Dragon Age Toolset Scripting Questions

[Borgut1337]

I'm looking for someone experienced with scripting in the Dragon Age toolset to answer a couple of questions about it. If you're not a modder yourself but a mod user, maybe you can still help! Because I haven't really followed the Dragon Age modding scene at all, I haven't got a clue what scripted mods and scripting modders are around... so if you as a mod user know about any modders with scripting experience around, please tell me and I can send them a PM :)

 

Now as for the questions themselves.. simple yes/no answers should suffice. I'm not looking for entire tutorials or guides or something like that. I'm an experienced programmer and would be able to figure out everything myself if I could download the toolset... but I can't. It requires having Dragon Age installed on your PC, but so far I've only got the Xbox version. I would buy the PC version as well but first I need to be absolutely sure that I will be able to do what I want to do with scripting.

 

I am considering to maybe use Dragon Age Origins and rewrite AI for enemies/followers as a Bachelor's Thesis project in AI. So before I spend money on a PC version, I need to know if the scripting language will allow me to do so;

 

1) Is it possible to write your own functions at all? If the answer is yes, this will seem like a very stupid question. But looking around the wiki everywhere, I've only seen them overwriting pre-defined functions with very specific names, so that is kind of worrying to me...

 

2) Is it possible to write entirely new classes? Object-oriented programming? Write my own data-structures? Subclasses extending superclasses?

 

3) Can I do multi-threading?

 

4) What's the language's performance like? If I write a decently complex AI, can I expect at least a couple hundred iterations per second?

 

Keep in mind that I'm not asking about how difficult any of this is... I'm just asking if the scripting language allows all this at all

[Thandal]

Really now? :unsure: You're a skilled programmer and you won't shell out US$30 for a computer toy? (Dragon Age: Ultimate Edition [Download] on Amazon.)

 

I know you've already played through on your console, but that means without mods! When you look at the time you'll spend enjoying the finding, fixing, or creating of your own mods, the game itself becomes essentially free on a per-hour basis.

 

Just get the game! :thumbsup:

[Borgut1337]

Yes I'm aware of the joys of modded games, I've quite heavily modded skyrim myself :P But I know that I'm not gonna have time to actually properly play through the game anytime soon anyway (dont think I'll do another dragon age playthrough until a short time before DA3 release, for the saved game importing :P) so I really wouldn't be playing it. Only reason for me to buy the PC version at this time would be for my bachelor's thesis, so I do want to make sure that plan will actually work out first

[mcgoy]

Yes, you can do all of those things - as far as I know - I'm not sure about multi-threading. And I've never heard of a Bachelor's Thesis. I wrote a thesis for my Masters, but didn't know that anyone required a Bachelor's Thesis. Senior project?

 

You will have to play through - multiple times - for test purposes, some will be very difficult to do, and some can easily be done and may increase the lag to the point that the game is practically unplayable.

 

Go to the toolset wiki for a bit of research on the possibilities http://social.bioware.com/wiki/datoolset/index.php/Main_Page

[Borgut1337]

I think it's quite normal over here in the Netherlands to write a Bachelor's thesis at end of bachelor's studies.

 

 

You will have to play through - multiple times - for test purposes

 

What do you mean with that though? Isn't it possible to set up a small testing environment somewhere and only test there? Instead of playing through the entire game? :P For me, it is not important that everything functions perfectly throughout the entire game. It's mostly proof of concept stuff... trying to implement new AI techniques, seeing how well they work in a controlled testing environment.

[mcgoy]

Ah - in the US, not so common to write a bachelor's thesis.

 

I'm not sure if you can separate your 'controlled test environment' from the game. The impact of a new AI on the whole game - not just the controlled test environment - would be an important part of testing.

 

You also raise the concern about copyrights and such. The toolset is for personal, nonprofit use. I don't know what the feeling (from Bioware and EA) about using it as platform to test a new AI would be. I could see arguments for both sides on whether what you want to do is permissible.