Hi,
do we have a clue about the night/day schedule and a changing weather with interactions?
From the Larian Kickstarter comments:
we're not planning on having Night/Day cycles yet. It would be an awesome feature, but given the number of other awesome features that we want, it's very difficult. Right now we're focusing on things like improving combat, 4 player co-op, and a systemic, reactive world that we hope will blow your chainmail socks off!
I just don't see it happening unfortunately. They're going to have their hands full enough already with the current number of vectors in their quest paths.
I guess it's possible they have a more establish and powerful set of tools, this should be easier to achieve.
If they can support NPC paths day and night cycles on their tools this should not be a very costly feature to implement on this second KS thought I'm just considering NPC that populate towns and creature spawns points.
very sad :-(
but again: i would be satisfied with a purely cosmetic day/night cycle
very sad :-(
but again: i would be satisfied with a purely cosmetic day/night cycle
Me too.
Day/Night would be nice if it has effect on gameplay (as in Baldur's Gate). Sadly Pillars of Eternity's is purely cosmetic, and then it's just "meh"
I'm unbiased on NPC cycles provided they can make them better than the naked nightwalkers of Oblivion.
I have to say that from what I understand, this is the kind of thing which has to be built into the game from the start. Trying to shoehorn it in at a later date, after production has advanced to a certain stage is just going to be too problematic.
So I do not think NPC Schedules should be put into this game.
It was a stretch goal for the 1st one. But as I understood it trying to fit it in after the fact became so resource intensive that it was counterproductive
Yeah it seems easy enough to imagine how much work it would take to add NPC schedules to a game that doesn't have them already. The Day/Night cycle visually not affecting gameplay, to me seems reasonable though.
One stated they weren't happy with PoEt's cycle because it was only visual, but I liked it vs always one way. I get NPC schedules for open world games that are going for realism, but this isn't open world.
Something I'd like to see is 4x map sizes, the larger the maps, the more I feel I'm not in a square and that I'm in a living world with some real treasure hunting going on. Is there any word that the game canvas's maybe larger? And that is something that bothered me with PoEt, their map sizes were no larger than BG's and the load times were slower than BG. This is 15 years later on massive systems compared to then. D:OS was still well larger in size and had no problems with load/save times, but put me in for being ok with even larger area's to run around in without loading a new map.
oh shit... I understand but definitely bad. That was my most expected feature !!
One stated they weren't happy with PoEt's cycle because it was only visual, but I liked it vs always one way. I get NPC schedules for open world games that are going for realism, but this isn't open world.
In Baldur's Gate, especially in the cities, it made a lot of difference. Also plenty of night-only sidequests available.
Compared to that, in PoE in the night vendors don't even go away, all quest-NPC's remain (just random uninteresting civs get less), there's no night-specific quests. And the whole awesomely ONE(!) night-NPC is only a craptastic vendor.
So yeah, it was pretty hard for me not to be dissapointed in that.
In games that include day/night cycles, I often end up feeling that the nights are way too long. So much of the charm and flavour of how an area looks gets lost when the screen goes "no, it's night now. You can't see". I'd still like to have it in the game though, but I'm not exactly heartbroken that I must suffer the ever bright, colorful, cheery, atmospheric and engaging world instead.
It would be very nice to have day&night schedules not just for fluff but indeed with gameplay implications like special night content/quests, vampirism, stealth advantages at night, more dangerous exploration and so on...
But I can understand why they are not doing it. I'm not exactly a programmer but even from my limited understanding of how software or games work, I would guess that basically everything inside the engine would have to be changed to work "by the clock" or on a schedule.
For NPC schedules you could probably get away with some scripting but meaningful day/night schedules would demand huge architectural changes under the hood since every gameplay system would have to be put on a timer.
Since Larian are going to use the same engine it's probably just not feasible. I guess we're just going to have to keep waiting for that big RPG to dwarf them all
... in which we will hopefully have it all, day&night, NPC schedules and also seasonal changes/activities (I really miss games with changing seasons!).
Just my two cents, I hate the idea of day/night cycles. Don't know why, but I do.
I think the day/night cycle itself wouldn't be too much work. I got it working fairly well for my mod, though there are some issues. Nothing that couldn't be solved with some minor changes to the engine, I wouldn't think though.
NPC schedules are another issue, but I don't think having a limited number of schedules would be too overwhelming. You don't have to attach everything to a timer. Not every NPC has to go to do bed, have completely scripted behavior. If merchants stopped selling and there were a few night/day only quests and skills, I think that'd be immersive enough, though Swen doesn't like half-assing it. It seems like they want to do everything, or not bother. If they actually let modders edit the main campaign (not mostly locked like D:OS), I might consider trying to add in a day night cycle with a few NPC schedules.
