Zeckul

Today will most definitely be the day. That said, I need some sleep now. Here's hoping to seeing some live Zeit action tomorrow!

By the way, we recently hit over 57.5K backers, so the next mega dungeon level is in!

George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets George Ziets i.e. I wholeheartedly agree with the proposition and look forward to a video with George Ziets.

Can I haz Project Eternity now plz?

This screenshot is magnificent, however it leaves certain technical details in the air: - How much of it is actually animated? If this waterfall and river are completely static it won't be very convincing. - Shall we take the availability of the screenshot in 2560x1440 as a sign the backgrounds are rendered for that resolution and will be dynamically downscaled for lower ones? (please say yes) - It's hard to tell if this render uses an orthographic or perspective projection, which one is it? Which one will be used for the game? I would assume orthographic, but 2d games have faked perspective in the past, i.e. Diablo 2. - Is the point of view representative of what will be used in the game, in terms of camera angle and altitude?

Ok, that clear things up. Beta key here I come!

Before I update my pledge I'd like to understand how this works. Here are the add-on rewards: Digital Add-Ons (Any Tier $20 and Above) Digital Strategy Guide for $7 (included in tiers $80 and above) Early Access Beta Key +$25 (included in tiers $110 and above) Extra Digital Download of the Game +$25 Extra Three Digital Downloads of the Game +$60 First, the basic mechanics: say I pledged 35$, if I simply change my pledge to 60$, I get the +25$ add-on rewards automatically? Second, there are two rewards for the +25$ add-on. If you add 25$ to your pledge do you get both? Thanks!

OMG George Ziets yes yes yes! MotB is my favourite RPG of recent memory and the MotB interview with Ziets showed he understood perfectly what makes a plot captivating and how to handle player choice.

Certainly not necessary to buy it, and from their information not necessary to download it, either. That's correct, there will be a stand-alone updater according to Trent Oster: http://www.beamdog.com/forum/forums/general-discussion/topics/availability-without-installing-beamdog-client . Thanks for the correction.

In the Infinity Engine games, the dynamic music system sometimes lead to almost comedic effect, when you had to fight a squirrel and this absurdly epic battle music would play. It would also get terribly annoying after a while. Personally I think a good amount of silence adds a lot to a game, if the ambient sounds are well done. Having music constantly playing inevitably leads to listener fatigue, whereas a theme that plays now and then adds to the atmosphere and lets itself be desired.

I loooooooove the Death Spell. Upon utterance of the proper incantations, the very life force of every foe is instantly snuffed out and they fall lifeless to the ground. It's clean, it's efficient, no save, large area of effect, guaranteed death to everything that fits the description, and that's a large number of ennemies in SoA.

Oh I have. Several time. Live. But see the point that directly preceded that part you quoted. I feel it is remote because it is removed from me. It's dead sound; a sunset viewed trough photochromic lenses. Intrinsic quality of sounds have very little to do with how much we love them (and I do mean sounds, which to me matter more than music... I have no problem listening to a sample a few second long going through a set of almost infinite pre-programmed algorithmic variations in Max/MSP, whereas that rendition of La Catedral, whose quality of execution humbles me, truly, has overcome its stay after 4 minutes - the satisfaction I can get from it is purely intellectual, and it leaves me otherwise cold; I cannot connect). Sound/music is a learned language. As with other languages, what you can understand and what you can taste can vary vastly. For example, the bit of music/sound I loved most these past five years is in all probability This speaks to me on a gut level. I understand it. And, to me, it's beautiful (granted, as with every other music here posted, youtube sound quality generally doesn't help). It simply floored me the first time I listened to it - and still does. To some of the classically trained friends I play with, it's just noise. It's quite simply not their language. Well I can't argue about you and your tastes in music (thanks for the references btw, interesting stuff). I interpreted your comment about orchestral music being texturally inferior and flat in an objective sense, and presented what is incredibly dynamic and texturally rich orchestral music as a response. If it doesn't reach you, there's not much for me to say except we obviously don't share the same tastes.

Trent Oster has stated he wants mods to be accessible on tablets as well, but I don't know how that'll be achieved. In any case I don't have any tablets do test it on. I don't think much will be done in the AI department at least for release. SCS will most certainly still work though, given that its creator is on the beta test team. You'll be able to play without having the Beamdog client running; I believe the client is required to buy and download the game however.

CD-keys can get lost and it's tedious to enter them. Being connected to the internet at installation involves doing absolutely nothing in particular for the vast majority of users, given that it's a digital download to begin with. It hardly gets less intrusive than this. I suppose your fear is that the activation servers might one day go down, in this case Overhaul will of course patch the game to remove the activation, if that hasn't already been done before.

The DRM is a one-time activation check over the internet when you install. Once the installation is done and activated, there is no need to run the Beamdog client or to be connected to the internet to play ever after. The activation check might even be removed in the future, but for now Overhaul is contractually bound to have at least some minimal form of DRM. Connecting to the internet once at some point shouldn't be an issue for most people.

The plan is for two separate games just like the originals.

