The Planescape Trilogy - Purgatorio Demo Released

As promised, Rogue Dao's Purgatorio demo has been released. You can grab it from NW Vault (note: there are a lot of files). Comments from Bill Harper on the official forums:

Allow me to clear up the speculation, and make the official announcement:

I found some bugs last-minute, that needed to be repaired, before I could package. As a result, upload schedule was a few hours behind. File upload started at officially 4:14 am EST, Friday the 13th. Files might not get uploaded for public consumption until Saturday, as a result.

If it means anything to you, I am literally now ending a 44-hour straight work session, with absolutely not a single minute of sleep, in order to get both a couple more nifty features active and a hopefully even smoother playing experience. That, and final packaging of course.

I really gave it my all people, tried my best to keep this promise we made to you and keep this deadline. Missed by a few hours, I think. I've got nothing left to give for the minute, it's all been given to this noble effort. And I'm far beyond exhausted from it. But despite all that, I'm still very happy (and relieved) that we'll get to share the fruit of our long labors with all of you, and soon.

We really hope you enjoy what you you experience. We hope this demo is at least worth some of the long wait. We are certainly proud of what we've got to offer you.

Rest assured, after a much-needed modders' vacation, there is plenty more coming from us at Rogue Dao! Who knows—-maybe you'll come and join us this time.

Now pike off, ye barmy spire climbers!
And let the games begin!

Bill Harper
Co-Lead Designer, Rogue Dao Studios

…if the demo release is confusing, here's a post from earlier in the week on the NWN2 forums:

The purpose of the release is to release something.

Basically, Purg is not done. Development is slow and difficult, and above all we want a quality final product. However, we've been sitting on a massive amount of custom content, interesting areas, and, as you mentioned, amazing music. This release is for people to see what we've done so far, and if there's anything that would be useful to them, use it.

Just to be clear: don't download the module next Friday expecting a full play experience. Instead approach it as us putting out everything we have saying "here's what we've done, isn't it cool?". We think it is, and hopefully you will too.

Keep an eye on our forums for more information, and thanks for your confidence.

Thanks to Prime Junta on our forums.
More information.

To avoid having to download 43 individual files, apparently there is torrent (this isn't dodgy, its hosted by Rogue Dao themselves).
http://www.roguedao.com/files/purgdemo.torrent

And just to clarify, it's still a rather rough build. They want to get bug reports in, so you could treat it as a sort of beta also.

Fairly early impressions is that they definetely got the Planescape atmosphere right, Sigil in particular is really quite close to what I envisioned it when I read the sourcebooks the first time. But there is still lots of work to be done

But yeah, one of the things I was doubting was whether it was possible to actually do a Planescape mod in the NWN2 engine. And I must say I'm quite impressed with the result, and it's also rather impressive how (despite its many flaws) versatile the engine can be with some effort behind it. The great music also really helps sell the mood.

But if you're solely a player who wants a great game to play, I'd probably hold off until a more final version is posted. A lot of the stuff is in place but in a fairly rough shape.

I'll let everyone else be the debuggers and beta testers.

Get to work guys, let me know when it's done!

I put up some scenery screenshots for anyone interested in how it looks: http://www.roguedao.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1607

Like I said before, I'm very impressed with how the brought Planescape the NWN2 engine in terms of area design. Stuff like writing and obviously bugs will need a lot of polishing however. It's great fun seeing the areas though.

That looks lovely. I really, truly hope they finish this one; I can barely wait to play it.

But wait I will, until it's released or formally abandoned.

Originally Posted by Starwars
I put up some scenery screenshots for anyone interested in how it looks: http://www.roguedao.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1607

Looks fantastic! I really dig the atmosphere.
Also, that baatezu poster .
This really needs to get finished.
Downloading right now for closer inspection .

Lovely artwork and screens—very impressive. I'm glad they released something to show the project's still alive. (Really like the white wolf in several of those shots Starwars—is it a summons, a companion, or what?)

It's a companion yes, he's called Hide. The companions are a bit messed up at the moment, they didn't quite have the time to fix them properly in time for the demo, but he looks to be pretty cool and unique.

EDIT: Speaking of which, posted some new screenshots: http://www.roguedao.com/phpBB2/viewt…hp?p=8033#8033

Apologies for the double post, but just wanted to say that I posted the final batch of screenshots I took when testing the mod. They are accessed through the links above as well.

Thanks, starwars. Some really impressive art.