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Beamdog Update, March 19, 2019
“Axis & Allies Online has been a labour of love from a lot of the developers over at Beamdog. We’ve been working hard to ensure we’ve made a game that is faithful to the source material, and just as fun to play.” ~ Cody Ouimet
These are busy times at Beamdog. We thought we’d give you a quick update on what we are up to:
- Axis & Allies Online is available to wishlist on Steam. Take a first look at screenshots and get ready for an official adaptation of the classic board game! Axis & Allies Online is coming soon to Steam Early Access for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
- Beamdog is heading to PAX East! We’ll be in Boston from March 28 - 31. Come meet us at the Skybound Games booth, where Trent Oster, Luke Rideout, Alfonso Munoz, and Sarah Dawson will be showing a playable demo of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition for PS4 and Switch so you can try it hands-on. Check Skybound Games’ Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts for more details on bringing Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate ll, Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Neverwinter Nights to consoles.
- The playable demo of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition for PS4 and Switch at the Skybound Games booth will feature the voice and portrait of Evelyn from the Dice, Camera, Action! pack for the first time.
“We are Axis and Allies fans and we’ve worked hard to build a fun, accessible version of the game and we hope you enjoy playing it as much as we have.” ~ Trent
- Check out the latest Axis & Allies Online interview with Beamdog CEO Trent Oster and Producer Cody Ouimet by Axis and Allies.org about the origin story of Axis & Allies Online, development insights, and more.
- Back in February, Trent Oster gave an interview to The Fly where he discussed Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, console ports, creating original games, and more.
- Check out the latest issue of community magazine Wild Surge for an interview with Beamdog Marketing and PR Lead Sarah Dawson about Axis & Allies Online!
- Beamdog has 50 employees as of last week, and we’re still hiring! We’re looking for Programmers, Lead Programmers, and Designers to join our team!
- Last week we launched the new and improved Beamdog.com which now covers both the D&D games and Axis & Allies Online. As a part of our site update, the Beamdog Client also received a small update (2.1.11 ver) to point to the Beamdog Store’s new URL. If you’re using the Beamdog Client and haven’t updated yet, it should still work normally.
- Kate Welch, game designer at Wizards of the Coast, moved on to play Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition in her show, Welch's Game Juice. Join her on Twitch every Thursday at 3pm PT to win giveaways!
Let us know your thoughts on our new website!
If you have a question for Beamdog, don’t hesitate to ask us on our forums. We'll try to get answers from Beamdog Producer Luke Rideout and then will directly communicate them back to you (above are Luke’s answers to the community questions asked in February, 2019).
- The next patch for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is not quite ready. As we mentioned in December, once we started on the renderer and 64-bit integration in earnest, that became our main focus. We have a team dedicated to the renderer, and the 64-bit merge has happened, but we’ve got a road ahead of us before we’re going to be able to put a bow on it and make it public, as the console branch requires us to spend time adding controller support, to spend time cleaning up some long-overdue UI problems, and other changes that will have far-reaching benefits in the long run.
- We don’t have a full feature list we can share with players yet, but the new renderer for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is very robust, and gives us, potentially, access to all the bells and whistles one looks for in a modern game. Luke thinks players and modders will be pleasantly surprised by its capabilities.
- A controller version of the Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition UI for PC wouldn’t be impossible. The controller branch currently is distinct from the PC branch because Neverwinter’s UI wasn’t designed with a controller in mind, meaning we have to include a number of changes to UI and camera behaviour that we would have to reconcile between the console and PC versions. But either way, it would likely be something to investigate after the Console version ships.
- The iOS port of NWN:EE is in progress. We don’t have an ETA yet, but it is being actively worked on, as well as updates to the Android version in parallel.
- We have a team of dedicated QA who are testing all of the builds, logging bugs, performing regression testing, and confirming both functionality and bug fixes on a daily basis. All of the development team are responsible for fixing the bugs on the features that they work on. The “New” status in the public bug tracker isn’t a measurement of time in the tracker, but an indication of whether an issue has been triaged and escalated. If a bug is listed as “New”, it means it’s still in the queue to be triaged.
