IMO some of you guys have missed the forest for the trees. This is about project management 101, time is money, and both time and money are short. I'm sure beamdog are well attuned to the balancing act, but it's still cool (and brave) they take the time out to post their thoughts and insights on the board here for public scrutiny
@Zeckul - we would only use the off-hand attack animation, not the entire character model. Miloch knows these things a lot better than me, from a technical standpoint.
But the problem is that the original models are lost. From what I understand, all they have is the final per frame images. There are no "animations" anymore, just a set of frames to show consecutively. Therefor, they can't just add animations. They'd have to create all the frames for the new animation in all the possible angles, which is an insane amount of work to do.
@Thels - that's something modders would do, if the devs could fix the crash that occurs when BG1 animations are equipped with off-hand weapons. Miloch seemed pretty positive it could be done, and I trust his knowledge of these matters. Besides, hard work never scared me.
Whoa, this thread... it lives. Okay, seems like I have some questions to answer/updates to give as getting sidetracked with other things means I missed some inquiries here:
He wanted to know if the look would be from BG2 or BG1. Trent's answer was that they will implement 1pp that changes avatars a bit, but i don't understand why -- At least, i seriously hope we find a way to implement BG1 models in some way. -- I only pondered if you could do something similar with 1pp yourselves... | ...or you will revise and change more stuff? | They might see the dated graphics and go away. -- 1pp is fine and all to a small degree, but there are areas it doesn't even touch, i don't think they're going to do something about that.
1) I believe Trent was referring to the paperdolls, which are changed by 1pp. 2) Implementing BG1 models such as they are will not work, there's too much missing information - if somebody actually re-models characters and re-bounces new BAM files in the style of BG1, then that'd be about as close as you get. 3) We want people to feel we've added something positive to the game. The best answer I can give to this is that we will do so as it makes sense to do so. I think it'll probably make sense to do original art/icons for new items, and any original content we add to the game - but of course I can't make any promises here with regards to that as it is not solely my decision as to what does and what doesn't get worked on. If people are scared off by the graphics, there is sadly not much we can do about that - I reiterate if we had the original assets there would've been many things we could have looked into doing on that side but as it is, we're enhancing instead of full-out re-making. 4) What areas are you concerned about? At this stage in the game, changing anything more than what we're working on is likely out of the question, but feedback is always welcome going forward.
I apologize if you were offended, --- If that is not possible, they should use the standard BG2 sprites and animations... | ...if they did that work, the game would be able to support the original Baldur's Gate animations. If this is not in their agreement, then I think the BG2 animations should be kept, 1PP remain optional and later patch the game. | ...in order to uphold the originality and integrity of the game (the most important part of this project), the original avatars, paperdolls and sprites MUST BE restored...
1) Not offended, no. I just wanted to be clear that we are in no way trying to take advantage of any modders or their hard work. Their hard work is still their hard work - we would've been happy to ship a game devoid of mods beyond our own content/fixes/upgrades, but people have approached us and asked us to include these things... you made mention earlier in the thread, something along the lines of "I don't think they understand that no one wants the same thing" - on that part, we are acutely aware of this and this is why we're trying to maintain/improve existing mod compatibility.
The stuff we're including is a good selection of reasonable upgrades for new users. The aesthetics of it all is a nice bonus to some and a detriment to others, but arguments over it will always come down to a matter of opinion. In a new user's case: the game will look gooood and it's kind of a moot point. As for this discussion, the majority has expressed to us this is something they want included, so... yeah. Erephine's mod (depending on the options) is an attempt to restore some of the BG1 aesthetic to the game. She does great work, and in working with us has even improved some of her implementation. So in that sense I'm not clear what you're upset about...?
The bottom line for me is that if what we've put in is not what you want and you'd rather have that vanilla BG2 looking experience, that will likely be a simple mod to assemble and you're not likely to be alone in that opinion. This might even be something we can do after ship for those that want a sans-1pp experience.
