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Would you buy Icewind Dale II: Enhanced Edition?

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  • rapsam2003rapsam2003 Member Posts: 1,636
    Vallmyr said:

    One thing I always thought was neat about NWN2 was you could open the subrace.2da and remove level adjustments and enable npc races like the half-celestial by just editing a number. Like say under the ECL for drow it has 2, you just make it 0 and BAM! No +2 LA! Great for people like myself that dislike level adjustment and homerule them out of PnP games. If they did a similar thing for IWD2 that'd be greaatt
    :smiley:

    This is a perfect example of how modding the Electron Engine (NWN2 uses an upgraded version of 1's Aurora Engine) is much easier than modding the Infinity Engine.
    VallmyrOriens
  • inethineth Member Posts: 707
    edited May 2016

    They made runtime enhancements to the game (on the engine side), but that's not particularly impressive, considering GoG.com managed to even do that with games like the Dark Sun games (from 1992 & 1995 respectively; Dark Sun series on GoG ).

    I'm pretty sure GOG simply bundled those games with DOSBox... :)

    No exactly the equivalent of supplanting an outdated UI with a new, scalable, wide-screen UI like Beamdog did.

    ineth said:


    Beamdog has the source code - if they wanted to add support for 3D character models, they could.

    No, they can't, not without rewriting ALL of the graphics processing code...
    Where are you getting your insider info from, regarding the state of the Infinity Engine source code and its capabilities?

    Am I correct in assuming that you have none, and you're simply presenting your wild guesses as fact here?

    And doesn't the Infinity Engine already use OpenGl/DirectX for rendering fog of war and some spell effects? So it's not like it would be completely new territory, or simply couldn't be done.

    They're much better off making a new engine.

    It costs more time [...] than it would cost to just create a new engine with a new renderer.

    I think you vastly underestimate how much effort it takes to build something of that complexity from scratch.

    In my experience (and that goes for most aspects of life), throwing away everything you've got to start from scratch, very rarely turns out to be the best course of action in hindsight - although it can sometimes seem tempting in the moment.

    For example, why do you think Obsidian and inXile entered a partnership to share technology that they built on top of Unity for their respective party-based isometric RPGs?

    Both companies got a budget of millions of dollars from Kickstarter for each of those RPG projects, but still considered it too expensive to build an RPG engine & toolset on top of Unity from scratch all on their own.

    And the engines they did build, even with the cooperation, turned out kinda mediocre on a technical level (i.e. terrible performance, and virtually unmoddable without decompiling and hacking the engine), as we discussed in another thread.

    Now I don't know what kind of funding and expertise Beamdog has, but would you really bet that they would fare better on their own?

    Imagine how much easier it would be if the BG3/BGNext Engine did so. For RP reasons, say you decide to change the name of the Ranger Class to “Woodman”. Open the right XML/JSON file, edit it and save. Boom!

    And how do you distribute this mod?
    By sharing your edited XML/JSON file, so that others can download it and override the original game file with it?
    What happens if multiple mods want to make changes?

    Giving mods a way to patch and insert things in a fine-grained way without interfering with each other more than necessary, is where most of the complexity of WeiDU comes from - not the fact that it needs to deal with binary formats.
    Another aspect of WeiDu's complexity is the fact that it allows mods to be compatible across different games and game versions.
    These problems and complexities would not go away if the engine used plain text-based game files instead of packed binary files.
    AstroBryGuyOriens
  • inethineth Member Posts: 707
    edited May 2016
    Vallmyr said:

    One thing I always thought was neat about NWN2 was you could open the subrace.2da and remove level adjustments and enable npc races like the half-celestial by just editing a number. Like say under the ECL for drow it has 2, you just make it 0 and BAM! No +2 LA! Great for people like myself that dislike level adjustment and homerule them out of PnP games. If they did a similar thing for IWD2 that'd be greaatt
    :smiley:

    Have you checked that it isn't already possible?

