Akari

I imagine Lucas Arts did. Some notes on that: The video is noteably darker than it is in the actual game. While those areas are intentionally dark, that video was to the point of being hard to see at some places. Though also realize that some of the shots in the video were from from angles where you probably can't ever even walk, so the lightning from those angles probably wasn't ideal. The choice of song used in the video doesn't carry any special significance. They probably just felt it sounded nice. -Akari

That's a subjective question that I can't really answer. I think everyone is going to at least have to play KotOR2 twice. -Akari

As I've long since forgotten what a day away from work is like, I'm in the office again today and I'm willing to take a stab at some questions once more. Though be warned, I think the previous two threads have mostly bled me dry of information I can actually get away with sharing. Also, I'm very busy with deadline material, so I might not be able to spend a lot of time monitoring this thread. Also, here's some killjoy guidelines copied from the second thread: I stay away from story matters as much as possible when it comes to giving answers. Partially because there's a lot of things that I don't even know about the story, but also because I think this is one of those stories best experienced rather than have ruined in advance. Having us be tight lipped about story details is for your own good. I try to answer questions in the order they're posted. Keep in mind I'm also, in theory, working today. So there may be long periods of time where I don't have time to post any answers. When I leave for the day I'll lock the thread, so you'll know when I'm actually done. Try to avoid repeating questions. Like I mentioned in the previous week's thread, I don't like repeating myself. Read the previous week's post and see if your question has already been answered. -Akari

That post isn't all together accurate, no. Outside of the things he quoted that everyone's already known, I wouldn't give the rest of his stuff much credit. -Akari

Yes. -Akari <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I've been asked to clarify that a more specific response would be 'Yes, there are is a very limited number of party NPCs from KotOR1 that may join you.' Just in case someone was mislead into thinking absolutely anyone from KotOR1 may join you, because that's certainly not the case. -Akari

Sorry gang. I might not have time to do hang out here too much today. I was out sick half of Tuesday and all of Wednesday, so I'm going to be trying to work doubly fast today to make up for it. And the stuff I'll be working on doesn't lend itself to long compiles either, so I don't have much of an excuse to not be working most of the day. Gotta earn those super-sized meals somehow... -Akari

At the office we're just really super busy. I haven't even had time to browse the forums all week until tonight. I have no idea when the next Lucas Arts website update will be though. But the game is coming along good. Closing the thread since it's mostly derailed by now anyway. -Akari

This thread is just all over the place except for being on topic. The original post was fine but the discussion afterward hasn't been. Closing this down. -Akari

Atton's not gay... I believe that's just been a long running joke that's somehow been interpreted as fact. And this topic is pretty off-topic, so I'm closing it. -Akari

Okay, since I'm taking off for the day I'm going to wrap up some questions then close this topic. Whoops. That's right. It's been over 9 months since I played KotOR1. Sometimes I forget the differences. Especially since I didn't touch the swoop stuff outside of Taris. Well, you can jump over stuff now. I think there's some other changes as well, but I didn't implement them so I'm shakey on it. I'll just leave it at that until I know more for certain. We tried to add opponents to the tracks but it just wasn't working out with how the Swoop stuff was implemented so we had to cut that. Sorry. The turret... Akari: Will the second weapon config. also apply to npc's? Don't remember the exact details.... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, your party members can take advantage of them. There's no real need for them for non-Party NPCs since we can just equip them with whatever we want in script on demand anyway. If I said 'two' somewhere then I mistyped. There's no particular two magazines that I'm waiting on. I'm just waiting on magazines or websites to give out more information on NPCs so that we can discuss them a little more here. Mn... maybe... why... do you know something I don't? We have put more work into scaling the difficulty as you become more powerful. Hopefully it gives you more of a challenge in combat. No idea. Hm... I'm not sure that there's anything like that off hand. Definitely not on the 'Force Movement' idea, though that would be cool. I'm not sure on the grenade defense though. The new slots are: lens, emitter, energy cell. Sounds like it might be Force Fury, a Sith Maurader power. Or maybe it's Force Scream. Just guessing here. No idea on this one. I believe it remains the same. It is a dialog with a NPC. I've heard Atton's name thrown around and that sounds plausible. I don't know for certain myself since I haven't played through that part yet. That isn't known yet. 'Alpha' is a nebulous term in this industry. It's hard to say what qualifies as Alpha or not. If you're asking if one can sit down and play from start to finish without running into any game-stopping bugs then the answer is no. It just became Weekend Designer! Anyway, I'm done for today. I didn't get to as much this time since I was busy with that whole 'Making the game for all of you' thing. -Akari

Skills in specific? Or feats? I can probably elaborate more on actual skills next week. Feats I didn't code so it takes me more time to actually look into what they do. I think the game will be more challenging in combat. We've added a lot of scaling code so that encounters get more challenging as you get more powerful. Don't know for certain yet. -Akari