2) That's where we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'd argue that the originality and integrity of the game is a quality of the game itself, and in this case the aesthetics are flexible. While we don't want to drastically change things from the original, we didn't hire an art director for nothin'! The cinematics and UI are getting an overhaul, so, what about the PPD's and avatars gets your goat so much?
FINALLY: Not offended, just want to re-iterate that. It's not like you were being a jerkface or anything, it's just a differing opinion. It's important that people speak up about what they want, otherwise how are we supposed to know? I'm more than happy to keep an open dialogue about this.
If the helmets are fixed to look like the ones in vanilla BG I'll be happy. I can survive all the small parts of 1PP I don't like (such as coloured quarterstaves and flaming swords, both of which I think are horrible ideas but most like them).
The problem is the helmets in 1PP are modelled off BG2 helmets, plus she took the horns off the noob helmet man! That's not fair.
If it were me I would've made the original cinematics fancier (fixed the grainy CGI with new technolgy), but they aren't great na. I don't know anything about CGI though. I think the new ones will be good though.
No opinions on the GUI until it's unveiled. Remember, you have my full support. I just miss the horns man.
The part that 1pp doesn't cover is basically male avatars, especially fighters or clerics. It's mostly about females and rogues. Ok, maybe it covers chainmail for some males, but that's it.
I also don't get the "changing plate to chain mail", on a plate armor (on some female avatars).
In other words, i hope 1pp evolves into something more, right now i don't see anything that i would care about enough, maybe if it covered more avatars.
Maybe something to think about BG2:EE, to have some more minor changes, since we are used to the same images and color patterns all these years, although to be honest, even if we're able to get rid of the pixelation mess of the sprites, i would be happy. I was doing some armor color editing yesterday or so, and i noticed especially on male elven fighter avatars, the pixelation is horrible, most evidently with metallic colors.
If the helmets are fixed to look like the ones in vanilla BG I'll be happy. I can survive all the small parts of 1PP I don't like (such as coloured quarterstaves and flaming swords, both of which I think are horrible ideas but most like them).
The problem is the helmets in 1PP are modelled off BG2 helmets, plus she took the horns off the noob helmet man! That's not fair.
If it were me I would've made the original cinematics fancier (fixed the grainy CGI with new technolgy), but they aren't great na. I don't know anything about CGI though. I think the new ones will be good though.
No opinions on the GUI until it's unveiled. Remember, you have my full support. I just miss the horns man.
I think (hope!) you'll be happy with the helmets. There are horns in there, and some wings.
Fixing the CGI would've required an entirely new sequence to be created and rendered - those assets too, are ones that were lost. If we had tons of money, maybe we could've hired Blur and called it a day... they would've done a kick-ass job.
All the same, Nat's art is gorgeous and we're all pretty confident over here that you (and everyone!) will like it.
I'm so glad 1PP is going to be in. The only thing i don't install are the new potion graphics, everything else i install. Now if we could just get those original helmet animations, wish i could get the original helmets from the candle keep guards into the BG2 engine. NOT the horned helmet from BG2, but the ORIGINAL candle keep helmets.
2) Implementing BG1 models such as they are will not work, there's too much missing information - if somebody actually re-models characters and re-bounces new BAM files in the style of BG1, then that'd be about as close as you get.
All you have to do is bribe Scott into finishing what he had started about fixing BG1 models and include them as unused resources into the game--I'm sure someone will take care of the rest
@Nathan , wait a minute, youre not Nat Jones?? I assumed you were ... Unless nat Jones speaks about himself in 3rd Person and has a giant ego regarding his art work :P
@Excalibur_2102 LOL, no, I'm not Nat Jones. My last name starts with a W, and the art that I'm skilled with is audio, not so much the visual. Nat browses the forums from time to time but AFAIK hasn't created a user account.
@Nathan Are you sure Nathan isn't just a cover name for Nat Jones? Three letters stand between you and him, it's a conspiracy.
I'll be serious now. Whoever you are, I'm very pleased to hear that we get horns back on our helmets. I tried the latest version last night and I am enjoying quite a lot of it.
