65 réponses à ce sujet

[themugen]

As someone who has done programming for a living (not any longer, thank goodness), this is not as simple as you're making it out to be.  Different game engines have different core modules and a multitude of other "geek speak" differences in how they handle data.  While not "impossible", it would certainly be extremely costly and time consuming.  I suppose "no way" was over stating it, but not by much.

 

The resources allocated to DAI were (IMO) better spent on the game itself than on having BioWare coders work with DICE for who knows how long to find a method of uploading save files.  It's not like save game imports worked that well when only using the BioWare proprietary engine - there were massive bugs and incorrect flags when loading to DAA and DA2.  Going from one engine to another would just compound the QA issue by an prohibitive amount.  The Keep seems like the best way to handle this, really.  It adds some up-front work for the user, but at least it's a separate entity that can be bug-squashed without a game patch.

All that AND they'd have to ensure it works on 5 platforms.  with Keep they only need to develop it for one platform.

[Aulis Vaara]

There's no direct import due to changing engines from the BioWare custom one to Frostbite 3. No way to technically make that work.

No offense, but that's a load of bullshit. So long as the data is there, you can make it work. By Odin's beard, there are people who hex edit functions into games' executables for modding, extracting some data should be no problem.

[Zakhar]

No offense, but that's a load of bullshit. So long as the data is there, you can make it work. By Odin's beard, there are people who hex edit functions into games' executables for modding, extracting some data should be no problem.

Sure there are people who can do insane things just to mod.

Except when they do it, they aren't running on a limited time and budget with papa Publisher breathing down their neck.

[ICevoL]

No offense, but that's a load of bullshit. So long as the data is there, you can make it work. By Odin's beard, there are people who hex edit functions into games' executables for modding, extracting some data should be no problem.

 

I'm not sure if you read the entire thread before replying to me, or if you ignored the post where I clarified what I meant.  Feel free to think it's bullshit, but I stand by my experience in the field to think it's better that BW decided to transfer world states with The Keep than by spending time making a direct transfer from DAO/DAA/DA2 work for DAI.  

 

Given that The Keep is intended to be used for all the future DA games, it's going to save on costs, development time, and QA work in the long term.  Plus, as stated in the post I linked, this will prevent the "sorry, we can't fix that import bug because we'd have to patch the old game, and that's not happening" responses that came when people voiced issues with DA2 imports.  With The Keep being a stand alone entity (with presumably its own budget), they can fix "source bugs" for import problems without game patching.

[elrofrost]

Actually using the Keep reminded me of a few events in DAO that I forgot about. Like the prisoner in Ostagar.

 

It also made me wonder, what does the prisoner have to with DAI. Does he play a role somehow?

[Aulis Vaara]

I'm not sure if you read the entire thread before replying to me, or if you ignored the post where I clarified what I meant. Feel free to think it's bullshit, but I stand by my experience in the field to think it's better that BW decided to transfer world states with The Keep than by spending time making a direct transfer from DAO/DAA/DA2 work for DAI.

Given that The Keep is intended to be used for all the future DA games, it's going to save on costs, development time, and QA work in the long term. Plus, as stated in the post I linked, this will prevent the "sorry, we can't fix that import bug because we'd have to patch the old game, and that's not happening" responses that came when people voiced issues with DA2 imports. With The Keep being a stand alone entity (with presumably its own budget), they can fix "source bugs" for import problems without game patching.

The keep IS a good idea, but they still could give imports to it from every game. That's not a ridiculous amount of effort.

[elrofrost]

Well I like the keep. The good thing about it is replay value. You can change things for future games. This is assuming, of course, prior choices actually matter. We'll see.

[SofaJockey]

Actually using the Keep reminded me of a few events in DAO that I forgot about. Like the prisoner in Ostagar.

It also made me wonder, what does the prisoner have to with DAI. Does he play a role somehow?

 

Of course the reason why there are so many minor choices in the Keep is that we don't know which choices will impact DAI.

Saving the Prisoner may be completely irrelevant, or not.

The key decision to save Thedas may be whether you brought Varathorn some Ironbark !!! 

[wtfman99]

This sounds like whine whine whine, I can't get my way so going to cancel my pre-order.

 

Why not just do some actual work and go through the keep and make decisions?

 

I played Origins so long ago and actually didn't mind the chance to see what choices were available because I could not get the sync to work either.

 

Really frustrating to see people would rather quit then face any type of difficulty, at all, ever.

[Urazz]

The keep IS a good idea, but they still could give imports to it from every game. That's not a ridiculous amount of effort.

And you would know this how?  They did this to save money and to make it easy for them to let us import our games into future.  Doing both Keep and importing save games is kinda going against that on the double instead of just doing one choice or the other.

[sylvanaerie]

I just started the "Sync" on the Keep website. So far it has just ticked off any achievements I've unlocked for DAO then told me "custom heroes unavailable - please select a default hero." Any point going ahead with this? It also seems like I have to manually enter a bunch of decisions I made in a game I haven't played for years. And with multiple playthoughs needed to get all achievements I have actually picked every choice at some point. Is this BioWare saying "We can be f*cked. Do it yourself?" Pretty disappointing. Between this and no character creation for multiplayer I'm actually considering cancelling my pre order.

 

All syncing is for is for recording your achievements (and possibly getting to use your custom PCs vs default).  Choices don't come from the game save itself, they come from you entering the information into Keep.

 

You aren't even required to back that up with a Hawke who used that particular playthrough.

[Helios969]

And you would know this how?  They did this to save money and to make it easy for them to let us import our games into future.  Doing both Keep and importing save games is kinda going against that on the double instead of just doing one choice or the other.

I don't know what all the motivations were, but if saving bottom line dollars was one of them that is good for all of us (potentially.)  Like it or not they are a for profit business.  The devs largely do this because they love what they're doing, but the investors want a return on their investments.  It's a difficult relationship to balance.  Bioware games comparatively speaking are much more expensive to make then most other games.  Despite that they don't really cost any more to purchase.  That says a lot right there.

[Fredvdp]

There's no direct import due to changing engines from the BioWare custom one to Frostbite 3.  No way to technically make that work.

I don't think it's an engine thing because a save file is just a text file with a list of variables. The Witcher 2, for instance, allowed save imports and that was on a different engine than Witcher 1. Importing may not be as easy as using the Keep, but that doesn't mean there would be no way to make it work.

[Doominike]

You couldn't import cross-platforms regardless though. Plus you can make a world state in a few minutes instead of doing 2 several hours playthroughs. The Keep is a pretty neat tool imo

[Catastrophy]

If you can't recall your decisions, they couldn't have been all that important to you so, why not just go with a default hero?

What? DEFAULT hero? Randomize is the way to go!

[ICevoL]

I don't think it's an engine thing because a save file is just a text file with a list of variables. The Witcher 2, for instance, allowed save imports and that was on a different engine than Witcher 1. Importing may not be as easy as using the Keep, but that doesn't mean there would be no way to make it work.

 

I've already clarified my (admittedly poorly worded) initial response more than once.  If you have arguments beyond my careless semantics in that initial post, then that's fine.  I've actually had to program interfaces between platforms to make a living -- importing "just a text file" (assuming that's all a save game entails) is not easy or cheap when all the factors of testing and multiple platforms are taken into account.  Having a single platform source (The Keep) to worry about simplifies (and therefore lowers cost) the process, rather than having something which needs to work for 5 platforms (PC / PS3 / PS4 / X-BOX 360 / X-BOX ONE).