I figure I'll just bookmark the thread and, if it ever happens, that would be great. I won't hold my breath, just because... Kudos to the team working on it.
Awesome. I said this in another thread, but a single modder doing this gives credence to my theory: a team like Beamdog could do this for all sorts of old AD&D 2E-based games, designing them like large mods on the EE engine, and releasing them as new games for ~$15 apiece. I would gobble them up, and I assume other people would as well.
Late response @subtledoctor - the issue is licensing. I think BeamDog has to go to the trouble to identify who has the rights to things, and then come to agreements with all parties (which becomes a mess when the original studios are broken up, as there are lots of fingers in the pie). It's funny because an IP that makes zero money and leads to zero income becomes a point of contention for the owners, because they want something out of it and would rather sit on zero... It is what it is.
I remember finding the original game in a charity shop, maybe ten years or so ago, but being such an old game even back then, I could never get it to run.
quote: "this mod still alive? hope so. Yes my mod(s) are alive, but i cannot talk about it, until the Dragonspear release... Thanks in Soulmarine's BG:EE Wood GUI Comment by Soulmarine July 15 ..."
quote: "this mod still alive? hope so. Yes my mod(s) are alive, but i cannot talk about it, until the Dragonspear release... Thanks in Soulmarine's BG:EE Wood GUI Comment by Soulmarine July 15 ..."
Guess we will have to wait and see : )
I'm confused: what does SoD have to do with a mod for IWD:EE?
Awesome. I said this in another thread, but a single modder doing this gives credence to my theory: a team like Beamdog could do this for all sorts of old AD&D 2E-based games, designing them like large mods on the EE engine, and releasing them as new games for ~$15 apiece. I would gobble them up, and I assume other people would as well.
I'd rather that Beamdog did that for the 5E engine. People adept old P&P adeventures for new(er) editions all the time. The 5E system is much more intuitive and is more noob-friendly than 2E. If they used something like Unity Engine (or another more modern engine), it would be very to make the game(s) modder friendly too.
Edit: Btw, I sincerely doubt @Soulmarine is going to finish this megamod. If he or she does, great. Not holding my breath though. The Infinity Engine isn't the easiest engine to create mods in, let alone megamods.
I just played some Shadowrun for an hour and I couldn't put my finger on why I find it dissatisfying... until I realized that the tactical depth is horrendous. You can be a mage... and that basically just lets you cast Magic Missile at people. And you can cast different kinds of missiles, which is more or less the equivalent of using different kinds of guns. So what's the difference between magic and guns??
Shadowrun P&P ruleset isn't fully represented by the Shadowrun games...
Edit: Also, you need to buy more spells. The tactical depth does get better when you get a bit further, iirc. It's still simplistic in the games, whereas it's not so in the P&P Shadowrun editions.
BG2 has so many effects, so many things you can do, so many combinations of abilities, it's shocking. I have zero interest playing a new BG-derived game that goes to Unity and dumbs things down to make things easy for newbies. "Intuitive and noob-friendly" often means "boring and soulless."
I hardly see how moving to unity or 5E would dumb things down. Look at Pillars of Eternity. It's more streamline, but it's very much D&D inspired in its rules and such. It is by no means "dumbed down". In fact, even as someone used to D&D-based games, it took me a bit to get used to PoE. 5E didn't make things noob friendly or dumbed dumb, contrary to what the stupidity that was Sword Coast Legends tried to present. (That game saying it was inspired by 5E was fucking joke.) P&P is just as involved as BG, imho. Yeah, you actually do the rolls yourself instead of the game doing so. And instead of THACO, you're just rolling a d20 die for attack. Etc. etc. The point is, 5E made things more intuitive without dumbing things down. 5E even has optional rules that not all DMs use (like "travel weariness", for example).
If they used something like Unity Engine (or another more modern engine), it would be very to make the game(s) modder friendly too.
How so?
The only Unity Engine RPG I'm familiar with is Pillars of Eternity, and it is not easier to mod than the Infinity Engine games.
