@upi00r yep, that's something we can look into going forward as well. For the time constraints and multiple-platform support, we had to work with existing conventions for the time being resulting in the current UI as you see it, but going forward we'll definitely be looking into the best way to implement a fully HD gui.
I can't give you a timeline, I hope you understand - but it's on the list.
@Magevil in your baldur.ini, which should be in your Documents/Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition/ folder, after the INSERT INTO ROWS ( line add the following seperate row (you can always delete baldur.ini if you mess it up, but you'll lose your settings, so be warned):
'Graphics', 'Scale UI', '0',
That'll let you look at the current state of things. Note, as I said, it'll make some screens look broken since the scaling is no longer being applied (and might possibly outright break other screens), but, this could be the start of a direction that we look into. I definitely shouldn't promise anything about how any new feature would be implemented, as I'm not the one that's elbow deep in the source code... but hey, if you have any audio questions, I'm your man.
I really like it without the scaling. Though the unused space below menus looks a little strange (and I can get used to that), the main game screen looks 100% better, imho.
@upi00r yep, that's something we can look into going forward as well. For the time constraints and multiple-platform support, we had to work with existing conventions for the time being resulting in the current UI as you see it, but going forward we'll definitely be looking into the best way to implement a fully HD gui.
I can't give you a timeline, I hope you understand - but it's on the list.
@Magevil in your baldur.ini, which should be in your Documents/Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition/ folder, after the INSERT INTO ROWS ( line add the following seperate row (you can always delete baldur.ini if you mess it up, but you'll lose your settings, so be warned):
'Graphics', 'Scale UI', '0',
That'll let you look at the current state of things. Note, as I said, it'll make some screens look broken since the scaling is no longer being applied (and might possibly outright break other screens), but, this could be the start of a direction that we look into. I definitely shouldn't promise anything about how any new feature would be implemented, as I'm not the one that's elbow deep in the source code... but hey, if you have any audio questions, I'm your man.
Hooray! Thanks for this. It's a definite step in the right direction.
When adding dubbing for other language are you going to operate on wave files or you gonna take acm directly? I'm asking because Polish sounds (not all but many) have crackles at the ends. Can you write a script for applying mute for last 30ms or so for each sound file (I guess that you have some kind of sound editor software to use)?
@Nathan That's cool you do sound, do you use Audition or Pro Tools?
Since you're on the audio side you'll know if this is a bug or not. When you 'win' at the pits, is that last narrative break supposed to be voiced? It was silent for me.
@upi00r That's a tough call - we'll probably just implement the sounds as they are. It's unfortunate if there are pops or clicks, but in order to do any editing, I'd have to unconvert from acm to wav, apply edits, then convert back. We'll see how much time I'm given by the boss man to do the editing if any at all - I can't promise anything right now.
@agris Pro Tools primarily, but Audition is nice for quick edits/modification and/or file information. It gives you a bunch of information "at a glance" that Pro Tools doesn't. When doing serious editing and processing, I prefer to work in Pro Tools. Once you've worked with one DAW, though, you see they all do the same thing - just approach it from a slightly different angle.
The winning narrative break in TBP unfortunately has no voice over, as far as I know. Dave Chan who was one of the original audio crew on Baldur's Gate did most of the voice recording on the project, I came into it in an audio capacity fairly late in the game and handled some of the processing along with the intro videos' audio. The possibility exists of adding in some lines later - we'll see, in the end it's all about how much money we have to chuck at this stuff.
I'd just like to drop my thoughts in here, since the dev team actually does seem to read (awesome). I would really, really love the ability to not have to go through a series of clicks to cast one spell after another. Imo there really, REALLY needs to be a "quickcast" (to take a NWN2 term) menu for all our spells that we can either click, open and close, or leave open and keep clicking from.
I got a lot of help from people here for building a Wild Mage for multiplayer ... but I'm a bit put off of actually using it in multiplayer because it's either a frenetic clickfest or I bore my friends to tears while they sit through my constant pausing to click through multiple spell menus (once I get more spells).
