Mac Store Update ETA?

jankmaster

So I have Baldur's Gate 2 EE on my Mac on the App Store. I'm wondering when in fact the 2.0 version and it's updates will come to my computer...

In a similar vein I'm wondering if anyone knows an Eta on the siege of dragonspear iPhone release...

GreenWarlock

@Cerevant mentioned it is being worked on along side the iOS and Android releases - I presume there is Apple approval process/app-store-specific work that needs to be done, given the Mac release is otherwise available from other app stores:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/753681#Comment_753681

While it's disappointing to be waiting without a known deadline, at least we should get a stable release after everyone else works out the 2.0 kinks for us

GreenWarlock

@Dee @Cerevant as ever, the information vacuum is the biggest problem. I'm happy to wait for the 2.0 teething problems to be resolved, but it would be helpful to set expectations of how long the wait is likely to be. Without making a binding commitment, could you speculate what the most likely schedule for the Mac App Store patch would be?

A few weeks?
A few months?
More than 6 months?
A 15+ month epic, like wait for the BG2 1.2 patch?

This is most relevant when trying to work out how likely I am to gain access to SoD before unavoidable spoilers start leaking across the forum, and therefore how hard to continue trying to avoid them.

Cerevant

The problem is that we can't really say anything without making it a binding commitment because no matter how many disclaimers we put on a date, if we miss it folks get upset.

We've decided to give visibility into what is being worked on for the next update, and thats as far into the future as we're willing to project at this point.

GreenWarlock

@Cerevant I understand, but I'll put the lack of information into context too. BG2 shipped with game-breaking bugs. Arguably the worst is that is actively corrupted saved games, so regularly saving to work around a potential bug was actively harmful. The 1.2 patch shipped within a week of the game, and the Mac App store release happened a couple of days after that - but was the original release as held up in the Mac App store approval process. We assumed that critical patch would similarly be in the approval process, and land in a week or so. It actually took 15 months to ship, as there was always something slightly more important than actually making that release happen, and it could be folded into the next patch release instead. Icewind Dales was released and patched. An Android version was released. The iOS version got its own patch. Eventually, 12 months later patch 1.3 was released, but delayed again on the Mac App store. Eventually it was released 15 months after the game shipped. By coincidence, that was 15 months ago.

Our games broke 7 months ago when OS X El Capitan was released, crashing to desktop on area transitions. A fix was found, and we are told to expect it in the 2.0 patch. Meanwhile, there is a workaround of disabling background music during play, so it is not as urgent as the last fix - but that is already 7 months of anticipation for the patch, now released (like before) that we cannot have.

There is more urgent work happening again than simply shipping the working patch through the app store, so I understand some delay, and even welcome a slight delay given the other fixes going in into the immediate patches.

Then there is work to support touch-screen UI updates entirely unrelated to our version and the App Store approval process, that will require extensive testing/QA and resources with no focus in our direction.

Then there is work to support the new engine on many different architectures and OSes for Andriod/iOS, and the associated QA and release process.

Finally, after that, you are in a position to address releasing the already available patch to the Apple store, assuming no other urgent work has arisen in the meantime to put us at the back of the queue again (such as working on a whole new product, as happened with Icewind Dale last time).

In the meantime, I will have no information about when to expect the patch to release. Nor will there be information on when I can expect more information, other than checking back and being disappointed daily. The best advice available in the meantime is to watch the growing list of features and patches being developed and released to other customers, including customer with the same hardware/OS as me who did not buy through the Apple store, safe in the knowledge that I will not be getting those features for a long time yet.

My main concern in the original post was to gain some confidence that this would not be another 15 month release cycle. A policy of not giving information in case it raises undue expectations tells me you are comfortable with deferring this release indefinitely. If you cannot give a non-binding commitment to release an already shipping patch within 15 months, for fear that you would disappoint if you fail to deliver, says that another 15 month is not only seen as reasonable, but even now, as something that you could not commit to for fear of disappointing if you did not deliver.

I know there is no intent for this release process to take 12 months or more. But I also lived through the last release that was not intended to take that long, and I am seeing the early steps of the same process repeating itself - there is no one thing that say "year long delay", just an ongoing cycle of always being deferred for something else, and already committed/completed work going to waste as it is never delivered.

I will highlight, in case the point is lost in the wall of text, that the issue is not that it takes a long time for the game to be patched - everyone was waiting >12 months for the 2.0 patch, and we were mostly good with that. The problem is that it seems we should expect year-long delays for /already/ /released/ patches to become available.

Mestar

The silence speaks for itself.

GreenWarlock

[cynic]No, the silence speaks for BeamDog![/cynic]
But if you think about it a little, you can see they are doing us a favor. They are concerned that if they say anything about supporting Mac App store and fail to deliver, they will disappoint us. Instead, they have taken the much more certain route of disappointing us up front, so the the only potential surprise will be if they restore support for us at some point in the future - which will be a nice surprise. So they trade deferred disappointment for the chance to delight.

In the meantime, we can be very disappointed and get on with our gaming. Apparently, gaming on v1.3 does not sound so bad at the moment anyway

justfeelinathome

Luckily, I'm following this thread out of curiosity, not necessity. I repurchased from beamdog, because while I think they are doing a great job overall, I expected a delay like this to happen.

Those 20 bucks extra spent for BG EE feel like a worthwhile investment I took, now.

I know there's always two parties involved when it comes to delaying a game via a different distribution channel than your own, but macdog's history had us warned,unfortunately . I just wish all the Mac Users that they can get their hands on an Appstore copy soon™ and that BG II: EE becomes playable again.

Keep your apples high, my friends.