Larian Studios Forums Divine Divinity (English) Suggestions DD add-on

That's suggestion thread so I'd like to suggest something. Divine divinity was (and still is) one of the best RPG that was ever made. Sadly Beyond D and DD2 didn't even close to their predecessor level. Flames of Vengeance was much better, yet first DD still was much better than them. So... Thing I'd like to suggest is making add-on to first Divine Divinity. This idea has few serious advantages (despite fact that DD without 3D was much better than most RPG ever made):
-First DD still looks great. It's almost 10 years old and still- only thing it needs are textures in higher quality/resolution. So making add-on wouldn't need much work (at least much less than making new game)
-World game: Creating extra locations (with story of course) would give many hours of additional gameplay. Otherwise- there are much "closed" (locked) locations which needs only adding story/NPC
-and the biggest one: Who the hell wouldn't like to play as Divine again or hear "I don't know what to do with that thing"?
First Divine Divinity had great amounts of humour, climate and that's just great game. I'd love to see continuation of Divine story in isometric game. It's nice to see Zandalor again and other characters I met in first DD but... That's not the same. So maybe instead of adding some bugfixes and additional resolutions to basic DD Larian could make next DD on source of first DD?

Given the age of the game, I think a remake would probably make more sense than an add-on if they were going to create any additional content for the game. Lar mentioned in one of the status updates that the person who did the updates for the download version no longer worked for the company, and anyone there who did work on DD would need to re-familiarize themselves with code and tools they probably haven't looked at in almost a decade.


In this topic Lar gave some of the first details of Dragon Commander (then called Project D) and Project E (aka Divinity 3):



Welcome to the forum.

I've a very good feeling about both projects, especially project E, aka Divinity III

Well... I can see Your point of course but still... Isn't making a great (probably well selling either ;)) worth spending some time to re-familiarize with tools? Also- I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who would like to see next DD in convention of first part.

I just meant if they were going to go to the trouble of digging out decade old software and re-familiarizing themselves with the tools and game engine details, then it probably wouldn't be that much more effort to re-make the game with their current tools and engine (maybe that is just wishful thinking, though). A remake would probably have a much broader appeal than an add-on for an almost 10 year old 2D game.

Well. It'd be great to see remake of DD than. But how big is chance that Larian actually will make a remake?

I'd guess it would be unlikely.

Dragon Commander started off as a small section of dragon combat, stumbled upon when they were tinkering with the mechanics after DKS was released. Thinking others might enjoy the combat, they originally thought of releasing a small DLC game, but in cleaning it up had to add stuff to give the combat purpose, but then it was still repetitive so they had to add choices and consequences, and then kept adding stuff until it was a full game. If they were to remake DD and start adding things, even with the restriction of not altering the original game content too much, then it would probably still end up being a fairly involved project. Maybe when project E is out they will have the time and resources to do a remake, but I have no idea if they have the inclination.

So I've big hope that Larian will make a remake

Sorry to say that I don't believe in a remake of DD ...

And WHY a remake ?

I really can understand your big wish, because Divine IS a Masterpiece I still love very much to play, still, after all many playrounds !!
And for a long time period no one could persuade me that Divinity II can ever beat DD in terms of passion/lust and/or replayability value for me,
but Divinity II succeed !

And now I love both games, DD and DKS !!

I believe that their is a time for coming and a time for going ... and games evolve in the same way as the technology of computer programs ...
Sometimes I wonder if the evolution of all this ever stops ? But thinking about the proverb "Pacific standing is going backwards" ** ... I believe it never stops !!

** or how do they say this proverb in correct english?

Games can evolve, sentiment stays Diablo 3 is 3d, but still in isometric mode. And I do agree that DD is a masterpiece. But adding something (good) to this masterpiece wouldn't harm anybody. I cannot agree with what You say about DKS. It's not a bad game of course, but it don't stand a chance with its predecessor. In fact I'm playing simultaneously both DD and DKS. I enjoy the latter, but DD is just better...

I can understand
And I'm very pleased you love DD very much and hope you've still hours and hours of game pleasure !!

