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Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear Pre-Release Thread

aVENGER

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jan 26, 2007
Messages
218
So you are saying that in SoD we can put it on Insane, get extra enemies but turn off double damage and extra XP we get normally for Insane?

Yes. There's a setting in the Options menu that allows you to turn off the difficulty-based damage adjustments.

Note that SoD (like BG1 and BG2) doesn't have XP adjustments based on difficulty, those were always exclusive to IWD.
 

aVENGER

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Jan 26, 2007
Messages
218
If true that is nice. But I'll remain skeptical until I see it, too many publishers spin the same shit. Still, if there one thing you couldn't complain about from the EE versions of games, it was the encounters added in BG2 EE and Black Pits 2. They were honestly some of the hardest (for the level range) encounters in the game. They were also usually fairly interesting in terms of enemy composition/items/abilities.

Thanks. I was responsible for creating the AI for the Black Pits 2 battles and most of the combat in Neera's areas.

Nowadays, I don't do as much AI scripting as before because of my management responsibilities, but I did set up the guidelines that our scripters use. I'm still personally writing certain portions of SoD AI, mostly boss battles and the new party AI scripts.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,998
So you are saying that in SoD we can put it on Insane, get extra enemies but turn off double damage and extra XP we get normally for Insane?

Yes. There's a setting in the Options menu that allows you to turn off the difficulty-based damage adjustments.

Note that SoD (like BG1 and BG2) doesn't have XP adjustments based on difficulty, those were always exclusive to IWD.
Tnx that is awesome. I got used to playing Bg1EE with SCS and was even thinking about waiting for SCS for BGEE: SoD but I guess putting it on Insane but turning off bonus damage for enemies will be good enough :)

BTW, are druids getting some more spells, Bg1 has terrible list of low level druid spells?
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,442
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
http://blog.beamdog.com/2016/02/beamdog-achievements.html

Beamdog Achievements

Greetings! Today's post is all about achievements. First, in the literal sense, we're in the process of testing our Steam achievement system. You might see achievements for our games on Steam but be unable to access them. That's because we're still internally testing the achievements to make sure they're fully functional when they go live in the next update. We'll post again here when that happens.

Second, in the metaphorical sense, we'd like to celebrate our achievements in some recent hiring and promotions. I say “recent” but in truth some of the employees mentioned here were hired over a year ago. We've been so focused on our work that we've neglected to celebrate them properly (and there's a lot to celebrate, as there's triple-A talent here). The time to rectify that oversight is NOW.

In September 2015 we added Brent Knowles to the Beamdog team as a designer. Brent has worked for many years on titles familiar to us, including Baldur's Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights. (His first project was BG2, so in a way coming to Beamdog is like coming full circle). We're happy to have him on the team.

Shawn Potter has also joined us temporarily as a contract programmer. Shawn previously worked as lead gameplay programmer for Mass Effect 3 and senior programmer for Mass Effect 1 and 2. We're excited to make use of his l33t programming skills (or should that be skillz? I'm never sure what the kids are saying these days. They're still saying l33t, though, right?)

Beambard Amber Scott received a promotion to Publishing and Marketing Coordinator. That's right, she successfully finagled a raise out of goofing off on social media. Amber will be responsible for coordinating convention appearances, managing press releases and blog updates, and running events like the fun live stream we did last week.

Thea Kent joined us several months ago as an illustrator and immediately made herself invaluable. You might have seen her work in Dragon+ magazine recently—she did the character art for Glint Gardnersonson.

In November, um, 2014, Jason Knipe came on board (sorry for the late accolades, Jason). He was the lead graphics programmer on Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights, and now works for us as a graphics programmer and a fighter-tank in our D&D games.

Finally, Tom Rhodes has taken the reins as art director as of this month. Tom worked on all three Dragon Age games as concept artist, and he quickly made his mark here drawing an awesome picture of a high-speed unicorn chase. Note: do not attempt high-speed unicorn chases at home.

We also hired a writer named Dave. He seems pretty cool so far.

Brent Knowles! So he made his way into the oldschool RPG world after all.

EDIT: Oh, and Gaider. :P
 
Joined
Mar 24, 2015
Messages
242
Location
Ziniguistan
So Brent Knowles entered and no one noticed, jesus.

