So ... “first iteration” of Alveus Malcanter and potential other items themed as future small DLC packs, huh?
Interesting.
Speaking of which—will this DLC be available through the Beamdog client?
As for Catmull-Rom, even if it created problems on mobile, why not make it an option along with NN? Off by default, and people on mobile can simply not turn it on.
When is beamdog going to make an isometric role playing game that uses Dungeon and Dragons fifth edition rule set:
a) We're working on one right now!
b) We have a licencing agreement with WotC to work on one but we haven't gotten around to it yet
c) We would like to, but still need to work out licencing agreements with WotC
d) When WotC releases 6e D&D
e) soon
f) never
g) you mean this game (announces new game)
h) NDA prevents us from answering this question.
edit: missed one
I guess I’ll ask this again since it wasn’t answered...
When is beamdog going to make an isometric role playing game that uses Dungeon and Dragons fifth edition rule set:
a) We're working on one right now!
b) We have a licencing agreement with WotC to work on one but we haven't gotten around to it yet
c) We would like to, but still need to work out licencing agreements with WotC
d) When WotC releases 6e D&D
e) soon
f) never
g) you mean this game (announces new game)
h) NDA prevents us from answering this question.
edit: missed one
I guess I’ll ask this again since it wasn’t answered...
This is answered in the first post of this page, under the first question.
When is beamdog going to make an isometric role playing game that uses Dungeon and Dragons fifth edition rule set:
a) We're working on one right now!
b) We have a licencing agreement with WotC to work on one but we haven't gotten around to it yet
c) We would like to, but still need to work out licencing agreements with WotC
d) When WotC releases 6e D&D
e) soon
f) never
g) you mean this game (announces new game)
h) NDA prevents us from answering this question.
edit: missed one
I guess I’ll ask this again since it wasn’t answered...
This is answered in the first post of this page, under the first question.
It isn’t really. You asked next game.. I am asking specifically when a genre of game is being made of at all.
It IS answered. "When is beamdog going to make an isometric role playing game that uses Dungeon and Dragons fifth edition rule set" - "I don’t know for sure, yet! There are a few new things we’re currently looking at, all of which are very exciting, but I’m afraid there isn’t much we can say at this point."
Q: Next game: DnD? Another board game (Netrunner, Murder City,Human Interface Nakamura Tower, Monastyr, Call of Cthulhu, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire,Night's Black Agents)? Non-DnD RPG? If it’s an RPG, isometric or no? Unreal, Unity, something different?
Was the question asked. He isn’t sure what the next project/game is yet (which is discouraging). There are a few things they are looking at (not working on) but doesn’t want to say what they are looking at which was my question:
Are they looking at making a 5e DnD game?
If so, how far along are they (got IP rights? In the process of getting IP rights? Have IP rights but put everything on the back burner for NWN and A&A? Or not interested? Can’t get the rights? What? That’s the question, and it wasn’t answered unless they can’t say (NDA) was the answer, but it reads like they can’t say what Beamdog’s next project is which wasn’t my question.
A yes or no would also suffice: Yes we would love to work on a new 5e DND game. No we don’t want to work on a new DND game, and they can leave out the why if they want.
That last blog confirmed that we won't see 2.6 for quite a while still (as it mentioned that the DCA stuff would be first on display on some kind of events, and the the DCA stuff would be released alongside 2.6).
It also confirmed that the horrible pathfinding issues that 2.5 brought in aren't going to be fixed in 2.6. So... Pathfinding is going to be broken until 2022?
"We have a team of dedicated QA who are testing all of the builds, logging bugs, performing regression testing, and confirming both functionality and bug fixes on a daily basis. All of the development team are responsible for fixing the bugs on the features that they work on. The “New” status in the public bug tracker isn’t a measurement of time in the tracker, but an indication of whether an issue has been triaged and escalated. If a bug is listed as “New”, it means it’s still in the queue to be triaged."
Thank you for this detailed answer to my question. It has reaffirmed my belief and faith in your company. Please take as much time as you need to properly exterminate any bugs in your triage queue. I'll even bring a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels Old No. 7 Barbecue Sauce to provide for the "smoke test". Maybe, I could stop in California and pick up a friend (she works in the Medical field) named Mary Jane on the way there. Then, we can have a real smoke test.
What project is this image (screengrabbed from the website) from?