    The Infinity Engine lets you change a lot by editing .2da files, too.

    By default they're zipped up inside the BIF game archives, in order to save disk space and improve performance. But both WeiDU and NearInfinity allow you to easily extract them to the override folder, so that you can edit them with the text editor of your choice.
    (And NearInfinity also has a built-in editor for editing them directly, if you prefer that.)

    Not sure about those particular things you mentioned; I haven't kept an IWD2 installation around to check...

    EDIT: I checked out the "IWD2 Subraces Pack" on Sorcerer's Place, and from a very cursory look at the TP2 script it appears that it unlocks, for example, the "Wild Elf" subrace by simply changing two numbers in SRLIST.2DA and ABRACEAD.2DA - i.e. similar to what @Vallmyr describes.
    Vallmyr
  • BelleSorciereBelleSorciere Member Posts: 2,108
    edited May 2016
    @rapsam2003 Just want to say that large modding communities were totally a thing in 1998. Doom supported one of the earliest such communities, and that came out in 1994. Quake was in turn built to make modding easier. Civilization 2 onward also had fairly active modding communities. For that matter, so did Diablo and later Diablo 2.

    @ineth Multiple games since 2001-2002 have had very comprehensive toolsets that go well beyond "map editor." Both Neverwinter Nights games, Elder Scrolls III, IV, and V. Even Dungeon Siege had a comprehensive editor which people used to create their own campaigns. IIRC there were also official mod tools for Dragon Age: Origins. Every game I just mentioned is signficantly more moddable than the IE games, and that's because those games were designed around being modded, whereas IE games were not designed around that expectation.

    IE is an old, outdated engine, and there's nothing wrong with saying that, nor is there anything wrong with believing that and playing IE games because the IE games are still fun. That doesn't mean we need more IE games when so many publishers have done so much better in the years since.

    WeiDU and other tools are great for modding IE, but other mod tools (those I mentioned) tend to be much better simply because they were designed to do just about anything you could possibly want with the game engine.
    Post edited by BelleSorciere on
    jackjack
  • rapsam2003rapsam2003 Member Posts: 1,636
    edited May 2016
    .

  • rapsam2003rapsam2003 Member Posts: 1,636
    edited May 2016
    ineth said:

    Have you checked that it isn't already possible?

    I assure you, the loops modders still have to jump through, even with the EE improvements and the further improvements on top of the base EE stuff via 2.x patches, are numerous. For example, I can NOT add new races to the game without using scripting to change the race AFTER character creation.

    There are numerous other limitations that modders have had to deal with.
    ineth said:

    The Infinity Engine lets you change a lot by editing .2da files, too.

    The Infinity Engine lets you change/expand on, at this time, maybe 50% of the game files as a whole.
    ineth said:

    By default they're zipped up inside the BIF game archives, in order to save disk space and improve performance. But both WeiDU and NearInfinity allow you to easily extract them to the override folder, so that you can edit them with the text editor of your choice.
    (And NearInfinity also has a built-in editor for editing them directly, if you prefer that.)

    Yes...the BIF archives are those files available to modders.
    ineth said:

    Not sure about those particular things you mentioned; I haven't kept an IWD2 installation around to check...

    EDIT: I checked out the "IWD2 Subraces Pack" on Sorcerer's Place, and from a very cursory look at the TP2 script it appears that it unlocks, for example, the "Wild Elf" subrace by simply changing two numbers in SRLIST.2DA and ABRACEAD.2DA - i.e. similar to what @Vallmyr describes.

