No Day/Night cycle ????

[Puff Daddy]

Freaking Minecraft has a day and night cycle, how can you call your game an RPG and not include it ? OG BG1 and BG2 had a sick cycle with hour specific quests and stuff. Night sceneries are already implemented in camp, just copy paste it on the map, chop chop. No excuses.

[Puff Daddy]

People are gonna mod in a janky day/night cycle and it's gonna be one of the most downloaded BG3 mod of all time. Larian better release the tool kit ASAP

[Admod, the Equivocal]

Originally posted by Rusted Metal:

BG3 has the potential to be one of the most complex C/RPG's to date especially if that lady was telling the truth about an instance where she has to make 800 lines of dialogue for one interaction which can be gone through in 4 clicks due to all the possibilities that you got to that point.

Was she or was she not paid for that?

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by Dragon Master:

Originally posted by ManBearCannon:

Fair enough.

Maybe you would need a fatigue system in that case, to synchronize the player's rest-cycle with the game's day/night cycle. More complexity for development, but interesting.

It could also compel characters to tailor their playstyles around it. Rest during the day and play as an assassin while everyone is asleep -- or rest at night and interact with more passive NPCs along your path. The complexity will snowball quickly as specifics are introduced, which is probably why Larian isn't doing it.

The fatigue system is kind of in. That's the whole idea of a Vancian Magic System, which is the spell slots.

Nitpicking comment: sorta yes but sorta no - there's no actual fatigue associated with magic (at least originally with Vance), it's actually the spell bouncing around in one's head getting out or something.

I kinda wish more of Vance's actual magic showed up more places - you can misspeak magic in his books, and there's tons of basically bargaining with imps to do stuff for most magicians. There's so much wild goofy stuff in the Dying Earth books.

[Dragon Master]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Originally posted by Dragon Master:

The fatigue system is kind of in. That's the whole idea of a Vancian Magic System, which is the spell slots.

Nitpicking comment: sorta yes but sorta no - there's no actual fatigue associated with magic (at least originally with Vance), it's actually the spell bouncing around in one's head getting out or something.

I kinda wish more of Vance's actual magic showed up more places - you can misspeak magic in his books, and there's tons of basically bargaining with imps to do stuff for most magicians. There's so much wild goofy stuff in the Dying Earth books.

We're really going into technicalities at this point as the vancian magic system was based on you only have enough energy per day to cast x number of spells, that it was meant to take a lot out of you.

But as you said, at this point it's nitpicking.

I still think the structure works for BG3 by limiting how many short rests we get between long rests.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by Dragon Master:

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Nitpicking comment: sorta yes but sorta no - there's no actual fatigue associated with magic (at least originally with Vance), it's actually the spell bouncing around in one's head getting out or something.

I kinda wish more of Vance's actual magic showed up more places - you can misspeak magic in his books, and there's tons of basically bargaining with imps to do stuff for most magicians. There's so much wild goofy stuff in the Dying Earth books.

We're really going into technicalities at this point as the vancian magic system was based on you only have enough energy per day to cast x number of spells, that it was meant to take a lot out of you.

But as you said, at this point it's nitpicking.

I still think the structure works for BG3 by limiting how many short rests we get between long rests.

I guess the vancian magic system for D&D perhaps - but the one in Vance was not.

Basically, just wanted an excuse to talk about the Dying Earth books.

With regards to the day/night cycle, I do think that resting kinda covers it though I personally would have liked one and NPC schedules. Not a big deal though.

Maybe next Larian game?

[Dragon Master]

Originally posted by ManBearCannon:

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Nitpicking comment: sorta yes but sorta no - there's no actual fatigue associated with magic (at least originally with Vance), it's actually the spell bouncing around in one's head getting out or something.

I kinda wish more of Vance's actual magic showed up more places - you can misspeak magic in his books, and there's tons of basically bargaining with imps to do stuff for most magicians. There's so much wild goofy stuff in the Dying Earth books.

Maybe I don't know what the Vancian Magic System is then.

In BG3, there is an actual fatigue system in the game. And I think it is tied to how many spell slots you use up. The characters begin to show fatigue and say outloud "I'm tired" or "I need a rest" after awhile in-game.

The Vancian Magic system is basically the spell slot system. It's not mana or anything like that, but the idea of it is that it takes a lot out of the caster to cast spells, so an apprentice wizard could only cast maybe 1 or 2 spells in a single day but a master of their craft with years of experience could cast not only multiple spells but incredibly powerful ones, with the most powerful spell levels only have 1 spell slot because it takes that much out of the caster to cast at that level.

[Dragon Master]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Originally posted by Dragon Master:

We're really going into technicalities at this point as the vancian magic system was based on you only have enough energy per day to cast x number of spells, that it was meant to take a lot out of you.

But as you said, at this point it's nitpicking.

I still think the structure works for BG3 by limiting how many short rests we get between long rests.

I guess the vancian magic system for D&D perhaps - but the one in Vance was not.

Basically, just wanted an excuse to talk about the Dying Earth books.

With regards to the day/night cycle, I do think that resting kinda covers it though I personally would have liked one and NPC schedules. Not a big deal though.

Maybe next Larian game?

Yeah, talking about the Dying Earth books is never a bad thing, I was just talking in the context of D&D and BG3.

