@jcompton Really? My bad on that one. Good to know as well. I can't say I blame them though. The OGL was a very generous license even with that limitation. I think it did more to promote D&D than anything else ever implemented. That is a shame about the video game limit though.
In that case I would seriously consider abandoning D&D as the ruleset. It brings WotC/Hasbro to the table for very little gain and significant cost. BG was originally going to be an original IP. There is no reason these guys couldn't return the IE to those roots.
At the risk of straying off-topic, that was one of the most brilliant cash grabs of 2012--setting a six-figure incremental fundraising target for OSX and Linux support, and then turning around and buying a $1500 engine which compiles OSX and Linux binaries with the touch of a button.
At the risk of straying off-topic, that was one of the most brilliant cash grabs of 2012--setting a six-figure incremental fundraising target for OSX and Linux support, and then turning around and buying a $1500 engine which compiles OSX and Linux binaries with the touch of a button.
You gotta admire balls like that.
As I understand it, is it little more complicated than that. They also licenses a range of development tools for dialogs and quests, and they also uses Obsidian art department in their development. I think that I have read (can't find it again), at the time they have bought services and licenses for 500K $ from Obsidian .
As I understand it, is it little more complicated than that. They also licenses a range of development tools for dialogs and quests, and they also uses Obsidian art department in their development. I think that I have read (can't find it again), at the time they have bought services and licenses for 500K $ from Obsidian .
Good for them. Yes, it certainly takes more work than just slapping $1500 down on the counter for Unity Pro in order to be able to make a credible RPG, but I still say it was a wry fundraising maneuver on their part.
I honestly didn't mind Dragon Age's engine at all... I mean, for one you had the option to zoom in and play over the shoulder, and once you hit combat you can pull back and pretty much have a similar view, with the character circles, etc, yet still rotate the action. Ideally something like that, with the ability to maybe fix the screen if desired, and incorporate the ad&d rules (as opposed to the ones DA used), would be awesome.
Also, as much as I love BG, I have to say I liked the 3.5 rules a lot more... they just made more sense, especially for rogues, with the dexterity bonus to hit for small weapons, the fact that having a low dex you could still wear plate and not have that -4 penalty, etc. Plus all the perks and skill pts.
Don't know anything about 4th edition but I heard it's completely different.
Also tactically, I really think TOEE nailed the strategy portion of the fighting. The combat in that I actually found a lot more rewarding and fun being turn based then trying to strategize in real time, using the pause button, etc. It would be amazing if you could switch between both if desired, although it's probably just a pipe dream.
If Overhaul has real guts, they would develop a new engine that is the spiritual successor to the IE, a 2D, pre-rendered, isometric system, almost identical in every way to IE, but far more customizable and capable of advanced NWN-style multiplayer DMing tools.
I agree with everything but the "2D, pre-rendered" graphics. The only reason the Infinity Engine uses pre-renders is because it was designed back in the days where hardware could not do real-time rendering of such highly detailed scenes. So they traded off the freedom of moving the camera around for fluid rendering. Today you don't have to make that trade-off: you get the freedom of point of view and highly detailed renders that are real-time and fluid. 3D also lets you have a much greater number of animations and appearances for all your characters without the exponential explosion of sprites 2D require. Plus with the source art lost for BG today forbidding higher-res renders we see the evil of not shipping the "real" art with the game.
I disagree 100%. There is no 3D RPG today that matches the subtle beauty of a pre-rendered 3D -> 2D isometric game like Baldur's Gate. Dragons Age tried this and it looked like complete and utter crap. I do not want BG3 turned gutted to look like a graphically soulless game like Dragon Age.
I wouldn't care if it looked something like Diablo 3 (although even that game's environments were pretty drab and empty), and the animated character sprites could be overhauled at a higher resolution. But NO full real-time 3D. That's not Baldur's Gate.
Agree with GaelicVigil. Something like ToEE maybe, but not DA:O.
Yes, ToEE certainly had the right idea. Slap that graphical style on top of an awesome, deep, and engaging story, toss in a powerful NWN-style world builder with DM tools and I'll be happy.
ToEE was great, at the exception of this feeling that the 'game' was in fact an expansion of something that was never released. Not enough content, great engine.
