Larian Studios Forums Divine Divinity (English) General Divine Divinity new version coming up

Hello all,

Don't take this as an official announcement, but more as a bit of a heads up for you very much appreciated people still active in these parts of the forum. We've quietly been working on remastering the original for release through digital distribution, upgrading it to work well with Vista/XP and supporting higher resolutions. Time permitting we'll probably even modify a couple of things, so here's the question. If you could choose only one thing, what's the thing you'd really like to see changed in the game code ?

Fix the broken skills.

Last I heard, Crossbow Mastery didn't add the damage it says it does, and True Shot just plain doesn't work.

I think that there's also an error with the Deadly Gift's Death Scorpions, they start at Level 100 and go up to 500. I think that's supposed to be level 10 up to level 50. Right now, they kill things fast, can follow you with Aura of Command, and practically never die. All the player has to do is collect the loot afterwards.

The Divine Eye doesn't remove the fog of war, so it can only explore areas you've already explored, or else you just move it blindly in a field of black. That's worthless.


(Maybe not broken, but questionable)

The Ranger's Sight skill is redundant and inferior to Elven Sight, and it requires a much higher level to put points into it despite its inferiority. Either swap the sight bonus of ELven SIght and Ranger sight, or give Ranger Sight a bonus, perhaps a bonus to bow/crossbow damage?

The Freeze spell only works on enemies below a certain spiritual resistance, but when that spell is on a weapon, it ignores that requirement and always freezes.

Resurrect is awesome because when you leave an area, enemies you resurrected turn back into regular enemies, letting you farm them for XP and items. (I don't mind this so much, it's not much different from the Heaven's Blessing skill). Is this intentional? I'm thinking it isn't.

All other weapon masteries seem inferior to the Sword and Mace Masteries, which add percentage-based, not fixed bonus damage.

Withering Curse would be good if not for the problem that most enemies you want to use it on have high spiritual resistance, and are thus immune. That may be intentional, but rather seems to defeat the point of using that spell.


Bug Report: When you rapidly open and right-click to close a container you've never moused over, sometimes extra items appear inside it. I discovered this in the vampire cave, although I didn't try doing that elsewhere. I was able to repeat it, but I haven't tried on other chests. It didn't really produce anything super, but it did produce extra free stuff. I know because that chest usually only contains just the boots and a Medium Strength Charm.

Nice iniciative! the game realy deserves a polish!

Things i would like changing:

- Better Hot-keys speed-use, it felt clunky the right-click mouse to use when we wanted to use a lot of abilities (i normaly sticked to 2-4 because of it was boring to change a lot)
- Inventory - Some kind of sorting button / Organizer and remove the gold icons
- Better hero animations
- Higher resolutions (i dont except 2009 graphics ofc, but a little polish would be nice)
- Potion hot-keys

KnightPT;
You can sort things into multiple chests, or other containers, if you wish.
There are already hotkeys for potions, just open the potion menu, hover the mouse over the potion icon and hit a function key.
Tutorial-Changing F1-F12 hotkeys to different keys


Other than bug fixes (parts of the Tingalf quest can get broken if it is done too much out of the expected order, weight bug, etc), I'd say the main thing would be game balance. The game tends to get easier as it progresses, and gold becomes readily available. Perhaps if the range of potential stats was narrowed a bit for higher end items (dragon set, etc), some people would be less likely to reload to get the best possible equipment / loot, so would not end up overpowered and very rich at the end of the game (though that is only part of the problem). If you are not going to add stuff to the wastelands, its size could be cut down (at the beginning of the wastelands I was in the mood for some hack and slash, but in the Black Ring dungeons I started running past stuff I didn't have to fight to get to the main buildings).

The game could use a couple more non-sword unique weapons consistently in the game, for those not playing warriors, or not wanting to look like standard warriors.


minor things:

Add a loading screen tip about right clicking on the menu bar interface to minimize it to 3 lines (for health, mana and stamina), and right clicking on the lines to restore the full bar.

Add a warning when first entering the place of sacrifice to not open the tombs, or put a password on it so you need the book from the cursed abbey to get in.

...

Raze, i know that, but using the function keys is very slow, i am more refering to keys like "q" or "r" or "t" or "1", "2", "c". I mean more choice of keys to bind to abilities

Mmm.. Language packs would be nice, comparable to how it was done in The Witcher Enhanced Edition:

You can download free language packs for the game and then play it in different voice over / subtitle combinations -- for example, Polish voices and English text, or French/French or whatever you fancy. Perfect for learning new languages.

More replies trickling in here: http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8136

Since a lot of people suggested stuff already, I'll suggest something different...

