Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Mass Effect Andromeda, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Dragon Age The Veilguard Posts: 2,634 Likes: 6,408
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Mass Effect Andromeda, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Dragon Age The Veilguard
Emily (aka Domino) Taylor pentapod "What kind of colour is that for a banana to be? No banana should be that colour." "On the bright side, the avocados look way better now." "But the bananas!" "It's the bananas of Dorian Gray. For the avocados to look better, something else had to suffer." #overheardintheoffice
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, Dragon Age The Veilguard Posts: 1,678 Likes: 4,701
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One day, the magic will come back. All of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part, and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see. -Sandal Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a world to save. Again. -Inquisitor
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition
John Epler @eplerjc DAI deep lore - the reason Iron Bull had a dedicated sex tower is because we boarded out the whole ‘everyone walks in on you’ scene and then we made the player’s bedroom with a staircase entrance instead of a door.
More deep lore - I deliberately framed the scene so the creepy picture on the wall would look at you disapprovingly, and got the Art team to revert it when they changed it.
I’m trying to remember all the other weird shit we added because after a certain point it was ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’.
Oh right, the scene where Bull fights off the assassins had zero motion capture budgeted for it, so it is pieced together from something like 40 animations blended in-engine.
DA2, but when Bartrand locks you in the vault, I made the player do a rail slide because it was infinitely easier than trying to get staircase animations to line up.
Mark of the Assassin - if you spare Arlange, he shows up (creepily peering around a corner) in the background of two scenes before he confronts you. One is the Lake, and I forget the other.
More Mark of the Assassin - when Prosper’s guards surround you in the vault, I had to make it look like something you’d never fight your way out of due to overwhelming odds. I also had a hard character limit, so it’s like, six guys, looped repeatedly.
More DAI - the hardest scene I ever worked on from a tech perspective is when Solas spoke to the spirit in Elven, but the subtitles were in English, because our Face animation tech did -not- like it.
The hardest part of the Iron Bull afterglow scene was making sure Bull’s junk was properly covered in every shot.
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes The Other Sex Tower
A lot of these @eplerjc DAI Memories seem to come back to me asking for something impossible with current tech/resources and then Epler making it not only possible but kickass.
John Epler @eplerjc More accurately, a lot of these come down to Patrick being an absolute pleasure to work with, because they understood we couldn’t do everything, but all they asked for was the best player experience we -could- do.
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Plus a soapbox for the dwarven Inquisitor to stand on.
👻 🎃Pivot to Video 🎃 👻 @krisligman I remember being at the GaymerX panel where you very somberly informed the audience that yes, John had just figured this out
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes It turns out that a scene involving significant physical contact between two characters, one of whom is sometimes 4’10” and sometimes 7’2”, and sometimes in the middle, is kind of a pain.
John Epler @eplerjc Did Iron Bull at one point have lovingly detailed junk?
John Epler @eplerjc More DAI - the hardest scene I ever worked on from a tech perspective is when Solas spoke to the spirit in Elven, but the subtitles were in English, because our Face animation tech did -not- like it.
Pella @pellamore Why was the animation tied to the subtitles?
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Short version: I was being fancy.
Longer version: it’s not tied to the subtitles. It’s tied to the line, and the line IS the subtitles. The tech can do “rough in lip sync from text.” It can’t do it from an audio file.
Which is why, barring a text/VO mismatch, the subtitle is also the audio line.
But because I was being FANCY, I wanted Elf Inquisitor to get English* subtitles for the bits between Solas and the spirit.
* Or whatever language one played in.
I would love for us to get tech that made this easier — I love having elves and Qunari and dwarves say stuff in their own languages for dramatic effect — but it’s an esoteric ask.
John Epler @eplerjc Sort of - it analyzes both, audio for timing and text for phonemes. When they don’t match it kind of just gives up. Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Listen, Epler, I Dunning’d my way into this conversation, and imma Kruger my way out of it.
John Epler @eplerjc I think the scene from DAI with the worst effort-to-people-seeing-it ratio I worked on was when you hug Varric after leaving Hawke to die. Still worth it, even when it broke weekly.
More canon, @patrickweekes and I refer to anyone who let the Chargers die as ‘basically monsters’.
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes It’s a totally valid choice, we can see both sides, but they ARE monsters.
