the program what to do. This is why we cant have nice things.
PS, did it occur  to you that they made it this way so you can change the story without replaying the first two games? Like they said... repeatedly.

I know exactly. It's already completed. DA:O has the save game importer for DA:O ready. And DA2 has the save game importer for DA2 ready. Or do you really think that when you load a save game in a game that is much different than a save importer? At least if it's implemented right. It's possible to make some short cuts in implementing a save feature, but it's a really costly mistake to make, especially if you know you'll have sequels with connecting stories. It'd be stupid to make those shortcuts. If anything I can think of that can make save game importing a nighmare is if the previous game doesn't actually save metadata and choices, but some sort of memory dump. Now if that's the case then they're really in a tight spot. If you don't understand half of what I'm saying don't be sad, you're not stupid, but I'm actually a programmer.

And please read before you write. I already said that I don't think the keep itself is a bad idea, but it should still offer the option to import your previous game choices.

[Hexenkind23]

And please read before you write. I already said that I don't think the keep itself is a bad idea, but it should still offer the option to import your previous game choices.

I agree on that. And as I said: They already working on importing old saves in the keep. It just don't made it in time yet.

[crowskin]

I know exactly. It's already completed. DA:O has the save game importer for DA:O ready. And DA2 has the save game importer for DA2 ready. Or do you really think that when you load a save game in a game that is much different than a save importer? At least if it's implemented right. It's possible to make some short cuts in implementing a save feature, but it's a really costly mistake to make, especially if you know you'll have sequels with connecting stories. It'd be stupid to make those shortcuts. If anything I can think of that can make save game importing a nighmare is if the previous game doesn't actually save metadata and choices, but some sort of memory dump. Now if that's the case then they're really in a tight spot. If you don't understand half of what I'm saying don't be sad, you're not stupid, but I'm actually a programmer.

And please read before you write. I already said that I don't think the keep itself is a bad idea, but it should still offer the option to import your previous game choices.

 

But (responding to the bold above) that is not a given in the games industry. Or really the entertainment industry as a whole. I know of a couple of games that were supposed to have sequels, but they got shut down. EA could step in at any moment and decide that the investment into the Dragon Age series isn't worth it. If DAO hadn't been a good money maker then it wouldn't have mattered how many sequels they have planned because DAO would have been it. BW can only plan for the next game that they have an actual budget for. 

[Mumia76]

But it is an issue, like it or not. You must know: The frostbite engine isn't from bioware themselves, so it wasn't created with a save game import in mind. The engine is from Digital Illusions CE, the developers of the battlefield games. If it was biowares own engine, they surely would would've added some feature regarding an import in the first place.

There might be some form of save feature implemented in that engine, but in it's vanilla state it's useless to bioware anyway. It may save the game world state, or the actual map you're in, as that's closely related to the graphics engine which is the major part of the game engine. The rest has to be extensively tweaked to accomodate for the story elements and such things. A game engine is not something you get key ready. It might have many features already implemented in some generalised or placeholder way, but that's just not enough, if you're doing an AAA game. What I'm saying is that they can't just use the save implementation of the engine out of the box anyway. Altough I have not worked on any game engine since UE2 but the principles still apply.

I understand that Bioware made a choice not to implement a save import for various reasons, but there is on way they can justify it with programming reasons in my eyes. If it's really so hard to implelemt then they made mistakes when they did the save structure of the previous games.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________


You don't have to agree with me, but calling people stupid for having differnt wants than you is childish.

[Mumia76]

I agree on that. And as I said: They already working on importing old saves in the keep. It just don't made it in time yet.

If anyone can confirm that would be cool. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere officially.

[movieguyabw]

And the different game engine should not be an issue, if you just want to read a save game. If you need the graphics engine to read your save game, then I'd call that a major programming f*kup.

 

Well, for starters there isn't a universal format to the DA savegames - Microsoft and Sony encode all savegames used on their systems, and they only really allow companies to use these encoding methods to *create* savegames - not to *decrypt* them.  There are 3rd party resources which allow you to crack into an xbox/playstation savegame but those are not officially recognized, or sanctioned by Microsoft/Sony.

 

Basically, there is no way Bioware would be able to take a savegame from a console, and *decrypt* it without Microsoft or Sony's permission to do so, and they are *very* tight when it comes to stuff like that as far as I understand it.

 

 

Also, previous DA games (as well as earlier Bioware games like NWN and KOTOR) run on a form of the Odyssey engine.  I'm not by any stretch of the imagination a programmer, but I can tell you it's a lot more of a difference going from that to the Frostbite 3; than just graphics.  If you've ever attempted to mod a game running on Odyssey, you'd notice that a lot of the things we've been seeing in Inquisition are just not possible to recreate.  Stuff like jumping, or fluid combat, or dynamic environments, or the level of customization we've seen in character creation and crafting. 

