Baldur's Gate 3 - In Development ?

Whether load screens are too long or not is subjective...how long are yours?
 
Joined
Sep 26, 2007
Messages
3,429
I think that there is a popular tendency for people to overestimate what is dictated by the base engine, and underestimate how much is down to what the devs implement on top of it. There is a huge amount of control over things like loading and rendering, and Unity doesn’t give you problems with these things out of the box. There are sometimes specific bugs, and areas in which some engines are weaker (Unity’s renderer is less performant that Unreal’s, for instance), but I’m always seeing claims made about various engines on forums, and they’re often a combination of urban myth and Chinese whispers.

With the loading issue, Unity doesn’t dictate how much data your levels contain, or when it is loaded – that’s entirely down to the devs. As is mentioned in that article that Couch posted, when things are tight, optimising the loading process is just something that doesn’t get any attention. In an open world game, you have to implement level streaming – anticipating what data is going to be needed next, and loading it in the background. You can do something similar with old-school RPGS, by looking at how much memory is available, and prefetching based on weightings of what is likely to be loaded next. But it’s the sort of thing these smaller projects don’t have the resources to focus on.
 
Joined
Nov 8, 2014
Messages
12,085
Kingmaker, from throneroom to Kingdom management map: 20 seconds. May not sound like much, but the frequency plays a role, too.
 
Joined
May 18, 2012
Messages
2,315
Kingmaker, from throneroom to Kingdom management map: 20 seconds. May not sound like much, but the frequency plays a role, too.
Still a massive improvement over the "up to 2 minutes" that Couch mentioned earlier in the thread.
 
Joined
Sep 26, 2007
Messages
3,429
Still a massive improvement over the "up to 2 minutes" that Couch mentioned earlier in the thread.

Yeah, that sound extreme. I have quick transitions to/from throne room - the only long loading screen is when I first start the game, and even that is well under minute. I have an SSD though.
 
Joined
Aug 23, 2007
Messages
2,128
Location
Cape Town, South Africa
Still a massive improvement over the "up to 2 minutes" that Couch mentioned earlier in the thread.

True. With up to 2 minutes I would _definitely_ have set my kingdom to auto management. Despite any repercussions that might have.
 
Joined
May 18, 2012
Messages
2,315
I can easily knock out a page or two in my current book in under thirty seconds, which is what I do when I get a loading screen. You can fight and rage against it, or find a solution. =)
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2011
Messages
18,685
Location
Holly Hill, FL.
I'm curious, why don't people like the idea of BG3 being a turn-based game? Honestly, I think turn-based (kind of like in X-Com 2 where you have a couple different actions you can take on your turn instead of a number of action points that determine what you can do and how many times) would be a better fit, especially since it's based on Dungeons and Dragons and all the rules for determining stuff like actions, turn order, reactions, etc. are already laid out.

Because Baldur's Gate is known for having trash mobs around every corner and one of the main selling points of RTwP is that it makes trash encounters more bearable (you can go grab a snack or take a bathroom break while your party auto-slaughters the gibberling village).

Also, while BG is not the first RPG with RTwP it popularized the system. It's known for it and most fans of BG would probably want & expect it just as I expected a Fallout 3 to have turn-based combat.

I agree that TB is a much better fit for a D&D game or any PnP adaptation, but then it would make trash encounters take a bit longer. And we all know there's no way an RPG could possibly not have constant trash mobs.
 
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
2,296
Location
PA
The thing is like how a non-optimized program may be slow in a slow computer but unnoticeable in a fast computer. Maybe the game (or games in Unity whatever) is not optimized for load times, but if you have a SSD it's a non-issue or a small nuisance, but in a HD it's excruciatingly slow. Solution? Since you can't look at the code and fix it, either don't buy the game (and close yourself from some awesome games) or just get a freaking SSD, they're very cheap nowadays.
 
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Messages
5,645
Location
Tardis
I believe that many game developers are either lacking talent or experience. They might understand the tools they need to develop the product but they don't understand many technical issues related to algorithms and performance. Now this is a broad statement and there are many very talented and experienced game developers but probably the majority of them are weak.
-
Having recently played bards tale iv (last game I played); what bothered me about it wasn't that it had bugs but the nature of the bugs. They screamed poor implementation. I actually did not have a big problem with wasteland 2 but poe was quite awful (haven't played poe2 yet - waiting for all the dlc). Even the first release of divinity original sin (and 2) had embarrassing slow downs in certain areas that screamed poor implementation - however to Larian credit they actually fixed most of their performance issues (a lot of quests still have silly bugs but those are more understandable given the many ways some of the quests can be solved).
-
I haven't developed with either unreal or unity so I can't really comment on how these engines impact performance. I mostly code to the metal but a lot of our stuff run with micro and millisecond sensitivity.
-
I doubt many of these developers think in terms of iop; page faults and system cache.
-
Btw ssd helps in a lot of cases (my gaming pc is ssd based); but the truth is with proper sequential reads a hard disk can nearly out perform some cheaper ssd. It is seeks that kill consumer hard disks.
-
Anyway I've diverged from BG3. I'd prefer turn base and not too many trash combat but what it happens to be it happens to be.
-
Btw when it comes to monitoring the hardware - i HATE windows.
 