John Epler @eplerjc Deepest of lore - until tonight I forgot there was an Iron Bull scene where he takes you to visit your soldiers, and I worked on it.
John Epler @eplerjc I think the scene from DAI with the worst effort-to-people-seeing-it ratio I worked on was when you hug Varric after leaving Hawke to die. Still worth it, even when it broke weekly.
More canon, @patrickweekes and I refer to anyone who let the Chargers die as ‘basically monsters’.
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes It’s a totally valid choice, we can see both sides, but they ARE monsters.
John Epler @eplerjc DAI deep lore - the reason Iron Bull had a dedicated sex tower is because we boarded out the whole ‘everyone walks in on you’ scene and then we made the player’s bedroom with a staircase entrance instead of a door.
Sammitch @sammitch Do you pre-brief HR like "ok this quarter we're starting work on 'the sex tower' and there's going to be some odd talk in the commissary" or is it more fun to just let them find out organically?
John Epler @eplerjc HR kind of just knows that we get up to weird stuff. We do try and let people know what’s coming, because some folks get uncomfortable and we want them to be able to opt out.
John Epler @eplerjc The only crane shot I specifically got into DA was ‘I died at Chateau Haaaine!’ and I think I spent it well.
That crane shot was 1) exceptionally well-deployed 2) a large part of the reason I am so happy John Epler is one of the people in charge of DA. Anyone who can make a zoom that funny knows what's what. Most great cinematic design is invisible, but it's also good to know exactly when to draw attention to it to really land the joke.
Patrick Weekes Retweeted MariahNotMaria @mariahnotmaria One of my fave photos from my #dragonage wedding! Can’t wait to see the rest! @biomarkdarrah @patrickweekes @unofficialdaday #kathleenfelionphotography
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, Dragon Age The Veilguard Posts: 1,678 Likes: 4,701
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John Epler @eplerjc More DAI - the hardest scene I ever worked on from a tech perspective is when Solas spoke to the spirit in Elven, but the subtitles were in English, because our Face animation tech did -not- like it.
Pella @pellamore Why was the animation tied to the subtitles?
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Short version: I was being fancy.
Longer version: it’s not tied to the subtitles. It’s tied to the line, and the line IS the subtitles. The tech can do “rough in lip sync from text.” It can’t do it from an audio file.
Which is why, barring a text/VO mismatch, the subtitle is also the audio line.
But because I was being FANCY, I wanted Elf Inquisitor to get English* subtitles for the bits between Solas and the spirit.
* Or whatever language one played in.
I would love for us to get tech that made this easier — I love having elves and Qunari and dwarves say stuff in their own languages for dramatic effect — but it’s an esoteric ask.
John Epler @eplerjc Sort of - it analyzes both, audio for timing and text for phonemes. When they don’t match it kind of just gives up. Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Listen, Epler, I Dunning’d my way into this conversation, and imma Kruger my way out of it.
OMG, is this why that scene was the only time in the entire game that elvish had a translation?
If so, I hope they find a way to make it easier. Translations is something I seriously hope for in the next game.
One day, the magic will come back. All of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part, and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see. -Sandal Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a world to save. Again. -Inquisitor
Twit requires your email+working phone number if you wish to be enrolled in the 2FA system. BUT....
Security and privacy advocates have long grumbled about this requirement, which isn't a condition of using 2FA protection from Google, Github, and other top-ranked sites. On Tuesday, Twitter gave critics a new reason to complain. The site said it may have inadvertently used email addresses and phone numbers provided for 2FA and other security purposes to match users to marketing lists provided by advertisers. Twitter didn't say if the number of users affected by the blunder was in the hundreds or the millions or how long the improper targeting lasted.
From Twit ... "We recently discovered that when you provided an email address or phone number for safety or security purposes (for example, two-factor authentication) this data may have inadvertently been used for advertising purposes, specifically in our Tailored Audiences and Partner Audiences advertising system".
Anyone interested can read all the dirty detailshere.
Pella @pellamore Why was the animation tied to the subtitles?
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Short version: I was being fancy.
Longer version: it’s not tied to the subtitles. It’s tied to the line, and the line IS the subtitles. The tech can do “rough in lip sync from text.” It can’t do it from an audio file.
Which is why, barring a text/VO mismatch, the subtitle is also the audio line.
But because I was being FANCY, I wanted Elf Inquisitor to get English* subtitles for the bits between Solas and the spirit.
