Planescape Torment, The 2 Baldur's Gate and the 2 Icewind Dale, that's it, why is that? It seems like such a waste of an engine, they should've open sourced it so anyone could've built their own standalone campaign mods in it
>>3560282It's crazy how IE is so much better for crpgs than Unity in pretty much every department, while also being easily moddable.
>>3560282Because it was outdated. The industry moved past isometric games in the 2000s.That's the reason iirc. They didn't have much forward thinking regarding video games back then. Still don't.
>>3560282Couldn't procedurally generate maps, required "hand"made assests for all locations, buggy and exploitable.
>>3560282Because it's not every good and IWD2 already pushed it to its absolute breaking point.
>>3560282Which engine was Fallout 1 and 2 made with?
>>3560282Because most engines only exist in a short time span for the purpose of a few games. Then most developers have made or acquired more advanced engines that either allow them to do more or to take better advantage of improved tech.
>>3560320It's funny how we still get indie games that are not even close to that level visually. Though usually they are both developed and enjoyed by soulless autists, unless we're talking about having an incredibly fun concept without skills/resources to make the game look pleasant.
>>3560368What level visually exactly?
>>3560282Honestly, it makes more sense to mourn Bioware's 3D destructible terrain engine from Shattered Steel. Infinity Engine was pretty much taken to it's maximum, and it's not even that isometric painted environments with sprites from pre-rendered 3D was such a huge thing in those days. People like to be tribal about everything now, but neither Bioware nor Black Isle had any particular commitments to those things. You have to remember that, and then reconsider being so tribal about it all. They wanted to make games in all sorts of ways, and to some extent they did, which is why they brought out the Aurora Engine, then retooled it to work with Jade Empire and served as a basis for DA:O and NWN2 and The Witcher.Many of their formats are similar or just copied over between engines too, or they're replaced by strict improvements. You could never really expect them to not advance and just keep rehashing the same stuff, especially not looking back in hindsight with nostalgia goggles.Open source is also one of those silly ideas when it comes to games. It almost never results in much, barring a few notable exceptions, and often just helps creating semi-official remakes when original stuff is lost by the current IP owners. Beamdog which is owned by some Bioware OG's already had as much access to the original source as you can expect and not everybody is happy about their remakes. New Bioware is less OG Bioware than Beamdog, but you can see the copy pasta controversies for yourself.You could still use the modding tools for IE to make your own campaign though, but you didn't, because it's laborious and nobody was THAT interested in it. Which again is a refutation of the open source argument. We wouldn't have had lots of great games if they did open source it. It would just be code that exists in some autists' code libraries collecting dust, since the autists don't even code.
>>3560368Take away the graininess and it just seems like pre-rendered 3D snapshots. I think if you tried to recreate the process it would just look kind of bad, like trying to redo black and white movies in black and white but using modern equipment. Maybe even a similar problem with pixel art, where most modern pixel art doesn't do stuff like dithering and so it never looks like 8-bit and 16-bit era game art.
>>3560380This is objectively good looking though.
>>3560385limitations breed creativity
>>3560388Yeah that's the point.
>>3560446>limitations breed creativityTruth
>>3560446Not those kind of limitations though. They modeled it in 3D without experiencing limitations, then basically screenshot it for use. The creative part was the idea to screenshot it, but they weren't the first to do that either. It's like how the texture for the ground in one of the towns is literally just coffee beans. You could get better textures today, but they didn't have to use coffee beans, but if you tried to redo it today you would notice it due to higher fidelity alone. It's just how it is.
>>3560282>only 5 games on an engineThat's a lot for back then. This was when developers made their own shit and didn't pump something out with middleware.
>>3560453If you think the engines they used to model these were without limitation you are pretty blind. I think a lot of the aesthetic appeal comes from the primitive early 3d lighting, its not very realistic but the style is unique.
>>3560465Limited in a technical sense maybe, limited just like today. It's not that they needed to use coffee beans as a textures, and you're an actual moron if you think there's any good to be had from using coffee bean textures today. The point is that they got away with more stuff because of the low fidelity, not because they were more creative. Being able to get away with stuff isn't the intentional creativity you're referring to.
>>3560465With the HD wide-screen mods the games are like playing through a beautiful painting on pc. Especially the icewind Dale games which have the most gorgeous environmentsTemple of elemental evil also had a really pretty engine. To bad only that game and keep on the borderlands used it
>>3560282Because Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind. /thread
>>3560382>sr0mkg>open source is a bad idea because people will not use itStop being such a jaded cunt on the Internet
>>3560368Poe2 looks good, but that's about all it does.
>>3560385>I think if you tried to recreate the processThere's people complaining about stagnation of games today, and there's people wishing that games stagnated in the 2000s.Back then, I was excited to see progress, and I still am. Some people now go play older games and they think they're so much better, but I believe it's just the novelty, since old games are different. But maybe they don't realize that those old games got old too at the time, and people wanted something new. It's too easy to take things of today for granted.