Playing a mage is way more unwieldy than it needs to be.
Yea, I don't see it happening but it would be nice. After the flashy movies and all of Baeloth's lines being VO, I thought the ending's narration would get the same treatment.
Is this reported already? When you hide the options bar and go to loot a container, a black bars appears where the options bar would normally sit. Not anything important, but it should be documented if it hasn't been already.
The UI does not scale, it just streches after a certain resolution which creates all that blurriness in high resolutions. As Trent states in Tweeter:"That is why it is a Beta feature (the 'Graphics', 'Scale UI', '0',). We can't make a bunch of custom UI screens for every possible resolution. Thus the borders" So the problem arises because Beamdog DID NOT create from the start custom UI screens for high pc resolutions and it will be corrected when/if it does. I will concure with the previous members that the pc version is just ported from the tablet versions thus the fat borders and ugly big buttons on the right side of the dialog/action box.
@Nathan The no ui scaling beta feature looks so much better than the default. You just need to tell it to split the difference of the added lines so that half the added lines are on top of the normal window and half are below instead of putting them all below, look below to see what I mean... Well maybe it won't fix everything but it will be a start...
The UI does not scale, it just streches after a certain resolution which creates all that blurriness in high resolutions. As Trent states in Tweeter:"That is why it is a Beta feature (the 'Graphics', 'Scale UI', '0',). We can't make a bunch of custom UI screens for every possible resolution. Thus the borders" So the problem arises because Beamdog DID NOT create from the start custom UI screens for high pc resolutions and it will be corrected when/if it does. I will concure with the previous members that the pc version is just ported from the tablet versions thus the fat borders and ugly big buttons on the right side of the dialog/action box.
It would hardly be feasibly to make complete GUI's for every possible resolution. It would take much more work than I think both you and I realize. The GUI isn't just what you see when you play the game window, it's inventory screen, character screen and every other screen we can see in the game.
The solution they went with was really the only choice they had, since the game will be released on different sized Android Tablets, iPad Tablets and computer monitors capable of a wide range of resolutions.
That they contemplate making a GUI just for high resolutions at all should really be regarded as a special thing, as I could imagine they've got a whole lot of stuff they could be doing with their limited resources at the moment...
They could have compensated for only the two highest resolutions that most pc players use for ex. 1920 × 1080 and 1680 × 1050, everything would have been smoother after that.
Instead they ported the tablet version straight to pc which in my opinion does not make things right.
As a result due to the fat side and bottom borders the dialog/action box is narrower and displays only one line of info as opposed to two in the normal BG version in the lowest setting and six lines instead of seven in the standard BG version.
Also these two big ugly buttons to its right which were nonexistent in the first BG have no purpose for PC users and just take up space.
Finally for an enhanced version I would have expected professional 3d cut scenes and not amateurish 2d ones, hell if Beamdog does not have the right people or resources they could have instead knocked the door to these guys http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq4n_qVo21k&list=PL04C80FA8CD384D89&feature=plcp and the job would be done the proper way.
Finally for an enhanced version I would have expected professional 3d cut scenes and not amateurish 2d ones, hell if Beamdog does not have the right people or resources they could have instead knocked the door to these guys http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq4n_qVo21k&list=PL04C80FA8CD384D89&feature=plcp and the job would be done the proper way.
I think a lot of things about BGEE does not make sense. For example almost all big time BG 1+2 modders are BGEE's moderators and beta testers and still they concure to a final product with an UI that streches in resolutions more than 1280 and produces blurred results, is touch and not PC optimized, does not run in all graphic cards, has sound issues, mediocre 2d cutscenes and so on. Three patches in seven days is not a good thing imo for a product that is on production for the past two years and relies heavily upon existent and final products like the widescreen mod and many others.