This stuff is not happening. From the Kickstarter comments section:
@Jimmious: Those just happen to be the ones we can't do. NPC schedules & cycles would make what we're trying to do very hard and require a bigger team than we have. Voice recordings I would love & I'll fight hard for it, but given the amount of dialogue we have, it's going to be tough. We recorded 7 months non-stop for D:OS EE & that was after the game was done. If we're going to have to add that much time to D:OS 2's development, I might be undead myself by the time it's finished
It IS a lot of work, a LOT more than you think, especially considering all the reactivity and different responses and quests for different party members.
Having the time of day change is not really that much of an issue.
The problem comes when you have to design all 500+ NPCs to react to such changes and to not have conflicting issues between all of the NPCs.
I know it's a ton of work to do it all the way (getting a town's behavior set up for just day is a lot of work, as I know from my mod), but a day night cycle with a fairly minimal influence on NPCs could be workable. It wouldn't have to affect any NPCs that are involved in quests, just the likes of some basic merchants and few citizens, and then a few characters might come out at night. Personally, I would find that satisfying; not asking for literally every single NPC to go to bed and have new dialogs for night, or what have you. 95% of events could work whether its day or night, but just having like, 5% of the characters and skills influenced by the cycle would do a lot to improve immersion.
But is Larian interested in doing this minimal approach? Probably not. I think they figure if they're going to do it, they're going to make it impact the game as much as the origins are, which is obviously a crap ton of work. So I understand why the day/night cycle won't happen, at least, not till D:OS 3 :P
Well with a million dollars and 29 days left I don't think it would cost that much to implement a Day and night cycle and an interactive world like with the Ultima. Just make its more alive. Its an important feature to immerse oneself in gameplay.
They have the engine already created (done with first kickstarter). Just implemente it
It's not happening.
Also, it's one of those issues where throwing a bunch of money at it doesn't really help. As much as I would like to see it, they have other priorities, and it's not happening for DOS II. From Swen himeself:
So on the day/night cycle (Swen here again) - what we're trying to do at the narrative & scripting level is really complicated and my head is too small to even contemplate adding yet another extra dimension of complexity to that. The impact of your origins combined with at higher level of freedom than the already insane amount D:OS gave together with the option of multiplayer = complex development, and until we tame all of that, we won't add an extra layer. Perhaps for a next game, but definitely not for this one.
Tbh, I was really excited when the day/night schedules were first announced for DOS and then got really disappointed when they had to be cancelled. But after actually playing DOS I have to say that I haven't really missed the day/night cycles: the game had so many other mechanics that I didn't feel that it really needed day/night cycles to be eenjoyable and immersive. I would of course welcome the addition of day/night to DOS 2 but I would rather have a more polished existing game features than half-done day/night cycles.
Pity, I like day/night schedules. Except when I need someone and it's night and trying to get hold of them means I'm trespassing and it all goes horribly wrong. Yes, I'm looking at you, Oblivion. But at least with Oblivion it actually worked well and was easy to add mods that did the same thing, and also made my character follow a suitable schedule that added to my role-playing malarky.
Er, yeah. Actually I'd really like a proper day/night schedule even if I can't realistically expect it to happen.
Pity, I like day/night schedules. Except when I need someone and it's night and trying to get hold of them means I'm trespassing and it all goes horribly wrong. Yes, I'm looking at you, Oblivion. But at least with Oblivion it actually worked well and was easy to add mods that did the same thing, and also made my character follow a suitable schedule that added to my role-playing malarky.
Er, yeah. Actually I'd really like a proper day/night schedule even if I can't realistically expect it to happen.
Well if Larian would simply encode current technology you could text the store owner at night & ask him to open the door. Then poof no more trespassing concerns :p
Well if Larian would simply encode current technology you could text the store owner at night & ask him to open the door. Then poof no more trespassing concerns :p
I think I prefer the established form of short-range communication used in mediaeval times: shouting.
Possibly accompanied by stones, but only small ones as broken panes would tend to see the prospective shopper being shooed away with a broom or worse.
That is contributing nothing to the discussion. People already know about that.
I only want this feature if they're able to implement it properly and without killing the game's other features. Otherwise, it could be sheer overload and burn-out for the teams.
Day and night I could take or leave. Weather I would definitely like, even if it were mostly aesthetic, as I find it to provide a lot of atmosphere in other games.
One thing I'd like, knowing full well there won't be day/night cycles, is for the lighting on the world map to be a little more uniform. In DOS1, the starting area was lit as if it were morning, with the sun--and shadows--shifting as you moved further north on the map. It was great for creating a sense of the day passing the first time you explored, but if you ever visited past areas--or even scrolled back over to other areas of the map--the lighting would shift backwards to looking like morning. Also, if you scrolled outside of Cyseal, there was kind of an awkward shift between the sunny inside of the city and the rainy exterior countryside. It was a little immersion breaking for me. A minor detail, really, but one I always noticed and one I'd prefer reconsidered.
I don't think weather and day and night have to be that complex, but I would like to see it in game.