The Infinity Engine has well-structured and reasonably simple binary file formats for each type of game resource, and an override folder mechanism. Once modders had reverse-engineered those formats and written tools for reading/writing them, modding became accessible to everyone willing to learn a little.
In Pillars, the data files are a tangled mess of Unity Asset Bundles which are basically compressed data structure dumps for the game executable (and thus can change each time the game executable gets a patch), and indeed contain plenty of references into the main DLL of the game. And there is no override folder mechanism either. From what I understand, in order to mod the game in any nontrivial way, you pretty much have to decompile the DLL - which requires the 'pro' version of the Unity editor, which costs lots of money (unless you pirate it). Oh and you'll need good C# programming skills too. So modding is not really accessible to anyone, but only to professional-level programmers with money to spare.
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PS: Also, I see little benefit for players in the Unity Engine, if Pillars is representative of it. While I like many things about that game, the performance is terrible. It eats lots of RAM, heats up the CPU by using it at 100% all the time even while paused, and loading and saving is painfully slow. (For me, loading a save takes around 15 seconds near the start of the game, and almost 30 seconds nearer to the end after having visited most maps and accumulated lots of loot). Compare that to Beamdog's EE games which run like the breeze, use 0% CPU when idle and < 100% even during battles, and have near-instant load and save.
Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture, but switching to Unity for future Beamdog games sounds like terrible idea to me.
If they used something like Unity Engine (or another more modern engine), it would be very to make the game(s) modder friendly too.
How so?
The only Unity Engine RPG I'm familiar with is Pillars of Eternity, and it is not easier to mod than the Infinity Engine games.
Pillars of Eternity did not come with a modders toolset. But it's much easier to construct such a toolset with a more modern engine than it is to construct a toolset for an engine that is over 15 years old.
The Infinity Engine has well-structured and reasonably simple binary file formats for each type of game resource, and an override folder mechanism. Once modders had reverse-engineered those formats and written tools for reading/writing them, modding became accessible to everyone willing to learn a little.
And it's still a giant mess. Why? Because unlike the Unity Engine, where the vast majority of the files are accessible to the end user, the Infinity Engine has a great deal of files which are hidden. And modders created ALL of the tools to mod the game. That's pretty bad, when you consider it.
In Pillars, the data files are a tangled mess of Unity Asset Bundles which are basically compressed data structure dumps for the game executable (and thus can change each time the game executable gets a patch), and indeed contain plenty of references into the main DLL of the game.
Tools for editing most of these items are 1) easier to create in a newer engine, as I mentioned before, AND 2) modders can easily download Unity Creation tools.
From what I understand, in order to mod the game in any nontrivial way, you pretty much have to decompile the DLL - which requires the 'pro' version of the Unity editor, which costs lots of money (unless you pirate it). Oh and you'll need good C# programming skills too. So modding is not really accessible to anyone, but only to professional-level programmers with money to spare.
No, not really. But the game creators need to provide a modders toolset, a la the toolset provided with the Neverwinter Nights games.
PS: Also, I see little benefit for players in the Unity Engine, if Pillars is representative of it. While I like many things about that game, the performance is terrible.
It eats lots of RAM, heats up the CPU by using it at 100% all the time even while paused, and loading and saving is painfully slow.
That's indicative of failure on part of the dev team to optimize the game, not the failure of the Unity Engine itself.
Compare that to Beamdog's EE games which run like the breeze, use 0% CPU when idle and < 100% even during battles, and have near-instant load and save.
Yes...how surprising that games designed for systems where there were significantly less resources run with very little system resource allocation on systems where there are significantly more systems resources available. Since 1998, computers have advanced a great deal.
Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture, but switching to Unity for future Beamdog games sounds like terrible idea to me.
You're not seeing the entire picture at all. I recommend you do further research. Here's a good start: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/making-a-moddable-game.312490/ -- Based on this, if modders are provided with tools, then it is not that hard to mod a game designed in the Unity Engine.