I think a lot of things about BGEE does not make sense. For example almost all big time BG 1+2 modders are BGEE's moderators and beta testers and still they concure to a final product with an UI that streches in resolutions more than 1280 and produces blurred results, is touch and not PC optimized, does not run in all graphic cards, has sound issues, mediocre 2d cutscenes and so on. Three patches in seven days is not a good thing imo for a product that is on production for the past two years and relies heavily upon existent and final products like the widescreen mod and many others.
BG:EE is in production for less than a year.. and BG:EE its not "heavily relying" on mods, yes the used some fixes that already exist, but eventually they implemented only a single mod, of Erephine. The modding community didn't clean up and fixed up all the ancient code of bg1, and that's in the end the most of the work, and still is.
Three patches in seven days just show the dedication of the devs that this would work, there are companys that even that not doing. Beamdog is a very small company, its not AAA company like Blizzard, just give them some time - believe me, they want it to be great just as the rest of us
My main complaints are with the graphical aspects of the game and its impact upon player's pleasure.
It is obvious from the start that the game's core is optimized, it loads faster, looks sharper, sounds better, uses both cores of the cpu efficiently, the zoom feature is a very nice add on.
But imo Beamdog should have created two seperate UI editIons, PC and touch, should give more attention to the cutscenes, that is my main gripe which does not inspire me to buy the game at its present state.
@ioannisman I think you're giving too much weight to the UI, judging the game based on it. Like @mch202 said, the patches that are coming out are a good sign, not a bad one. That being said, I do wish they had made a PC UI that looked crisp at the highest supported PC resolution (2.5k x something) then scaled that DOWN for all other PC resolutions. That would have probably looked the best. The issue is that the PC isn't their primary market segment (% of sales expected from PC is lower than tablet), but I think they're going to cater to us anyway with this 'big screen mode'.
@ioannisman I think you're giving too much weight to the UI, judging the game based on it. Like @mch202 said, the patches that are coming out are a good sign, not a bad one. That being said, I do wish they had made a PC UI that looked crisp at the highest supported PC resolution (2.5k x something) then scaled that DOWN for all other PC resolutions. That would have probably looked the best. The issue is that the PC isn't their primary market segment (% of sales expected from PC is lower than tablet), but I think they're going to cater to us anyway with this 'big screen mode'.
I have never said that 3 patches in a week are a bad sign just not a good one, perhaps the pc version release should have been delayed a bit more just as the ipad one currently is.
And I fully agree that since the pc isn't Beamdog's primary market segment I would buy the game when I acquire an ipad or when the "big screen mode" is fully implemented and most bugs are fixed, not a day sooner.
I can easily live with the current UI after I disabled the scaling. And I think there was no need for a completely new UI (also it would surely have taken some time because of the old programming language baldurs gate is written in). But the biggest improvement regaring the UI is the new Journal - I really like it.
@Nathan The no ui scaling beta feature looks so much better than the default. You just need to tell it to split the difference of the added lines so that half the added lines are on top of the normal window and half are below instead of putting them all below, look below to see what I mean... Well maybe it won't fix everything but it will be a start...
@Ruse that was something we really, really wanted to do but ran out of time to implement. That'll be one of the things we'll be looking at changing going forward. I have no clue as to the form or precise function of how it'll work just yet as I'm not the one that's implementing it, but, I can tell you it's in the works.
@smeagolheart@derduke, thanks for the feedback - yep, at least centering the existing unscaled UI portions is something that we'll look at at least as a preliminary no-scale-mode fix-up.
@ioannisman not sure what to say to you there, dude. The cutscene that you linked from @Cuv was masterfully done in the DA:O engine (I would know, I worked on the game!) - and is fantastic work for their mod, but, still, we're talking a completely different game engine with toolset and everything. It looks good for what it is, but it isn't something we'd want to use in our product nor even be able to use for licensing reasons. Honestly, if money was no object we would've gone with these guys whose work I love but that's some major $$$ we don't have. Personally, I love Nat's work and I think the new cutscenes are great for new players. The biggest issue is that the feeling/emotions/everything that the old cutscenes evoked when they were first out... that's ineffective, now, because they just straight up look old and weird. Nat's work, converted into a cutscene helps to recapture some of that. Is it perfect? No, but it's a lot better than leaving it be, especially for anyone that's new to the series.
