Larian Studios - The why of Our Third Secret Project

kobold said:

Buy original Divinity if you don't have it. Great game.

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This is a good point and it gives me an idea.

Divine Divinity is the game I enjoyed the most and yet it's the game Larian made with the least experience making games. It feels like it must have something to do with the 2D graphics.

Larian should do another 2D game. So much more oldschool charm and if 3D is to be isometric anyway its not a downgrade gameplay wise and depending on the pixel art a "sideways" move in quality for graphics.

Consoles have almost always been a primary focus for Larian and the move away from 2D was always a move away from PC.

If anyone remembers Divinity 2 back when it was the "secret project" it was going to be a "next-gen" 3D game for xbox 360. The result was a potentially pretty good RPG rushed and ruined on a clunky 3D engine. Not really worthy of being associated Divinity 1 as the fantasy setting was about the only thing the two had in common.

I'd love to see a 100% PC focused true 2D sequel to the original. 3D is fine though. Just a thought.

SirJames said:

I'd love to see a 100% PC focused true 2D sequel to the original.

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Me too!! Would love that.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

To quote another one :

"Racist !"



Why does it *need* to go away ? Where is the "need" in that, actually ?
Me, I'm still fine with 32 bit. I really cannot see any "need".

And that apart from the fact that I just don't have the money to upgrade that much. I don't even have the money for upgrading into Windows 7 yet because of some hardships.

And besides that, I still want to be able to run older games on my PC.
64bit blocks me out on some.

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No no, he's right. You have my sympathies about the inability to upgrade, that sucks. But for multiple reasons I would suggest as a friend that upgrading be put higher on your priority list (below food but above new clothes). I'm assuming you're using XP and not a maintained distribution of Linux. That's pretty much officially dangerous as security updates have ceased for awhile now. You need a secure system for day-to-day computing, especially if you do banking online. Again, I'm making some assumptions about your situation, but please don't take offense. Understand I'm giving earnest friendly advice in suggesting you seek to upgrade as soon as you can.

I would also suggest upgrading to Windows 8 instead of 7. There are under-the-hood improvements 7 doesn't have and the interface problem can be dealt with in short order. Actually 10 may be a better bet if you hold off till late summer or early fall.

Regarding games, there's never a "need" for games. They're entertainment, not food. But as for the importance of of the x64 change, being able to address more memory is huge to an RPG like this. I don't doubt for a second they've been bumping up against memory limits through development. Getting some breathing room is a good thing. It opens development studios to new technical possibilities they didn't have before. Having a substantial install base stuck on 32 bit OS (and CPU??) may have artificially held back some development advances. Mostly graphical, sure, but possibly some new avenues like AI or systems. Games are both aesthetic art and technical art and it's good to see a pretty old technology finally sunset. I won't miss 32 bit processing.

Incidentally, how are you unable to run older programs due to 64 bit? Both CPU and OS are backwards compatible. Possibly old XP specific or old GPU tech?

SirJames said:

This is a good point and it gives me an idea.

Divine Divinity is the game I enjoyed the most and yet it's the game Larian made with the least experience making games. It feels like it must have something to do with the 2D graphics.

Larian should do another 2D game. So much more oldschool charm and if 3D is to be isometric anyway its not a downgrade gameplay wise and depending on the pixel art a "sideways" move in quality for graphics.

Consoles have almost always been a primary focus for Larian and the move away from 2D was always a move away from PC.

If anyone remembers Divinity 2 back when it was the "secret project" it was going to be a "next-gen" 3D game for xbox 360. The result was a potentially pretty good RPG rushed and ruined on a clunky 3D engine. Not really worthy of being associated Divinity 1 as the fantasy setting was about the only thing the two had in common.

I'd love to see a 100% PC focused true 2D sequel to the original. 3D is fine though. Just a thought.

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That's not Swen and Larian's style though. I remember being deep in their community when they were making DD and Swen was really harping on keeping up with the state of the art (Diablo/Diablo II) but taking it in a distinctly deep RPG direction. He's kind of like a spiritual successor to 90s era Garriott that way, making deep RPGs with the newest possible tech instead of getting distracted by the RP possibilities of a super large community (UO).

And I guess I'll throw in one more opinion.