>>3560368>indie games that are not even close to that level visuallyOne problem is that indies don't have talented artists, but another one is that perhaps they don't understand the value of visuals. Pixel art for example is deceptively easy to make, but hard to master.
>>3560344I think custom built by tim in his free time
there was a good 10 years that if a game wasn't 3d it was seen as outdated. 2d sprite-based games didn't come back into the human conscience until the rise of indies in the early 2010s. i mean look at this shit, fallout 1/2 are not graphic juggernauts but they look 30000 times better than this shit. but this shit is 3d, infinity engines can't do that so time to make a new one that can.
>>3560511neverwinter nights looked like absolute shit and still does
>>3560652And the combat was worse than IE games, it was a total downgrade
>>3560614No, games were objectively best late 90s early 2000sThat's due to two trends- improving budgets, teams and better tech compared to earlier times- only the start of declining trend of suits taking over and neutering creativity in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator to increase sales and profits
>>3560808early to mid 90s was far more creative.
>>3560813but had far less resources and consumer tech was far behind what will be available in just 10 yearspicrel is how I see itwe are past peak PC gamingPSofc just as there were bad games in the 90s, there were good games in late 2000sobviously I'm talking general trends herePPSconsole market's story was different consumer slop from the start
>>3560832tech constantly improving and devs chasing that created a lot of garbage, it isn't just "suits". media data capacity alone led to FMV, which was awful. i think you oversimplify.
>>3560840>i think you oversimplify.sure no doubt about thatbut it's a good first-order approximation
>>3560477If you think the software they had could easily paint scenes, or even create simple terrain you are an idiot. The tools they had to create anything in 3d back then were so primitive, unwieldy, and limited that someone who has only used modern software(even just 5 years newer) cannot even comprehend.it was nothing like today, not even remotely close.
>>3560614You're not responding to a post about stagnation in games. You're responding to a post pointing out where devs were lazy and cut corners but it still worked out because the tech was bad in a way that allowed it to be ignored. People just want to make broad generalized statements about trends going in one direction, but the reality is more complicated.Then you have people who have mistaken nostalgia for the wrong things, just like you have people now that act like pixelated graphics was an artistic choice. As soon as they could move on all the devs moved to better tech, until their bosses heard they could farm nostalgia bucks. The things that caused game development to radically change was not an increase in resolution and displayed colors.
>>3560884Stop jerking off to how mystical you think it was to use early 3D software. It has improved but you can still recreate the same janky look and feel. People don't because it's shit and it works better now. It didn't breed creativity or any such nonsense, that's just a poorly applied platitude that doesn't describe the creative process at the time.
>>3561071>until their bosses heard they could farm nostalgia bucksi don't think minecraft's popularity was based on nostalgia.
>>3560282Because 3d was all the rage, even Bioware jumped on the trend.
>>3561085No, it wasn't completely, not that this is relevant. In part it was also a protest giving a middle finger to the industry though. It's probably one of the biggest reasons that you have early access today too. Be careful for what you wish for and all that.
>>3561306i think the game blowing up proved that style isn't entirely tied to tech and that on a long enough timeline anything becomes an artistic choice that people can appreciate.
>>3560388No. It looks like some trash soviet propaganda cartoons.
>>3560368It is a 2D image overlaid over another 2D image. The entire thing is a 3D illusion and all movement is done on a flat top down 2D plane. When making new content for the game getting this look is essentially just a mix of photoshop and 3D editing.Heck you can even skip the 3D renders if you know how to draw (not AI art commissions).
>>3562062>Russki thinks he knows anything about artAnon, pls.
>>3560832>tempers
>>3560465>primitive early 3d lightingSpeaking of the lighting the only real lighting is an overlay that determines changes to colour gradients. The only fancy lighting effects you see are all from the pics used to make the map's appearance.Don't get me wrong this is a pretty robust setup and everything is really tight in the infinity engine. Yet, nothing you are talking about here actually applies.
>>3562946fuck of I'm an esl an on top of that an engineer and I was tired and that was too much effort for a 4chong post as is
>>3560798Nwns real-time combat animations were infinitely better than anything that came before it as a rtwp CRPG. You are deluded and are slavic, or have probably experienced what you would call "gender dysphoria" at least once in your lifetime.
>>3562967What kind of engineer? You’d better be a real one
>>3564585You are probably half-blind or completely tasteless, NWN looked like a pile of vomit and the gameplay was way worse than IE games, having better animations (it didn't btw) doesn't make the gameplay/combat better, you are probably just one of those weirdos who likes to larp on one of those NWN empty shards with other morbidly obese people but objectively that game is an abomination with no reedeming qualities
>>3564589>objectively that game is an abomination with no reedeming qualitiesYou are deranged if you think this.