Well, in older RPGs there were events that would make you play at night, or the weather would change. IMO, there's no NEED for a cycle, but it would be nice to have a part in the game when it would become night or the weather would change, something like that. To create rare rain weather that would make some npcs go to cover is cool and simple. The point is that the areas that one goes through in D:OS make one not miss weather cycles, because there was a snowy area, a dark area, a beach area, a windy area, and that was satisfying enough.
Oh I think a proper weather system and day/night system IS complex. And I mean a proper system, where people actually realistically reacts to the environment condition. You can't expect a painter to hang around under the rain at night, on the town's central plazza, to sell his paintings. Not only would the guy be nuts not to run to cover and/or near a fire, but he wouldn't let his paintings risk being damaged
And that's just one obvious example. In the end, Larian isn't willing to have a purely cosmetic system of night and day, neither are they really interested in dedicating ressources to NPC behaviours...
On the other hand, sure, weather may be a tad easier to implement, especially since they already have static weather conditions in DOS1. Just make them dynamic, maybe force a specific weather upon towns or quest hubs in general. Either way, with or without, I'm okay with what I'll get.
In games that include day/night cycles, I often end up feeling that the nights are way too long. So much of the charm and flavour of how an area looks gets lost when the screen goes "no, it's night now. You can't see".
Same for me, actually, but there's nothing wrong with having short nights and long days in Summer time. And night has charm and flavor too, albeit of a different kind and in smaller doses.
Personally I'm still hoping they make "Night & Day" the main theme of D:OS 3. That, and the passage of time. If it's too complicated as a stretch goal and too complex to include at all when there's so much else going on... then focus on it completely and give it the attention it deserves.
It could be tightly integrated with the main story, some obscure and all-encompassing light and darkness duality problem. Or, more down to earth, something to do with the sun, the moon, and the source. Divinity already has all the elements, but no real light and dark magic (curious, given its name). There could be a whole gameplay system behind the night and the day, although of course there's always the question of whether it would be enjoyable. Waiting around is boring and dark towns are bleak, so they need to be made fun in other ways during those hours.
Dreams are one thing that could be explored at night, as are nightmares or course. What if they were corporeal? If you could enter them at night and return with physical manifestations?
Or how about this then: Zelda - A Link to the Past had a whole world to explore, which featured a "dark" parallel world that you could switch to at will via a magic mirror. It opened up all kinds of interesting possibilities. Would something like this not work just fine in D:OS? Have a second teleporter pyramid pair, one that doesn't teleport through space, but through time (or through dimensions). Maybe exactly 12 hours back and forth. Invent reasons for stuff to prevent time paradoxes. ... or, uh, perhaps it would be easier to just do dark and light mirror worlds like in Zelda, or simply have a phase-shifted continuum on top of the real world. The latter would defeat the purpose of having a day/night cycle though...
Anyway, there are lots of (explored and) unexplored gameplay opportunities with night and day, on top of all the usual benefits.
Thinking from the perspective of a modder... If we can make maps, we can make maps dark. If we can create scripts, we can force a certain time or event to trigger 'night,' aka a duplicate map of the original in dark form. This would be more akin to games where it's always day until you 'sleep.' It's not a realistic solution, but modders could certainly create this version.
I imagine, depending on how open the scripting engine is, we could create a night/day system from scratch. On certain events, check the time (or maybe the game is always listening for time). If it's between certain numbers, cause a recalc of alpha and color based on predefined settings. Might be jarring, and it would be fairly resource intensive. The benefit of a system like this in code is efficiency.
At the end of the day, though, I'm not sold it's necessary for a game like D:OS. Certainly it's a cool feature, but not one that would sell the game.
Thinking from the perspective of a modder... If we can make maps, we can make maps dark. If we can create scripts, we can force a certain time or event to trigger 'night,'
If I remember correctly SniperHF faked some.
I saw that on youtube I think. Maybe he can talk about what he has made.
Thinking from the perspective of a modder... If we can make maps, we can make maps dark. If we can create scripts, we can force a certain time or event to trigger 'night,' aka a duplicate map of the original in dark form. This would be more akin to games where it's always day until you 'sleep.' It's not a realistic solution, but modders could certainly create this version.
I imagine, depending on how open the scripting engine is, we could create a night/day system from scratch. On certain events, check the time (or maybe the game is always listening for time). If it's between certain numbers, cause a recalc of alpha and color based on predefined settings. Might be jarring, and it would be fairly resource intensive. The benefit of a system like this in code is efficiency.
At the end of the day, though, I'm not sold it's necessary for a game like D:OS. Certainly it's a cool feature, but not one that would sell the game.
nice thoughts, but not necessary, b/c as far as i can remember the divinity engine already supports "dynamic lighting". dont know whether this is the terminus technicus, but what i mean: ie a technology that changes ambient light (and everything else connected to that) according to time of day based on a slider/single variable dynamically.
So, "everything" that is needed for a (cosmetic) day/night cycle is a script that changes that variable continuously (or based on certain events if prefered)
Larian has said that you could create day and night through triggers to change the lighting.
