Shattered War exclusions

I'm taking a bit of a different approach for today's blog about The Shattered War. Recently I've been covering things that I've included and the decisions I've made. Thanks to a suggestion from a friend, today's post is going to cover things that didn't make the cut.  That's right, I'm going to be talking about things I decided not to include and why.

Companion Abilities
The plan here was to make some custom abilities for each companion that would set them apart from the regular warriors, rogues and mages. Not only that, but these abilities would vary in their effectiveness and strength based upon the player's interaction with them. Take Fialeth, the elven rogue, who prefers to fight with a dual-wield style. If the player encouraged her to pursue an aggressive or angry method to resolve her issue, then the ability would cause her to inflict more damage. Alternatively, a player pursuing a path of reconciliation would provide Fialeth with the ability to avoid damage.


Gifts
I was never a huge fan of the gift system in Dragon Age: Origins. It felt a little clunky most of the time, and felt like a means to smooth over relations with characters whom you fundamentally disagreed with. On the whole I felt the rivalry system introduced in Dragon Age 2 was a lot better, another design choice led by Alpha Protocol.

The friendship/rivalry system was one of the improvements of DA2

In sort of a combination of the above two issues, I am looking to implement small bonuses to attributes (just like DA:O did) but to give different bonuses based on whether the companions like or dislike you. Of course, the bonuses provided will be to different attributes based on the companion and how they feel about you.

Custom Models
Basically, I don't have the necessary modelling skills, and I don't know the process for including new models. In addition, it would be vital the new models follow the same sort of artistic style present in the original game, as I wouldn't want something that feels out of place with existing content.

No Area Reuse
There will be some areas that will be reused from Origins within the game. In virtually all cases I'll make some modifications so that they're not immediately recognisable from the original game, and there will only be a few areas that I'll appropriate as part of the adventure. I'm also limiting this exclusively to interior areas; my ability to create interiors is not as high working with exterior/landscape levels, so I've focused more on my strengths. This helps reduce my workload and enable me to get the mod released earlier.

When you're outside, expect completely new terrain

Minor Characters & Ambient Consequences
One initial plan for The Shattered War was to have a large number of "ambient consequences". This involved having a significant cast of "ambient" characters in the adventure - NPCs that either only speak in barkstrings (ie one-line conversations that do not go into letterbox format) upon the player interacting with them, or simply holding background banter as the player passes.

The concept was that the player would make many minor decisions throughout the adventure or perform with varying degrees of success in battle, and these would be reflected in these "background" conversations.  For example, one sidequest may see the player placing poison to kill off dangerous and aggressive wildlife. This would subsequently result in the player overhearing a conversation between people where a Mabari had died. Alternatively, if the player didn't carry out, the people would comment on how the region was unsafe. Another example is where the player fights alongside allies - their survival (or not) would be reflected in conversation later on.

 The people around this campfire won't be as talkative as I originally planned

Unfortunately the overhead of managing and recording the necessary amount dialogue means that this idea would take a great deal of time. A lot of the necessary background work is present to enable this to happen, but I simply haven't written the associated dialogue.

So there you have it, some things that didn't make the cut within The Shattered War. I'm hopeful that the things that have remained as part of the adventure will keep players engaged and entertained.

NPCs, interaction and dialogue

In between my testing sessions for The Shattered War, I've been focusing on getting a lot more dialogue written. While the dialogue has basically been planned in general content terms for quite some time, I'm getting down into the details of the interactions with a few of the significant characters.

In terms of NPC interaction, I've taken the Mass Effect approach. Between core story missions, you return to your home base of Fort Velen. This helps drive some key events and discussions vital to the plot, and helps with the pacing and overall flow of the game. The player does get a choice of tasks they wish to pursue, so having them return to Fort Velen allows me as the designer to bring certain essential items to the player's attention should they not have discovered them on their own.

You'll become familiar with the surroundings of Fort Velen

This design means that most of the major interaction between party members will occur in Fort Velen. Outside of Fort Velen, they will generally only provide 1-line responses to any attempt to talk to them. I understand that many players dislike this model, but given the number of potential choices and scenarios they player can be in, I simply can't justify the overhead of the dialogue (particularly VO work) that the alternative would require.

However, in addition to party members, there will also be a number of key NPCs who are part of the campaign against the darkspawn who are based in Fort Velen. Your interactions with them will occur here as well - though in all these situations, you will be given choice. These NPCs may come to you with issues or opinions and ask for your support, and your decisions here will affect how they react to you, and may result in them providing or withdrawing their help to you. You may even choose to ignore them, which could bring its own consequences.

