Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Mods What older game should be done as a Mod ?

This might seem weird, but I think you could probably make a decent version of Monkey Island (and co.) in the Divinity Engine.

The first Dragon Warrior game. Fill out the areas with Original Sin-style immersive environments.

Here's some of the basic zoning planning...

There's this super-obscure game called "Anito". It's not much of a "good" game, but I think it could use an update and make it better than how it was more than a decade ago.

Hah! Copying a game = å…¸hinking outside the box for you?

You need to learn the real meaning of that phrase, as it literally means the opposite of what you think it means.

Copying some other game title is the biggest TUNNEL VISION you can get into, because basically you skipped the thinking part straight to the creating part, very unoriginal, uninspired, etc.

As Heathen said coming up with Original story line is hard... so why not just do it the easy way and just steal someone else's idea that's already been done. Then call that "Thinking outside the box", great workflow guys.

I'm glad it's only the modding section of the gaming industry that is blatantly into copying. Otherwise all these commercial games would be remakes of a few good games leaving hardly any room for new great titles.

I took up Art in college, 3D design at University, and another side class of life drawings every week, I encourage you guys to enrol in such courses if you want to get an idea of what "Thinking outside the box" means So many art subjects and topics thrown back at you for not coming up with something original enough, that you have to go rework on it or start over again. Teachers that despised the manga/anime style, comic style or the general shit you see on the internet.

But sure man go ahead, skip the Thinking part of your game design/mod, and just be the TOOL to pump shit out. Everyone can learn how to push a few buttons and create shit in game engines / 3D software, Photoshop, etc. The people who get hired in Art/Design jobs are the ones that show artistic flair not technicality.

Look even if I brought senior tutors with PhD qualifications here to the forums to make an argument you will still dismiss the idea because of some bullshit reason, and the very fact that you just want to outright copy, I guess that's why highly qualified people don't participate in a forums full of monkeys.

Stay in the Modding sector, forever.

Oh, wait. You're being serious? That's very cute.

The naivety required to type that out is just... *phew*, but I'll let Forbes speak for me:

Last week, Electronic Arts ($EA) sued Zynga ($ZNGA) for copyright infringement because Zynga痴 典he Ville game allegedly takes too much of EA痴 鉄ims Social game. Lawsuits like these are rare in the games industry, for good reason. Imitation of other manufacturers games is standard in the industry, and every major industry player does it frequently. As my peer Prof. James Grimmelmann wrote, 鍍he [games] industry has developed a dysfunctional culture of copycattery.

Forbes 2012


I'm not even going to touch the quagmire that is modern FPS development.


Frankly: stick to drawing anime. Community College =/= the reality of game development.

So you are one of these people that I need to clearly state and define things with a wall of text so you don't drift off making assumptions right, drifting onto the advantages of things I didn't clarify?

Yet again you pointed out something obvious, I've never heard of a company sue another company for copy right infringement, what a shocker! Doesn't change the fact that modding groups are more keen to outright copy titles with the content of yet another game's engine so basically they own nothing, hilarious.

Besides now youæ± e pointing out companys suing each other for copyright infringement, what side of the battle are you on, have you got confused you filthy devils advocate you! It seems you have switched sides now that we are talking about commercial games.

I don't draw anime, but I see how you made the connecting assumption. Also I don't really know what you mean by Community college, I guess that's an American thing, or do you mean state funded schools, who cares your insults are childish at best.

There is a difference between making similar games such a FPS games like Battlefield and Call of Duty, and then saying Lets Remake specific title game entirely. You cant have one FPS game, or one zombie game, or even one brand of bread. However stealing ones identity or brand (in this case copying a game entirely and its title) is when things get sour. Did I really need to explain this? Are you an imbecile?

Lets put this into prospective, you are an idiot: encouraging people to copyright infringement, which may potentially close down at the owners discretion, laziness and no imagination.

Me on the other hand, I'm telling people spend a little more time and use their imagination, to create something new, a unique experience, and not ride of the back of a famous title in hopes of gaining from its popularity, a shitty thing to do.

I clearly win here only an idiot will disagree (clearly you).

I suppose you cant really tell a drug dealer what hes doing is wrong without probably getting shot in the face, so in that case YOU WIN! #WINNING!

