Nice post, I would call that post a tribute 😀 and the cool part is this. The engine has been ported to so many systems, including MAC OS(and MAC OS X), Amiga OS 4, and Linux. Yeah, I need to dive into them too 😀 Now I just need a cool PC geek to get it compiled on Linux for me. But other than that, then cool as hell 😀

IWD2 did have issues,though, not the least of which was the transition from A,D&D 2.0 rules to 3.0. Not all of the new rules could be accommodated by the game engine so large portions of them were simply left out so what you got was a game based on a half-assed version of the 3.0 rules. They would have been better off to just keep the game in the 2.0 ruleset universe and save themselves a lot of development time especially considering that the modified Infinity Engine they created would not be used in any other games after this one. The storyline was also weak in comparison to other games in the Infinity Engine family tree and like many games that are written around time constraints, not all the content that the developers wanted to include could be added without missing the release date. If you're a die-hard fan of Infinity Engine games, IWD2 kept you going for a little while longer, but really didn't bring anything innovative to the gaming scene that at the time consisted of hardware that was capable of much better visuals than the Infinity Engine could deliver.

Sadly I never ventured into the Infinity Engine games aside from Planescape: Torment. What got my attention was the story. Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale didn't call out to me in the same way the premise for PS:T did. Another thing is that I feel hampered by character creation. I know very little about what challenges I'll face when starting a game. By the half way point I realize I should have spent my attribute points differently, that quests should have been done in a different order, and in general I regret most of my choices made in the 1st hour of playing.

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

Sadly I never ventured into the Infinity Engine games aside from Planescape: Torment. What got my attention was the story. Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale didn't call out to me in the same way the premise for PS:T did. Another thing is that I feel hampered by character creation. I know very little about what challenges I'll face when starting a game. By the half way point I realize I should have spent my attribute points differently, that quests should have been done in a different order, and in general I regret most of my choices made in the 1st hour of playing.

Isn't that true about all games, and life in general, though? 😀

Here's an interesting project that fans of Infinity Engine games might like

http://www.gemrb.org/wiki/doku.php?id=start

It's a project to create an open source game engine that replicates the capabilities of Bioware's Infinity Engine for Linux, Android and iOS. It's also great for people who are into modding as you can create your own Infinity Engine games on those platforms(assuming you have the tools to modify the original data files) and not have to worry about stepping on someone else's intellectual property.

Of course people have been writing mods for the Infinity Engine games since they were originally released and you can also find those mods and original creations in various places around the web by Googling.

sliderider wrote:

Here's an interesting project that fans of Infinity Engine games might like

http://www.gemrb.org/wiki/doku.php?id=start

It's a project to create an open source game engine that replicates the capabilities of Bioware's Infinity Engine. It's great for people who are into modding as you can create your own Infinity Engine games (assuming you have the tools to modify the original data files) and not worry about stepping on someone else's intellectual property.

That was the one I was talking about. As in the infinity engine was "ported" to the different operating systems. So again, it is not the original engine. But a cool open source engine that runs the game 😀

snorg wrote:

Isn't that true about all games, and life in general, though? 😀

I think it only comes up in RPGs and management games. I especially never started over with new character stats in real life.

sliderider wrote:

Here's an interesting project that fans of Infinity Engine games might like

http://www.gemrb.org/wiki/doku.php?id=start

Status
PST and IWD2 are not completable and require a lot more love.
🙁

Didn't slide once say that engine remakes are useless (or something like that)? 😉

Dominus wrote:

Didn't slide once say that engine remakes are useless (or something like that)? 😉

I'm sure I said something, but not that exactly. Please show the context.

Besides, this isn't a remake exactly, but a port to other platforms that those games were never released on.

I was asking if you didn't say something like this not stating that you did. Read carefully...

It's an engine *remake* which is cross platform. Only if they were using the original code it would be a port. It's quite a difference.

Dominus wrote:

I was asking if you didn't say something like this not stating that you did. Read carefully...

It's an engine *remake* which is cross platform. Only if they were using the original code it would be a port. It's quite a difference.

Except that it IS a port because it allows the games to be played on systems that never had them before. It does not allow them to be played on the system they were originally released for. That's what a "port" is, moving a game designed for one system so that it can be playable on an unrelated system.

And the comment you mentioned was about the Syndicate Wars "port" which to me is no port at all since it requires the original CD to be present in the drive to play. If you need the original CD, you should just play it from the original CD. Why would you even need another piece of software to run a game that you have the original of?

No, when you don't use the original code it's a remake. And since they are using SDL it's easily cross platform (edit: and of course as they say themselves, easily portable). And gemrb does run on Windows AND to play the games it supports you need the original CD (Edit: or DVD or some other way to get the original game data, for example from GOG.com) as well. Same as that Syndicate Wars engine remake.
You really need to get that port and remake stuff sorted out in your mind. You are confusing it...

Dominus wrote:

No, when you don't use the original code it's a remake. And since they are using SDL it's easily cross platform (edit: and of course as they say themselves, easily portable). And gemrb does run on Windows AND to play the games it supports you need the original CD (Edit: or DVD or some other way to get the original game data, for example from GOG.com) as well. Same as that Syndicate Wars engine remake.
You really need to get that port and remake stuff sorted out in your mind. You are confusing it...

You are the one confusing them. The act of moving a game from one platform to another is called porting, not remaking.

So how are you going to use the original CD on your iPhone or Android device? It's a PORT.

The engine remake is cross platform and easily portable. The original game is not look it up. If you make the ORIGINAL engine playable on another OS you would be right. Since it is not you are incorrect. As well as saying gemrb is not for the original OS and not requiring the original games... You can dig your hole deeper or take your meda, look it up and say you were wrong. AGAIN

As for using your original cd on iphone/android, you will have to copy the data from the cd as described on the gemrb site.

Dominus wrote:

As for using your original cd on iphone/android, you will have to copy the data from the cd as described on the gemrb site.

And that would be software piracy.

Bullshit

AGAIN

http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?show … t=0&#entry32659
Reimplementation of the infinity engine.

One could call this an engine remake... It's not a port of ONE game, it's a remake of the engine of several games. Same as ScummVM (when it was just aimed at the scumm engine). Do you still not get it?

Or ask the internet. See how often engine remake in relation to gemrb turns up compared to game port or engine port (and make sure you are not including mentions of a port of gemrb to a platform)