That's more or less exactly right, @Mornmagor. Not to dwell on what could have been, but if you look at the comparison screenshots for MDK2HD, you can see the kind of thing that is possible when you have access to the source art assets.
Personally...I think the graphics are a great improvement. All things considered, they did a great job to bring it to where it is. And I will continue supporting, even donating if they ask.
I played BG1 after BG2 and Ive got to say, BGEE is the only reason I'll ever be playing the first game again. Don't get me wrong, I loved the it, but I detested the UI and much of how it looked. Even tho the screenshots they've shown us have apparently been while the game was still in development, it looks alot like ToB quality to me (which is great!). Not only that, my version could never do a full install, so I'd swap disks over again and again. Having that headache out of the way is enough of a reason for me to buy this Sure id like HD, but id also like the voiceactors to provide voices for everything the characters say. Neither of those will happen, but Im thrilled this 14 yr old game is getting official upgrades after so long.
It's mindboggling that the source art was lost for such a venerable, iconic game... a game series that is still critically considered the pinnacle CRPG in existence after 14 years. Someone definitely screwed the pooch. (Although BG2 is considered by most critics to be the true landmark game, versus BG1.)
So basically, we're getting BG1 via the BG2 engine a la tutu and BGT. The question is how much better it will look than what is already available.
Perhaps the inability to re-render BG1 in HD will drive Beamdog all the harder to make up for that by improving the game in other important areas.
Imho, in particular improvements that support and energize the modding community to continue to churn out mods is key to keeping the game popular for future generations. Mods are the primary reason for the game's continued popularity over the last decade. I'm sure Beamdog will give us some excellent NPCs and quests for DLC (both at release and down the road). But their official content will be a fairly small fraction of what we can expect the modding community at large to develop.
No, the source art for BG in general was lost, except some TOB monsters.
Since the game runs on the TOB engine, which had BG2 graphics, you can understand that, indeed every source art was lost, or else they would be making them HD.
Personally, While I could deal with the background graphics remaining almost exactly the same as in the original BG, I'm HUGELY disappointed about the zero modification to the visuals of NPC avatars and their movements. Is mighty Minsc (while not wearing plate armor) doomed to look like any scrawny thief, with grey hair mimicking his baldness, even in 2012? Come on!
Personally, While I could deal with the background graphics remaining almost exactly the same as in the original BG, I'm HUGELY disappointed about the zero modification to the visuals of NPC avatars and their movements. Is mighty Minsc (while not wearing plate armor) doomed to look like any scrawny thief, with grey hair mimicking his baldness, even in 2012? Come on!
Yeah, I agree that it's mainly with the humanoid creature animations that the original game would have felt greatly enhanced by HD. I'd be happy if just those were re-rendered. The backgrounds already look fine to me.
Personally, While I could deal with the background graphics remaining almost exactly the same as in the original BG, I'm HUGELY disappointed about the zero modification to the visuals of NPC avatars and their movements. Is mighty Minsc (while not wearing plate armor) doomed to look like any scrawny thief, with grey hair mimicking his baldness, even in 2012? Come on!
Yeah, I agree that it's mainly with the humanoid creature animations that the original game would have felt greatly enhanced by HD. I'd be happy if just those were re-rendered. The backgrounds already look fine to me.
Yeah, i was the one that asked for that too some time ago.
The reply was that if they made the characters only, without doing monsters, it would create visual inconsistency, and since monsters would take a huge amount of time, it could not be done.
Now if you ask me, i don't agree with the answer they gave of course. They did after all create new areas for black pits and some other stuff in game, which look close to the existing ones in quality, so i don't see why it would create an inconsistency to make new character avatars, but new areas would be ok with consistency.
Several monsters like Dragons, Half-Ogres like Tazok and others looked better and more crisp compared to the pixelated character sprites anyway.
So in the end, i think they just didn't want to do it, because they think it takes too much effort for the potential result.
