I'd buy it 1. Just to support the Beamdoggies 2. Just for the graphics update 3. Just to see what they would do with all the kits 4. Because, while probably the weakest of the Infinity Engine games, it is still an Infinity Engine game, and therefore worth playing
Maybe is probably the best answer. A lot would depend on what everyone else has said, what kind of enhancements would you get?
For me, while I played and completed IWD2, I don't really like 3e rules in general - some didn't make sense to me (like armor class vs dex) but then again a lot of people that enjoy 3e find that 2e and its rules also rather stiff and arbitrary.
I personally prefer to play in 2e when using PnP - 3e rules of feats and other things really distract me from role playing - it felt for me a custom character making game rather than role-playing.
Not if it comes with the same sprites as the ones they added in the 2.0 patch. If they add a toggle for the new sprites and the old sprites, sure. I will buy it. As it looks now, though. No chance.
I would enjoy it, but I actually would prefer they work on BG3/BGNext in a new game engine with the addition of a modders toolset (a la the Aurora/Electron Engine in the NWN series).
Not if it comes with the same sprites as the ones they added in the 2.0 patch. If they add a toggle for the new sprites and the old sprites, sure. I will buy it. As it looks now, though. No chance.
As I see it, they simply need to make the game acceptable for today's standards - compatibility with new machines, quick pick menu, support for widescreen, updated user interface, colorful circles under the characters and maybe some more customization in the options menu. No need to do a complete overhaul for the game. :P
@Riderat I don't think they want to maintain two separate game engines though.
The ideal solution would be to make the EE engine so flexible that it can handle both 2nd and 3rd edition rules, but this would probably be a lot of work.
@ineth yeah, I know. I'm just thinking "what if..". There were many posts before with people not knowing what would be improved n stuff. And I'm just sitting here, speculating, giving BD some ideas for a new game
@ineth yeah, I know. I'm just thinking "what if..". There were many posts before with people not knowing what would be improved n stuff. And I'm just sitting here, speculating, giving BD some ideas for a new game
Beamdog has already stated that any new game (which IWD2EE is not on that list, iirc) would be using the 5th Edition D&D rules. And it'd most likely have a new engine. Because the Infinity Engine is garbage compared to other (newer) engines.
Well, judging from the popularity of the games using that engine, one could probably argue that whether or not the engine is garbage is a moot point.
The games are popular because of the story and gameplay involved. The Infinity Engine (despite several games that use it) has NOT aged well. It's very unfriendly to modders. (The main reason mods are even a thing is because early modders of the IE created tools for modding IE games.) It lacks an actual toolset (a la the toolset in NWN1 or 2.) There's only so much that can be done in terms of graphics on it. The reason that IE games are popular is NOT the Infinity Engine. In fact, modders are a great part of the popularity of the IE games, frankly.
The Infinity Engine itself needs retiring. We need a more modernized engine, with tools for both modders and DMs. Better graphics would be a plus. If BG3/BGNext/whatever is made, it will be made using 5E rules, and it MUST have a new engine -- which is modder friendly and DM friendly.
Sidenote: When I say "DM friendly", I mean it SHOULD be easy to create your own custom adventures. An example of an implementation of this is how Sword Coast Legends did it. Unfortunately, the SCL devs didn't allow you to make custom things (you were stuck with ONLY their models/areas/etc.), unlike the NWN1/2 Engine. If we had the best of both worlds in an engine that has tools for creating truly custom content (meaning custom campaigns, a la the NWN series and SCL) and tools for modding, it would be great.
@rapsam2003 even with all your hate towards IE, you still voted that you would play the shit out of IWD2. I know you said that you like the story but dislike the engine. You can talk crap about the IE as much as you want, you still enjoy playing the games that were made using it. If you don't then I don't know what are you doing on these forums.
And about your previous statement. It's maybe my use of language, but I guess I didn't get the message across. I know that at the moment even the idea for remake of IWD2 is on a hold (to say the least). But I never meant to say that this will be the new game. I summarized the attributes that would work as a incentive for me to buy the enhanced IWD2.
@rapsam2003 even with all your hate towards IE, you still voted that you would play the shit out of IWD2.
