CGSociety :: Game Production Focus
22 July 2010, by Peter Rizkalla
A good role-playing video game is probably one of the hardest genres to develop. Extensive time and effort needs to be afforded to every aspect of the game. The gameplay needs to be solid, the UI needs to be intuitive, the experience system and the AI needs to be balanced. The graphics and sound must both be brilliant cos players will most likely put in a minimum of 40 to 50 hours into the game to beat it. So you can see why it’s going to have to look and sound pretty. Nothing can be overlooked in developing an RPG!
That being said, many gamers and developers alike have to tip their hats to a single development house for never overlooking anything in their RPG titles and for also putting together some of the game industry’s most renowned RPGs. BioWare is known for some of the most sophisticated RPGs anyone can ever play; games such as Jade Empire, Star Wars: Knights and the Mass Effect series are just to name a few. One of BioWare’s crowning achievements is Dragon Age: Origins; an RPG which won multiple awards for 2009 RPG of the Year and was also nominated for multiple awards at the Game Developer’s Choice Awards. With the recent announcement that BioWare is currently in development of Dragon Age 2, we take a look back at the development of Dragon Age: Origins. To do that, I got to have a little chat with Art Director Matthew Goldman on the development of the Dragon Age series so far.
Art and Design
Going back to the BioWare roots of creating a fantasy/party based RPG, the first step was establishing the feel of Dragon Age: Origins. “Sung Kim and Fran Gaulin worked with then Art Director Dean Anderson referencing various world and fantasy cultures,” says Goldman. Dragon Age: Origins features three playable races; humans, elves and dwarves. Each race has their own art style and feel to them. For example, the human race feels very 'old world' with their surroundings being rich in big timber and rough stone while the dwarf race feels more mystic with lots of angular architecture and even angular design tattoos on their faces. Goldman goes on to tell us more about the intent of Dragon Age: Origins. “We wanted this to be a ‘spiritual successor’ to Baldur’s Gate 2. However that was a high fantasy setting and the goal early on was to bring an edgier more mature feel to the universe. Whimsical was out and bloody was in.”
The Dragon Age: Origins world is filled with thousands of different races and creatures. Controlling your party of warriors through DAO’s UI is also a breeze considering how deep the game can get. “Characters and creatures are certainly memorable and there are a lot of them too. The UI turned out really well too. Both systems are incredibly dense and complex,” says Goldman. But for some reason, horses are not a main part of the Dragon Age experience. You would think that horses would be everywhere in a medieval style game. “Well we keep trying to do horses and it never seems to take off. One day we’ll figure out how to make this fun with multiple party members. We almost got it this time,” says Goldman, smiling. “Our games are about evolving worlds and compelling character interaction which are extremely complex in their own right.” True enough!
Basically, Matthew Goldman sums up the direction for Dragon Age: Origins, and any BioWare developed game for that matter, in just a few short words. “For gameplay? Emergent complexity within an elegant set of rules. For art? Silhouette and motion coupled with interesting behavior.”
Development
Typical tools of the trade apply at the BioWare studios. “Max, Photoshop and ZBrush did the heavy lifting for the authoring of individual assets,” says Goldman. “We have a propriety toolset we use to construct the scenes, manage lighting and pathfinding. We had our own animation system as well because at the time, Character Studio couldn’t do a lot of the things we wanted.” In a previously released developer diary, the BioWare team reveals some of the tricks they used to create gorgeous looking models without sacrificing resources. In one instance while modeling the Cry Demon, the modelers would create a low polygon model based on the 2D concept art. They would then take the low poly model and flesh it out into a very high poly model and sculpt out all the little details of the demon. They would then flatten out the high poly model into a 2D projection of the sculpture from all sides creating a texture map. They would then take that map and apply it to the original, low poly model and have the texture map create the geometry by bump-mapping the highlights and low lights of the texture.
