The Mass Effect 3/BioWare Thread

[Major_Blackhart]

I love Nigel's expression.

 

[DraQ]

I love Nigel's expression.

Whole one of it.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Genius!

 

[eremita]

I was checking Trent Oster's twitter for some information about possible future projects (despite the fact that EE content is nothing special, I really dig the idea playing Infinity Engine games on tablets)... Anyway, I found some tweets, which might be interesting for some of the local gossip girls/boys/transgenders/whatever this cursed place is filled with: http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-m...-director/answer/Trent-Oster?srid=shU&share=1 http://www.quora.com/How-much-tech-...ach-other/answer/Trent-Oster?srid=shU&share=1

Game credits are not like movie credits. In the movies you have a formalized system of roles and credits. In video games, the roles are much less defined and more open to interpretation. During my time at Bioware, 14 or so years, I stacked up a lot of business cards, each with a different title. The Bioware structure was built slightly differently based on the individuals who made up the team. I led the development of "Neverwinter Nights" from a one word concept to a shipped game with two expansion packs. My title at the time was Project Director, which in Bioware is about as close to movie Director as you can get. My background started in computer science as a programmer, where I completed 3 years of a 4 year degree before we started the company. I spent the next five years doing 3D computer art as I had decent (for the time) art skills and a good understanding of 3D space and the 3D packages of the day. I moved from 3D production / technical art into managing an Art team and then into Project Direction.

James Ohlen, the Creative Director on Star Wars:The Old Republic, came from owning a comic book store and running countless roleplaying games. James designed Baldur's Gate, after that he pretty much defined how Bioware designed all of the games we made.

Casey Hudson of KotoR and Mass Effect fame is an Engineer with good 3D art skills. Casey started as a technical artist and exceeded every job put in front of him. When the time came for someone to lead a new project the choice was obvious.

There is no clear answer to the education and skills required and someone won't just hire you to be a Creative Director. Creative Director or Project Director or Project Lead (whatever you call the role) goes to the person who can condense, focus and communicate a powerful vision of a product in the right manner to a team of highly skilled people who can help realize that vision. Often the role isn't about knowing exact details, but broader concepts which you can convey to skilled people and let them run with the idea.
In the case of the three people I reference above, the title came after the work. First you make a game, put everything you have into it to make something spectacular, obsess about the details, debate hard on your decisions, but commit to a path and present a solid, coherent, vision to everyone.
The thing I haven't mentioned is luck or timing. All of us were at the right place at the right time with the right attitude, skills and motivation. If the timing was wrong, we might have become frustrated and moved on or remained locked into our existing roles.

In summary, I'd suggest building a broad understanding of how games are made by learning some programming, some 3D art / animation and some writing. Then, critique everything you see, think about what you like, what you don't like. Ask other people what they like and dislike so you can build a sensitivity to your own bias. Be aware of your bias, but look at how you might make games better, think about how you would improve a movie or TV show. Become dissatisfied with what exists and get angry about making it better, then, get to work.

About tech...

Early days, not much, later on more. As Director of Tech my goal was to unify our tech and it didn't really happen how we had planned.
Shattered Steel was a custom, one-off scanline rendered height-field engine and was never re-used.
Baldur's Gate used the Infinity Engine, which was use for BG, BGII and licensed to Black Isle for Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale II.
MDK2 Was the Omen engine, a from scratch Open GL 3D engine which used LUA throughout. Most of the MDK2 team left after the game shipped, so the tech dead-ended.
Neverwinter Nights was the from-scratch Aurora Engine, an Open GL based 3D engine. Aurora implemented its own C syntax scripting language (out of fear of hostile users creating viruses with a full scripting language). Aurora was licensed Obsidian for Neverwinter Nights 2 and later heavily modified and used as the base for the Knights of the Old Republic, and then licensed to Obsidian for KotOR2. Jade Empire was based off the KotOR work.
Mass Effect was to be a temporary stop-gap measure, licensing the Unreal 3 Engine while an internal team developed the next major Bioware technology platform, called the Eclipse Engine. Early on in the Eclipse Engine tech there was a pivot, moving Dragon Age (which was supposed to ship on yet another variant of Aurora) onto the still research stage Eclipse Engine. The results were harsh. The Eclipse engine was envisioned as a streaming open world engine and the Dragon Age concept did not fit this model. Most of the research was abandoned and some Aurora Code was brought in. The next five years were all about cleaning up the result and shipping Dragon Age. Dragon Age II was based off the same technology base.
The Mass Effect series was all Unreal 3 based. Mass Effect 2 was a large programming effort, re-basing off a newer drop of the Unreal 3 Engine and staying much closer to the preferred usage of the technology. Mass 3 continued in this vein.
There were two unannounced internal projects with were killed off under EA (Jade Empire 2, which became Revolver and "Agent") which were to be based off a clean drop of Unreal 3.
It was recently announced that Dragon Age 3 is based off the Frostbite technology.