As i said, i support BG:EE, but it doesn't mean i think their answer to that particular subject was satisfying.
Since they do receive our feedback, i propose they find a way to update the character avatars, even if it is a work in progress and released in parts, after shipping.
Honestly, if this wasn't Baldur's Gate but any other game, i wouldn't feel any inclination to buy it. I played it so many times though, i'm having trouble finding the strength to go through the whole game again.
it is Sooooo very easy to SAY things like, "it should be easy" and "shouldn't take a lot of time" As a matter of fact many "Suits" in my industry frequently make comments like this, when they have almost ZERO understanding of the work involved. So I would tend to side with the Devs here when they say, "it would take too much time and effort" they are being pretty honest...time is money and no one wants to work for free...well except for the modders.
As for source art/code being lost...that kind of stuff happens all the time, the first time I became aware of it was waaay back in the olden days of intel 386 and 486 computers and DOS with games like Ultima VII having the source code lost by the Devs. Crap happens, disks die, companies break up or are disolved and stuf f gets lost. There's no conspiracy here to keep the people who love BG from getting what they want....the stuff just got lost.
I'am sorry I did not read every post. But what does the OP want, Diablo 3 graphics? This is faithful remake and that is a good thing, the engine will now be prepared for the new hardware specs etc. Remaking everything to have 3D could work but why mess with great art when 3D would probably look bad. Even Diablo 3, 3D look a bit lame and its one of the best out there... anyway leave the Diablo 3 graphics to BG3
Even if the source art wasn't lost, I'm sure it would still come down to time constraints and budget. It might well be that they could never have hoped to make their money back with a fully re-rendered game to begin with...
I guess we'll just have to wait and see how improved the game looks. Won't be long. The September 18th will be here before you know it.
it is Sooooo very easy to SAY things like, "it should be easy" and "shouldn't take a lot of time" As a matter of fact many "Suits" in my industry frequently make comments like this, when they have almost ZERO understanding of the work involved. So I would tend to side with the Devs here when they say, "it would take too much time and effort" they are being pretty honest...time is money and no one wants to work for free...well except for the modders.
Redoing all art from scratch would simply cost too much. Nobody is willing to pay for it so it is not done. I don't see how any further discussion on the topic is going to change that.
What they are doing is applying some filters to make upscaling more bearable. Take a screenshot of BG1, upscale it in Photoshop and add some Sharpen filter. That's pretty much what you'll get with BG:EE. There is nothing else they can do without redoing the art.
EDIT: About the price, is it worth it? 20$? Well that's really up to you. There won't be any new graphics, they'll just improve the upscale process. If this is not okey with you, then 20$ is too much obviously. Perhaps you'll want to consider iPad version then, with the smaller screen the old graphics wont look as bad and it only costs 10$.
If you don't care about graphics that much, then you'll be getting MORE content than you would have if they had the original art assets, because a lot of their time would have been spent re-rendering those, it wouldn't have happened with a press of a button.
EDITEDIT: And just to be clear, I was really disappointed when they announced that there wont be any improved graphics because source art was lost. But on the other hand, its not because of the graphics why I love Baldur's Gate anyway.
I think source art is not lost. Its counsciously hidden by Bioware. Their reputation would suffer even more, if HD BG were to come out. New generation of players could've grasped more about whats the deal with recent DA2 and ME3 developments. Bioware would not want BG HD now, when even more simplified DA3 is about to come out.
it is Sooooo very easy to SAY things like, "it should be easy" and "shouldn't take a lot of time" As a matter of fact many "Suits" in my industry frequently make comments like this, when they have almost ZERO understanding of the work involved. So I would tend to side with the Devs here when they say, "it would take too much time and effort" they are being pretty honest...time is money and no one wants to work for free...well except for the modders.
