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Do you think Beamdog should use/develop a more modern engine?

I'm not against IE (or the updated IE), but it does have limitations. What say you?
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  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    I think its time to let IE rest in peace. It had a fantastic run, but it is so rigid.
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    ThacoBell
  • SirBatinceSirBatince Member Posts: 882
    IWD2ee should be their last IE project imo.
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  • bob_vengbob_veng Member Posts: 2,308
    i think they should improve IE to be able to handle big sprites. IE is not that limited. there are great and successful 2D games today and IE is a capable 2D engine i think.
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  • woowoovoodoowoowoovoodoo Member Posts: 150
    edited February 2017
    Making an engine for isometric games from scratch is difficult. I do not think it makes sense for Beamdog to work on a new engine when they can spend the same resources working on the game itself. But then they are limited to either using IE - which is rigid, as @ThacoBell said above - or to licensing some other engine, for example, PoE engine from Obsidian based on Unity. And that engine is not as good as you want it to be: when you take a ready to use product you expect that it saves you a lot of a hassle, not adds more.
    Or you can try to revive IE, somehow modify it, and it might be just enough for creating the next great game.
    Post edited by woowoovoodoo on
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  • bob_vengbob_veng Member Posts: 2,308
    more fluid and more realistic animations are needed for bigger sprites, it's difficult to do. i think beamdog should strive for sprite size and animation quality from banner saga. maybe that kind of cartoon art style could work in ie too.
  • woowoovoodoowoowoovoodoo Member Posts: 150
    All those good people from different companies should define an isometric engine as a pre-competitive activity, come together and create IE.next. :) Unfortunately, not gonna happen.
  • Mantis37Mantis37 Member Posts: 1,169
    I am old and find change difficult. This heretical talk of going beyond Infinity must end. What if we should gain a whole bright new world of opcodes & features at the cost of our collective soul? Avaunt ye vile tempters lest I be forced to shake my fist a second time.
    switwoowoovoodooMiridorFlashburn
  • DrakeICNDrakeICN Member Posts: 623
    My guess is that nobody here, ever, has heard of Myth III, or if you have you havent played it. You might have heard of Myth or Myth II, but Myth III is kind of unknown. Twas a good game, cept unbalanced. Some levels were a cakewalk and some levels where impossible, could only be beaten by abusing unwalkable areas and other cheese. The graphics are also... certainly not ugly, but lets just say they were outdated already when the games was released. (On the other hand, Myth III is like fifty times prettier than NWN2, a game that a lot of people enjoy, so...)

    However, the physics of that game is AMAZING!!! In most games - no, in almost every game in existance - you will have characters "airwalking" and move at a set speed across the map. In Myth III they have REAL walk. That is, where the creature put its foot down, that is where it will be at the given time. When a ranged unit throws a spear and misses, the spear will stick out of the ground, where it got stuck, and at the angle it got stuck! AND the game can handle like 200 spears sticking out of the ground. Not like most games, where after 10 or so spears of blood spatters of bodies or whatever they just disappear. And so on and so forth. From a physics mechanics point of view, the only game I can think of that even gets close to how advanced the physics in Myth III is would be Half-Life 2.

    Also, there is no other game better at camera handling than Myth (I, II or III handles the same).

    Unfortunately, Myth III flopped, and the head developer, Santa's Head, went into making silly java script games. I think - it was a long time ago, my memory may not be perfect.

    If I ever gathered enough captital to make a game (which will never happen, unless I win the lottery) I would email Santa's Head and hire him, and this way get the Myth III engine for free (at least I am assuming he hold the rights, maybe I am wrong), and then update the fuck out of it graphics-wise and game mechanics wise (so it can be an RPG instead of action strategy).

    HINT HINT
    woowoovoodoo
  • bob_vengbob_veng Member Posts: 2,308
    the best 3d engine for top down games right now i think is the unity adaptation for shadow tactics. good performance and looks (better framerate than PoE), everything is very polished...
    CrevsDaak
  • DrakeICNDrakeICN Member Posts: 623
    Side by side comparison (if you open two windows ;) )



    Like I mentioned, Myth III has outdated graphics (but like I remembered, still prettier than NWN2 though). (Also, the guy playing obviously has a thing against zooming out proper, which makes moving around very cramped. How can you play like that? You would miss-click all the time, and get ambushed even more often.)
    But imagine the graphics were more modern for Myth III or apply an imaginary ugly filter to Shadow tactics and - sorry Bob - Myth III wins!
  • bob_vengbob_veng Member Posts: 2,308
    yeah, looks great. love the blood. the shadows are pretty fancy too for 2001.

    but the reason i picked shadow tactics is because scenes in it look very pretty. if you look at them without moving the camera they can look like very detailed prerendered isometric scenes
    CrevsDaak
  • dibdib Member Posts: 384
    edited February 2017
    For a new IP, definitely. Now whether it's worth upgrading IE to modern standards or start from "scratch", I don't know. Wasn't Bioware's Aurora Engine using a lot of tech from IE?
  • bob_vengbob_veng Member Posts: 2,308
    there's a myth that aurora was just an iteration of the MDK2 engine (omen engine), but this doesn't seem to be true. there are similarities between IE and Aurora, but i don't know if it's really shared code, or just spontaneous similarities resulting from the fact it's the same company making them

    IE can not be upgraded to modern standards, but it can be made to look satisfactory i think. in terms of 2d graphics. it will always be a bit clunky inside (not a programmer so i'm not authoritative on the issue)
  • CrevsDaakCrevsDaak Member Posts: 7,155
    bob_veng said:

    yeah, looks great. love the blood. the shadows are pretty fancy too for 2001.