No thanks, that engine needlessly turns my computer into a hot plate. The only Unity game I bother with is Shadowrun, and not even that is on my hard drive anymore.
No thanks, that engine needlessly turns my computer into a hot plate. The only Unity game I bother with is Shadowrun, and not even that is on my hard drive anymore.
But the nature of the engine invites heavy use of unoptimized code templates, which naturally leads to unoptimized processor and GFX card usage, resulting in turn-based isometric games that regularly run i7 processors and 1GB graphics cards at 90-100 degrees C at low to medium settings. I don't really need a brush-up on my tech facts, but thanks for the link
But the nature of the engine invites heavy use of unoptimized code templates, which naturally leads to unoptimized processor and GFX card usage, resulting in turn-based isometric games that regularly run i7 processors and 1GB graphics cards at 90-100 degrees C at low to medium settings. I don't really need a brush-up on my tech facts, but thanks for the link
There is no supporting (read: non-anecdotal) evidence of such a conclusion.
Comments
"this mod still alive? hope so. Yes my mod(s) are alive, but i cannot talk about it, until the Dragonspear release... Thanks
in Soulmarine's BG:EE Wood GUI Comment by Soulmarine July 15 ..."
Guess we will have to wait and see : )
Edit: Btw, I sincerely doubt @Soulmarine is going to finish this megamod. If he or she does, great. Not holding my breath though. The Infinity Engine isn't the easiest engine to create mods in, let alone megamods.
Edit: Also, you need to buy more spells. The tactical depth does get better when you get a bit further, iirc. It's still simplistic in the games, whereas it's not so in the P&P Shadowrun editions. I hardly see how moving to unity or 5E would dumb things down. Look at Pillars of Eternity. It's more streamline, but it's very much D&D inspired in its rules and such. It is by no means "dumbed down". In fact, even as someone used to D&D-based games, it took me a bit to get used to PoE.
5E didn't make things noob friendly or dumbed dumb, contrary to what the stupidity that was Sword Coast Legends tried to present. (That game saying it was inspired by 5E was fucking joke.) P&P is just as involved as BG, imho. Yeah, you actually do the rolls yourself instead of the game doing so. And instead of THACO, you're just rolling a d20 die for attack. Etc. etc. The point is, 5E made things more intuitive without dumbing things down. 5E even has optional rules that not all DMs use (like "travel weariness", for example).
The only Unity Engine RPG I'm familiar with is Pillars of Eternity, and it is not easier to mod than the Infinity Engine games.
The Infinity Engine has well-structured and reasonably simple binary file formats for each type of game resource, and an override folder mechanism.
Once modders had reverse-engineered those formats and written tools for reading/writing them, modding became accessible to everyone willing to learn a little.
In Pillars, the data files are a tangled mess of Unity Asset Bundles which are basically compressed data structure dumps for the game executable (and thus can change each time the game executable gets a patch), and indeed contain plenty of references into the main DLL of the game.
And there is no override folder mechanism either.
From what I understand, in order to mod the game in any nontrivial way, you pretty much have to decompile the DLL - which requires the 'pro' version of the Unity editor, which costs lots of money (unless you pirate it). Oh and you'll need good C# programming skills too.
So modding is not really accessible to anyone, but only to professional-level programmers with money to spare.
---
PS: Also, I see little benefit for players in the Unity Engine, if Pillars is representative of it. While I like many things about that game, the performance is terrible. It eats lots of RAM, heats up the CPU by using it at 100% all the time even while paused, and loading and saving is painfully slow. (For me, loading a save takes around 15 seconds near the start of the game, and almost 30 seconds nearer to the end after having visited most maps and accumulated lots of loot).
Compare that to Beamdog's EE games which run like the breeze, use 0% CPU when idle and < 100% even during battles, and have near-instant load and save.
Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture, but switching to Unity for future Beamdog games sounds like terrible idea to me.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-pros-and-cons-of-Unity-3D-and-Unreal-Engine
Any performance issues are most likely due to the devs being sloppy with garbage collection, which is NOT the fault of the engine...at all.