Allies or adversaries? That's up to you...

One thing I am not doing is making the ramifications of those choices blatantly obvious. One of the design decisions I disliked from The Witcher was the way the game informed the player very clearly about a consequence related to an earlier decision. While some players appreciated being told exactly what result their decisions had, I found it an immersion breaking technique. Every choice the player makes should lead to a story that feels unique and accurate - not one of a series of alternate realities that are made blatantly clear. While the illusion can be broken somewhat by multiple playthroughs of a game, I believe that each should feel like it was the "true" story. To do otherwise is to partially rob the player of the power of telling their own story.

So there's an insight into the design aspects of interactions with major NPCs in The Shattered War. If you have any specific questions or things you'd like to know, please comment and I'll provide a response!

Testing issues

As I've mentioned previously, I wanted to create a beta version of the introductory part of The Shattered War for testing by some players while I continue to work on the mod.  While for the most part this has gone smoothly, there have been a few issues that keep cropping up and causing me trouble.

One of the most frustrating is the audio for a particular dialogue not working properly - the character simply does not speak. Oddly enough, the lines work perfectly in the toolset, and I can export the dialogue without hassle. I can then even extract the sounds from the exported .fsb file and listen to them. Unfortunately, for some reason, they refuse to play in the game itself. This occurs with a couple of characters, but I can't identify any consistent issue across the various dialogues or sound files. If anyone has experienced this and/or has a solution, please let me know.

Of course, the other problem is that some characters aren't yet voiced, but that's a problem that I understand and will hopefully get the right people to solve before the final release. I've still have to produce properly annotated scripts for some of the dialogue that still needs to be recorded, which is a significant undertaking in its own right.

Taraz looking concerned (maybe about voicing issues?)

Another hassle appears to be within character creation. Specifically, the game doesn't seem to give the player enough attribute points if the player happens to click "Quick Play". If they do, then a whole lot of attribute points simply disappear into the ether, and I can't find a means to fix this.  If the player decides to create their character by going through the entire customisation process, there's no issue, but it's a potential problem.

Another problem that has come about a number of times is objects not interacting correctly.  There have been several cases where objects to do not react correctly to player manipulation. In some cases this is due to me attempting to use pre-existing mechanisms for interaction in a way that isn't supported. This generally has to be discovered by trial and error, as documentation of many of these mechanism is minimal to non-existent.  The other alternative is to simply code all my own scripts, an option I have been resorting to more frequently, albeit at the expensive of additional time.

At least we can interact with this corpse...

All that being said, testing is coming along quite well, and everything is fitting together reasonably well.  So if you're keen to check out the beta version of the introduction of the mod (and haven't already contacted me) please shoot me an email (I have a gmail address for AmstradHero) and I'll be in touch.

I do work in a bit of a vacuum at times, completing individual segments separately before doing the work that brings them together.  There are a lot of individual parts (particularly dialogue) that are complete, and I can see the end in sight for writing of dialogue.  The Shattered War may be a long time in the making, but a beta version of the introduction shouldn't be far off for those interested. With any luck, people won't have to wait a really long time for the full product!

The Shattered War: Combat Design

Since I've been doing a bit of playtesting of The Shattered War, I'd like to talk about some of the design aspects of the mod.  While I often talk about things like dialogue, choice and character design, in this post I'm going to deal with the crucial gameplay aspect of combat.

The first important decision was to decide which level to start the player. Most players who play mods, particularly a stand-alone mod not part of the main campaign, will be familiar with the Dragon Age mechanics, and know how to conduct combat. Thus I don't need to hand hold people with basic fighting tutorials (as happens within the start of DAO), or how to create a character. For most players, it's also more interesting to not start at the lowest level. As such, The Shattered War starts players around level 9, and gives them some basic supplies suitable for this level.

Of course, there will be enemies to match your level...

As the player starts as a more powerful character, their companions must also start at a higher level. Because of this, there is the possibility that the player will decide a particular playstyle is not working, or that they don't like it. As a result, I'm also going to include the possibility of re-creating a character - by adopting the re-spec mod. This has been on my to-do list for a quite a while and I've only recently begun to look at it. This is a crucial part of having an adventure starting at a higher level, as it allows the player to redesign their character and their companions to create a balanced party. This is also essential because of the limitation in the mod of there only being four companions, meaning there is not necessarily the ability for the player to simply "take a different character" if the existing character build does not suit them.