    Using DLTCEP to search for SRLIST.2DA reveals that there isn't even a SRLIST.2DA in the BIF archives for the other 3 games. In BG1/2/SoD/IWDEE, that file likely doesn't exist, because 2E D&D didn't have subraces, whereas 3E did. SRLIST.2da is likely short for "Subrace list". Editing the ABRACEAD.2da file in BG1/2/SoD/IWDEE does NOT allow you to have those races selectable on character creation, because the files that add kits to specific races are not exposed.
  • rapsam2003rapsam2003 Member Posts: 1,636
    edited May 2016
    ineth said:

    They made runtime enhancements to the game (on the engine side), but that's not particularly impressive, considering GoG.com managed to even do that with games like the Dark Sun games (from 1992 & 1995 respectively; Dark Sun series on GoG ).

    I'm pretty sure GOG simply bundled those games with DOSBox... :)

    No exactly the equivalent of supplanting an outdated UI with a new, scalable, wide-screen UI like Beamdog did.
    ineth said:

    ineth said:


    Beamdog has the source code - if they wanted to add support for 3D character models, they could.

    No, they can't, not without rewriting ALL of the graphics processing code...
    Where are you getting your insider info from, regarding the state of the Infinity Engine source code and its capabilities?

    Am I correct in assuming that you have none, and you're simply presenting your wild guesses as fact here?

    And doesn't the Infinity Engine already use OpenGl/DirectX for rendering fog of war and some spell effects? So it's not like it would be completely new territory, or simply couldn't be done.
    .../facepalm

    Even if you're using DirectX/OpenGL (which they are), you would have Engine side graphics code that can NOT just be revamped as easy as pie. It would be such an expensive and time consuming exercise to revamp the old Engine side graphics code that it isn't even worth.

    Also, shouldn't we expect more as consumers in 2016 (with all the numerous software technical advances implied by that) than a few blobs and dots on the screen? Yeah, it works for a game that's 15 years old, but I really don't want BG3/BGNext to have spellcasting that looks like this:

    I'd rather it look more like this:

    I think that we should expect a lot more than graphics from 1998 in BG3/BGNext. I mean, seriously.
    ineth said:

    They're much better off making a new engine.

    It costs more time [...] than it would cost to just create a new engine with a new renderer.

    I think you vastly underestimate how much effort it takes to build something of that complexity from scratch.
    I'm a software engineer; I KNOW exactly how it takes to build something from scratch. I also know that revamping something that is over 10 years old is generally an even greater undertaking. Also, who said anything about building it totally from scratch? They could easily buy APIs (or use Open Source APIs) that make their job a lot easier. Hell, in other threads, I've even said Beamdog should use Unreal 4 or Unity. What would be ideal is that they should use Unreal 4 or Unity as a base and add things onto those to create the BG3/BGNext engine.
    ineth said:

    Now I don't know what kind of funding and expertise Beamdog has, but would you really bet that they would fare better on their own?

    I'm willing to bet that they would fare much better using a newer engine than if they tried to revamp the Infinity Engine for today's standards.
    ineth said:

    Imagine how much easier it would be if the BG3/BGNext Engine did so. For RP reasons, say you decide to change the name of the Ranger Class to “Woodman”. Open the right XML/JSON file, edit it and save. Boom!

    And how do you distribute this mod?
    By sharing your edited XML/JSON file, so that others can download it and override the original game file with it?
    What happens if multiple mods want to make changes?
    Are you really asking this?! How do we distribute mods today? How do we deal with inconsistencies/redundancies in modded files today? It wouldn't change just because you're using an XML/JSON format.
    WeiDU doesn't handle file conflicts any better than any other system. If 2 mods use the same file, whichever mod is installed 2nd will overwrite that file, unless the modder specifically included logic to prevent that.

    Finally, since BG3/BGNext is supposed to be based on the 5E D&D ruleset, it wouldn't matter if whether the mods that work in Infinity Engine would install for BG3/BGNext. The old BG1/2/SoD/IWDEE mods are based in the 2E ruleset and would therefore not be designed for a 5E ruleset-based game.

