Pacing and movement.

[Rubicon]

So I have been playing Baldur's Gate "Enhanced" over the last few days. The idea behind it was to update the game to the latest version of the infinity engine. Now, I haven't played this game in a very long time, but this is what is striking me now. It seems like pace and movement is really slow. Maybe its the limited animations of the characters, or maybe its just how i perceive movement over the ground. Either way, it seems like a huge hassle to move across one of the maps and there is nothing really entertaining to look at while you do it.

 

Its almost like driving a car if you will. Notice how when you are in a small car close to the ground, more similar to over the shoulder and first person movement, it feels like you are going faster even though you aren't? Just like in a massive SUV or Hummer it makes you feel like you are moving slower even though you are going the same speed?

 

Anyway. That all is to say, I find myself getting a little bored and a little sleepy playing even the Enhanced Version of Baldur's gate just because of movement. How will Project Eternity address modern animation and over land travel to make it "feel" like a more modern game and still have a play style and camera position of a classic?

 

And what do you all think? Am I too caught up on this movement thing? How do you all deal with it? Anyone else experiencing these feelings while replaying some of the older infinity games?

[JFSOCC]

teleportation as quick-travel option. If you're going to make me go back and forth between places, it would be nice if you could unlock teleportation circles or something like that. could be a mini-quest per map.

[Osvir]

I feel opposite, I've been playing Baldur's Gate (the original, with tons of mods, recently) and I feel it "stutters" when I change location. If I click somewhere they walk towards that area but if I press somewhere else whilst they are on their way they "stutter" and then walk the other directed location. In BGEE the reaction is much faster, there is no stutter and they walk as directed. Don't know if that is exactly what you're after but just one of my own observations (also, try shift+click).

Edited December 4, 2012 by Osvir

[Solviulnir the Soulbinder]

Just my 2 cents.

 

Imho that whole "slow walking" thing seems to be related to "modern gaming experience". Nowadays some of the players (majority?) feel bored to death when there are no new fascinating and colourful things popping out of the screen every 5 or 6 seconds. While I can understand that, to me (and that's just my personal opinion) this "slow" walking paradoxically adds some flavour and atmosphere to the game. It's just what it says on the tin can - long journey. Naturally I'm not a masochist and I don't get more excited the slower my party walks. But that element of the game mechanic, in my view, quite accurately gave the impression of... well, being on the road. Yeah you had your party walking all the way across a barren land and typically what you could do was to look at the scenery, enjoying the work of Bioware's Art Department, listen to the ambient sounds (which were very good) and - from time to time - watch the weather change from a sunny morning into a rainy afternoon while Khalid was all like: "Sunny or not, tis' nice to enjoy the out-of-doors." I don't think those (rare) moments are something Obsidian should throw away and replace them all with trendy (and yeah to some degree convenient) teleporting. An option maybe?

 

/edit/ @Osvir: that change may be related to BG:EE's improved pathfinding algorithm.

Edited December 4, 2012 by Solviulnir the Soulbinder

[JFSOCC]

Having to walk back for half an hour of gametime straight to get back to your questgiver to accept your reward is bad pacing, and in that case, it shouldn't be a problem to speed it up a bit.

[Kaz]

I haven't played BGEE or other "high resolution" mods, but judging from the screen shots I can tell what they did was essentially zoom the camera out to gain resolution. That's just a trick which doesn't actually increase the fidelity of the image. Anyway the side effect is that your vantage point is further away from the ground plane making the characters appear smaller, which in turn reduces their relative speed on screen. It's the same reason the ground seems to move slower from an airplane. I bet if you installed and played BG1 now at it's native resolution you wouldn't suffer from the sluggish character / vacant map syndrome. Unlike the "zooming out trick", PE's maps / areas are designed from the ground up to support current high resolution standards, meaning we'd get higher image fidelity out of the box without having to zoom out, so the sluggish movement thing shouldn't be an issue here. I think this explains the movement feeling sluggish, but if pacing of quests and game content is an issue that will be something the devs will have to look into.

 

 

Compare the size of the character relative to the screen size.

 

Edited December 4, 2012 by Kaz

[Kaz]

You know what, after watching some videos of actual BG1 footage I gotta say I stand corrected. BG1 movement speed is indeed comparable to the rate at which progress is made in US government. While the things I said about resolution and fidelity are true it might not have much to do with the sense of movement.

