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[ScotGaymer]

I should point out now there appears to be another clock countdown on Baldur's Gate dot com; and the site now appears to have a link to the forums (finally!).

The clock is currently at 44 days 48 hours and some minutes.

Probably a count down to release?

[Bhryaen]

@FitScotGaymer
hehehe.. It's another timer, but it's in HOURS/MINUTES/SECONDS... So 40.5 hrs from right now... something... I don't know either, but maybe this is how the GUI gets unveiled. :-)

[Jozape]

Doubt it's for release.

Like the new portraits. Wish every game had portraits like BG1.

http://baldursgate.com/images/bg.jpg

Modifié par Jozape, 25 juillet 2012 - 03:40 .

[ScotGaymer]

Is it?

oops...

Cant be release then... hmmm.

EDIT:
It is a shame tho.

Beamdog are pretty much not allowed to touch a thing in the release that was part of the original content; other that tweaking and bug fixing.
Seriously.

No expanding the companions, no updating the story. Nothing.

Oh they allowed to add new content and new characters.

So what we will end up with is the boring vanilla characters that do and say very little; and the new characters that are fleshed out like the bg2 characters.

BG1NPC project will need ported first thing lol.

Modifié par FitScotGaymer, 25 juillet 2012 - 10:46 .

[Bhryaen]

@FitScotGaymer
Well, actually it's not quite so bleak. They can't go expanding the dialog of the old NPCs just to do so, and they don't appear to have within their scope the employment of the original voice actors (though it's been mentioned as a possibility). However, they are allowed to expand the original NPC dialog [i]if it is in interaction with the new NPCs or new area content.[i] And I believe they not only can do so but have mentioned already having done so. So it's limited, but then again, there's room... and they've expanded into it...

Another thing that was somewhat unexpected was this... and @BondaritheReloader just might be interested... Of course, this is just a statement by Dave Gross on the BGEE Forum that anyone can access, so it's not as if this is breaking news other than on the Bioware forum. Actually it's dated from July 23rd, just a comment he made on one thread related to new romances...

There'll be a small amount of romance content in BGEE, sort of "starter romances" that will grow more involved in BG2EE.

This is exactly what I've been requesting from early on in the process- though on the BGEE forum intended not as a full-fledged romance in BGEE but as a male NPC that has potential for a BG2EE romance with a hetero-female the way Jaheira has that potential (and realization). So that should be quite the thing to experience... if you're into that sort of thing. ;-) And you see that once again the term was plural: "romances." I'm only assuming that it's not going to be yet another set of hetero-male love interests, mind you, but it seems like a very good chance that at least one Anomen romance replacement is in the BGEE house. For sure though this will be the first that romance material is available in the core BG game without mods.

Speaking of new NPCs, that photo linked by @Jozape above appears to contain another two new portraits- i.e., another two new NPCs:



Best I could do to sharpen and brighten the colors. So we get a new female NPC as well as a meathead male that also happens to be half-orcishlike (and far better than the BG2 half-orc), and the original robed human male which- though it's not at all noticeable in that dark shot- wears a necklace bearing the symbol of Selune... I didn't mention also this recent one from the OsterTweets:

Completed female voice actor auditions on Saturday. Some awesome talent lined up...

And for a side of Trent I just feel like endorsing to the hilt:

I've pushed hard throughout my career to put forward positive roles for women in games. I find the reaction against @femfreq unacceptable.

By the way, did you notice that the baldursgate.com page now no longer has the links to the BGEE info? It took a while before I recognized that, well, of course they're gone: the announcements were moved to the BGEE Forum itself in the News section. So that's where folks will be best off to get info. What I've gleaned from OsterTweets is just a fraction of what you get by going to the forum itself, and they just made a Guest participation possible which I'm assuming allows full viewing of (but not posting to) all the fora. As soon as that happened the registry of online participants shot from a peak of maybe 50 to a regular 250+.

With the countdown to less than a day from now (the minute I leave work tomorrow it seems) there are a few more tidbits to mention from the OsterTweets, however:

With a purchase through Beamdog, you will get a launcher app which checks for updates, then launches the game and shuts down. No client

So that's more on the less-intrusive nature of the BGEE product... as compared with the infiltration feeling I get when I load up DAO and get a message from anti-virus warning me that I'm letting EA read my typing...

