1094 replies to this topic

[The Imp]

Pretty sure that that's not actually Sikret.

Now, could you ALL just stop.

Cooperation is usually easier if you let yourself try.

 

Now then, yes, the GAME_IS is a good way to do things with weidu, so long as you(or with the help of other people, wow) keep checking your code to be correct with the others versions as well, as it will be harder to keep things moving if you don't have all the versions. And that's usually a challenge, even among the relatively well connected people.

[kreso]

As somebody who's been very much against EEs, then played only EEs when the latest patch came out - all I can say is that original game + ToBex is still better.

Incredible, but true. 

EE advantages are many:

1) faster load times

2) zoom

3) SoD campaign is ok

4) new opcodes make some stuff that was only a dream possible (extra high WIS should make one immune to Confusion? Granted...)

5) moddable kits like sorcerer and monk

 

however...

1) EEs lag with cloud-type spells. On my game water (in fact, not water, but fish animations(!)) causes immense lag as well. What good does it do if my map loads in 2 seconds (8 on old engine) if a Teleport Field spell will drop my FPS to 5?

2) crashes.

3) Ascension mod for EE is buggy

4) graphics are worse than old engine + 1PP mod (let alone Infinity animations)

5) pathfinding. It's worse than in old BG, it's worse than in old RTS games.

6) bugs. Spider webs flying everywhere, having your entire party dead due to unknown reasons and similar. None of these exist on old game.

7) ToBex isn't implemented properly. Three of the most important tweaks for me (regen stacking, no disruption on zero damage and concentration tweak) either aren't implemented or don't work as they should.

 

And lua options system is horrible.

 

For all these reasons (and many more), vanilla > EE. I still hope some day all these will be fixed and old BG will retire; but given how Beamdog updates these games I don't think that day will come soon. 

Edited by kreso, 26 February 2017 - 10:03 AM.

[Chevalier]

Hello Old Friends!

 

I am so glad it is peaceful here like in the old days.

 

You might want something more exciting than this calm thoughtful examinations on which is better version of Baldur's Gate.

 

Here are my exciting adventures in Trademeet:

 

Link to watch on Youtube.

 

Coming soon are my adventures playing Fishing for Trouble.

 

 

[subtledoctor]

I like the EEs for no reason other than these two:

1) It is really pleasant to play with touch controls on a tablet the size and weight of a paperback. And the hope that you could do this with BGT on GemRB is unfortunately vaporware.

2) I can do stuff with mods that I could never do in the old engine, like mess around with fighting styles. Extra APR for specializing in SWS, stunning shield bash for specializing in S&S. SPLPROT.2da, SPLSTATE.IDS, opcodes 318, 321, 326, 328, 337... these things are amazing.

If GemRB could be used by mere mortals, and somebody extended ToBEx to cover these new functions, I would turn my back on the EEs in a heartbeat. But none of the EE bashers are stepping up to the plate instead just whinging on web forums. So EE wins for me.

The fact that EDIT - someone thinks this opinion makes me a troll, make someone an idiot. The fact that someone would necro a thread just to insult people and try to rile people up, would make someone an actual troll.

Edited by subtledoctor, 01 March 2017 - 11:28 AM.

[Nightfarer]

Well, subtledoctor, me I did not insult neither EEs nor people playing EEs.

 

I think it is up to people... even if one tries to rile people up, it does not mean that one should automatically throw an insult

[kreso]

2) I can do stuff with mods that I could never do in the old engine, like mess around with fighting styles. Extra APR for specializing in SWS, stunning shield bash for specializing in S&S. SPLPROT.2da, SPLSTATE.IDS, opcodes 318, 321, 326, 328, 337... these things are amazing.

ToBex already can tweak extra apr for spec. Some stuff can be mimicked on old engine. It's not as straightforward as new opcodes, but some of it can be done.

 

and somebody extended ToBEx to cover these new functions

Afaik, there were 2 people in BG modding history with such expertise, Taimon and Asc64 (and I'm not sure even them could implement some EE stuff to BG). To the rest of us, this is just Chinese (no pun intended).

[subtledoctor]

Nightfarer I did not insult you in any way, or anyone else who prefers BGT to EET but is civil to people who feel differently. (I mean a little perspective, folks, you're talking about a preference in video games.) Vlad acted like a troll, and was rude, and his rudeness was also wrong, to the point of being idiotic. I did not mean to insult him, so much as simply describe his post in an accurate manner.