Making a duplicate map though, is not a very efficient plan. Each map in D:OS has a buttload of things to interact with, move around, destroy, and the state of each and every one of them is saved. That's why the saved games are so big. So, you would need to duplicate the current state of the map, which probably means a lengthy load time. And that's also hoping that duplicating the map doesn't also break all the intertwined story and script triggers.
Plus, because of multiplayer, you'd have to put this trigger in a separate map than the one you want to change the time of so it doesn't change suddenly when player 2 is wandering about in the middle.
Thinking from the perspective of a modder... If we can make maps, we can make maps dark. If we can create scripts, we can force a certain time or event to trigger 'night,' aka a duplicate map of the original in dark form. This would be more akin to games where it's always day until you 'sleep.' It's not a realistic solution, but modders could certainly create this version.
I prefer the approach of the "weather" (including day/night cycles) as well as NPCs, creatures and so on just following a clock: I'd rather not see a sudden transition or two maps that could get out of sync.
My main experience of modding was with Oblivion, but a simple clock that dictated the weather as well as triggering schedules seemed to work very well. From an RP perspective I preferred to have my PC questing during daylight and catching up with some much-needed sleep at night; and where nights were concerned I added a mod that made them typically dark enough (dependent on weather and the location of the moons) where I couldn't see my hand in front of me, and decided I'd be better off in a comfortable bed (or even a straw mattress with fleas!) than using a torch and various spells to combat the darkness.
Thinking from the perspective of a modder... If we can make maps, we can make maps dark. If we can create scripts, we can force a certain time or event to trigger 'night,'
If I remember correctly SniperHF faked some.
I saw that on youtube I think. Maybe he can talk about what he has made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceqq2JFWI4g&list=PLJA_Rkb-8ptvIzBNT2-GuRMv5KEtxWSBo
Thanks mate. Exactly what I was talking about
Also, if I may shamelessly plug, here's a different, more organic look at what a day night cycle might feel like, though the cycle should be even slower than that. Where Sniper uses 15-24 atmospheres (I don't recall how many exactly), I just use four:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Eih7CW4ph8If Larian could make the atmosphere triggers a bit more versatile, that's be awesome. I wish I could edit the transition time of an atmosphere with a script for example, so I could make the atmospheres have different lengths, say if I wanted a slightly shorter night than the day atmospheres without screwing up the transition times. And it'd be nice to not have the transition could bypassed when you teleport in or out of the transition trigger. Sniper's many atmospheres makes this less noticeable probably, since if you have a different atmosphere for your upstair rooms, then you can have a teleport trigger send you there, and then come back, and while it'll still skip ahead to finishing the transition time, the timer will soon boot up again to transition the atmosphere again, so it won't be sitting there still for very long. That's compared to four atmospheres, which if you skip ahead of the transition time with 300 second transitions, the atmosphere might be stuck as it is for 250 seconds instead if giving that slow transition.
Another option is to have maybe 8 atmospheres to represent 3-hour cycles, and just make the transitions quick (5-10 seconds) but hold those atmospheres, which would also use a lot less CPU than constantly moving the shadows. But not quite as immersive.
Anyway, hope Larian gives us the capacity to add a day night cycle to the main game if we want.
I imagine, depending on how open the scripting engine is, we could create a night/day system from scratch.
Yes, a few of us have implemented day/night cycles and NPC schedules in our prototyping and/or WIP. It requires a bit of 'fiddling' though and is not user friendly by any stretch of the imagination. The primary problem is that atmosphere triggers only fire when a player is moving inside of it. If a player just stands there, even if you update the atmosphere associated with the trigger, the atmosphere won't change. It introduces a bunch of unhappy workarounds that have to take into account numerous scenarios.
Thanks mate. Exactly what I was talking about
That's very nice :p
(Let me qualify this post by indicating that this is my response to the thread--not necessarily to anything Larian has officially said about a day/night cycle. I would have thought day/night would be a a given seeing as how it was asked for & promised in the first game--but not delivered, for reasons that should not at all apply to DOS2, imo.)
I don't buy the idea that day/night is somehow so difficult that it's beyond the ability of Larian to do--development of DOS2 has just begun--thus the "it has to be built into the game from the ground up so we can't just add it" mantra won't work here...as it was used to explain why it couldn't be done in DOS even though it was supposedly a stretch goal for that game that was promised by the developers (but never met.)
In the DOS2 Kickstarter Larian raised a multiple of the dollar goal they asked for--so if Larian needs "more hires" to do day/night then that should happen (which seems silly to me--the same guys that can do day can also do night--why not? It might take longer in development--but that's it.)
And also the idea that a night cycle would involve all new quest lines and all new schedules for NPCs and implementing that would become a terrific burden--well, it doesn't have to be so complex--just like in real life. When the sun goes down we don't stop pursuing our goals in life, do we?...;) Nope, those goals go right into the next day, don't they? They do not fundamentally change. The sun going down doesn't have to present an unsolvable dilemma from the development side, good grief. Anyone remember the old Might & Magic (not Heroes) rpg's of 25-30 years ago? Well, Day/Night was worked into those games even though the developer of those games didn't have peanuts to work with as far as money or personnel goes in comparison with Larian's resources for DOS2.