That wasn't what i said though :]
Ok then, its just what I thought you said I make mistakes from time to time....and lose source code
I think source art is not lost. Its counsciously hidden by Bioware. Their reputation would suffer even more, if HD BG were to come out. New generation of players could've grasped more about whats the deal with recent DA2 and ME3 developments. Bioware would not want BG HD now, when even more simplified DA3 is about to come out.
Dude, I know corporate America (err and Canada), I know what can happen, the one thing I know NEVER happens and that is Grand Conspiracies....don't happen. Pretty sure the code was lost LOOOONG before anyone thought of doing an Enhanced version of this game.
I think source art is not lost. Its counsciously hidden by Bioware. Their reputation would suffer even more, if HD BG were to come out. New generation of players could've grasped more about whats the deal with recent DA2 and ME3 developments. Bioware would not want BG HD now, when even more simplified DA3 is about to come out.
Dude, I know corporate America (err and Canada), I know what can happen, the one thing I know NEVER happens and that is Grand Conspiracies....don't happen. Pretty sure the code was lost LOOOONG before anyone thought of doing an Enhanced version of this game.
I still feel that in the case of Baldur's Gate, it's strange. The game was a huge success, and Bioware still exists to this day (no break-ups, bankruptcy and the like), so how could this happen? I mean, I honestly don't understand it. Even if HD space was more expensive back in '98, they must have made a metric fuckton of money with BG and BG2, so I refuse to believe they just deleted all the source assets because they didn't want the hassle of buying two or three additional hard disks and saving the stuff there.
I mentioned it somewhere already but a single 3dsmax file with say a human leather armored bandit model could be around 800kb w/o a single sequence, lights etc. Just the model. so count all the BG stuff together and hell...I have some texture work in PSD format which are around 50.000 Kbyte and are of 1024 scale too.
Even they had zipped the source assets and some guy lost the password you know... nothing you can do, it´s gone. I believe them 100%
It is worth noting, although it might not be relevant, that the art director for BG1, Daniel Walker, passed away shortly after BG1 was released.
So I don't know that they were deleted. It's more likely that they were on a flash drive or a CD, and misplaced in a drawer somewhere. It's unfortunate, but it happens.
It is worth noting, although it might not be relevant, that the art director for BG1, Daniel Walker, passed away shortly after BG1 was released.
So I don't know that they were deleted. It's more likely that they were on a flash drive or a CD, and misplaced in a drawer somewhere. It's unfortunate, but it happens.
Oh that's right! The BG2 manual even had one of the front pages dedicated to him.
I still feel that in the case of Baldur's Gate, it's strange. The game was a huge success, and Bioware still exists to this day (no break-ups, bankruptcy and the like), so how could this happen? I mean, I honestly don't understand it. Even if HD space was more expensive back in '98, they must have made a metric fuckton of money with BG and BG2, so I refuse to believe they just deleted all the source assets because they didn't want the hassle of buying two or three additional hard disks and saving the stuff there.
All it takes is one glitch, one mistake in your backup strategy over the years for tons of data to go missing, having worked in the industry for a loong time, Im telling you, it happened way more than you might think, especially if you havent dealt with 1990's technology and solutions.
It is worth noting, although it might not be relevant, that the art director for BG1, Daniel Walker, passed away shortly after BG1 was released.
So I don't know that they were deleted. It's more likely that they were on a flash drive or a CD, and misplaced in a drawer somewhere. It's unfortunate, but it happens.
Oh that's right! The BG2 manual even had one of the front pages dedicated to him.
We'll never really know (unless the source art is rediscovered one day). But I think it may be academic as it would probably have been cost prohibitive to re-render all that artwork.
Comments
Oh well, whatever
It's unfortunate that the enhanced edition couldn't be truly HD, but given what they had to work with, I agree that it looks pretty spiffy.
Sure id like HD, but id also like the voiceactors to provide voices for everything the characters say. Neither of those will happen, but Im thrilled this 14 yr old game is getting official upgrades after so long.