Joined
Oct 20, 2006
Messages
7,758
Location
usa - no longer boston
I'm curious, why don't people like the idea of BG3 being a turn-based game?

It must be UGOIGO for one cause: there is no audience for RTwP products, making it too hard to developp a RTwP product.
At the end of the day, players will replicate UgoIgo sequences and expect the product to play UgoIgo.

Better to make it UgoIgo from the start.

I agree that TB is a much better fit for a D&D game or any PnP adaptation
The key word is adaptation.
Usually, it is a port, trying to translate 1:1 the PnP rulesets.
Except it does not work at many levels.

These party based UgoIgo products'target are mostly people without the social resources to play TT, PnP etc
 
Joined
Mar 29, 2011
Messages
6,265
It's also the primary reason load times are so much longer for the same games on PS4 and Xbox.

Apparently this is not true. Many people have swapped the PS4 HDD with SSD and they didn't see huge performance improvement like they do with PC. There are other bottlenecks...
 
Joined
Oct 8, 2009
Messages
4,425
Location
UK
Apparently this is not true. Many people have swapped the PS4 HDD with SSD and they didn't see huge performance improvement like they do with PC. There are other bottlenecks…

I'm not so sure there would be other bottlenecks as such - it might just be that console games tend to do their loading in a more optimal way, so you don't see as much obvious benefit from the SSD. For example, PS4 games are designed to be playable before they've even finished installing - they install the first required data, then quietly install the rest in the background while you play. That's a different sort of thing, but you can see how the thinking might apply.
 
Joined
Nov 8, 2014
Messages
12,085
Kingmaker, from throneroom to Kingdom management map: 20 seconds. May not sound like much, but the frequency plays a role, too.
Bravo someone who understands. This game is a load screen simulator.
Get into town, instant port into throne room *load screen* click table *load screen* want to build barrack in village *load screen* build barracks, leave village menu *load screen* leave table *load screen* leave throne room *load screen* leave plaza *load screen* travel to new area *load screen*
So let's see it takes four minutes to load on start-up and 25-30 seconds for the rest of them for me. The startup-up screen even says it can take up to seven minutes to load.

Please spare me the usual fanboy replies once again. As I wont be replying to them.
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,073
Location
Spudlandia
Now back on topic Baldur's Gate 3 will be made on a better engine then Unity, and will be developed by Obsidian. I can smell the disappointment a mile away from RPG fans.:devilish:
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,073
Location
Spudlandia
Now back on topic Baldur's Gate 3 will be made on a better engine then Unity, and will be developed by Obsidian. I can smell the disappointment a mile away from RPG fans.:devilish:

Kotaku yesterday published information that Obsidian will soon be bought by Microsoft. Not a positive prospect for Obsidian future production in my book.
 
Joined
Oct 6, 2018
Messages
1,113
I think it will use DnD 5 and the “new“ setting.
Does the city of Baldur's Gate still exist there?

Yes. Baldur's Gate survived both the Spellplague and the Sundering.

After the Spellplague it became the largest city in the realms. I don't know if it still is or if a lot of the refugees filling it went home after the Sundering fixed a lot of their homelands.

There is a modual for 5e called Murder in Baldur's Gate, about the return of Bhaal.

If that is not the plot for BG 3, maybe Dragon Heist/Dungeon of the Mad Mage will be, where we explore Waterdeep, Skullport, and all 23 levels of Undermountain.

Alternately it might be based on whatever comes after that.

If it is based on the 5e, that means playable Dragonborn, Tieflings, and Drow at the very least, and I'm betting Ghostwise Halflings, Aasimar, Grey Dwarves, Deep Gnomes, Genasi, are in too. Hopefully all of the races, subraces, and subclasses will be in. It sounds like a lot but you could fit all the none PHB 5e player options into 1 book with room to spare.
 
Joined
Oct 12, 2018
Messages
1
Back
Top Bottom