Are you sure Gaider is that Dave Infinitron? If happened to be those guys really need a new marketing department.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
If true that is nice. But I'll remain skeptical until I see it, too many publishers spin the same shit. Still, if there one thing you couldn't complain about from the EE versions of games, it was the encounters added in BG2 EE and Black Pits 2. They were honestly some of the hardest (for the level range) encounters in the game. They were also usually fairly interesting in terms of enemy composition/items/abilities.

That's good to hear. You're comparing to vanilla rather than tactics right? Still. If only we oculd see some of that in all this DoS previewing, I could be more positive.
 

agris

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
6,810
Furthermore, in SoD, difficulty settings affect a larger variety of things than just enemy damage. Some examples include enemy combat tactics (how intelligently they pick their targets), enemy numbers (3 enemies on Normal, 5 on Core Rules and 6 on Hard, 7 on Insane), enemy group composition (3 melee opponents on Normal, 2 additional archers on Core Rules, an extra healer on Hard and an opponent with special abilities on Insane) as well as enemy spell / item use (enemies won't use their most powerful spells and items below Core Rules).
And this is what difficulty should be in all RPGs.
 

Nihiliste

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 16, 2014
Messages
2,998
If true that is nice. But I'll remain skeptical until I see it, too many publishers spin the same shit. Still, if there one thing you couldn't complain about from the EE versions of games, it was the encounters added in BG2 EE and Black Pits 2. They were honestly some of the hardest (for the level range) encounters in the game. They were also usually fairly interesting in terms of enemy composition/items/abilities.

Thanks. I was responsible for creating the AI for the Black Pits 2 battles and most of the combat in Neera's areas.

Nowadays, I don't do as much AI scripting as before because of my management responsibilities, but I did set up the guidelines that our scripters use. I'm still personally writing certain portions of SoD AI, mostly boss battles and the new party AI scripts.

Did you move to Edmonton to work with Beamdog? That's my neck of the woods.
 

Nihiliste

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 16, 2014
Messages
2,998
So Brent Knowles entered and no one noticed, jesus.

Are you sure Gaider is that Dave Infinitron? If happened to be those guys really need a new marketing department.

Since he's probably not going to be able to do any significant work on this since it supposedly content complete, perhaps its for the best they're not marketing his hire. I wonder if they just brought him in part time/as a consultant to review the writing while he was unemployed.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,998
As long as they don't let him write companions I don't have a problem with him helping them on next D&D game :D

Most of the overly gay stuff in latest Dragon Age games were with companions. On the other hand if they let me create my own party like I can in BG games I don't care about companions. For first few years after release I never took a single companion with me in BG2. I always played with custom team of well min/maxed characters :D
 

moraes

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 24, 2011
Messages
701
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Codex USB, 2014 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
dp69YC4.png

The Black Hound confirmed, bringing massive incline!!!111
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,800
TBH was BG3 in name only and Extremely Black Isle/Josh Sawyer, a Beamdog BG3 would be very different. :M
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,998
TBH was BG3 in name only and Extremely Black Isle/Josh Sawyer, a Beamdog BG3 would be very different. :M
After seeing PoE and its :balance: problems I am thankful that BG3 didn't receive :balance: treatment of "fixing" things.
 

eremita

Savant
Joined
Sep 1, 2013
Messages
797
http://blog.beamdog.com/2016/02/beamdog-achievements.html

Beamdog Achievements

Greetings! Today's post is all about achievements. First, in the literal sense, we're in the process of testing our Steam achievement system. You might see achievements for our games on Steam but be unable to access them. That's because we're still internally testing the achievements to make sure they're fully functional when they go live in the next update. We'll post again here when that happens.

Second, in the metaphorical sense, we'd like to celebrate our achievements in some recent hiring and promotions. I say “recent” but in truth some of the employees mentioned here were hired over a year ago. We've been so focused on our work that we've neglected to celebrate them properly (and there's a lot to celebrate, as there's triple-A talent here). The time to rectify that oversight is NOW.

In September 2015 we added Brent Knowles to the Beamdog team as a designer. Brent has worked for many years on titles familiar to us, including Baldur's Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights. (His first project was BG2, so in a way coming to Beamdog is like coming full circle). We're happy to have him on the team.