Now PO.

If someone wants to spend hundreds of hours making a copy of a copyrighted game, that's their prerogative. We can't force people to not do things over the internet.

If said work ends up costing them in legal costs and punishments, then that's their problem, not ours.

If someone wastes hundreds of hours and ends up in jail, then that's their problem, not ours.

And if someone receives no lawsuits or any tangible consequences as a result of infringing someone else's copyright? Well, that's their situation, and has nothing to do with us.

At which point we can all safely ignore you.

The entire point of "mods" is that you're not a multi-million dollar company, you're most likely doing it as (drumroll) a hobby.

As for people bleating on about "selling the mods" - DERP. You've not licensed the engine, get a fucking grip already.


As a mental exercise I briefly hashed out how much work a complete mod of Ultima VII would require:

1) Map translation - the brunt of the work.

This map is extremely sexy - http://www.kxmode.com/U7map/

It does show that the project is viable and that the dungeons etc are fairly small. This, of course, can be expanded. Having an immediate reference to translate is double-plus good.

2) NPCs / Quests / backstory / lore

This site http://bootstrike.com/Ultima7bg/cool.php contains the files for all NPC / books; cutting down a lot of work. Grunt work would be creating all the trees & technical placement / trigger testing.

3) Technical - scripting & quests.

This site http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Ultima_VII_Walkthrough has a detailed list of all the main / side quests. This, of course, could be expanded upon.

4) Engine limitations: D:OS doesn't support ship travel (that I know of), a quick hack would be to have two classes of "gates" - the standard eight moongates (although working out moon phases without a day / night cycle might be "fun") and "ship gates". Where you buy a ship deed and/or get co-ordinates via side quests that allow you to fast travel between locations. e.g. You don't actually sail (boo), but you fast travel between set docks. Kludgy, but possible - for the smaller islands (e.g. near Serpent's Isle) you'd just make the water shallow enough to walk through. You'd probably lose the magic carpet, sadly.

You'd also need to work out a scale & map limits / where your zones changed.

5) Art assets / creatures. You'd need some work here converting to Ultima VII creatures, no doubt about it. Original content + work warning. Not sure of the NPC total, but portraits might be lacking. Specific items that might not exist: Sextants stick out, as do the various unique items (Cube, Sphere but we've got a pyramid already!).

6) Mechanics skills etc - Ultima VII didn't have skills, just basic 3 stats. Easily convertable, although you'd have to parse down 20 levels > 8 levels. Doable, I could hack it out in a few days. Simple system = easier.

Spells would be more work, given you'd be making them from scratch. Probably best to convert them to the already-existing element system instead. (e.g. swordstrike => lightning storm etc).

Reagents - you'd have to mod the crafting engine & link it to spell slots. Troublesome. A quick "hack" would to be to make all spells craftable "scrolls" using the reagents, and not have permanent skill slots for them. (Essentially ripping out a lot of the D:OS complexity for ease of use / not having to code). Kludgy but workable.

7) Companions - 4 as a max isn't so bad, and it'd be a blast if you could do 4 man co-op (although, tbh, making only a single player able to do dialogues would be sensible / not create massive headaches). Not worth the effort to expand to 8, I'd imagine.

8) Virtue system. Would be a doozy to mod the reputation system into something like the intended virtue system (that as far as I can remember never worked beyond Ultima V).



That's a rough draft [15mins thought + google]. Big project, would probably take 3-5 people a good part of a year (+?).





No, I just know the difference between being a game company, licensing an engine to create your own project and making a mod.

You clearly don't, so *shrug*.


Hint: in all of the above, feel free to point out where you're going to get into legal trouble, I'm all ears. Hint: you're not. As both Lazarus & the U6 project have already proved.

Blazed, you are about the most condescending ass I've encountered in a long time. And you have absolutely not right to be. You've contributed exactly nothing to this community thus far. Virtually every post you've made on this forum directly insults someone. Usually for no reason other than they don't agree with you. So feel free to get off your high horse and start contributing to the community, or kindly keep your mouth shut if you're not going to be a productive member.

WOOSH! completely missed my sarcasm, genius.

On that second line, I've mentioned countless times that Larian would need some sort of revenue agreement similar to UDK, UE4, etc.

