In the blog post on March 2019 they said the pathfinding fixes will not be a part of the 2.6 update:
"We’ve made significant improvements to pathfinding and collision in the console ports of our Infinity Engine games. Luke hopes to back-port these improvements to PC, but they’re not a part of the 2.6 patch for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition (which is still in the works)."
Do you perhaps know if the 2.6 patch will bring some new capabilities for modding the Infinity Engine (e.g., new/expanded opcodes, new/expanded script triggers/actions and the like)? Thanks in advance.
Not sure. At this point, it's easier to just wait till the patch drops.
Nice to finally get some news out for 2.6, even though there's no indication when it's actually coming, other than 'soonish'.
Still not sure why this needed to be hush-hushed.
Also, it doesn't mention in any way if the DLC will still be released or not. I kinda assumed it wouldn't, due to the controversy about it, but it remains unclear.
According to WotC, the DCA is on hold. So is the DLC.
@JuliusBorisov So, does that mean the 2.6 patch is no longer linked to the DCA DLC? Can it be released without the DLC getting greenlit?
Also, are there still plans to incorporate the UI update? There was a pretty strong call from Beamdog to invest users in the creative discussions, and a lot of people invested a lot of time in discussing stuff and making potential mockups, with the promise that Beamdog would be looking into those threads and would be making a proper UI for the IE games, instead of the broken UI crap that we have today unless we choose to install a decent UI mod.
When I last asked this a few months ago, you told me that Beamdog still intends to uphold this promise, but a few posts up, you made it sound that 2.6 could potentially be the very last patch.
Are there still plans to incorporate the UI update? There was a pretty strong call from Beamdog to invest users in the creative discussions, and a lot of people invested a lot of time in discussing stuff and making potential mockups, with the promise that Beamdog would be looking into those threads and would be making a proper UI for the IE games, instead of the allegedly broken UI that we have today unless we choose to install a decent UI mod.
I won't reply to a part that calls the UI a "broken crap".
I'm glad Beamdog respects the opinions of their customers.
It's been pointed out that there are lots and lots of issues with the post-2.0 UI... Beamdog even asked us to give us our input on improvements to said UI.
Here is what Beamdog replied in February about the UI requests:
We received a number of questions about UI for the Infinity Engine Enhanced Editions games and our plans regarding it going forward. Now that the console releases are announced, we can share that we’ve been doing extensive updates to our UI system that could very possibly end up paying dividends for the PC versions into the future.
However, I don't like when a question that is being asked already implies something about an answer, @Thels .
You can't blame someone for calling a duck a duck. You can prove it is not a duck but, let's say, a goose.
You also can't blame someone for calling a broken crap UI a broken crap UI. You can try to prove that it is a nice and/or solid UI.
I've being studying some new stuff and using Beamdog's GDPR issue as a case of how to poorly deal with a crisis but I would never forecast such a bad response to a costumer complaint - even by Beamdog's standards.
Congratulations, that's a whole new level of lack of professionalism from this company that even me - who trends to expect the worst from Beamdog and deals with crisis management as profession - didn't see coming.
Pro tip (literally): you don't restrain yourself from answering an instastified costumer because he/she expressed bluntly about the product that is generating this stress.
Especially under the circumstances that involves Beamdog, the UI and the community. Like 3 years-old reported issues and a whole section of the forum that was created to hear us and then put aside (two if we count the Feature Request, but that's a whole different story).
Nobody was put aside. I can guarantee you that all the people involved into the IE games at Beamdog got numerous analysis reports about actual bug reports, feature requests, concerns and propositions stated there (in the UI subforum).
@Raduziel I don't restrain myself from answering an unsatisfied customer and have never done that. I've been replying to such people for 3+ years. Always, no matter the circumstances.
However, when a question asked is asked in the way the person asking it implies something we all - the person and I - read clearly, there's no sense in replying. I've never been against blunt expressions, critical reviews, etc. But it doesn't work nice when this review is being included into a question for the company.