I've said to many others, many times, we're going to keep working on this going forward, and making changes as they make sense to do so. The UI scaling situation is one of those changes - it looks generally good on most monitors, televisions, and tablets as well - it's a best of all worlds situation. Some PC gamers prefer smaller margins? Okay, so we added in an option to disable the scaling so people can see how that looks. There are lots of things we can do going forward, an HD UI of sorts isn't out of the question - it's just something that we need time to do. Whatever the choice, it'll come at a later date.
and what? seriously? 3 patches is a bad sign?
...there's no pleasing some of you. Would you rather no patches? I don't understand.
Sheesh. Some days, people forget that vanilla BG1 was a game that crashed every 2 hours back when it was released in '98. =P
@Nathan The no ui scaling beta feature looks so much better than the default. You just need to tell it to split the difference of the added lines so that half the added lines are on top of the normal window and half are below instead of putting them all below, look below to see what I mean... Well maybe it won't fix everything but it will be a start...
Just quoting you to support your idea concerning the opening menu. 50-50 top/bottom should look fine!
Additionally make the two buttons on the right side of the dialog box and its bottom border slimmer so that we can see two lines of info in its lowest setting and increase its width like in the original BG1.
Also provide the original 3d cut scenes as an option and please bring back the "There are others!" line from the opening cinematic that the doomed knight says before getting thrown off the balcony which is a very important piece of foreshadowing, the famous Nietzsche-quote "when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you" that they used to open the game after the game's opening cutscene and the skull appearing after the disappearing hand following the protagonist death.
@Ruse that was something we really, really wanted to do but ran out of time to implement. That'll be one of the things we'll be looking at changing going forward. I have no clue as to the form or precise function of how it'll work just yet as I'm not the one that's implementing it, but, I can tell you it's in the works.
@smeagolheart@derduke, thanks for the feedback - yep, at least centering the existing unscaled UI portions is something that we'll look at at least as a preliminary no-scale-mode fix-up.
@ioannisman not sure what to say to you there, dude. The cutscene that you linked from @Cuv was masterfully done in the DA:O engine (I would know, I worked on the game!) - and is fantastic work for their mod, but, still, we're talking a completely different game engine with toolset and everything. It looks good for what it is, but it isn't something we'd want to use in our product nor even be able to use for licensing reasons. Honestly, if money was no object we would've gone with these guys whose work I love but that's some major $$$ we don't have. Personally, I love Nat's work and I think the new cutscenes are great for new players. The biggest issue is that the feeling/emotions/everything that the old cutscenes evoked when they were first out... that's ineffective, now, because they just straight up look old and weird. Nat's work, converted into a cutscene helps to recapture some of that. Is it perfect? No, but it's a lot better than leaving it be, especially for anyone that's new to the series.
I've said to many others, many times, we're going to keep working on this going forward, and making changes as they make sense to do so. The UI scaling situation is one of those changes - it looks generally good on most monitors, televisions, and tablets as well - it's a best of all worlds situation. Some PC gamers prefer smaller margins? Okay, so we added in an option to disable the scaling so people can see how that looks. There are lots of things we can do going forward, an HD UI of sorts isn't out of the question - it's just something that we need time to do. Whatever the choice, it'll come at a later date.
and what? seriously? 3 patches is a bad sign?
...there's no pleasing some of you. Would you rather no patches? I don't understand.
Sheesh. Some days, people forget that vanilla BG1 was a game that crashed every 2 hours back when it was released in '98. =P
Dear Nathan first of all obviously I was not speaking for a reconstruction of the BG series in the DAO engine (which would have been perfect btw) but just for the actual cutscenes which I believe are simple videos not related to the game engine or the toolset, if I am wrong here please accept my sincere apologies. But if that is the case then I strongly believe that modern 3d models of the characters participating in the cutscenes would have created a greater visual impact on the player than the current 2d ones.