- The Dice, Camera, Action! voice and portrait pack will introduce a new vendor - Alveus Malcanter (voiced by Mark Meer). You’ll find him in each game (Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition) selling four items tied to the Waffle Crew. Any further items he would carry would always be thematically tied to the pack they’re distributed with.
- We looked into the possibility of an easter egg banter between Alveus Malcanter and Baeloth (since Mark Meer is the voice of both, as well as a few other voices in the game) in Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition and Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear. Unfortunately, it was out of the scope of what we could do for the first iteration of the Alveus Malcanter character.
- We’ve made significant improvements to pathfinding and collision in the console ports of our Infinity Engine games. Luke hopes to back-port these improvements to PC, but they’re not a part of the 2.6 patch for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition (which is still in the works).
- Luke has been interested for a while in making Ascension an official “DLC” for Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, and a few other similar mods, but there are some challenges in that: we can’t legally distribute content that we don’t own or have permission from all involved parties. In the case of some, where the people who worked on it are not in communication with us, our hands are tied.
- It appears that the primary reason that Catmull-Rom was dropped in the 2.0 patch was that it caused some very large performance issues with the mobile versions of the game. It is something that might be worth looking at restoring, but we’d need to do a little more research as to why we were unable to keep it in the first place.
- There seems to be an issue with an old implementation of Android softkeys not playing nicely with Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, and Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition after they were updated to work with a newer version of the Android OS, which we had to do for security reasons. On some devices running Android 4.4 KitKat and earlier, the softkeys get in the way of the fullscreen game, but we’ve been unable to reproduce and fix as the issue only occurs on select devices that are no longer supported by Google.
- The 3.1.4 patch for Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition (which includes the Czech localization) has been live on Beamdog for a while now! If you have it installed via the Beamdog Client, it should either already be version 3.1.4, or updateable to 3.1.4 now. You can confirm the version number in the lower-right corner of the main menu after launching.
Beamdog Q&A: May 2019
Today we’re publishing answers from Beamdog Producer Luke Rideout to the community questions asked in April-May, 2019.
Q & A WITH LUKE RIDEOUT, BEAMDOG PRODUCER
1. Is there any update on the Google Play situation with BGII:EE and IWD:EE? The previous update was given on April 3.
LUKE: We’re working on adding a UI element to both games that will allow the player to access our Privacy Policy from within the game, as per Google’s updated policy requirements. Sorry it’s taking a while for this to get into everyone’s hands. There was some back and forth time with Google’s review team to pinpoint exactly what needed to be done, and there is still some work and QA to be done.
2. Will whatever David Gaider worked on in Beamdog eventually be released?
LUKE: That’s a very good question, and not one I’m able to answer at this time, I’m afraid.
3. Have you looked at Patreon and/or similar crowdfunding solutions as a possible monetization method for providing patch support for the Enhanced Editions? Do you think such a solution could help with that effort?
LUKE: Unfortunately, as these are a licensed property that we don’t have complete IP control over, it’s not really a viable option.
4. Will the iOS/Android touch controls be available for use on the console (eg. Nintendo Switch) port of the games?
LUKE: Currently the console builds don’t include touchscreen functionality.
5. Back when BG:EE was still unreleased and Beamdog announced the three new NPCs, the latter had slightly different portraits compared to those that eventually shipped. Namely, Rasaad was wearing red, Dorn had no bluish tint, and Neera had no pinkish tint. Would it be possible to share the source files of the original, pre-change portraits with the community?
LUKE: I’ll need to look into our archives, see if the original artwork is still available, and check with a few key folks here as to the reasons behind the changes before I could be able to offer those for widespread download.
6. Will PST:EE, which is on a different branch than 2.6, get a patch beyond 3.1.4? There are still issues reported or submitted at the moment.
LUKE: I wouldn’t rule it out - there have been some positive updates made to the game through the development of the console versions that might be able to benefit PST:EE in the long run, but we’d have to look into what we’d need to do to cleanly port them back into the PC version, which would have to happen after some of our team resources free up when the console versions are done.
7. Some time ago, Trent spoke about the company being spread thin because of all the games/platforms/operation systems. Has that been improved nowadays and how does he envision handling this with even more games and more platforms?
