Icewind Dale 1 to IWD2 engine?

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i guess i'm weird.
i preferred IWD1 far more than IWD2. i tho't the story and character creation was far superior to 2. i could barely finish 2, while i've replayed IWD 3 or 4 times over the years.

V***V

 

Story and most of the game itself i agree was superior in IWD1. but the Engine itself and the implementation of 3E rules in IWD2 i felt was better than IWD1. So basically had they done this i could have played the best parts of both games

 

Yeh, probably no worse than BG2->IWD2 but that doesn't work perfectly, so.

In addition, I believe IWD2 was built on top of the BG2 - ToB engine rather than the IWD1 one (as it was more recent).

 

Well, i dont know for certain, but it seemed most reasonable that it wasbased on IWD1 engine. Since it has most of the same "quirks" like no joining NPC's code, the bard songs and special abilities from HoW, same animations mostly (yes they can be converter etc, but i think they are to lazy!), And also since Black Isle worked on IWD1 and 2 mostly separate from Bioware, where Bioware consentrated on BG1 and 2.

Uhm, does anyone knows the truths of this ? would be interesting to hear.

 

Raptor: IWD2 was originally going to be second edition, like the other games. If you look inside the files, IIRC there's still some BG2 stuff in there (to do with kits and so on).

 

^REALLY? MOST strange indeed! I guess they had to convert it to 3E pretty quickly and thus left so many bugs in the game and a little unbalanced CRs maybe?

 

That is interesting, still makes me wonder why they removed the joinable npc stuff etc.

Personally i think those CR problems are more related to converting a P&P game into a CRPG setting, anything with much HP and DMG + BA is automatically more powerfull than anything else in a game based mainly on combat.

 

Yes i know why the games have no joinable NPC's, but why remove the engine codes for joinable NPC's so that the game cannot posibly join an npc at all ? its like removing a feature just becose you dont need it. when we already know the entire Infinity engine series contains lots of spare stuff lying around in the codes, examples are just what Andyr mentioned earlier with the BG2 kit stuff lying around in IWD2... why.

 

I suspect that it is not a case of deleting code for joinable NPCs rather than not integrating it when they made the large enginge modifications to convert it to 3E...

Regarding the BG2 kit files I think were still in there, it's not as if they were converted to 3E or anything, it's just a file or two listing them in BG2 is still present. So it's not something you could restore, more like a 'fossil' from the other games.

And, yeah, you can get joinable NPCs in IWD2, and that is how it works in IWG2, it just doesn't work properly. Because, as Tal said, the IWD games are built for you to play with your own party.

 

I know im nitpicking but:

Same would be case for IWD1, so it couldn't/shouldn't be only the case becose of converting it to 3E rules.

And kit's is actually in use in IWD, just look at the Cleric of Lathander and Paladin of Helm.

Heh, and yeah, i have tried these joinable NPC's in IWG2, while it did work, with some slight workarounds (new np join, do not save game, export character, delete character, import character, save.) It just seems so weird that this was a similarity between iwd1 and iwd2, while not bg2. Seems more like they have meshed together IWD1 and BG2 into a halfway engine. Or probably modified IWD1 engine, with some of the posibilities of BG2, and just meshed in the datafiles from bg2 to fill up posible gaps.

All in all, is there anyone we COULD ask that actually knew for certain ? like Bioware or x-Black Isle'rs ?

 

The deity-specific kits and orders in IWD2 are not in the same vein as the kits all classes had (yes, except Monk, Barbarian and Sorcerer) in BG2.

As for asking BioWare/BlackIsle people, it has been tried but of the people that people have managed to get in contact with, they either weren't involved in the programming side or couldn't remember the answers.