 

I also remember seeing a video where one of the devs was talking about being presented with the Frostbite 3 engine and being told that it could not handle four legged creatures.  Sure, Bioware proved them wrong, but that really wouldn't have been a graphical limitation.  That sound more like DICE believed something in the way the engine handled models and animation would not support a four legged animal.

 

Aaand, not to mention if it was just an issue of Frostbite 3 being different graphically from the Odyssey engine, but both had similar hardware and used the same types of files; then honestly I would just pull out the the trusty .gff editor (mod tool released for NWN) I downloaded back during my Kotor days (and still works on DA:O and I'm guessing DA2), and I'd be prepared to mod DAI on launch.  As it stands, modding is not yet known to be possible on Frostbite 3. I'm imagining because either the engine does not use the same sort of files as Odyssey did; or because they are *heavily* encrypted and no one has been able to crack them yet.  Then again, as I said, I'm not a programmer.  I'm only a film student who fools around with mods in Bioware games occasionally.  This is what I gather from what we've hard so far, about Frostbite 3, however. 

[Hexenkind23]

You don't have to agree with me, but calling people stupid for having differnt wants than you is childish.

Yes it is childish and it wasn't me who called you stupid. I've just wanted to explain why I think they couldn't implement it. At the end we can just speculate.
 

[Hexenkind23]

If anyone can confirm that would be cool. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere officially.

At least I recall that they were working on it but couldn't say for sure whether it would be possible or would be ready for the launch of inquisition.
I don't know if they still try to get it working just now.

[Diefenbaker]

Well, no, you don't have to play with a default state. You could spend a few minutes and look at each choice and see what you think you might have done? Or pick something new? Or you could check out your in game journal to find out your past choices. 

 

This.

 

Or just pick the choices you like now and want to see reflected in the next game. If you did manage to find your old choices you might be surprised at what you picked and might not even want them in your DAI game. I made some questionable choices with some parts of the DAO that totally go against what I want for my story now, Keep gave me the option to change that.

[Kilek Darkfire]

If I recall correctly, it pulls all your Heroes' data from the legacy BSN site, so even if they wanted to import potentially buggy saves for them, I don't think they could. Most I ever saw on those was a simple image (that didn't always work anyways) the name, and I think maybe the class, level and equipment. I don't think there's actually any save data on the choices made, and without that it's kind of impossible to import save data, buggy or not, into the Keep, since there's nothing to import for it. Sure some could maybe argue that PC players could have some special import thing, but what about the rest of us? There's plenty of people who'd feel left out if that were the case, and I personally felt their time was better spent elsewhere rather than trying to figure out a way to automatically import choices when you can customize your state as much or as little as you want already.

 

Like it's already been mentioned, if you just cannot remember what you chose, boot up an old save, or go with your gut feeling on how you think you or your character would've handled it. If you don't know what they're talking about in a tile, then give a quick check on the wiki. Also remember that this is still in Beta, so if you really feel so strongly against having to reference the wiki because you feel there just isn't enough context to figure out what the choice is about, submit a suggestion about having some more information with plot tiles.

[Ranadiel Marius]

At least I recall that they were working on it but couldn't say for sure whether it would be possible or would be ready for the launch of inquisition.
I don't know if they still try to get it working just now.

Actually, I am pretty sure that it isn't happening. They were looking at it a few months ago, but I am fairly certain that they have said that it didn't work out for some reason or another.

[Kantr]

If anyone can confirm that would be cool. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere officially.

It's not being worked on. The flags inside the saves are faulty.

 

Not fair to people who cant access them anyway (console users and those who lost the saves)

[Don Lionheart]

I can't remember most of the things this "keep" poses at me without any explanation. How could I create my world state, if I don't remember my choices or the fact that I even encountered some of those characters in previous games.

 

At the least there should be an explanation on the significance and background of each choice, not just a plain CHOOSE A B C, cause I have nothing to base my choice on.

 

A save importer would've been infinitely better. All the effort that they put into this when they could've implemented save game import with much less.

 

The game's not even out yet and they already dissappoint me.