So basically, we're getting BG1 via the BG2 engine a la tutu and BGT. The question is how much better it will look than what is already available.
Perhaps the inability to re-render BG1 in HD will drive Beamdog all the harder to make up for that by improving the game in other important areas.
Imho, in particular improvements that support and energize the modding community to continue to churn out mods is key to keeping the game popular for future generations. Mods are the primary reason for the game's continued popularity over the last decade. I'm sure Beamdog will give us some excellent NPCs and quests for DLC (both at release and down the road). But their official content will be a fairly small fraction of what we can expect the modding community at large to develop.
If one game is HD and the other isn't, I'm wondering how noticeable the difference would be in a BGT-like experience for both games together.
Since the game runs on the TOB engine, which had BG2 graphics, you can understand that, indeed every source art was lost, or else they would be making them HD.
Yes, we are quite doomed.
The reply was that if they made the characters only, without doing monsters, it would create visual inconsistency, and since monsters would take a huge amount of time, it could not be done.
Now if you ask me, i don't agree with the answer they gave of course. They did after all create new areas for black pits and some other stuff in game, which look close to the existing ones in quality, so i don't see why it would create an inconsistency to make new character avatars, but new areas would be ok with consistency.
Several monsters like Dragons, Half-Ogres like Tazok and others looked better and more crisp compared to the pixelated character sprites anyway.
So in the end, i think they just didn't want to do it, because they think it takes too much effort for the potential result.
As i said, i support BG:EE, but it doesn't mean i think their answer to that particular subject was satisfying.
Since they do receive our feedback, i propose they find a way to update the character avatars, even if it is a work in progress and released in parts, after shipping.
Honestly, if this wasn't Baldur's Gate but any other game, i wouldn't feel any inclination to buy it. I played it so many times though, i'm having trouble finding the strength to go through the whole game again.
@Mornmagor
it is Sooooo very easy to SAY things like, "it should be easy" and "shouldn't take a lot of time" As a matter of fact many "Suits" in my industry frequently make comments like this, when they have almost ZERO understanding of the work involved. So I would tend to side with the Devs here when they say, "it would take too much time and effort" they are being pretty honest...time is money and no one wants to work for free...well except for the modders.
As for source art/code being lost...that kind of stuff happens all the time, the first time I became aware of it was waaay back in the olden days of intel 386 and 486 computers and DOS with games like Ultima VII having the source code lost by the Devs. Crap happens, disks die, companies break up or are disolved and stuf f gets lost. There's no conspiracy here to keep the people who love BG from getting what they want....the stuff just got lost.
Even Diablo 3, 3D look a bit lame and its one of the best out there... anyway leave the Diablo 3 graphics to BG3
I guess we'll just have to wait and see how improved the game looks. Won't be long. The September 18th will be here before you know it.
What they are doing is applying some filters to make upscaling more bearable. Take a screenshot of BG1, upscale it in Photoshop and add some Sharpen filter. That's pretty much what you'll get with BG:EE. There is nothing else they can do without redoing the art.
EDIT: About the price, is it worth it? 20$? Well that's really up to you. There won't be any new graphics, they'll just improve the upscale process. If this is not okey with you, then 20$ is too much obviously. Perhaps you'll want to consider iPad version then, with the smaller screen the old graphics wont look as bad and it only costs 10$.
If you don't care about graphics that much, then you'll be getting MORE content than you would have if they had the original art assets, because a lot of their time would have been spent re-rendering those, it wouldn't have happened with a press of a button.
EDITEDIT: And just to be clear, I was really disappointed when they announced that there wont be any improved graphics because source art was lost. But on the other hand, its not because of the graphics why I love Baldur's Gate anyway.
Even they had zipped the source assets and some guy lost the password you know... nothing you can do, it´s gone. I believe them 100%
So I don't know that they were deleted. It's more likely that they were on a flash drive or a CD, and misplaced in a drawer somewhere. It's unfortunate, but it happens.