LUKE: We’ve devoted significant effort to bringing on new, talented team members, and growing our existing people to make sure we have the bandwidth to tackle what we need to focus on, which at the moment is Axis & Allies, and the ports of Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate II, Siege of Dragonspear, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Neverwinter Nights, each to the 3 different console platforms.
We are definitely looking into the future at this point.
8. The new renderer for NWN:EE came up about half a year after the release of the game on Steam. What was the development of the plan/process of rewriting the renderer? It wasn't announced at the beginning.
LUKE: The new renderer for NWN:EE was one of the initiatives that we took on as a part of the project to bring NWN to consoles. Alongside the move to 64-bit, Cam has completely torn down and rewritten the renderer, as well as creating different versions of the renderer to support the 3 consoles we’re developing for (Of course as well as PC). I won’t go into the boring details of production planning and scheduling, but Cam had a vision of what he wanted to accomplish with the new Aurora Renderer, and has experience doing complete tear-downs and rewrites of renderers from MDK2 and beyond, so the technical and creative vision of the renderer was mostly driven by Cam, with a key set of features and shaders that we wanted to deliver conceived of and delivered by a few core members of our rendering team.
9. Question regarding the console port of NWN:EE: I am certain you are aware of the attack bonus miscalculation bug in the current PC version of the game. Have you been able to tackle this issue in the console and/or mobile ports? (bug #37442 on Redmine)
LUKE: It’s on our list of bugs that we’re looking at for Neverwinter, but we’re still working on getting the console gameplay and UI control perfect before we can start tackling more rules issues.
10. Will local multiplayer (one console 4-6 remotes) be possible in BG & IWD console ports? I think that might be fin for the IE games.
LUKE: Sorry, as much as we do love couch co-op, you’ll need to each have a networked console in order to play multiplayer.
11. Can you give any hint about the next RPG or non-RPG project you want to handle after Axis & Allies Online?
LUKE: We’ve got some things brewing right now, but it’s still very early days! I’m excited to give you folks more information about what we’re doing next, but I can’t say anything just yet.
Beamdog Q&A: April 2019
April 18 2019 in Beamdog , Skybound
A few weeks ago Beamdog attended PAX East to showcase our console demo of Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition at the Skybound Games booth.
Beamdog teamed up with Skybound to bring the Enhanced Editions of Baldur’s Gate, Baldur's Gate II, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Neverwinter Nights, as well as Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear to console. Check out the full announcement by Skybound Games here.
Today we’re publishing answers from Beamdog Producer Luke Rideout to the community questions about these upcoming console releases.
Q & A WITH LUKE RIDEOUT, BEAMDOG PRODUCER
1. What will be the price of each game? How DLC, such as premium modules for NWN:EE and SoD for BG:EE, will be handled in terms of price and availability?
LUKE: The price point and bundling method haven’t been officially announced yet, but stay tuned for Skybound’s upcoming announcements!
2. Which platforms and console types exactly will the games be playable at?
LUKE: The Baldur’s Gate Series, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, and Neverwinter Nights will all be coming to the Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
3. How/where will it be possible to buy the games? Will they be available via subscription-based services? What will physical box versions include?
LUKE: There will be both physical and digital releases of the games. Stay tuned for future announcements from Skybound about more details in the upcoming months.
4. Are there any graphical improvements in the console versions if compared to the PC/mobile ports? What exactly is changed? What improvements does the new renderer in NWN:EE bring?
LUKE: The Infinity Engine games will look the same on the console version as they do to the PC versions. NWN:EE’s new renderer, aside from improving performance, improves lighting and shadows, transparency, textures, and adds support for a much larger set of advanced shaders that we couldn’t previously make use of.
5. Are there any additional bug fixes in the console versions if compared to the PC/mobile ports (eg. better pathfinding)?
LUKE: There have been lots of additional bug fixes, including a significant amount of work on pathfinding, which was an absolute necessity for the implementation of analog party control.
6. Will mods work for the console versions (mods for the Infinity Engine Enhanced Editions, modules, custom content, community fixes and haks for NWN)? If they will, for which consoles in particular?