The next point is to attempt to introduce new mechanics or combat scenarios to enhance the gameplay. Due to technical and balance considerations, I am trying to avoid creating new abilities or spells for players to use. Despite this, I trying to introduce new mechanics through usable items and placeables, as well as enemies with slightly different behaviour to the default game. It is important to understand that increased difficulty does not come simply from adding more monsters, but at the same time, I do not want to introduce effects or situation that seem far fetched compared to the original campaign.

So there's a short discussion of the combat of The Shattered War, if you have any questions about the combat (or maybe even some suggestions), please feel free to comment!

Level reuse guidelines

I thought I'd go into a bit more detail on the subject of level reuse and cover some rough guidelines on things that work and things that don't. I'll use some examples to compare and contrast different examples where possible - as level reuse has been present in games for quite some time.

Don't reuse plot critical areas
This is Dragon Age 2's main failing. Areas that are home to crucial areas of the plot are locations the player has visited potentially dozens of times before as meaningless and nondescript places  used for sidequests. It ruins any sense of exploration and the sense that something new is occurring, because it's simply reminding the player of the sidequest they did 30 minutes ago... and 30 minutes before that... and 30 minutes before that...  Alternatively, if you consider Mass Effect 1, you'll see that while it potentially featured just as much level reuse as Dragon Age 2, all of the generic levels (with slightly different arrangements of crates) were for side-quests. Optional content that while interesting, wasn't part of the main plot and climatic events of the game. This is why I found the original Halo dull after the halfway point, because the second half of the game was mostly just traveling in reverse of what you'd already done.

Use it as background
Like Sundermount in Dragon Age 2, try to use larger (outdoor) areas as different components. Dragon Age Origins did this with a number of its random encounter areas - several were part of the one "map", but the player could only see a small part of the map at any given section. The additional areas were merely background - area that the player could see and made their current surroundings real, but not accessible to walk. By doing this, none of the effort of level design is wasted (because all of the walkable area is used), but because the different component areas form the vista (partially) visible from the others, each area will feel unique rather than feeling like the same cookie cutter areas. Of course, if it's combined with the above point, then you're even more off the hook.

You saw that wall and mountain in the background from a few different areas

Limit reuse
This might seem like a no-brainer, but it warrants saying. Don't re-use levels too much. If player keep seeing exactly the same terrain over and over again, they're going to get bored. It doesn't matter how pretty it is, they're going to find it tedious. When we're talking a single player experience, especially a narrative based experience, you have to present the player with something new, because otherwise it doesn't feel to them like the surroundings are progressing with the story. Even if the setting is set in the same location over a long period of time, it should undergo cosmetic changes to demonstrate the effect of previous events within the story.

Reuse segments, not everything
Wherever possible, try to avoid reusing an entire level wholesale. If you can fragment a level and potentially present the player with those segments in a different order (or even leaving out bits entirely), then the player will likely see the deception, but is more likely to accept it as a reasonable effort to keep things interesting. Missions within sandbox games (e.g. GTA series) do this brilliant, as do many driving games. They have the player travel through part of a level they've already seen, then introduce new segments that they haven't seen. Designers can also get the player to come through the area from a different angle; have them go backwards through the level instead of fowards. Dragon Age 2 attempted to do this to a degree, but due to failiings in the above areas, it's reuse still grated on players.

This outdoor setting was used in its entirety every time

So there's a few simple pointers in terms of how to manage level reuse in games. Reuse isn't always bad, but if you're reusing levels, make sure that it is a conscious choice and reasoned decision to reuse an area rather than simply "we didn't have the time/budget to do a new level." If you're doing that, then you're game already contains one design flaw that could have been avoided.

Level Design and Dragon Age 2

It's no secret that on the whole I found Dragon Age 2's (DA2) level design to be sorely lacking. From my perspsective, it's one of the areas where it really shows that DA2 was forced out of the door before it truly ready.

The first major flaw is Kirkwall itself. It's a remarkably tidy city by any standards. You barely see any litter in the streets or bits of trash as you wander around. It obviously is home to the most diligent cleaners in the history of Thedas - and probably even puts modern cities to shame in most cases. This is a lack of "trash detail" that pervades much of the game. Places get dirty unless they are cleaned, and this should occur to some degree even in the utopia that is a fantasy world in a computer game. It doesn't need to be brown and mucky everywhere (as would likely be realistic), but there needs to be some mess, otherwise it's simply not believable.

