Most of the content of Dragon Age Central has been developer posts to the official Dragon Age forums, first opened in May 2004. But all things must come to an end, and these forums were shut down on 2nd November 2009, the day before the game’s release in North America.
Since I haven’t had time to add much other content to the site for most of 2009, I’ve decided to also shut down Dragon Age Central as it was, leaving it here as an archive.
The new Dragon Age Central is now a much simpler (and fully automated) website dedicated to making developer posts to the new official forum (on Bioware’s social site) easier to find and search through.
It’s been interesting running this site, and in a way I’ll miss it... but hopefully I’ll be too busy finally playing the actual game to care :)
Dragon Age Central
Updated: Monday, 02 November 2009 02:07PM | Synced: 389187 mins ago
Forum posts were made by game developers. Please do not take posts out of context. While these individuals will have special insight into certain game-related questions, they are by no means the final authority. Please read the full topic and all its replies before forming an opinion. Remember, all things are subject to change.
-{ 2004 }-
Forum Post
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David Gaider ~ Lead Writer |
Thread: Dragon Age Licensing [+6]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 06:07PM
I... I think you just killed my soul. |
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Darcy Pajak ~ Associate Producer |
Thread: Dragon Age Licensing [+6]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 05:50PM
You didn't like my "Deekin and the Boss" Saturday morning cartoon idea did you? Come on. What would be more fun then a wise cracking Kobold, and his serious, but kind-harded boss solving mysteries with their dino-buddy? |
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David Gaider ~ Lead Writer |
Thread: Dragon Age Licensing [+6]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 05:35PM
Yeah, right. Like I'll have any energy left after this. |
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Darcy Pajak ~ Associate Producer |
Thread: Combat System Question [+5]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 05:34PM
Very true, and it all depends on how much you want to use your imagination to justify a rule, or how detailed you want to make the rules so they seem "realistic".
In the example you provided we could define basic human traits with a speed statistic, an accuracy statistic, strength, reflexes, arm reach, balance, stamina. But as the body doesn't act without the mind we could also include an intuition stat, to represent the player's ability to take in lots of information and make the right choice quickly. A wit stat that represents the player's quickness of mind. and other mental type characteristics. Then on top of all that they need skill as you say. So a very skilled, but slower, weaker, and dumber guy, could beat down a fast, strong, novice. |
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David Gaider ~ Lead Writer |
Thread: New languages? Ooooh ... [+0]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 05:27PM
We are quite serious about these languages not only having a serious place in our world but also in our game mechanic. If nothing else, it will add some logic to how things and people are named in our world aside from just pulling something "fantasy-ish" off the top of my head.
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Darcy Pajak ~ Associate Producer |
Thread: Dragon Age Licensing [+6]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 05:24PM
Anything is possible regarding original and creative IP. But it all depends on demand from the public. If people want books, toys, other types of video games, cars, t-shirts, posters, stuffed toys, lead figures, soundtracks, plates, water bottles, freezy pops, lunch boxes, juice, computer cases, saturday morning T.V. show (which we'll get Dave Gaider to write
 ), then we'll do it.
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David Gaider ~ Lead Writer |
Thread: first five [+0]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 05:22PM
I agree with much of what Grom has said, a few things I don't so much. Either way, without going into detail we have taken the opportunity to make some things about our world very different from the "generic fantasy norm" that some call D&D and its published campaign worlds. Why wouldn't we, after all?
We didn't make things different, however, just for the sake of making them different. I like what we've done (and am naturally biased) and also think we've made sure that every part of the background world is someplace that would be interesting to visit and adventure in. The setting and history accomodates our classes and system in a logical way and also sets up an interesting dynamic... overall, we strove to make it a place that we would really want to GM a group of players in. So we haven't gone the same old route, we've taken a few chances, but from the point of view that this is supposed to be both a place to game in as well as a place that inspires storytelling. The details will all come in the future, I think, but I thought you might be interested to know from which angle we approached our world creation. |
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Darcy Pajak ~ Associate Producer |
Thread: Combat System Question [+5]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 05:14PM
It depends on how basic you want the rules. If the only way to measure someone's natual potential in combat is with a "strenght" statistic, then you would have to infer that strength also means accuracy.
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Darcy Pajak ~ Associate Producer |
We're still figuring out how armor effects a person in combat. It's a huge balancing act that needs to consider many factors.
What chance does someone have to hit someone else? How much damage should they do? How much should armor protect someone, and should diffrent armor protect against diffrent types of attacks? What sort of cost to the player should be incured for armor? Gold, weight, speed. If armor is very protective then should a player have to develop skill in it? All these things are still being worked out between our technical designers, and QA. |
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Darcy Pajak ~ Associate Producer Categories: Quality:
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Thread: Combat System Question [+5]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 05:03PM
We're currently testing the rules system in a simulator. The idea is that speed, strength, and skill are the biggest factors in hitting, and damaging your opponent.
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Scott Greig ~ Project Director/Producer |
Thread: Singleplayer [+1]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 02:41AM
All of the nuts and bolts work will be done by the project team. That said, the live team is definitely involved in the planning and execution of the various features. |
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Scott Greig ~ Project Director/Producer |
Thread: Singleplayer [+1]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 02:27AM
Our goal from day one is to deliver the best single player experience that we can. My personal opinion is that Dragon Age will be our best single player game to date, but I am a little biased  You will just have to judge for yourself how well we do.
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David Gaider ~ Lead Writer |
Thread: So What is Trent Oster doing? [+0]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 02:03AM
He's doing something else.
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Scott Greig ~ Project Director/Producer |
Thread: Scripting Language [+0]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 01:59AM
Rule #2, is don't allow user created scripts to crash the game. We actually used Lua for MDK2. When we started NWN we decided to create our own scripting language because we wanted to protect the server as much as possible from runaway scripts. Of course this caused an entirely different set of problems.... |
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Scott Greig ~ Project Director/Producer |
Thread: species: open vs. closed [+3]
Date: Thursday, 20 May 2004 01:50AM
That was actually a misquote. I was present for that interview and what was said was something like: "The races in the game will be familiar to fans but will have some interesting features that will make them unique the the Dragon Age world." I can easily see how this was misinterpreted. Sorry about the confusion. |