Then there's a little BGEE philosophy:

We just want to make a good game for the fans and keep giving them value. This is straight, dev to users... What we want to do is provide a great game and offer ongoing support and hope our users reward us. Simple, game makers to game players.

To which one Twitterer responded:

The old Interplay motto almost! :

Looking forward to tomorrow afternoon... *grinning*

[Bhryaen]

lol Have you noticed that at the top of the Bioware page is now their own countdown?!

I mean, really? EA is so starved of attention they have to mimic little BGEE? So glad now I've never checked out Mass Effect- other than Sam Hulick's work, of course...

[goblinsly1]

I have a few questions, maybe they were already answered but i guess better twice the information then none.

Who are the ppl working on BB:EE ? I mean i guess this is a group like interplay was....and they bought off the rights to BG and infinity engine ( from bioware ? ) ? In this group, is there anyone who was working on the original BG1, BG2 and their expansions ?

I am kind of sad that they didnt go to BG3 right away. Its quite possible that bg2:EE wont sell well because most of us played BG2 soo many times.....while BG3 i am sure, 100.000s would buy right away, i mean bg2 is, after all this year still by far the best game ever ( and no amount of money EA or others have will change that ). And well, if BG1:EE and BG2:EE wont sell well, they surely will not do BG3.

ps: shame on me for not reading BG forum, i am very short on time though. Soo Atari is in charge ( which i kind of like, they are better then some of others..... ) and the overhaul games brought some of the original bg developers. How awesome is that.
ps2: could someone explain to me about the rights to bg2 series ? Bioware made bg2, black isle had the rights to D&D ? Black idle sold D&D to Atari, but where is bg2 in that ? And some ppl from bioware who made bg2 are now in overhaul games ? I could use more info cause i am not sure who is the bad guy in this story soo i can jell and point fingers, and well, i cant live without that heh.

Modifié par goblinsly1, 25 juillet 2012 - 11:46 .

[Bhryaen]

Um... yeah...

New adventures, new NPCs revealed, plus "over 400 improvements..."

Plus... you can pre-order...

Modifié par Bhryaen, 26 juillet 2012 - 07:42 .

[ScotGaymer]

So question answered.

The counter was a count down to the site having actual useful information on it lol.

[Bondari the Reloader]

Sept. 18th can't come quickly enough!!!

The new companions sound fantastic, and the Black Pits adventure almost sounds like a mini Icewind Dale. I guess I should start digging through the forums now for more news!

[Wissenschaft]

Its been tweeted by @TrentOster

All three characters are romanceable.

They have plans to bring these new characters over to BG2. So that means female players will have 3 male romance options in BG2. I'm sure our fellow female BG fans are happy to hear this.



Also, you will have the option of importing your BG:EE characters into the black pits adventure.

Modifié par Wissenschaft, 26 juillet 2012 - 10:26 .

[Seagloom]

The most interesting bit about this announcement is replacing the old cut scenes with new hand drawn art. I vastly preferred the BG2 approach, so this is good news to me. Otherwise it sounds like more Baldur's Gate goodness. Admittedly none of the new NPCs interest me much at a glance. Perhaps that will change once I play the game.

I'm assuming the level cap is higher now? Otherwise a full six character party will hit the maximum long before they run through all the content. That occurred in the original Baldur's Gate, but it happened late enough into the game that I didn't mind.

[Humanoid_Taifun]

I'm guessing that since they're working so close together with modders, there will be some freedom in regards of level cap etc. After all, (unmodified) BGT didn't have anything of the sort.

[Humanoid_Taifun]

Oh dear Gods, I want to see a trailer, I want to watch a "beautifully hand painted animated" Minsc heading off into the mines with a worried Imoen rushing after him.

[Wissenschaft]

Yes, the level cap has been raised and possibly removed. Exactly how much extra XP you'll be able to gain is another matter though.

[Seagloom]

Ah, awesomeness. Should make higher level play a whole new experience for certain classes. I never got around to playing BGT or TuTu modded BG1, so this will my first experience with that.

[goblinsly1]

They should include SCS(2), BG series needs nothing more then this, this is the only flaw of bg series i can find, too easy, SCS corrects this....maybe this SCS guy could also join them, i mean he created a master piece...