I'm absolutely tickled to hear about controller friendliness and console compatibility. I created a Steam box (HTPC) for my living room and it works marvelously well. Sometimes I need a keyboard, but I'll mostly try to use a 360 controller. It is far more satisfying and comfortable. M&K at the desk began giving me cramps and this represents a bit of a relief.

I'm pleased about the latter because it represents new revenue streams for a really good small company. The fears of PC or deep RPG abandonment are essentially FUD and not really warranted if you pay close attention to both Larian and the state of PC gaming. If you're planning on abandoning your PC RPG roots, there are few worse ways to do so than developing three RPGs simultaneously. That, Swen's rabid association with pushing these kinds of games forward, and the centralization of the Steam platform give PC RPGs a market strength they haven't had before. This represents a new welcoming of the PS Xbox players into our fold, not the loss of "our" developers to console heathens.

The only real remaining risk is that of the console and TV centric user interface. I'm honestly not that fussed about it myself (I'm one of the weirdos that prefers Skyrim vanilla on a TV to SkyUI), but I've noticed that well scaled UI systems appear to have improved across the board since Bethsoft and Skyrim. And I would also suggest, maybe controversially, that there are bigger fish to fry in making good RPGs than the aesthetics of a console centric UI that's still quite usable in M&K. I should know. I beat
Final Fantasy VII on PC and that was a mess compared to Fallout and Skyrim.

SirJames said:

Consoles have almost always been a primary focus for Larian and the move away from 2D was always a move away from PC.

If anyone remembers Divinity 2 back when it was the "secret project" it was going to be a "next-gen" 3D game for xbox 360. The result was a potentially pretty good RPG rushed and ruined on a clunky 3D engine. Not really worthy of being associated Divinity 1 as the fantasy setting was about the only thing the two had in common.

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As far as I remember from the various times I talked with them during the development of Divinity 2, everything worked on PC first and made to work on consoles afterwards. Original Sin was designed completely on PC and with the PC as target. The whole console thing is something from the last 6 months.
I honestly fail to see how consoles have almost always been a primary focus for Larian Studios.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Why does it *need* to go away ? Where is the "need" in that, actually ?
Me, I'm still fine with 32 bit. I really cannot see any "need".

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One reason why Simcity 2013 sucked as much as it did is because they decided to support 32-bit systems. Simcity 4 from 2003 already suffered from this - what would people give for a 64-bit engine for that game. The whole simulation and strategy genres suffer from the need to cater to 32-bit holdouts.

I can imagine that it's difficult with personal hardships, but I congratulate developers that finally leave 32-bit behind. Also, as Bedwyr said, it's not safe to go into the internet with a Win XP computer. Planned obsolescence sucks, but I can see that MS doesn't want to support a 14 year old operating system anymore.

I still cannot see why SIM City "sucked" because of it being 32bit. I mean, no-one really gave me technical reasons for this.

And, personally, I still don't understand why someone can't be fine with DirectX 9. It worked for so many years now, I just don't need anything better.

On the other side, I talked to an representative of Deep Silver, German publisher of the new version, and he literally tod me (althogh my info that it'll be for 64bit only was new to him) that "there is no ill will", but instead "because of the new technology". He meant modern systems.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I still cannot see why SIM City "sucked" because of it being 32bit. I mean, no-one really gave me technical reasons for this.

And, personally, I still don't understand why someone can't be fine with DirectX 9. It worked for so many years now, I just don't need anything better.

On the other side, I talked to an representative of Deep Silver, German publisher of the new version, and he literally tod me (althogh my info that it'll be for 64bit only was new to him) that "there is no ill will", but instead "because of the new technology". He meant modern systems.

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Never got the game. My absolute wild guess is that one of the biggest limitations to the game was city size: absurdly small. Because 32 bit is limited in the memory is can address, the city size could not grow to utilize the resources someone might have to build a bigger city. So perhaps Maxis decided not to devote resources towards developing a 64 bit executable that could access the much higher resources many already have and thus allow more reasonably sized cities. The feature was considered so critical to an adequate SimCity experience that, if true, the decision largely sunk the game even outside it's buggy early release timeframe.