I can only think of one reason why Larian would resist putting in a day/night cycle and I have to say it's disappointing--and that is that Larian wants to reuse a lot of the assets created in DOS in DOS2, and that wouldn't be possible with a different engine and a day-night cycle because all of the night-time assets would have to be created fresh. So? What's so weird about creating a bunch of fresh assets for DOS2--the people contributing to the game surely expect that, and rightfully so.
Bottom line is that day/night is not the boogeyman Larian keeps saying it is--it's been done before in other games with a fraction of Larian's development money & personnel, and at a time when the general technology for game development was not nearly so robust as it is today! Larian is one hell of a talented company--this insistence that day/night is beyond them seems ludicrous, imo.
They don't need new assets for night at all. It's just a matter of changing the atmosphere to make it dark and get rid of shadows, which is easily done already. That's not the problem (and in fact, they are adding a TON of new assets, hundreds if not thousands of new models and animations and textures, not just reusing stuff from D:OS1). The problem is giving a sufficient number of NPCs reactive behavior to the day night cycle to make it actually immersive, instead of just pretty. You seriously underestimate the amount of work it takes to give lots of NPCs schedules, new quests, etc. They could do a minimal amount of scheduling, making vendors go inside, 3-5 night-specific quests, etc. but I think Swen would much prefer to go all the way. It's just like with the origins, which aren't going to be little gimmicks but have a massive effect on the game. Trying to throw a well-developed day/night cycle on top of that is asking too much.
Games have had day/night schedules in the past, but very few have been all that good at changing the world with the scheduling. And the ones that did weren't as graphically or mechanically as complex as D:OS, so they had more time to spend on that reactivity. Making 6-8 highly reactive origin stories and well-developed quests and competitive elements is already a lot for an RPG, and a day/night cycle with scheduling would definitely make the origins suffer. As much as I'd like a day night cycle, I understand why it can't be done. If they had millions more to spend, they could spend months working on the day/night stuff, but we don't know how much the publishers are funding them.
And really, you can't just add the scheduling on top of the game - it has to be there from the start or you're not going design things to account for it. So even if someone were to give them two million dollars 3/4 through development to spend on the day night cycle, it'd be questionable whether they would want to accept it because that would involve reworking a lot of quests and dialogs.
If they had millions more to spend, they could spend months working on the day/night stuff, but we don't know how much the publishers are funding them.
There is no publisher; Larian is self funding much of the development, and Kickstarter added on to what could be done.
From the
D:OS 2 Kickstarter FAQ:
No, we have no plans to introduce a day and night cycle. What we're trying to do at the narrative & scripting level is really complicated, so to even contemplate adding yet another extra dimension of complexity to that gives us a headache. The impact of the player origins combined with a higher level of freedom than the already insane amount of freedom you had in Divinity: Original Sin, added to the options required for multiplayer mode already means that our development is going to be hugely complex. Until we tame all of that, we won't add an extra layer. Perhaps for another game, but definitely not for this one.
If I remember correctly SniperHF faked some.
I saw that on youtube I think. Maybe he can talk about what he has made.
Have I been summoned
The real trouble is scheduling.
This is sort of my half ass attempt at getting some basic schedules going. It looks a little better now than it did two weeks ago when I made the video. These things you can sit there and polish each individual NPC animation and movement till you die.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75oHucmV5TUThen you have to account for quest NPCs.......
though the cycle should be even slower than that. Where Sniper uses 15-24 atmospheres (I don't recall how many exactly), I just use four:
Still haven't come to a conclusion on how long it should be for a 24 hour period, but it's much longer than the YT video from before. That was sped up intentionally.
Sniper's many atmospheres makes this less noticeable probably,
That's exactly why.
Anyway, hope Larian gives us the capacity to add a day night cycle to the main game if we want.
I've never even attempted modding MAIN since even some stuff in standalone mods gets locked off by developer mode requirements. I can't imagine what it would take to add it to D:OS 1
Baardvark & SniperHF: Well done!
Working with day/night cycles does sound like a crutch, however, with all those workarounds. For a little more than cosmetic and useful cycle, at least from a player's POV, I guess we'd just need the following:
- - A timer to use that works independently of triggers
- - GUI elements for info about time: A clock, a calendar. Just a little image showing the current position of the sun/moon.
- - GUI elements for interaction with time: Wait for xx minutes; rest until morning or for 8 hours
Looking at your transition videos, by the way, I feel that night should generally be a lot darker. Not all the time and everywhere, e.g. during full moon nights and in towns there might be some minimum level of brightness, but I'd prefer having to use torches and other light sources outside towns or in dark alleys for better atmosphere.
The unfortunately discontinued
Diablo mod had some great night time vistas.