Obviously all mages are forced by the templars to master the "tidy floor" spell

Kirkwall's second problem is the fact that it doesn't change. DA2 takes place over 10 years, yet Kirkwall is almost static in appearance during that time. No new buildings are made, none fall into disrepair, the same tiles are missing in the stone walkways, the same cracks exist in building walls. While it would not be intelligent (or feasible) to redesign the city repeatedly each time a few years advance during the story, the fact that virtually nothing changes is utterly ridiculous. This is particularly the case after the second act, where the city is home to a full-blown conflict in the streets. Yet a few years later when the story resumes, the city has been rebuilt to an identical match of its former state. This is sheer laziness in terms of level design, and does not lend credibility to the narrative at all. Good level design should help tell the story of a location just as much as words should, so to flagrantly disregard this opportunity and to disrespect the storytelling of the game is a hideous shortcoming.

The poor quarter was rebuilt perfectly back the way it was? Seriously?

 The third, and most commented on issue by DA2's critics in terms of level design, is the gross amount of level reuse present within the game. There are a few stock areas that you travel maybe a dozen times in the game, perhaps with different sections blocked off here and there, maybe sometimes in the other direction, but most distinctly copied and pasted wholesale. When part of the critical plot of a game sees you go through and area you've already explored several times before as part of a random cave, the impact of the story and the sense of adventure are all but lost. This is without doubt one of the most telling indictments that DA2 simply wasn't given enough time to be developed. No, level design is not everything, but to come up short in such an obvious fashion that is terribly grating to the player is either a sign of a rushed product, or design staff who simply didn't understand the gravity of the problem for the player. I'd hope it was the former rather than the latter.

However, the news isn't all bad, so I do want to finish with one "good news story" that came out of DA2: Sundermount. This section of the game, or rather, the exterior areas (because the internals are part of the set levels used ad-nauseum) of it, are one of the highlights of the level design. Of course, there's the natural draw of "mountains are pretty", but while Sundermount does succeed aesthetically in providing good visuals, part of this is due to the technical design. Simply put, it reuses existing level design properly - it uses it as backdrop. The foothills of the mountain and the lower parts can all be seen as part of the vista that you can survey as you climb. This is intelligent area reuse, as it not only provides a sense of achievement (because you've climbed those bits before), but also helps to contextualise the player's position and current progress.

If you look carefully, you can even see people walking down below

So the news isn't all bad for Dragon Age 2 on the level design front, but unfortunately it tells us far more about level design through what it does wrong than by what it does right. If there's interest, I might try and put together a few points about when, where and how to reuse levels in a way that's less jarring to players.

Those little things

Sometimes life gets in the way of modding. Between work, social, musical and exercise commitments, not mention the daily routine of making sure I'm eating well and not living in a pig-sty, things have to fall off my to-do list.  Blogging tends to be the first cap off the rank there, hence why I've been a bit quiet of late. This is not to say that I haven't been thinking about game design or doing modding.

So when life gets in the way and I can't sit down for a long stint at the computer to mod for The Shattered War, I need small tasks that I can complete in short bursts.  So this is where it comes down to leaving "the little things" in a list to come back to when I have 15-30 minutes to spare rather than an hour or more.

First item on this list is processing VO lines that have been sent from voice actors. The first step here is to make sure the volume is consistent with all other lines in the mod. Sometimes this means decreasing the volume of the recording, other times increasing it, and other times I may need to do both to increase or decrease the overall volume range of the line. Once this is done, there's frequently a soft pop or tongue click that's not very audible by default, but would be in the final delivery. Then there's clipping or inserting silence at the beginning or end of each line to make sure that each line isn't just running into the next one.

Even fast talkers have to pause between sentences

The next item is codex entries, and this is an important one for me. I know some people will never check the codex once to check out the backstory of people, places or items, but for me this is a vital part of the modding process. Sure, I'm playing within the existing world of Thedas, but I'm exploring territory not really covered elsewhere, so I have a little freedom to provide background on the locations the player will visit. Every place has its own unique tales and pieces of folklore, and locations in The Shattered War are no different. The same applies to characters the players will meet, and the unique items they could acquire.

Add a couple of dozen codex entries for locations alone...

More recently, I've been looking at the various bits of text you read during load screens. Whether it's an area transition or loading a save, players deserve to see bits of information relevant to their current adventure rather than just generic bits of information recycled from the core campaign.  I want to make sure that players aren't disappointed when they are waiting on those loading screens and have something new and interesting to read.

Some of these are "little things" that many players (and modders) are often less fussed about, but I'm keen to make sure that these small touches of polish are present to make The Shattered War a more complete gaming experience. Are there any other things in this vein that players appreciate? If so, let me know those little things which really appeal to your sense of enjoyment and engagement.