143 réponses à ce sujet

[Elhanan]

In the film 'A Christmas Story', I remember all those list giving, screaming children going down the chute after being kicked by Santa. Why they come to mind, I dunno....

[Zanderat]

ladydesire wrote...

Zanderat wrote...

Firstly, what does compatibility testing have to do with
importying DLC items?

The item templates for the affected armors, swords, and rings are stored in an encrypted file, with toolset settings that mark them as usable only in the Single Player (Origins) campaign. Making those either Core Game Resources (what Bioware did for Return to Ostagar) or making new item-only DLCs (like Bregan's Bow) that have two versions (one for Awakening, since the existing versions already work in Origins) require that the new or altered content be tested before Microsoft or Sony would allow them to be distributed. 

Secondly, you are right.  "all that needs to happen is them
doing it".   Given how long DA:A has been out, what do you
believe the odds of that happening?

They could have them done, but be holding them until the patch is ready to be sent for testing by the console makers, which makes sense to me; yes, I do have most of the affected DLC items, but I didn't feel that having the items took priority over bug fixes.

Thirdly, LITERALLY no other expansion (as opposed to a true
stand alone sequel) that I have played, has had this issue. 
For example, Shivering Isles allowed you to freely go back and
forth and keep both your items from, say, KOTN and SI with no
issues.

Blame the PC modding community then, because the system that Bioware used to add content is something we've asked for since probably the second or third year that Nevewinter Nights was out so we wouldn't have to be constantly editing game files every time Bioware released a patch for the game we were modding.

Well, you blame the pc modding community.  From your response, it sounds like we should blame the consoles.  But what's the point?  It comes down to lazy programming on Bioware's part, either way.

I am curious about the modding aspect, though.  I am most familiar wit the TES system.  With that game engine, version is immaterial, except for scripting.  The game will recognize resources, as long as they are in correct format and listed in the plugin.  Why does the game version, even matter?  In my previous example, Shivering Isle was the expansion to Oblivion and Knights of the Nine was one of their offiicial DLC's.  You could  use a weapon found in KOTN in SI.  DA:A should be able to do this.

Modifié par Zanderat, 27 juin 2010 - 08:18 .

[ladydesire]

Zanderat wrote...

I am curious about the modding aspect, though.  I am most familiar wit the TES system.  With that game engine, version is immaterial, except for scripting.  The game will recognize resources, as long as they are in correct format.  Why does the game version, even matter?

With prior versions of Bioware games, scripts and 2da files (a spreadsheet that the game engine reads for certain data) were the main things that could change when the game was patched, or an expansion was released. Dragon Age introduced a change to how 2da files work, which means that modders no longer have to directly edit any files that Bioware may have changed. So, in essence, only scripts that Bioware may have changed directly affect modders. What is significantly different is that game resources can exist in multiple scopes; Core Game Resources (files which are useable by any module created in the Dragon Age toolset) and module resources (which are only used in the module they are created in). There are currently three types of module resources; Single Player, Awakening, and player module/DLC. Single Player module resources are the resources created for Origins, Awakening resources are for the AWakening expansion and player modules are just that. DLC are player modules that happen to be created by Bioware; these are encrypted before distribution. There is more to how things work, but basically what happened with the earliest DLCs is that they "extend" the Single Player module, and the resources are owned by the module, which means they are only visible to Origins. I can go into more detail in a PM, if you want me to.

[Zanderat]

Wow, talk about being needlessly complex. The earlier version is basically how the plugin system works for TES/FO3. ANY additional content (including player created content, and up to and including offical dlc and expansions) is treated the same. Much more elegant approach in my opinion, not to mention that compatibility is much less of an issue.

Which brings us back to the issue at hand. There is no need for this bug (feature) to even exist. Makes me think that this is some sort of bad design decision.

Modifié par Zanderat, 28 juin 2010 - 12:29 .

[ladydesire]

Zanderat wrote...

