List of the must play games

[Surf Solar]

MMXI

You don't like fog of war? I like it. :/ I would agree that the area that "wipes" the black away around your character could be made a bit bigger though, so you can still see the entire map eventually without annoying black spaces inbetween.
Especially in IWDII with those "SURPRIES!11" encounters it made a bit sense that you couldn't see landmarks and details of areas before you made it there.

 

[MMXI]

MMXI

You don't like fog of war? I like it. :/ I would agree that the area that "wipes" the black away around your character could be made a bit bigger though, so you can still see the entire map eventually without annoying black spaces inbetween.
Especially in IWDII with those "SURPRIES!11" encounters it made a bit sense that you couldn't see landmarks and details of areas before you made it there.

Oh, I'm not talking about it as a gameplay element. I'm only talking about the graphics. When playing with the widescreen mod I end up spacing my characters out to clear the fog of war before taking a screenshot. The problem is that the radius isn't suited to super high resolutions, meaning that you very rarely get to see the full background graphics in all its sexy glory.

EDIT: I'm not talking about the shroud by the way, but only the fog of war.

 

[Surf Solar]

I just asked Josh Sawyer (merely out of boredom and I am skimming through those maps ;D ) and he said:

"23:45
the majority of up-front work was always done in 3D, but the touch-up was almost always done by one guy: brian menze."
So now you know why these look so good - there was more love given in post production, after they were rendered.


EDIT:

Yeah, then I agree. It is noticable these games weren't made for such high resolutions, a shame actually.

 

[MMXI]

I just asked Josh Sawyer (merely out of boredom and I am skimming through those maps ;D ) and he said:

"23:45
the majority of up-front work was always done in 3D, but the touch-up was almost always done by one guy: brian menze."
So now you know why these look so good - there was more love given in post production, after they were rendered.

Good job. I've never seen a definitive answer from the developers before now. Have my first brofist since brofisting was limited to 1yo+ users (check my join date).

EDIT:

Yeah, then I agree. It is noticable these games weren't made for such high resolutions, a shame actually.

Indeed. This comes with the territory when increasing the resolution of 2D games. It's the whole zoomed out effect. When playing Baldur's Gate at 640x480 the fog of war tended to be off the screen when centred on one of your characters. However, when using the widescreen patch, half the screen has the horrible looking fog of war covering it.

I suppose one way of fixing it would be to make the fog of war look better. That would be the simplest change anyway. I wonder what the enhanced Baldur's Gate will do regarding increased resolutions?

 

[Surf Solar]

MMXI
I feel privilegued by receiving your first brofist, I will hold it up high in my codex memoirs!

Since I am really interested in how these things were done, I will ask Menze for some tips and tricks regarding these touch ups. People who read my WR stuff, may know this already, but I am working on some similar things right now. Here is a short gif of how I *think* these renders were touched up and "detailized". The first image in the animation is the "detail" one, the second is how it came directly out of the renderer.

I guess he means something like this?



@ Fog of war:

I think to make the fog of war better, the circle around the characters needs to be bigger, yeah. Infact I wonder if this is hardcoded in the engine or could be modded - this would be a huge incline. Must investigate at Spellhold Studios!
And to make it prettier, the edges look too... eh, jagged and "edgy" at the moment. :D The FoW would look much better if it would be like in Lionheart - there it was really beautiful. It had very smooth edges around the Character line of sight, also the outside area of the LoS was black and white shaded, whileas the visible LoS was in normal graphics.

Like here - you can see it on the southwestern edge - it looks really beautiful in motion.

Sorry for this graphic faggotry thread derail, but I just find it interesting.

 

[Vault Dweller]

So you just zerged every encounter and won the game?

Why try anything else if the simplest thing works? A game becomes tactical when you HAVE to use tactics to beat it.

Also, why bring up Darklands and Realms of Arkania when they are clearly far less tactical?

That was in response to "clearing maps is something players do in the vast majority of cRPGs. "Linear, choice-less story-line" was something that existed in 95% of the genre at the time Baldur's Gate came out..."

