hi!

[Danny02]

today I thought if it's possible to improve the graphics of the infinity engine because I want to play BG without hurting my eye.

 

And so I googled for a while and found your forum.

and here is my question does your rebuiled of the engine improve anything of the graphics or is it possible to improve them with a mod? (higher textures?).

 

2. I saw the topic which was about porting BG II to the Nintendo DS.

wouldn't it be possible, because you can buy a 4GB memory card?

And on this BG would fit easylie.

If that would be possible it would be the coolest thing ever.

[Icendoan]

As for the DS port, it depends which version.

 

If you simply try to copy the sys files over (and it will do this, a full install is 3.6GB space) it will refuse to play the windows version, as it does not detect it in the registry. It will try to install.

 

Upgrading the graphics, I suppose you mean area maps and animations? That would be possible, but it would take years.

 

If you mean making it 3D, well, you would have to make the game again. A bit pointless in a modding community.

 

Icen

[jcompton]

And so I googled for a while and found your forum.

and here is my question does your rebuiled of the engine improve anything of the graphics or is it possible to improve them with a mod? (higher textures?).

 

No such mods exist.

 

2. I saw the topic which was about porting BG II to the Nintendo DS.

wouldn't it be possible, because you can buy a 4GB memory card?

 

Storage flash memory is not the same thing as system memory. The Nintendo DS lacks the system memory to run GemRB. It has 4 megabytes of system memory. You can put a 4 gig card on it, but it will still have only 4 megabytes in which to execute programs.

 

A special port of the original Baldur's Gate Infinity Engine was once done for the original Playstation, although never commercially released. The original Playstation had even less RAM than the DS, so it is not inconceivable that--with a great deal of effort--it could be attempted, but I seriously doubt such an effort would come from the GemRB codebase, which is geared for a desktop PC resource profile.

 

Don't hold your breath, Mr. 02.

 

I should also point out that the resolution of the DS (even considering the two screens added together) is poorer than that of any Infinity Engine title on desktop PC. So your complaints about graphics seem strange paired with your desire to play the game on an even more graphically limited system.

[Qwinn]

I'm actually wondering if maybe what the OP is referring to is TuTu?

 

If regular Baldur's Gate graphics hurt your eyes, but BG2 graphics are okay for you, then EasyTutu -will- improve the graphics for you, as it will allow you to play BG with BG2 graphics. For one thing, it allows you to play it in 800x600 resolution instead of 640x480... pretty sure 640x480 is the best graphics that the original BG will support (please correct me if I'm wrong).

 

Qwinn

[berelinde]

Given that he's talking about "textures," I suspect he'd like to play it in 3D, like NWN2 and Oblivion. That isn't possible, though. While the IE spectrum of games offer higher resolution than anything possible with 3D rendering, none of them offer a "zoom" function. Without it, your sprite is always going to be roughly half an inch tall, and you can't zoom in close to check out that chainmail texture.

[jcompton]

If regular Baldur's Gate graphics hurt your eyes, but BG2 graphics are okay for you, then EasyTutu -will- improve the graphics for you, as it will allow you to play BG with BG2 graphics. For one thing, it allows you to play it in 800x600 resolution instead of 640x480... pretty sure 640x480 is the best graphics that the original BG will support (please correct me if I'm wrong).

 

It's true that the BG1 engine only plays in 640x480, but Tutu doesn't "make the graphics better" in many appreciable ways. The graphics are 2D and unchanging, so BG2 doesn't "display them better", it just displays on a bigger canvas so that the game doesn't look quite so zoomed and cramped on modern, larger screens.

 

With Tutu you do get the BG2 sprites which have more nuanced ranges of facing than BG1 (16 positions rather than 8) but I don't know how much actually changed in the quality of the sprites from the first game to the second. I don't think he was asking about that detail, in any case.

[Qwinn]

*nod* Alright. I just thought maybe that's what he meant because I really do appreciate the 800x600 resolution upgrade from TuTu myself. Not sure why, but for some reason I do find it easier on the eyes. (Of course, the best thing by far about TuTu is finally not having to switch discs every two minutes, I couldn't make it stop doing that before even on super-full installs, heh, I really don't think I could stand playing the game again if it wasn't for that, such a godsend).

 

It's certainly not an upgrade to NWN2 graphics, of course. But then again I really think those graphics are overrated... I enjoyed NWN2 for a good while, but now every time I think of playing the game I just think of looking at every character doing the "head lolling and tilting" graphics over and over and over, and the female "shift weight to the other foot" thing again and get somewhat nauseous, heh. It's not just NWN2 though, Oblivion and WoW and all the other games have the same thing... at some point when you make the graphics too ostentatious you get the thing where their "idle" movements become obnoxiously repetitive, and since it's so damn big on your screen you can't just refocus elsewhere...

 

My personal opinion of the best graphics available in a D&D style game? Temple of Elemental Evil, by far. Yeah, it's just sprites, but they're drawn -really- well, and the background art is breathtaking (just look at the leaves on the trees, amazingly realistic stuff). Dual wielding character idling graphics includes very very slick little graphic of them sharpening the weapons against one another that looks exceedingly wicked and is just beautifully done. The cloaks, the way the sprite's hair moves as they run, all that, just beautifully done. And the female sprites are -awesomely- hawt The only thing they're really lacking is, well, faces, hehe.

 

Qwinn

[jcompton]

My personal opinion of the best graphics available in a D&D style game? Temple of Elemental Evil, by far. Yeah, it's just sprites

 

No, it's not. TOEE is realtime 3D characters on 2D backdrops.

[Qwinn]

Huh. I didn't realize that. I guess it -would- be hard to pull off that weapon-sharpening animation in 2d, heh.

 

EDIT: Come to think of it, yeah, you can spin their model around in 3d on the character sheet, should've realized that, duh.

 

Qwinn

[Danny02]

please replace textures with spirits then you will understand what i mean

 

I just thought to replace the standard spirtis with higher resolution ones and to add maybe alphachannels to the shadows , spells and so on.

 

also it could be add a zoom function

[berelinde]

Sorry, Danny02, but the game is what it is. There are some things you can't do in the Infinity Engine.

[jcompton]

please replace textures with spirits then you will understand what i mean

 

No. Nobody has done a higher-resolution set of sprites. It would be a huge amount of work and the net result would be people who looked disproportionate with the backgrounds.

[devSin]

Also, without the original models and textures, you'd be stuck trying to recreate all the art (and then have to go through it to see if BioWare did any Photoshop touch-ups after the renders were finished). (For the people who'd want to do it The Right Wayâ„¢, that is.)

[Jarno Mikkola]

And so I googled for a while and found your forum.

and here is my question does your rebuiled of the engine improve anything of the graphics or is it possible to improve them with a mod? (higher textures?).

You mean higher resolution? The Widescreen mod gives you the ability to adjust it to what ever you like, as long as your graphic cards and monitor can handel the resolution.

 

Just an advice, install the game and the proper patch, start a new game and after the game is saved once, exit, you can start installing mods to it, not before!

[jcompton]

It's definitely fascinating how we have all had different answers to this question.