IWD-in-BG2 development halted

[kreso]

Thank you.

Imagine the title - Overhaul games - sharing the best of both worlds.

I can't even envision all the possibilities this kind of tweaking could offer to EE games.

[subtledoctor]

I'd much rather have Erg active and critical than have him made to feel unwelcome or wrong. I value his input.

Hear, hear. I must say I don't think Erg is *unduly* critical (and I hope I am not). I think (and judging from his activity on the Beamdog forums I think Erg agrees) that the EE games are fantastic, superior to the originals in countless ways. IWD:EE's state at launch seems to be really impressive. Erg and I have specific, targeted criticisms, which all basically stem from ToBEx capabilities that were not carried over to the EE engine, and which have all been explained in tempered, realistic feature requests over on Beamdog's forums.

 

My main requests of Beamdog were 1) externalizing the applicability of proficiency-based APR for warriors vs. non-warriors; 2) enabling the player to control the direction the party faces in tablet versions of the games; and 3) enabling/externalizing a method for modders to apply ToBEx's concentration check for spell disruption.

 

In the last few patches Beamdog has made 2 of those 3 things happen. This gives me hope that they are listening and maybe the 3rd will appear in v1.4. If so, I'll probably switch to playing the EEs exclusively (and buy more, non-tablet copies of them as well). But until it happens, that feature of vanilla is more important to me than the various advantages of EE. I suspect Erg (not to mention many others who aren't as vocal about this stuff) feels similarly. I mean, he and I have both released EE-only mods!

Edited November 3, 2014 by subtledoctor

[smeagolheart]

 

Well, credit where credit is due. Now, maybe (probably) this isn't the right thread to ask this, but anyway - I've noticed that IWDEE adds "Evasion" to thieves (they can dodge fireballs completely).

Is there any chance something like this goes to BGEE? Along with the concentration tweak and cosmetic attacks?

I don't really know the engine differences in between the two games, but if it's possible to implement (even via 3rd party mods) some of IWD stuff to BG world - that would be epic.

Evasion, like the 3e sneak attack and Heart of Fury mode, require code support in the actual engine. There's probably some poking around you can do with mods, but not a lot--e.g. David and I manged to get evasion working for IWD-in-BG2, but only through a lot of hacks.

 

However, since it's a shared code base it's entirely doable to see this code turn up in BGEE/BGIIEE in the future. The problem is that it's a lower priority than, say, bug fixing, and testing code merges for regressions is a non-trivial QA exercise. I want it there, and personally I think it will be--the problem is that there's no way I could say that for sure, and certainly not attached to any kind of a timeline. Few things would get me into more trouble than for someone to take this as 'Beamdog confirms...'

 

 

 

At worst, if Beamdog stopped doing anything today, maybe someday we'd see a Baldurs Gate 2 in IWDEE conversion mod. It would be a funny completion to the circle to this project of IWD in BG2.

[Dakk]

BG2-in-IWDEE, well won't that be the day

[kreso]

maybe someday we'd see a Baldurs Gate 2 in IWDEE conversion mod.

[Erg]

I must say I don't think Erg is *unduly* critical (and I hope I am not). I think (and judging from his activity on the Beamdog forums I think Erg agrees) that the EE games are fantastic, superior to the originals in countless ways.

 

@subtledoctor, you are not far off, but on this I must disagree. Actually, to me it is rather the opposite, i.e the original games are fantastic, currently far superior to the Enhanced Editions in countless ways. However, I do not despise everything about the Enhanced Editions, and there are few things they do better than the originals (mostly technical stuff, like for example the fact that they use less cpu, etc.) but the things I don't like, at lest for now, outweigh the ones I like.

 

In particular, I'm currently still using EasyTutu to play and BG:EE, (but also BGT, and vanilla BG1 for that matter) only for testing purpose. Maybe one day I will switch to BG:EE (or maybe not) but until then I will not buy BGII:EE or IWD:EE.

 

Backporting to BG:EE some of the IWD:EE features that I'm reading here, implementing all of ToBEx with all its flexibility (that means support for the ini files too; if ToBEx and SCS can use inis to enhance customisability, why can't BG:EE? Granted it would be an advanced feature, but not everyone is a casual player, advanced users need some love too), and in general providing the means to modders to change stuff instead of going ahead and arbitrarily change stuff by default in the game (e.g. there was no need to change the way Pick Pockets works in BG:EE like the last patch did; it is better to leave that to mods; IMO just externalising SLTSTEAL.2DA would have been enough), these are some of the features that could change my mind about the Enhnaced Editions

Edited November 4, 2014 by Erg

[DavidW]

At worst, if Beamdog stopped doing anything today, maybe someday we'd see a Baldurs Gate 2 in IWDEE conversion mod. It would be a funny completion to the circle to this project of IWD in BG2.

You might be surprised at how easy that would be (unless I'm missing something). The BG2EE and IWDEE engines are much closer together than any two engines of vanilla IE games.

[InKal]

ok

 

so I donated to G3...err...I have/has/had/whatever bought ID:EE on Steam for the displayed prize. good stuff.

 

 

playing barbarian half-orc dualwielding two clubs actually makes MUCH sense. seriously.

 

waiting for ID2:EE with implemented graphic acceleration support. future is so bright I need to wear shades.

[kreso]

You might be surprised at how easy that would be (unless I'm missing something). The BG2EE and IWDEE engines are much closer together than any two engines of vanilla IE games.

Anyone!?

[Jarno Mikkola]

 

You might be surprised at how easy that would be (unless I'm missing something). The BG2EE and IWDEE engines are much closer together than any two engines of vanilla IE games.

Anyone!?

When DavidW says that something is easy, it's easy get confused yeah. It might be easy for him as he knows how to make an engine conversions and so forth... so when he says easy, it's not to say that you don't have to know what you are doing. It's likely just that it will be (much )easier than say for him to make the IWD-in-BG2 mod.

It's actually quite likely that the BG2 get's an official release of a patch that will do most if not all of the essentials + a few other requests you won't see everyday ... yes, that's a few assumptions in, but you just got to wait. And no, there is like not going to be tweaks like those in BG2 Tweaks pack, optional with an .ini interface ...

[Avenger]

 

At worst, if Beamdog stopped doing anything today, maybe someday we'd see a Baldurs Gate 2 in IWDEE conversion mod. It would be a funny completion to the circle to this project of IWD in BG2.

You might be surprised at how easy that would be (unless I'm missing something). The BG2EE and IWDEE engines are much closer together than any two engines of vanilla IE games.

 

 

It would be incredibly easy. But i would rather wait for the bg[2]ee patches of future

[CrevsDaak]

Unless Beamdog decides to backport features from IWD:EE, the engine will always be superior to BG(2):EE's. A WeiDU script with rather lots of COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP blocks and MAKE_BIFF commands should do the work fine for conversion purposes.