 

[MMXI]

Since I am really interested in how these things were done, I will ask Menze for some tips and tricks regarding these touch ups. People who read my WR stuff, may know this already, but I am working on some similar things right now. Here is a short gif of how I *think* these renders were touched up and "detailized". The first image in the animation is the "detail" one, the second is how it came directly out of the renderer.

I guess he means something like this?

The original looks like it has little in the way of shading/shadows. I guess you could draw them in, but having some pre-rendered guidelines could make the process easier.

@ Fog of war:

I think to make the fog of war better, the circle around the characters needs to be bigger, yeah. Infact I wonder if this is hardcoded in the engine or could be modded - this would be a huge incline. Must investigate at Spellhold Studios!
And to make it prettier, the edges look too... eh, jagged and "edgy" at the moment. :D The FoW would look much better if it would be like in Lionheart - there it was really beautiful. It had very smooth edges around the Character line of sight, also the outside area of the LoS was black and white shaded, whileas the visible LoS was in normal graphics.

Like here - you can see it on the southwestern edge - it looks really beautiful in motion.

Sorry for this graphic faggotry thread derail, but I just find it interesting.

It would be a rather simple pixel shader to do the black and white effect. It would be a rather elegant solution too!

Why try anything else if the simplest thing works? A game becomes tactical when you HAVE to use tactics to beat it.

My point is that you can't zerg every encounter in the game. I'm calling bullshit on this.

That was in response to "clearing maps is something players do in the vast majority of cRPGs. "Linear, choice-less story-line" was something that existed in 95% of the genre at the time Baldur's Gate came out..."

It's pretty easy to pick out one of those 5% games. Those do seem to be rather well known. Perhaps if you actually look at Baldur's Gate as being some sort of over land "dungeon" crawler, while comparing its content to the Gold Box games instead of, say, Fallout or Planescape: Torment, you wouldn't be so critical. Still, this point hinges on whether its combat is tactical or not, and after playing countless cRPGs from the late 70s to today I can say for sure that only a handful actually have better or more tactical combat.

 

[Surf Solar]

I don't know if I just suck at these games or not, "tactics" like people suggest to try that are almost always a winning strategy in the IE games never work for me. I would have preferred TB combat in those games too ofcourse, but with some getting used to it - the combat and what possibilities it offers is really really nice in those games - one of the reasons why I call the Icewind Dales my favorite ones. I never won because of some of these "cheap" tactics people always mention, it worked always better for me to try out my own moves after lots of dying and felt pretty rewarding afterwards. Now ofcourse this is highly subjective and as said the possibility is high that I just suck at realizing "zerging" and such, but did the people who won the game with this play on easy or something? Then I can understand why it works so flawless....


@ the teleporting vs. running around - can't there be some middleway? Ofcourse I agree with you Vault Dweller that some games really were fucking annoying to run run run around all the time to go from questgiver to questgiver, but IMO this is more of a flaw in leveldesign and placment of the NPC, rather than the actual gamedesign. I don't have much against the teleporting in AoD, but I have to admit it feels a bit weird and I'd rather run to this place myself, yes it sounds weird. But I am sure I am not the only one. Maybe you could make this teleporting optional? (I guess not)

 

[FeelTheRads]

but I am in awe how the ice etc. looks more like brushstrokes than a rendered object.

The textures make it obvious it's done in 3D. But yeah, this one is likely touched-up quite a lot.

Also I don't agree that touching up can be called hand painting. Very different things. But hey, nowadays photo-manipulations/collages are called hand paintings as well.

 

[Surf Solar]

Sorry for again starting with this shit, but I received another message from Sawyer, thanks again Josh! :

"00:48
yes. highlights, detail, and sometimes a lot of completely new painted material. as an example, there's a map in icewind dale: heart of winter where you are walking along a white dragon skeleton's spine and it's covered in ice. originally, there was not much ice. menze hand-painted in the majority of it."
Here is the area he is talking about:

Fucking awesome if you ask me...

 

[FeelTheRads]

Yeah, in my opinion that's the best looking of all the Infinity Engine games. The details are amazing. Surprisingly, IWD2 looks pretty crappy, especially the outdoor areas.

 

[Surf Solar]

True, the IWD2 game was good in terms of encounter fun (really good, I would even say) but in terms of graphics it was a step down to the details of IWD.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I decided to use that as a wallpaper.