    Edit: I'm done with the topic of whether the Infinity Engine should be replaced or not. Your insistence that it's perfectly fine for a new game is asinine. I'll pop up in the thread again, I'm sure; but not to discuss this line of conversation.
  • BelleSorciereBelleSorciere Member Posts: 2,108
    I forgot that Warcraft II and Starcraft shipped with comprehensive editors as well. Starcraft had a pretty active mod community, but I do not recall if Warcraft II also did.

    Mostly, though, the idea of modding as a thing designers wanted to design toward was an evolving issue in the mid-late 90s, but really came into its own in the early 2000s.

    I can't imagine wanting new IE games when a new engine means having the same flexibility as the Aurora Toolset, let alone the possibility of having better (and we can totally have better).
    rapsam2003
  • AstroBryGuyAstroBryGuy Member Posts: 3,437

    I forgot that Warcraft II and Starcraft shipped with comprehensive editors as well. Starcraft had a pretty active mod community, but I do not recall if Warcraft II also did.

    Mostly, though, the idea of modding as a thing designers wanted to design toward was an evolving issue in the mid-late 90s, but really came into its own in the early 2000s.

    I can't imagine wanting new IE games when a new engine means having the same flexibility as the Aurora Toolset, let alone the possibility of having better (and we can totally have better).

    Your argument is based on a false premise. A new engine does not automatically equal more moddable.

    ToEE is newer than the Aurora engine, but without the work of Circle of Eight, would not be moddable (or playable). Neither Pillars of Eternity nor Tides of Numeria have plans for mod toolkits. You have to use Unity bundle extractors and hex editors.
  • BelleSorciereBelleSorciere Member Posts: 2,108
    @AstroBryGuy

    I forgot that Warcraft II and Starcraft shipped with comprehensive editors as well. Starcraft had a pretty active mod community, but I do not recall if Warcraft II also did.

    Mostly, though, the idea of modding as a thing designers wanted to design toward was an evolving issue in the mid-late 90s, but really came into its own in the early 2000s.

    I can't imagine wanting new IE games when a new engine means having the same flexibility as the Aurora Toolset, let alone the possibility of having better (and we can totally have better).

    Your argument is based on a false premise. A new engine does not automatically equal more moddable.

    ToEE is newer than the Aurora engine, but without the work of Circle of Eight, would not be moddable (or playable). Neither Pillars of Eternity nor Tides of Numeria have plans for mod toolkits. You have to use Unity bundle extractors and hex editors.
    That's not my premise. It should be obvious what my premise is, but I'll make it even more explicit since you clearly misunderstood me:

    I can't imagine wanting new IE games when a new engine means having the same flexibility as the Aurora Toolset, let alone the possibilitity of having better.

    I am speaking of Beamdog making a new game - a BG3, for example. I am not speaking of Temple of Elemental Evil or anything the Circle of Eight did for it. Temple of Elemental Evil is completely outside the context of my statement. It has zero relevance to my statement.

    Pillars of Eternity and Tides of Numenera are also beyond the context of my statement, since I am speaking strictly in terms of Beamdog making a D&D 5e game with a new engine, possibly Baldur's Gate 3.

    And apparently statements devs have made about wanting to support modding.

    Anyway, without WeiDU and other third party tools, IE is exactly as moddable as Temple of Elemental Evil is without third party tools, which means that it is an inferior choice for future games and really shouldn't be used.
  • AstroBryGuyAstroBryGuy Member Posts: 3,437
    edited May 2016
    I understood you perfectly. I simply disagree that "new engine" automatically means "more mod-friendly". I was giving examples of newer engines that are less modding-friendly than the Aurora engine.