 

Setting aside the last sentence of this post because it's so unbelievably ignorant, I will address the main point, which is a valid one, and I was quite surprised to not have seen anyone say this to actually answer the original post.  If you select a tile, say the Paragon of Her Kind one, and within that is the tile involving Ruck, who is a character who fits the point the original poster is trying to make.  If you were to click on that tile, and then look above where the question is posed, there is a "?" there that you can click on.  If you click on it, you will actually get a background, albeit a brief one, of the quest that was involved in the decision.  I believe that every decision tile has one of these, or at least they all will have one (I know I ran across a couple where the "?" was there but it said a description was coming soon when it was in the closed beta) at some point in time.  That said, the question mark does not always give enough information, and I know that there are choices that even I didn't remember (because of how small they were) or didn't experience (because I didn't play the particular combination of race/origin required).  For that situation, as many Keepers above me have said, the Wiki for Dragon Age is incredibly detailed (be careful of spoilers if that matters to you) and serves as a great resource to refresh your memory when the in-Keep resources are not enough.  Also, as my fellow Keepers have point out, there is the feedback button in the Keep to make suggestions.  BioWare and been really great about listening to feedback and implementing popular suggestions, so please make sure to use it.

 

Finally, about the merits of a save importer, while it certainly does have value, many people here have pointed out the numerous problems that persisted when importing a save from DA:O to DA2, and all variety of issues using different DLCs for importing, etc.  While I would have appreciated one as well, the fact of the matter is that it was not as viable for the game because of these problems, as well as the platform change (with 8th Gen coming out).  And for my final point, the Keep serves as a record, almost a library, of ALL decisions made in previous games, one that allows the developers to take information from previous games (and upcoming ones, like DA:I) and store it in a succinct, stable form available for use in future installments of the game series.  This way, if a game, DA:I for instance, does not use a particular choice, the next game has access to it should it become important.

[Jagrevi]

I've been in the Keep beta for a few weeks. I remembered very little. Over the course of about a week, I managed to recover all of this information, save for 2 tiles, just by loading up my old save, looking at "Journal: Completed Quests", looking up stuff on the Dragon Age wiki, reading the epilogue slides from just after my final save, seeing what NPCs were still standing around, what they said when clicked on, etc. I even did so for my wife. (That's ~ 139/141 questions solved this way, with the majority not-remembered, on two different worldstates). I thought about making a guide for people for indicators for each tile outcome, but I'm far too busy atm - I bet someone may at some point though.

 

Point being -> The Keep came out weeks before the game for a reason. If you want to recover your save/worldstate data, put some elbow grease into it. You actually do have the tools in front of you if you still have old saves.

 

Look up the names of all the quests (DragonAgeWiki)

See what you completed in the Journal

See what is says the result was

See what consequences various missions have and check for those conditions

 

You can recover the vast majority of Keep questions this way

[crowskin]

This website may also be helpful:

 

http://thedialoguewheel.wordpress.com/

[Mumia76]

Well, for starters there isn't a universal format to the DA savegames - Microsoft and Sony encode all savegames used on their systems, and they only really allow companies to use these encoding methods to *create* savegames - not to *decrypt* them.  There are 3rd party resources which allow you to crack into an xbox/playstation savegame but those are not officially recognized, or sanctioned by Microsoft/Sony.
 
Basically, there is no way Bioware would be able to take a savegame from a console, and *decrypt* it without Microsoft or Sony's permission to do so, and they are *very* tight when it comes to stuff like that as far as I understand it.

That makes no sense at all. They already decrypt the save when it is loaded by the game that made it. If you can only save but can't load that defeats the whole purpose of saves.
 

Also, previous DA games (as well as earlier Bioware games like NWN and KOTOR) run on a form of the Odyssey engine.  I'm not by any stretch of the imagination a programmer, but I can tell you it's a lot more of a difference going from that to the Frostbite 3; than just graphics.  If you've ever attempted to mod a game running on Odyssey, you'd notice that a lot of the things we've been seeing in Inquisition are just not possible to recreate.  Stuff like jumping, or fluid combat, or dynamic environments, or the level of customization we've seen in character creation and crafting.

As I mentioned already plot choices have very little and most likely no relation to the used game engine at all. It had to be added to the engine by bioware anyway. Plot choices are just flags, and they would just have to read those flags, nothing else. Everything else could be jibberish as it's not neccessary for this. It has nothing to do with what you're allowed to do in the game world and how extensive customization is. You'd just have to comb save files for plot choices, and ignore everything else.

I also remember seeing a video where one of the devs was talking about being presented with the Frostbite 3 engine and being told that it could not handle four legged creatures.  Sure, Bioware proved them wrong, but that really wouldn't have been a graphical limitation.  That sound more like DICE believed something in the way the engine handled models and animation would not support a four legged animal.

As fascinating as that is, again completely irrevelant. The engine may not handl four legged creatures out of the box, but that's what I meant when I mentioned no game engine is key ready, there is always tweaking and extending to be done. In programming there is no such thing as impossible. It's just a question of commitment.  