 

[aris]

Whoever thinks BG series are shit needs to go throw himself into the pits of sorrow and die

BG was shit. The main feature was the handpainted backgrounds which made the game/series truly beautiful and one of a kind when it comes to graphics. The rest? Crappy RT combat? Dutifully following a linear path devoid of anything resembling an active choice? Dumb "farmboy/girl discovers that he/she is special and has special powers" plot featuring the epic battle between you and retarded assassins who can't kill a lvl 1 character? You fight enemies matching your level, level up, move to the next pretty map, fight tougher enemies, level up, move to the next map, and so on until you beat Sarevok in his fancy "I'm a villain mwahaha" spiked armor.

The Durlag's tower added atmosphere to pretty background, raising the overall quality. BG2 went epic, adding some meaningless choices here and there, which made it a fun action adventure game, kinda like throwing in meaningless choices has made ME2 a neat little shooter. The Throne of Bhaal was a dull linear BG-like game, which completed the circle.

But hey, I'm glad that you've enjoyed it.

That would be a fine description to BG, if it wasn't for the fact that this extremely general description that could be applied any game ever made. Or am I wrong? Please enlighten me with your insight, some examples would not hurt.

Any game? Is every game an action-adventure RPGs with crappy real-time combat, linear, choice-less storyline that revolves around a boy/girl coming of age and discovering that he/she is special and clearing up maps RTS-style?

No. Let me elaborate.

First of, what do you mean with crappy RT combat? That's the exact opposite of the popular opinion of this game, and sure, there might be some merit to your claim, but at least add some basic argumentation to that claim. Or are you on of those geniuses who thinks that combat is bad when it is not turn-based?

Secondly, what is wrong with linear games? There's a shit-ton of great games that are all linear, in fact, most great games are linear. There are some games which are truly open ended, which generally falls into the sand box category, and some of them are great, but there is always the "because it is open ended" attached to that sentence. Thirdly, why the hell is it essential to have an active choice? It's a game, not the real life. We play games to escape reality not to live while we live, there's nothing inherently wrong with being shoehorned into specific roles, especially not for people who likes to have a fun time, but don't have any fantasy, like me.

Fourthly, your summary: "farmboy/girl discovers that he/she is special and has special powers" is incredibly stupid. It might seem clever to you, and it would have been, if it wasn't for the fact that this kind of deconstruction can be done for every single story that was ever fucking crafted. Fallout has a dumb "Fed-EX fetch the waterchip" plot, PS:T has a dumb "amnesia plot with some loser trying to string together his story and fighting a retard in a fortress". In fact, amnesia and plotting together your past, is only beaten in popularity as a basic plot device by "you are good, it is evil, kill it" or "go and get the thing". The quality of a story does not lie in the basic premise of the story, but in the details of its writing.

Fiftly: " You fight enemies matching your level, level up, move to the next pretty map, fight tougher enemies, level up, move to the next map," Yeah? That's what you do in every fucking RPG. That's how an RPG work.

 

[Vault Dweller]

First of, what do you mean with crappy RT combat? That's the exact opposite of the popular opinion of this game...

Well, if the popular opinion is to be believed, Oblivion is the best game ever and KOTOR is the pinnacle of turn-based combat.

... and sure, there might be some merit to your claim, but at least add some basic argumentation to that claim. Or are you on of those geniuses who thinks that combat is bad when it is not turn-based?

I don't. As for throwing in some arguments, the topic has been discussed to death years ago (the consensus was that the Infinity Engine combat sucked in general and in BG in particular) and doing it all over again is simply boring. No offense.

Here is one BG thread that comes to mind (although I don't recall if combat was mentioned there)
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/why-was-bg2-subpar.1935/

Edit: Here is another:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/what-is-it-about-bioware.1587/#post-13135

Saint Proverbius: "Instead of something that pushed forward, BG through the use of the popular D&D license, dragged the CRPG genre kicking and screaming back from the technical improvements of Fallout straight back to the days when CRPGs were just combat games. Then it further dumbed down the genre with passive combat where the user simply has to watch the combat and make sure everything is going okay rather than any real involvement."
^ Now that was the popular opinion on the Codex back in the day.