[snip] I know you said that you like the story but dislike the engine. You can talk crap about the IE as much as you want, you still enjoy playing the games that were made using it.
1) I don't hate the IE. I simply acknowledge it is very old and is out of date. Due to the technical limitations of the IE, there are simply some things it will never do. For instance, it will never display fully 3D models. Everything in the IE is isometric. That was fine in 1998, but today even cheap graphics cards can handle 3D models with ease. As consumers, we should expect more out of a new game from Beamdog than the same graphics we had in 1998 and the early '00s.
2) How is acknowledging that an engine, a) made pre-1998* is old, b) has not aged well compared to other engines, and c) is NOT modder friendly**, should NOT be used for a new game..."hate" or "talking crap"? If you can't see why the IE should NOT be the go-to engine for BG3/BGNext/Whatever other new game, then you've not been paying attention. It WAS a great engine in '98 and the early '00s. It is a very old engine these days, with technical limitations that are, frankly, frustrating today.
*BG1 was released in '98, which implies they created the engine before that. **Since there is no toolset, all of the mods that are created for IE games are created using Modder-created tools, such as WeiDU, DLCETP/NearInfinity, etc.
Fact is, Beamdog should embrace the next tech that is out there. That means embracing a new engine. The EE games are essentially using a hack-y version of the old IE in order to run the EE games on a modern system and add the improvements that Beamdog has added (or wants to add in the future). With a new engine, the majority of the current technical limitations disappear. Do I want something like the Frostbite Engine? No. But something on the level of the Unity Engine or the Unreal 3/4 Engine -- that would be ideal.
There are so many new possibilities with a new engine! And I'm excited to see them realized. I want something that gives players and modders much greater control than the IE ever could.
In addition to what Umar said, I really like the fact that these games are playable on toasters and tablets. I don't need a powerhouse pc in order to enjoy a good game. To me it is the strongest selling point for all these games.
As consumers, we should expect more out of a new game from Beamdog than the same graphics we had in 1998 and the early '00s.
3D is overrated.
For new games, it probably is sensible to use 3D character models (a la Temple of Elemental Evil and Pillars of Eternity), but for the environment art, pre-rendered/painted backgrounds have so much more charm than live-rendered 3D landscapes, even today.
Not to mention that when 3D environments are used, the developers usually can't resist the temptation to give us a freely movable/rotatable camera, and then playing the game becomes more about fighting the camera than fighting monsters... (*cough*NWN )
NOT modder friendly**, [...] **Since there is no toolset, [...]
You keep equating "modder friendliness" with "availability of an official toolset". I think that's a fallacy.
Official "toolsets" are always severely limited in scope. Developers just have a very restricted imagination when it comes to predicting what kind of changes modders might want to make to a game in the future.
So in practice, "official toolset" means a simple map editor, and that's it.
But look at all the most popular IWD and BG1/2 mods... Most of them are not about adding new maps. Instead, they make severe changes to the NPCs, items, rules, UI, etc. of the game. It's safe to say that most of these changes would not have been supported by an official modding tool if Bioware had decided to make one back in the day.
Instead, Bioware made a game engine without official modding tools, but with an architecture that is intrinsically modding-friendly - despite your claims to the contrary.
The engine allows each game resource to be represented as a file with a well-designed specialized file format, with the filename specifying the resource's internal ID. And it allows resources to be replaced simply by copying such files to the override folder. I think you underestimate how much this architecture has benefited the modding community and contributed to its growth.
The only real complication/down-side for modding that the IE suffers from, is the fact that all strings have to be compiled into the dialog.tlk file. That's why weidu had to be created in the first place. But it has been successfully created.
I dont understand why you keep bringing up the fact that modders had to create their own modding tools, as a reason to ditch the Infinity Engine now. Yes the tools weren't created by Bioware and they didn't exist at release, but they do exist now, so where is the problem?
Surely you don't think that it would be a net win, to have a "modern" game engine that comes with an official map editor (so that every newbie can create simple maps on their own), but in turn doesn't make it feasible for modders to create 'real' mods like Tweaks Anthology or Stratagems or Spell Revisions or Scales of Balance?
I don't hate the IE. I simply acknowledge it is very old and is out of date.