I love both games, but for different reasons !
Some of them ?
For the story (+ with the seven races) & music I prefer DD mostly .
For the Skills, combat (thanks to the lovely Priest skills!!) and trading I mostly prefer DKS
(but trading in DD is of course also big fun, but for some personal reasons I like more the DKS shopkeepers)

Quests in a RPG I always love them (except if they are all of the same type, I like variation)

Actually in DKS I've mostly enjoyed playing as a dragon. Other parts are sadly often unpolished and sometimes (Hall of Echoes duels for example) it maked me really angry (I've finished all the battles without any problems- except fight with lord and lady- about 10 save/load). DD just look more "finished". I know what I've to do and still- I can run around main quests and have great fun. In DKS those quests aren't so evolved- just kill someone/ bring something and that's all. But completing Dragon Set in DD is great fun- and I'm doing it fifth time I think...

Can't agree about the quests of DKS ... !
It's also thanks to the Mindreading feature that you can discover even more options to solve a quest .

Well... Mindreading is a nice feature but I used it every time I could. It was mostly like another dialogue option. And I've 42 (or 43 maybe) level of experience (in FoV of course). So it's not very revealing.

Hopefully Diablo 3 comes out this year, I'm really looking forward to it when I beat DD. I just love Isometric RPGs! I thought Diablo 2 was the end of it all until I saw DD recently. I really thought I played every good game out there. Torchlight is addictive but its more of a hack and slash game. I love good writing and story in my games over the fighting.

I'm really hoping Project E is what we all dream about It's funny I haven't even beaten DD and I'm wishing for a much greater version of it, lmao.

Blizzard is aiming for a Q2 release (April - June) for Diablo 3 (see here).

The game releasing in 2-3 months will be a miracle. Lets hope for it! Just sad though, because I heard bad things about Beta. I hope Bliz doesn't let us down. I know Larian Studios won't with Divine Divinity 3.. They better not hehehehe

I was going to make a new topic but I figured this might just be a smarter place to put it.

Wouldn't it be better to try and release the tools to make the game than to re-familiarize and make it your self? A mod API would certainly revive some aspects of the community and I would gladly dish out some levels of money for it. Let alone use it extensively. It does not even have to be anything big, just small and simple tools so we can make the game bigger and more grand than it already is our selves.

Some of the tools they used were third party programs, which can not be released. Maybe they could duplicate the functionality with other programs, but it would likely be a lot of work to develop a mod API for a game that wasn't designed from the beginning to be moddable.


Welcome to the forum.

Ah but a shame, if only they had used some fore sight with that, though I can hardly blame them.

And thank you!

Can Lar give to foreign developers source codes of game for writing add-on? Or any other way...

Larian is still updating the game, after the recent Steam and Larian Vault releases, so I doubt they would release the source code. There are modding tools being included with the upcoming Divinity: Original Sin, though.

Ok....waiting Divinity: Original Sin =)

The fact that modding tools are being included with Original Sin is BIG.

If a loyal modding comunity starts to develop we'll be enjoying the game for countless of hours...Which I dig.

indeed)

Yes... But Divine Divinity is one of those magical games that I enjoy playing again and again. And I'd love to have a possibility to play a little more next time.

A while ago someone from the Larian Studios digged up and old ingame chatlog or something like this, where the developers discussed the process of programming and the code in general.

I´m too lazy to look them up right now (maybe Raze can, if he remembers) but the way they talked to each other back in the days kind of displays their way of programming, that sounded something like this :
" Wtf, is this shit" "Bullshit ain't workin wtf u did there ?!" "This sweetshit looks good but crashed all the time <_<"
"How the f*** is this even working ~ whatever"
I guess they were young forward looking people with many many ideas but the problem about making an addon or giving the source codes to the users is, it wouldn't make any sense to us at all.
The effort and pure lunatic power that went into this game ended up in an very beatiful and epic game with a VERY fragile and (sometimes) bugged source code.

I'd really like to see Larian Studios remaking the game but since they won't run out of ideas soon you may satisfy your hunger with some background information and eastereggs you didn't find yet :
The guy who designed the characters and some animations :
(http://valaraukar.de)
Eastereggs and secret areas :
(http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=77614)
My favourite :
(http://www.xanlosch.de/kiyas_crypt/Div_Skateboard.jpg)

Some comments in the game's code were quoted (slightly edited) in the topic Status update (long overdue).