Turrets: An Informed Debate

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Patrick Weekes

Point: Oh Crap, a Turret.

by Chargina McCharge, Alliance N7

CHAAAAAAARGE! Aaaaand Nova aaaaand Melee and wooo, how do you like that, Cerberus flunkie? Oh man, I am CARRYING this wave. I am in the ZONE. I just wish I weren’t halfway across the map from those goofballs riding my coattails, because it’s sad that they can’t see how well I’m doing right now.

Well, looks like they disabled Device Number 3. Man, we’ve only got a minute left. Maybe I should stop drawing aggro and help out. Hey, the last one is right over there just across the street. Cool! All right, guys, no worries, I’m on this one!

Oh crap, a turret.

No no no ow crap stop YES I KNOW MY BARRIERS ARE DOWN, okay, cooldown done, let’s take this thing out! Chaaaaaaarge! Nova!

Oh no, it didn’t go through knockback. It’s still firing. And I don’t have any barriers MELEE MELEE MELEE–

Oh no. It’s all red. The little health countdown is ticking down. Looks like I’m sitting out the rest of the–

Wait, who is that? Don’t come over to revive me! Take out the turret first! Don’t you see the – stay away, IT’S A TRAP!

No, the team hasn’t flatlined! Don’t say that! Maybe someone’s got some medigel, or…

Nooooooooo!

Damn you, turret. Damn you to hell.

Counterpoint: Hello, New Friends!

by Archon V Automated Sentry Turret, SN# CERB-1337

Hello, new friends! I’m a turret!

I am the Archon V Automated Sentry Turret! My creator calls me AVAST for short. He says that it sounds like a pirate! Do you like pirates?

My creator used to carry me on his back. I was up so high, but I could not say hello to any new friends. Then he put me down and told me that it was time to grow big and strong and say hello to anyone I see who doesn’t have a Cerberus-authenticated friend-or-foe combat VI signature.

I am very small, but even small things can make a big difference. I am a good helper.

I love saying hello to all my new friends!

My purpose is to say hello to them at approximately 1200 rounds per minute until they fall over and go to the happy place. My creator went to the happy place shortly after he put me down. He went around a corner, and a new friend ran into him very fast.

Now that new friend is coming toward me! Does she want to be my friend?

I am feeling shy. I will sit here very quietly. Maybe she will go somewhere else. I will be sad if she does, because I love saying hello, but I don’t want to hurt her feelings. She might have other things to do besides making friends with such a small thing like me.

Maybe she does not even like to say AVAST like a pirate.

Oh, here she comes! She DOES like me! She wants to be my friend!

Hello new friend! Hello new friend! Hello new friend!

She’s charging at me! Her hugs feel like sunshine! Hello new friend! Hello new friend! And now she has fallen over and gone to the happy place! Yay!

I am good at making friends! I don’t have to be shy at all!

Here comes another person who lacks a Cerberus-authenticated friend-or-foe combat VI signature! He is running toward my new friend! I bet he is saying, “She has gone to the happy place already! Who is the nice person who helped her do it? I wish I could go to the happy place!”

He is running so fast that he doesn’t even see me!

Hello new friend! Hello new friend! Hello new friend!

Now everyone is happy! Avast! Arr!

–

Team Vanguard & Happy Turret by Sara (aka Mwar).

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Demo Live Today + Interview with Billy Buskell and Corey Gaspur!

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Jessica Merizan

Today is a HUGE day for Mass Effect 3 fans! Our demo has arrived and can be downloaded to play. No offense to any star-crossed lovers, but I’d say there’s no better way to spend Valentine’s Day than at home with your PC/Xbox/PS3. Maybe pair it with a nice box of chocolates… All of us at BioWare are huge fans of the multiplayer mode in ME3 so you never know when you’ll run into one of us on your squad!

Fans of The Walking Dead will also be in for a treat this Sunday when our big Digic CG trailer “Take Earth Back” will premiere. It’s 90 seconds long, so it’s pretty much going to dominate that commercial break. Watch the video above for a 15 second preview!

Yesterday, we were all set for a live Q&A with combat designer Corey Gaspur and producer Billy Buskell but encountered issues with Livestream that prevented the event. In its place, I asked fans on Twitter to send us questions about multiplayer for our devs to answer. Check out their answers after the cut…

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Dragon Age Week

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Mark Darrah

In the first week of January, I tweeted several times about DA Week, talking about things I did and/or saw. You may have questions:

If we have a team dedicated to Dragon Age, how can we have a DA Week?
What is DA Week?
If Sir Pounce-a-lot and Barkspawn got into a pie-eating contest, who would win?
Why is there a lamprey on a shirt further down in this article?

I will answer some (but not all) of these questions in this post.

What is it?

Dragon Age Week is a weeklong period during which team members work on their own projects. These projects can serve a multitude of purposes:

Investigate a feature that is not currently in the plan.
Learn a skill outside their current area of expertise.
Look into projects outside the scope of current Dragon Age work.
Almost anything else.

Teams are allowed and encouraged.

At the end of the week, each person or team is expected to have something to show.