As for the blurry UI thing I cannot understand why it was not fixed during the beta stage since it is strikingly obvious there, unless off course everyone was only testing the game in 12-15-17 inch laptops and nothing else which I truly find hard to believe.
For me 3 patches in a week is a sign of a non 100% tested and 100% final product which btw is not a new product but an improved version of an existing game with exceptional and non stopping support from an alive and kicking community.
For the records I played vanilla BG1 after I discovered BG2 in 2000 and never had a problem with crashes.
You must understand that with the announcement of the BGEE very high expectations were created which imo the current release of the game does not meet.
Perhaps things would improve with the passing of time perhaps not, we will have to wait and see but in the meantime I hearty wish all the best to everyone contributing to make this little rpg gem known to players all over the world.
@Ruse that was something we really, really wanted to do but ran out of time to implement. That'll be one of the things we'll be looking at changing going forward. I have no clue as to the form or precise function of how it'll work just yet as I'm not the one that's implementing it, but, I can tell you it's in the works.
Awesome! I discovered that I can set hotkeys for individual spells and thanks to MMO experience I'm pretty good at memorizing them, but this would be fantastic for the less-used spells that can still be clutch. Really glad to hear this!
Unrelated, I'm not sure where all the hate is coming from for the 2D animated scenes. I think they look great, and I think sometimes people get tunnel vision for "cutting edge" and can't appreciate artistry if it doesn't include the latest technology.
Wow the fanboyism in this thread is nauseating. Its like people blindly defending overhaul games over this has no idea how stupid they sound. 720p is not full HD, and changing desktop resolutions for a game is NOT a solution. Its ridiculous they could take a PC game and port it to tablets and port it back over.
Fun Fact: People with working eyes CAN see the difference between 720p and 1080p and up. My eyes hurt when I look at anything lower then 1080p, mostly because my monitors native resolution is 2048x1152, which by the way modded BG1 and 2 has been able to achieve without these issues.
It's so interesting to read people's opinions on this. Seems like the UI is quite subjective. One of the biggest plusses for me is the EE UI. It's much easier to read than any success I've had modding BG1.
I noticed that you added to ability to move by right-clicking which is nice but it seems like you can't go up stairs, through doors, etc. by right clicking, which is probably pretty confusing for people playing this for the first time.
Dear Nathan first of all obviously I was not speaking for a reconstruction of the BG series in the DAO engine (which would have been perfect btw) but just for the actual cutscenes which I believe are simple videos not related to the game engine or the toolset, if I am wrong here please accept my sincere apologies. But if that is the case then I strongly believe that modern 3d models of the characters participating in the cutscenes would have created a greater visual impact on the player than the current 2d ones.
As it tuns out most of the DAO cutscenes are made using the DAO toolset, and all the ones in BG2:redux are. Personally I like the new 2d cutscenes, I think they look much better then the 15 year old rendered ones.
Comments
I can't give you a timeline, I hope you understand - but it's on the list.
@Magevil in your baldur.ini, which should be in your Documents/Baldur's Gate - Enhanced Edition/ folder, after the INSERT INTO ROWS ( line add the following seperate row (you can always delete baldur.ini if you mess it up, but you'll lose your settings, so be warned): That'll let you look at the current state of things. Note, as I said, it'll make some screens look broken since the scaling is no longer being applied (and might possibly outright break other screens), but, this could be the start of a direction that we look into. I definitely shouldn't promise anything about how any new feature would be implemented, as I'm not the one that's elbow deep in the source code... but hey, if you have any audio questions, I'm your man.
I really like it without the scaling. Though the unused space below menus looks a little strange (and I can get used to that), the main game screen looks 100% better, imho.
When adding dubbing for other language are you going to operate on wave files or you gonna take acm directly? I'm asking because Polish sounds (not all but many) have crackles at the ends. Can you write a script for applying mute for last 30ms or so for each sound file (I guess that you have some kind of sound editor software to use)?
