Beamdog working on a new D&D CRPG (cancelled)

[Lilura]

It's not RPG-exclusive but pretty good at cataloguing games of all genres.

Can honestly say I've never referenced the site in my life. Landed on it a few times accidentally over the years, but never learned anything from it.

Of course, it's missing some of the games collected in the "Really Obscure RPGs" thread here.

No great loss. The usual reason for an RPG being obscure is because it's shit.

 

[JarlFrank]

Well, the entire purpose of the site is to serve as a catalogue listing all games that exist, along with release date, companies involed, individuals listed in the credits, platforms it was released on, etc etc. There's no commentary there or anything of that sort.

Mobygames is like a library catalogue for games. It tells you which games exist, but if you want to know more about the game than just the genre and release date, you need to play it yourself.

 

[kaisergeddon]

Mobygames is actually way ahead in terms of cataloging niche titles across all platforms, and they have a pretty comprehensive backend of screenshots, descriptions, developer and publisher information, etc.. It's not perfect, but I usually find what I'm looking for from them. The screenshots alone are worth the service of the site.

 

[LESS T_T]

"Interesting" hires from early this year.

Andrew Scholotiuk, Project Director: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-scholotiuk-a843162b/

Project Director

Company Name Beamdog (Full-time)
Dates Employed Feb 2020 – Present
Employment Duration 4 mos
Location Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Leading new innovative media creation pipelines

He worked at film and cinematography related fields before Beamdog, no apparent prior video game experience.


Derek French, Live Ops Producer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derek-french/

Live Ops Producer

Company Name Beamdog (Full-time)
Dates Employed Feb 2020 – Present
Employment Duration 4 mos
Location Edmonton, Canada Area

Started at Beamdog as the Live Ops Producer on February 18th, 2020.

He worked at Bioware for almost 20 years, on the technical side of production/publishing team. It's unlikely they hired him as "Live Ops" Producer for the Axis & Allies game, so maybe their unannounced project features some degree of multiplayer features.

 

[LESS T_T]

Also Live Ops programmer:

LIVE OPS PROGRAMMER

Beamdog, the company behind the Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Editions, is looking for a Live Ops Programmer to help us develop and maintain our existing titles and live services!

As a member of the Live Ops team, you will work with existing games and services and the developers that created them, to maintain and improve our titles by programming, optimizing, offering analysis, and problem-solving live issues.

With your experience in game development, you will champion excellence in live operations, development, and best practices on the team.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Maintain existing Beamdog online services
• Assist with maintaining existing legacy games
• Develop and monitor our Continuous Integration (CI) services
• Identify and recommend solutions to technical problems in implementations
• Build the next generation of Beamdog online solutions
• Assist your team in keeping technical documentation well maintained

CORE SKILLS

• 3+ years experience building games; minimum 1 shipped game title
• Knowledge of modern C++ and best practices
• Experience developing in Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS
• Experience with other programming languages such as C#, Go, etc.
• Experience with AWS services such as ECS, RDS, Cloudfront, S3, etc.
• Effective in creative and dynamic team environments that iterate quickly on ideas
• Proven track record of delivering professional-quality work

PREFERRED

• Experience working in an agile development environment
• Familiarity with web development and common frameworks
• Docker experience
• Knowledge of security practices, e.g., SSO, 2-factor authentication
• Source control experience with Git and SVN

Also Trent Oster confirms their unannounced project is Beamdog's own new IP.

 

[CappenVarra]

kill them all
god(s) won't spend much time sorting them out

 

[DavidBVal]

The art really tells everything you need to know about their projects, doesn't it.

 

[LESS T_T]

IIRC that art has been on the site for a few years. Probably not related to the unannounced project if you're talking about that.

 

[underground nymph]

The art really tells everything you need to know about their projects, doesn't it.

Not sure about this. Art is targeted at possible employee which might be of unrelated cultural background.

 

[Ninjerk]

What problems does anyone have with that particular piece of artwork? I can definitely spot some... oddities, but I'm curious what others see when they look at that.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

What problems does anyone have with that particular piece of artwork? I can definitely spot some... oddities, but I'm curious what others see when they look at that.

It's a style with a colorful modern happy vibe with certain character design the gaming conservatives in general associates with modern leftist artists which of course can only mean decline in their book.

 

[Darth Canoli]

It's a style with a colorful modern happy vibe with certain character design the gaming conservatives in general associates with modern leftist artists which of course can only mean decline in their book.

Or it's just generic uninspired garbage ...

 

[underground nymph]

What problems does anyone have with that particular piece of artwork? I can definitely spot some... oddities, but I'm curious what others see when they look at that.