Aaand, not to mention if it was just an issue of Frostbite 3 being different graphically from the Odyssey engine, but both had similar hardware and used the same types of files; then honestly I would just pull out the the trusty .gff editor (mod tool released for NWN) I downloaded back during my Kotor days (and still works on DA:O and I'm guessing DA2), and I'd be prepared to mod DAI on launch.  As it stands, modding is not yet known to be possible on Frostbite 3. I'm imagining because either the engine does not use the same sort of files as Odyssey did; or because they are *heavily* encrypted and no one has been able to crack them yet.  Then again, as I said, I'm not a programmer.  I'm only a film student who fools around with mods in Bioware games occasionally.  This is what I gather from what we've hard so far, about Frostbite 3, however. 

Again, pulling out plot choices from a save game has nothing in common with modding graphical elements of a game. Different engine uses different storage formats for its content, that's perfectly natural. But again it doesn't make modding impossible, you just need a different tool for it. It's the same with saves, you need a different tool for DA2, than for DA:O, but it's hardly anything near impossible to do.

As I understand some flags are already messed up during the games themselves, that can't be helped, but that bears no significance on the complexity and possibility of extracting choices. What is already wrong would be carried over as wrong, but at least people would have most of their plot choices right, and they could still edit the ones missed with the keep.

[phantomrachie]

I don't understand, if you don't remember you choices then how would a save importer have been better? If you don't remember you choices then you might not have noticed the effect your choices had on the game.

 

Now you can create a world state that you will remember & so you will notice the effect.

[Peranor]

At first I thought I would have trouble remembering all my choices. But once I logged in to the Keep and started going through all the various options I noticed that I in fact recognized and remembered most of them. Only some of the minor choices eluded me, but a quick search on the interwebs helped refresh my memory.

I love the Keep by the way and I think it's an brilliant idea. Just hoping the DLC choices will be included in varric's narration as well.

[Espurr]

I'm not really sure what to tell you at this point, since multiple people have brought up the reasons why the keep was implemented over a traditional save import system, but you just seem intent on arguing why those reasons aren't valid or good enough. Game engines effect a heck of a lot more than just graphics and porting things cross-generation on consoles just adds another level of difficulty. Could they have figured out a way to do it and make it work if they poured enough time and energy and resources into the problem? Maybe. Would it have been worth it when the keep is a fun (in my opinion anyways), effective, and much easier to maintain solution? I seriously doubt it.    

 

At the end of the day Bioware looked into all their options for save importing and decided this would be the best/most effective way to do so. It's not very hard or time consuming to read the wiki or check a save game to remember your choices (or even make new ones, if you've changed your mind or just want to see a different outcome). 

[Peranor]

I'm not really sure what to tell you at this point, since multiple people have brought up the reasons why the keep was implemented over a traditional save import system, but you just seem intent on arguing why those reasons aren't valid or good enough. Game engines effect a heck of a lot more than just graphics and porting things cross-generation on consoles just adds another level of difficulty. Could they have figured out a way to do it and make it work if they poured enough time and energy and resources into the problem? Maybe. Would it have been worth it when the keep is a fun (in my opinion anyways), effective, and much easier to maintain solution? I seriously doubt it.    
 
At the end of the day Bioware looked into all their options for save importing and decided this would be the best/most effective way to do so. It's not very hard or time consuming to read the wiki or check a save game to remember your choices (or even make new ones, if you've changed your mind or just want to see a different outcome).

I agree. I think The Keep solution to the save-game import issue is perfectly fine. In fact I may be so bold to say that I think I even prefer it over a traditional save-game import.

[Undead Han]

Use the wiki, that is what I did.

 

I could remember all the DA:O choices without a problem, but it felt like I was having to glance at the wiki on about half of DA2's. I wonder why that is? 

[Helios969]

I recommend replaying the games to refresh your memory.  Baring that there are a bazillion youtube videos plus wiki to facilitate recreating your world state.  At any rate if you cannot recall a specific decision it probably isn't too important to you DAI game experience.  For new players or those who cannot remember I'd recommend concentrating on Warden alive or no, romance, the major decisions with your allies (e.g. Connor saved/not possessed), and who is ruling Fereldan.  For DA2, Hawke class and disposition, romance, and whether you played pro-Templar or pro-Mage, and maybe if you want Anders alive or no.

 

Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to have a pinned thread to assist new players with creating their world states (and those far removed from the games.)

[Justin Edmond]

The key was we didn't want to spoil the old games for people who still want to play them.

 

Several of my friends and our beta testers recommended searching a Dragonage wiki, which should contain all the information you need to jog your memory. If something still doesn't seem familiar perhaps you never encountered that situation in your playthough... There was a lot of stuff you could miss.

[Kantr]

Try this as well.