[Slynx Jewel]

Originally posted by Tenshinhan strongest human:

People are gonna mod in a janky day/night cycle and it's gonna be one of the most downloaded BG3 mod of all time. Larian better release the tool kit ASAP

is it though? the game can be played in turn base mode almost all the way through. and 1 turn equals 6 secons by the rules. so there is no way for players to notice enough day\night changes to justify the work on this unnecessary feature.

[Popsicles]

Originally posted by Alealexi:

How is this important to the game?

You could enforce long resting only once per day with a day night cycle. That alone is important no?

[Puff Daddy]

Originally posted by Slynx Jewel:

Originally posted by Tenshinhan strongest human:

People are gonna mod in a janky day/night cycle and it's gonna be one of the most downloaded BG3 mod of all time. Larian better release the tool kit ASAP

is it though? the game can be played in turn base mode almost all the way through. and 1 turn equals 6 secons by the rules. so there is no way for players to notice enough day\night changes to justify the work on this unnecessary feature.

Choosing your character's face/eye colour/voice/hairstyle is unnecessary. Heck the dialogue cinematics are unnecassary and yet Larian spent millions upon MILLIONS on that.

[Hobocop]

Originally posted by Balltin:

Originally posted by Alealexi:

How is this important to the game?

You could enforce long resting only once per day with a day night cycle. That alone is important no?

There would be nothing stopping players from hanging around until they can long rest again. Solasta has this, and it adds nothing to the actual gameplay.

And no, random encounters aren't it either, since that opens the door to unbalacing the XP curve unless you make random encounters worth zero XP, which is just taking the piss at that point.

[Razorblade]

Originally posted by Tenshinhan strongest human:

People are gonna mod in a janky day/night cycle and it's gonna be one of the most downloaded BG3 mod of all time. Larian better release the tool kit ASAP

Unlikely.

First off, I don't think there's a way in the Divinity Engine to change basic level stuff like the terrain, or importantly, the skybox, in real-time.

Secondly, assuming you can change the skybox at runtime, there are likely only two provided skyboxes. That means someone would have create several more skyboxes, and even then, they'd pop into existence very jarringly.

Thirdly, creating scripts for every single NPC in the game would be quite the monumental task; there are a lot, after all.

Lastly, this all assumes the Divinity Engine has globally accessible time mechanics to base any of these changes off of. I know D:OS2 tracks how many in-game days your adventure has taken, which points to there being some kind of internal time system, but I've never looked into how accessible it is to scripts, so it may not be accessible at all to anything other than the journal.

It's a lot of (potentially impossible), multi-discipline work for a cute immersion feature that, as you said, would look janky. I'm doubtful that anyone is going to take up such a workload, and that anyone will care enough to download it.

[Hobocop]

Originally posted by Razorblade:

Originally posted by Tenshinhan strongest human:

People are gonna mod in a janky day/night cycle and it's gonna be one of the most downloaded BG3 mod of all time. Larian better release the tool kit ASAP

Unlikely.

First off, I don't think there's a way in the Divinity Engine to change basic level stuff like the terrain, or importantly, the skybox, in real-time.

Secondly, assuming you can change the skybox at runtime, there are likely only two provided skyboxes. That means someone would have create several more skyboxes, and even then, they'd pop into existence very jarringly.

Thirdly, creating scripts for every single NPC in the game would be quite the monumental task; there are a lot, after all.

Lastly, this all assumes the Divinity Engine has globally accessible time mechanics to base any of these changes off of. I know D:OS2 tracks how many in-game days your adventure has taken, which points to there being some kind of internal time system, but I've never looked into how accessible it is to scripts, so it may not be accessible at all to anything other than the journal.

It's a lot of (potentially impossible), multi-discipline work for a cute immersion feature that, as you said, would look janky. I'm doubtful that anyone is going to take up such a workload, and that anyone will care enough to download it.

There was definitely a janky day/night cycle mod for D:OS2. Tried it out once and basically didn't bother keeping up with it because it contributed so little to the overall experience.

[Hobocop]

Originally posted by ManBearCannon:

Originally posted by Hobocop:

There was definitely a janky day/night cycle mod for D:OS2. Tried it out once and basically didn't bother keeping up with it because it contributed so little to the overall experience.

Was it just lighting or NPC behavior too?

Just lighting changes, which is why I stopped caring really quickly.

Same thing happened with the Pathfinder games. There was basically zero reason to care if you did anything in the day or night, so the fact that there was a cycle at all was irrelevant. You operated based on whether or not you were fatigued or out of resources, not because the sun or moon was overhead at any particular point in time.

[Dragon Master]

Originally posted by ManBearCannon:

Originally posted by Hobocop:

Just lighting changes, which is why I stopped caring really quickly.

Same thing happened with the Pathfinder games. There was basically zero reason to care if you did anything in the day or night, so the fact that there was a cycle at all was irrelevant. You operated based on whether or not you were fatigued or out of resources, not because the sun or moon was overhead at any particular point in time.

Ya, I have a hard time imagining it making any difference in a pathfinder game. But in a game like this, it could define your whole play-through.

For example:
Whether to approach the goblin camp during the day and encounter them all drinking/partying, or to sneak in during the middle-of-the-night when half the camp is asleep. Your whole play-through would be drastically altered.

That is actually a pretty good point. I don't think it'll mean much though seeing as we are so close to the full game being released. At this point it's all polish and window dressing, and squashing bugs, maybe adding a side quest or two in there and potentially cleaning up the dialogue for the game itself.