Shawn Potter has also joined us temporarily as a contract programmer. Shawn previously worked as lead gameplay programmer for Mass Effect 3 and senior programmer for Mass Effect 1 and 2. We're excited to make use of his l33t programming skills (or should that be skillz? I'm never sure what the kids are saying these days. They're still saying l33t, though, right?)

Beambard Amber Scott received a promotion to Publishing and Marketing Coordinator. That's right, she successfully finagled a raise out of goofing off on social media. Amber will be responsible for coordinating convention appearances, managing press releases and blog updates, and running events like the fun live stream we did last week.

Thea Kent joined us several months ago as an illustrator and immediately made herself invaluable. You might have seen her work in Dragon+ magazine recently—she did the character art for Glint Gardnersonson.

In November, um, 2014, Jason Knipe came on board (sorry for the late accolades, Jason). He was the lead graphics programmer on Knights of the Old Republic and Neverwinter Nights, and now works for us as a graphics programmer and a fighter-tank in our D&D games.

Finally, Tom Rhodes has taken the reins as art director as of this month. Tom worked on all three Dragon Age games as concept artist, and he quickly made his mark here drawing an awesome picture of a high-speed unicorn chase. Note: do not attempt high-speed unicorn chases at home.

We also hired a writer named Dave. He seems pretty cool so far.

Brent Knowles! So he made his way into the oldschool RPG world after all.

EDIT: Oh, and Gaider. :P
HOLY COCK! That's some pretty interesting news. Oldschool Bioware might be back. We'll see how it goes. I guess everything depends on SoD reception.
 

Rahdulan

Omnibus
Patron
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Messages
5,111
What's with BG1EE cheevos delay? Because you know that's the one thing stopping me from replaying the game for the nth time. :obviously:
 

Neanderthal

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2015
Messages
3,626
Location
Granbretan
Well thats another company to avoid then, pity I were half lookin forward to that Siege of Wherever after MCA gave his thumbs up.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,442
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
http://blog.beamdog.com/2016/02/beamdog-welcomes-david-gaider.html

Beamdog Welcomes David Gaider

We're very pleased to welcome David Gaider to the company as our new creative director. Originally we advertised for the position of senior writer, but when David contacted Trent about the position, we upgraded the role.

David is well known for his design and writing work on Baldur’s Gate 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Dragon Age: Origins. He brings 17 years of experience to our little team and we couldn't be happier to work with him. David will lead the writing team and direct new creative endeavors for the company.

Welcome, David!
 

hell bovine

Arcane
Joined
Sep 9, 2013
Messages
2,711
Location
Secret Level
If true that is nice. But I'll remain skeptical until I see it, too many publishers spin the same shit. Still, if there one thing you couldn't complain about from the EE versions of games, it was the encounters added in BG2 EE and Black Pits 2. They were honestly some of the hardest (for the level range) encounters in the game. They were also usually fairly interesting in terms of enemy composition/items/abilities. Still remember that fucking drow fight where every single drow killed turned into 3 hasted, super venomous spiders, good times.

Not on the level of the difficulty mods released much earlier but frankly most of those were just BS and required a puzzle like approach to combat, with a very very very specific set of things needing to be done in the perfect order with the perfect timing. Kinda BS.
Which mods do you mean? Because having played through Tactics, Ascension (and now slowly trudging through SCS to get to the Ascension plus SCS final battle), I have to disagree. I think most of the threads went down with the old bioware forums, but these mods have been soloed with a lot of different classes, including non-spellcasters, because you could take very different approaches to combat.

If true that is nice. But I'll remain skeptical until I see it, too many publishers spin the same shit. Still, if there one thing you couldn't complain about from the EE versions of games, it was the encounters added in BG2 EE and Black Pits 2. They were honestly some of the hardest (for the level range) encounters in the game. They were also usually fairly interesting in terms of enemy composition/items/abilities.

Thanks. I was responsible for creating the AI for the Black Pits 2 battles and most of the combat in Neera's areas.

Nowadays, I don't do as much AI scripting as before because of my management responsibilities, but I did set up the guidelines that our scripters use. I'm still personally writing certain portions of SoD AI, mostly boss battles and the new party AI scripts.
If you ever do something approaching the difficulty of the old mods, even if its only optional battles, then I would be interested in SoD. (Yep, I'm one of those old BG players.)
 

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