I would love to see a proper UI update, and if the Console edition provides us with one, then that would be a nice thing. Hopefully, though, the Console edition being the push behind this UI update hopefully doesn't mean it'll be an UI opdated for Controllers, rather than keyboard and mouse.
However, we've already been informed that 2.6 will NOT be the UI update patch, but that there will be later patches. Recently however, you yourself posted the following:
Don't read too much into this, please. I really ask you.
But while Beamdog indeed confirmed more than once that 2.6 wouldn't be the last patch, that happened in 2018 during livestreams regarding the old content of the 2.6 patch (the one that was ready at the end of the year before the build process became broken).
That makes it sound like the 2.6 would potentially be the last patch. Since that was your most recent post on the topic, one could assume that that post would overrule the earlier information from Februari.
I don't know if the 2.6 patch will include a UI update (the console improvements-related). I quoted the February blog because that was a direct reply to never ending questions about UI and complains the subforum discussions had been put aside. That reply still stands, and I've just shared that the team is well aware of everything every customer said about the UI on this forum.
At this point, it's easier to just wait till the patch drops to learn what it brings.
@JuliusBorisov I'm not exactly sure what changed. I'm still as confused as before I asked these questions. Maybe it's a language issue? English is not my native language, after all...
Either way, we've been waiting for a proper UI update for over 3 years now. From what I currently gather from your posts, it seems to be like:
"You may perhaps get an UI update, you may perhaps not. If you do get an UI update, it may perhaps be optimized for Controller, it may perhaps not. You'll just have to wait and see. And no, I cannot tell you how long you have to wait."
Or in short: "We don't know!"
I'd expect Beamdog would know what it is that they're currently working on? Hopefully, you can understand that us customers have had questions for over three years, that we would love to actually see answered at some point?
Totally understand that. I have been passing those questions during these 3 years. The February blog was the last reply to those questions.
Beamdog would know what it is that they're currently working on. I hope there will be opportunities in the future to provide another (updated) reply to the UI requests (& all other IE requests) after the 2.6 patch is released. At this time, though, I can't provide that reply.
While fixing bugs/broken issues is one thing, several of us pointed out in the UI discussion of past that we like the new UI over the old one and would not want to have the UI reverted to any form of the old version.
@kanisatha Have you checked out the actual UI discussion threads? It wasn't about "Let's go back to the old UI!". It was about fixing and improving the existing UI.
Beamdog would know what it is that they're currently working on. I hope there will be opportunities in the future to provide another (updated) reply to the UI requests (& all other IE requests) after the 2.6 patch is released. At this time, though, I can't provide that reply.
This is the same answer since 2.0 was released. UI changes won't be in the next patch but maybe in a future one.
While this is understandable for UI requests, a lot of posts are about UI bugs. And it's not normal that these bugs are still not fixed after all these years.
@kanisatha Have you checked out the actual UI discussion threads? It wasn't about "Let's go back to the old UI!". It was about fixing and improving the existing UI.
I participated in that thread section heavily. There were a TON of posts saying the UI should just be changed back to the old.
Also, calling the new UI "Broken Crap" is incredibly disengenuous. I'm really fond of the current ui, and think its a solid step forward over the previous versions.
I participated in that thread section heavily. There were a TON of posts saying the UI should just be changed back to the old.
Maybe because some of the changes are bad. When you change something, it should be better than the previous version otherwise the change is pointless. I'm sorry but some of the changes in 2.X are just stupid. Look at the dialog box with three different scrollbars. Who thought it was a good idea?
Also, calling the new UI "Broken Crap" is incredibly disengenuous. I'm really fond of the current ui, and think its a solid step forward over the previous versions.
The button in the very first screen you see when you launch the game are misaligned since forever (https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/34120).
They change how scrollbar BAMs are rendered in 2.5 (https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/34061). This breaks the scrollbar look in SoD.