As for DirectX, I think I'm going to pretty much dismit's the "Why leave DX 9?" sentiment out of hand at this point. The multithreading argument alone leads anyone intuitively to DX 11 and 12. Processing power has progressed but games have technically stagnated due in no small part to memory management and an absurd lock-in to single core processing. Clock speeds are stuck, but core changes, busses, and GPU CPU interfaces keep getting better. DirectX 9 is really long in the tooth at this point and honestly needs to be put down.

And I'm not making purely a graphics argument. I'm a pretty hardcore mechanics uber alles person. But in seeing what I've seen in my work doing MPI CUDA development coupled with machine optimization, this is the next major gameplay change besides VR. I agree with Wardell who, with some personal issues aside, really "gets" AI. He thinks we've stagnated badly and I agree. Being able to address all the modern computing resources we now have and do it quickly in development is a big deal.

they sound disappointed or intimidated by PC gamers.
quality is under par as far as im concerned so its a rational decision

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I still cannot see why SIM City "sucked" because of it being 32bit. I mean, no-one really gave me technical reasons for this.

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Simulations need the full processor power and lots of memory for the huge amount of data they process. Cities: Skylines for example uses something between 8 and 16 GB of system RAM on my machine. A 32-bit system can only handle 4 GB of total address space, a 64-bit system 16 EB (exabytes), at least theoretically. As Bedwyr mentioned, that's the reason why SimCity turned out to be SimVillage. The 2003 game SimCity 4 is still running into memory limitations on modern systems, due to it being a 32-bit game. The better graphics of today made this problem worse for the 2013 game.

That's why for Cities: Skylines, a conscious decision was made to go 64-bit only. The game was not possible to make with 32-bit limitations. It's usually the marketing departments of the publisher that push for 32-bit versions, even though this limitation is often enough crippling from a technical side.

Ill add as a huge Kerbal Space Program fan that modders are running into all kind of issues. They're begging Squad to develop and release a 64 bit exe, but there's no guarantee. Might come with the Unity 5 build; unclear. Till then people are doing all kinds of texture compression tricks to get the memory load down.

Bedwyr said:

Ill add as a huge Kerbal Space Program fan that modders are running into all kind of issues. They're begging Squad to develop and release a 64 bit exe, but there's no guarantee. Might come with the Unity 5 build; unclear. Till then people are doing all kinds of texture compression tricks to get the memory load down.

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Sorry for the OT, but how is that game? It's on my wishlist because it looks interesting... Maybe I'll watch some gameplay vids.

Thank you for your replies. Now I understand things a bit better.

But - today I just invented a new line for the refrain of "Word Of Mouth" by Mike & The Mechanics :

"From the north side
to the east side,
from the south side
to the west
we don't need no
tesselations
if we've got bitmaps
all around."



( If things go well I'll be able to hear its original live on Monday evening. )

Myrthos said:

As far as I remember from the various times I talked with them during the development of Divinity 2, everything worked on PC first and made to work on consoles afterwards. Original Sin was designed completely on PC and with the PC as target. The whole console thing is something from the last 6 months.
I honestly fail to see how consoles have almost always been a primary focus for Larian Studios.

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A reply from mythros! He must like the 2D idea too! Maybe he wants to reminisce about the early days of Larian.

Oh.

Well, this is awkward.

I'll admit I don't know a great deal about developing games on consoles but I imagine they're all sitting around on their computers and not spewing out code with a nintendo controller. It's probably common enough that these programs can compile and run on the computers they're designed on. That's why everything ran on PC first, but it doesn't mean more time wasn't spent fucking around with the console client. Also of note was Div2 was only on xbox which uses directX "9c" and not on the more confusing hardware of the PS3.

The x86 cpu architecture of the new xbox and playstation means writing CPU code is the same for all these platforms which means there's a lot less to tweak when moving it to another system. This wasn't done by accident, it was all done to lower development time for AAA multiplatform games. If this was the case at the time Div2 was developed then we'd definitely have seen a playstation version.

Sure, Original Sin was PC focused, but it was also crowd funded!(and, really, so was Dragon Commander) When it comes to pleasing a modern publisher Larian will be sure to return their focus to consoles because every publisher wants console games.

This is how I see it.

LED Wars (1998)
Divine Divinity (2002)
Beyond Divinity (2004)six years no consoles
Divinity II: Ego Draconis (2009)
Divinity II: Flames of Vengeance (2010)six years with consoles
Divinity: Dragon Commander (2013)
Divinity: Original Sin (2014)
crowdfunded freedom with no publisher and no consoles

So half their time in the industry its been a primary focus, and when you consider that for part of that first half with LED wars I hadn't heard of Larian then it certainly feels like almost always is accurate enough.

