Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Access to Divinity Engine 4.0

What's the odds of getting access to stuff on Divinity Engine 4.0 ahead of time (e.g. early access or before)? Would be cool to get a look at the tools available for modders etc and understand what's possible early, to get a headstart figuring out what cool things can be done.

Also, does anyone know how similar it is to the old DE versions and modding tools? Is it worth spending some time playing about with those or will it be so disimilar as to not be worth the bother?

Larian has said that the Divinity 4.0 engine only has 20-30% code of the previous version of the engine, having adapted it for D&D and the new verticaliity.

They've also said that Mod Support won't come for a while, likely after official release 1.0. (They are focused on releasing the official campaign)

They also have to co-ordinate with Stadia which currently doesn't support Mods and is trying to build their equivalent of the Steam workshop.
For Crossplay they will need some sort of unified approach for Mods to exist as Stadia doesn't store anything locally.

I wouldn't expect it to be available in Early Access.

I don't know if you have any experience in this, but any idea how privacy concious Larian are before releases? If you're an interested developer, could a few words to the right people and a confidentiality agreement help? It's always easier to dev something cool when you get to spend time with the toys before the play school opens.

I wouldn't really require anything like what they did for the community with modding tools before (well, not that much). It's the code I'm interested in, primarily.

I really hope they will release it early, even without supporting it. Waiting too long could mean people just jump off the ship after they finish the campaign, without the desire to return to BG3. (And I'm talking about regular players, not hardcore fans).

cant wait to make some D&D campains .. yes Im a necro but the conversation in this thread is still valid.

If they release it and any skilled developer gets ahold of it, please make a mod that somehow restores the previous engine's feel.
My old and tired PC really hates 4.0.

Very unlikely IMHO: NDAs are fairly unusual for non-staff/contractors outside of very controlled conditions (e.g. play-tasting) and probably both a headache and a risk for both parties; but a bigger problem is likely to be licensing issues with what will be at this stage a developers' tool and a lot of the stuff included has quite restrictive (and expensive) licensing.

Some degree of modding is unofficially supported already as mentioned in this topic: in short, Norbyte's tools can be used to extract the data archives, convert binary data files to XML format and back and GR2 models to Collada format which are compatible with Blender (v2.79 recommended) and so on. But to reiterate, this is not officially supported and is absolutely at your own risk, including the possibility of having to start over and re-download the entire game if it goes wrong. Please do not contact support or submit feedback about a modded game!

Well, I suppose I ought to ask since almost 3 years have gone by. Will modders have tools to create? One of my guilty pleasures has been modding DOS2 (even with struggles.) I just want to create adventures again.

We don't know if there will be modding tools, Larian hasn't said anything official. Fextralife said he asked Larian about this when he got to play the full game was told that they'd love to have modding tools but it's not up to them and they don't know if they'll have modding tools. So it might be something to do with the D&D license and Wizards of the Coast.

From the FAQ
"Will there be modding support in Early Access?
Modding will be supported sometime after launch, but not during Early Access. We loved what our modding community did with DOS2, and we’re excited to see what they’ll do with BG3."

We don't know.

Any updates on the Divinity Engine 4.0?

Can you remember where exactly it was mentioned that 20-30% of the old code was left, it would be great if you could provide a link to the source?