@AndreaColombo Are you the same Andrea C. from Spellhold Studies which said "I plan on taking care of this but it's going to be a couple more months before I can even start, and working out all weapons for all avatars is probably going to take a very long time. It's not worth waiting for me to make your way through BG2, but just so you know those animation will eventually be dual-wielding ready" in relation to restored BG1 animations?
my point is that they messed up big time with the shields and helmets animations in bg2, and because BG2 is a direct continuation of BG1 I dont see a reason why suddenly all the helmets and shields should look any different.
I HATE helmets in BG2. Where are the glorious Flaming Fist full helmets? Where are awesome "chimera winged" Amn helmets? I want them back
Well, I agree with what some other people have said about 1pp being a mixed bag. A few of the components are pretty cool, but most aren't really my cup of tea. A shame it is going to be the standard - should have been left as an optional install.
What really puzzles me is that given the team knew they weren't going to be able to do improved art, couldn't they have released a version that looked like the original, something TuTu can't do. If dual wielding was THE thing stopping this... just leave dual wielding out of BG1?
Looks like the choice is now threefold - Original(pause cancelling spells bug makes it unplayable, little mod capacity), Tutu(some bg2 art in your bg1, takes at least 4 hours of tinkering around to get going), BG:EE(Beamdog's favourite aesthetic mod pre-installed, where is my nostalgic trip?)
Is it really too much to get a working BG1 at a nice resolution?
@Loz sure it could be done. But then who would buy it? The <1000 people on Earth who actually remember exactly what BG looked like and want to play it like that but higher resolution? I wonder how much the game would have to cost then to cover the expenses.
You can use Infinity Animations, a mod that brings the BG1 character avatars in the game, and is compatible with TuTu or BGT. It works fine.
It looks great, since the engine upscales everything to the resolution you set by the widescreen mod, they look as fine as the BG2 ones, at the same resolutions, even better.
The BG1 models crashed the game when dual wielding, but the devs fixed that, the game no longer crashes, animations for dual wielding do not exist, of course, but you could use the BG1 models with no problems now. I assume they fixed it because they intend to allow the optional usage of BG1 character models for the nostalgic ones. But nostalgia or not, they look better for me, the BG2 ones are an atrocity.
We have high hopes of the BG1 character models being included in the game data, one way or another.
As for 1pp, it's a great mod, for those who like BG2 animations, the amount of work Erephine did is insane, but i personally detest the BG2 sprites, so it does nothing for me.
Comments
2) Implementing BG1 models such as they are will not work, there's too much missing information - if somebody actually re-models characters and re-bounces new BAM files in the style of BG1, then that'd be about as close as you get.
3) We want people to feel we've added something positive to the game. The best answer I can give to this is that we will do so as it makes sense to do so. I think it'll probably make sense to do original art/icons for new items, and any original content we add to the game - but of course I can't make any promises here with regards to that as it is not solely my decision as to what does and what doesn't get worked on. If people are scared off by the graphics, there is sadly not much we can do about that - I reiterate if we had the original assets there would've been many things we could have looked into doing on that side but as it is, we're enhancing instead of full-out re-making.
4) What areas are you concerned about? At this stage in the game, changing anything more than what we're working on is likely out of the question, but feedback is always welcome going forward. 1) Not offended, no. I just wanted to be clear that we are in no way trying to take advantage of any modders or their hard work. Their hard work is still their hard work - we would've been happy to ship a game devoid of mods beyond our own content/fixes/upgrades, but people have approached us and asked us to include these things... you made mention earlier in the thread, something along the lines of "I don't think they understand that no one wants the same thing" - on that part, we are acutely aware of this and this is why we're trying to maintain/improve existing mod compatibility.
The stuff we're including is a good selection of reasonable upgrades for new users. The aesthetics of it all is a nice bonus to some and a detriment to others, but arguments over it will always come down to a matter of opinion. In a new user's case: the game will look gooood and it's kind of a moot point. As for this discussion, the majority has expressed to us this is something they want included, so... yeah. Erephine's mod (depending on the options) is an attempt to restore some of the BG1 aesthetic to the game. She does great work, and in working with us has even improved some of her implementation. So in that sense I'm not clear what you're upset about...?