 

[Infinitron]

Hey Anthony Davis, he says the Aurora Engine was "from scratch", ie not actually an evolution of the Infinity Engine.

Who is right?

 

[Anthony Davis]

Hey Anthony Davis, he says the Aurora Engine was "from scratch", ie not actually an evolution of the Infinity Engine.

Who is right?

Aurora and Infinity Engine DEFINITELY shared many of the same classes. Both Aurora and IE had the same naming convention for classes, for example, they prefixed CExo to class names that were... uh let's see... I don't really remember at this point what the CExo was supposed to mean. Anyway, if someone had the source they could just start by looking at and comparing the classes that were named CExo<whatever> that exist in both.

Aurora also had the exact same 2DA system from the Infinity Engine games. That alone shows that some of the code was shared in Aurora from IE.

On top of that, there are comments in the Aurora code, in the older classes, that are from IE. There are also comments in the code from the Aurora timeframe addressing comments from the IE part.



I don't think there is an official industry definition of what "from scratch" means.

To me, "from scratch" means 100% (minus third party SDKs you might have installed, like Havok or Scaleform). For example, Obsidian's Onyx engine, used in the cancelled Aliens RPG, Dungeon Siege 3, and South Park, was an original from scratch engine. The code in that was either written by Obsidian developers, or it was a 3rd party SDK.

I don't know what his definition of "from scratch" means, to him it could mean >50% of the code has changed, and many engineers out there in the world would agree with him. I can't fault that, it's just not my definition of "from scratch".

It makes little sense to start from scratch on anything if you don't have to. Why would you? How many different ways can you implement a string class, for example? "Hey, IE had a perfectly serviceable CExoString class, why don't we just use that?"


That said, Aurora added so much more than IE had, the scripting language, the 3D renderer, which also meant that pathfinding had to change, plus the server and the DM Client, plus more.

Maybe to him, re-writing 75% (or whatever) is enough to qualify as "from scratch", and again, many engineers might agree with that.

Starting with parts of IE just makes good engineering sense to me. You are frequently taking code that has already be tested a zillion times in previous development cycles. It is good engineering and good planning.


I'm pretty sure I know why people argue over this too. Some people, marketing people for example, and to a certain extent - gamers, like hearing "from scratch" or "brand new tech", because to them it (mistakenly) means "cutting edge".

To me, as a gamer and an engineer, those words are greeted with trepidation, as that far too often means buggy and unreliable.

 

[Caim]

Guys, I've started ME2 as an Adept Shepard and oh my god these guns suck. When not dealing with shielded/barrier'd enemies I can survive, Slamming dudes like I'm Charles Barkley in a court full of b-balls, but against enemies with any kind of protection I just fall flat. One of my powers can deal with armored enemies, but even then I do not deal a lot of damage. Any ideas?

Who would name their male character anything but Adrian Shepard?

 

[Rivmusique]

1. Get behind cover.
2. Wait until enemies are in cover/reloading.
3. Stick head out and hover over where one will pop out.
4. Wait for the head to appear.
5. Shoot until you need to reload/shields go down.
6. Reload/let shields recharge.
7. Back to 1.

 

[Caim]

1. Get behind cover.
2. Wait until enemies are in cover/reloading.
3. Stick head out and hover over where one will pop out.
4. Wait for the head to appear.
5. Shoot until you need to reload/shields go down.
6. Reload/let shields recharge.
7. Back to 1.

That works when you're a soldier/engineer, but as an Adept the approach is a difficult one because of you lack of decent guns. The pistols have too low a Rate of Fire to deal good damange before needing you to pop back into cover, and the SMGs deal pithy damage and the bullets go all over the place.

 

[Xor]

Any ideas?

Reroll a vanguard.

 

[maverick]

I like to play as a popamole Infiltrator Sniper. One shot kills all, if you go for the head of course.

 

[Caim]

I like to play as a popamole Infiltrator Sniper. One shot kills all, if you go for the head of course.

Played an Infiltrator in ME3. Had some fun times: tried pretty much all sniper rifles from the portable cannons to the scoped rifles. Eventually settled on the N7 one: good scope and 3 shots that I could all land in the space of a single time dillation.

 

[eremita]

1. Get behind cover.
2. Wait until enemies are in cover/reloading.
3. Stick head out and hover over where one will pop out.
4. Wait for the head to appear.
5. Shoot until you need to reload/shields go down.
6. Reload/let shields recharge.
7. Back to 1.

Despite popular belief (based on ignorance) on the Codex, ME doesn't work that way unless you're playing Soldier/on easy difficulty...

Guys, I've started ME2 as an Adept Shepard and oh my god these guns suck. When not dealing with shielded/barrier'd enemies I can survive, Slamming dudes like I'm Charles Barkley in a court full of b-balls, but against enemies with any kind of protection I just fall flat. One of my powers can deal with armored enemies, but even then I do not deal a lot of damage. Any ideas?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J7YvVRRdto This might help with useful tips.

