will BGEE make modding for the first part of the series more popular?
Son_of_Imoen
Member Posts: 1,806
One thing that has allways had me wondering, being a great fan of Tutu (not the bishop, yeah, the bishop too, but also the mod thats makes you play BG1 in the BG2 engine), is how little content mod there is:
1. (my most important point): there's many good quality NPC-mods to choose from for BG2. For BG1, there's only 2 high-quality mod-NPC's that you can pick for your game: Finch and Gavin.
2. there's little fan-made quests for Tutu. The only things I found so far to have decent quality, is the 4 mini-quests added by the Iron Modder competition around the theme 'A rain of tears' and the Sirine's Call mini-quest. I found Secret of Bonehill to be unbalancing, the Drizzt Saga is unbalancing too, the Stone of Askavar badly written, my hopes are for the Grey Clan Episode 1 now, I'm about to try it out, once my characters are experienced enough to deal with it. Compared with BG2 extra content, it's few. Sure, there's Dark Horizons, a very big mod, but it adds such a lot of overpowered items in the early part of the game, it completely breaks it.
Why is there so little interest in BG1 (or Tutu, or BGT part 1) modding. And will it be justified to hope for a revival of modding for the first part of the game, now that a much better out-of-the-box BG1 engine will get available, with inspiring new content as a bonus?
1. (my most important point): there's many good quality NPC-mods to choose from for BG2. For BG1, there's only 2 high-quality mod-NPC's that you can pick for your game: Finch and Gavin.
2. there's little fan-made quests for Tutu. The only things I found so far to have decent quality, is the 4 mini-quests added by the Iron Modder competition around the theme 'A rain of tears' and the Sirine's Call mini-quest. I found Secret of Bonehill to be unbalancing, the Drizzt Saga is unbalancing too, the Stone of Askavar badly written, my hopes are for the Grey Clan Episode 1 now, I'm about to try it out, once my characters are experienced enough to deal with it. Compared with BG2 extra content, it's few. Sure, there's Dark Horizons, a very big mod, but it adds such a lot of overpowered items in the early part of the game, it completely breaks it.
Why is there so little interest in BG1 (or Tutu, or BGT part 1) modding. And will it be justified to hope for a revival of modding for the first part of the game, now that a much better out-of-the-box BG1 engine will get available, with inspiring new content as a bonus?
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Comments
I really did try to enjoy it but it just needs a lot of work to feel 'done'. I hope it continues to be made.
Unfortunately most quest mods need the World Map, and I hate the World Map mod. I like the regular Tutu/Vanilla map.
Overall I'd say there's not a lot of BG1 content and what IS available could use some work.
In relation to Sirine's Call, fantastic mod. The only problem is that the areas they used for the lighthouse buildings are ripped from IWD and very poor quality. Not good to look at.
While people always point out that there are mods for free so why bother with bg:ee, they forget that there aren't alot of mods for to BG1, least to say new ones. the last of the quest related mod is from 2009 - over 3 years ago - and maybe Dsotsc which its last update is from 2010, and its not a new mod anyway.
I hope we will see more new and quality mods specifically for BG1.
NTotSC and DSotSC don't even work on EasyTutu! That's the other problem, what little mods there are for BG1, half of them need BGT.
I'll be happy when BG:EE destroys the EasyTutu/BGT conflicts and everything is made to work with ONE.
yes.
More likely, what will happen is that we will have THREE.
Are there any ideas already brewing in the modding community you could give a long answer about, or is it too early yet?
BGEE would seem to expand both supply (by being easier to mod than BG1--but read on) and demand (by rekindling interest in BG1.)
Caveat: We have no idea whether, or how, iOS and Android versions would be moddable. Compiling WeiDU for those platforms would appear to be "doable, with a moderate amount of effort," and I'm sure the kinds of people who have worked on multi-mod installers would work on solving the interface problem for those devices. However, "here is an independent program whose sole purpose is to modify another program on your device!" is exactly the sort of thing Apple does *not* allow people to do, as a rule. So if the BGEE market is totally dominated by iOS downloads... we'll see what happens, I guess.
But really, @JCompton has the long and short of it. People who love the main story and want to build in new stories, quests, and areas will show up as long as they feel engaged enough in the game, are given the technical access/knowledge of how to do so, and percieve that additions they make will have an audience.
(Some folks even do this without looking for an audience. DavidW's SCS and SCSII were created and developed long before he decided to share his work. He just wanted to do it, and so he did. Luckily for us, it is not resting in some forgotten backup - but it always brings up the point - there are plenty of folks out there who loved the game when it first came around who now are older and may have the time and inclination to try out storytelling in this manner. We just have to wait and see if they get reenergized and try it out!)
But the only downside is, copy-pasting existing graphics to make these new areas makes it feel wrong. The landscapes are hand drawn and so they look natural, but when you take bits out of context from their surroundings it doesn't feel right anymore and you can see the differences then.
Well I don't know what's possible because I don't know how to make new maps, but there are a number of ways I can think of to make these pieces of landscape they borrow feel more natural in the setting. It depends on the limitations of whatever file format these images are in though. I can't unlock them in the first place. That's a good point man. What I meant was BGT/Tutu won't have to be a choice for me anymore (assuming BG:EE isn't too horrible. :P). Even if BG:EE superceeds BGT/Tutu in everyway, they will still be useful as I'm sure a lot of mods won't make it over to BG:EE. Again, it's a clever concept. But I just find the whole thing unnecessary and difficult. Not only is the image compressed in order to justify it's size (you can visibly see the artifacts in game), but you would never use a world map for such an area.
A world map is just overkill, you can't focus on the actual game area because there's too much around. Your ability to scroll the map and enjoy the work the creator did is limited due to the clunky scrolling movement (not the fault of creator).
I just think that these new areas should of been added to the existing map, or that it should have been expanded a little.
It would be possible to put out a HD edition of the map. It would just be a lot of work producing MOS files for 7 languages, with two map sizes for each language.
And so I have found it very amusing that BGEE will ship Neera, essentially rendering my idea pointless. Though one can never know. BGEE at least will finally destroy the Tutu, which is always a good thing. Agreed about BGT though.
I feel that the amount of documentation at Pocket Plane Group is incredible and can get you started on a mod easily. If writing is your strongpoint you should maybe go around and see if you could get a coder/scripter to work with you to implement it.
I put Finch and Gavin up there in my list of mods I would like to play in EE
Eventually we will see a BGT:EE (I already hear screams of horror at that thought)
I can promise you there will be active efforts to try to get Finch and Gavin and Indira and The Lure of the Sirine's Call and Baldur's Gate Mini Quests & Encounters and BG1NPC working on BG:EE, as I like those mods and want to play them myself - and while I have not pre-ordered, because I am waiting to pay full price on purpose, I expect to be playing BG:EE.
What do the Dorner dialog fixes and extensions do what BG:EE does not?
Great to hear about the BG1 NPC Project not being ignored when EE comes out, it's such a great mod. Mandatory on any playthrough of BG1 I do.
The code of BGEE is more clean ? And ? Which will be the difference for create a quest mod ?... None. Create a quest mod for BG is no more difficult than create a quest mod for NWN/TES.
The difference is that with NWN/TES when you finish your mod, you just need click on the "save" button for export it. For the BG, you need to know the weidu langage for export it.
Since the begin, the problem of modding for the IE games is to find a easy way to export the mods and the problem will still the same with BGEE.