Dont you just wish... they hadn't used a 3d engine?

slozenger said:
I just have very fond memorys playing Baldurs Gate way back in 98? if not earlier.
was released in 97 im pretty sure... head over to here :
http://forums.spellholdstudios.net/index.php?showforum=261
for the greatest mod you'll ever play. BGTrilogy.

entire bg series compiled together to run with BG2 graphics in one continuous game, in otherwords no crappy low res + dual weapons + more character classes in the original, no transition from bg to bg 2 (Map covers entire area from both games so you can travel around at will, could even leave durag's tower till after you've started bg2 if you want).. its great, alot of work has gone into it.

There is plenty of modding going on for the game.. more than there ever was before, main websites for it are.
- www.spellholdstudios.com
- www.pocketplane.net
- www.gibberlings3.net
- www.blackwyrmlair.net

just ignor the front pages & download pages.. most of them are never updated so you generally have to go threw the forums to find all the good & newest stuff.
 
AvianAvenger said:
I'm very tempted to get oblivion..sooo quit tempting me DAMMIT. :lol:

You're going to need a fairly high powered video card to play it to it's fullest potential though. I have a Radeon 9550, and I'm getting rather mediocre framerates at 640 x 480 resolution with just about every tweak turned off or down. In a couple of weeks I'm getting a new video card, so I'm just going to put the game on hold until then.

I wouldn't ever purchase NWN2, the first still has issues playing smoothly. It just wasn't that well coded.. so i dont trust them anymore.

Don't use NWN 1 as a basis, NWN 2 is being produced by a different company this time. Bioware is basically just providing the game engine, Obsidian is the company that's actually producing it. And it's a brand new game engine, so it will perform differently than the first version. I haven't had any problems with NWN 1 myself, aside from the odd crash when loading a new area.

and the fact that you know that your not going to have to upgrade your pc to really enjoy the game or tweak the settings...

Unfortunately, upgrading computer gear is a fact of life. Keep in mind Moore's Law.
 
AvianAvenger said:
entire bg series compiled together to run with BG2 graphics in one continuous game, in otherwords no crappy low res + dual weapons + more character classes in the original, no transition from bg to bg 2 (Map covers entire area from both games so you can travel around at will, could even leave durag's tower till after you've started bg2 if you want).. its great, alot of work has gone into it.

There's also BG Tutu, which allows you to run BG1 in the BG2 engine. Pocketplane is the place to go for that, while Gibberlings 3 has some tweaks you can add later.

just ignor the front pages & download pages.. most of them are never updated so you generally have to go threw the forums to find all the good & newest stuff.

Sure they are. As soon as something new comes along they update their pages right away. At least Pocketplane and Gibberlings 3 does. It's just that new things for the game are few and far between.
 
NWN2 might be worth a look then.. but it would have to be a considerable improvment for me to want it. And also a unrelated story/world.

A main gripe of mine with nwn was that what you said to people(in game) had no effect on the game... i stoped reading the text and just pressed anynumber after a while.

Me: [insert insult, refual to do job, walk away]
Aeribeth: "Yea.. well go do it anyway"
Me: [attack aeribeth]
game -- you are in a none PvP zone
Aeribeth: "You must hurry... the fate of n..blah blah blah.. depends on you"
Me: role = 20 critical hit, damage dealt = 0
Aeribeth: "You must hurry... the fate of n..blah blah blah.. depends on you"
Me: [throws disc into fan]

roleplay .. without the freedom of choice, might as well read a book.
 
AvianAvenger said:
NWN2 might be worth a look then.. but it would have to be a considerable improvment for me to want it. And also a unrelated story/world.

A main gripe of mine with nwn was that what you said to people(in game) had no effect on the game... i stoped reading the text and just pressed anynumber after a while.

Me: [insert insult, refual to do job, walk away]
Aeribeth: "Yea.. well go do it anyway"
Me: [attack aeribeth]
game -- you are in a none PvP zone
Aeribeth: "You must hurry... the fate of n..blah blah blah.. depends on you"
Me: role = 20 critical hit, damage dealt = 0
Aeribeth: "You must hurry... the fate of n..blah blah blah.. depends on you"
Me: [throws disc into fan]

roleplay .. without the freedom of choice, might as well read a book.

That's just the default scenarios, some of the mods were quite different. I guess Boiware didn't want people to stray to far away from the main storyline. It's certainly not that the game wasn't capable of it.
 