They change how some UI elements are rendered in 2.5 (https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/36559). This breaks my mods (and probably others). This is the thing that represent most of the bug report I get from people using my UI mods and there is nothing I can do about it.
They change how text elements are aligned in 2.5 (https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/34514). This means that with the default UI, some elements are no longer correctly positioned.
And I could go on and on.
The things that annoy me the most is that even if the patches are not focused on the UI, they still managed to break things...
Also these bugs may look minor but the game is no longer in early dev or in alpha stage. The game have been out for a long time. Which mean the blocking bugs should be fixed by now and they can focus on polishing the game.
...and the original games didn’t have these issues, which doesn’t reflect overly great on the “enhanced” tag. One thing that bothers me too is that the Enhanced Edition made the UI 1.2 times bigger than in the originals, but paperdolls and icons were left at the original size, thus messing the original proportions. Those proportions had not been left to chance by the original team and they looked good.
There’s also an issue with buttons always calling the same BAM cycle in the Enhanced Editions, thus preventing the possibility to restore original UIs faithfully. @Kilivitz lamented it in trying to restore the stony UI; I don’t think it’s on Redmine.
I understand that @JuliusBorisov don't have direct answers from devs and my english knowledge is lacking but the more info we get about 2.6 patch the more I'm confused.
Is there any pathfinding improvements at all in this patch? If DLC on hold now and there will be no major UI fixes whats the point patch anyway? Will it be simultaneous for all platforms or gated? When it will be released? Q3? Q4?
Lastly, from longstanding point of view I understand that there is no financial reason to support IE games after a few years anyway. Releasing engine source is out of the possibility that's for sure. Most realistic scenario would be releasing one or two patches with fixing all critical bugs and exernalizing all realistically possible parts of engine for modding community to thrive for many years. Even if it takes 2-3 years of part time working it's still better scenario than abandoning the IE platform completely.
@kanisatha Have you checked out the actual UI discussion threads? It wasn't about "Let's go back to the old UI!". It was about fixing and improving the existing UI.
I participated in that thread section heavily. There were a TON of posts saying the UI should just be changed back to the old.
Also, calling the new UI "Broken Crap" is incredibly disengenuous. I'm really fond of the current ui, and think its a solid step forward over the previous versions.
Yeah, @Thels, my experience was similar to @ThacoBell's. I also posted a lot on that thread but got tired of all the posts saying go back to the old UI and the hell with anyone who might have a different preference.
@lefreut, whether a change is bad is often entirely subjective. Yes the example you gave of the dialog box is one with which I agree, but many of the other changes that others see as "bad" I (strongly) disagree.
Yes the example you gave of the dialog box is one with which I agree, but many of the other changes that others see as "bad" I (strongly) disagree.
Even if you disregard all subjective opinions and ignore all the questionable design decisions, the 2.5 UI still has an astonishing number of bugs and instances of diminished usability as well as missing functionality.
@lefreut So, all the bugs are entirely cosmetic? Clickables work, all the needed information is visible. Yeah, no. A handful of cosmetic bugs does not equal "broken." This is entirely intellectually dishonest.
What Beamdog did with the weapons' proficiency screen makes a lot of kit-related mods incompatible with other mods (now we have to mod the base class instead of just giving allowance to the kit).
The aforementioned dialogue screen is as cosmetic as the pathfinding. We can work our way around it but makes the game annoying as hell.
I'm not a "UI-person". Pretty much everything that is broken wasn't noticed for me until pointed out but there is a matter of principles here.
I'm sure @lefreut and @Adul can point out more things that are not merely cosmetic, those are just the ones that affects me directly (as a modder and as a player respectively).
Comments
"We’ve made significant improvements to pathfinding and collision in the console ports of our Infinity Engine games. Luke hopes to back-port these improvements to PC, but they’re not a part of the 2.6 patch for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition (which is still in the works)."
