Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound, EoFF Ressurects It!

[Araciel]

hahaha yeah this is true...though whenever we play, we leave the NPCs out of it as much as possible...cameos at best...

anyway, there was actually a book entitled elminster in hell, and during the time when the city of shade reappeared, i think they witnessed him being torn out of faerun...been a while since i read those books....took him a while to get back

any of the chosen showing up is just a bit too deus for me, even if it's just to slap somoene in the face

but you have to have some iconic FR characters show up and with a plot as epic as this, the sage of shadowdale is quite likely to poke his hairy nose in

[Azure Chrysanthemum]

Plus Drizzt needs to make an appearance to satisfy the collective fanboys

But yeah, I've always been a firm advocate of sending Elminster to Ravenloft.

[Laddy]

? What the.....? Ah, um.... okay I give up, what are you talking about?

[Ender]

Roll Call (Identify Yourselves):

Do you sketch or draw (more than just casually)?
Do you have experience with creating art on the computer?
What programming languages can you write simple programs in?
Have you worked with creating or editing sound or music files?
Do you play DnD tabletop games or own DnD and/or Forgotten Realms sourcebooks?
How would you describe your knowledge about the Forgotten Realms setting?
Do you have people in mind you could recruit to work on various aspects of the game?

I'm curious to see what exactly we have here to work with,

ALSO: If this is really a go do you want to find a free forum somewhere so that this isn't clogging up this one with BG3 posts? (I vote yes)

Anyway, here are my answers:

Do you sketch or draw (more than just casually)? YES, better than most people, but I don't consider myself an artist by any means.
Do you have experience with creating art on the computer? YES, mostly photoshop and window's paint. I have done some simple graphical editing of game files for various games.
What programming languages can you write at least simple programs in? C++
Have you worked with creating or editing sound or music files? NO
Do you play DnD tabletop games or own DnD and/or Forgotten Realms sourcebooks? I don't play DnD, but I do own probably over half of the 3.0/3.5 edition books for the Forgotten Realms setting.
How would you describe your knowledge about the Forgotten Realms setting? Decent general knowledge of people, geography, and history, and obviously have a lot of info on hand, but I'm not an expert by any means.
Do you have people in mind you could recruit to work on various aspects of the game? Unfortunately no.

[Laddy]

Q. 1) I'm okay, logos and stuff, but other than that, I suck.
Q. 2) No, not really. I Microsoft Paint and that's it.
Q. 3) None, so F------------------.
Q. 4) No, yet again.
Q. 5) None at all. as you can tell.
Q. 6) Other than some computer and video games, none at all.
Q. 7) Many people on this site can write and draw, but I've asked some and they don't want to.

Okay, it may seem like I'm useless, but I will inform you, if I had D&D knowledge, I would most certainly write.

Also, I might answer another question.

Do you have an appealing voice for a PC RPG?) No, my voice is high-pitched.

[Azure Chrysanthemum]

Do you sketch or draw (more than just casually)? No
Do you have experience with creating art on the computer? No
What programming languages can you write simple programs in? None
Have you worked with creating or editing sound or music files? None
Do you play DnD tabletop games or own DnD and/or Forgotten Realms sourcebooks? Yes I play D&D 3.5, no I do not own Forgotten Realms sourcebooks.
How would you describe your knowledge about the Forgotten Realms setting? Fair.
Do you have people in mind you could recruit to work on various aspects of the game? Nope.

[Laddy]

What we need is somebody who could at least give a tech demo or something. Like a character walking or such.

[Ender]

What we need is somebody who could at least give a tech demo or something. Like a character walking or such.

Red, what did you have in mind for the type of graphical look/engine? 3D or the top-down 2D isometric view of BG1 and BG2?

There is a group of people building what amounts to an emulation of the Infinity Engine that BG1 and BG2 (as well as the Icewind Dale games and Planescape:Torment) ran on. As far as I can tell they've done a lot of work, but I have no idea as to exactly how far they've gotten or how customizable it will be. If you are interested in going for the BG1/2 look/feel, you should contact them:

http://gemrb.sourceforge.net/modules...q=yes&id_cat=3

Let them know you are heading a project to make a fan-based sequel to BG1 and 2 and ask them as to the status of their emulator, if it's ready for use with new/original content, what they still hope to get done with it and in what time frame, etc. You can also ask if anyone involved in that project would be interested in help with the programming/implimentation of this game, since they will know the engine best.

Another option would be to talk to people who own NWN2 about the scenario creation tools. If it is possible to create your own original characters, buildings, monsters, races, classes, etc. (both statistically and graphically), you may want to consider it. You would get the benefit of an engine that already has a lot of the DnD rules, plus the animations, graphical display, the combat engine, etc. built into it. On the downside, this would at best be considered a (albeit good) fan-made scenario for NWN2.

There may be other options for pre-built engines that you could use based on other similar RPGs. You may want to see what's out there. If you can get your hands on something that's already programmed and highly customizable, which requires you to upload the character sprites, GUI (the graphical user interface), backgrounds, etc., then things become significantly easier. Then it becomes a matter of creating the graphical and musical content, punching in stat info, and scripting the dialogue and game events.

The last option of course is to build the game engine from the bottom up. It's the ideal option if you have, or can get together, the people to do it, simply because in the end it'll be more rewarding for the people involved and because you'll be able to get exactly what you want within the bounds of the programmers' ability. Unfortunately, it looks like none of the people presently involved have anywhere near the ability to pull this off. That means some of us are either going to have to teach ourselves how to program, or you need to recruit more people (you'll need to do that anyway). There are plenty of websites devoted to game development. Find forums regarding game development and post a "Help Wanted" request for anyone interested in programming RPG game and graphics engines. There are almost certainly a number of people out there who are building their own game engines that if you approach them with a clear vision of what you want and give them some direction they could make this a lot easier.

[Laddy]

I want to build a custom engine. It's a daring task, but that's my preference, concerning this, I think Araciel should answer it.

[Ender]

I created an ez-board for game discussion if you're interested.

It's currently private and you'll need an ezboard membership.

The title is:

EoFF Baldur's Gate 3 Project

Here's the link:

http://p068.ezboard.com/beoffbaldursgate3project

The password is:

leolives

I haven't done this before, so I'm not sure if/how it will work. I will be out of town for the Christmas holiday, so if you can't get on, don't sweat it, carry on here or wherever. That also means that the board will temporarily be without admins or mods (You guys can take control of the board as needed after I clear who gets what duties with RedXIII13) so behave yourselves.

Invite who you need to for the purposes of the project, but don't bring people over just to "hang out."

If the project takes off I'll look to moving it to a better hosting service.

[Laddy]

Ah, I got it, I will see you there.

[Laddy]

I will like to add if this is to be discussed further, the link is where you will go!