Taylor Swope @_taylorswope We released patch 1.2 of #TheOuterWorlds today, and it includes a fix for the dreaded "the game thinks my companions are dead" bug, which I believe I spent more time investigating than I have for any other individual bug in my career (1/18)
Allan Schumacher allanschumacher It's not uncommon to "fix" an issue in finaling only to realize that it caused a lot of downstream issues because systems were built around the bug often without knowing.
Then it becomes time to decide "if we can't fix all the underlying issues, is it better to ship with bug?"
seb hanlon @hanlsp yuuuuuuuuuup.
also Dying/Dead remains a perilous cavern of exceedingly sharp and pointy edge cases @biomarkdarrah
also this, forever and always. “I don’t know why it was happening but I changed X and it fixed it!” 😱🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Remember when followers in DAI would sometimes lose all gear and drop to level 1, and we couldn’t figure out why, and thanks to my kid getting way too excited about the horses, we figured out it was mounting or dismounting (and spawning/despawning party) during a streaming load?
Taylor Swope @_taylorswope There were one or two cases before launch where this issue seemed to happen, but no one in QA ever managed to reproduce it and despite our best efforts we couldn't learn anything concrete about it (4/18)
Allan Schumacher allanschumacher Been there and done that. So frustrating.
And when you get 1mil people into the game 1h into it at launch, that's about 125,000 8 hour days worth of testing. 342 years.
That 0.001% chance may never happen again internally, but for a million people? Hundreds have seen it.
Imperator Furiåsa @devilkitten So @konsollbergen that I was at earlier this year has released the talks. Mine is about ethics in game development. Thank you Konsoll for having me and thank you @gabriellekent and @sylviaduerr for inviting me. And Endre for your patience 😊
So I’ve gotten a few reactions to this talk and part of them are “but I like this game” or “we’re just devs, we can’t change anything”. To the first reaction I say this - yeah, and that’s okay. It’s okay to like games that have problematic content. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to read, view or play a lot of the media I enjoy playing, viewing or reading. What I’m saying is be aware of what you put out there. Be aware of that others may experience things like violence, torture, transphobia and sexism differently than you do. Be prepared to at least acknowledge that it might be problematic.
To the second reaction I say - yeah. This is hard and it might bite you in the butt if you speak up. Draw your lines. Figure out what you’re comfortable with. My lines may be different to yours and we may have different things that we can or can’t accept, but figure it out. Don’t just do things because you “have to”. Think about why you’re asked to do it. Questions decisions. Even people who think they’re powerless can change things.
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Started Fleabag and am immediately envious of the masterfully done fourth-wall breaks. Just like when I watched Burn Notice, it makes me want to use it myself, despite me not working on a game or novel where that would make sense.
W J Johanson 🎮 Pokemon Shield @whatwillsay Dragon Age: The Office
Alain Baxter @alainbaxter Took a snap last Friday of our dev area and it shows the streams we watch (Always rotates between streams & BioWare games). It's always fascinating to see what players do in our games. 🧐
Nunzio DeFilippis (W), Christina Weir (W), Fernando Heinz Furukawa (A), Michael Atiyeh (C), and Sachin Teng (Cover)
On sale Mar 18 FC, 32 pages $3.99 Miniseries
Fenris, the legendary “Blue Wraith,” has joined a young mage and her companion, an agent of the Inquisition, in their quest to stop the reckless experiments of rogue Tevinter mages. In this bloody conclusion, they will have to overcome waves of Qunari and one of the most powerful mages in the land.
My radio show is back! I decided to jump back into the world of video game radio for 2020 - enjoy some shows before I start up in earnest.
I spoke with lead writer for Dragon Age Patrick Weekes years ago about how the enigmatic character Solas was created, here is what that magic elf could have up his sleeve for us in Dragon Age 4.
John Epler @eplerjc Have decided to take a page out of Nintendo’s book and so I am pleased to announce Walistair, an exciting addition to the DA IP. You fools, this is the dark power you’ve given me. Anyways Walistair is canon now.
John Epler Retweeted sten fucker @stenfucker ok, like this?
Sanshee @teamsanshee Today you can bring home your very own Dorian Collector's Plush. He's a classy gent, with refined tastes, so uncork your finest wine and break out the h'orderves. And if you have Iron Bull hanging around, well, I doubt he'd say no to that either😉
Mark Darrah @biomarkdarrah If I’ve done the math correctly, today marks the day when I’ve worked for BioWare for half my life ... Which means my life is an expanding series ... Which means I’m immortal!
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Dragon Age The Veilguard Prime Posts: 3,912 Prime Likes: 9733 Posts: 2,894 Likes: 12,961
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Dragon Age The Veilguard
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes Have been thinking about why Narrative teams have a hard time in games sometimes.
One reason: Writers/narrative designers make asks that feel concrete for reasons that often feel fuzzy.
“Yes, I NEED a cutscene here, even though it’s expensive. Why? Because the story needs it.”
A character artist can say how expensive building and rigging a character is, and the VO director can say how much the actor will cost. The cinematics folks will have time estimates on the scene. The writer has to justify spending that cold hard cash with “quality of narrative.”
Now, this fuzziness isn’t always actually that fuzzy. Every writer on the team may understand that you NEED a scene with that character in moments like that, or the whole plot stinks.
But a lot of game writers are self-taught, so they may lack the vocabulary to explain this.
And, even if the narrative team CAN explain their reasoning for why they need the thing, that explanation only works if other departments are willing to learn narrative’s rules or trust that narrative knows their rules even if other folks don’t.
If I order a level designer to break her rules by putting in more NPCs than our memory budget allows, the game will crash. That rule is easily testable.
If I don’t get a scene I know I need, nothing crashes. A non-writer might look at the mission and say, “Seems fine to me.”
This year, I’m trying to develop a friendly-to-non-writers vocabulary for how some of our rules work, in hopes of making that dialogue more accessible.
Sarah Arellano @thesugarvenom (Writer & VO Director | @dsvolition |)
Patrick Weekes @patrickweekes I’m hoping that is solidarity and not me having ticked you off!
Sarah Arellano @thesugarvenom Definitely solidarity. Getting buy-in is my biggest challenge.
And it’s not just about needing a cutscene - it’s about why this relationship is different if the characters are different genders, or why the beginning of an arc must correlate with the end, etc.
Most people feel stories. If they’re represented in the story, it feels right and everything else feels wrong.
🌔 Kathy is the Moon Arcana 🌒 @aildreda OhmygodohMYGOD I'm three stories into Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights and officially driving full speed back into DA theory town. The Horror of Hormak....WHAT IN THE HELL, @eplerjc
Just...the implications....UGH. (Also, it was so excellently creepy ❤️)