I stopped reading past this point, it was clearly a bad start, leading to what will probably be more crappy discussion, feel free to write a shorter version.



A bit like your own post, shut it please.

I do agree with Blazed with most of the things,
But I myself would like to see old games redone, not coz its easier to do, which it is, but coz people who did not play them in the past could play them now, and people who did play them could relive them in much better looking versions.

I myself tried playing some old games, but just could not do it, for example: I am fan of TES series above any else, but I only played it sense Daggerfall, when I tried to play Arena I just could not do it, same goes for old The Dark Eye games, fortunately I myself played all Divinity games, but I am sure that there are some people who only started Divinity with newer games and would like to play old ones also, if they are redone properly.

Still having a good new mod with new and original storyline is also good, and here is one advise how to make a good storyline: Get few guys/girls who are good at FRP(Tabletop Fantasy... whigs with those dices) and are also well read in terms of fantasy literature, let them to their thing and write notes, then use your imagination and modding skills to put that in version which could be played and world which can be enjoyed.
Still making a mod with totally new storyline has its benefits, if you screw up people will just say that it sux and no1 would mind, but if you redo very good old game, and do a shitty job, fans of that game are gonna hate you forever

My votes would be (in no particular order):

Divine Divinity / Beyond Divinity (brought forward to the new engine)
Ultima 1-9
Fallout 1-2 might be interesting with this engine.

Well, some people can't come with new ideas. Some people can't do 3D models. Don't have the brain setting for that. I am someone like that. Let the ones who can, do it, and the one who can't, make some copy. Because the pleasure is in modding, not always creating something new.
We can all have various pleasures.

And thanks for reminding that some works can be sued, that's nice of you.
Now stop being a stupid jerk, go to the modding table, and start working on your own totally new project.

Some of my favourite RPGs not yet mentioned in the first post so far were:

Might & Magic series esp. 3-9
Wizardry 6-8
Neverwinter Nights 1+2

Just to give an inspiration for discussion...
It seems there'd be great potential and working modular if spread work in chapters with a mindmap
If possible of course, as the most of them are some kind of open world.
Important for me would be the focus to do it as original as possible.

Arcanum seems to be the most interesting suggestion so far. But personally I would rather make something new than remake something old!

Absolutely! The thought of running around with Shamino, Iolo and Dupre in a Britannia and Serpent Isle with D:OS graphics... *drool*
This would be a ridiculous amount of work though. I doubt anyone would be crazy enough to make it so.

Edit: Just put blazed on your ignore list. People with an attitude like that don't deserve attention.

People still going on about me even though I left the discussion for a while now, seems like constant invitation for me to come back to be honest.

It seems people have reported me to mods in another thread, hereç—´ a tissue by the way. They went through the whole thread and decided not to do anything, because I guess words like stupid, moron, idiot are just not vile enough to warrant action especially in return fire arguments where it wasn't totally uncalled for. Even teachers call their students, stupid, idiot, etc. occasionally when it's justified or deserved.

I've been adding really good information on why you shouldn't do it, but I like I said it's pretty much like telling a drug addict to stop taking drugs, you just don't care for your own demise. So go ahead screw yourself over and make your crappy remakes and crappy ideas, oh wait - not your ideas.

Please go ahead and add me to ignore list, better than you making a negative comment about me, and me returning fire. At least have the decency to take it like a man and not to go cry about it when I completely annihilate you in the argument of Originality vs Unoriginality, as one of these words is a negative antonym, FACT.

Tracing a drawing, Not impressive at all. Copying a drawing... Still not impressive, Drawing something entirely new - Now we're getting somewhere...

let's call this what it is then... nothing more than a strawman.

you don't know what you're talking about, but boy, you sure can talk up a storm.

i repeat...

get a life.

IT IS copyright infringement if you copy a game's title and it's story's content entirely, it's only the discretion of the owner whether they do something about it or not, that doesn't mean your not infringing copyrights.

My god what is so hard to understand.

Then says "I know nothing", "boy and get a life". Pathetic troll, be more subtle next time.

Talking to Apes.

Stop derailing the thread with needless namecalling. Blazed brought up a valid concern, but everyone will have to decide what to do with it on their own and it will be their own fault if something bad happens.