    The developers of PoE and ToN have not come out as being anti-modding. They've said it's not in their budget to make mod toolkits - and that modding some parts of their games (e.g., maps) would be too hard for mere mortals. Here a quote from Josh Sawyer:
    PC World: Is the game mod-friendly?
    JS: It’s not mod-unfriendly...
    There are certain elements of it that I think are probably going to be easier to mod than others. Environments are probably going to be pretty tough to author on your own, because even for us they’re complicated, they’re time-consuming to build, they’re very hi-res, they involve a number of special passes and things.
    Other things I think are friendlier to modification, but we’ll have to see.
    Beamdog is not a big developer. Putting together a new engine, creating game resources (artwork, SFX, models, etc..), writing a good story, recording VO actors, AND making a toolkit is a lot of work. Guess which will be the lowest priority in that list and therefore the first thing axed when there are delays and budget overruns?

    Also, it has been suggested that Beamdog license PoE's engine, and tweak the ruleset to fit DnD 5e. If they do that, what do you think the odds are of a mod toolkit, especially when Obsidian hasn't created one themselves?
    Post edited by AstroBryGuy on
  • BelleSorciereBelleSorciere Member Posts: 2,108
    edited May 2016
    You didn't understand me at all, since you keep pulling up irrelevant examples.

    And anyway, even if they do have no mod support, that is no worse than IE is now. There's no reason to stick to IE when a newer engine will do the job better and require less mucking about with said engine's guts. We know that any new game they produce will be 5e and IE is designed around 2e. I also recall Josh Sawyer talking about how much of a pain it was to convert IE over to 3e for IWD2, so I can't imagine that 5e would be any better.

  • AchterkladAchterklad Member Posts: 114
    edited May 2016
    It's too cheap not to buy, to be perfectly honest. :) My copy was on special, though.
  • AstroBryGuyAstroBryGuy Member Posts: 3,437

    @AstroBryGuy

    I forgot that Warcraft II and Starcraft shipped with comprehensive editors as well. Starcraft had a pretty active mod community, but I do not recall if Warcraft II also did.

    Mostly, though, the idea of modding as a thing designers wanted to design toward was an evolving issue in the mid-late 90s, but really came into its own in the early 2000s.

    I can't imagine wanting new IE games when a new engine means having the same flexibility as the Aurora Toolset, let alone the possibility of having better (and we can totally have better).

    Your argument is based on a false premise. A new engine does not automatically equal more moddable.

    ToEE is newer than the Aurora engine, but without the work of Circle of Eight, would not be moddable (or playable). Neither Pillars of Eternity nor Tides of Numeria have plans for mod toolkits. You have to use Unity bundle extractors and hex editors.
    That's not my premise. It should be obvious what my premise is, but I'll make it even more explicit since you clearly misunderstood me:

    I can't imagine wanting new IE games when a new engine means having the same flexibility as the Aurora Toolset, let alone the possibilitity of having better.

    I am speaking of Beamdog making a new game - a BG3, for example. I am not speaking of Temple of Elemental Evil or anything the Circle of Eight did for it. Temple of Elemental Evil is completely outside the context of my statement. It has zero relevance to my statement.

    Pillars of Eternity and Tides of Numenera are also beyond the context of my statement, since I am speaking strictly in terms of Beamdog making a D&D 5e game with a new engine, possibly Baldur's Gate 3.

    And apparently statements devs have made about wanting to support modding.

    Anyway, without WeiDU and other third party tools, IE is exactly as moddable as Temple of Elemental Evil is without third party tools, which means that it is an inferior choice for future games and really shouldn't be used.
    Your assumption is that "a new engine means having the same flexibility as the Aurora Toolset" (or more flexibility). The examples of ToEE, PoE, and ToN show that having a newer engine does not mean it is as flexible or more flexible than the Aurora engine. That is how they are relevant. Just because you don't like the counter-example they provide doesn't make them irrelevant.

    Beamdog could develop and release a 5e game built on a new engine (or they could license and use the PoE engine like ToN) and it could be just as unmoddable as the Infinity Engine was when released or the PoE engine is now.

    Now, does that mean that Beamdog should just stick with the Infinity Engine+ for a 5e game? Not necessarily. The graphics do show their age and need updating. However, the ability to play the EEs on my iPad is awesome and something that neither Pillars nor Tides have ever even contemplated. A less resource-hungry game engine would be great for widening the potential audience.

