Pretty sure that the related project will take a few years till it comes out if they are now just looking for an art director. These things take time and evidently things are still in the planing/ concept phase. There is no way the two projects are related.
These days, building an engine from scratch is - imho - nonsensical. There's so many excellent engines. Look at Torment: Tides of Numenara, which just came out. It uses the Unity Engine (which is purchasable or available for free if you don't publish your game). Pics:
It has that classic isometric RPG look, but with a new, better, more robust engine than any of those old game engines (including the EE Engine, I would posit).
The EE games are performant (e.g. loading and saving is near-instant, and even the SoD battles involving whole armies don't cause lag/stuttering) precisely because Beamdog's programmers optimized them at the engine level.
Maybe it's theoretically possible to take a generic game engine like Unity that wasn't specifically designed for isometric party-based RPGs, and sucessfully build an isometric party-based RPG on top of it that performs as efficiently as the EE games. But I haven't seen an example of that yet.
Errrmmm...you haven't? Well, Pillars of Eternity, Torment: Tides of Numenara, Tyranny, Shadowrun Returns and Hong Kong, all Sword Coast Legends (which was a horrible RPG but did use an isometric style and was party-based) -- all of those games wave at you and say, "Hello, we exist!". You can argue over efficiency, but all of those games run quite well (with the exception of 2 of them).
The only Unity RPG games I've found to have sluggish performance are Sword Coast Legends and Pillars of Eternity. Of course, those foibles speak more towards Obsidian and towards N-Space than towards the Unity Engine itself. People don't complain about the performance of Torment: Tides of Numenara, Tyranny, OR Shadowrun Returns and Hong Kong; because there simply isn't performance issues in those games. You can whine about how all of those games take a while to load an area, but - let's not forget - back in the day, it took forever for Infinity Engine games to load too. Rose-colored nostalgia glasses make us all forget that.
Sidenote: Despite being a crappy game with even crappier support and a really bad advertising campaign, Sword Coast Legends was fully moddable. Every basic system could be changed simply by changing values in a JSON file. And, for the record, every "round of actions" in SCL did take 6 seconds, which is how D&D does define actions taking in a combat round. If a spell in D&D PnP says it last for 60 seconds (1 minute), that means it last for 10 combat rounds. But SCL didn't fail because it was fully moddable, did it?!...SCL failed because it was billed as a D&D game, but it didn't even feel that way.
From what I've seen, Unity's data files (at least in the case of Pillars) contain plenty of binary dumps of C# data structures, and item/creature scripts are even compiled into the main executable (with the respective item/creature files containing a pointer into the EXE). That kind of thing would be extremely complex to parse and modify programmatically, especially since the exact layout of the binary dumps might radically change with every patch to the game or engine.
The Infinity Engine uses comparatively simple binary formats, where each type of file has a rigid specialized structure with data fields at well-defined byte offsets and/or in a well-defined order. And it provides the override folder mechanism to replace or add individual assets easily. This made third-party modding tools feasible.
Do you really think that, before NearInfinity and DLCETP and WeiDU were developed, it was easy to do the same on the Infinity Engine? Everyone acts like Infinity Engine is inherently easy to mod, when we've had over 15 years of fan-made work to even get those games to this point! The Infinity Engine itself (or, in actuality, Bioware) didn't give you the ability to mod the games at all. Passionate fans gave you that... And many of the recent enhancements actually came from the fact that Beamdog was kind enough to expose more files for the modders to play with. Even so, we're still incredibly limited in what we can and cannot do in all Infinity Engine games, if we compare what can be done with games such as the Elder Scrolls series. What we essentially have is a game engine that, thanks to thousands and thousands of volunteer man hours, is moddable and customizable- even though the original developers at Bioware didn't consider whether players would want to mod their game.
Of course, as I've said, we already have (limited) tools that explore the file structures in Unity. And for those who still think Unity Engine isn't moddable, here's a simple tutorial for you: http://www.turiyaware.com/creating-a-moddable-unity-game/ Hint: the "it's really hard" part referred to in the above tutorial, it doesn't just apply to Unity, but to ANY GAME ENGINE. Do your research, people. I've developed software that allows customers to change the basic behavior. It's definitely not easy, with any kind of software - including games. The entire way you develop the end product, from start to finish, changes. And that's freaking huge, in terms of design!
From what I've seen, Unity's data files (at least in the case of Pillars) contain plenty of binary dumps of C# data structures, and item/creature scripts are even compiled into the main executable (with the respective item/creature files containing a pointer into the EXE). That kind of thing would be extremely complex to parse and modify programmatically, especially since the exact layout of the binary dumps might radically change with every patch to the game or engine.
