Dan Vávra at GDS 2014

Dan talks about Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It is in English so… enjoy :- )

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Thanks for finding and sharing.

You are welcome but I deserve no credit for that. I just reposted that from a [Czech game web][1] I read daily. :- )
[1]: http://games.tiscali.cz/tema/gds-2014-danel-vavra-game-design-v-praxi-iii-246591

Great share! I love how during explaining how he coaches the team when they run into issues he begins to have technical difficulties.

@Hellboy you should grow that beard out, everyone respects a beard. BTW your accent disappears every time you say Fuck, further evidence of its universality.

:disappointed_relieved: The Q/A at the end has no translation.

Just a brief translation of the Q/A. It’s very loose translation, but there are all relevant things.

Q1: About the problems with time; Have you considered to make it real time 1:1 during the dialogs? It should work, beacuse NPCs would stay on the same place and ingame time would start again after a dialog.

Dan: Yes, it was actually the first thing we did, and that’s why we started to do the other solutions (laugh). What would happen if Cumans came and started to raid a village in the background? Or if someone fired an arrow too far from you which means you wouldn’t be in combat mode and you would be able to start a dialog, and the arrow killed you during the dialog? This can happen and it’s complicated.

Q2: Can you feed villagers?

Dan: We agreed in the team that the simulation must have its limits. It’s great that we have that simulation and it’s really good, but there are moments when we simply have to break the simulation, switch it off and fake some things. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to make the game. And about the food; right now no comment.

Q3: I’m sorry, I also want to ask about the time thing. I wonder what are advantages of having in game time which is not 1:1 with reality, because I can’t come up with anything except that I will see 3 sunsets during a castle siege…

Dan: We have actually solved this. The game time will start and a castle siege can last indefinitely in theory. Another thing is that when a player is in the menu or when he is shopping, time has to stop, because otherwise it would take 3 in-game days before he is finished with shopping. (laugh) If in-game time was a 1:1 real time, then a game would be kind of slow. NPC would say “let’s meet over there at night”, and player would have to always use “skip time, skip time, skip time…”, because otherwise he would need to take a 1 month long time off from a job to play the game without using a skip time, which isn’t ideal.

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hmm, this problem has ever surfaced sometime for another game? Was there a solution? Probably was then thought … why reinvent the same wheel?

it was solved with skip time, but also solved with fast time. depends on overall vision, aesthetic consistency, what dev wants to achieve. there is no ultimate solution.

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I see even so, is a matter of taste and aesthetics. Think in the foreground a credible, pleasant gaming experience should be.