Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director's Cut

[Curratum]

https://www.mmorpg.com/previews/bards-tale-4-the-directors-cut-impressions-1000013907
leveraging the power of Unreal 4, giving it a much stronger visual consistency. In short, it dialed up visual immersion to 10 and I think it shows.

How is switching from fully dynamic lighting - a hallmark of UE4, to pre-baked, pre-calculated, static lightmaps - a hallmark of fucking Quake 1, "leveraging the power of UE4", you insufferable shills?

 

[Neerasrc]

Irrelevant: Has the full version of this song been released?

 

[Zombra]

That's irrelevant x 1

I think I backed at the soundtrack level, PM me and I'll check when I get home whether I have it.

 

[Neerasrc]

That's irrelevant x 1

I think I backed at the soundtrack level, PM me and I'll check when I get home whether I have it.

That's irrelevant x 1

 

[Efe]

Zombra put it on a google drive id like the soundtrack too

 

[Infinitron]

The Bard's Tale IV soundtrack is on YouTube, but I don't think it includes that track.

 

[Nyast]

Nope, that's the only soundtrack I was interested in ( the most beautiful one IMO ) and that's the very one they didn't include in their digital download.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

does bt4 have waifus?

 

[Lady_Error]

That's irrelevant x 1

I think I backed at the soundtrack level, PM me and I'll check when I get home whether I have it.

That's irrelevant x 1

Shouldn't it be "That's irrelephant"?

 

[Gord]

https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=20438

Hey everyone, one of the graphics problems that we identified overnight and this morning is that shadows aren't working properly. High and Ultra shadows are not working at all, however, switching to Medium will at least provide some shadows (which us a different tech):

• Change your in-game "Shadows" settings to Medium in the Options menu
• Load a save or reload the game to enable the change

They're of course not the best quality, but they'll add that element back in while we work on a fix for the dynamic shadows in High and Ultra settings.

Doesn't seem to work on all NPCs, though. Esp. around the adventurers guild many still won't cast a shadow.

 

[Ivan]

Glad to see this game has entered Beta

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I can't play this, it's full of strange design decisions like Scottish cast which gets annoying after less than an hour.

The actual Skara Brae is located in the Orkneys, but even so it was a mistake for Brian Fargo to jump onto the "fantasy should sound like Trainspotting" bandwagon.

 

[soulburner]

So how is the performance in this new edition? I read it's much better, but how much better? For example, if you barely had 30fps in the original release, do you now have 60 vsynced or...? And how much VRAM does it eat? Thanks in advance.

 

[Curratum]

So how is the performance in this new edition? I read it's much better, but how much better? For example, if you barely had 30fps in the original release, do you now have 60 vsynced or...? And how much VRAM does it eat? Thanks in advance.

I was doing 30-40 in the early game areas in the old version. Now I'm doing between 65 and 75. Haven't checked VRAM usage, but probably much lower.

The original game is almost 50 GB, the DC is almost 30 GB. Given the textures are the same, I think that just cooking the levels with static lighting reduces filesizes MASSIVELY. This also impacts load times - I went from 35-40 seconds to around 10 seconds.

 

[Agame]

That's irrelevant x 1

I think I backed at the soundtrack level, PM me and I'll check when I get home whether I have it.

That's irrelevant x 1

Shouldn't it be "That's irrelephant"?

Haha... I see what you did there.

And why is that not a button, its so adorable!

 

[Curratum]

Thank god for FX injectors. A Steam user provided this:



The difference is pretty dramatic and with this, even the DC looks quite passable. There is so much detail and shading that pops back into view thanks to the reshade.

Even with compressed YT still images, it's pretty obvious how much is restored:

Vanilla DC:

Reshade:

 

[Neerasrc]

Thank god for FX injectors. A Steam user provided this:



The difference is pretty dramatic and with this, even the DC looks quite passable. There is so much detail and shading that pops back into view thanks to the reshade.

Even with compressed YT still images, it's pretty obvious how much is restored:

Vanilla DC:

Reshade:

The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep - (original)



The Bard's Tale IV: Director Cut (Reshade)



The Bard's Tale IV: Director Cut

 

[Curratum]

I will try to tweak this thing further tonight for maximum visual gains and the least performance loss. We'll see how it goes.

 

[Great Deceiver]

The main problem for me was the excruciatingly long load times (especially initial load). I played around 10 hours of the original, I'll give this DC a try, but I think it's pretty ridiculous that there isn't at least an option to restore dynamic lighting.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Did they just fucking forget how to make RPGs after Wasteland 2? or was this made by some kind of intern B-Team?

-Still has shitty as fuck combat, stats, items, leveling, and """classes."""
-Main character chick still looks like a mannish dyke

Oh they fixed some background graphics big fucking deal. i'd play this with wireframe backgrounds if it was actually fun.

 

[Bohr]

Time to break out the bubbly at inXile Tower

 

[Curratum]

Meanwhile, on Steam, the game has Mixed 60% positive reviews and the top review is negative, with more upvotes than all the positives combined...

That Greek review would hold a lot more weight if it didn't contain all screenshots from the game's Steam page and ONE reviewer-made shot from the starting area...

 

[Curratum]

The main problem for me was the excruciatingly long load times (especially initial load). I played around 10 hours of the original, I'll give this DC a try, but I think it's pretty ridiculous that there isn't at least an option to restore dynamic lighting.

I don't think they can technologically made the old lighting a toggle in the menus. As I said, the new game is dramatically smaller in size, a 20 gb difference, which I suspect stems from the fact that once you cook levels with static lighting, the filesizes are much smaller. It's baked in and can't just be restored with a variable. Do check out the reshade posted above, it fixes a lot of the bad things with the DC's graphics.

On the upside, load times are MUCH better in the DC. Times faster magnitudes of better.

 

[anvi]

Looking at the video above convinced me to play Fall of the Dungeon Guardians instead.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Not even a slight discount? If you want a pity buy then set a pity price.