Wow, talk about being needlessly complex. The earlier version
is basically how the plugin system works for TES/FO3. ANY
additional content (including player created content, and up
to and including offical dlc and expansions) is treated the
same. Much more elegant approach in my opinion, not to
mention that compatibility is much less of an issue.

Modding Oblivion or Fallout 3 has always been about adding to the Official Campaign, since there has never been any other option. The same is true of Morrowwind. Modding in Neverwinter Nights was exactly the opposite; the very design of the game discouraged modding it, and encouraged creating stand-alone modules; if you modded any of the official campaigns, you couldn't patch the game. Dragon Age allows both, while striving to keep campaign extentions from negatively affecting stand-alone modules.

Which brings us back to the issue at hand. There is no need
for this bug (feature) to even exist. Makes me think that this
is some sort of bad design decision.

As I pointed out above, there is a need, since very often a modder alters thing in a specific way for his stand-alone campaign that will break if other content is allowed to affect it. This also allows content to integrate into official content without interfering with updating the game and forcing modder to release a massive update just to remain compatible.

[Zanderat]

ladydesire wrote...

Zanderat wrote...

Wow, talk about being needlessly complex. The earlier version
is basically how the plugin system works for TES/FO3. ANY
additional content (including player created content, and up
to and including offical dlc and expansions) is treated the
same. Much more elegant approach in my opinion, not to
mention that compatibility is much less of an issue.

Modding Oblivion or Fallout 3 has always been about adding to the Official Campaign, since there has never been any other option. The same is true of Morrowwind. Modding in Neverwinter Nights was exactly the opposite; the very design of the game discouraged modding it, and encouraged creating stand-alone modules; if you modded any of the official campaigns, you couldn't patch the game. Dragon Age allows both, while striving to keep campaign extentions from negatively affecting stand-alone modules.

Which brings us back to the issue at hand. There is no need
for this bug (feature) to even exist. Makes me think that this
is some sort of bad design decision.

As I pointed out above, there is a need, since very often a modder alters thing in a specific way for his stand-alone campaign that will break if other content is allowed to affect it. This also allows content to integrate into official content without interfering with updating the game and forcing modder to release a massive update just to remain compatible.

I think that it comes down to the fact that Bethesda thought about mods and how to allow from the get go, whereas Bioware seems to not particularly want their game to be modified. 

Btw, there are plently of stand alone quests/TC's for MW/OB/FO3.  Bethie's approach does not nullify that option.  Neither one is superior.  But I now understand the issue.  Of course, it also means that I now know how to fix it. 

Stay tuned.  

Modifié par Zanderat, 28 juin 2010 - 02:33 .

[ladydesire]

Zanderat wrote...

ladydesire wrote...

Zanderat wrote...

Wow, talk about being needlessly complex. The earlier version
is basically how the plugin system works for TES/FO3. ANY
additional content (including player created content, and up
to and including offical dlc and expansions) is treated the
same. Much more elegant approach in my opinion, not to
mention that compatibility is much less of an issue.

Modding Oblivion or Fallout 3 has always been about adding
to the Official Campaign, since there has never been any other
option. The same is true of Morrowwind. Modding in
Neverwinter Nights was exactly the opposite; the very design
of the game discouraged modding it, and encouraged creating
stand-alone modules; if you modded any of the official
campaigns, you couldn't patch the game. Dragon Age allows
both, while striving to keep campaign extentions from
negatively affecting stand-alone modules.

Which brings us back to the issue at hand. There is no
need
for this bug (feature) to even exist. Makes me think that this
is some sort of bad design decision.

As I pointed out above, there is a need, since very often a
modder alters thing in a specific way for his stand-alone
campaign that will break if other content is allowed to affect
it. This also allows content to integrate into official content
without interfering with updating the game and forcing
modder to release a massive update just to remain
compatible.

I think that it comes down to the fact that
Bethesda thought about mods and how to allow from the get
go, whereas Bioware seems to not particularly want their
game to be modified. 

Mods to the Official Campaigns weren't the goal of Neverwinter Nights development; Bioware likely wanted players to be able to use the game engine to tell stories without having to go the Total Conversion route. Dragon Age represents a change in focus from solely external playable modules to allowing player content to work in the story that Bioware is telling.

