To all waiting for NWN II Biowares Dragon Age

[SpiritWarrior]

Originally posted by T-D-C: Same I am really looking forward to DA more than NWN 2. After the way Obsidian bombed KOTOR2 I don't have much faith in them to do NWN2 right.

I'm not holding my breath either. All I can see is a graphical upgrade really. The engine is the same obsolete one too. It's more like a patch for NWN's 1 IMHO. I think i'll give it a miss and grab Oblivion.

[lost prophet]

the screenshots fr DA have been on www.gamebanshee.com for a couple of months now. I used some of them for a computing project i had to do in about July i think. I like the look of it and hope you can participate in that massive battle under the bridge!.

[Mozenwrathe]

NWN II vs. Dragon Age...
my questions are simply this:

will it be possible to successfully port modules created from NWN into NWN II like they seem to be insisting, and...

will Dragon Age actually be playable on the PC? After all the hype about Jade Empire, it only showed up for the XBox - a huge slap in the face for those of us who cannot (or will not) purchase an XBox just to play two or three games on mild occasion. Fable ended up finally being released on PC about one or two years after its (successful) release on the XBox. So I want to see if Microsoft's sticky and huge fingers will keep a stranglehold on Dragon Age in the same fashion as they did Fable and Jade Empire. (sure, two different companies made the games, but the end result to me was the same - no Fable, no Jade Empire).

[vesselle]

Originally posted by Mozenwrathe: NWN II vs. Dragon Age... my questions are simply this: will it be possible to successfully port modules created from NWN into NWN II like they seem to be insisting, and...

very doubtful. obsidian has literally gutted the aurora engine and rebuilt it from the ground up.

V***V

[Link]

Originally posted by Sir Goulum: Dragon Age is completely different and seperate from NWN2 though. DA is based on the same world as Jade Empire while NWN2 uses forgotten realms.

Since when is Dragon Age based on the Jade Empire world?

[vesselle]

i'm quoting from the bioware nwn2 graphics & art forum, with a thread compiled by Mr. Guybrush that includes just about everything obsidian has confirmed or denied about the art, graphics and world of nwn2.

link to thread:
http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums...15659&forum=99

[img]smile.gif[/img]
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Ok, after 2 hours of collecting quotes i have this new topic. I will keep it updated with new developer quotes, but this topic will give everyone a quick reference point for quoting and showing to new members. If i've missed anything out, post and i'll edit the post. Can we keep this information related to just the Art/Graphics forum please. I hope the developers won't mind, i'm sure they get bored answering the same questions over and over again

Confirmed Details:


* DDS as the image format of choice
* 'cartoony' graphics axed
* Adjustable lighting engine, allowing pitch black areas if wanted
* Brand new Graphics Engine
* New Lighting, Shadow Engine
* Inclusion of Normal and Parallax mapping


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Quotation Order

q01. 2d/3d Portraits
q02. A Continuous-world
q03. Camera Angles
q04. Cloth Simulation
q05. Creature Customisation
q06. DirectX 9.0c
q07. Dynamic Lights and Shader Effects
q08. Face Generator
q09. First Person
q10. Foilage
q11. Helms
q12. Instancing
q13. Lighting Engine
q14. Normal/Parallax Mapping
q15. Polycount
q16. Screenshots
q17. Sneaking Movement
q18. Tilesets
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q01. 2d/3d Portraits

Quote: Posted:07 February 2005 by David Espinoza:Artist

I don't think its a matter if 2d or 3d is better, for that is all in the eyes of the beholder (pun).

I just believe with the many diverse possibilites the player will be presented with in terms of creating their own character, why just limit youself to a set of 30 images that may or may not have any likeness to your character at all?

First an formost, I am an original 2d guy and I think am more for 2d than 3d.

But to be able to use an actual shot of your 3d character, that fully looks and IS your character in everyway I think is a step closer in giving the player a more interactive step into the world of NWN2.

And I am sure you guys are all aware of Normal Mapping technology. Trust me, the models in this game are leaps and bound ahead of the past NWN, making for more than just "blocky" representations...

...but 2d still kicks nuts

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q02. A Continuous-world

Quote: Posted:01 February 2005 by Erik Novales: Programmer

A continuous world is not going to happen. That would literally require rewriting the game from the ground up, which is not in the cards. Continuous-world gameplay is not a trivial undertaking.

Here's a great article that I linked before, on the Obsidian boards, detailing some of the challenges in making a continuous world game (Dungeon Siege).

link to DS site:
http://www.drizzle.com/~scottb/gdc/continuous-world.htm
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q03. Camera Angles

Quote: Posted:17 February 2005 by Frank Kowalkowski: Lead Programmer

The game is being designed with the isometric camera view as a priority. Encounters, levels, artwork will all be prioritized to work best from that angle (zoomed in or out).

That said, we don't plan to remove any angles from the original game and the cutscene cameras will be placeable at whatever angle you want.

That's pretty much all I have to say about that.

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q04. Cloth Simulation

Quote: Posted:24 January 2005 by Frank Kowalkowski: Lead Programmer
Cloth simulation has its issues. We are getting to the point where it is viable in a game like NWN, but I don't think we are there yet. That's not to say we can't hand animate a cloak or skirt ala a game like World of Warcraft.

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Quote: Posted:19 February 2005 by Adam Brennecke: Lead Programmer

Cloth simulation is something that we are looking at, and the dangly mesh stuff is not used anymore. Also, Cloth simulation is done on the client side only, and has nothing to do with how beefy the server is.