Secondly, what is wrong with linear games? There's a shit-ton of great games that are all linear, in fact, most great games are linear. There are some games which are truly open ended, which generally falls into the sand box category, and some of them are great, but there is always the "because it is open ended" attached to that sentence. Thirdly, why the hell is it essential to have an active choice? It's a game, not the real life. We play games to escape reality not to live while we live, there's nothing inherently wrong with being shoehorned into specific roles, especially not for people who likes to have a fun time, but don't have any fantasy, like me.

Not even sure where to start here.

First, linear games are less interesting (at least for me) because you don't play a role - you follow a preordained, set in stone path. Replaying a linear game produces an identical experience. Now, I know that some "storyfags" prefer it, arguing that the best story is a linear story and they don't have time to replay games anyway, so let's say it's subjective.

Second, you're confusing different concepts. Non-linear and open-ended are two different things. Having an "active choice" doesn't mean that a fantasy game suddenly becomes real life. It means making decisions within that fantasy world, unless it's too stressful for you. Playing a specific role in linear games? You don't. No more than you play a role of a brave and indestructible marine in Doom.

Most great games are linear? Care to be more specific?

Fourthly, your summary: "farmboy/girl discovers that he/she is special and has special powers" is incredibly stupid. It might seem clever to you, and it would have been, if it wasn't for the fact that this kind of deconstruction can be done for every single story that was ever fucking crafted.

Wasn't it already addresses above?

Fallout has a dumb "Fed-EX fetch the waterchip" plot, PS:T has a dumb "amnesia plot with some loser trying to string together his story and fighting a retard in a fortress". In fact, amnesia and plotting together your past, is only beaten in popularity as a basic plot device by "you are good, it is evil, kill it" or "go and get the thing". The quality of a story does not lie in the basic premise of the story, but in the details of its writing.

Once again, you're confusing things. Fallout is not about fetching a waterchip. It's a plot device to send you into the big new world.

Fiftly: " You fight enemies matching your level, level up, move to the next pretty map, fight tougher enemies, level up, move to the next map," Yeah? That's what you do in every fucking RPG. That's how an RPG work.

Only the linear games that you like so much.

 

[MMXI]

Instead of something that pushed forward, BG through the use of the popular D&D license, dragged the CRPG genre kicking and screaming back from the technical improvements of Fallout straight back to the days when CRPGs were just combat games.

Sounds like a glowing endorsement to me.

Then it further dumbed down the genre with passive combat where the user simply has to watch the combat and make sure everything is going okay rather than any real involvement.

Nah. Fallout dumbed down combat, Baldur's Gate didn't. You spend around 10x longer "watching" combat in Fallout than you do in Baldur's Gate, and then Fallout stripped out full party control. Talk about decline.

 

[GordonHalfman]

Then it further dumbed down the genre with passive combat where the user simply has to watch the combat and make sure everything is going okay rather than any real involvement.

This is a strange criticism, having to click every turn to do the same thing again doesn't add anything to number of decisions the player has to make.

If anything the problem with RTWP is that gives the player too much involvement, e.g. it lets you kite the enemy round in circles and other daft things instead of having to commit to an action.

 

[MMXI]

If anything the problem with RTWP is that gives the player too much involvement, e.g. it lets you kite the enemy round in circles and other daft things instead of having to commit to an action.

Agreed. Baldur's Gate with no control between rounds and a forced auto pause would probably be far better. That would make it phase based I guess.

 

[GordonHalfman]

It would be neat if the auto-pause options let you do that, (I don't think they did IIRC). I'll tweet the idea to Trent Oster.

 

[aris]

I don't. As for throwing in some arguments, the topic has been discussed to death years ago (the consensus was that the Infinity Engine combat sucked in general and in BG in particular) and doing it all over again is simply boring. No offense.

Here is one BG thread that comes to mind (although I don't recall if combat was mentioned there)
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/why-was-bg2-subpar.1935/

Edit: Here is another:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/what-is-it-about-bioware.1587/#post-13135

Saint Proverbius: "Instead of something that pushed forward, BG through the use of the popular D&D license, dragged the CRPG genre kicking and screaming back from the technical improvements of Fallout straight back to the days when CRPGs were just combat games. Then it further dumbed down the genre with passive combat where the user simply has to watch the combat and make sure everything is going okay rather than any real involvement."
^ Now that was the popular opinion on the Codex back in the day.