Btw, there are plently of stand alone quests/TC's for MW/OB/
FO3.  Bethie's approach does not nullify that option.  Neither
one is superior.  But I now understand the issue.  Of course, it
also means that I now know how to fix it. 


Stay tuned.  

Okay; I personally don't care for total conversions or totally unrelated content that gets dropped in the world, but I can understand how some used to that would be baffled by a game that doesn't work as expected.

[Darth Mikkon]

You can get a copy of Cailin's armor from the DA Nexus and install it as 'unofficial DLC'.

[AjaxDuo]

I got awakening today on xbox 360 and imported my human noble who had warden commander armor on, but im naked and it won't let me equip any sort of armor apart from helmets. After 20 minutes i got bored of slaughtering darkspawn in just my panties D:

[Relshar]

Ferret A Baudoin wrote...

The Power of Blood abilities do carry forward into Awakening. We just answered that in a Q&A yesterday.

If you mean the abilities from Wardens Keep. No they dont work, all you get is the animation but no actual effects.

[Maedryc]

Elhanan wrote...

Let me get this correct; we should have been informed that DLC crafted and released prior to a later exansion would not work in that expansion? Not asking for much, are we? I would also liked to have known my wife was leaving me before I got married, who plays in the next Superbowl, and a few other like precognative events of worth. But I shall not bank on it occuring.any time soon.
Unless you actually believe Bioware decided to make DAA with the intended purpose of excluding prior DLC, you appear to be on rather thin ice.

 According to Bioware, they started working on Awakening more than 1 year ago. Soldier's Peak came out in october/november IIRC.
Awakening is, obviously, compatible with DA:O, after all, and Soldier's Peak was released after DA:O; this means that they had at least 6 months to address any compatibility issues that might arise, compatibility issues that, I'd add, took the modding community a few days/weeks to solve.
So, no, I don't feel like I'm asking for much, not at all: as I'm sure you realize, your examples are mostly strawman arguments, because their premises are pretty different from the case in point ( namely, Bioware has far more insight about what it's going to release in the forthcoming 6-12 months than your wife about how her feelings might change in the future, and I'm not even going to address the football example because, really, it's not really fitting in this case).
And no, I don't think it was an intended purpose. It was just a bad call, mixed with lazy programming.
Those are faults nonetheless, you know.

Modifié par Maedryc, 29 juin 2010 - 10:06 .

[ladydesire]

Maedryc wrote...

Elhanan wrote...

Let me get this correct; we should have been informed that DLC crafted and released prior to a later exansion would not work in that expansion? Not asking for much, are we? I would also liked to have known my wife was leaving me before I got married, who plays in the next Superbowl, and a few other like precognative events of worth. But I shall not bank on it occuring.any time soon.
Unless you actually believe Bioware decided to make DAA with the intended purpose of excluding prior DLC, you appear to be on rather thin ice.

 According to Bioware, they started working on Awakening more than 1 year ago. Soldier's Peak came out in october/november IIRC.
Awakening is, obviously, compatible with DA:O, after all, and Soldier's Peak was released after DA:O; this means that they had at least 6 months to address any compatibility issues that might arise, compatibility issues that, I'd add, took the modding community a few days/weeks to solve.

Compatible with the core resources of Dragon Age: Origins, yes; DLC items are not core game resources like they are in sandbox games like Fallout 3 or TES: Oblivion, since Awakening isn't an expansion in the sense of the Shivering Ilses was for Oblivion. Bioware game expansions (at least the ones for Neverwinter Nights) were stand alone campaigns that share resources with the base game and built on it; Dragon Age does share core resources with Awakening, but things that are specific to each campaign are not shared. The DLC items in the earliest DLCs are usable in Origins because the DLCs extend the Origins campaign (Single Player in the DA toolset); if they were set as Core Game Resources, they would transfer easily, I believe one reason that Return to Ostagar was delayed was that they wanted to fix the issue that they had discovered with DLC items not transferring for at least one DLC. That subsequent DLC items have been released in Origins and Awakening versions seems to indicate that they know a way to make the other items transfer without having to have the entire original DLCs retested.

