November 02 Livestream Recap
JuliusBorisov
Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,754
in News
During today’s stream Beamdog CEO Trent Oster and Producer Luke Rideout shared the latest studio news and updates on Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition and the Infinity Engine games. Luke showed off a “keyholing” feature (work in progress) for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, which will allow players to see their character even when walls and other objects block the camera.
Check out the recap!
Check out the recap!
7
Comments
Whut?
It is a super viable project, trust me, Trent! JUST DO IT, PLEAZE!
Make it available on the Mac App Store at full price!
Too many Mac customers are satisfied with their resolution of the Soultaker quest. Disappoint us by re-opening the quest line with an expansion, so we can feel once more we are part of the Beamdog community, complaining about the same things as everyone else. The heck with these completed games
Edit: And once you are going for 3.0, PLEASE create a dedicated UI-Discussion thread for it.
Fake Signature
Also known as CD Labs: Radon Project on other forums
If serious: Just compare the quality of the Interface of PSTEE with BGEE, ICEE, BG2EE. Miles away in terms of sharpness, good use of space, consistency of aesthetics, size of text and therefor comfort.
A dated posting of mine that goes a little more into detail:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/71864/roadmap-for-userinterface-enhancements-for-bg-and-iwd#latest
Really, the most important point is the blogposting dealing with PSTEEs UI. Once you read this, you know why I´m saying "from scratch" and why there is such a huge gap in quality.
If kidding, what´s the joke I´m missing? Is there some guy on the forum that just calls everything fantastic or so?
Fake Signature
Also known as CD Labs: Radon Project on other forums
You like the current UI: Just because you like the current state doesn´t mean it´s fantastic. Especially it doesn´t mean that there is no tuning potential, actually, there is a lot.
Minimum of Clicking: Definitely not. There are many unnecessary scrollbars. Why unnecessary? Well, the panels are simply not using all the space they could, therefor they have to be used ways earlier then they could be. Remember: The interface was a FullScreenInterface back then.
Stone-Of-Choice: Yes, sounds like it should be a No-Brainer.
May I ask you on which monitor resolution you are playing? I guess not on UHD/2160p, but on a lower res. The lower, the less obvious it gets (of course) that the interface elements are rendered/ drawn at real low quality. Every button is blurry due to being LowRes in the scaled version and well, the unscaled version makes everything tiny.
That´s what I´m talking about when I say from scratch: Beamdog should look at elements of the interfaces in the originals and remake these elements in higher render quality, if they wanna continue to use them. They did it for PSTEE: http://blog.beamdog.com/2017/10/ins-and-outs-of-planescape-torment.html
And well, the result is gorgeous. The starting screen alone is looking fantastic, whilst the starting screens of the other games are 800x600-Screens, if I recall it correctly.
Of course, I wouldn´t mind Beamdog taking a look at the elements of the current versions as well. I´ve lost track of what exactly came from which version, which cool ideas they´ve incorporated and so on.
Fake Signature
Also known as CD Labs: Radon Project on other forums
– real support for 4k/UHD resolutions, currently it's either huge (when scaled) or tiny. One can force the games to believe they run on 1920x1080, then it's okay, but it's not the point. Sharpness of High resolution textures would be a nice bonus, but i to me(!) it's not essetial, especially as the actual game content is not going to get sharper anyway, so the visual offset between UI and content would be even greater.
– a real UI scaling slider to adjust the size just as it suits oneself, not choose between "scaled" and "non-scaled". That would also allow to set the relation to the font size as it pleases the individual eye and still fit the text into the boxes ... they may fit for english, but they definitely don't do well i.e. in german.
(and that 2.x journal texture, that still looks like copied from some other game, not any of the IE games)
On a general level, I´ve never heard somebody complaining that due to perfect sharp vector text the rest of a pdf looked worse to them. Or that some textured background in an artbook or so made the art look even worse due to the background being highres. I can understand why people dislike it when some textures in a 3Dgame are ultra highres and some fairly lowres and would rather have all of them being fairly lowres. But I don´t think this effect applies to interface ontop of gameworld at all... (just like the examples stated above)
Anyways, an option would be better then none, regarding that we are completely same minded, I guess.
Fake Signature
Also known as CD Labs: Radon Project on other forums
When playing the games though (on a 4k Screen as good as it can be done with pseudo-support) I often tend to think how lowres the content actually is, while the UI looks okay to me compared to that, and I imagine the discrepancy gets worse with better UI resolution.
Oh and I'm noticing (and silently regretting) when vectors and text looks perfectly sharp on websites or pdfs while the images don't deliver enough resolution to live up to that. Or even worse if some do and others don't, side by side. But I have a radar for that as a media designer for print and screen, i might be not mainstream there.
Um, yes it does. I think it is fantastic, so it IS fantastic to me. No amount of yours or anyone else's dislike changes this. It would be just as feasible (read: non) for me to say that because you think it needs improvement, doesn't mean that it does.
Maybe that´s just a some different, region-specific use of language. Especially america is often cited to suffer from fantastic being regularly used out of context. I often forget about that issue. Sorry for that, should have probably poured more information in that sub-answer.
Anyways, it´s a very central part of that posting.
Fake Signature
Also known as CD Labs: Radon Project on other forums
Soultaker plot? Fine as it is.
LIES AND DECEIT
(This is hyperbole and meant to be taken in a lighthearted manner)
Just pointing out that it's not just the new content that community desires, some people also want a UI upgrade and you seemed surprised by that.
/J