I will say, you did write "I think modders should support both engines" but then you wrote "my mods only support my preferred engine." I don't think that makes you worthy of being insulted... but I do think you are not living up to your own standards.

I actually do take the time to support both engines in my mods. Problem is, especially with tweak mods, the cool stuff that can be done with the new engine has led to me making whole components that simply get skipped in the old engine. I was part of the "never EE" club until they pushed the engine meaningfully past the capabilities of ToBEx.

[Nightfarer]

Hi subtledoctor. Well, you only read a part of it then. Personally yes, I don't have the EEs, but if you read better, they support EE thanks to agb1 who asked me if could turn them.
So they support both.
So the standards are met.

[Vlad]

SD, I think you should apologise for this insult. I didn't revive the old thread. It was revived in 2017 already. I just made a few comments about EE and the current state of the community from my own perspective without insulting anyone. I read forums once in a while and post whenever I see it proper. You don't like something, pm to me.

 

[EDIT] I kindly ask moderators to remove the personal insults from his post and then my post too. It's a shame to see this community so much degrading.

Edited by Vlad, 28 February 2017 - 01:26 PM.

[Cahir]

Subtle, Vlad did not revive this thread. We all know his opinion about EE's and Beamdog, but I think you just barking on the wrong tree here. I don't think I ever read Vlad insulting someone who prefers EE's over vanilla, so your words are unfair, if you ask me. He just won't support it, but that's his right to do.

[subtledoctor]

The thread was several months dead when Vlad revived it to say that players or modders of the EE games are either 1) corrupt, 2) noobs, or 3) trolls.

Each of those is an insult in its own way; and not only is that contention offensive, it is also simply wrong - lots of people around here don't fall into any of those three categories.

I maintain that reviving a dormant thread only to lob such insults at forum members makes you a troll. If Vlad does not actually mean to insult people, then he is not a troll and need not take offense. So you see it all boils down to his intent; if he is offended, it is deserved. If it is not deserved, then there is no offense to him. See how nicely that works?

Edited by subtledoctor, 01 March 2017 - 11:34 AM.

[kreso]

however...
3) Ascension mod for EE is buggy
4) graphics are worse than old engine + 1PP mod (let alone Infinity animations)
 

3) Could you please report them so community might want to fix it

4) 1pp mod is included inside EE, maybe you want to have old anti-aliasing method? Take look into options.

 

 

And lua options system is horrible.

Are you talking about the format of baldur.lua file?

 

 

Re Ascension - pools are permanently "locked", so you can't reach them; Solars teleport to them so the only way to fight them is at range. This breaks the whole Ascension battle, since you need to use cheat keys to click the pools, and then leave their vicinity, but demons spawnng there can't reach you anymore. 

Mel wouldn't spawn when it should. I had to CLUA her in. Note that these aren't unfixable issues, it's just that when you play a no-reload game this stuff is very bad. It breaks immersion, and moreover it breaks concentration.

 

Graphics - I don't know what exactly is wrong with EE graphics, I simply prefer the simplicity of old game over it. I haven't even bothered with outlines, that causes extreme lag on my machine.

 

Lua - yes, that's what I'd expect from a modder, not a game studio. Even ToBex customization looks better than this.

 

There are other things that I find really annoying after a while (poison vs stoneskin, no damage spell disruption, imp.invisibility saves being hardcoded and similar) and which made me revert back to the good old BGT.

UI, Character sheet, and most of all Journal on EEs are; well, awful. Even thou I'm not really the kind of player that cares much about that stuff, there's no escape from the horrors of trying to read your journal entries on an EE game. Sooner or later you'll be pressing the J key by accident. Why change stuff that worked just fine for 20 years? And for the worse?

Sure, there are pros and cons to both of these games, but when I look at the overall picture I simply find the old engine much more to my liking, and even when I load it up with a bunch of risky mod combinations such as 1pp + Infinity Animations it seems to be less prone to crashes than a relatively simplistic EE install (EET, Ascension, Revisions, Refinements, SCS). EE crashes even w/o mods. Since I play only no-reload games, you can imagine the pain of a random crash in a battle as long and complex as Ascension or Yaga Sura.