From an RP perspective I preferred to have my PC questing during daylight and catching up with some much-needed sleep at night; and where nights were concerned I added a mod that made them typically dark enough (dependent on weather and the location of the moons) where I couldn't see my hand in front of me, and decided I'd be better off in a comfortable bed (or even a straw mattress with fleas!) than using a torch and various spells to combat the darkness.
Aye, that sounds immersive to me. And since AGoT we know that nights are dark and full of terrors.
thats why i hope larian will provide an in-depth manual for the editor including some engine internals so we do not have to find out the nitty gritty parts ourselves
thats why i hope larian will provide an in-depth manual for the editor including some engine internals so we do not have to find out the nitty gritty parts ourselves
Well, if we do some kind of "manual" or anything like this I don't think we will spend time showing you how to do a day/night cycle since it's not planed for the game
That's not the problem (and in fact, they are adding a TON of new assets, hundreds if not thousands of new models and animations and textures, not just reusing stuff from D:OS1). The problem is giving a sufficient number of NPCs reactive behavior to the day night cycle to make it actually immersive, instead of just pretty. You seriously underestimate the amount of work it takes to give lots of NPCs schedules, new quests, etc. They could do a minimal amount of scheduling, making vendors go inside, 3-5 night-specific quests, etc. but I think Swen would much prefer to go all the way. It's just like with the origins, which aren't going to be little gimmicks but have a massive effect on the game. Trying to throw a well-developed day/night cycle on top of that is asking too much.
OK...development of the game is just beginning...what's stopping Sven from "going all the way", exactly? It seems silly to reject a concept which you have never attempted to implement and for which, therefore, you have no concrete notions as to what it would consume in terms of developmental resources. This is kind of a chicken-egg scenario, imo. If you haven't ever done a night cycle, how can you reject doing it on the grounds it will consume resources you do not have? That's an illogical premise because since you have never attempted it in a game you cannot know what it will cost to implement.
This will be the second game in which a night cycle has been deliberately rejected by Larian--and I think you'll have to admit, it is an intriguing insight into Sven's thinking. He worries about the "realism" of NPC activity during a night cycle; but he doesn't worry about the non-realism of a perpetual day without end. See what I mean? Somehow the facts just don't add up completely.
No, a night cycle simply does not have to put everything in the game on a "night schedule" that is fundamentally different from a "daylight schedule"--it doesn't happen that way in real life, so why should it be different in a game? What are the two main elements that happen at night--sleep & businesses closing, right? How difficult is that to implement? Why not a few quests that have to happen at night--and only happen at night--like something involving ghosts and/or haunts? That's all you need.
Witcher3 has a day/night cycle--I just completed a quest that could only be accomplished at midnight. But, just because the sun goes down, again, it does not mean that everything in the game relating to NPCs has to change. Doesn't happen that way in the Witcher 3 and the game in no way suffers for it. The Witcher meditates (rests)--what about player characters in a Larian RPG needing rest on a daily basis?
Don't misunderstand, I very much enjoy Larian's games and have for a long time and I think D:OS is a masterpiece. But I really don't understand this peculiar aversion to day-night cycles in games. Larian fans aren't as demanding as Sven when it comes to "nighttime realism" and if they were they'd be all over him about the unrealism of perpetual daylight and the absence of a few other normal things that usually happen only at night. I think he's missing a huge opportunity to move Larian forward with D:OS2 by so quickly deciding that Larian cannot afford to implement nights inside the DOS2 universe.
thats why i hope larian will provide an in-depth manual for the editor including some engine internals so we do not have to find out the nitty gritty parts ourselves
Well, if we do some kind of "manual" or anything like this I don't think we will spend time showing you how to do a day/night cycle since it's not planed for the game
that i do understand.
i rather meant information/knowledge needed to implement a day/night cycle not a specific tutorial
i can understand Swens argument. but to be honest i tend to agree with Waltc. i think Swen is a little bit too "evangelical" (no offense!) concerning a night/day cycle. IMO even a not fully fledged day/night cycle would add to the overall Divinity/gaming atmosphere.
OK...development of the game is just beginning...what's stopping Sven from "going all the way", exactly?
A tenuous grip on sanity?
It seems silly to reject a concept which you have never attempted to implement and for which, therefore, you have no concrete notions as to what it would consume in terms of developmental resources. This is kind of a chicken-egg scenario, imo. If you haven't ever done a night cycle, how can you reject doing it on the grounds it will consume resources you do not have? That's an illogical premise because since you have never attempted it in a game you cannot know what it will cost to implement.
They did try it for D:OS 1. It turned out to be a shit-ton more work than was expected and it was too hard to put in.
Yes, they could do a cosmetic-only d/n cycle which changes nothing, and of course that would be much less work. Swen has considered that possibility and rejected it.
Adding in a cosmetic day/night cycle for D:OS 2 sounds like it would be more immersion-breaking than adding one in for D:OS 1, since there are things which will happen "tomorrow", like the Divine Magisters arriving on the island. Since they will never arrive on the island, having people say that they'll arrive tomorrow, ignoring the fact that you could have months of day/night cylcles happening in the meantime wouldn't be any more realistic than eternal day.