I want to be able to manipulate the camera more so -- i.e. be able Zoom In and Out on the action (like in Beyond Divinity).

Oh, a SDK would be nice, too.

Crap, I just mentioned two things, eh? :P


EDIT:
Other thoughts -- hmmmm, is there any way you could sell a Divinity Box that comes w/ Divinity 2 and Divine Divinity: Remastered?

What channels are you planning to see DD: Remastered?
GOG, I hope, right? I prefer no DRM in my games.
Hmmm...What about selling DD: Remastered on Impulse? Steam? Direct 2 Drive? GamersGate?

If possible, I'd like to see the evening colours back.

As far as I can remember, I think the "fading" was taken out due to some incompatibilities with Windows XP or so ?

There would be more to think about ...

Personally, I'd just love to see the blocked areas to be free , but I doubt this would be possible.

I never understood, by the way, why some of the highest hills (in the mountains) were not accessible ... I think, opening the blocked areas would be some kind of fun to explore.


Two more points : If possible, I'd like to see the "Source" thing back (I think it was a quest, wasn't it ?), and I vaguely remember another cat there, who spoke quite lowly of Arhu, the cat ...

Another point is that there I think was a quest planned around a character called "Der Adler", who was depicted as an eagle on the very first anniversary wallpapers ... If I remember correctly, this was cut out.

Personally, if I was working on it would rather be some kind of "restauration project" than anything else ...

NPC's and quests in the wastelands.

I've played this game a lot. I still play it. I've adjusted to the skills, the equipment, the balance, the bugs. But the final act is like a different game. It deserves some attention. Use old NPC models, write up some dialogue, whatever it takes. Make it a game worth finishing instead of "oh, I rang the gong," time to quit.

Alrik: by default the sunrise/sunset is inactive but you can turn it back on in the config file. I use it and never had any problems in XP.

Ah, thanks, flixerflax !

You know what would really rock, if Larian had this remastered version packaged with Divinity 2 in some kind of collector's box.

Ah finaly the message I was waiting for. =)

Few suggestions:

- some quests/npcs in the wastelands. I love the fact, that the game does not end with the "gong cermenoy" but the wastelands were really boring^^
- an access to the mountains around the dwarf entrance ( I always wondered what's up there... )
- fixing some borrow/crossbow abilities that do not work yet
- balancing Josephina (weaker) and improving the strenght of the Lord of Lies. (I'm not sure if he is called so; i played the german version ) He is way to easy in comparison to Josi.
- Balancing the scorpions (lvl 100?) and the frost (to easy with this ability, especially at a weapon).
Thanks a lot.

Thank you for creating this extraordinary game. =) It's one of my favourites. You can explore so many areas and find funny easter-eggs.


p.s. sorry for my english xD

Wooow... great news!! I just want support for higher resolutions, compatibility with new OS and bugs fixed.

Saw the linked post on RPG watch and felt the need to chime in, because i really enjoyed DD back in the day and would snatch a remastered version from digital distribution in a heartbeat. That said, i hope the digital distribution service in question is GOG or alternatively Steam because most others suck really bad in my experience.
As for what should be changed in the code, i would say:
1. Add higher resolutions
2. Improve compatibility
3. Release SDK
I am not saying that known bugs and balance issues should not be looked into. I am saying, that if you give fans the SDK, these will be non-issues pretty fast. These days many great oldschool RPG-s like Arcanum, Fallouts, Baldur's Gate games, Planescape Torment etc. see fixpacks and unofficial patches, but SDK or at least a reasonably moddable engine is a strong requirement. DD has neither so far.

- a desert filled up with some side quests (I think I read in an interview that Larian hadn't had time to make them, so that's the occasion)
- the possibility to do the source quest

And... I don't know really, but at least something to give me the impression I did everything I had to.

If you can't change the scenario, just improve the stability and hunt the bugs

There are a few more comments here ... :
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=269792&fpart=5

In the game code? Nothing. But I'd rather like to see it appear on GOG.com then Steam or any other DD-site - does that count, too?

I hope that the remastered version will be compatible with saves from the original game. I'd buy it but I'd like my 60+hours partial playthrough with a Fighter not to go to waste.

And yes, I agree too. Please, please, please, release this on GOG with some goodies. I hope CDV will allow you to release this DRM-free.

Original game already was almost perfect; if we get some additional bugfixing and few more goodies, then it would be absolutely perfect!

I vote for SDK (unofficial mods\patches are always sweet) and wasteland expansion.

And yeah, release on a GOG is quite high on my personal dream-list .