    But that is beside the point I am making, which is the assumption that a new engine means a more modding-friendly game is flawed.
    ineth
  • rapsam2003rapsam2003 Member Posts: 1,636
    edited May 2016

    Your assumption is that "a new engine means having the same flexibility as the Aurora Toolset" (or more flexibility).

    I think it's more accurate to say that a new engine has the potential to be more flexible. It depends. But, really Beamdog would be shooting themselves in the foot, considering the huge modding community that the IE games have, if they don't include the same kind of flexibility via a toolset that the Aurora Engine had -- at a minimum. You want to piss off your core userbase, the folks that will tell all their friends about the game and act as free advertisement for you? Don't provide a toolset that facilitates ease of modding. In 2016, players shouldn't be having to program their own C++ based tools to mod the game (like what was originally done with DLTCEP). It's not as great of an undertaking to provide a toolset as it was back in 1998, due to the technical advancements in programming since then.
    BelleSorciere
  • AstroBryGuyAstroBryGuy Member Posts: 3,437

    Your assumption is that "a new engine means having the same flexibility as the Aurora Toolset" (or more flexibility).

    I think it's more accurate to say that a new engine has the potential to be more flexible. It depends. But, really Beamdog would be shooting themselves in the foot, considering the huge modding community that the IE games have, if they don't include the same kind of flexibility via a toolset that the Aurora Engine had -- at a minimum. You want to piss off your core userbase, the folks that will tell all their friends about the game and act as free advertisement for you? Don't provide a toolset that facilitates ease of modding. In 2016, players shouldn't be having to program their own C++ based tools to mod the game (like what was originally done with DLTCEP). It's not as great of an undertaking to provide a toolset as it was back in 1998, due to the technical advancements in programming since then.
    One would have thought the same thing for Pillars and Tides, since they are obviously trying to appeal to the Infinity Engine player crowd. But, no toolkits for those games have been announced (and in fact, they've basically said they won't be making them because it's not in the budget).
    Aedanjackjack
  • BelleSorciereBelleSorciere Member Posts: 2,108
    One wouldn't necessarily have thought the same thing for Pillars and Tides specifically because they're about appealing to fans of the IE games.

    Beamdog is on a different path, which goes from the IE games to NWN to NWN2 to whatever Beamdog is going to do.

    Anyway, I get the impression that whether or not a notional BG3 will have an editor is a sidetrack and the main argument that has been presented is that a new game should be made on IE, which is so not going to happen, and a new engine is going to be better than IE.
  • rapsam2003rapsam2003 Member Posts: 1,636
    edited May 2016

    One would have thought the same thing for Pillars and Tides, since they are obviously trying to appeal to the Infinity Engine player crowd. But, no toolkits for those games have been announced (and in fact, they've basically said they won't be making them because it's not in the budget).

    And what do base this on? They created new games that never had any modding scene. How could they estimate that people would even want to mod their games? By contrast, Beamdog KNOWS that people modded the crap out of IE games.

    BelleSorciereVallmyr
  • AstroBryGuyAstroBryGuy Member Posts: 3,437
    edited May 2016

    One would have thought the same thing for Pillars and Tides, since they are obviously trying to appeal to the Infinity Engine player crowd. But, no toolkits for those games have been announced (and in fact, they've basically said they won't be making them because it's not in the budget).

    And what do base this on? They created new games that never had any modding scene. How could they estimate that people would even want to mod their games? By contrast, Beamdog KNOWS that people modded the crap out of IE games.

    Because they are marketing to the very same people.

    Look at Pillars' and Torment's websites. Pillars' "Game" page name drops Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment in the second paragraph. Torment's website mentions Planescape: Torment in the second sentence of its main website - and of course, referenced it in the game's title.