It seems silly to reject a concept which you have never attempted to implement and for which, therefore, you have no concrete notions as to what it would consume in terms of developmental resources.
Apparently you've forgotten (or written in ignorance) that Larian attempted to incorporate a day/night schedule with NPC schedules in DOS1 but ultimately gave up on account of the complexity, so they know as well as anyone what kind of resources it would require to implement it. The decision to reject it is well informed and not silly.
Now perhaps you think it's silly to reject your day/night cycle "light" version without having scoped out the resources, but that's attacking a straw man. They haven't rejected day/night cycle "light" because of resources, but rather because it's not something that interests them.
So to sum up: They have a particular vision of what a day/night cycle should include. They have attempted to implement such a vision already in DOS1 and know what the implications are and decided against it due to the added complexity. Deciding not to implement that in DOS2 is an informed decision. Deciding not to implement your light version is a philosophical one.
That's not the problem (and in fact, they are adding a TON of new assets, hundreds if not thousands of new models and animations and textures, not just reusing stuff from D:OS1). The problem is giving a sufficient number of NPCs reactive behavior to the day night cycle to make it actually immersive, instead of just pretty. You seriously underestimate the amount of work it takes to give lots of NPCs schedules, new quests, etc. They could do a minimal amount of scheduling, making vendors go inside, 3-5 night-specific quests, etc. but I think Swen would much prefer to go all the way. It's just like with the origins, which aren't going to be little gimmicks but have a massive effect on the game. Trying to throw a well-developed day/night cycle on top of that is asking too much.
OK...development of the game is just beginning...what's stopping Sven from "going all the way", exactly? It seems silly to reject a concept which you have never attempted to implement and for which, therefore, you have no concrete notions as to what it would consume in terms of developmental resources. This is kind of a chicken-egg scenario, imo. If you haven't ever done a night cycle, how can you reject doing it on the grounds it will consume resources you do not have? That's an illogical premise because since you have never attempted it in a game you cannot know what it will cost to implement.
Except they did try to implement in their first game, but they saw how much work it would be. Maybe they tried it with a few NPCs, had a lot of problems, saw how much time that took, and can extrapolate from there that they didn't have the time or money to do add it. I made a mod (unfinished) and saw how hard it'd be to make a good day/night schedule, so I imagine Larian could see it even more.
Permanent daytime is less immersive than a slightly incomplete day/night cycle, yes, but the point is Larian doesn't want to half-ass it. How hard is making all the businesses close and people go to sleep without breaking a bunch of quest behavior and then adding enough for players to do at night (instead of wow, everyone's asleep so I can't complete these quests) -- it's hard, especially in the Divinity Engine. And if the player needs to sleep, that'd be a lot of work for something players wouldn't even see. It's just another layer of complication on top of what is building up to be an extremely multi-faceted game.
Say you arrive at the town in the demo, and it's night. Is that dwarf still going to bomb that cart? If he does, you have to change some code with a bunch of people gone. If he doesn't, another complicated thing to code for, and the player will be missing a big set up for a lot of tension in the town. Now imagine doing that with nearly ever event, only making some of them night-only. People's behavior does and should change with the day-night cycle.
Larian could've done the day/night cycle if they sacrificed some other aspect of the game, like the origins. They should learn to properly craft a multi-faceted narrative before they spend a lot of money on something that is mostly aesthetic and just doesn't quite move the genre forward as much as something like hugely impactful origin stories and competitive questing. I haven't played Witcher 3 yet, but that's a game, like Skyrim, that has a huge focus on immersion. It also, I hear, has great quests, good combat, and other things. But they also had a lot more money. And, it's their third game in the series. Witcher 2 had a cycle if I recall, but I don't remember it impacting the game all that much. And I don't know how much it impacts Witcher 3 either.
I still think I'd rather have no day/night cycle.....
The reason is this
Larian wants to do this right or not at all. But I don't want it done right (Day/Night in W3 was completely sad, I always rested straight to sunrise all the time because at Night, aside from dangerous travel, you gained nothing but navigation troubles in forests..., unless a quest made night visit mandatory) so all this does is destroy visual direction in the game. A certain area may look good tinted in eternal dusk illuminated by torches another in broad sun light.
So yeah. Better Larian focuses on the things that matter... like story, companions, writing and skill/combat balance
I don't like day and night. Hate to wait until shops are open or NPC's are on their places.
Also don't like rain! I'd like to have a switch to turn on sunny day's. I like the sun.
I'ts a game! If I wan't reality I look out of my window.
I'd prefere to be a big wizzard, with a good sword and a spell to be invisible, to look in all those chests! I like to create my own magical sword! I like this extra points from books in D:OS.
I don't like day and night. Hate to wait until shops are open or NPC's are on their places.
Also don't like rain! I'd like to have a switch to turn on sunny day's. I like the sun.
I'ts a game! If I wan't reality I look out of my window.