It was outdated, so Beamdog came along and modernized it for the Enhanced Editions.
Now it runs perfectly on computers with modern operating systems and modern screen resolutions. Where is the problem?
No, what Beamdog did was use modern methods to supplement an old system. At its core, the EE system is the same old Infinity Engine, with all of its technical limitations. They made runtime enhancements to the game (on the engine side), but that's not particularly impressive, considering GoG.com managed to even do that with games like the Dark Sun games (from 1992 & 1995 respectively; Dark Sun series on GoG ). Making a game work on modern systems is the bare minimum I would expect out of any revamped system like the EE revamping of the IE system.
Due to the technical limitations of the IE, there are simply some things it will never do. For instance, it will never display fully 3D models.
Says who?
Beamdog has the source code - if they wanted to add support for 3D character models, they could.
No, they can't, not without rewriting ALL of the graphics processing code...which is a TON OF WORK. They're much better off making a new engine. You don't just decide one day, "Hey! Let's inject fully 3D models into our supplemented version of the old graphics renderer!". It's NOT that simple. It costs more time and more money to put fully 3D models in an old graphics renderer than it would cost to just create a new engine with a new renderer.
As consumers, we should expect more out of a new game from Beamdog than the same graphics we had in 1998 and the early '00s.
3D is overrated.
For new games, it probably is sensible to use 3D character models (a la Temple of Elemental Evil and Pillars of Eternity), but for the environment art, pre-rendered/painted backgrounds have so much more charm than live-rendered 3D landscapes, even today.
Games like Pillars of Eternity still hark back to that old charm, while being more 3D than Isometric.
Not to mention that when 3D environments are used, the developers usually can't resist the temptation to give us a freely movable/rotatable camera, and then playing the game becomes more about fighting the camera than fighting monsters... (*cough*NWN )
NWN1 camera was awkward, I admit. NWN2 just fine, if you were smart and used exploration mode. The KOTOR camera was even better than the NWN2 camera. With modern tech (see Dragon Age: Origins for an example), fighting the camera is NOT a thing anymore.
NOT modder friendly**, [...] **Since there is no toolset, [...]
You keep equating "modder friendliness" with "availability of an official toolset". I think that's a fallacy.
Official "toolsets" are always severely limited in scope. Developers just have a very restricted imagination when it comes to predicting what kind of changes modders might want to make to a game in the future.
So in practice, "official toolset" means a simple map editor, and that's it.
You obviously never used the NWN1/2 toolset, if you think this...
But look at all the most popular IWD and BG1/2 mods... Most of them are not about adding new maps. Instead, they make severe changes to the NPCs, items, rules, UI, etc. of the game. It's safe to say that most of these changes would not have been supported by an official modding tool if Bioware had decided to make one back in the day.
You need to check the more popular NWN1/2 mods, because they are SO MANY mods that change/tweak the NWN1/2 ruleset or classes or UI or whatever. But guess what? It's easier to do most of that, because it's a newer, more friendly system. Now, UI or model mods, of course, require external tools (because the Toolset is NOT a model editor/creator); but there is support for files from common external tools (such as GIMP), to allow you to inject the models into the Toolset itself and then save the files as the file extensions that the Aurora/Electron Engine expects.
Instead, Bioware made a game engine without official modding tools, but with an architecture that is intrinsically modding-friendly - despite your claims to the contrary.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Do you know how much work had to be done to even make modder friendly so?! Work that early BG modders all did, not Bioware. The modders. Do you think WeiDU as we know it today was done in a day? No, it took years of development. Same with NearInfinity and DLTECP. Stop acting like the game is modder friendly. If I have to use an external tool with its own syntax to even modify a text string inside the game, then that game is not very modder friendly. If I have to use an external tool to inject area file references to the right file that holds all those area IDs, then that game is not very modder friendly. If I have to deal with hard coded limitations on how many of something (such as classes or races or kits) I can have, then that game is not very modder friendly. I have modded SEVERAL games, and BGEE/BG2EE/IWDEE/SOD are, without a doubt, the most awkward games to actually change (yes, even with the EE stuff enhancing things and exposing more of the files) stuff in. Other games, I can literally edit a text file (example: 2da files in NWN1/2 or KOTOR1/2; XML files in Civilization or Sword Coast Legends), and I have changed an entire spell or an entire class or edited a big string of text. And I can do that in Notepad, most of the time. If I need to do more extensive things (like change UI), then I have the power to do that too. Why? Because those games were built with modders in mind. If you think that the IE games were built with builders in mind, you are seriously full of it. The concept of a large modding community wasn’t even a thing in 1998, when BG1 came out!