If Overhaul has real guts, they would develop a new engine that is the spiritual successor to the IE, a 2D, pre-rendered, isometric system, almost identical in every way to IE, but far more customizable and capable of advanced NWN-style multiplayer DMing tools.
I agree with everything but the "2D, pre-rendered" graphics. The only reason the Infinity Engine uses pre-renders is because it was designed back in the days where hardware could not do real-time rendering of such highly detailed scenes. So they traded off the freedom of moving the camera around for fluid rendering. Today you don't have to make that trade-off: you get the freedom of point of view and highly detailed renders that are real-time and fluid. 3D also lets you have a much greater number of animations and appearances for all your characters without the exponential explosion of sprites 2D require. Plus with the source art lost for BG today forbidding higher-res renders we see the evil of not shipping the "real" art with the game.
I disagree 100%. There is no 3D RPG today that matches the subtle beauty of a pre-rendered 3D -> 2D isometric game like Baldur's Gate. Dragons Age tried this and it looked like complete and utter crap. I do not want BG3 turned gutted to look like a graphically soulless game like Dragon Age.
I wouldn't care if it looked something like Diablo 3 (although even that game's environments were pretty drab and empty), and the animated character sprites could be overhauled at a higher resolution. But NO full real-time 3D. That's not Baldur's Gate.
They'd have to improuve the sprites, they where awefuls
I disagree 100%. There is no 3D RPG today that matches the subtle beauty of a pre-rendered 3D -> 2D isometric game like Baldur's Gate. Dragons Age tried this and it looked like complete and utter crap. I do not want BG3 turned gutted to look like a graphically soulless game like Dragon Age.
I wouldn't care if it looked something like Diablo 3 (although even that game's environments were pretty drab and empty), and the animated character sprites could be overhauled at a higher resolution. But NO full real-time 3D. That's not Baldur's Gate.
The only difference between a pre-render and a real-time render is the time when the image is generated. With enough power you can achieve exactly the same result either way, except one locks you to one resolution and one point of view forever, and the other doesn't. Ok so you don't like the style of Dragon Age's graphics, that's fine, it's not a question of technology it's a question of artistic style. Baldur's Gate could be rendered in real-time on modern hardware, it'd look exactly the same except with arbitrary resolutions and point of views. We're at a point today where you can achieve pretty much anything you want in real-time, so there's really no argument for 2D.
2D also imposes severe constraints on both artists and engine developers since every pixel that can ever be shown has to be pre-rendered, so there's much less flexibility to make varied animations, models and particularly clothing and armor. 2D also make it utterly impossible to do things gamers pretty much expect these days such as dynamic shadows and lighting, universal physics, and of course any representation of depth looks off. Baldur's Gate awkardly tries to do mountains and cliffs and looks at its worse in these regions.
Today we see 3D games that surpass any pre-renders of before in all respects, be it detail, style, realism, etc. Look at The Witcher 2 or Trine 2 for instance.
We're at a point today where you can achieve pretty much anything you want in real-time, so there's really no argument for 2D.
You make some decent points, although this goes a bit far especially when you realize that a mid-range gaming rig may not be the true target platform for a hypothetical new "Beamhaul Quest 1: Search for the Overdog."
The true target platform may be, say, the iPad, which although not without 3D rendering capabilities is not quite the match of your garden-variety mid-range gaming rig.
You make some decent points, although this goes a bit far especially when you realize that a mid-range gaming rig may not be the true target platform for a hypothetical new "Beamhaul Quest 1: Search for the Overdog."
The true target platform may be, say, the iPad, which although not without 3D rendering capabilities is not quite the match of your garden-variety mid-range gaming rig.
Have you seen what Trine 2 looks like on iPad? http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/trine-2/id483381002?mt=12 That's a real-time 3D render, and it certainly surpasses the level of detail of anything we've seen the Infinity Engine do.
Err @jcompton I do tend to forget that many people aren't running a $10k multi-SLI'd gaming rig...It's been a while since I tried gaming on a lower end machine...but I have to think that many of the reviews and screen shots Ive seen didn't come off my super machine....and they still look awesome.
