Divinity 2 - Patch 1.02

The patch version 1.02 has just been released. It is available on the official Divinity 2 site, but don't bother going there any time soon, the server is extremely slow. You better wait a bit until the patch is available from other locations as well.
Larian studios frum member Phnx translated the German patch notes:

• Sorting function for items in the inventory and in a few other menues implemented
• Improvement of texture quality
• More options in the graphic options menu
• 3 new custom buttons for the aiming system
• Crashes caused by the fading system fixed
• Navigation-path improved for big creatures like trolls or demons
• Performance for single core-processors improved and an extra option in the graphics options implemented
• Problem with aiming of story-NPCs has been fixed
• "Always running" when frequently using pause/running buttons has been fixed
• Fading system has been improved

Thanks Leth and Alrik for letting us know.


More information.

The game is definitely much improved. I posted a summary of changes that I noticed in the game on the official forum:

1. More graphics options
2. Much smoother performance. (No more FPS slow down at the menu or inventory screens! And no more laggy mouse when the dialog selection screen comes up. ) Though there is still very noticeable stuttering when you are running around in the world. (It is the worst in heavily wooded areas. And strangely, my FPS never dipped below 35 FPS, and SLI setting for my 295 GTX doesn't change the behavior.)
3. Better inventory textures. And in-game textures in general. They are much much more detailed now! Seriously they are gorgeous!
4. MANUAL TARGETTING system! You can bind keys to "tab" target!
5. Difficulty option added.
6. Much longer view range (at highest setting).
7. Swimming animation is improved. Your character actually swim in water (for the most part) rather than "floating" on top of water.
8. Water looks "livelier." Water in river has a better flowing animation.
7. (Not sure if this is completely new, but it definitely wasn't working for me before) You can access selections using the number keys.

9. Did I mention much more detailed textures? At the highest settings, everything in the game looks so much more detailed. I could swear that under different lighting, your character and esp. your minion even has a very artistic "cell shade" look to them.
10. I don't know if this is true or not, but the initial CD check seem to be shorter. Perhaps a securom update? (Also, exiting the game is much much faster now)

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any other animations improvments except swimming? the 1.0 version had some of the choppiest animations i've seen since 1997 or so, its like they're runing at 10 FPS (while the rest of the game is fluid) even the water was poorly animated in the same way.

The animation is smoother. (There is actually an animation setting that you can enable, to make the animation more "real time." It appears that both shadow and animations were updated in "time slices" in the previous patches, which means that they are updated not as frequently as possible. With the "real time" setting, you will immediately notice that the somewhat "static" shadows casted by large trees now "sways" in the wind.)

But I am betting noticeable stuttering in heavily wooded outdoor areas. The stuttering doesn't seem to be related to the gfx card either.
It seems to be related to the game trying to process a bunch of info at once and is not doing a fast enough job to get it done, does causing the game to seem to just pause momentarily.
This is not uncommon for games that has a lot of things that need to be done at every frame updates (which is why some RPGs locks the FPS at 30fps). I will have to do more testing tomorrow, but an interesting side affect of this is that you will get a much smoother gaming experience if you crank up the gfx settings as high as possible, to the point where your mean fps is around 30fps.

It sounds like Divinity 2 still has some minor issues that need to be worked out. I'm really looking forward to see how it looks, and runs, by the time it hits NA. It sounds like Larian is making a great effort to support/improve the game though.

JDR13 said:

It sounds like Divinity 2 still has some minor issues that need to be worked out. I'm really looking forward to see how it looks, and runs, by the time it hits NA. It sounds like Larian is making a great effort to support/improve the game though.

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That is my thought - I keep reading these things and thinking, oh good, they're taking care of that for us!

txa1265 said:

That is my thought - I keep reading these things and thinking, oh good, they're taking care of that for us!

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I'm not that happy about that.

No company could do it vice versa, the English-language market has become far too important.

Use some small countries as a testing area for the big market ...

Germany is not a small market. Chris Priestly confirmed to me that it's the world's 2nd most important market for fantasy RPGs.