    You don't have to have an advertising degree to realize that they are marketing to players (and former players) of Infinity Engine games. Unless the developers at Obsidian and InXile have had their heads in the sand since 1998, they too know that a significant part of their audience, as you put it, "modded the crap out of IE games."

    And, IIRC, the PoE kickstarter was launched in September 2012. In a reddit Q&A that same month, the question of modding came up. So, pretty much it went like:
    "Hey Internets! We want to make a new isometric RPG like Baldur's Gate. Give us money!"

    "Cool! Will we be able to mod it?"
    Post edited by AstroBryGuy on
    Aedanjackjack
  • AstroBryGuyAstroBryGuy Member Posts: 3,437
    ineth said:

    Vallmyr said:

    One thing I always thought was neat about NWN2 was you could open the subrace.2da and remove level adjustments and enable npc races like the half-celestial by just editing a number. Like say under the ECL for drow it has 2, you just make it 0 and BAM! No +2 LA! Great for people like myself that dislike level adjustment and homerule them out of PnP games. If they did a similar thing for IWD2 that'd be greaatt
    :smiley:

    Have you checked that it isn't already possible?

    The Infinity Engine lets you change a lot by editing .2da files, too.

    By default they're zipped up inside the BIF game archives, in order to save disk space and improve performance. But both WeiDU and NearInfinity allow you to easily extract them to the override folder, so that you can edit them with the text editor of your choice.
    (And NearInfinity also has a built-in editor for editing them directly, if you prefer that.)

    Not sure about those particular things you mentioned; I haven't kept an IWD2 installation around to check...

    EDIT: I checked out the "IWD2 Subraces Pack" on Sorcerer's Place, and from a very cursory look at the TP2 script it appears that it unlocks, for example, the "Wild Elf" subrace by simply changing two numbers in SRLIST.2DA and ABRACEAD.2DA - i.e. similar to what @Vallmyr describes.
    IWD2 is a lot less moddable that the other IE games. They hardcoded a lot of the 3E conversion stuff.

    There is a mod for this, but it is an installable DLL: Custom DLL Fixes & Changes v1.5.0 by MindChild

    http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/IWD2/index_editors.php
    inethjackjacksemiticgoddess
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    I would love Icewind Dale 2 (and Planescape) to be "enhanced" by Beamdog, without a doubt. I think the UI in the new versions of the other 3 games is great. That said, neither of them are going to be a quick fix to bring up to date. Planescape has always the one that looks best when properly modded thanks to the UI mod fixing the widescreen issues. Icewind Dale 2 needs it perhaps more than any other Infinity Engine game.

    As for the discussion of Baldur's Gate 3, I would want it to run on the Infinity Engine. But for the time being, Siege of Dragonspear is VERY close to being that game, it just happens to take place in a place in the timeline that doesn't imply it is. But personally, the gap between Sarevok and Irenicus' dungeon always seemed sudden and arbitrary to me, and I'm thrilled that's the time period they decided to explore.
  • ProphetPXProphetPX Member Posts: 5
    edited May 2016
    IF this company remakes ANY game any time soon, it should be the SUPER BUGGY "Pool of Radiance [2], The Ruins of Myth Drannor" (which was the FIRST EVER game to use a buggy 3.0e and INCOMPLETE engine) that is NOT EVEN PLAYABLE anymore without a Virtual PC type emulator using a WIndows 98(se?) VM :(

    PLEASE REMAKE THAT ONE ... and THEN focus on a new engine for IWD2 and Planescape.
    Hopefully someone remakes Temple of Elemental Evil so that it is also compatible with the Circle of Eight mod packs and Keep on the Borderlands, as well.

    Modding THESE to Pathfinder or 5e would be swell! At least to 3.5 anyway.
    Post edited by ProphetPX on
  • rapsam2003rapsam2003 Member Posts: 1,636
    edited May 2016

    As for the discussion of Baldur's Gate 3, I would want it to run on the Infinity Engine.