* Or whatever language one played in.
I would love for us to get tech that made this easier — I love having elves and Qunari and dwarves say stuff in their own languages for dramatic effect — but it’s an esoteric ask.
John Epler @eplerjc Sort of - it analyzes both, audio for timing and text for phonemes. When they don’t match it kind of just gives up. Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Listen, Epler, I Dunning’d my way into this conversation, and imma Kruger my way out of it.
OMG, is this why that scene was the only time in the entire game that elvish had a translation?
If so, I hope they find a way to make it easier. Translations is something I seriously hope for in the next game.
Slight tangent, but a common problem in tech is that the accessibility features get double-booked (i.e. used for something else besides accessibility), which causes problems when the accessible UI needs to do something different than the other UI.
A great example is text-to-speech labelling, which is often hijacked by internal tools to do automated testing. On the surface, this is a great idea - since the labels are required for testing, this encourages developers to add text-to-speech labels to their UIs. A win for accessibility, right?
Unfortunately, text-to-speech navigation is different than sighted navigation! There are interaction modes people can use in TTS tools that aren’t common in visual UIs. For example, flicking through all the actions available on an item, so they don’t have to precisely find small buttons on a screen they’re not looking at.
But because the TTS system is so tightly coupled to automation testing, this can create conflicts. Optimizing the labelling for TTS users means that it’s now laid out differently than the visual UI, which makes it harder to automation test the visual UI. In the example above, grouping the buttons for TTS means they don’t “look” the same as the buttons they’re representing in the visual UI. They’re arranged completely differently.
You end up doing all these weird hacks to change the accessibility layout for testing, which can often create bugs for TTS users.
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, Dragon Age The Veilguard Posts: 1,678 Likes: 4,701
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OMG, is this why that scene was the only time in the entire game that elvish had a translation?
If so, I hope they find a way to make it easier. Translations is something I seriously hope for in the next game.
Slight tangent, but a common problem in tech is that the accessibility features get double-booked (i.e. used for something else besides accessibility), which causes problems when the accessible UI needs to do something different than the other UI.
A great example is text-to-speech labelling, which is often hijacked by internal tools to do automated testing. On the surface, this is a great idea - since the labels are required for testing, this encourages developers to add text-to-speech labels to their UIs. A win for accessibility, right?
Unfortunately, text-to-speech navigation is different than sighted navigation! There are interaction modes people can use in TTS tools that aren’t common in visual UIs. For example, flicking through all the actions available on an item, so they don’t have to precisely find small buttons on a screen they’re not looking at.
But because the TTS system is so tightly coupled to automation testing, this can create conflicts. Optimizing the labelling for TTS users means that it’s now laid out differently than the visual UI, which makes it harder to automation test the visual UI. In the example above, grouping the buttons for TTS means they don’t “look” the same as the buttons they’re representing in the visual UI. They’re arranged completely differently.
You end up doing all these weird hacks to change the accessibility layout for testing, which can often create bugs for TTS users.
Well, I only understand a fraction of that, but I will assume it can be summed up as 'tech dev is hard', which I DO understand.
And, honestly, the translations don't even need to be in the game, if it's too much of a hassle to get them there. Put them in the credits. Or a menu somewhere. In a completely separate text document. Put them in the Keep, if they intend to continue utilizing that. I'm truly not picky with this.
And I'm not even looking for direct translations, since I know the vocabulary can be finicky (for elvish, at least). All I want is a rough, 'here's what we intended for the character to say' sort of thing. I'm really good with anything.
Huh. I had a small tangent of my own, it seems. I'm done now.
One day, the magic will come back. All of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part, and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see. -Sandal Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a world to save. Again. -Inquisitor
Crystal McCord @mrscmccord Being a working Mom means doing a zoom meeting in the car while driving your son to daycare because you need to communicate with Spain before they are done for their day! #timezones #workingmom #localization
- To be fair though, I'm not sure which project she's referring to (Anthem, DA, ???).
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes It turns out that a scene involving significant physical contact between two characters, one of whom is sometimes 4’10” and sometimes 7’2”, and sometimes in the middle, is kind of a pain.
𝓉𝒶𝓎𝓁𝑜𝓇 @caffeinehag Wait, dwarves are 4’10”?
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes I maaaaay have completely made up those numbers.