Creating the environments of Dragon Age: Origins was another story. “We create libraries of tile and objects that speak to a theme,” says Goldman. “There are 220 levels in Origins which means flexibility is paramount. We also released the tools to the community for free so that they can design new adventures.” What Matthew Goldman is referring to is that BioWare released a toolset which allowed modification and customization of the game. This toolset is much like the kind of toolsets you will find in a copy of Unreal Tournament 3 where many aspects of the game’s visuals and playability can be modified. Obviously, this feature is only available for PC users.
Last March Bioware released an expansion pack for Dragon Age called Awakening. When asked what was the main difference in development this time around, Goldman replied with this. “The main difference is that the build environment is mature and a lot more stabile. That let the art team spend more time on doing art instead of worrying about pacing, framing opportunities and visual story telling.”
BioWare developed a proprietary character generation tool specifically to handle the task of creating a living society of many characters in the Dragon Age world. “The character generation tool is quite an accomplishment. We like to bandy around the number 1.52x10(52) head variations. In the end we only made 1,700 different characters.” At this point I replied with “ONLY!?” “so maybe that was a bit overkill. 1,700 is still a lot of talking characters in a game!” I’ll say! Speaking of character creation, BioWare released the Dragon Age Character Creator on October 13, 2009 which is about three weeks before the game’s launch date. This tool allowed players to create their own character before the game was officially released and then import that character into their game once it was released. Much like the mod toolset referred to earlier, the character creator proved to be a very robust piece of character creation software. In fact, many players loved creating multiple characters and uploading pictures of their creations online, which was kind of what happened with the SPORE creature creator, just on a much smaller scale.
A lot of the environments in Dragon Age: Origins are epic; in fact, the artists intended that many instances when the player walks into a significant environment for the first time that they are flooded with color and size. All of these grand entrances require appropriate lighting which brings us to the rendering. “I’m an art guy and my engineering background is limited to one especially unimpressive year of university,” You're not the only one Matt! He goes on to say, “But I’m told that the engine is forward rendering. In our case we are generally managing an enormous set of assets in each scene so this style of engine makes it a lot easier to parse memory usage.” In the development of the lighting of the game, BioWare did all the baking and rendering in Illuminate Labs’ Maya plug-in, Turtle.
A big problem with developing Dragon Age is that the game engine they started with was not the same game engine that they finished with. “Swapping out the engine mid-project was pretty hard going. It made the game look and feel better but imagine, if you will, doing that with an airplane and you can imagine the response; a tremendous amount of screaming. We responded by putting our noses to the grindstone. BioWare ships awesome games because the people band together in the face of adversity and git ‘er done.” I love the Larry ‘The Cable Guy’ Reference. “I suspect this behavior may be a product of our grueling winters.” Possibly. BioWare is based in Canada. Early development of Dragon Age was done in the same game engine as the Neverwinter Nights series, the Aurora engine. Later on, the engine was switched out to the newly developed Eclipse engine.
The Grand Scheme Of Things
I asked if any other studios helped in putting together the ‘Dragon Age pieces’, so to speak. Goldman’s response was “Liquid was a big help to us. They operate out of Portland Oregon.” Keep in mind, BioWare’s standards are very high; any studio that attempts to work with them needs to be prepared to meet that same standard. In fact, Goldman left me with a little comment on the BioWare standards. “If you stand still you can’t grow your fan base so we always striving to create unique and interesting experiences for our fans,” he says.
Now with Dragon Age 2 on the horizon, gamers can very well expect another deep RPG experience if BioWare intends on staying true to their tradition. A while back a BioWare rep commented on how Dragon Age: Origins runs by saying that it runs 'very well' on Windows 7. Sure enough, it does! Let’s hope the same thing can be said for the sequel.
Dragon Age: Origins is available on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC as well as the Dragon Age: Origins expansion pack, Awakening. The latest downloadable content to be released for Dragon Age: Origins is the Leliana's Song pack.
