Game News The Witcher 2 Toolkit Released

[flabbyjack]

The Witcher 2 trollkit released

 

[Jaesun]

/generic edgy shipost

 

[Monkeyfinger]

it's pretty hard not to love a dev who gives a product this much "...but why are you even doing this?" support. it's great to see a company actually valuing goodwill. I have no idea how CDPR can afford to put the level of post-release work into TW2 that they have. must be dem big GoG bucks, huh?

but seriously, even if nothing cool ever gets made with this, it's great that they cared enough to find the time to do it. A++.

The witcher is an IP that CDPR wants to stick with for a long time. Cramming the early stages of a long term project with PR stunts is a pretty smart business decision. You get several years of time for news of your PR stunts to circulate through word of mouth, and this word of mouth does a lot to build trust in your company and strengthen the later parts of your project.

 

[oldmanpaco]

/idea for mod I'll never actually make.

 

[circ]

Someone should replace all dialogue with samples of different people saying Kurwa.

 

[Jasede]

You mean a dialogue improvement mod?
/zing

 

[Jaesun]

If I recall correctly, the dialogue (and English translation) was fairly well done?

 

[sea]

I'm sure you will be able to make some monumentally pretty stuff with this.

But is it possible to actually make a game where you don't play as Geralt with these tools? I assume so since they did that a few times during the main campaign itself. One of the weakest links of any mod unfortunately is getting good voice acting, and when you have such impressive graphics, well, getting voice work to match is basically impossible. Yet The Witcher 2 is such a dialogue and story-focused game that it'd be pretty weird to rely exclusively on text.

 

[Jaesun]

You stuck and forced to play Geralt is this series biggest weakness. While in Planescape: Torment you were also forced to be The Nameless One, you could forge your own path.

 

[Metro]

I played a couple of mods for Witcher 1 that were packaged in the Super Sized Edition with Fries. Mostly consisted of some generic fetch quests. Don't think anything significant will come from this -- people are already in pre-fap mode for Witcher 3.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

/potato joke

First mod that's likely to be out would be a play as female witcher.

 

[J_C]

Not at all, you're just a butthurt fanboy taken in by companies who publish mediocre titles but wrap them up in fancy packages. I think Double Fine needs a little more of your whiteknighting... sally forth!

Double Fine gets just enough whiteknighting from me, 'mkay?

 

[tindrli]

music for trailer is ok

 

[Black_Willow]

www.edgycodex.net

 

[Storyfag]

If I recall correctly, the dialogue (and English translation) was fairly well done?

Yes. Yes it was. Esp the English translation

 

[Indranys]

So?
Please let me know when the sorceress campaign mod is finished.
I can't wait to roll her up.
This is the only way to make the game playable for me.

 

[Fat Dragon]

The music used in that trailer

 

[crawlkill]

Not at all, you're just a butthurt fanboy taken in by companies who publish mediocre titles but wrap them up in fancy packages. I think Double Fine needs a little more of your whiteknighting... sally forth!

I mean...I didn't even like TW1 or 2 all that much? you can appreciate wholesome business plans without necessarily digging the product.

 

[SmartCheetah]

I'm sure you will be able to make some monumentally pretty stuff with this.

But is it possible to actually make a game where you don't play as Geralt with these tools? I assume so since they did that a few times during the main campaign itself. One of the weakest links of any mod unfortunately is getting good voice acting, and when you have such impressive graphics, well, getting voice work to match is basically impossible. Yet The Witcher 2 is such a dialogue and story-focused game that it'd be pretty weird to rely exclusively on text.

As far as I know, some modders came up with a "replace" script which enables you to switch from Geralt onto another actor. Thing is, you can't use equipment and only "strong attack" is available for you (making combat even more shitty)
My idea was to edit original Geralt model and make it whatever you want. Lots and lots of effort, unfortunately.

 

[thesheeep]

One of the weakest links of any mod unfortunately is getting good voice acting, and when you have such impressive graphics, well, getting voice work to match is basically impossible. Yet The Witcher 2 is such a dialogue and story-focused game that it'd be pretty weird to rely exclusively on text.

Fully agree here. Somehow sad, isn't it?

 

[Severian Silk]

Does the toolkit fix the shitty combat?

 

[sea]

One of the weakest links of any mod unfortunately is getting good voice acting, and when you have such impressive graphics, well, getting voice work to match is basically impossible. Yet The Witcher 2 is such a dialogue and story-focused game that it'd be pretty weird to rely exclusively on text.

And why exactly relying on plain text is weird, you popamole sunovabitch

If you have an engine and gameplay style which is focused so heavily on cutscenes and voice-acted dialogue, then relying on text for your adventure is going to be awkward. The best way you can do it, in my opinion, is to avoid direct conversations with NPCs and do an adventure where you pick up the story through objects, books, notes and so on. But you just know we're going to see 1001 "kill the bandits" adventures where some guy with a shitty Logitech mic does the voice work for each and every character.

 

[SmartCheetah]

I had an idea to use some lines from eg. Game of Thrones series, where they are speaking in those fancy languages(Drogo and the others) so it would actually sound kinda cool and you won't need to give a damn about proper voice acting. Provided that setting you use, can somehow explain why they are expressing themselves in such weird languages. You know, it would work like Twi'Leks in kotor games, where they are repeating the same 2-3lines while text dialog is doing the rest. Cheap substitute, but it's better than nothing, eh?

 

[Semper]

If you have an engine and gameplay style which is focused so heavily on cutscenes and voice-acted dialogue, then relying on text for your adventure is going to be awkward.

vo is the cherry on the cake, but i wouldn't rate it that high on the list. good quests, cc, a decent story and stunning levels shape your mod. of course zoomed in frozen faces in dialogues won't feel right, but you could easily hide it with a different camera angle if that's possible. perfect vo with shitty gameplay is far worse than conversation strictly through text and enjoyable gameplay.

 

[sea]

vo is the cherry on the cake, but i wouldn't rate it that high on the list. good quests, cc, a decent story and stunning levels shape your mod. of course zoomed in frozen faces in dialogues won't feel right, but you could easily hide it with a different camera angle if that's possible. perfect vo with shitty gameplay is far worse than conversation strictly through text and enjoyable gameplay.

Yeah, it's the "frozen faces with little animation" problem that modern 3D RPGs have. So much easier when you just have a zoomed-out camera and a dialogue window instead. Of course I have done the former before mostly because of the constraints of the engine I've made my stuff in, I'm just saying, The Witcher 2 is about as cinematic as RPGs get, so you'd probably want to do some smart design to minimize direct dialogue and hide your limitations.

Aren't you making a mod for DA:O ? How much VO do you have?

None. For some reason it's easier to buy this sort of thing in Dragon Age because of the way I use animations to convey emotions, the huge amounts of text that would be impractical to voice normally without a large budget, and the "spiritual link" to the Infinity Engine games present in Dragon Age.