Publishers almost always want console games and if its the case for the publisher then its the case for Larian.

When games like Original Sin and Wasteland 2 are released for the consoles, we're looking at evolving a very large audience. Assuming, of course, that the audience will take to this kind of design.

I think it will, as I believe good games will be played no matter where and how.

It represents a step towards publishers being more open about funding the kind of games that are dear to our Watch hearts, and I'm very happy to see them having success.

Original Sin, especially, because I think of the "big 3" (PoE, WL2 and D:OS) - it's the only one with actual innovation and boldness in its vision. It wasn't a safe fan-service product, and I commend Larian for that - and I think it's the perfect example of what Kickstarter could be about.

SirJames said:

So half their time in the industry its been a primary focus, and when you consider that for part of that first half with LED wars I hadn't heard of Larian then it certainly feels like almost always is accurate enough.

Publishers almost always want console games and if its the case for the publisher then its the case for Larian.

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So, releasing five games without console support and divinity II with console support gives them a primary focus on consoles, just because the development of Divinity II took quite some time.
That puts your post in perspective.

Bedwyr said:

I'm assuming you're using XP and not a maintained distribution of Linux. That's pretty much officially dangerous as security updates have ceased for awhile now. You need a secure system for day-to-day computing, especially if you do banking online.

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There is no proof that XP users suffer from illegal activity more than newer OS users.
From security standpoint, a home user can stick to XP without fears. Why should anyone upgrade then? Because the new software won't work on XP. And I'm not talking about games only.

Bedwyr said:

I would also suggest upgrading to Windows 8 instead of 7. There are under-the-hood improvements 7 doesn't have and the interface problem can be dealt with in short order. Actually 10 may be a better bet if you hold off till late summer or early fall.

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Win 8 upgrade because of performance? Don't be rediculous.
There is nothing win8 added that is desperately needed. Win 8 is not a bad OS, it's miles away from broken ME and Vista, but it's OS noone really needed.
However, for whatever reason, win8 is cheaper than win7. Knowing that upgrade from win7/8 to win10 will be free, and win10 should be out in a couple of months, the only reason to put win8 and not win7 on a new PC is the OS price.

But here's the catch, knowing win10 will be out soon, why should anyone really upgrade from XP (or Vista) to win 7 or win 8 today? We don't know what the price for a brand new win10 license (non-upgrade) will be. Maybe it'll be cheaper than win 8.
Thus the only logical thing to do now, unless your win XP machine dies, is to wait till win10 price is revealed.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I still don't understand why someone can't be fine with DirectX 9. It worked for so many years now, I just don't need anything better.

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Nokia3310 worked for so many years, noone needed anything better, yet everyone has a smartphone today. Playstation 3 owners didn't need Playstation 4 - but they still got it.
The technology moves forward. You can't stop the progress by saying "I don't need it". You do need it, you just don't know that you need it.
Plus, it's good for marketing, sales and generally ecomony. We all want to buy something fancy and new, right? Who cares if we actually need it. The world crisis didn't affect videogames industry. Why? Because there is always something new, something unseen before, something that can still sell.

About D:OS EE going x64…
There's the thing called memory addressing. Games, but also some other resources demanding software, need crapload of your RAM. It's not a strange thing. To address enough of RAM without falling apart, a piece of software just can't stick to x32.
Was it completely necessary to go x64 only with D:OS EE we can't know, we're not devs. But going x64 devs simply don't have to care about memory limitations, they don't have to degrade certain parts of the product.

Myrthos said:

So, releasing five games without console support and divinity II with console support gives them a primary focus on consoles, just because the development of Divinity II took quite some time.
That puts your post in perspective.

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Sure. Is that unreasonable?

The most recent time has more weight in memory. Not just because the memory is fresh but because its closer to the present day and how things are now.

Blog said:

the announcement of Divinity:Original Sin – Enhanced Edition for Xbox One/PS4/PC/Mac/Linux/SteamOS and was eagerly shared in the office – it really is the type of stuff that makes developers tick.

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Consoles are what makes developers tick, man.