Here are some of the ” under the hodd” canges Bioware is planing to add with game Patch 5.10.2. fw2g
Under the Hood with SWTOR 4550a
Today we want to pull back the curtain about the development process a bit, in order to talk about two something a little different from what we normally do and go deeper into the tech-side of our explanations. With that, let’s dive in!
Dynamic Placeable Objects (DYNs)
First off, let’s talk about what DYNs are. DYNs are objects that neon sign, while they aren’t interactable, are DYNs that help us build the game world. In the past, every single element and property of these objects had to be individually hand-crafted by a designer.
bug appeared when interacting with an NPC and the fix was to move them to another location on the map. On paper that sounds easy, but unfortunately, it’s not always that simple.
To explain all of this, we are going to set up an example involving a Non-Playable Character (NPC) and some triggers, things that set off an event or action. This NPC could have several DYNs tied to it – lighting, audio triggers, an interaction trigger, etc. Taking it a step further, all those triggers could then be tied to others, thus creating a much more complicated web of fixes. Let’s put all of this into an actual situation now. Taking our mentioned NPC, let’s say when you interact with it, a nearby wall blows up. That wall is another DYN with its own set of effects, connected to this sequence of events, each of which may be tied to yet another DYN with its own set of effects. You can see how this could quickly get out of hand and require hours of work for what would be, in theory, an otherwise “simple” fix.
Why Now?
While the team was looking down the road at content we have planned.
So, how are DYNs going to be changed? We’re taking what are all individually separate entities (our previously mentioned NPC and wall for example) and packaging them together into a single item. By doing this, we will refine, polish, and optimize the entire process. In turn, this makes the build and work with objects in the game more efficiently, while lowering the chances of introducing new bugs throughout the process.
What does this mean going forward?
In general, the system is highly expandable, which opens the doors for our team to create and implement a lot of things that were previously impossible. Something the community has requested for a long time are interactable Stronghold decorations. Imagine your whole Guild meeting up and leaning across the bar, sharing drinks after the latest successful run. While this idea is not a guarantee, it should help paint the picture for things that we can do that never used to be possible!
Preview Window
Now let’s talk about one of the most longstanding frustrations that both players and of our team have struggled with since the This weird limitation shows itself in several ways, from the previewer showing black textures in place of the VFX, to not showing anything at all (we’re looking at you, A7 Surveillance Drone and your missing arms).
The way the preview window was originally built didn’t lend itself well to being expanded upon with new functionality or item types. When Strongholds came out, for example, the decorations previewer had to be built from scratch, rather than being integrated within the existing window. Over time, the window became so complex that we had built up a backlog of over a thousand bugs. Unfortunately, we knew we’d never be able to fix all of these, since it would mean less time devoted to developing new features for the game.
A few months ago, we decided that enough was enough and this was the right time we were updating our DYNs.
What changed?
In addition to a full rewrite of the underlying code, our Dread Fortress Portal will now show their actual effects, rather than a big, black blob. And A7 finally got his arms back!
Optimizing DYNs and rebuilding the Preview Window allows us to move forward with some exciting systems work.