So, no, I don't feel like I'm asking for much, not at all: as I'm sure you realize, your examples are mostly strawman arguments, because their premises are pretty different from the case in point ( namely, Bioware has far more insight about what it's going to release in the forthcoming 6-12 months than your wife about how her feelings might change in the future, and I'm not even going to address the football example because, really, it's not really fitting in this case).
And no, I don't think it was an intended purpose. It was just a bad call, mixed with lazy programming.
Those are faults nonetheless, you know.

I'd prefer to think that Bioware felt getting the bugs in Origins and Awakening fixed took priority over fixing the DLC items, even if it seemed to many players that Bioware was ignoring the bugs in favor of creating more DLC.

[Maedryc]

ladydesire wrote...

Maedryc wrote...

Elhanan wrote...

Let me get this correct; we should have been informed that DLC crafted and released prior to a later exansion would not work in that expansion? Not asking for much, are we? I would also liked to have known my wife was leaving me before I got married, who plays in the next Superbowl, and a few other like precognative events of worth. But I shall not bank on it occuring.any time soon.
Unless you actually believe Bioware decided to make DAA with the intended purpose of excluding prior DLC, you appear to be on rather thin ice.

 According to Bioware, they started working on Awakening more than 1 year ago. Soldier's Peak came out in october/november IIRC.
Awakening is, obviously, compatible with DA:O, after all, and Soldier's Peak was released after DA:O; this means that they had at least 6 months to address any compatibility issues that might arise, compatibility issues that, I'd add, took the modding community a few days/weeks to solve.

Compatible with the core resources of Dragon Age: Origins, yes; DLC items are not core game resources like they are in sandbox games like Fallout 3 or TES: Oblivion, since Awakening isn't an expansion in the sense of the Shivering Ilses was for Oblivion. Bioware game expansions (at least the ones for Neverwinter Nights) were stand alone campaigns that share resources with the base game and built on it; Dragon Age does share core resources with Awakening, but things that are specific to each campaign are not shared. The DLC items in the earliest DLCs are usable in Origins because the DLCs extend the Origins campaign (Single Player in the DA toolset); if they were set as Core Game Resources, they would transfer easily, I believe one reason that Return to Ostagar was delayed was that they wanted to fix the issue that they had discovered with DLC items not transferring for at least one DLC. That subsequent DLC items have been released in Origins and Awakening versions seems to indicate that they know a way to make the other items transfer without having to have the entire original DLCs retested.

This doesn't change the fact that community modders fixed the problem easily. So, unless you're saying that community modders are better programmers than Bioware professionals, I'm afraid that this kind of argument doesn't hold much water.
The reason why RtO was delayed is entirely speculation on your part, and the fact that the items from RtO were compatible with Awakening  was brought up after it was released for PC, but before it was released for the consoles, and with suspect timing ( IOW: after the ****ing about the non-portability of DLC items had started, and when they realized that unless they made RtO compatible the console sales for the DLC would have taken a huge hit ).

So, no, I don't feel like I'm asking for much, not at all: as I'm sure you realize, your examples are mostly strawman arguments, because their premises are pretty different from the case in point ( namely, Bioware has far more insight about what it's going to release in the forthcoming 6-12 months than your wife about how her feelings might change in the future, and I'm not even going to address the football example because, really, it's not really fitting in this case).
And no, I don't think it was an intended purpose. It was just a bad call, mixed with lazy programming.
Those are faults nonetheless, you know.

I'd prefer to think that Bioware felt getting the bugs in Origins and Awakening fixed took priority over fixing the DLC items, even if it seemed to many players that Bioware was ignoring the bugs in favor of creating more DLC.