That image puts me in mind of an RPG I used to play in the mid-to-late 90's called Deadlands, by Pinnacle Entertainment Group. In the past, they have crossed gaming platforms with Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Call of Cthulhu. The big baddie with a bank vault in its grip bears a strong resemblance to old Squid-Head. The undead-looking figure beneath it involved in a shootout with a cowpoke could very well be a walkin' dead, or a "harrowed". Thank you for reading, and happy gaming to all.
I don't know why they don't mention it in the article, but you will be able to try the demo of BG:EE for PS4 and Switch if you come to the Skybound Games' booth at PAX East (Booth #12178):
Console games: digital only? Or will there be physical copies as well?
According to the Skybound Games' article, "More details about what fans can expect with these upcoming console releases, including specific platforms and box contents, will be unveiled in the coming months."
Never got a response about True Type Fonts the last several times I asked. I guess it's time to give up on NWN and answers .
This is actually answered:
The next patch for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is not quite ready. As we mentioned in December, once we started on the renderer and 64-bit integration in earnest, that became our main focus. We have a team dedicated to the renderer, and the 64-bit merge has happened, but we’ve got a road ahead of us before we’re going to be able to put a bow on it and make it public, as the console branch requires us to spend time adding controller support, to spend time cleaning up some long-overdue UI problems, and other changes that will have far-reaching benefits in the long run.
According to the plans in December, the next stable patch for NWN:EE will come out with new main menu art, Steam achievements, bug fixes and features, including True Type Font support, keyholing, and fine UI scaling.
So, True Type Fonts will come to NWN:EE, but because there is no new patch (and there is no new patch because all the efforts are on substantial changes to NWN:EE - the renderer and 64-bit integration; green-lighting a smaller patch (before the big work is completed) would mean spending QA and dev resources), True Type Fonts will happen later.
Yeah, considering the Patch was planned for last year, it would be nice to get some kind of ETA, since some people were holding back their next playthrough, because the patch is almost here...
Cuv & later Jcompton gave me their blessing to start updating Ascension to EE standards. Whiteagnus had done a small amount of work on it already, so I enlisted his help. We rolled out a version or two together, I suffered a personal tragedy and dropped out - WhiteAgnus followed later. ALIEN & Agb1 have been spearheading efforts since and are in effect, the project's current caretakers.
That said, Cuv & Jcompton both stated to me that Ascension belongs to the community & we're free to do what we will with it.
looking at the above quote, i have the following question for beamdog: how about that Ascension DLC?
(what follows is not a "question", just my thoughts behind the question:)
since the stated obstacle for SoD story resolution DLC for BG2:EE is that the DLC would need to be substantial enough to justify a normal "major DLC" price tag, maybe there's an opportunity here -
a BG2:EE DLC that has:
1. SoD story resolution
2. Beamdog version of Ascension, perhaps some tie-ins with SoD elements (Caelar in ToB, with some bearing on the endgame, for example)
3.* something extra (different possibities: ESRGAN upscale /for appropriate platforms/, shaman stronghold, SoD NPCs in BG2:EE, return to windspear...)
* i have a very specific idea for new content, with regard to what you did really well in SoD:
create a classic BG1-style/SoD-style "non-linear" wilderness for BG2:EE (that you have to traverse to reach destinations such as de'arnise, umar hills etc, also enabling you also to freely travel to Beamdog-NPC-specific EE areas and have certain, perhaps limited, interactions there, even without Beamdog NPCs, thus finally responding to the core criticism of new EE content: how it's "structurally odd")
Are you planning to do something about the CreatueCreatureOffscreen() function and the countless issues it's still causing within BG:EE and BGII:EE?
For an example, play the Yaga-Shura encounter in BGII:EE v2.5 at 1920×1080 resolution at 100% zoom level. Throughout the fight, enemies will spawn off-screen, they will not approach the party, and even Yaga-Shura and his bodyguards will get scattered around the map in random locations, effectively ruining the fight. Then replay the same encounter in vanilla ToB to realize just how broken it is in the EE.
There are, of course, many other examples of encounters that are broken in a similar fashion, thanks to Beamdog's over-reliance on the same broken script function.
* The infinity engines are being patched to 2.6 somewhere in the near future and some stuff is indicated for a 2.x release after that (UI/pathfinding issues). But will PST:EE, which is on a different branch, get a patch beyond 3.1.4? There are still a boatload of issues reported or submitted at the moment.