[Wissenschaft]

They are making BG:EE with existing mods in mind so its very likely you can just use SCS with BG:EE if you want.

[BelgarathMTH]

SCS if you want is fine. Involuntary SCS makes me want to vomit and scream in protest. Thank Oghma they are not doing any such thing.

I personally HATE SCS. If someone tried to make me play that horrible monstrosity involuntarily, I would simply not play.

[Humanoid_Taifun]

Yes, SCS comes with a few problems that you should not force upon people who don't want them (like the homing system of enemies, that only need to see one of your guys once to know exactly what your entire group is doing). I use it, but that is a choice I personally made.

[Flamedance]

SCS should be optional. The main problem with the original game which SCS tries to fix is the horrible AI. David W. did a fantastic job with SCS(2), given the limitations of the engine.

Still, SCS has it's problems like the homing system H_T mentioned. BGEE could also use an aggro system like the one MMO's use, to avoid the pitfalls of the AI focusing on either the first character it sees (vanilla BG) or on the least protected/highest AC character in the party (SCS).

All in all: this looks good and i'm certainly going to give it a try.

[goblinsly1]

SCS as an option offcourse, just like that special mode in IWD2 but to actualy increase difficulty..
bg(2) without an option to play without scs would not be good, because there are still many casual player and SCS in most cases leads to occasional frustration, for instance, some of us love the challange of getting pwned by a dragon for 100 times and then jump for joy when we kill it the 101th time, but some prefer "fair game". But still its an idea and for sure would raise the value of the game. Then they could have some kind of hall of fame for all the players who completed SCS(2) and also some special hall of fame for those who did it in special terms ( for instance without using HLA, etc. ). Now those forum badges would really mean something, SCS2 badge, skill inside heh. But, thats just an idea. Once again, i am very glad that things are moving in the right direction.

[Mr Spidey]

They can't put SCS into the game for the simple reason that all of BG:EE is for-profit and owned by either Bioware or Overhaul. At that point, not only would Overhaul be making money off of the unpaid work made by those who contributed to SCS, but the mod would also stop being a free mod available for download. It would be unheard of that part of a game is freely available from third party sites for free use with other third party products.

It might even pose a contractual problem, since Overhaul's license most likely doesn't include rights to develop mods for the original Baldur's Gate games.

No, it is much, much better that SCS remains a mod. That way the interests of the mod remain non-profit, it remains very legal to customize and modify the heck out of it as one please, and unpaid modders keep their intellectual property. This is by far the best for everybody.

What Overhaul could (and should) do in EE is add some flesh to the AI scripting (but for God's sake not change any existing commands beyond bug fixes) and then improve on the crappier default AI scripts. Mages can cast better spells, even if they're doing it "blindly", without knowing every last detail about the party. Grunts can be much better at shielding the squishies, even if they don't have auto-zoom towards your hidden party mages.

And I mean no offense to Overhaul, I'm sure those people generally mean well, but they are a business, and if there's one thing my business admin degree has taught me, it is that only fools trust a business to do the right thing rather than the profitable thing. Some times the profitable thing is also the right thing but usually there's a gap between the two.

[Bhryaen]

I made the request for an SCS option early on with a thread for it in the BGEE Feature Requests, and DavidW came to the forum himself and said publicly that if the BGEE devs want to use his material to "feel free." It's more a technical matter than legal: integrating it with BGEE's unique engine design and in way completely unlike SCS (i.e., where you can actually turn it on and off in-game) and troubleshooting all the possible issues is rather beyond the capabilities of the project. I mean, we've got 2 months now tops with the myriad other issues to tackle before release... And this less billionaire-backed project can't do everything anyway. Alas, major AI improvements are likely to remain a mod option only, even given that it's one of the best mod options going. BG's AI is almost embarrassingly lame often enough.

And this will go for a lot of things priority wise. *sigh* I'm not looking forward to the list of neglected features and fixes, even though the improvements *are* going to be substantial. I'm hoping an AI fix will at least be in the post-release updates.

[ScotGaymer]

They could use SCS as inspiration for an ultra-hardcore mode for the game (cos let's face it - SCS is just that hard).