Right. Really, I don't have a horse in this race. I'm just coming at this from the perspective of someone who has worked with the vagaries of two different all-2D-all-the-time engines and saying, from that experience, "it is a poor use of resources to try to do all-2D-all-the-time in 2012."
If someone wants to try to ball-peen hammer the Infinity Engine into making a sixth full-length title with it, then it's their funeral. My observation is that the Overdogs are smarter than that.
I'm not qualified to comment on the relative polygon-pushing power of, say, Unity Pro on a Kindle Fire (a just-as-plausible-as-anything-else guess at what a hypothetical Beamhaul Quest 1 might be employing and targeted at.) If the answer is "as beautiful and lush a landscape as could be imagined in the wildest dreams of Seymour Cray," then great!
The biggest/only issue for me about 3D is that you're often looking at it from an imperfect angle or distance. Either a part of a character or part of a building, background etc. is always sticking out and no amount of anisotropic filtering or bump mapping etc. will help. It just physically cannot look the same quality as 2D. Other gripes aren't inherent to dimensions, but more to required detail. If the stuff is clearer to see it requires exponentially more detail to look good. This includes textures, animations, polygons, sounds... and very fast this becomes not feasible, resulting in a somewhat unrealistic look for me.
I'm also disappointed that modern games are afraid of text (beyond books and other fluff dumps). I can still remember my stomach turning reading stuff in the mortuary.
I think most of the problems with 3D environments looking choppy or broken comes from the fact that the camera isn't fixed; you have to account for a lot more angles when the camera could literally be anywhere than you do when the camera will only ever be in one spot (for example, you can have structures with transparent sides, rather than having to render all sides of every object).
Incidentally, free-camera views also create complications with gameplay. The biggest learning curve when Zelda went 3D was learning to negotiate the camera and controls. Final Fantasy XIII is terrible in its use of camera.
There's no reason why a new iso-RPG couldn't be 3D-rendered, with a fixed camera that allows zoom. @Zeckul keeps bringing up Trine 2, and that's an excellent example of this kind of design.
I think most of the problems with 3D environments looking choppy or broken comes from the fact that the camera isn't fixed; you have to account for a lot more angles when the camera could literally be anywhere than you do when the camera will only ever be in one spot (for example, you can have structures with transparent sides, rather than having to render all sides of every object).
I think the issue that remains today with 3D rpgs is camera manipulation as you mention it; but it's a gameplay/level design problem, not an inherent flaw of all real-time rendering approaches. Dragon Age did a lot better in that respect than NWN2 before it, for instance.
That said, Baldur's Gate has its own issues with its fixed camera viewpoint: you can't see your characters at all when they're behind trees or buildings! It remedies the problem somewhat with some semi-transparency. It's certainly not an ideal solution by any means.
Most of the 3D games I play you can add in modded textures to make it look better, I usually Run Skyrim with 4096x4096 textures and I think it looks fabulous. If one is running low end hardware then one has to make do with limited processing power. Still it is all subjective. I like the 2d work in the IE but appreciate newer 3D work in other engines.
To me the engine doesn't really matter that much. A game engine is like an operating system, it's main job is to get out of the way and not be noticed at all. I care a lot more about the game play and story then textures and sprites. If it looks good enough than go with it. More important to me would be the scripting possibilities. ToEE would be the better engine IMHO if it was available. But if a souped up IE is available I say make some more killer games with it.
There is actually something to be said about the merits of a fixed-camera system depending on the type of game. It does allow for more polish just simply because you'll have a very clear, very defined idea about what level of effort/detail you need to put into making the levels look good. You don't need to have an artist spend that extra hour of effort making the far side of a mountain look good when the player can't get there and will never be able to see it - whereas with an unfixed camera, the chances of the player getting into a position where they can see it might be a possibility, so, "just in case" or one bug report later...
That's certainly part of the reason why DA2 lost the "tactical view" that DA:O had, and that's something that any 3rd person camera game (GTA, for example) or first person game (Halo, for instance) definitely take advantage of.
Personally, I'm actually quite fond of Diablo 3's aesthetic when it comes to this, basically 3D but with its viewpoint fixed in an isometric style, but I am also quite fond of a game like Bastion which effectively uses a newer take of that older 2D isometric art style, and adds some 2.5D elements.
