Obsidian Entertainment - Feargus: We Are Doing Fine

Avantenor said:

As I understand, NWN tech was based on Infinity tech and KotOR was based on NWN tech, the same as Dragon Age. All of them use different kind of rulesets. So that can't be the problem.

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KotOR was based on the Infinity engine, yeah, but that doesn't mean it was trivial to adapt the Star Wars D20 rules.

Dragon Age is based on an entirely new engine, or so I've heard, and they have the luxury of making up their own rules. That's always a lot easier in terms of code workload, than having to convert pen and paper rules to a computer system.

Converting NWN2 to 4th edition rules would represent a GARGANTUAN undertaking, since every single skill, feat, spell, class, race, and so forth would have to be redesigned - and retested.

Basically, it'd be like making a new game.

NWN to NWN2 - the rulesystem part - was probably significantly less hard, because 3.0 and 3.5 are quite similar in most ways, but it was still a huge task - I have no doubt.

Baldur's Gate was based on AD&D, must have also been a lot of work to upgrade it to D&D 3.0 ruleset. Can't imagine that this really could be such a serious problem.

Dragon Age was originally developed with the NWN toolset. Meanwhile they made a new one, but as I understood it's not that far from Aurora. All BioWare games share a common basis.

my condolences Micheal Dean. ion storm will always have a special place in my heart. i guess i was confusing it with where tom hall and harvey smith brief tenure at midway after ion storm.

Avantenor said:

Baldur's Gate was based on AD&D, must have also been a lot of work to upgrade it to D&D 3.0 ruleset. Can't imagine that this really could be such a serious problem.

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I'm not sure I understand?

Baldur's Gate was never upgraded to 3.0.

Icewind Dale 2 used a bastardized and completely unfaithful version of the 3.0 rules - but that's another story.

But yes, it really would be a serious problem.

Dragon Age was originally developed with the NWN toolset. Meanwhile they made a new one, but as I understood it's not that far from Aurora. All BioWare games share a common basis.

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There's a big difference between the rendering engine and the code that controls the rulesystem, combat system, and the database holding all the information needed for every aspect of these systems. It seems to me you have no idea what kind of task it is change the rules so fundamentally as would be required for a 4th edition upgrade.

Sure, it's doable, but it would take so much work that they might as well make a new game from scratch.

Brother None said:

Heh. His introduction at the old Fallout 2 launch party always makes me chuckle. Buncha geeks.

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I never knew David Mitchell had an alter-ego!

Avantenor, yes, elements can be kept over and re-used but they are mostly on the tools side of things, not the engine. The engine mechanics were quite overhauled between infinity engine and aurora, and again between aurora and whatever the dragon age engine is called. They might still use Bioware's preferred data formatting rules (and files), but many elements in what they actually do with the data are fixed as part of the core engine. Witness the difficulties Obsidian had (and are still having) when implement class features even in a 3.5ed game - despite the fact they were able to write their own graphics engine.

For 4th ed D&D I don't even know if it'd be possible to take the (in my estimation) non-rules based engine that DA uses - sure the flexibility is there compared to other bioware engines, but will it be efficient enough when forced back into emulating table top rules again? Probably, but a lot of work - and that's assuming EA will license it to a competitor.

Emulating tabletop rules is extremely light computation-wise. Has to be, since you can't do a lot of computing in tabletop gaming -- simple arithmetic is all you can use.

IOW, if the game engine has a modularized "rules engine," as I'm fairly certain it must have, I can't see how it would impose any technical limitations on the ruleset used in it. (Where do you get the idea that DA is "non-rules based," and what do you even mean by that?)

But implementing and balancing the whole shebang is bound to be a lot of work, no matter what game engine you use.

Prime Junta said:

Emulating tabletop rules is extremely light computation-wise. Has to be, since you can't do a lot of computing in tabletop gaming -- simple arithmetic is all you can use.

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Not entirely true. For the very same reason, most tabletop games rely on the GM to make quick decisions, while the ones that built tables/rules for everything often fails. When building a computer game such decisions have to be made by the computer.

I doubt implementing a complete ruleset is the hard thing for developers, but developing a completely new ruleset and world-setting (which you don't need a computer for) like for DA I recon is much harder. Dialog-trees and scripting events might be much harder in comparison also.

Actually an engine (ruleset) can be quite difficult because the rest of the game relies on that ruleset...all the checks and balances have to work correctly...alot of times these get refined over time. Usually they get better. Hopefully.