No offense, but I don't put very much weight into what the consensus on the RPGcodex is on this, no more than what I care about the consensus of evolution or gays within the baptist church or the views on medication within the scientology church. Also if with passive combat, he means that you can not do anything of real involvement, he has not been playing baldur's gate. If he means, that you do not need to, because it is easy, he is partly right. And sure, combat could be more difficult both in bg and bg2, i'll give it that. I still think this does not alone qualify as bad combat.

Not even sure where to start here.

First, linear games are less interesting (at least for me) because you don't play a role - you follow a preordained, set in stone path. Replaying a linear game produces an identical experience. Now, I know that some "storyfags" prefer it, arguing that the best story is a linear story and they don't have time to replay games anyway, so let's say it's subjective.

I don't care for storyfags-arguments, but you're right, it is subjective. I got the strong impression that you were initially claiming it wasn't though.

Second, you're confusing different concepts. Non-linear and open-ended are two different things. Having an "active choice" doesn't mean that a fantasy game suddenly becomes real life. It means making decisions within that fantasy world, unless it's too stressful for you. Playing a specific role in linear games? You don't. No more than you play a role of a brave and indestructible marine in Doom.

Most great games are linear? Care to be more specific?

Yeah, I could be more specific, but I'm not going to, since I already know we are not going to see eye to eye on which games are good. So I'm going to spare myself the time. I would rather like you to tell me which non-linear games you think are great, hell maybe I could learn something.

Fourthly, your summary: "farmboy/girl discovers that he/she is special and has special powers" is incredibly stupid. It might seem clever to you, and it would have been, if it wasn't for the fact that this kind of deconstruction can be done for every single story that was ever fucking crafted.

Wasn't it already addresses above?

No? I'm not sure if you got my point. Every story can be deconstructed to seem stupid when you summarize its basic premise of the plot like that, and then I went on to show you how you can do the exact same thing in what followed with fallout and PS:T. Sure, you might say that the story of BG isn't particularly great, and I'm inclined to agree with that, but "farmboy/girl discovers that he/she is special and has special powers" does not demonstrate that.

Fallout has a dumb "Fed-EX fetch the waterchip" plot, PS:T has a dumb "amnesia plot with some loser trying to string together his story and fighting a retard in a fortress". In fact, amnesia and plotting together your past, is only beaten in popularity as a basic plot device by "you are good, it is evil, kill it" or "go and get the thing". The quality of a story does not lie in the basic premise of the story, but in the details of its writing.

Once again, you're confusing things. Fallout is not about fetching a waterchip. It's a plot device to send you into the big new world.

Yeah? Well, you could say the same thing about bg, gorion's death is a plot device to send you into a big new world.

Fiftly: " You fight enemies matching your level, level up, move to the next pretty map, fight tougher enemies, level up, move to the next map," Yeah? That's what you do in every fucking RPG. That's how an RPG work.

Only the linear games that you like so much.

Really? Can you tell me one RPG where this isn't basically what you do?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Also if with passive combat, he means that you can not do anything of real involvement, he has not been playing baldur's gate. If he means, that you do not need to, because it is easy, he is partly right. And sure, combat could be more difficult both in bg and bg2, i'll give it that. I still think this does not alone qualify as bad combat.

Well, if it's so easy that "you don't need to anything of real involvement", that's pretty fucking bad, no?

Yeah, I could be more specific, but I'm not going to, since I already know we are not going to see eye to eye on which games are good.

Is that the goal? To impress me with your list of great linear games?

So I'm going to spare myself the time. I would rather like you to tell me which non-linear games you think are great, hell maybe I could learn something.

Fallout. Arcanum. Daggerfall (tallking about the non-linear plot, not the sandbox design). Prelude to Dakness. The Geneforge series. Escape Velocity: Nova. Realms of Arkania games (at least the first two, don't recall the third). Darklands. Etc.

