Pillars of Eternity II - Patch to Add Mod Support

[Couchpotato]

That's because Shadowrun uses tiles. Pillars of Eternity is just one large 2D image.

Then I see no point of adding mod support, but what do I know.

I would love to seem them redo all the PoE games in the most recent iteration of the engine (when they're done with the series) - and I would especially love a cooperative multiplayer mode.

Not that I think it'll happen, though.

Not a bad idea as Larian seems to remaster every game they develop nowadays.

 

[Darth Tagnan]

Then I see no point of adding mod support, but what do I know.

Mechanics, classes, items, powers, items, etc.

 

[Darth Tagnan]

Not a bad idea as Larian seems to remaster every game they develop nowadays.

What games have they remastered?

Do you mean the enhanced editions? Those aren't really remasters, to my mind.

 

[Couchpotato]

Mechanics, classes, items, powers, items, etc.

Textures and new areas are all I look for in mods. That's why Bethesda will always be king of the mod scene due to using the same modified moddable game engine.

What games have they remastered?

Do you mean the enhanced editions? Those aren't really remasters, to my mind.

In a way they are just not your typical lets update the graphic/engine kind. If you read the latest update it should explain what's different in the Definitive Edition.

 

[Darth Tagnan]

Textures and new areas are all I look for in mods. That's why Bethesda will always be king of the mod scene due to using he same modified game engine.

I get that, but I assume you understand that other people exist and they might want other things?

 

[Couchpotato]

I get that, but I assume you understand that other people exist and they might want other things?

Yes but they don't matter now do they.

Anyway the PoE mod scene is disappointing.

(My personal opinion.)

 

[Copper Coin]

New area mods are possible. Anyone can draw a 2D image. The issue is that few people are talented enough to match the quality of Obsidian.

 

[rjshae]

New area mods are possible. Anyone can draw a 2D image. The issue is that few people are talented enough to match the quality of Obsidian.

There's more to these PoE# areas than just a 2D image.

 

[Couchpotato]

There's more to these PoE# areas than just a 2D image.

Yep I remember Josh explaining in a video how the art was rendered, and wouldn't be moddable. I will have to find the video again as it will be a few years old by now.

 

[Darth Tagnan]

PoE 2 areas aren't merely 2D images. They look like a combination of high fidelity pre-rendered backgrounds and proper 3D assets - which is how they're able to do complex lighting and shadow effects - as well as interactive animated objects.

Any custom area mod would be extremely hard work for the average modder - and there's absolutely no way we're going to see anything significant like that.

Even if you were able to create decent assets, you'd also have to hook it up to the engine and script animations - which I'm pretty certain is not going to be part of the modding toolset.

 

[Ripper]

I'd be surprised if we see new area mods for Deadfire. With their setup, you've got a 3d engine, using 2d planes, painted to look like 3d. It's a really convoluted and labour-intensive way of doing things, and without their tools and workflow, I think it'd be a nightmare. You never know with modders, though!

 

[Copper Coin]

PoE 2 areas aren't merely 2D images. They look like a combination of high fidelity pre-rendered backgrounds and proper 3D assets - w

No, the only 3D assets are the characters. Everything else is a 2D computer painted image.

 

[Ripper]

Yes and no. Actually everything in a Unity game is a 3d object. Unity doesn't actually have a proper 2d engine - it uses flattened 3d objects (which is also a pain in the arse). But, yes, most of PoE is painted flat planes, with some clever tricks to achieve lighting.

 

[Lucky Day]

They look like rendered 3d images which was how Arcanum worked and how all of Myst was done. It actually fooled me for Arcanum thinking it was all in 3d.

Graphically it gives unity (pun not intended) to the overall image and keeps the models from sticking out.

I remember doing 2d in 3d in my graphics class. You literally stick a texture on a 3d object and give that said object 0 depth. We used my professor's engine he wrote in college. With his lighting running in an infinite loop I counted the cycles and replaced the texture every second with character tiles including Peanut Butter Jelly time. The professor asked me for my permission to demo it to his later classes.

 

[Stingray]

No, the only 3D assets are the characters. Everything else is a 2D computer painted image.

While it's true that PoE backgrounds are 2D images, they aren't hand-painted as some people say. They are 2D images that were rendered from 3D sources, then touched up by hand.

One source citation on that: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60642-3d-or-hand-painted-graphics/?p=1207129

The 3D sources they're built from are almost certainly not even included in the game files…assuming so, then there'd be no way to re-use the existing art to create new maps, unless you want to do a lot of cropping and pasting and hand-touchups and hand-painting, which I'd have to think would be far more time-consuming than the process used to create the game's original maps.

 

[Copper Coin]

What does 3D sources mean? It's either 2-dimensional or its not.

He says like the IE games, which were entirely 2D. It's the same here.

 

[Stingray]

3D sources means their graphics are built in 3D (using models and textures and so forth) and then they render to 2D (with extremely high-quality settings obviously, since this only has to be done once), and then the rendering is saved as a flat image. In much the same way as how you have a 2D image on your monitor at any given moment while playing a fully 3D game, and you could just save off that image if you wanted. And then bring it up in an image viewer at any time you wanted, without having to re-render the 3D. However, it was still generated from 3D graphics techniques originally, and not hand-painted.

Among other things, some reasons to do that would be to (1) eliminate any performance issues at play time, because your video card doesn't have to do 3D rendering of any of the background (and especially not at the extreme settings they would have used), and (2) allow for hand-touchups.

 

[Stingray]

Replying again since you added this to your post...

He says like the IE games, which were entirely 2D. It's the same here.

I'm fairly certain Infinity Engines used the same technique described above. In fact, Josh confirms it in the post I linked above.

 

[Copper Coin]

You're right. They create a 3D model, make it a 2D image, and paint it with detail

Spoiler: example

 

[Stingray]

Interesting, thanks for digging that up. The caption on the top pic says it's the "untextured 3D model". What it doesn't say is whether it would be textured later on, as a starting point for hand touchups, or whether they would just render the whole thing untextured and paint it all in by hand. I would have thought the former, but would be interesting to know.

Edit: well, it does say "before it's prerendered", so probably can assume it got textured later. Maybe they just thought it was cooler to show us the untextured model.