Waiting for the shops to open or for key NPCs to get out of bed is annoying, though actually I find a schedule helps my roleplaying: I figure that my character also needs a rest occasionally and can't do 24-hour questing. In games with day/night schedules, if possible I tend to make the nights really dark, unless the weather's clear and it's a full moon (actually I forget if the moon(s) ever make a difference, but the weather certainly does). I admit it's sometimes annoying wandering around Cyrodiil or the Capital Wasteland not being able to see a hand in front of me and hearing various growling noises fairly close by! Especially as bad planning means I can inadvertently get caught by the sunset when I'm away from a settlement, meaning stumbling through the dark as I prefer not to fast-travel either.
I agree about the rain, though. I start to feel persecuted when even the weather in my games has it in for me!
Apparently you've forgotten (or written in ignorance) that Larian attempted to incorporate a day/night schedule with NPC schedules in DOS1 but ultimately gave up on account of the complexity, so they know as well as anyone what kind of resources it would require to implement it. The decision to reject it is well informed and not silly.
Whatever Sven does I know it will be fine. Never have I seen a game developer so obviously enthusiastic about his job, who so much clearly enjoys the company of other people, as I have seen in Sven. You cannot fake the sort of enthusiasm he brings to his many videos about Larian's work. He's a joy to watch and listen to, even if his enthusiasm propels his speech at a 90 miles-per-hour clip as if he's scared he's going to run out of time...;) He's an example to the rest of them, imo.
But that doesn't mean he's perfect, and Sven seems the kind of level-headed guy who'd agree that none of us are...;) IIRC, in the first game, day-night was a stretch goal, wasn't it? His arguments made plenty of sense then as the game foundation was already laid and it was too late to rewrite the engine to properly do day-night. Fine, that was certainly understandable...then, and for D:OS exclusively.
But this is a brand-new game, ostensibly getting a brand-new engine. That was my point. If ever there was a time to bring day-night to Divinity it is now. Because, if not now, when, then?
Waiting for the shops to open or for key NPCs to get out of bed is annoying, though actually I find a schedule helps my roleplaying: I figure that my character also needs a rest occasionally and can't do 24-hour questing. In games with day/night schedules, if possible I tend to make the nights really dark, unless the weather's clear and it's a full moon (actually I forget if the moon(s) ever make a difference, but the weather certainly does). I admit it's sometimes annoying wandering around Cyrodiil or the Capital Wasteland not being able to see a hand in front of me and hearing various growling noises fairly close by! Especially as bad planning means I can inadvertently get caught by the sunset when I'm away from a settlement, meaning stumbling through the dark as I prefer not to fast-travel either.
I agree about the rain, though. I start to feel persecuted when even the weather in my games has it in for me!
What I like about day-night in Witcher 3 is the change in atmosphere it brings. That's it, really. In W3, the day-night schedules do not change simply because the sun goes down. Things do however manage to look much different at night--and I think that alone lends them credibility. And as well, in W3 there are several scenarios that can only be accomplished @ night. I don't think Larian would have to carry it any further than that. These are fantasy games in fantasy worlds and nobody expects an entirely different world when the sun drops below the horizon--no need at all for a "night-shift" game.
I mention W3 also because you mention the weather--and I agree with you that it is often irritating. However, in W3 they've managed to make even inclement weather highly entertaining...like when the dark/black clouds roll in and the wind whips up...I often stop to just watch...;)
Yeah, I enjoyed TW3's weather variations a lot. I also liked little touches like a different choice of music during the night: I think the first game where I noticed that happening was Gothic 3, and it also really adds to the overall atmosphere.
TW3 had some fairly obvious things such as noon-/nightwraiths that could only be tackled during certain hours, as well as various quests ("meet me at midnight by the crossroads", sort of thing) but sometimes it's the apparently small changes to the ambience that make the big differences.
But this is a brand-new game, ostensibly getting a brand-new engine. That was my point. If ever there was a time to bring day-night to Divinity it is now. Because, if not now, when, then?
What, so it's suddenly become now-or-never for day/night?
Just looking at the pre-alpha of D:OS 2, even a cosmetic-only day/night does not make sense because you have so supposedly get off the island by "tomorrow", but no matter how many nights pass, tomorrow will never come.
But this is a brand-new game, ostensibly getting a brand-new engine. That was my point. If ever there was a time to bring day-night to Divinity it is now. Because, if not now, when, then?
What, so it's suddenly become now-or-never for day/night?
Just looking at the pre-alpha of D:OS 2, even a cosmetic-only day/night does not make sense because you have so supposedly get off the island by "tomorrow", but no matter how many nights pass, tomorrow will never come.
And we all know you can never ever change a single line of dialog. You'd have to release a whole new game every time a line is changed. That's why they released the enhanced edition. It spiralled from a few revisions to the dialog
Seriously though, a day and night cycle was my number 1 wish for the second game before I saw the details. I know they have chosen not to add it, but I would personally rather have a 40-50 hour game with a day and night cycle than a 80-100 hour game without.