    It's not going to be on IE. And it will use 5E rules. End of story.
    ProphetPX said:

    IF this company remakes ANY game any time soon, it should be the SUPER BUGGY "Pool of Radiance [2], The Ruins of Myth Drannor" (which was the FIRST EVER game to use a buggy 3.0e and INCOMPLETE engine) that is NOT EVEN PLAYABLE anymore without a Virtual PC type emulator using a WIndows 98(se?) VM :(

    It's available on GoG, iirc.
    ProphetPX said:

    PLEASE REMAKE THAT ONE ... and THEN focus on a new engine for IWD2 and Planescape.

    That's not what's being suggested here. Both of those games still use the Infinity Engine. What's being suggested is that BG3/BGNext/whatever (which would be a completely new and original game) would use a completely different, new engine and would use the 5E.
    ProphetPX said:

    Hopefully someone remakes Temple of Elemental Evil so that it is also compatible with the Circle of Eight mod packs and Keep on the Borderlands, as well.

    Um...what? ToEE is on GoG, and the CoE is what makes that game. Why bother to remake it?
    ProphetPX said:

    Modding THESE to Pathfinder or 5e would be swell! At least to 3.5 anyway.

    No, it really wouldn't. That would require, in many cases, an engine overhaul. New, original 5E games are better.
    BelleSorciere
  • Mark85Mark85 Member Posts: 1
    I would buy IWD 2 for sure, no problems here in putting the game thru its paces. Errr when is IWD THREE coming out ROFL!!
  • VulchorVulchor Member Posts: 9
    3rd (and 3.5) were my all time favorite ruleset. It's why I moved over to Pathfinder after 4th ed was released, and I have no interest in 5th ed. I would buy an EE of IWD2 in a heartbeat, full price, probably 2 copies (like I did with all the other EE games, lol). I know its a huge challenge as IE was modified extensively. But yeah, I hope demand is strong enough that they do it.

    Also, of course a Planescape Torment EE would be most welcome, what with Torment Tides of Numenera getting delayed again to Q1 2017.
  • SmakerSmaker Member Posts: 3
    I would definitely buy IWD2 enhanced, to me it was a big improvement over the first one with more dialog choices and better combat design, it's also the best looking game of all the Infinity Engine games, followed by the first IW, the areas are absolutely gorgeous and full of details, especially the more advanced ones, it was a love letter to the Infinity Engine.

    I remember when Neverwinter Nights came out and despite using a 3d engine, it was ugly as sin compared to IWD2 and BG2, i guess it was nice to rotate and zoom the camera but god damn that game was ugly.
    There's certain loss of aesthetics quality when moving from 2d to 3d, and to compensate that loss, studios have to spend much more money in graphics.

    What i'm trying to say is that if Beamdog decide to make a new game (hopefully IW3) i wouldn't mind if they use the Infinity Engine especially seeing how they already master it, (unless they have like 50 million dollars stored somewhere).
  • BartTPBartTP Member Posts: 19
    YES! Especially if they make an option to switch to BG1-style interface, because I hate IWD2 one. I believe it's totally possible and not very complicated. A lot of people are used to original BG interface and it would be great if given an option to switch to it.
  • rapsam2003rapsam2003 Member Posts: 1,636
    Vulchor said:

    Also, of course a Planescape Torment EE would be most welcome, what with Torment Tides of Numenera getting delayed again to Q1 2017.

    I highly doubt PST:EE could be developed before that time either...
  • acolyteacolyte Member Posts: 36
    I really enjoyed all the IWD and BG type games I've played so I'd definitely buy it when/if IWD2 comes out. Also, as someone else pointed out... as much as I like the 2nd ed ruleset and the interesting duals and multis, it often just doesn't make as much sense. Like the breakpoints for stats are very weird.
  • PK2748PK2748 Member Posts: 381
    I'd buy it if they moved the system to second edition for sure. I've never been fond of 3rd.
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