* Some time ago, Trent spoke about the company being spread thin because of all the games/platforms/operation systems. Has that been improved nowadays and how does he envision handling this with even more games (AaAO, something new?) and more platforms (the IE games/NWN on consoles)
* The new renderer for NWN:EE came up about half a year after the release of the game on Steam. What was the development of the plan/process of rewriting the renderer? It wasn't announced at the beginning but just suddenly appeared (or at least it seemed so to the outside world).
Back when BG:EE was still unreleased and Beamdog announced the three new NPCs, the latter had slightly different portraits compared to those that eventually shipped. Namely, Rasaad was wearing red, Dorn had no bluish tint, and Neera had no pinkish tint (I understand why Rasaad was made to wear a different color from red to make health loss more clearly discernible on his portrait, but I never understood why Dorn and Neera were changed.)
Would it be possible to share the source files of the original, pre-change portraits with the community? I liked them better and I would love to have them in a lossless format to use in-game.
EDIT: Actually, turns out I have the originals for Dorn and Neera in BMP in my archive. It's only Rasaad that I have i JPG; if Beamdog could share Rasaad's portrait in BMP, that'd be ace.
@Prince_Raymond I appreciate the gesture, but were it just a matter of file extension, I could easily open the file in MS Paint and save it as BMP The reason I’m asking Beamdog for the original BMP file is that it is of a higher quality than a JPG.
While we’re talking portraits—IIRC, Beamdog once released an earlier version of Edwin’s BG portrait, but I don’t think it has ever been officially included in the games as selectable. Is that planned?
Appreciate it’s super easy to add it manually but since it’s out there...
Last but not least—is the portrait pack DLC coming to the Beamdog store/client?
5. Are there any additional bug fixes in the console versions if compared to the PC/mobile ports (eg. better pathfinding)?
LUKE: There have been lots of additional bug fixes, including a significant amount of work on pathfinding, which was an absolute necessity for the implementation of analog party control. https://www.beamdog.com/news/beamdog-q-april-2019/
Comments
Interesting.
Speaking of which—will this DLC be available through the Beamdog client?
As for Catmull-Rom, even if it created problems on mobile, why not make it an option along with NN? Off by default, and people on mobile can simply not turn it on.
I guess I’ll ask this again since it wasn’t answered...
What project is this image (screengrabbed from the website) from?
This is answered in the first post of this page, under the first question.
It isn’t really. You asked next game.. I am asking specifically when a genre of game is being made of at all.
Was the question asked. He isn’t sure what the next project/game is yet (which is discouraging). There are a few things they are looking at (not working on) but doesn’t want to say what they are looking at which was my question:
Are they looking at making a 5e DnD game?
If so, how far along are they (got IP rights? In the process of getting IP rights? Have IP rights but put everything on the back burner for NWN and A&A? Or not interested? Can’t get the rights? What? That’s the question, and it wasn’t answered unless they can’t say (NDA) was the answer, but it reads like they can’t say what Beamdog’s next project is which wasn’t my question.
A yes or no would also suffice: Yes we would love to work on a new 5e DND game. No we don’t want to work on a new DND game, and they can leave out the why if they want.
When is the Soultaker plothole going to be fixed?
That last blog confirmed that we won't see 2.6 for quite a while still (as it mentioned that the DCA stuff would be first on display on some kind of events, and the the DCA stuff would be released alongside 2.6).
It also confirmed that the horrible pathfinding issues that 2.5 brought in aren't going to be fixed in 2.6. So... Pathfinding is going to be broken until 2022?
To everyone @Beamdog,
Thank you for this detailed answer to my question. It has reaffirmed my belief and faith in your company. Please take as much time as you need to properly exterminate any bugs in your triage queue. I'll even bring a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels Old No. 7 Barbecue Sauce to provide for the "smoke test". Maybe, I could stop in California and pick up a friend (she works in the Medical field) named Mary Jane on the way there. Then, we can have a real smoke test.