ToEE was great, at the exception of this feeling that the 'game' was in fact an expansion of something that was never released. Not enough content, great engine.
It was the demo version of something never released
Comments
In that case I would seriously consider abandoning D&D as the ruleset. It brings WotC/Hasbro to the table for very little gain and significant cost. BG was originally going to be an original IP. There is no reason these guys couldn't return the IE to those roots.
You gotta admire balls like that.
Also, as much as I love BG, I have to say I liked the 3.5 rules a lot more... they just made more sense, especially for rogues, with the dexterity bonus to hit for small weapons, the fact that having a low dex you could still wear plate and not have that -4 penalty, etc. Plus all the perks and skill pts.
Don't know anything about 4th edition but I heard it's completely different.
I wouldn't care if it looked something like Diablo 3 (although even that game's environments were pretty drab and empty), and the animated character sprites could be overhauled at a higher resolution. But NO full real-time 3D. That's not Baldur's Gate.
Something like ToEE maybe, but not DA:O.
Yes, ToEE certainly had the right idea. Slap that graphical style on top of an awesome, deep, and engaging story, toss in a powerful NWN-style world builder with DM tools and I'll be happy.
2D also imposes severe constraints on both artists and engine developers since every pixel that can ever be shown has to be pre-rendered, so there's much less flexibility to make varied animations, models and particularly clothing and armor. 2D also make it utterly impossible to do things gamers pretty much expect these days such as dynamic shadows and lighting, universal physics, and of course any representation of depth looks off. Baldur's Gate awkardly tries to do mountains and cliffs and looks at its worse in these regions.
Today we see 3D games that surpass any pre-renders of before in all respects, be it detail, style, realism, etc. Look at The Witcher 2 or Trine 2 for instance.
http://www.pixgame.fr/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/trine_2.jpg
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110602143728/witcher/images/0/0a/Tw2-valette-castle-06.png
Does that lack detail? Is that soulless?
The true target platform may be, say, the iPad, which although not without 3D rendering capabilities is not quite the match of your garden-variety mid-range gaming rig.
If someone wants to try to ball-peen hammer the Infinity Engine into making a sixth full-length title with it, then it's their funeral. My observation is that the Overdogs are smarter than that.
I'm not qualified to comment on the relative polygon-pushing power of, say, Unity Pro on a Kindle Fire (a just-as-plausible-as-anything-else guess at what a hypothetical Beamhaul Quest 1 might be employing and targeted at.) If the answer is "as beautiful and lush a landscape as could be imagined in the wildest dreams of Seymour Cray," then great!
Other gripes aren't inherent to dimensions, but more to required detail. If the stuff is clearer to see it requires exponentially more detail to look good. This includes textures, animations, polygons, sounds... and very fast this becomes not feasible, resulting in a somewhat unrealistic look for me.
I'm also disappointed that modern games are afraid of text (beyond books and other fluff dumps). I can still remember my stomach turning reading stuff in the mortuary.
Incidentally, free-camera views also create complications with gameplay. The biggest learning curve when Zelda went 3D was learning to negotiate the camera and controls. Final Fantasy XIII is terrible in its use of camera.
There's no reason why a new iso-RPG couldn't be 3D-rendered, with a fixed camera that allows zoom. @Zeckul keeps bringing up Trine 2, and that's an excellent example of this kind of design.
I think the issue that remains today with 3D rpgs is camera manipulation as you mention it; but it's a gameplay/level design problem, not an inherent flaw of all real-time rendering approaches. Dragon Age did a lot better in that respect than NWN2 before it, for instance.
That said, Baldur's Gate has its own issues with its fixed camera viewpoint: you can't see your characters at all when they're behind trees or buildings! It remedies the problem somewhat with some semi-transparency. It's certainly not an ideal solution by any means.
That's certainly part of the reason why DA2 lost the "tactical view" that DA:O had, and that's something that any 3rd person camera game (GTA, for example) or first person game (Halo, for instance) definitely take advantage of.
Personally, I'm actually quite fond of Diablo 3's aesthetic when it comes to this, basically 3D but with its viewpoint fixed in an isometric style, but I am also quite fond of a game like Bastion which effectively uses a newer take of that older 2D isometric art style, and adds some 2.5D elements.