 

[Kitako]

I like to play as a popamole Infiltrator Sniper. One shot kills all, if you go for the head of course.

Was fun 2shotting last boss, love Infiltrator. Apparently the sniping bonus you get when coming out of stealth is applied to the nuke launcher too.

 

[Rivmusique]

1. Get behind cover.
2. Wait until enemies are in cover/reloading.
3. Stick head out and hover over where one will pop out.
4. Wait for the head to appear.
5. Shoot until you need to reload/shields go down.
6. Reload/let shields recharge.
7. Back to 1.

Despite popular belief (based on ignorance) on the Codex, ME doesn't work that way unless you're playing Soldier/on easy difficulty...

It worked for an Infiltrator and Soldier for me, both insane (first was Hard for a little while, I forget which one that was). It was the long, boring, easy fall back tactic, I'd do stupid shit occasionally just to make it somewhat interesting. I'd assume with a class with worse weapons you could do the same, it would just take longer? This, of course, only works on the ranged groups, when melee gets involved you need to backpedal and hold LMB which mixes things up.

 

[Xbalanque]

1. Get behind cover.
2. Wait until enemies are in cover/reloading.
3. Stick head out and hover over where one will pop out.
4. Wait for the head to appear.
5. Shoot until you need to reload/shields go down.
6. Reload/let shields recharge.
7. Back to 1.

Despite popular belief (based on ignorance) on the Codex, ME doesn't work that way unless you're playing Soldier/on easy difficulty...

It worked for an Infiltrator and Soldier for me, both insane (first was Hard for a little while, I forget which one that was). It was the long, boring, easy fall back tactic, I'd do stupid shit occasionally just to make it somewhat interesting. I'd assume with a class with worse weapons you could do the same, it would just take longer? This, of course, only works on the ranged groups, when melee gets involved you need to backpedal and hold LMB which mixes things up.

You just add special abilities to that

 

[Aeschylus]

1. Get behind cover.
2. Wait until enemies are in cover/reloading.
3. Stick head out and hover over where one will pop out.
4. Wait for the head to appear.
5. Shoot until you need to reload/shields go down.
6. Reload/let shields recharge.
7. Back to 1.

Despite popular belief (based on ignorance) on the Codex, ME doesn't work that way unless you're playing Soldier/on easy difficulty...

Yeah, that applies more to insanity difficulty than easy. On easy there's very little need to stay in cover, and most enemies aren't shielded as I recall.

 

[DalekFlay]

Only way I found to make ME2 combat at all interesting was to play a sniper on hardest difficulty. That makes you super vulnerable, so you have to use your squad to distract and tank enemies, and you have to use a combo of cloak and headshots to be effective at killing things.

Still super popamole though, obviously.

 

[logrus]

I like to play as a popamole Infiltrator Sniper. One shot kills all, if you go for the head of course.

Actually it's even more fun with Liara in the team. Singularity/Lift combo turns cover shooter into skeet shooting competition between Shepard and Wrex

 

[Major_Blackhart]

So, shit games are shit. Good to know.

 

[eremita]

1. Get behind cover.
2. Wait until enemies are in cover/reloading.
3. Stick head out and hover over where one will pop out.
4. Wait for the head to appear.
5. Shoot until you need to reload/shields go down.
6. Reload/let shields recharge.
7. Back to 1.

Despite popular belief (based on ignorance) on the Codex, ME doesn't work that way unless you're playing Soldier/on easy difficulty...

It worked for an Infiltrator and Soldier for me, both insane (first was Hard for a little while, I forget which one that was). It was the long, boring, easy fall back tactic, I'd do stupid shit occasionally just to make it somewhat interesting. I'd assume with a class with worse weapons you could do the same, it would just take longer? This, of course, only works on the ranged groups, when melee gets involved you need to backpedal and hold LMB which mixes things up.

Sentinel doesn't need weapons to begin with, so no, it's not longer, it's different. Vanguard has absolutely different playstyle, not using cover/shoot mechanics at all.

ME2's and ME3's combat is pretty complex for an action game.

So, shit games are shit. Good to know.

With assumption that everything is shit unless it's a turn based izometric RPG, then yes - it's shit. Are we done with this hipster faggotary? Ok, it's no then - it's pretty good for what it is.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Nothing from Bioware is pretty good for what it is meat.

 

[eremita]

Nothing from Bioware is pretty good for what it is meat.

Shit, I almost forget! Thanks for saving me from the Abyss, man...

 

[Decado]

ME3 was pitifully easy, even without playing a soldier build. Even if you are rolling an adept, the procedure is the same: wait in cover until your powers recharge, then pop up and fire one off. Rinse and repeat.

 

[Valestein]

ME3 was pitifully easy, even without playing a soldier build. Even if you are rolling an adept, the procedure is the same: wait in cover until your powers recharge, then pop up and fire one off. Rinse and repeat.

Yup, the only bit with difficulty was the one where Shep had to push buttons on those missile launchers in the Earth section.