That image puts me in mind of an RPG I used to play in the mid-to-late 90's called Deadlands, by Pinnacle Entertainment Group. In the past, they have crossed gaming platforms with Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Call of Cthulhu. The big baddie with a bank vault in its grip bears a strong resemblance to old Squid-Head. The undead-looking figure beneath it involved in a shootout with a cowpoke could very well be a walkin' dead, or a "harrowed". Thank you for reading, and happy gaming to all.
https://blog.us.playstation.com/2019/03/22/playstation-at-pax-east-heres-what-were-up-to/
I don't know why they don't mention it in the article, but you will be able to try the demo of BG:EE for PS4 and Switch if you come to the Skybound Games' booth at PAX East (Booth #12178):
https://www.skybound.com/games/conventions/skybound-at-pax-east-2019
According to the Skybound Games' article, "More details about what fans can expect with these upcoming console releases, including specific platforms and box contents, will be unveiled in the coming months."
Also, this:
This is actually answered:
The next patch for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is not quite ready. As we mentioned in December, once we started on the renderer and 64-bit integration in earnest, that became our main focus. We have a team dedicated to the renderer, and the 64-bit merge has happened, but we’ve got a road ahead of us before we’re going to be able to put a bow on it and make it public, as the console branch requires us to spend time adding controller support, to spend time cleaning up some long-overdue UI problems, and other changes that will have far-reaching benefits in the long run.
According to the plans in December, the next stable patch for NWN:EE will come out with new main menu art, Steam achievements, bug fixes and features, including True Type Font support, keyholing, and fine UI scaling.
So, True Type Fonts will come to NWN:EE, but because there is no new patch (and there is no new patch because all the efforts are on substantial changes to NWN:EE - the renderer and 64-bit integration; green-lighting a smaller patch (before the big work is completed) would mean spending QA and dev resources), True Type Fonts will happen later.
looking at the above quote, i have the following question for beamdog: how about that Ascension DLC?
(what follows is not a "question", just my thoughts behind the question:)
since the stated obstacle for SoD story resolution DLC for BG2:EE is that the DLC would need to be substantial enough to justify a normal "major DLC" price tag, maybe there's an opportunity here -
a BG2:EE DLC that has:
1. SoD story resolution
2. Beamdog version of Ascension, perhaps some tie-ins with SoD elements (Caelar in ToB, with some bearing on the endgame, for example)
3.* something extra (different possibities: ESRGAN upscale /for appropriate platforms/, shaman stronghold, SoD NPCs in BG2:EE, return to windspear...)
* i have a very specific idea for new content, with regard to what you did really well in SoD:
For an example, play the Yaga-Shura encounter in BGII:EE v2.5 at 1920×1080 resolution at 100% zoom level. Throughout the fight, enemies will spawn off-screen, they will not approach the party, and even Yaga-Shura and his bodyguards will get scattered around the map in random locations, effectively ruining the fight. Then replay the same encounter in vanilla ToB to realize just how broken it is in the EE.
There are, of course, many other examples of encounters that are broken in a similar fashion, thanks to Beamdog's over-reliance on the same broken script function.
These two tickets list all the scripts that currently use CreatueCreatureOffscreen() in each game respectively:
https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/39228
https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/39229
* Some time ago, Trent spoke about the company being spread thin because of all the games/platforms/operation systems. Has that been improved nowadays and how does he envision handling this with even more games (AaAO, something new?) and more platforms (the IE games/NWN on consoles)
* The new renderer for NWN:EE came up about half a year after the release of the game on Steam. What was the development of the plan/process of rewriting the renderer? It wasn't announced at the beginning but just suddenly appeared (or at least it seemed so to the outside world).
Would it be possible to share the source files of the original, pre-change portraits with the community? I liked them better and I would love to have them in a lossless format to use in-game.
EDIT: Actually, turns out I have the originals for Dorn and Neera in BMP in my archive. It's only Rasaad that I have i JPG; if Beamdog could share Rasaad's portrait in BMP, that'd be ace.
Here they are, by the way:
While we’re talking portraits—IIRC, Beamdog once released an earlier version of Edwin’s BG portrait, but I don’t think it has ever been officially included in the games as selectable. Is that planned?
Appreciate it’s super easy to add it manually but since it’s out there...
Last but not least—is the portrait pack DLC coming to the Beamdog store/client?
LUKE: There have been lots of additional bug fixes, including a significant amount of work on pathfinding, which was an absolute necessity for the implementation of analog party control.
https://www.beamdog.com/news/beamdog-q-april-2019/
@JuliusBorisov Since the new post once again doesn't address my question: When will Beamdog resolve the lingering SoulTaker plot thread?