Have they changed their plan?
Yes. The entire plan for the 2.6 update has been reevaluated.
As @deltago said: "This will be addressed in the next Wild Surge magazine. Out soonish."
Not sure. At this point, it's easier to just wait till the patch drops.
According to WotC, the DCA is on hold. So is the DLC.
In a few blog posts and articles, we've mentioned the team wants to go forward. I doubt there're resources to create such a toolset.
Also, are there still plans to incorporate the UI update? There was a pretty strong call from Beamdog to invest users in the creative discussions, and a lot of people invested a lot of time in discussing stuff and making potential mockups, with the promise that Beamdog would be looking into those threads and would be making a proper UI for the IE games, instead of the broken UI crap that we have today unless we choose to install a decent UI mod.
When I last asked this a few months ago, you told me that Beamdog still intends to uphold this promise, but a few posts up, you made it sound that 2.6 could potentially be the very last patch.
I won't reply to a part that calls the UI a "broken crap".
The UI is broken though.
In case Beamdog needs a reminder, here you go.
I'm glad Beamdog respects the opinions of their customers.
It's been pointed out that there are lots and lots of issues with the post-2.0 UI... Beamdog even asked us to give us our input on improvements to said UI.
Here is what Beamdog replied in February about the UI requests:
We received a number of questions about UI for the Infinity Engine Enhanced Editions games and our plans regarding it going forward. Now that the console releases are announced, we can share that we’ve been doing extensive updates to our UI system that could very possibly end up paying dividends for the PC versions into the future.
However, I don't like when a question that is being asked already implies something about an answer, @Thels .
You also can't blame someone for calling a broken crap UI a broken crap UI. You can try to prove that it is a nice and/or solid UI.
I've being studying some new stuff and using Beamdog's GDPR issue as a case of how to poorly deal with a crisis but I would never forecast such a bad response to a costumer complaint - even by Beamdog's standards.
Congratulations, that's a whole new level of lack of professionalism from this company that even me - who trends to expect the worst from Beamdog and deals with crisis management as profession - didn't see coming.
Pro tip (literally): you don't restrain yourself from answering an instastified costumer because he/she expressed bluntly about the product that is generating this stress.
Especially under the circumstances that involves Beamdog, the UI and the community. Like 3 years-old reported issues and a whole section of the forum that was created to hear us and then put aside (two if we count the Feature Request, but that's a whole different story).
@Raduziel I don't restrain myself from answering an unsatisfied customer and have never done that. I've been replying to such people for 3+ years. Always, no matter the circumstances.
However, when a question asked is asked in the way the person asking it implies something we all - the person and I - read clearly, there's no sense in replying. I've never been against blunt expressions, critical reviews, etc. But it doesn't work nice when this review is being included into a question for the company.
I would love to see a proper UI update, and if the Console edition provides us with one, then that would be a nice thing. Hopefully, though, the Console edition being the push behind this UI update hopefully doesn't mean it'll be an UI opdated for Controllers, rather than keyboard and mouse.
However, we've already been informed that 2.6 will NOT be the UI update patch, but that there will be later patches. Recently however, you yourself posted the following:
That makes it sound like the 2.6 would potentially be the last patch. Since that was your most recent post on the topic, one could assume that that post would overrule the earlier information from Februari.
I don't know if the 2.6 patch will include a UI update (the console improvements-related). I quoted the February blog because that was a direct reply to never ending questions about UI and complains the subforum discussions had been put aside. That reply still stands, and I've just shared that the team is well aware of everything every customer said about the UI on this forum.
At this point, it's easier to just wait till the patch drops to learn what it brings.
Either way, we've been waiting for a proper UI update for over 3 years now. From what I currently gather from your posts, it seems to be like:
"You may perhaps get an UI update, you may perhaps not. If you do get an UI update, it may perhaps be optimized for Controller, it may perhaps not. You'll just have to wait and see. And no, I cannot tell you how long you have to wait."