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q05. Creature Customisation

Quote: Posted:24 January 2005 by Frank Kowalkowski: Lead Programmer

We have plans to take care of the clone wars. We've already demo'd a handful of similar creatures all decked out in creature specific armor, but with a variety of combinations. The effect is subtle, but it looks very nice. We're looking into some shader effects for further generating uniqueness in creatures.

Scaling creature size is already in the game. We will definately be putting some constraints on the resize though, this is mostly because animations start looking a little strange as you scale further away from the creature's intended size.

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q06. DirectX 9.0c

Quote: Posted:20 January 2005 by D. Lawson: Programmer Tough Pants

NWN2 is 100% DirectX 9.0c.

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q07. Dynamic Lights and Shader Effects

Quote: Posted:15 February 2005 by D. Lawson: Programmer Tough Pants

To address all of your guys' concerns etc...I will say this. Almost everything you guys have mentioned in this thread is being addressed. Without saying too much, I can say that there's new support for fully dynamic lights (several kinds). I'm currently in the middle of writing a brand new shadowing system. With the new tool set, you can place a torch sconce on a wall and whether or not you chose to "place" a light on/in that sconce will be up to you. If there's a light there, then expect light to be cast within the scene. If there's no light, then expect the usual...darkness.

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q08. Face Generator

Quote: Posted:20 January 2005 by Frank Kowalkowski: Lead Programmer

We've looked into this technology and will continue to look into it, but there are some limitations to what it can provide us at this time. We've spoken with the middle-ware providers of the face-gen stuff and haven't gotten a solution to our problem worked out yet. We'll continue to explore this option, but as of right now, we have some other options available to us that will greatly increase character variety.

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q09. First Person

Quote: Posted:09 February 2005 by Frank Kowalkowski: Lead Programmer

There will be no first-person. We have some pretty good reasons not to do first-person that will become apparent over time.

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q10. Foliage

Quote: Posted:18 February 2005 by Frank Kowalkowski: Lead Programmer

We have big, bushy trees that sway in real-time according to the wind (not a canned animation).

We will not add a FP only cam.

There will be foliage.

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q11. Helms

Quote: Posted:20 January 2005 by Frank Kowalkowski: Lead Programmer

Open faced helms are a go.

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q12. Instancing

Quote: Posted:04 February 2005 by D. Lawson: Programmer Tough Pants

Instancing allows you to render the same object in various locations in the world at the same time without the overhead of having to unique copies of the model loaded into memory for each instance. All objects refer back to only one set of physical geometry, etc in memory. It's fairly involved on the technical side regarding making it happen, but you see the point in terms of memory savings, etc that can be achieved.

Aside from the memory footprint savings, you can send batches of like instances to the rendering hardware in a single shot and only incur the overhead associated with a single draw call rather than one draw call for each instance. Although, that's getting pretty technical.

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q13. Lighting Engine

Quote: Posted:28 February 2005 by D. Lawson: Programmer Tough Pants

The lighting engine has been completely rewritten from scratch. The scene lighting will be as customize-able as you want it. I've already aluded to the fact that lighting will be 100% under the control of the module builder.

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q14. Normal/Parallax Mapping

Quote: Posted:22 January 2005 by D. Lawson: Programmer Tough Pants

Well, when all is said...you can get quite a bit of mileage out of two polys with normal mapping and parallax mapping. With that being said, there's no reason to over-do anything that's going to be taking advantage of those kinds of features.

Of course after only 5 months of programming a new engine we're not going to release any numbers as to what can be expected. Something of this magnitude really boils down to itteration. I think the only given, is that the poly counts will be higher than the first game. But even then, that's not necessarily a "requirement" for the very reasons listed above.

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q15. Polycount

Quote: Posted:24 January 2005 by Frank Kowalkowski: Lead Programmer

You're likely to see smaller meshes than 3000 polys for most non-PCs. Much of the lighting detail will come from normal mapping. We're looking at 'what looks good' right now with respect to the diffuse and normal map resolutions.

Keep in mind, that while we will be loading 2x the textures (or more...) than NWN1, in some cases we can use lower resolution textures and look much better because of shader technology. NWN1 also had to support some very low VRAM requirements, much lower than the min spec for NWN2 will be.

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q16. Screenshots

Quote: Posted:08 February 2005 by D. Lawson: Programmer Tough Pants

We want to show some shots just as bad as you guys want to see them. It's not up to us, but we're pushing for something pre-E3 if that helps. Although at this point, E3 is really not that far away. But hey, we'll all take what we can get...right?

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q17. Sneaking Movement

Quote: Posted:18 Jan 2005 by Frank Kowalkowski: Lead Programmer

We have internally demo'd a character 'sneaking' in game, using a distinct animation. It's really an issue of animating the sneak across multiple skeletons. There's a good chance we can work this in, but no garauntees (which you'll hear me say a lot).

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q18. Tilesets

Quote: Posted:19 January 2005 by Frank Kowalkowski: Lead Programmer

If all we were doing was switching to 3.5 rules, you'd be playing NWN2 by now. The technology upgrade will be significant--there will be no original rendering or animation code in the game.

What 'Tilesets' are used is still being discussed.

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all i did was copy/paste it. [img]smile.gif[/img]

V***V

[robertthebard]

Nice...Thanks. I'm gonna send the guy that builds the other server I play over here to have a look. He's been asking me a lot about these things.