The Infinity Engine uses comparatively simple binary formats, where each type of file has a rigid specialized structure with data fields at well-defined byte offsets and/or in a well-defined order. And it provides the override folder mechanism to replace or add individual assets easily. This made third-party modding tools feasible.
Do you really think that, before NearInfinity and DLCETP and WeiDU were developed, it was easy to do the same on the Infinity Engine? Everyone acts like Infinity Engine is inherently easy to mod, when we've had over 15 years of fan-made work to even get those games to this point!
I think the point @ineth was making is, even now with the EEs, a lot of mod ideas run up against the wall of "sorry, can't do it, that's hard-coded." Even if someone put in the effort to make a Weidu or NI or DLTCEP for Pillars of Eternity, we would still run into that wall far, far more often than we do with the IE.
Maybe, maybe not. But we don't have a comparable tool like NI or WeiDU or DLCETP for most of the games I mentioned (and whether we ever do depends on whether someone decides to create those). My guess is, it'd be like the early days of those tools, where the modifications that were possible were relatively less in scope and number. Of course, when the developer did make it easy to modify their game, such as with Sword Coast Legends, it was actually EASIER to change things. Why? Because using Notepad++ to change or add things in a JSON file is a lot easier than needing to code anything. JSON is a simple markup-style "language", which takes all of 30 seconds to understand, imho.
I've developed software that allows customers to change the basic behavior. It's definitely not easy, with any kind of software - including games. The entire way you develop the end product, from start to finish, changes. And that's freaking huge, in terms of design!
Right. And the point is, Obsidian blatantly declined to design PoE that way. That's why it gets stuck with the label of "not moddable."
That's not really the fault of the Unity Engine, is it? That's the fault of Obsidian for not designing PoE to be moddable.
Whether the unity engine makes it inherently harder for developers to design games that way, is something I don't know the answer to. But given the crickets chirping in the empty wastelands of what otherwise might be the modding scenes for these games, I'd guess the answer is yes.
No, no, no, it's NOT that Unity makes it harder. It's that, when you - as a developer of any type of software - want to allow it to be modified by customers (or players/modders, in the case of games), it requires to design the game with that in mind, from the get-go. This applies to any type of software.
This is why every Bethesda game since Morrowind has a toolset. Because Bethesda realized back then, that modders wanted to make cool additions and/or modifications to their games. Bethesda games are designed with that in mind.
Now, the question is, SHOULD game developing give us the ability to mod their games? I think the answer should be a resounding "YES!".
Well if the Modders are still incredibly limited on what they can, and cannot do...then why not ask the developers right now to see what can be done? Is this the reason why so many mods currently are struggling so much to be less buggy than how it was in the past?
Is this the reason why so many mods currently are struggling so much to be less buggy than how it was in the past?
This is in all honesty just an assumption and not actually meant to sound sarcastic or patronizing, but I think that's probably because BG and co. are old and people had literally over a decade to work out the kinks of the engine. Early mods must have been LOADED with bugs, glitches and terrible design decisions. Not to forget that the mods that stood the test of time are probably in the minority.
Is this the reason why so many mods currently are struggling so much to be less buggy than how it was in the past?
This is in all honesty just an assumption and not actually meant to sound sarcastic, but I think that's probably because BG and co. are old and people had literally over a decade to work out the kinks of the engine. Early mods must have been LOADED with bugs, glitches and terrible design decisions. Not to forget that the mods that stood the test of time are probably in the minority.
Actually early mods had to be hex edited by hand as there were literally no modding tools. So yes, that led to all kinds of bugs and the fact that most early mods were totally incompatible with each other.
Which is why I'm gald we're "somewhat" leaving BGT behind in favor of EET, the amount of times I tried to get mods to work together continuously failed, but these days there is much less of that occurring thanks to the dedication of active modders that kept their projects up-to-date. Believe me I was losing my mind back in the old days of modding, I didn't want anything to do with mods till it actually got fixed up properly, and then came the Enhanced Editions, and everything changed for everyone.
What makes me a bit mad is the hate the new engine is getting from certain modders, but don't realize just how beneficial it is compared to the old, and outdated software, I hope at some point they will come around.
Which is why I'm gald we're "somewhat" leaving BGT behind in favor of EET, the amount of times I tried to get mods to work together continuously failed, but these days there is much less of that occurring thanks to the dedication of active modders that kept their projects up-to-date. Believe me I was losing my mind back in the old days of modding, I didn't want anything to do with mods till it actually got fixed up properly, and then came the Enhanced Editions, and everything changed for everyone.