Going back to the original poster's desire for a 2d skin for Civ4, now that the SDK is out (i.e. we now have the source for the entire gameplay portion of the game) there is nothing stopping some industrious person with a colossal amount of time on their hands from building exactly what is being requested! (That would be a fun project just for the inevitable challenges. :badcomp: )
My preference is for 3d and I happen to agree with the decisions Firaxis made in this regard for many of the reasons stated here, but...there is that nagging voice inside that wishes it ran on my old laptop! :mischief:
 
Willem said:
That's just the default scenarios, some of the mods were quite different. I guess Boiware didn't want people to stray to far away from the main storyline. It's certainly not that the game wasn't capable of it.

Mod support was excellent, the final expansion was pretty good too. a funny moment was when my shadow dancer had to fight the mirror image of himself.. he would go invisible & so would i so neither of us could attack the other :crazyeye:

The interface was terrible, strayed too far from mainstream interfaces, come to think of it i have alot of complaints about nwn. The toolkit was cool.. the only game ive seen with better mod support is this one.

I've been meaning to try out one of those persistent worlds too.. they look like fun, & now that i have adsl i should be able to

back to the topic,
by the time you get a 2d interface made with the sdk you'll most likely have the hardware needed to run it in 3-D so its a bit of a self defeating exercise.
 
AvianAvenger said:
Mod support was excellent, the final expansion was pretty good too. a funny moment was when my shadow dancer had to fight the mirror image of himself.. he would go invisible & so would i so neither of us could attack the other :crazyeye:

Yes, I can see that would be interesting. :lol:

The interface was terrible, strayed too far from mainstream interfaces, come to think of it i have alot of complaints about nwn.

I sort of agree with you there. The radial menu was kind clumsy, and I never had enough quick slots, especially if I tried to play a magic user. It would have been alot better if I could have cast spells directly from my spell book. That's one reason why I always ended up playing fighter types, it was too much hassle going through the quick slots. They really weren't all that quick.

The toolkit was cool.. the only game ive seen with better mod support is this one.

Agreed. I was fooling around with modding for awhile, but I just didn't have the patience for all that scripting and finally gave up.

back to the topic,
by the time you get a 2d interface made with the sdk you'll most likely have the hardware needed to run it in 3-D so its a bit of a self defeating exercise.

I doubt it will even be possible. Firaxis has mentioned that we'll be able to mod pretty much everything except for the graphics engine. That's the property of whoever created the Gamebryo system and won't be accessible through the SDK. Adding/altering units to the game will probably be the most we can do.
 
Willem said:
I doubt it will even be possible. Firaxis has mentioned that we'll be able to mod pretty much everything except for the graphics engine. That's the property of whoever created the Gamebryo system and won't be accessible through the SDK. Adding/altering units to the game will probably be the most we can do.

Actually my point was that with the core game logic compiling to a DLL which has a well-defined interface, one could replace, not mod, the exe and the rest of the system (including replacing the entire graphics engine with a freely available 2d engine).
Ah well, just speculation anyway as I doubt the effort involved would be justifiable unless the person implementing was very motivated!
 
Yes, please Firaxis! You shouldn't have gone 3D, you should only sell to diehard Civ3 fans and not try to get new customers, cause that's a bad business plan, right? It's better to have fewer customers every release!

(PS: I didn't read the whole thing, I just felt sarcastic for a moment.)

;)
 
I thought it has been mention so many time here; Firaxis had no choice , they had to go 3-D. So no 3-D engine equals no Civ4.
 
Willem said:
I doubt it will even be possible. Firaxis has mentioned that we'll be able to mod pretty much everything except for the graphics engine. That's the property of whoever created the Gamebryo system and won't be accessible through the SDK. Adding/altering units to the game will probably be the most we can do.

True, but someone with waaaaay too much time on his hands could probably replace the 3d units with 2d animated billboards (the max plugin for Gamebryo should allow for this). The sad thing is that this would likely actually increase the memory requirements if the animations were very detailed.
 
If we could trade in all the 3d gimmicks for performance increase I trade it in without a second thought. I stressed this in other threads: those animated cows don't really add anything after seeing them after the 100th game. The same goes for all the animated shores, animated units or anything else. I rather have the game run stable without the 3d engine than have it run like it runs now (one can browse the support page to have an idea...) with all the added eye candy.

