Err… no. There is simply some infrastructure that is required in order for multiplayer to exist. It's not just a matter of inserting an extra player in there, you need some client/server communication going on to keep them in sync and working together. If it's not there, you can't have multiplayer or PW's period. Not sure if there's a difference between simply not having a feature and "preventing it on purpose" for someone like you, but there you go.Incidentally, we never said there wouldn't be an area editor. The assumption on the forums was that there would not be one because we didn't use tilesets. And, to be honest, we really didn't know back at that point if we were going to be able to present them with a way to do areas the same way we do or not so we really couldn't comment.

Even so, on the whole the toolset (and area editor) are quite powerful -- and much more flexible than NWN's editor. That said, what it adds in power it trades off in ease-of-use. We were able to leave a lot of the game open to modding, so hopefully with some support from us they're able to do a lot… not that it will ever match NWN/NWN2's editor capability, but considering that the toolsets for those projects were part of their entire purpose I'd be surprised if it did.

They generally claim it's the successor to BG, not NWN.

And in BG, single player was mostly something secondary… I tried it a couple of time and never got far in the game. Great & complex story doesnt fit well with MP and it's very difficult to have complete such a huge game with a group.

No big deal there for me.

Now that you explained bioware's reasoning to not include multiplayer in the spiritual successor of BG and NWN the difference seems crystal clear. :D

No, the assumption that there was no area editor was present because bioware kept talking only about the possibility to edit existing (DA) areas by placing objects and npcs and didn't mention the existance of an area editor. So all, logically, assumed there was no area editor. Tilesets don't have anything to do with this.

That's interesting. Can you elaborate a little about how it is more flexible?

Gaider would disagree…

I assume you mean multiplayer in BG ;)

Well, it certainly wasn't secondary to me back when I played it with 5 friends. Even if there were certain annoyances with MP implementation, we had a blast of a time.

I realise that they've backed away from what Dragon Age was ORIGINALLY supposed to be, but that doesn't change what they said back around the time it was announced - which is aaaaages ago. Around the time that KotOR was released.

I don't remember specifics, but it was definitely supposed to be a natural step forward in the vein of NWN.

right, which is why I was suggesting NWNX, SQL and 3rd party client system. It would be nigh difficult to keep sync issues perfect and timely as you said

ie: player (object) A moves to x,y,z at this speed, update to client - problem 1, how do you even capture that? I would think: poll for player object, poll for its previous state (running? attacking?), is it different from new state, change state, move player to new vector if necessary. Repeat ad nauseum.

This all assumes its a state machine and those states can be captured.

If a guy is 2 minutes ahead of you do to lag how does one handle that? NWN had it built in for objects following one another. If they got too far behind a trigger would jump them back to the leader.

Oblivion and even Fallout 2 both managed to get mods that allowed MP. I don't remember how Oblivion did it but FO2's basically shared an INI file that both games updated.

Regardless, nothing much came of those mods and in the case of FO2 I believe the game mechanics get in the way, like quests.

It does seem like it could be done but again it looks like a nightmare.

I noticed that first part. Years of Bio forums will teach anyone to look for what's not being promised ;). Glad to hear it will have an area editor now.

Not convincingly. My bailiwick is the conversation systems -- the other stuff I only have peripheral knowledge of. You'd be better served asking on the toolset forums for DA, if you're interested.

So why can't we pass multiple variables of our choice to/from a single conversation node? >:O :p (please don't waste your much valued community interacting time on this question - it's asked in the toolset forum too. This topic should be about your book and I'm grateful for all the reviews and comments so far)

Unfortunately, this can also be said of some of TDE novels. Unfortunately.


You cannot say that the writer is just bad or new to the genre : Because what most people don't even think of is an institution called Lectorate.

The Lectorate of any publisher play an important role - and in my point of view it's not the writer's fault if there are errors in it - at least not entirely - but the lectorate also must have been bad. Very bad, the worse the mistakes are.

So, don't damn anyone who is writing a book or call him a 14-year old writer. Always remind yourself that an lectorate also is there for correcting errors. If an lectorate doesn't see or/and doesn't correct errors, then it's just an bad lectorate. It's as simple as that.

We didn't need to, to be honest. That's something we'll probably add to the toolset in the future, for our use as well as the community's. There's bound to be numerous ease-of-use features that we figure out a way to squeeze in moving forward.

As it is, the ability to pass in a variable on the node was put into place as a step up in convenience from having to do everything in scripting (as we did in NWN).

But.. the error is there in the first place because the writer of the book made it. So if it slips through the lectoring you might learn something about the writer's grammatical skills. :)

I think you would be surprised just how bad some writers grammer really is. They are called editors in north america, at least that is what I think you mean by lectorate.

But if the book is released in a sorry grammatical state - and I'm not saying it is, as I haven't read it - exactly what signal does it send about the effort Bioware put into it?

Certainly, to me, it suggests that it's not something they really care about - and as such I would have to perceive it as a marketing ploy, no matter how much energy Gaider might have put into the story.

Also, it says something about their respect for their employees - because if you let some guy write an entire book for your product, at least put in the effort to have it released in a decent state.

But that's me.

So you're from the Codex.

No. The lectorate should have pointed him out that he made some actual mistakes.

You don't know how newspapers are written, don't you.

I assume you don't care about how editing literature of any kind works anyway.

You just want to have someone you can complain about.

No, I'm from my country, town, house.

Ok, you didn't underastand what I wrote there so I shall repeat hoping you'll understand this time.

If bad grammar/spelling slips through the editing it means: a) bad editing and b) writer with bad grammar/spelling.


You should learn how to use multi-quote instead of cluttering topics with your posts, it's really simple.

Thanks for the reply David.

Me,too. So you're my neighbour now ?



And you still refuse to understand what I meant.


No, I won't.

I'll do anything I want to and you will most certainly not hinder me from deciding what kind of writing style I use.

You're confused. I didn't say your country, town, house. The keyword was *my*. :)




Yeah, well, lets agree that we don't understand each other. :D


Ok, sorry. :petting: