Will "BG1 Unfinished Business" mod content will be included in BG:EE ?

ALIEN

Hell developers. I want to ask about "BG1 Unfinished Business ("BG1UB")". For me it's crusial to have all of those missing components from BG. Are you planing to include them ? If not, then the whole sense of BG:EE is questionable

Please give me some reply as i already buy the game.

"BG1 Unfinished Business ("BG1UB") is designed to restore many of the cut items, quests, dialog, and encounters from the game's final release, as well as try to tie up some of the "loose ends."

Completed components include:

Ice Island Level Two Restoration
The Mysterious Vial
Additional Elminster Encounter
Angelo Notices Shar-teel
Finishable Kagain Caravan Quest
Coran and the Wyverns
Kivan and Tazok
Branwen and Tranzig
Safana the Flirt
Appropriate Albert and Rufie Reward
Place Entar Silvershield in His Home
Scar and the Sashenstar's Daughter
Quoningar, the Cleric
Shilo Chen and the Ogre-Magi
Edie, the Merchant League Applicant
Flaming Fist Mercenary Reinforcements
Creature Corrections
Creature Restorations
Creature Name Restorations
Minor Dialog Restorations
Audio Restorations
Store, Tavern and Inn Fixes and Restorations
Item Corrections and Restorations
Area Corrections and Restorations
Permanent Corpses
Elven Charm & Sleep Racial Immunity
The Original Saga Music Playlist Corrections
Sarevok's Diary Corrections

Phælin

Seven Hells, I would really like to see this in EE. Without it, the game wouldn't be truly enhanced...

Drugar

From the recent AMA session;
No.
Mostly because the mod's authors are all over the place or unknown. The mod will probably be quickly adapted to perform seamlessly with BG:EE though, so you can install it then.

Kitteh_On_A_Cloud

Yet another 'If this isn't included then BG:EE isn't worth buying' topic.... *sigh*

ALIEN

Drugar said:

From the recent AMA session;
No.
Mostly because the mod's authors are all over the place or unknown. The mod will probably be quickly adapted to perform seamlessly with BG:EE though, so you can install it then.

But why it is the problem ? The mod authors are absolutely not the owners of missing components. It's like saying that "I wrote an short "Dune: Missing Episodes" novel and now i have the "rights" to sell it. The authors of BG:EE came across all legal issues to make this game happen yet they are unable to cove the "mods" issues ?

Kitteh_On_A_Cloud said:

Yet another 'If this isn't included then BG:EE isn't worth buying' topic.... *sigh*

I already buy the game. I just wanted to know the opinion.

Drugar

It's intellectual property that they made (it was mostly unfinished in the game and the modders added their own parts to make it work) and provide for free.
If Beamdog yanks it from the internet and offers it as a paid package without the modders consent, I do believe they could be sued into the ground.

To take your example, if you write Dune fanfiction and I find that on the internet and have it published under my name, making money off it, I think you'd be pretty pissed off too.

shawne

That said, both Trent Oster and Nathan Willis have confirmed that you can install "Unfinished Business" onto the EE at launch - it's fully compatible as is.

ALIEN

I can install anything i want but it's not the point. If they can't include some of the modifications, can they atlast do an "Mods" at the main page with some sort of information ? I don't count that something complex like mod database can be done, but how about simple page with links ?

shawne

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/baldurs_gate_series/baldurs_gate_2_essential_mods/page1

http://www.spellholdstudios.net/ie/modding

sandmanCCL

If they used that mod verbatim, I'm sure they'd be in trouble.

However a lot of that stuff I imagine will be addressed. It's pretty simple to rework dialogue to something different than what those modders accomplished.

shawne

@sandmanCCL: It depends on how far they could manipulate the core game. Kagain's quest and others like it weren't so much cut as broken due to script errors, but there's been no word as to whether that's been taken care of or not...

ALIEN

Indeed ! Fixing bugs cannot be taken as "copyright" violation.

sandmanCCL

shawne said:

@sandmanCCL: It depends on how far they could manipulate the core game. Kagain's quest and others like it weren't so much cut as broken due to script errors, but there's been no word as to whether that's been taken care of or not...

To quote the main page for BG:EE--
Core Game Improvements
The Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate has been given an extensive overhaul. The original source code has been cleaned up and improved, sped up, and now has support for modern platforms. Over 400 issues from the original game have been found and fixed.

So, I would think signs point to yes.

Anduin

I found this in the textual overdeath that is reddit

[–]Billards 25 points 19 hours ago
Thanks for the AMA!
Just a couple of quick ones:
•How much, if any, of the 'Unfinished Business' content is in BG:EE?

•What's one minor change that you think has improved the game the most, that's not been part of a press release?

[–]OverhaulNathan[S] 37 points 19 hours ago*
Hi Billards, thanks for coming out!
•Unfortunately, we won't be including any of the Unfinished Business mod content with the BG:EE core. In order to include any mods with the game, we've done our best to ensure that we get direct permission from the creators involved and credit them accordingly.

Unfinished Business is one of those mods that, although it has one sort of 'curator' to look after it, who sort of owns the content therein is a big question mark. In addition, there are some strict contract-related things about modifying the existing game's content that we have to be careful to not run afoul of, so... there you have it.

BG:EE will be very mod friendly though, I believe more-so than BG2/BG1 is, and should support existing mods with minimal modification on the mods' part. I'd be surprised if the people in charge of curating the mod don't update it to work with BG:EE fairly quickly.
•For me, I'd think it's the overall efficiency of the game. The game is now being rendered in OpenGL and as such suffers no extreme slowdowns from spell effects and items on-screen, and Scott Brooks (@Blaze74 on here) our resident code guru has made some major improvements to loading times. Basically everything in the game is instantaneous now in terms of transitions, auto-saving, the like.

People have been saying, "it already loads super fast on current systems" - I assure you, it's much faster now. Enough that whenever I have to load up the old game for reference' sake I get frustrated with loading screens.

I should mention for interest's sake, we're working very closely with many of the mod creators that have been supporting the game these past 14 (eesh.. 14!) years. They've been very gracious in providing their support (in some cases even providing their content!) and helping us out in our beta testing.

[–]DaigleDopple 40 points 19 hours ago
i was like "just steal the content, ain't nobody gonna care" but i was shouted down by the ethics committee.


I think a lot of stuff is fixed... Just the stories are not...

shawne

Precisely my thoughts, Anduin: it seems the references to fixes are mechanical rather than story-related. Disappointing, but not an insurmountable obstacle.

The_New_Romance

A shame Philip Daigle didn't get his way... I mean, if no one knows who owns this stuff, just put it in already and offer anyone who can prove he made it a Collector's Edition afterwards.

Maybe impractical if you're in the US with their strange jurisdictions, though.

Lemernis

It was great to see those loose ends from the original game tied up, but for me UB did not dramatically affect the overall experience of playing the game. I always played with the mod installed, but it wasn't an earth-changing BG1 experience (which mods like BG1 NPC Project and SCS were). Not to take anything away from UB, because it is a very well executed and welcome mod. Just putting it in proper perspective. One man's opinion.

If one is looking for new quest content in BG1 "Baldur's Gate Mini Quests & Encounters" at Gibberlings 3 is good.

shawne

@Lemernis: I think that goes to the "unintrusive" nature of UB - it's not about big sweeping changes, but little things like the second level of the Ice Cavern, Branwen confronting Tranzig, or Angelo reacting differently if his daughter is in your party.

Nimz

I really hate these limitations the Enhanced Editions have with not being able to edit the original story content of the games in any way

agris

Also, I think the real legal issue is their contractual limits over changing core content, not integrating a mod author's work into the game. The fact that Beamdog is trying to get mod author consent is a show of respect to the community. Mod content like this is actually 'owned' by whoever 'owns' the rights to the game (see KillaP's fallout 2 patch being integrated into the GoG distro of F2..).

Demoss

Guess I'll just have to keep checking jastey for updates at pocketplane for UB. (V14 is in the works)

Roller12

UB added some items which were removed for a reason, like the helm of charm protection in beregost, get it for 1k gold and go clear the sirenes, and generally enemy mages love to charm.

shawne

@Roller12: Perhaps, but on the level of story it restored components I thought were essential - the Sashenstar quest, Branwen's revenge, Kagain's connection to Entar Silvershield, Angelo letting you go if Shar-Teel is in your party and so on. Little things, perhaps, but the game is built on such little things.

Corvino

@Roller12 Cavaliers are charm immune by default. Those Sirines are cake

_Q_

shawne said:

It depends on how far they could manipulate the core game. Kagain's quest and others like it weren't so much cut as broken due to script errors, but there's been no word as to whether that's been taken care of or not...

Issues like these could be reported as bugs and might be fixed.

_Q_

Edit: Sorry for the double post.

Demoss

Just realised you wont be able to use UB with BG:EE as it will be in the BG2 engine from the get go, UB has to be installed on a BG1 install before being ported over to BG2 ala BG1Tutu or BGT.

shawne

@_Q_: Sadly, the AMA confirmed that they're not recognized as bugs and so will not be featured in BG:EE...

_Q_

shawne said:

Sadly, the AMA confirmed that they're not recognized as bugs and so will not be featured in BG:EE...

Not necessarily. Certain things from UB (like the missing Elminster encounter) have been confirmed as being fixed.

shawne

@_Q_: Well, now I'm really confused; I was told at the AMA that Kagain's quest and the Angelo/Shar-Teel bit weren't going to be fixed because it was part of the UB mod and fell under contract limitations... but the Elminster encounter doesn't?

Phælin

ALIEN said:

Indeed ! Fixing bugs cannot be taken as "copyright" violation.

That's exactly what I meant. Finish what is unfinished, not thoughtlessly copy someone else's work.
I also already bought it, even.