HD Version of Baldur's Gate?

[wellard]

So who has got the 'new' game and what is it like? Bug city?

[Lord of Alcohol]

I read Nov 30th for release.

[Luvian]

I got it for PC. It basically is the old game with an HD mod and extra fixes and ease of use bundled in. I was under the impression that they were using a new engine but it's actually the BG2 engine.

Here are a couple of differences with the old game:
* They use BG2 sprites for the characters.
* They changed the intro movie for a hand drawn one. But they removed a couple of other movies since they had no time to redo them. Naskel and such.
* They changed the way you select the characters to make it easier for the tablet version.
* Your projectiles can stack higher than in vanilla game.
* There is a mouse wheel zoom feature. Personally I don't use it. If you zoom in it's as if you were playing the game at the lowest resolution. If you zoom out things get a little too small for my taste. Apparently the zoom is saved per map so you have to re-zoom every time you enter a new zone.
* There is a new adventure but it is stand alone.
* They added 3 new companions. They're pretty great but it's the kind of thing you got from mods already.
* There is a DLC shop but they do not have the permission to alter the old content, so I guess it will be there for more characters and stand alone adventures?

So basically to me it feel like a Modded version of BG1 with BB tutu and ease of use. And it's mostly what it is, really. It's up to you to chose if 3 new companions are worth buying this version over the Good old Games one. Personally I think their main plan was to release BG on handheld devices and the PC release is just an afterthought.

I'll probably buy it if it's compatible with my tablet. There is much more value into getting a handheld port of the game than there is in getting a modded BG1 game, in my opinion. It's up to you to chose if you want to buy Baldur's Gate 1 for the PC again.

Originally Posted by wellard So who has got the 'new' game and what is it like? Bug city?

On the official forum I saw a couple of people talking about some bugs but I haven't run into any myself. Apparently if you summon a club with your druid wou will never be able to change weapon again.

[Micah Foehammer]

Originally Posted by Luvian I got it for PC. It basically is the old game with an HD mod and extra fixes and ease of use bundled in. I was under the impression that they were using a new engine but it's actually the BG2 engine. So basically to me it feel like a Modded version of BG1 with BB tutu and ease of use. And it's mostly what it is, really.

That sounds pretty underwhelming actually. Pretty much a major disappointment imo.

Glad I decided to wait. Think I'll give this a pass and buy something else.

[Shadow Stranger]

Summon club bug, can it be solved by casting Flame Blade? This should clear the weapon selection.
May need a fix to the spell file.

Does sound underwhelming but it is an alternative to GoG for new players.

[Azred]

I have it and even though I haven't played very far--just got to Friendly Arm Inn--I am enjoying the updates. It isn't quite a "we fixed and updated everything" because many weapons that should be "magic" still have an enchantment level of 0, but I haven't really gotten into checking through the items and spells yet. NearInfinity will still translate all the game files, so browsing them is easy; DLCTEP will work but because dialog.tlk isn't where it used to be all the string references are broken.

The BeamDog and BGEE forums are full of people complaining about problems getting the game to load but most of those people are using Windows7 and they are going to have to right-click > run as administrator to get BGEE to run correctly. That is stupid, of course, but then I didn't design Win7. I have it installed on two Win7 computers with no problems; on the third one--the home computer--I had to get ola32.dll (or something like that) installed but once I did the game worked just fine.

On the laptop NearInfinity still lets me do things like turning a generic multiclass mage/thief into mage/assassin or removing a limitation such as turning a gnome cleric/illusionist into cleric/mage.

I noted one interesting items that purports to be +1 but +2 at night; I don't think this is possible because the Infinity Engine doesn't check time for items (unless I am totally mistaken). However, its code references effect 318 and I don't know what that is right now; I will look into it more today.

All things considered, this was a decent investment of a mere $20. I never bothered with Tutu or many of the various mods that were put out over the years. Where this release is a significant improvement over previous mods or fixes is that the effects which were previously broken or bugged have been fixed--I look forward to correcly using "modify duration" to increase the length of time many spells last; this effect still won't work for spells like Stinking Cloud because the projectile lasts only for a preset amount of time that cannot be changed.

I have not encountered the "summon club" problem. I presume this refers to the spell Shillelagh? I'll look into it today and see what I can uncover. I suspect that it should still be fixed by Dispel Magic, which removes the shillelagh from inventory but maybe there is some other problem with how it is coded.

edit: well, I found dialog.tlk. It is in the BGEE folder then, on my computer, \data\00766\lang\en_us. Now I can try to edit DLCTEP to point there and find string references; otherwise, I will have to rely on NI only. Incidentally, the sound files are there, as well--\data\00766\lang\en_us\sounds folder--so now custom soundsets can be added. I am going to move the IWD sound sets over because I like them.

I am currently in the process of putting my own personal preference fixes back in place. Mages may now use clubs (the description says "anyone can swing a club" so why not mages?), having a "neutral" reputation makes neutral characters use their "happy" soundoff, I corrected druid xp table to match clerics, tweaked the xpcap a little so now all multiclass characters can get to about 9th level (the worst is fighter/mage/cleric who can get to only 8/9/9, made it so half-orcs have a -2 to chr rather than int, etc. Nothing major, mind you, merely personal preferences. When I finish, I'll zip my fixes to make it easier to apply them to my various computers or to hand out to people.

[Azred]

Now that I have had a chance to look into it a little deeper--I found dialog.tlk and if you copy it to the same folder as chitin.key then DLTCEP works normally--I see that at this point in time they appear to have overpromised and underdelivered. There are numerous string reference problems, the problem I mentioned earlier of "magic" weapons having an enchantment level of 0, but I will admit that the scripting is significantly improved--some of scripts are quite well-thought-out and certainly more complex than anything I had ever attempted before. The official BG:EE forum is still full of people complaining and several wanting their money back--good luck with that, folks--but I haven't run into any of the problems they are describing (choppy sound files or video, the program not installing or loading correctly, cannot open or enter doorways, game crashes, etc). The other main source of complaints seem to be a lack of monsters--it appears that significantly fewer random foes will spawn to attack the party. If you have created your character in The Black Pits, fought a couple of fights to quickly level up, exported then imported into the main campaign, you might find yourself bored with the ease of the game...or so I have heard. I haven't gotten that far into playing the game, itself, preferring to check out its inner workings and correct things that are, to me, mistakes. A lot of items are as you remember them only the name has been changed, along with some of the description. There are a couple of new shields that are, in all honesty, over-the-top cheese which would be better suited to ToB--aura cleansing, immune to backstab, disabled permanent death, and you critically hit on a roll of 13 or better? A few EFF files are incorrectly applied--to do things like "+1, +3 versus left-handed orcs" requires effect 177 referencing an external .eff file and then the actual bonus to hit is applied in that external file. *shrug* Amateurs, I guess.

I have an iPad but I haven't tried out the game there. It appears that the primary focus of this release was to capture the mobile device market and PCs/laptops were an afterthought, which explains some of the weirdness.

I will update my recommendation. If you haven't bought the game yet then wait a while--perhaps in 3 months when I have all my fixes in place or a large official patch is released you might consider buying it. For now, though, it was only $20 so I am not going to complain.

[Azred]

Here is the review from ArsTechnica. Their verdict: flawed classic that is worth getting.

[Luvian]

For what it's worth I don't regret getting it. But I do feel like I was mislead as far as the PC version goes. They promised an HD version of Baldur's Gate. Instead I got BG1 in BG2.

[Hivetyrant]

Definitely looking forward to the iPad version, will be nice to have a proper game to play on the go. Though with Vice City out in a few days I might be a little distracted