Icewind Dale The Icewind Dale Series Thread

[Lonely Vazdru]

I wonder how a team of three Bards, each on themed around a musical genre for the hell of it, might work...

Fucking great idea ! I might try it next time, even if I get to add a roadie or two mid-tour.

 

[Snufkin]

The bestest IWD party is:

Gnome Fighter - Sword and shield, gnome because shorty saves and amazing helm of trusted defender
2 x Elf Rangers - Since all AC items will go to tank and you cant get grandmastery in bows in vanilla IWD ranger is a good choice, also can get some blunt specialization to get many attacks to chew thru undead
Human dual class 2 level of thief / cleric - levels of thief are for disarming traps - then cleric for turn undead and buffs
Half elf Bard *female* - with 14 strenght 18 dex 16 con 18 int 16 cha - for songs,buffs and questing, basicly party face
Half-elf Druid - eh because HoW added some cool spells

 

[A horse of course]

Working hard on my iwd2 video frens. I'm back to regular work tomorrow so it'll take a while, but it should be ready by the end of March or start of April. In the meantime, I thought I'd grant RPG CODEX an exclusive glimpse into the creative process of an ARTIST:

https://voca.ro/1nuznPUj2hBq

https://voca.ro/19qz5aIUtnKx

 

[Lagole Gon]

Working hard on my iwd2 video frens. I'm back to regular work tomorrow so it'll take a while, but it should be ready by the end of March or start of April. In the meantime, I thought I'd grant RPG CODEX an exclusive glimpse into the work process of an ARTIST:

https://voca.ro/1nuznPUj2hBq

https://voca.ro/19qz5aIUtnKx

Much better than I expected. But I do get a very strong internet snarky guy vibe.

 

[Jvegi]

I'm not interested because I despise your political views.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Working hard on my iwd2 video frens. I'm back to regular work tomorrow so it'll take a while, but it should be ready by the end of March or start of April. In the meantime, I thought I'd grant RPG CODEX an exclusive glimpse into the work process of an ARTIST:

https://voca.ro/1nuznPUj2hBq

https://voca.ro/19qz5aIUtnKx

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'm regularly updating my portraits library, and I came across this nice fellow: deviantart com /piofoks /gallery

You'll recongize the style similarities to IWD.

 

[adddeed]

Part I of my in-depth IWD retrospective has been posted. This is for 1.06 IWD, pre-HoW expansion.

It is written in a similar style to my ongoing Baldur's Gate retrospective, with which the reader is assumed to be acquainted.

Part I is basically just an overview of Setting & Scope and Chargen, but there is a section on ApR. Most of the retrospective is to be given over to a dungeon-by-dungeon analysis like the one I wrote for Durlag's Tower.

Enjoy!

Hey i love your site and been reading some articles. Super informative. Is there a way to download all of your articles somehow?

 

[AwesomeButton]

I managed to get IWD2 multiplayer to run on Windows 10 in 2021, using Game Ranger. I had problems initially where the client computer's game window would start losing and regaining focus as soon as it connected to the host computer. This very much seemed like an issue with Game Ranger itself because, for some reason, it shows a popup dialog as soon as you connect, informing you that to get back to Game Ranger you need to quit the game normally or click the button in said popup. The issue was resolved when I tried switching the two computers - using the previous client as a host computer.

 

[CappenVarra]

the only thing you need to run IWD multiplayer is the shared chill of inevitable doom deep in your heart, did you not know?

 

[Don Peste]

 

[Denim Destroyer]

[...]but some immediate improvements include a revision of Mirror Image to make it more balanced.

Looks like the balance man has been at his work much longer than I thought. Also the Barbarian camp concept art looks pretty nice I might have to look for a higher res version later.

 

[octavius]

Funny how unbalanced Heart of Winter ended up being, what with War Chant of the Sith, and quite uneven combat difficulty.

 

[CappenVarra]

 

[Melcar]

Fucking whores is what they were.

 

[Bara]

Finished Icewind Dale II again as it's been a while. For some reason the female halfing thief party member turned into a male dwarf some how midway through the adventure?

This happened on my first playthrough also. no idea what triggers it.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Finished Icewind Dale II again as it's been a while. For some reason the female halfing thief party member turned into a male dwarf some how midway through the adventure?

This happened on my first playthrough also. no idea what triggers it.

Changing class probably. The default avatar for halfling and gnome females is male dwarf for some classes IIRC.

 

[Snufkin]

Classic version seems like have sharper image quality then enchanced. Here is rar file with comparison.

https://workupload.com/file/ydwLb6h68B9

WTF Beamdog?

 

[AwesomeButton]

People familiar with the EE can say, but I think the EE uses a different version of the engine than the classic version, and also supports a wider range of resolutions, which made it necesseary for Beamdog to resample the backgrounds. Hence the loss of quality. BTW, can you zoom in and out in the IWD EE?

 

[Snufkin]

Yes i can. And i cannot change resolution in EE, i guess it goes for my native desktop which is 1280x1024. The screenshot of classic IWD i added is also 1280x1024 thanks to widescreen mod.

 

[Gargaune]

Yes, the EEs run on your native resolution, you can't set it manually.

 

[A horse of course]

The Enhanced Editions have all kinds of retarded visual fuckery. Someone who followed the saga of the EEs might correct me but I believe it was in patch 1.9 (pre-Dragonspear) they completely changed the game renderer to support their new "features".

 

[AwesomeButton]

Yes, the EEs run on your native resolution, you can't set it manually.

My God, what a vomit this EE is.

 

[Gargaune]

The Enhanced Editions have all kinds of retarded visual fuckery. Someone who followed the saga of the EEs might correct me but I believe it was in patch 1.9 (pre-Dragonspear) they completely changed the game renderer to support their new "features".

I think it was 2.0 that added some ill-considered features like sprite outlines, but pretty much all of that stuff can be toggled off now. About the only enduring visual tradeoff is a slight loss in general sharpness on account of the filtering technique, but it's fairly minor.

My God, what a vomit this EE is.

Is this really a concern, though? Genuine question, seeing as the EE has an extensive zoom range and there's no performance factor to consider, what would be the benefit in setting the resolution manually?

 

[A horse of course]

The Enhanced Editions have all kinds of retarded visual fuckery. Someone who followed the saga of the EEs might correct me but I believe it was in patch 1.9 (pre-Dragonspear) they completely changed the game renderer to support their new "features".

I think it was 2.0 that added some ill-considered features like sprite outlines, but pretty much all of that stuff can be toggled off now. About the only enduring visual tradeoff is a slight loss in general sharpness on account of the filtering technique, but it's fairly minor.

My God, what a vomit this EE is.

Is this really a concern, though? Genuine question, seeing as the EE has an extensive zoom range and there's no performance factor to consider, what would be the benefit in setting the resolution manually?

I played 2.5 (?) after my BG Trilogy replay last year, to see what it was like. Side-by-side the EE image quality definitely looks noticably worse even with all the retarded shit turned off - not only the upscaled backgrounds but the sprites themselves.