Civ3, Civ2 or Civ1 have never crashed afaik (or it might be something unrelated to the game). I wish I could say the same for Civ4... And I've been only playing Civ4 for 6 months while I played the previous versions for years...
 
slozenger said:
It adds nothing to the game and is only there because some wiseguy thought it would sell to more noobs if only it had a 3D engine *sigh*
And it did just that. When Civ4 was announced i gaurentee most people thought "I wonder if their going to make it look real" Sure Civ3 was pretty, but Civ4 is prettier. Was it a waste. Well lets see, Modern Gamers aka Gamers that came from the XStationCube Era expect Graphics. Graphics are the selling points of the games these days. By making the game play good their aiming at regular people, by making the game look good their aiming at Graphic nuts. If they didn't add in the 3d Engine, you think the graphic nuts would buy it? no. Now your going to say, Civ4 can't run on alot of machines of those who play Civ3. Well, I'm sorry but their going to have to stay with 3 or upgrade.

Maybe this goes beyond selling the games though. Afterall, if the hardcore Civ3 fans can't play civ4, they have to options upgrade/buy a worthy computer or complain about Civ4. Which works for Firaxis both ways. See, your spending money to buy computer parts or whole computers. This inturn gives those companies money to spend on a few extra employees to help supply the demand for parts. These employees then get a paycheck and buy Civ4. After buying it they realize they need a new computer and buy the parts ect, causing the companies to hire even more people. Well, not only does this bring in large profits to the computer companies but also Firaxis because one the people bought hteir game, and two I'm sure these Companies are showing their gratitude for being the catalyst that inspired people to upgrade their computers. But also that people complaining about it, yeah that gives them more attention, By saying HEY THIS GAE LOOKS PRETTY DON'T BUY IT people are going to be like, wow it is pretty pick it up and play it.
 
They could have designed a new engine...

One that recreates the overall "Civ3" succesful formula. One with the extra power to push it further and faster so all the new ideas modders had dreamed of would be possible, if not already complete. A engine that did all that plus the fancy eye candy, cool new animation, Faster processing. it could have been possible.

They could have stacked on to what they already accomplished. Instead the "suit" said:satan: "lets see what we can do with this engine we've already invested tons of money on, even if its not proven to perform on the Civ platform, it will save us money not having to start from scratch and best of all we can release sooner and capitialize on what the old engine has already established(Quality Craftmanship,Loyal fan base) Besides, all the kids are into that 3d Sh## now a days"

Shameful. but this capitalism. What looks good on corprate paper sometimes means more then what ends up on a players screen. Civ4 fell victim to just this approach. :sad: but true
 
warpstorm said:
True, but someone with waaaaay too much time on his hands could probably replace the 3d units with 2d animated billboards (the max plugin for Gamebryo should allow for this). The sad thing is that this would likely actually increase the memory requirements if the animations were very detailed.

You could easily make the terrain 2D, just flatten all the hills and stuff down so each tile only uses 2 polys rather than loads of little ones. It would look kinda cool, building could be made to look like billboards. Hell, i would play it. heh. 2-D units should be left 3D, it would be too much to reanimate them.
 
shareholder pressure?

civ4 was made while firaxis was a private company... besides shareholders don't care how the games are made, as long as the games sell well

i don't mind that civ4 uses a 3d engine, it's just that it isn't implemented well. there are lots of opportunities to cut the graphics requirement, such as dynamic texture (GTA) so that when the viewpoint is far from a city the buildings are not rendered at full detail - a waste because you can't see the difference. also civ4 seems to render all units on screen regardless of whether it's necessary. with a stack of 30 tanks it's really only necessary to render the top tank, but civ4 seems to render all 30 tanks
 
acidsatyr said:
3d step was neccessary, one way or another. Play tetris if you dont like 3d

It was necessary only to please the people who believe it's a "necessary step." "Play tetris?" well, that is a better game than many that have been coming out recently (and obviously had a longer shelf life as we all know what it is,) but you could play civ3 as well.
 
Kan' Sharuminar said:
Quoted for truth. Having good graphics is only a bonus, in my opinion, it's the gameplay and fun that come first and foremost for me.

Agreed. Try to find a universal definition for a "game." I'd put forward "An activity by which 1 or more people engage, wherein there is a challenge to overcome simply for the reason of entertainment or fun, which is governed by rules." If you notice I easily managed to do it without the word "graphics" in it. I hate to say it but the games of 10+ years ago were much better and had greater replayability than the games of today. Most of them were innovative graphics wise and had good music and sound quality. Even if they didn't though, the games were focused on being good "games" they were well balanced, and fun to play. Simple ideas yes, but I find myself more commonly breaking out the old SNES and NES games than digging up "that computer game I bought 3 years ago."
 
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