Worst of all, these are no crashes like an invalid helmet animation/shield and similar that one can fix with an editor, these are far more complex and probably beyond modders' reach.

EE has one thing still going for it - it's (I hope...) being worked on so hopefully next patch will do something about these issues, if they're considered to be issues with BD anyway. If I see a Cloakwood spider shooting their  web at the top left corner of my screen when the next patch comes out, I won't be very happy.

[Falagar]

Hi everyone, it has been a very long time since I've last posted, but I've saw all of this, and I needed to say something.

 

1) It warms my heart when the old school modders of SHS take appreciation for the newer system, so that we still play your old mods for everyone to enjoy. I can't see myself playing EET without Darkside, Dark Horizons, and many other mods.

 

2) I wish you all didn't fight like this, there is nothing to be gained. Personally the hate for EE is unwarranted, and don't you all remember a long long time ago you all struggled to work with the original engine to be where it is today for the original BGT? EE on the other hand offers a more up-to-date system to keep up with technology, and that was sorely needed. You guys are expert coders, and something like this should be just easy, and maybe there will be times it can get newly complicated, but that is part of the fun.

 

3) People are most likely on newer hardware & software these days, and as this advances, the less compatibility BGT would have gotten since it needs older software which has long since lost support, that does not help both modders & players. The revival of the series into Enhanced Editions greatly solved many issues regarding that, but while offering new problems that will need to get fixed.

 

4) Consider the fact Beamdog basically generated a new generation of Modders, I know a lot of you guys will not be around this scene forever as if I recall...many of the veterans since the beginning have retired..though thankfully there is still some that stick around to offer modding support.

 

Aside from all this..I just want to say something that's been on mind as well, I feel sometimes the more you guys delay fixing your mods, the less likely you will ever get around to it. To this day some mods, and even ones still currently in Beta that they still suffer from some issues, and these issues have been around for a few years now (though evidence suggest a sluggish, but successful pace is being made since last year). To us players, we're not really getting any younger, and eventually we would probably move on to something else or just simply play the game in it's vanilla state seeing as there is no point to keep waiting for another year. Usually modding communities are never this sluggish, and I find that to be a bad sign. Maybe it is a unfair assessment, I understand that most modders have a life, but it is always good to have a 2nd or 3rd man (or woman) in charge if you have to be away for awhile. That way there is continuous support with no long stops because that is what has been happening for a long time now.

 

There is exceptions to the norm, but those modders are rare.

 

The goal should be here to try to get most of the old mods (on BWS) fixed properly without stops in-between. Once we are sure the mods are fixed once, and for all then we can concentrate converting, and introducing other mods.

 

The Mega Mods, Quest Mods, and Ascension should be the first step to make sure we can at least squash bugs that cause major problems (either recently, and bugs that have yet to be squashed for years). The players likely would want those mods the most aside from Stratagems, but of course that is my opinion on the matter. There is also the issue with the Area Maps that need to be fixed that cause horizontal lines that many mods suffer from, and that has been a major thorn in the side for EE Modding.

 

On a Final Note on the subject:

If the number of modders have dwindled from SHS, G3, and elsewhere then the best thing to do is gather the manpower, and focus on one mod at a time, and then proceed to the next, and then the next. Let's say for example The Darkest Day was the most bug ridden mod, but with all that manpower on one project that it will cut the time down than it would normally take when it's just a few people to fix it up properly, players reporting in would be a bit of a bonus to help speed things up. I recommend having events like this only on the weekends where most people are free, and on the week days the man power would spread out, and do their own thing, but comeback together again on the weekend to squash bugs in a big mod.

 

Also I encourage the use of Modding Test Saves to be used, so everybody is on the same level (Your BWS has to have the same setup as the other users in order for the testing to be accurate, and elimination of false errors). I'm ignorant on this subject however because I don't know if it's possible to use Modded Saves in other Modded EETs. The benefit of this would be so that people don't have to sluggishly get back to the part of the game where the testing would be begin, it would cut down a lot of time for everyone.

 

Alternatively...

 

We can run Multiple Mods instead of one mod for a Community Playthrough on the weekend too which would bring faster results, and eliminate multiple bugs rather than just squashing bugs from just one mod.

 

Also this would help Alien out as he would have the most reports on the weekends, and the regularly usual reports on the weekdays for BWS.

Edited by Falagar, 13 March 2017 - 09:25 PM.