The bottom line for me is that if what we've put in is not what you want and you'd rather have that vanilla BG2 looking experience, that will likely be a simple mod to assemble and you're not likely to be alone in that opinion. This might even be something we can do after ship for those that want a sans-1pp experience.
2) That's where we're going to have to agree to disagree. I'd argue that the originality and integrity of the game is a quality of the game itself, and in this case the aesthetics are flexible. While we don't want to drastically change things from the original, we didn't hire an art director for nothin'! The cinematics and UI are getting an overhaul, so, what about the PPD's and avatars gets your goat so much?
FINALLY: Not offended, just want to re-iterate that. It's not like you were being a jerkface or anything, it's just a differing opinion. It's important that people speak up about what they want, otherwise how are we supposed to know? I'm more than happy to keep an open dialogue about this.
If the helmets are fixed to look like the ones in vanilla BG I'll be happy. I can survive all the small parts of 1PP I don't like (such as coloured quarterstaves and flaming swords, both of which I think are horrible ideas but most like them).
The problem is the helmets in 1PP are modelled off BG2 helmets, plus she took the horns off the noob helmet man! That's not fair.
If it were me I would've made the original cinematics fancier (fixed the grainy CGI with new technolgy), but they aren't great na. I don't know anything about CGI though. I think the new ones will be good though.
No opinions on the GUI until it's unveiled.
I also don't get the "changing plate to chain mail", on a plate armor (on some female avatars).
In other words, i hope 1pp evolves into something more, right now i don't see anything that i would care about enough, maybe if it covered more avatars.
Maybe something to think about BG2:EE, to have some more minor changes, since we are used to the same images and color patterns all these years, although to be honest, even if we're able to get rid of the pixelation mess of the sprites, i would be happy. I was doing some armor color editing yesterday or so, and i noticed especially on male elven fighter avatars, the pixelation is horrible, most evidently with metallic colors.
Fixing the CGI would've required an entirely new sequence to be created and rendered - those assets too, are ones that were lost. If we had tons of money, maybe we could've hired Blur and called it a day... they would've done a kick-ass job.
All the same, Nat's art is gorgeous and we're all pretty confident over here that you (and everyone!) will like it.
Btw: 1PP is awesome, FTW =D
I'll be serious now. Whoever you are, I'm very pleased to hear that we get horns back on our helmets. I tried the latest version last night and I am enjoying quite a lot of it.
What really puzzles me is that given the team knew they weren't going to be able to do improved art, couldn't they have released a version that looked like the original, something TuTu can't do. If dual wielding was THE thing stopping this... just leave dual wielding out of BG1?
Looks like the choice is now threefold - Original(pause cancelling spells bug makes it unplayable, little mod capacity), Tutu(some bg2 art in your bg1, takes at least 4 hours of tinkering around to get going), BG:EE(Beamdog's favourite aesthetic mod pre-installed, where is my nostalgic trip?)
Is it really too much to get a working BG1 at a nice resolution?
You can use Infinity Animations, a mod that brings the BG1 character avatars in the game, and is compatible with TuTu or BGT. It works fine.
It looks great, since the engine upscales everything to the resolution you set by the widescreen mod, they look as fine as the BG2 ones, at the same resolutions, even better.
The BG1 models crashed the game when dual wielding, but the devs fixed that, the game no longer crashes, animations for dual wielding do not exist, of course, but you could use the BG1 models with no problems now. I assume they fixed it because they intend to allow the optional usage of BG1 character models for the nostalgic ones. But nostalgia or not, they look better for me, the BG2 ones are an atrocity.
We have high hopes of the BG1 character models being included in the game data, one way or another.
As for 1pp, it's a great mod, for those who like BG2 animations, the amount of work Erephine did is insane, but i personally detest the BG2 sprites, so it does nothing for me.