2013.

Just so you know, DavidW (SCS) is with us on the beta test team, along with aVENGER (aTweaks, Spell Revisions, Rogue Rebalancing), CamDawg (G3 Tweak Pack, FixPack), Ascension64 (BGT-Weidu, ToBEx), and a few others. We're very aware of the modding scene because we are, in good part, the modding scene (well not me, but them). BG:EE will be the best version of Baldur's Gate for mods and has already sparked renewed development in the community, notably 1ppv4 (integrated directly in BG:EE).

Sounds like someone needs to listen to a good rendition of the Rite of Spring. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4Jk8Fjt4rc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSC0rohjBMs

I'm on the beta test team for BG:EE so I can offer some more accurate insight (nothing that isn't already public though). What buying BG:EE will get you: - Your wallet is 18$ lighter if you pre-order, 20$ otherwise - You encourage professional developers including BG's original lead designer, to improve this game, its sequel, and potentially a brand new sequel in the future (BG3?) - You can buy it for Android and iOS tablets, for Mac and Windows - You don't need to spend an hour installing mods just to get it working to a decent level and in the ToB engine - You retain the ability to use any mods you want, although some will be obsoleted obviously (technical tweaks and bug fixes mainly) - Not only does it include all the bugfixes you would have got with unofficial patches before, but it also fixes dozens of issues that could never properly be fixed before, so it'll be (eventually) the most bug-free and up-to-date version of Baldur's Gate - It gracefully supports any resolution out of the box - You can zoom in and out dynamically as you wish - The UI scales gracefully with resolution and adds some functional improvements (I can't talk too much about this but you'll see) - A new class, the Blackguard - Three new voice-acted characters (Dorn in particular sounds awesome) with their own quests and romances, written by Dave Gross and Phillip Daigle - New areas to explore in the Sword Coast - New crisp-looking chapter/dream art and cinematics by Nat Jones - New music by Sam Hulick - A new high resolution world map - New voice sets for characters - A separate mini-campaign set in the Underdark, The Black Pits - Working multiplayer between all platforms - Post-ship DLC, both free and paid - Engine improvements that will enable the creation of higher quality content, both official and unofficial: 24-bit color area art, flipbook animation transparency, true alpha blending What BG:EE doesn't get you: - Higher resolution renders of the original models, because Bioware lost them - Anything more than small scale text changes to existing NPCs Here's a link to the forum thread with all this info in case I missed anything: http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/2041/bgee-please-read-list-of-things-that-have-been-announced/p1 Now I've seen the UI mentionned a few times as looking bad. Please keep in mind any screenshots of the UI you've seen were preliminary and that the UI is currently moving very fast towards something properly polished. If you look at alpha screenshots of BG1 or 2 or other games you will also notice ugly-looking icons, alignment issues and the like. These things take time to finalize. The UI will look better and be more user-friendly than the original BG1 UI once it hits the shelves; most importantly, it'll scale natively to any resolution you want, something mods could never do (the widescreen mod expanded it but it didn't scale).

Thanks for the input! Just how high resolution are you playing with? I would hope no upscaling is necessary on today's highest resolution displays, i.e. 2560x1600.

Haha, "The Epic Soundtrack", right? I made that mod. Good times.

Even just one live part can make a huge difference, i.e. Diablo 2's Tristram... you don't even notice that everything but the guitar isn't live. On a totally unrelated note, I really need to learn to play guitar just so I can play Rogue and Tristram.

I don't really care how it is recorded or what instruments are used, as long as it's coherent, convincing and makes me want to listen to it again (i.e. beautiful). On that note, if real instruments are used or imitated, they should sound real and live. The last samples we heard sounded too synthetic for my tastes. I'm totally fine with non-real/exotic/medieval instruments, as long as they sound like they should, and the whole sounds coherent - nothing stands out as artificially super-imposed on the rest. That's probably too vague to be really helpful, but oh well, I'm not a composer. Matt Uelmen's work on Diablo 2 is one of my favorites and shows how a convincing and coherent sound can be achieved through both synthetic and live means. Most of the score is produced by digital tools, albeit mixed with some live instruments, e.g.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tJBG77Xn3k I love how this sounds like it's playing inside that crypt; it just blends with the environment. It doesn't try to emulate an orchestra. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Act 5 had full orchestral live recordings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YruCuC6gbl0 These don't achieve the same degree of environmental immersion, however they do sound phenomenal and very dramatic in their own right. Both are convincing and coherent soundscapes. Baldur's Gate's music was neither; it tried to sound orchestral while only using samples: this is weaker I think. The themes and orchestration are great in BG's music but it does sound unnatural at times; choirs especially.

Yes, I studied music for 10 years and played piano for 17 years. I'm terrible at composing though. Yeah it didn't sound that much like a bass drum to me either but that's how I interpreted it anyway. I like natural, live-sounding instruments and I felt like a good bass drum hit with proper reverb would've been more effective there (Road to Eternity). Oh and I totally second the recommandation of Arvo Pärt. Best living composer of deeply mystical music.