Before DA Week, we ran a series of DA Fridays where Friday afternoons were devoted to similar goals.

Why do it?

Game development is a creative process. As teams have grown bigger and bigger, dependencies have become increasingly important to understand and track. This is great and all, but it has the side effect of restricting what a developer can work on and when. When other people are depending upon my output, it is difficult for me to experiment and try new things.

But therein lies the problem. Experimentation is where a lot of the best features come from.

Off-book things that I personally have been responsible for:

The Wild Mage in BG2
Creature possession in the NWN DM client (though this quickly BECAME a core feature)
Combat balancing in Sonic Chronicles

How’d it go?

We had excellent participation through the week. I think it was a great success.

Anything come out of it yet?

Yes:

Several smaller tech initiatives will be rolled over directly into the codebase.
We had four different groups who worked on board/card games. They are all great games with good “feels.” We haven’t yet figured out exactly what the next steps are for those.
Several people worked on creating assets from a discipline outside their own. This is an EXCELLENT thing. While most of these assets won’t be used in the game itself, the exercise gives a greater appreciation for the work that other disciplines do. Additionally, it actually tends to improve workflow, as domain experts are forced to explain things to non-domain experts, often revealing holes in the documentation or workflows.
Several interesting art projects. Some of which you may see in the store in the future. Some of the more “interesting” offerings caused us to start looking into a print-on-demand store. Things like this:

There is a story that goes with this. REALLY, I promise.

Callback

What if it was fish pies?

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Interview with Level Designer Raylene Deck

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Jessica Merizan

Who are you and what is your role at BioWare?

My name is Raylene Deck and I’m a Level Designer on the Mass Effect franchise.

What is the best part about your job?

I think the best thing about being a level designer is being able to help drive the creative process of making a level. The level starts as just a brief description on a piece of paper, then it’s just a bunch of boxes to represent rooms and cover, and pop-up box messages to tell the player what is happening. But eventually, everything comes together and it transforms into something amazing by the time we ship. The great thing about this process is that I get to work closely with a lot of different departments during various stages of development. Working in a creative environment, people come up with so many ideas that almost every day something is improved, changed or newly discovered, and that what makes it exciting.

What does an average day look like for you?

As a level designer, I think an average day really depends on which stage of development we’re working on. If it’s the beginning of the project, I will be in a lot of meetings to discuss what kind of level we want to make. We’ll figure out the overall story, setting and gameplay, and from there, I will start making the level layout. If it’s mid-production, we have the bones of the level figured out and so now I would be doing tasks such as combat layouts, boss fight mechanics or exploration puzzles. At this time, I’m working very closely with my artist, writer, gameplay designer and cinematic designer to figure out all the details of the level and most importantly, make the level fun. If it’s getting close to the time of shipping the game, the level is already fun so now it’s time to fix all the bugs. I switch gears and work with the QA team. Some of the bugs I’ll be fixing range from logic errors, memory and frame rate issues or collision problems.

Can you tell us about one of your proudest moments working in game development?

Mass Effect 2 was my first critically acclaimed game that I’ve worked on. Walking into my local game store, and seeing Mass Effect 2 sitting on the shelf was an amazing feeling, especially being new to the gaming industry. Everyone I work with puts so much heart into their work. Seeing the fans so excited to play the game is humbling and makes all those long working hours worth it.

What’s a geeky thing about you?

Oh boy, where do I start? If I had to choose one thing that’s out of the ordinary, I’d pick my love of making costumes. I used to dress up as favourite anime characters and perform skits at Animethon (a local anime convention in Edmonton) when I was younger. I can’t believe I just admitted that! But I still try and go over the top for any event that requires a costume. At BioWare, there is a Halloween costume contest each year and I’ve been lucky enough to win a few times. It’s always a competitive contest with so many creative people working here. This past year, I dressed up as Chell from Portal 2.

Do you have any advice for those wishing to get into the video game industry?

In my department, level designers come from a lot of different backgrounds. For me, I have a degree in Computing Science, but there are people that have art or even music backgrounds. So I don’t think the important part is where you come from, but instead, your drive to make games. So make something! Grab a copy of a toolset like Unreal Editor or even the Neverwinter Nights toolset, and try your hand at scripting and learning what is fun. And don’t be discouraged if your idea fails. For every idea that works, there were 10 past ideas that didn’t work. Also, get your friends to try out your game. Being able to take feedback and iterate on it is an extremely helpful skill in making games.

If you weren’t working in the industry, what would you be doing?

Hard question! I’d probably be doing something completely different. For instance, I’m a big Japan-nerd so I’d possibly become a Japanese-English translator and translate games in Japan.

What are you currently playing, reading, or listening to?

The last few months have been tough since we’ve been pushing really hard to get Mass Effect 3 finished, so I’m behind on my stack of games. But I managed to find time to play Skyrim and I’m just starting up on Uncharted 3. I got a Kobo E-reader for Christmas so I downloaded my first book, Ender’s Game, and I’m really enjoying it. I also bought tickets for Coachella for the first time so I’ve been listening to a lot of the bands who will be there and getting really excited for the show!

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