Or in short: "We don't know!"
I'd expect Beamdog would know what it is that they're currently working on? Hopefully, you can understand that us customers have had questions for over three years, that we would love to actually see answered at some point?
Beamdog would know what it is that they're currently working on. I hope there will be opportunities in the future to provide another (updated) reply to the UI requests (& all other IE requests) after the 2.6 patch is released. At this time, though, I can't provide that reply.
Really looking forward to 2.6, updates here are about as frequent as Christmass (perhaps even less so)
This is the same answer since 2.0 was released. UI changes won't be in the next patch but maybe in a future one.
While this is understandable for UI requests, a lot of posts are about UI bugs. And it's not normal that these bugs are still not fixed after all these years.
I participated in that thread section heavily. There were a TON of posts saying the UI should just be changed back to the old.
Also, calling the new UI "Broken Crap" is incredibly disengenuous. I'm really fond of the current ui, and think its a solid step forward over the previous versions.
Maybe because some of the changes are bad. When you change something, it should be better than the previous version otherwise the change is pointless. I'm sorry but some of the changes in 2.X are just stupid. Look at the dialog box with three different scrollbars. Who thought it was a good idea?
The button in the very first screen you see when you launch the game are misaligned since forever (https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/34120).
They change how scrollbar BAMs are rendered in 2.5 (https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/34061). This breaks the scrollbar look in SoD.
They change how some UI elements are rendered in 2.5 (https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/36559). This breaks my mods (and probably others). This is the thing that represent most of the bug report I get from people using my UI mods and there is nothing I can do about it.
They change how text elements are aligned in 2.5 (https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/34514). This means that with the default UI, some elements are no longer correctly positioned.
And I could go on and on.
The things that annoy me the most is that even if the patches are not focused on the UI, they still managed to break things...
Also these bugs may look minor but the game is no longer in early dev or in alpha stage. The game have been out for a long time. Which mean the blocking bugs should be fixed by now and they can focus on polishing the game.
There’s also an issue with buttons always calling the same BAM cycle in the Enhanced Editions, thus preventing the possibility to restore original UIs faithfully. @Kilivitz lamented it in trying to restore the stony UI; I don’t think it’s on Redmine.
Is there any pathfinding improvements at all in this patch? If DLC on hold now and there will be no major UI fixes whats the point patch anyway? Will it be simultaneous for all platforms or gated? When it will be released? Q3? Q4?
Lastly, from longstanding point of view I understand that there is no financial reason to support IE games after a few years anyway. Releasing engine source is out of the possibility that's for sure. Most realistic scenario would be releasing one or two patches with fixing all critical bugs and exernalizing all realistically possible parts of engine for modding community to thrive for many years. Even if it takes 2-3 years of part time working it's still better scenario than abandoning the IE platform completely.
Yeah, @Thels, my experience was similar to @ThacoBell's. I also posted a lot on that thread but got tired of all the posts saying go back to the old UI and the hell with anyone who might have a different preference.
@lefreut, whether a change is bad is often entirely subjective. Yes the example you gave of the dialog box is one with which I agree, but many of the other changes that others see as "bad" I (strongly) disagree.
Even if you disregard all subjective opinions and ignore all the questionable design decisions, the 2.5 UI still has an astonishing number of bugs and instances of diminished usability as well as missing functionality.
No.
What Beamdog did with the weapons' proficiency screen makes a lot of kit-related mods incompatible with other mods (now we have to mod the base class instead of just giving allowance to the kit).
The aforementioned dialogue screen is as cosmetic as the pathfinding. We can work our way around it but makes the game annoying as hell.
I'm not a "UI-person". Pretty much everything that is broken wasn't noticed for me until pointed out but there is a matter of principles here.
I'm sure @lefreut and @Adul can point out more things that are not merely cosmetic, those are just the ones that affects me directly (as a modder and as a player respectively).