The engine allows each game resource to be represented as a file with a well-designed specialized file format, with the filename specifying the resource's internal ID. And it allows resources to be replaced simply by copying such files to the override folder. I think you underestimate how much this architecture has benefited the modding community and contributed to its growth.
And? Newer systems do this a much better way. For example...the NWN1/2 system or the KOTOR system (which is really the same basic system). Allowing you to reference things in 2da files and/or use the override folder is not an impressive achievement these days. Yes, it was then. It's still useful today. But acting like that system is impressive in 2016 (when most games designed to be moddable have a similar system now)... That's like saying it's impressive that we can turn dough into pizza. It's so common to eat pizza that it doesn't matter how impressive it was back when the first pizza ever was created. You should NOT look at past achievements without an eye to improve things. There are so many powerful new tools, tech, etc. that can be utilized to make things even MORE modder friendly.
The only real complication/down-side for modding that the IE suffers from, is the fact that all strings have to be compiled into the dialog.tlk file. That's why weidu had to be created in the first place. But it has been successfully created.
I dont understand why you keep bringing up the fact that modders had to create their own modding tools, as a reason to ditch the Infinity Engine now. Yes the tools weren't created by Bioware and they didn't exist at release, but they do exist now, so where is the problem?
Surely you don't think that it would be a net win, to have a "modern" game engine that comes with an official map editor (so that every newbie can create simple maps on their own), but in turn doesn't make it feasible for modders to create 'real' mods like Tweaks Anthology or Stratagems or Spell Revisions or Scales of Balance?
I don't think you understand the true power that a text editor and a developer-created toolset (a la the Aurora/Electron Engine Toolset) have...
You obviously don't realize how much EASIER it is to mod a game like Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 or Sword Coast Legends (all of which have their own toolsets for creating custom content OR [in the case of SCL] use JSON files to easily allow editing of the basic functionality of gameplay) than it is it to mod a game like the games in the Infinity Engine. The delta is weeks of saved man hours, when it comes to some of these larger mods.
Hell, Sword Coast Legends made it even easier than Neverwinter Nights games did. All of the text strings are literally saved in JSON files for that purpose, which means you can just edit the text strings in any text editor. Classes, spells, UI...all in JSON files or referenced in JSON files.
Imagine how much easier it would be if the BG3/BGNext Engine did so. For RP reasons, say you decide to change the name of the Ranger Class to “Woodman”. Open the right XML/JSON file, edit it and save. Boom! The game now shows Woodman instead of Ranger. Want a new model for a completely new race? Make up the model in GIMP, import it into the Aurora/Electron Engine (NWN1/2 engines, respectively) Toolset, and then edit the relevant 2da files.
One thing I always thought was neat about NWN2 was you could open the subrace.2da and remove level adjustments and enable npc races like the half-celestial by just editing a number. Like say under the ECL for drow it has 2, you just make it 0 and BAM! No +2 LA! Great for people like myself that dislike level adjustment and homerule them out of PnP games. If they did a similar thing for IWD2 that'd be greaatt
Well I might consider it if they kept to the structure of 3E (3.0) rules and classes that were introduced in the Interplay/Black Isle game version (with the original kits) and not try to bring it in line with their other Enhanced Games - that sounds like a lot of unnecessary work that would affect the quality elsewhere I think. Also the two IWD games take place over a generation apart and should not be link-able, and judging by the mood on these forums I'd assume some newcomers would expect their characters to import across, which I would be against.