    Look at Myth II (trees are 2D sprites that turn around with the camera tho), it's pretty fancy as well.
  • TheGreatKhanTheGreatKhan Member Posts: 106
    Programming, particularly graphically is really the one thing or subject I have absolutely zero knowledge of and I have never studied in any way. Which now that I think about it, is truly bizarre as I've been playing games and using computers since I was 6 and I'm actually very good with desktop hardware. So my authority on the subject is nonexistent.

    If I had to take a guess I would assume they would move on from IE after they finish up BG and ID games. It does seem limited especially in the model sprites, I remember there were issues for why they could not update the old sprites to HD. Something about art assets which I've heard others talk about but I don't understand due to my lack of programming knowledge. So my guess would be they would want to start something original and new with 5th edition.

    I will say this though, I've always loved the IE games and I've always liked how fluid and steady the games all ran, and I've played them on four completely different systems the last 19 years. I do love Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity but I felt the engines while nice looking, were sluggish and laggy. Though that could just be my experience.
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  • CrevsDaakCrevsDaak Member Posts: 7,155

    If I had to take a guess I would assume they would move on from IE after they finish up BG and ID games. It does seem limited especially in the model sprites, I remember there were issues for why they could not update the old sprites to HD. Something about art assets which I've heard others talk about but I don't understand due to my lack of programming knowledge.

    They've lost the original renders/pictures that compose the sprites in the game, which are of course of lower resolution than the originals.
    [Deleted User]
  • AstroBryGuyAstroBryGuy Member Posts: 3,437

    If I had to take a guess I would assume they would move on from IE after they finish up BG and ID games. It does seem limited especially in the model sprites, I remember there were issues for why they could not update the old sprites to HD. Something about art assets which I've heard others talk about but I don't understand due to my lack of programming knowledge. So my guess would be they would want to start something original and new with 5th edition.

    The 2D sprites were originally rendered from 3D models. The 3D models were lost, so they would have had to be recreated from scratch to update the 2D sprites. The original art for the area backgrounds was lost as well.
    [Deleted User]
  • TheGreatKhanTheGreatKhan Member Posts: 106
    edited February 2017
    As it didn't happen I'm going to assume that's probably a very hard thing to do. Now is that because of the IE engine or is that just generally a hard act to accomplish on any engine. I'm also assuming it's a one way street as well, the 3D models to the actual game, not able to be reversed. If it's an IE specific problem then maybe they would want to start fresh, but if not then just personal preference then no? Does the IE engine continually still give them problems on development?

    [Deleted User]
  • thruddthrudd Member Posts: 96
    People still play the IE Games and love them (Me) I say NO. Make it better modify it if they can, but definitely make More Dungeons and Dragons Games in the Forgotten Realms.... I hope the new one that is currently being worked is a Brand new Adventure in the Forgotten Realms !!!!!! or IWD 2 EE would be AWSOME as well.
    [Deleted User]
  • lefreutlefreut Member Posts: 1,462
    edited November 2019
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    Post edited by lefreut on
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  • DrakeICNDrakeICN Member Posts: 623
    edited February 2017
    thrudd said:

    People still play the IE Games and love them (Me) I say NO. Make it better modify it if they can, but definitely make More Dungeons and Dragons Games in the Forgotten Realms.... I hope the new one that is currently being worked is a Brand new Adventure in the Forgotten Realms !!!!!! or IWD 2 EE would be AWSOME as well.

    Using 2,5 e rules at most then. Teh suck started to seep in with 3 e, due to six attacks per round, unlimited THACO gain but VERY limited AC gain and other horseshit that favored warriors, while most enemies have near total resistance to all spells. I dunno how true to 3 e NWN was, but that game was incredible unbalanced. And then teh suck just got worse and worse and worse - Owlbears, 50 recolorations of Slaadi that all had insignificant differences, 5 gazillion classes and races and so on and so forth.

    Pillars of Eternity did everything right when they took what worked and tossed out what didnt.
    DJKajuruCrevsDaak[Deleted User]
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0
    edited February 2017
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    [Deleted User]CrevsDaak
  • woowoovoodoowoowoovoodoo Member Posts: 150
    edited February 2017


    There are more examples but I'll stop and ask the general question: with all the effort that goes into making a good engine, why don't developers milk it for a few games, spending more resources on good content and gameplay, before delving to the technical pit of developing a new one? Especially when new engines have such an inconsistent track record as far as actually pleasing players?

    Maybe because all those engines are barely ok even for a single game and can't withstand its own weight? Companies have deadlines, products have technical debt...

    Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to see it as a soap bubble? (A. Perlis)

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  • woowoovoodoowoowoovoodoo Member Posts: 150
    edited February 2017


    Those seem like arguments against building new engines from the ground up. Unless I'm (probably) not fully understanding you.

    I just think game devs feel pressure to deliver the new shiny, especially with the prominence of big reveals at conferences and the like. But look at games like Half-life, Fallout New Vegas, BGEE/SoD... it's possible to produce great games beloved by players, on technically outdated engines. Seems to me, doing that would make the whole process cheaper and easier, and allow the devs to focus more on other aspects of the game...

    I think it goes that way. Sales people say: we can't release the second part just with the same (but a bit different) "save-the-world" plot. We need features to be successful. And implementing those new features is not possible on top of the old engine's architecture, so you save parts that can be saved and build a new version of the engine on top of the remnants of the old one, with features and the same (but a bit different) plot.
    [Deleted User]
  • levelwormlevelworm Member Posts: 41

    IWD2ee should be their last IE project imo.

    I'd love that they port IWD2 and PS:T to the updated engine. It would buy them more cash and time to develop a new engine. It is really difficult to develop new areas for IE, I mean, if you compare with NWN.
    woowoovoodooCrevsDaak
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