I'd prefer that they fixed the bugs in the original game rather than releasing more DLC as well, but that shouldn't be an issue, because AFAIK, the DLC team is not the team working on the patches.
On the other hand, invalidating the official content people purchased for the original game in an official expansion is a dumb idea no matter how you look at it, and should be high on their priority list, because DLCs aren't free: we've paid for the game and we paid for the DLC. It's not an "either-or" situation: both should be fixed.

Modifié par Maedryc, 29 juin 2010 - 11:05 .

[ladydesire]

Maedryc wrote...

This doesn't change the fact that community modders fixed the problem easily. So, unless you're saying that community modders are better programmers than Bioware professionals, I'm afraid that this kind of argument doesn't hold much water.

Considering that community modders did not fix it but rather found a way to "override" the default settings to make it work on one supported platform, it's of no use to the players on PS3 or Xbox 360. We do not have access to the DLC items in our toolset so only Bioware can fix it properl.

[Maedryc]

ladydesire wrote...

Maedryc wrote...

This doesn't change the fact that community modders fixed the problem easily. So, unless you're saying that community modders are better programmers than Bioware professionals, I'm afraid that this kind of argument doesn't hold much water.

Considering that community modders did not fix it but rather found a way to "override" the default settings to make it work on one supported platform, it's of no use to the players on PS3 or Xbox 360. We do not have access to the DLC items in our toolset so only Bioware can fix it properl.

Yes, but the point that it only works on one supported platform doesn't change the fact that, for good or for ill, it works. Furthermore, it's a somewhat moot point considering that console users can't use mods anyway, and that Bioware wouldn't probably need to use the toolset to create a similar workaround and address the problem in a patch.
It's not like it's harder for them because they have more tools at their disposal!

Modifié par Maedryc, 29 juin 2010 - 11:37 .

[ladydesire]

Maedryc wrote...

Yes, but the point that it only works on one supported platform doesn't change the fact that, for good or for ill, it works. Furthermore, it's a somewhat moot point considering that console users can't use mods anyway, and that Bioware wouldn't probably need to use the toolset to create a similar workaround and address the problem in a patch.
It's not like it's harder for them because they have more tools at their disposal!

Actually, anything they do to fix it has to be done in the toolset.

[Wicked 702]

Just clearing up one misconception here....

RtO was delayed because the patch that was released with it locked specializations on the 360. The early release was a goof by Microsoft (or a targeted ploy, we'll never know). There is no speculation on this issue. THAT WAS THE REASON.

In fact, those people who managed to grab it from Xbox live before it was yanked DID NOT have to re-download it once the "real" release occurred. The two releases were identical. There was even great discourse by the PC community, asking why Bioware was holding back their release even though it was only the console versions affected, while knowing full well that there were no technical problems with RtO.

There, now you have the facts.

[ladydesire]

Wicked 702 wrote...

Just clearing up one misconception here....
RtO was delayed because the patch that was released with it
locked specializations on the 360. The early release was a
goof by Microsoft (or a targeted ploy, we'll never know). There
is no speculation on this issue. THAT WAS THE REASON.
In fact, those people who managed to grab it from Xbox live
before it was yanked DID NOT have to re-download it once the
"real" release occurred. The two releases were identical.
There was even great discourse by the PC community, asking
why Bioware was holding back their release even though it
was only the console versions affected, while knowing full well
that there were no technical problems with RtO.
There, now you have the facts.

Wasn't there a prior delay where Bioware pulled it due to "a problem that affected all platforms"? This, if I'm remembering correctly, is what leads me to believe that they discovered that the DLC items weren't transferring when they should have been and fixed the problem in RtO.

[Wicked 702]

Those were the locked specializations... That was the "problem" with all platforms.

To be honest, this is probably the one issue I can actually consider myself an expert in. This was the exact reason I joined these forums so I pretty much have firsthand knowledge of all this junk. I followed it diligently for weeks.

Edit: Though you may be correct. I believe it was scheduled for release on Jan. 5th but they held it back for a couple weeks. If that is what you're referring to then I'm sorry to have confused the matter. I wasn't around for that one really.

Modifié par Wicked 702, 30 juin 2010 - 01:22 .