I thought that the story-line of IWD2 made less sense than its predecessor though, which was a tad disappointing. If they were to make another enhanced version (and I think they shouldn't, and concentrate on something else) I'd prefer PS:T
Comments
1. Just to support the Beamdoggies
2. Just for the graphics update
3. Just to see what they would do with all the kits
4. Because, while probably the weakest of the Infinity Engine games, it is still an Infinity Engine game, and therefore worth playing
For me, while I played and completed IWD2, I don't really like 3e rules in general - some didn't make sense to me (like armor class vs dex) but then again a lot of people that enjoy 3e find that 2e and its rules also rather stiff and arbitrary.
I personally prefer to play in 2e when using PnP - 3e rules of feats and other things really distract me from role playing - it felt for me a custom character making game rather than role-playing.
BGNEXT! ON A NEW (BETTER) ENGINE!
There is a toggle for that in 2.0 already...
The ideal solution would be to make the EE engine so flexible that it can handle both 2nd and 3rd edition rules, but this would probably be a lot of work.
The Infinity Engine itself needs retiring. We need a more modernized engine, with tools for both modders and DMs. Better graphics would be a plus. If BG3/BGNext/whatever is made, it will be made using 5E rules, and it MUST have a new engine -- which is modder friendly and DM friendly.
Sidenote: When I say "DM friendly", I mean it SHOULD be easy to create your own custom adventures. An example of an implementation of this is how Sword Coast Legends did it. Unfortunately, the SCL devs didn't allow you to make custom things (you were stuck with ONLY their models/areas/etc.), unlike the NWN1/2 Engine. If we had the best of both worlds in an engine that has tools for creating truly custom content (meaning custom campaigns, a la the NWN series and SCL) and tools for modding, it would be great.
And about your previous statement. It's maybe my use of language, but I guess I didn't get the message across. I know that at the moment even the idea for remake of IWD2 is on a hold (to say the least). But I never meant to say that this will be the new game. I summarized the attributes that would work as a incentive for me to buy the enhanced IWD2.
For instance, it will never display fully 3D models. Everything in the IE is isometric. That was fine in 1998, but today even cheap graphics cards can handle 3D models with ease. As consumers, we should expect more out of a new game from Beamdog than the same graphics we had in 1998 and the early '00s.
2) How is acknowledging that an engine, a) made pre-1998* is old, b) has not aged well compared to other engines, and c) is NOT modder friendly**, should NOT be used for a new game..."hate" or "talking crap"? If you can't see why the IE should NOT be the go-to engine for BG3/BGNext/Whatever other new game, then you've not been paying attention. It WAS a great engine in '98 and the early '00s. It is a very old engine these days, with technical limitations that are, frankly, frustrating today.
*BG1 was released in '98, which implies they created the engine before that.
**Since there is no toolset, all of the mods that are created for IE games are created using Modder-created tools, such as WeiDU, DLCETP/NearInfinity, etc.
Fact is, Beamdog should embrace the next tech that is out there. That means embracing a new engine. The EE games are essentially using a hack-y version of the old IE in order to run the EE games on a modern system and add the improvements that Beamdog has added (or wants to add in the future). With a new engine, the majority of the current technical limitations disappear. Do I want something like the Frostbite Engine? No. But something on the level of the Unity Engine or the Unreal 3/4 Engine -- that would be ideal.
There are so many new possibilities with a new engine! And I'm excited to see them realized. I want something that gives players and modders much greater control than the IE ever could.
Now it runs perfectly on computers with modern operating systems and modern screen resolutions.
Where is the problem? Says who?
Beamdog has the source code - if they wanted to add support for 3D character models, they could. 3D is overrated.
For new games, it probably is sensible to use 3D character models (a la Temple of Elemental Evil and Pillars of Eternity), but for the environment art, pre-rendered/painted backgrounds have so much more charm than live-rendered 3D landscapes, even today.
Not to mention that when 3D environments are used, the developers usually can't resist the temptation to give us a freely movable/rotatable camera, and then playing the game becomes more about fighting the camera than fighting monsters... (*cough*NWN
Official "toolsets" are always severely limited in scope. Developers just have a very restricted imagination when it comes to predicting what kind of changes modders might want to make to a game in the future.
So in practice, "official toolset" means a simple map editor, and that's it.