What makes me a bit mad is the hate the new engine is getting from certain modders, but don't realize just how beneficial it is compared to the old, and outdated software, I hope at some point they will come around.
I had much more; and much worse issues with EET than a full-blown megamoded BGT. EEs have a distinct advantage for modding since they allow use of some things that are either impossible or smply overly complicated on old BG.
Anyway the best we can do in this thread is try to guess something about the next releases from snippets of information that comes out of interviews, Twitter, etc... there's really no solid fact to discuss yet.
@AstroBryGuy - Cold, Hard: New England Cidah! To 'on-topic' - Given the histories of several BeamDog team members and the history of the EE products; I would be very surprised if future BeamDog products (using any engine) did NOT provide even greater 'modability' than what we have now.
As @mlnevese and @lefreut have already said, it'd be nice to start discussing about solid facts...... So, to recap: we know the game contains a key. Something else ?
Comments
The only Unity RPG games I've found to have sluggish performance are Sword Coast Legends and Pillars of Eternity. Of course, those foibles speak more towards Obsidian and towards N-Space than towards the Unity Engine itself. People don't complain about the performance of Torment: Tides of Numenara, Tyranny, OR Shadowrun Returns and Hong Kong; because there simply isn't performance issues in those games.
You can whine about how all of those games take a while to load an area, but - let's not forget - back in the day, it took forever for Infinity Engine games to load too. Rose-colored nostalgia glasses make us all forget that.
Sidenote: Despite being a crappy game with even crappier support and a really bad advertising campaign, Sword Coast Legends was fully moddable. Every basic system could be changed simply by changing values in a JSON file.
And, for the record, every "round of actions" in SCL did take 6 seconds, which is how D&D does define actions taking in a combat round. If a spell in D&D PnP says it last for 60 seconds (1 minute), that means it last for 10 combat rounds. But SCL didn't fail because it was fully moddable, did it?!...SCL failed because it was billed as a D&D game, but it didn't even feel that way. Do you really think that, before NearInfinity and DLCETP and WeiDU were developed, it was easy to do the same on the Infinity Engine? Everyone acts like Infinity Engine is inherently easy to mod, when we've had over 15 years of fan-made work to even get those games to this point! The Infinity Engine itself (or, in actuality, Bioware) didn't give you the ability to mod the games at all. Passionate fans gave you that...
And many of the recent enhancements actually came from the fact that Beamdog was kind enough to expose more files for the modders to play with. Even so, we're still incredibly limited in what we can and cannot do in all Infinity Engine games, if we compare what can be done with games such as the Elder Scrolls series. What we essentially have is a game engine that, thanks to thousands and thousands of volunteer man hours, is moddable and customizable- even though the original developers at Bioware didn't consider whether players would want to mod their game.
Of course, as I've said, we already have (limited) tools that explore the file structures in Unity. And for those who still think Unity Engine isn't moddable, here's a simple tutorial for you: http://www.turiyaware.com/creating-a-moddable-unity-game/
Hint: the "it's really hard" part referred to in the above tutorial, it doesn't just apply to Unity, but to ANY GAME ENGINE. Do your research, people. I've developed software that allows customers to change the basic behavior. It's definitely not easy, with any kind of software - including games. The entire way you develop the end product, from start to finish, changes. And that's freaking huge, in terms of design!
Of course, when the developer did make it easy to modify their game, such as with Sword Coast Legends, it was actually EASIER to change things. Why? Because using Notepad++ to change or add things in a JSON file is a lot easier than needing to code anything. JSON is a simple markup-style "language", which takes all of 30 seconds to understand, imho. That's not really the fault of the Unity Engine, is it? That's the fault of Obsidian for not designing PoE to be moddable. No, no, no, it's NOT that Unity makes it harder. It's that, when you - as a developer of any type of software - want to allow it to be modified by customers (or players/modders, in the case of games), it requires to design the game with that in mind, from the get-go. This applies to any type of software.
This is why every Bethesda game since Morrowind has a toolset. Because Bethesda realized back then, that modders wanted to make cool additions and/or modifications to their games. Bethesda games are designed with that in mind.
Now, the question is, SHOULD game developing give us the ability to mod their games? I think the answer should be a resounding "YES!".
What makes me a bit mad is the hate the new engine is getting from certain modders, but don't realize just how beneficial it is compared to the old, and outdated software, I hope at some point they will come around.
To 'on-topic' - Given the histories of several BeamDog team members and the history of the EE products; I would be very surprised if future BeamDog products (using any engine) did NOT provide even greater 'modability' than what we have now.
Now, go forth, minions! Convince all the developers of this!
So, to recap: we know the game contains a key. Something else ?