The designers did ask for more control over facial animations and I believe one of the other programmers implemented support for it. We'll see what the designers do with it. -Akari

I don't think I can give a final answer on this one way or another right now. -Akari

There's no new mini-games this time around. We stuck with the original three and improved on them as much as we could. There were some ideas tossed around early on about some other options, but they got cut eventually. -Akari

I doubt Avellone would tell me even if I asked. Nothing that outlandish, I'm afraid. Most of the stuff you can create are item upgrades than you can then insert into your equipment. Regarding the item creation stuff in general, it should probably be emphasized we're not talking about a full fleged crafting system like you might find in a MMORPG. It's more of an alternative way to get rid of stuff you don't use anymore (I.e., break it down) and putting the broken down components or chemicals to use in something that might be handy for you. While there's probably (I don't know for certain) a number of items that can only be gained through item creation, it's also a way of making items that are more useful to you than stuff you might already have. For example, you might have a ton of medpacks that you don't really need. You could break those down into 'chemicals' and then reassemble the chemicals into advanced medpacks or life support packs. You would obviously get fewer life support packs than the medpacks it took to make it, but later in the game the life support packs are probably more useful to you than a ton of medpacks. This is just an example. Double-bladed sabers will use the same number of crystals. I'm not sure on the alignment-centric item distribution. Hopefully they're more balanced this time around. And I don't know what the sidequest count is for the NPCs. I suspect that it will vary. Some will have more while others have less. I don't think there's an exhibitionist type fighting tournament in the game. But there is some dueling stuff that is very important to the story on one of the planets. I'm trying not to ignore too many questions, but there's a good number that my response would just be 'Can't say' or I've already answered the question before in either this thread or last week's thread so I just skip over them. Right now the designer in charge of that stuff asked that I not change it. Though I agree that it would make sense to let you use more capabale characters for those kinds of things. We'll see what happens. -Akari

It's the same categories that were in KotOR1 in this regard. Ranged weapons, Melee weapons, Lightsabers, and Armor. -Akari

Yes. -Akari

Hm... well, there will be items that you can't fill up all the slots on, but it won't be a 'pick 3 out of 5' thing, it will just be 'This item can't take upgrades in that slot' type of thing. That mostly happens when it's an upgrade slot that doesn't make sense for that item to even have. No new skills. But we've done a lot to make each of the skills more interesting. I can't go into detail on each of the skills right now, but in one of my other posts I mentioned some new ways that Treat Injury and Repair (both of which seemed unimportant to me before) will be more useful by factoring into a character's innate regeneration as well as the item creation system. I mean more to the effect of the actual content of areas will change significantly depending on the direction you went earlier. There won't be graphical changes most of the time. Er, yeah... I'll get right on that during all that extra free time I have. -Akari

Our graphics programmer could speak better on this... but for graphical effects, there is now rain and snow and lightning (And thunder, but that's not graphics). I don't believe we're using any DirectX 9 features in order to avoid bumping up the system requirements of the game. Hm... I haven't seen all the levels yet. There's one that had some pretty dark concept art for it, but I get the feeling that that particular planet is always dark rather than it just happening to be night time. No idea. I think somewhere around 30 or 40. That may still be undecided at this point. Not much I can give you about those right now. Nothing's changed since last week on that regard. -Akari

It is still in the game. While I'm not certain, I'm getting the impression that it will be available a little less this time around because of the nature of the quests and situations you find yourself in. -Akari

I know what 10 of them are. And I actually confirmed what 2 of them are in last week's thread even though it may have seemed like I was only confirming one. Given that you know what the 5 basic ones are from the last game, that leaves only 3 unknowns at this point. Maybe I'll give those out later. -Akari

Yay. Back at work! Here's some catch up questions to start off with. At first we thought the game was actually going to be about the same length or maybe a little bit shorter. But looking at the time it takes to get past the first general area we're starting to think that the overall gametime may be a bit longer than the first. We don't know for certain yet because there's still work being done on the last area so we can't estimate the total play time. If you have your secondary weapon configuration slots empty you can switch to them at the click of a button and that will put your weapons away all together. I don't know off hand. But I think the areas all around look a lot better. The artists are going back through and putting their finishing touches on areas to make them look great. I suspect not. I think those decisions are all made by Lucas Arts marketing. Hm... hard to say. There's a lot of new upgrade components going into the game and we're adding a good number of different properties to them that weren't used in the first game. Also, lightsabers now have 6 upgrade slots in total. 3 crystals and then 3 other components of the saber itself. -Akari

I voted no! I think he should come in late-... er, damn. -Akari

Hey sweet. This means I'm off the hook today, right? -Akari

I'm pretty sure it's the exact same model. It might just be the camera angles. -Akari