LUKE: We haven’t announced anything about this yet, so I’m afraid I can’t answer this, but stay tuned!
7. Will playing the console ports in multiplayer be possible? Will MP be cross-platform: PC & consoles, mobile versions & consoles, different consoles with each other? Will NWN:EE persistent worlds be available for console players?
LUKE: We’re currently investigating what we can do. We recognize Multiplayer is a huge and important component of these games, and we want to bring you the best experience that we can offer within the limitations of the consoles.
8. Will there be any cloud saving? So that one save is being continued from multiple devices: consoles, PC, mobile?
LUKE: There will be cloud save functionality tied to your console account, but we don’t currently have a way to transfer saves across different platforms from the console versions.
9. Will UI be simplified? Can you explain the control scheme for one of the IE games and NWN:EE? How will you overcome clunkiness considering the games weren’t designed for consoles?
LUKE: The main control difference for the IE games is that we have implemented an analog control mode that allows you to directly control the movement of your party in formation. To compliment this, we have improved highlighting of interactable objects in-game, and have a system that snaps the cursor to important objects, characters, and transition points, which can be interacted with using the interaction button on the controller. The player can switch between this analog drive mode and a virtual mouse “tactics mode” for fine targeting of spells. Most of the HUD buttons have been consolidated into radials, and party management is achieved by cycling through with the shoulder buttons, and through a party radial, that allows for creating custom party member groups, much like control groups in RTSes.
Neverwinter Nights, though it has never been on console before, already has a very controller-friendly control scheme, so NWN’s UI is very similar to the PC version of the game. The most notable change is that we have adapted the hotbar to work as a radial menu as well, as opposed to a bar on the HUD. Character movement, of course, will also use the analog controller. If you’ve played modern 3D third-person RPGs, it should feel fairly familiar to you.
10. Won’t the framerate drop if there’s a heavy magic fight going on with lots of multiple graphics effects presented (fireballs, web spells, lightning, etc)? Are there any loading screens in the console versions?
LUKE: Modern consoles are fairly robust, and certainly capable of handling the on-screen effects that we use in these games. And there are loading screens in Neverwinter Nights, as you may already be familiar, but the IE areas load quickly enough that you shouldn’t be seeing any load screens.
11. Are there any plans for additional consoles support (other than these 3)?
LUKE: Not at the moment
12. Will improvements developed while working on the console ports be ported back onto the PC/mobile versions? What about PC controllers/TV and a controller?
LUKE: There are certainly updates and code fixes that have been done for the console versions that we would like to see on the other versions, but as a small team, that’s something we’d have to look at after we finish work on the Console versions.
13. Did you consult with Chris Avellone before porting PST:EE to consoles?
LUKE: We did!
14. When do you plan to release the console versions? Will all the games be available at the same time?
LUKE: Specific release dates haven’t been announced yet, but you will see them this year!
15. Will you be able to import characters/parties from one game to another (BG1, BG2, IWD) on consoles?
LUKE: You will be able to import across games in the Baldur’s Gate saga, but not IWD.
16. What languages will the console versions be in?
LUKE: That’s currently TBD.
17. How long have the console ports been in development?
LUKE: Since early 2018.
18. Will there be any console-specific DLC/content?
LUKE: No announcements have been made yet on that side. Stay tuned!
19. Will there be differences between UI (or any other differences) on Xbox, PS4 and Switch?
LUKE: Aside from console-specific things like buttons and user account management, the UI will be effectively identical.
20. Do you have plans for (improving/enhancing) Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II?
LUKE: No plans for the Dark Alliance series, I’m afraid.
If you have a question for Beamdog, don’t hesitate to ask us on our forums.
SKYBOUND AND BEAMDOG BRINGING CLASSIC DUNGEONS & DRAGONS RPG GAMES TO CONSOLES THIS FALL
PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL ENHANCED EDITIONS OF BALDUR’S GATE, BALDUR’S GATE: SIEGE OF DRAGONSPEAR, BALDUR’S GATE II, PLANESCAPE: TORMENT, ICEWIND DALE, AND NEVERWINTER NIGHTS COMING TO PLAYSTATION®4, XBOX ONE AND NINTENDO SWITCH™
Skybound Games and Beamdog announced today that enhanced editions of several classic Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing videogames—including Baldur’s Gate, the Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear expansion, Baldur’s Gate II, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights—will be available on consoles this fall and for the first time on both PlayStation®4 and Nintendo Switch™.