Thx for the GUI info.
Since you're on the audio side you'll know if this is a bug or not. When you 'win' at the pits, is that last narrative break supposed to be voiced? It was silent for me.
@agris Pro Tools primarily, but Audition is nice for quick edits/modification and/or file information. It gives you a bunch of information "at a glance" that Pro Tools doesn't. When doing serious editing and processing, I prefer to work in Pro Tools. Once you've worked with one DAW, though, you see they all do the same thing - just approach it from a slightly different angle.
The winning narrative break in TBP unfortunately has no voice over, as far as I know. Dave Chan who was one of the original audio crew on Baldur's Gate did most of the voice recording on the project, I came into it in an audio capacity fairly late in the game and handled some of the processing along with the intro videos' audio. The possibility exists of adding in some lines later - we'll see, in the end it's all about how much money we have to chuck at this stuff.
I got a lot of help from people here for building a Wild Mage for multiplayer ... but I'm a bit put off of actually using it in multiplayer because it's either a frenetic clickfest or I bore my friends to tears while they sit through my constant pausing to click through multiple spell menus (once I get more spells).
Playing a mage is way more unwieldy than it needs to be.
Is this reported already? When you hide the options bar and go to loot a container, a black bars appears where the options bar would normally sit. Not anything important, but it should be documented if it hasn't been already.
edit: that's at 1920x1200 fyi.
As Trent states in Tweeter:"That is why it is a Beta feature (the 'Graphics', 'Scale UI', '0',). We can't make a bunch of custom UI screens for every possible resolution. Thus the borders"
So the problem arises because Beamdog DID NOT create from the start custom UI screens for high pc resolutions and it will be corrected when/if it does.
I will concure with the previous members that the pc version is just ported from the tablet versions thus the fat borders and ugly big buttons on the right side of the dialog/action box.
opening menu
gameplay
It would hardly be feasibly to make complete GUI's for every possible resolution.
It would take much more work than I think both you and I realize.
The GUI isn't just what you see when you play the game window, it's inventory screen, character screen and every other screen we can see in the game.
The solution they went with was really the only choice they had, since the game will be released on different sized Android Tablets, iPad Tablets and computer monitors capable of a wide range of resolutions.
That they contemplate making a GUI just for high resolutions at all should really be regarded as a special thing, as I could imagine they've got a whole lot of stuff they could be doing with their limited resources at the moment...
Instead they ported the tablet version straight to pc which in my opinion does not make things right.
As a result due to the fat side and bottom borders the dialog/action box is narrower and displays only one line of info as opposed to two in the normal BG version in the lowest setting and six lines instead of seven in the standard BG version.
Also these two big ugly buttons to its right which were nonexistent in the first BG have no purpose for PC users and just take up space.
Finally for an enhanced version I would have expected professional 3d cut scenes and not amateurish 2d ones, hell if Beamdog does not have the right people or resources they could have instead knocked the door to these guys
Funny you say that, so it happens that Cuv, which is the Project Lead/Level Design of Baldur's Gate Redux is a moderator AND a beta tester of BG:EE.
For example almost all big time BG 1+2 modders are BGEE's moderators and beta testers and still they concure to a final product with an UI that streches in resolutions more than 1280 and produces blurred results, is touch and not PC optimized, does not run in all graphic cards, has sound issues, mediocre 2d cutscenes and so on.
Three patches in seven days is not a good thing imo for a product that is on production for the past two years and relies heavily upon existent and final products like the widescreen mod and many others.
BG:EE is in production for less than a year.. and BG:EE its not "heavily relying" on mods, yes the used some fixes that already exist, but eventually they implemented only a single mod, of Erephine. The modding community didn't clean up and fixed up all the ancient code of bg1, and that's in the end the most of the work, and still is.