Gorath said:

Germany is not a small market. Chris Priestly confirmed to me that it's the world's 2nd most important market for fantasy RPGs.

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For some reason that does not surprise me in the least.

It surprises me. I would've thought it was much lower on the list.

Anderson said:

It surprises me. I would've thought it was much lower on the list.

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I really don't mean to offend anyone, but a country that was led down the destructive fantasy path of Nazism is surely a place where fantasy rpg games will thrive

Melvil said:

I really don't mean to offend anyone, but a country that was led down the destructive fantasy path of Nazism is surely a place where fantasy rpg games will thrive

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Linking Hitler and the Nazi's to the idea of a country preferring fantasy RPGs... that's a new one.

Anderson said:

It surprises me. I would've thought it was much lower on the list.

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Me too.

Considering how several publishers treat the German market ...

I'm guessing some part of the reason they release in Germany first is so that they can understand the questions and problems that arise much better than they could if they released first in the English-speaking market. Larian's speak German fluently and English not as well. I'd much rather release my game first in a country where I can understand what's going on when a problem arises.

Of course, but that's still kind of - what I called it - optimisation towards the English-speaking market.

Benelux has probably just gotten a publisher, rumors say (at least they were rumors the last time I read there), and Benelux would've been much closer to Belgium anyway.

By the way, most of the Larians understand some German, but I don't know how much, actually. In one post Larian ForkTong says he'd probably be the only one of being able to *fluently* understand German. Lar seems to be able to at least understand it, at least partly, so does Lynn, but I really can't say, because I can't look into their heads !

A part of the reason why the German-languuage technical forum section about Divinity 2 went out of control (it just fit every thing I read here about how the Codex' people behave) was that there actually were no German-language moderatorss there at all. And since it is Larian's forum, dtp Betty had no real influence there, as well. Plus, she's already busy with other things ...

Larian did imho make the mistake of not hiring German-language moderators at all. From this prspective it was highly unfortunate that the contract with the German community company "Team Two Pi" closed a short time before the release (or around it).

So, the German-language technical section went out of control. What I read there was in part the most immature behaviour I've ever seen. Some more mature gamers stood out there as a solid rock, being able to calm the angry people down a bit. (Not me, I'm trying hard to keep away from that forum section, although my curiosity check has almost always been successful .)

Melvil said:

I really don't mean to offend anyone, but a country that was led down the destructive fantasy path of Nazism is surely a place where fantasy rpg games will thrive

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Ehm, what?

crpgnut said:

I'm guessing some part of the reason they release in Germany first is so that they can understand the questions and problems that arise much better than they could if they released first in the English-speaking market. Larian's speak German fluently and English not as well. I'd much rather release my game first in a country where I can understand what's going on when a problem arises.

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Nah, that can't be it, at least not on side of the developer. Questions of release are taken care of only by the publisher(s), I believe, I suppose Gorath can fill us in on the details, he tends to know stuff like this.

Larian itself is, or was at least when I visited them during development of Divinity 1 and Beyond Divinity, completely multi-lingual. The core itself is Belgian of course, two were from Russia, some freelancers from Germany, some help even came from the UK. Consequently, they speak Dutch, French, German and maybe even a bit of Russian (music-wise ), but their lingua franca is English.

Larian still has a good French-speaking sub-forum, although it was erected rather late - and a Dutch-speaking sub-forum as well.

crpgnut said:

I'm guessing some part of the reason they release in Germany first is so that they can understand the questions and problems that arise much better than they could if they released first in the English-speaking market. Larian's speak German fluently and English not as well. I'd much rather release my game first in a country where I can understand what's going on when a problem arises.

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DTP is a German publisher with a lot of experience with distribution channels in the DACH countries only. For distribution channels in other countries they need to establish agreements with other publishers. I would expect that they could strike a much better deal with other publishers when the game already is a success in Germany and if the game fails they might not even want to invest the money in securing deals with other publishers anyway. By releasing in Germany first they get a substantial part of their investment back and they put themselves in a better position in making deals with other publishers.