No? I'm not sure if you got my point. Every story can be deconstructed to seem stupid when you summarize its basic premise of the plot like that, and then I went on to show you how you can do the exact same thing in what followed with fallout and PS:T. Sure, you might say that the story of BG isn't particularly great, and I'm inclined to agree with that, but "farmboy/girl discovers that he/she is special and has special powers" does not demonstrate that.

I'm not trying to make it look stupid. I'm summarizing it.

BG and most (if not all) Bio games that followed are about you being special and saving the world. Bio has made no secret that they deal in wish fulfillment, which I consider pandering to the lowest common denominator. You're special. You always knew it. All these people who thought that you aren't special were wrong. You have newly awakened special powers to prove it. Only you can save the world/galaxy. Because it's your destiny. And bang every hot girl in your party. How could they not love you - after all, you're special and they see it in you.

Some people like it. Some people don't.

Yeah? Well, you could say the same thing about bg, gorion's death is a plot device to send you into a big new world.

Naturally. Only I didn't say that the story is about Gorion or his death. It's about you being special.

Fiftly: " You fight enemies matching your level, level up, move to the next pretty map, fight tougher enemies, level up, move to the next map," Yeah? That's what you do in every fucking RPG. That's how an RPG work.

Only the linear games that you like so much.

Really? Can you tell me one RPG where this isn't basically what you do?

Most non-linear games?
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,2365.0.html

 

[MMXI]

Well, if it's so easy that "you don't need to anything of real involvement", that's pretty fucking bad, no?

My point is that you can't zerg every encounter in the game. I'm calling bullshit on this.

BG and most (if not all) Bio games that followed are about you being special and saving the world. Bio has made no secret that they deal in wish fulfillment, which I consider pandering to the lowest common denominator. You're special. You always knew it. All these people who thought that you aren't special were wrong. You have newly awakened special powers to prove it. Only you can save the world/galaxy. Because it's your destiny. And bang every hot girl in your party. How could they not love you - after all, you're special and they see it in you.

Wrong. Baldur's Gate has a story similar to some of the Gold Box games. It's an investigative story where you have to discover the cause of the strange goings on in the world. This is straight out of the late 80s. It's the rest of the BioWare games, starting with Baldur's Gate II, that borrows heavily from shitty mid-90s JRPGs.

 

[Infinitron]

Then it further dumbed down the genre with passive combat where the user simply has to watch the combat and make sure everything is going okay rather than any real involvement.

This is a strange criticism, having to click every turn to do the same thing again doesn't add anything to number of decisions the player has to make.

I think VD's implicit assumption here is that, due to being real time, Baldur's Gate's designers had to make the combat easier, so that the player wouldn't have to change tactics constantly (in the worst case scenario, the meaning of going from turn-based to real time is that the "turns" become infinitesimal, and so the AI has a huge speed advantage over a human player).
And since the combat is turned easy, it no longer requires as much player input. Hence, it becomes "about watching".

Note: I don't agree with this and I think IE combat was quite challenging, requiring full control for the difficult fights, and with some leeway granted for the filler trash mobs.

 

[MMXI]

I think VD's implicit assumption here is that, due to being real time, Baldur's Gate's designers had to make the combat easier, so that the player wouldn't have to change tactics constantly (in the worst case scenario, the meaning of going from turn-based to real time is that the "turns" become infinitesimal, and so the AI has a huge speed advantage over a human player).
And since the combat is turned easy, it no longer requires as much player input. Hence, it becomes "about watching".

There's probably some truth to that, especially in terms of movement, but the AI is severely limited in terms of speed by the 6 second rounds. Both the AI and the player can cast a maximum of a spell per round per character, and with auto pausing every round the player will never fail to achieve this through lack of speed. The biggest problem with the Infinity Engine's implementation is movement between rounds, and how you can change movement orders incrementally throughout a round while all other actions are largely "committed" to. This means that you can do all sorts of lame stuff like abusing line of site, wasting enemy spells, kiting etc.

 

[Vault Dweller]

BG2 had a lot of challenging fights and enemies. I still remember most of them. BG was much easier and I don't remember anything even remotely challenging. Maybe it's my memory, maybe it's the fact that you had a low level, easy to kill, "handle with care" party, maybe because it was their first game and they wanted to ease people in.