But look at all the most popular IWD and BG1/2 mods... Most of them are not about adding new maps. Instead, they make severe changes to the NPCs, items, rules, UI, etc. of the game. It's safe to say that most of these changes would not have been supported by an official modding tool if Bioware had decided to make one back in the day.
Instead, Bioware made a game engine without official modding tools, but with an architecture that is intrinsically modding-friendly - despite your claims to the contrary.
The engine allows each game resource to be represented as a file with a well-designed specialized file format, with the filename specifying the resource's internal ID. And it allows resources to be replaced simply by copying such files to the override folder. I think you underestimate how much this architecture has benefited the modding community and contributed to its growth.
The only real complication/down-side for modding that the IE suffers from, is the fact that all strings have to be compiled into the dialog.tlk file. That's why weidu had to be created in the first place. But it has been successfully created.
I dont understand why you keep bringing up the fact that modders had to create their own modding tools, as a reason to ditch the Infinity Engine now.
Yes the tools weren't created by Bioware and they didn't exist at release, but they do exist now, so where is the problem?
Surely you don't think that it would be a net win, to have a "modern" game engine that comes with an official map editor (so that every newbie can create simple maps on their own), but in turn doesn't make it feasible for modders to create 'real' mods like Tweaks Anthology or Stratagems or Spell Revisions or Scales of Balance?
If I have to use an external tool with its own syntax to even modify a text string inside the game, then that game is not very modder friendly. If I have to use an external tool to inject area file references to the right file that holds all those area IDs, then that game is not very modder friendly. If I have to deal with hard coded limitations on how many of something (such as classes or races or kits) I can have, then that game is not very modder friendly. I have modded SEVERAL games, and BGEE/BG2EE/IWDEE/SOD are, without a doubt, the most awkward games to actually change (yes, even with the EE stuff enhancing things and exposing more of the files) stuff in.
Other games, I can literally edit a text file (example: 2da files in NWN1/2 or KOTOR1/2; XML files in Civilization or Sword Coast Legends), and I have changed an entire spell or an entire class or edited a big string of text. And I can do that in Notepad, most of the time. If I need to do more extensive things (like change UI), then I have the power to do that too. Why? Because those games were built with modders in mind. If you think that the IE games were built with builders in mind, you are seriously full of it. The concept of a large modding community wasn’t even a thing in 1998, when BG1 came out! And? Newer systems do this a much better way. For example...the NWN1/2 system or the KOTOR system (which is really the same basic system). Allowing you to reference things in 2da files and/or use the override folder is not an impressive achievement these days. Yes, it was then. It's still useful today. But acting like that system is impressive in 2016 (when most games designed to be moddable have a similar system now)...
That's like saying it's impressive that we can turn dough into pizza. It's so common to eat pizza that it doesn't matter how impressive it was back when the first pizza ever was created. You should NOT look at past achievements without an eye to improve things. There are so many powerful new tools, tech, etc. that can be utilized to make things even MORE modder friendly. I don't think you understand the true power that a text editor and a developer-created toolset (a la the Aurora/Electron Engine Toolset) have...
You obviously don't realize how much EASIER it is to mod a game like Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 or Sword Coast Legends (all of which have their own toolsets for creating custom content OR [in the case of SCL] use JSON files to easily allow editing of the basic functionality of gameplay) than it is it to mod a game like the games in the Infinity Engine. The delta is weeks of saved man hours, when it comes to some of these larger mods.
Hell, Sword Coast Legends made it even easier than Neverwinter Nights games did. All of the text strings are literally saved in JSON files for that purpose, which means you can just edit the text strings in any text editor. Classes, spells, UI...all in JSON files or referenced in JSON files.
Imagine how much easier it would be if the BG3/BGNext Engine did so. For RP reasons, say you decide to change the name of the Ranger Class to “Woodman”. Open the right XML/JSON file, edit it and save. Boom! The game now shows Woodman instead of Ranger. Want a new model for a completely new race? Make up the model in GIMP, import it into the Aurora/Electron Engine (NWN1/2 engines, respectively) Toolset, and then edit the relevant 2da files.
I thought that the story-line of IWD2 made less sense than its predecessor though, which was a tad disappointing. If they were to make another enhanced version (and I think they shouldn't, and concentrate on something else) I'd prefer PS:T