Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Mods Divinity to NWN and beyond

Divinity Engine will never be as simple as the Aurora Toolset. It can't be. NWN's areas in modules were tile based, that's what made it so simple to use. Click and place, click and place. Didn't matter if it was indoors or outdoors. Everything was click and place. The only thing similar is that they both have a complex scripting system that allows for so much, but that's where the similarities end more or less.

Divinity works on a much different system. The landscape is not tile based and it isn't just full of prefabs like Aurora/NWN was. That cliff you ran into in NWN is a prefab, but in Divinity it's dozens of well placed rock models to make it look like a cliff. The trees are individual, not a group of trees in a tile. There's just no comparing the two really. Divinity Engine is much more complex, and that's one of the things that's hurting it.

Complexity isn't the only problem with it though, in my opinion. The main obstacle I've found is the complete lack of documentation except for a dozen or so video tutorials that just don't explain things all that well. The lack of instructions for Divinity Engine is a huge turn off for people. They can't just jump into it like you could with Aurora. It's a much slower process. I started working with Divinity Engine as soon as I got the game. I've started a mod which has one large area (probably twice the size of the first area in the original campaign) and a lot of smaller places attached to it (like caves, etc). I'm STILL working on a small portion of that map where the main town will be. The rest of the map remains blank.

Divinity Engine is tedious and has a HUGE learning curve, especially compared to Aurora. That in addition to the lack of documentation and complexity of it is what will stop it from ever having a community like Aurora had (and still has). There is no fixing it really.