Nothing really except some kind of childish style. Don’t know about any agenda that is associated with it.

 

[Theldaran]

That piece of art is to art what Siege of Dragonspear is to BG.

Postmodern cringe. Fully fits Beammod.

 

[Silly Germans]

What problems does anyone have with that particular piece of artwork? I can definitely spot some... oddities, but I'm curious what others see when they look at that.

Why are they smiling although they have their weapons at the ready ?
Why does the guy that seems to be covering the back of the girl, look in the same direction as the girl ?
Why does he hold his weapon in a way that would disable any sort of quick motion ?

Basic reasoning will apparently play no part in the design, taking this piece of artwork as representative.

 

[agris]

...meanwhile, you studied the blade.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Basic reasoning will apparently play no part in the design, taking this piece of artwork as representative.

Basic reasoning will have you conclude that the answer to all of those is that this is art intended as a promotional poster instead of actual gameplay, like movie theater poster.

 

[deuxhero]

The anatomy is pretty bad.
1: The guy's left elbow appears to be bent backwards
2: His neck is quite puzzling.
3: The woman's arms don't align to the tilt of her torso
4: Likewise, the boots don't align with the legs

In general, it looks like several pieces that would be OK on their own stitched together in a non-functional way.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

he looks like buzz lightyear

 

[mediocrepoet]

The anatomy is pretty bad.
1: The guy's left elbow appears to be bent backwards
2: His neck is quite puzzling.
3: The woman's arms don't align to the tilt of her torso
4: Likewise, the boots don't align with the legs

In general, it looks like several pieces that would be OK on their own stitched together in a non-functional way.

5. Her legs don't join her body correctly.

I don't have much of an eye for this stuff and this picture bugs me in many ways since nothing fits together properly.

 

[King Crispy]

That piece of art is to art what Siege of Dragonspear is to BG.

That's rather ironic that you'd say that because about the only thing that SoD had going for it was its artistic attention to detail and less-sloppy-than-much-of-BG2 level design.

 

[Poseidon00]

I hate the faces. Too happy and cartoony. Looks like I'm looking at a Disney movie.

 

[Ninjerk]

Kudos to deuxhero and mediocrepoet
I thought there would be more non-descript answers and few people noticing the... problems. The two problems I noticed earliest were the male character's visible pauldron growing larger as it moves away (seemingly impossibly, unless it is VERY oddly shaped... to the point of not being useful) and his.... sword is foreshortened in a very... strange manner. Now that I've read what you guys said, her right leg (the one that we see on the left side of the image) has a freakishly long femur.

My guess is this is evidence of the industry racing at lightspeed towards photobashing and away from fine art:

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Kudos to deuxhero and mediocrepoet
I thought there would be more non-descript answers and few people noticing the... problems. The two problems I noticed earliest were the male character's visible pauldron growing larger as it moves away (seemingly impossibly, unless it is VERY oddly shaped... to the point of not being useful) and his.... sword is foreshortened in a very... strange manner. Now that I've read what you guys said, her right leg (the one that we see on the left side of the image) has a freakishly long femur.

My guess is this is evidence of the industry racing at lightspeed towards photobashing and away from fine art:

video is tl;dr but if anything, I'd say most art labeled as 'concept art' was never concept art to begin with -- it was promo art.

 

[Ninjerk]

Kudos to deuxhero and mediocrepoet
I thought there would be more non-descript answers and few people noticing the... problems. The two problems I noticed earliest were the male character's visible pauldron growing larger as it moves away (seemingly impossibly, unless it is VERY oddly shaped... to the point of not being useful) and his.... sword is foreshortened in a very... strange manner. Now that I've read what you guys said, her right leg (the one that we see on the left side of the image) has a freakishly long femur.

My guess is this is evidence of the industry racing at lightspeed towards photobashing and away from fine art:

video is tl;dr but if anything, I'd say most art labeled as 'concept art' was never concept art to begin with -- it was promo art.

Probably more interesting to me in total (and yeah it's more tl;dr than I remembered), but basically my point is this: 10 years ago everyone trying to do concept art (art meant to, yes, sometimes promote the game and sometimes to give 3D modelers something to make models from as a reference) outside of the big art schools were starting (and staying) deeply in the atelier/fine art tradition and doing things to make your life easier, e.g. using photo references was like some kind of forbidden fruit. Compare that to little 18 year old YouTuber "Benny Productions" (pretty interesting channel, actually) where in the art battle style videos you see timelapse videos of these guys creating pictures by chopping up and skewing a collection of photo references.

I suspect we'll continue to see wonky art that, like someone said above, has some parts that look okay in isolation but don't make quite so much sense taken together as a whole.