 

Bonus moon walking eagle 7:53. 'Merica!

http://tinyurl.com/a57w66r

[NerdBoner]

1 word: Overland map

 

 

edit: 2 words

Edited December 4, 2012 by NerdBoner

[Umberlin]

1 word: Overland map

 

 

edit: 2 words

 

0_o Maps . . .

 

http://oi50.tinypic.com/dagg.jpg

 

http://oi50.tinypic.com/2uq0mq9.jpg

[rjshae]

For me the IE overland movement rate seemed fine during exploration, since the party is advancing cautiously into unexplored territory. It's perhaps comparable to moving about in Sneak mode with Fallout 3. The main instance where it grew tiresome was in cases where the map had already been explored. Moving across the map to return to a locale on a quest-related mission can grow old, especially when you need to constantly herd the party because of pathfinding issues. (This was true even the first time through the game.) It was less of a problem once everybody got boots of speed, or the equivalent.

Edited December 4, 2012 by rjshae

[Sabotin]

Put running in the game, as in PS:T. Then make it usable mostly for backtracking/fast transition/fleeing, by making it punishing to blindly run into the unknown: ambushes, traps you detect too late, reduced stamina, w/e. You can even make something simple like click to move, double-click to run.

Edited December 4, 2012 by Sabotin

[Umberlin]

Thinking about it, in Quest for Glory, you had yoru sneak, walk and run movement settings. Running, in Quest for Glory, at least, tired you out faster though, and this was a game you had to rest, eat and drink, or, suffer and die for the neglect. However, knowing that time and movement, in some cases, could be too slow, you actually had a setting that would increase these things beyond running. The time passage increase was linked to the movement speed increase so that you'd still be restricted to the same range of movement, per unit of game time, even though by your own time (reality) you were getting where you were going faster.

 

I don't know that it was the right way to handle things, especially not in the context of modern game development, but I thought it might be interesting to mention. Gaming history, as it were.

[Ganrich]

IIRC the original artwork is lost from the BG games. So, I believe the only way to increase fidelity is by zooming out. I guess you could redraw everything, but that would be heresy IMHO. So the only option available is zooming out.

 

BGs walk rates were abysmal, but it worked at the time. Adding a PS: T style toggle would be awesome for PE, and the suggested penalty for abusing it someone posted above (via stamina penalties, or other means) sounds great as well.

[mstark]

BG2 becomes playable once you have acquired boots of speed for each party member.

[rjshae]

Something that would be nice to have is a mode that lets you 'jump' the party to a location on a map that you have already explored. If the game could do a path-finding check to make sure the party doesn't get intercepted during the walk, then there's no reason you couldn't just move the game view location then have the party instantly walk into the area from the screen edge. Perhaps accompanied by a graphical effect or a sound to indicate traversal of the intervening distance.

[Shadenuat]

Planescape had running

 

/thread.

[mstark]

Not a fan of instant jumps or "quick travel". Just design areas to minimize pointless backtracking. Bladur's Gate 2 did this fairly well, compared to the original BG. You'd still have backtracking through small quest areas, eg. enter, finish objective, backtrack, exit. But for large areas you'd usually progress through them, then exit at another location of the map, and you never really had a reason to walk back through the same area. I suppose BG2 had quick travel in the sense that you could jump between all major quest hub areas, but there wasn't any other way to get there (you couldn't just walk), and adding all the filler area in between areas would be quite pointless for a map as large as the one in BG2.

 

Even areas where you had to walk back and forth quite a big (eg. Underdark) I didn't mind it so much, it set a nice pace for the game. At least when you had boots of speed . When only 1 or 2 characters in the party had boots of speed, I'd use them to run around areas to do everything needed... I can't remember if it was possible to get 6 haste items in BG2, or if you needed ToB for the 6th one.

 

I suppose my memories might be a bit rose tinted, I can't imagine I much enjoyed backtracking to the Thieves Guild every 7 (in-game) days to send my thieves out on new missions... but such problems would be relatively easy to solve, for example by making me able to control the Thieves Guild remotely through an interface.

Edited January 8, 2013 by mstark