Physical editions of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition will arrive at major retailers on Dec. 3, 2019 in North America and Dec. 6 in other territories, while the other titles will arrive earlier, on Sept. 24, 2019 in North America and Sept. 27 in other territories. All physical editions will be released for the PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch™. Available for $49.99 each, these special boxed editions include:
● The Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition Pack: Celebrating the series’ 20th anniversary, the original Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition and its sequel, Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition, return with all DLC and restored quest content, as well as the Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear expansion, featuring new original content developed by Beamdog to bridge the two games.
● Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition / Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition: Two must-play games and all their DLC in one package – the chilling Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, plus its expansions, and the enhanced edition of 1999’s RPG of the Year, Planescape: Torment.
● Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition: The 2002 Computer RPG of the Year and all its DLC deliver 10 standalone D&D-based adventures featuring co-op and online multiplayer.
Tailored for a natural gameplay experience on consoles, these enhanced editions give longtime fans and newcomers alike the opportunity to play these critically acclaimed adventures from a golden age of RPGs in a whole new way. Beamdog has upgraded all of the above titles with native support for high-resolution widescreen displays, controls optimized for console controllers, new standalone content, new characters and classes, new voice sets, expanded character creation options, improved multiplayer functionality, redesigns of the UI and UX, bug fixes, balance changes and more. For complete breakdowns of the content available with each title, visit: https://www.skybound.com/dnd-enhanced-editions
“It’s such a pleasure to celebrate the 20th anniversary of one of the most legendary RPGs of all time, the original Baldur’s Gate, as well as the iconic games it inspired, by bringing these special enhanced editions to a new generation of players and platforms,” said Skybound Games CEO Ian Howe.
“It’s been nearly two decades since Baldur’s Gate was born from a D&D campaign between me and the game’s co-creators,” said Trent Oster, Beamdog CEO. “The longevity of this series and the games that followed has been both humbling and rewarding. Our team is thrilled to continue that tradition by finally making this wealth of amazing storytelling and gameplay available to everyone on modern consoles.”
Each game will also be available to purchase for digital download individually upon release through the PlayStation®Store, Xbox Games Store and Nintendo eShop.
You can play the old classics on the toilet now
Also CRPG controls are just not compatible with controllers, no matter how hard you try.
You'd be retarded to buy anything full price on Steam. Pretty much everything goes on sale multiple times per year. Garbage like GTA5 and Fallout 4 are on sale almost every week.I'll rent the BGs on PS4 from GameFly. There is no way I'm paying $40 for 2 20 year old games on Steam (and I have considered it...but come on, 20(+) years old. For $1 to $5 I'd consider it...but $40...I'm not retarded enough for that.
Zep--
FO4 was on sale for $19 in the games shop I was in a couple of hours ago. But I was too busy laughing at FO76 to do much else.You'd be retarded to buy anything full price on Steam. Pretty much everything goes on sale multiple times per year. Garbage like GTA5 and Fallout 4 are on sale almost every week.I'll rent the BGs on PS4 from GameFly. There is no way I'm paying $40 for 2 20 year old games on Steam (and I have considered it...but come on, 20(+) years old. For $1 to $5 I'd consider it...but $40...I'm not retarded enough for that.
Zep--
It's time to enter the world of Faerûn like never before!
We've gathered a wonderful group of some of the finest adventurers in the lands to tell you all about our collaboration with Beamdog that you won't want to miss: the Enhanced Edition Collector's Packs for Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Planescape: Torment & Icewind Dale! There's something for everyone in these amazing collections, and for those who just can't decide, we've got the Ultimate Enhanced Edition Collector's Pack that's full to bursting with unbelievable goodies!
For more info and to preorder now, click here: http://bit.ly/BeamdogxSB
If all you have is just one cow, you better fucking milk it as best as you can.