Three patches in seven days just show the dedication of the devs that this would work, there are companys that even that not doing. Beamdog is a very small company, its not AAA company like Blizzard, just give them some time - believe me, they want it to be great just as the rest of us
It is obvious from the start that the game's core is optimized, it loads faster, looks sharper, sounds better, uses both cores of the cpu efficiently, the zoom feature is a very nice add on.
But imo Beamdog should have created two seperate UI editIons, PC and touch, should give more attention to the cutscenes, that is my main gripe which does not inspire me to buy the game at its present state.
And I fully agree that since the pc isn't Beamdog's primary market segment I would buy the game when I acquire an ipad or when the "big screen mode" is fully implemented and most bugs are fixed, not a day sooner.
But the biggest improvement regaring the UI is the new Journal - I really like it.
Just quoting you to support your idea concerning the opening menu. 50-50 top/bottom should look fine!
@smeagolheart @derduke, thanks for the feedback - yep, at least centering the existing unscaled UI portions is something that we'll look at at least as a preliminary no-scale-mode fix-up.
@ioannisman not sure what to say to you there, dude. The cutscene that you linked from @Cuv was masterfully done in the DA:O engine (I would know, I worked on the game!) - and is fantastic work for their mod, but, still, we're talking a completely different game engine with toolset and everything. It looks good for what it is, but it isn't something we'd want to use in our product nor even be able to use for licensing reasons. Honestly, if money was no object we would've gone with these guys whose work I love but that's some major $$$ we don't have. Personally, I love Nat's work and I think the new cutscenes are great for new players. The biggest issue is that the feeling/emotions/everything that the old cutscenes evoked when they were first out... that's ineffective, now, because they just straight up look old and weird. Nat's work, converted into a cutscene helps to recapture some of that. Is it perfect? No, but it's a lot better than leaving it be, especially for anyone that's new to the series.
I've said to many others, many times, we're going to keep working on this going forward, and making changes as they make sense to do so. The UI scaling situation is one of those changes - it looks generally good on most monitors, televisions, and tablets as well - it's a best of all worlds situation. Some PC gamers prefer smaller margins? Okay, so we added in an option to disable the scaling so people can see how that looks. There are lots of things we can do going forward, an HD UI of sorts isn't out of the question - it's just something that we need time to do. Whatever the choice, it'll come at a later date.
and what? seriously? 3 patches is a bad sign?
...there's no pleasing some of you. Would you rather no patches? I don't understand.
Sheesh. Some days, people forget that vanilla BG1 was a game that crashed every 2 hours back when it was released in '98. =P
Also provide the original 3d cut scenes as an option and please bring back the "There are others!" line from the opening cinematic that the doomed knight says before getting thrown off the balcony which is a very important piece of foreshadowing, the famous Nietzsche-quote "when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you" that they used to open the game after the game's opening cutscene and the skull appearing after the disappearing hand following the protagonist death.
As for the blurry UI thing I cannot understand why it was not fixed during the beta stage since it is strikingly obvious there, unless off course everyone was only testing the game in 12-15-17 inch laptops and nothing else which I truly find hard to believe.
For me 3 patches in a week is a sign of a non 100% tested and 100% final product which btw is not a new product but an improved version of an existing game with exceptional and non stopping support from an alive and kicking community.
For the records I played vanilla BG1 after I discovered BG2 in 2000 and never had a problem with crashes.
You must understand that with the announcement of the BGEE very high expectations were created which imo the current release of the game does not meet.
Perhaps things would improve with the passing of time perhaps not, we will have to wait and see but in the meantime I hearty wish all the best to everyone contributing to make this little rpg gem known to players all over the world.
Unrelated, I'm not sure where all the hate is coming from for the 2D animated scenes. I think they look great, and I think sometimes people get tunnel vision for "cutting edge" and can't appreciate artistry if it doesn't include the latest technology.
Fun Fact: People with working eyes CAN see the difference between 720p and 1080p and up. My eyes hurt when I look at anything lower then 1080p, mostly because my monitors native resolution is 2048x1152, which by the way modded BG1 and 2 has been able to achieve without these issues.