Trials of Tav and... The Black Pits 3?

[yaerav]

Just to post something fun, maybe to start a thread to just geek out a bit over BG and about the new roguelike mode mod: I have been watching a couple of bits of Trials of Tav mod streams. And... I would never actually play that personally, butttttttttttt!

It does really start to look like at least a theoretical possibility to create some sort of mod that incorporates custom maps and custom scenario's. And what would be more logical than a successor to The Black Pits?

If you have not heard about those: The Black Pits 1 and 2 are arena fight style gauntlet mini-campaigns with something vaguely resembling storylines, that come with the Extended Editions of BG1 and 2. In both cases, there are two maps: a holding area with merchants and some other NPCs, and an arena where the party is forced to fight ever tougher battles for the pleasure of the ringmaster and the audience. Levels are gained pretty fast, and it's a great way to test out builds, items, spells, and tactics in general

If I were Larian, I would just drop something like this in a patch. I'll go further than that: I am predicting here and now that Larian is actually going to release this as a definitely-not-DLC at some point, it seems just too fun and too easy for them not to do it, and also a fun way to give a bit of a spotlight to those rarely used hirelings.

A mini campaign like this might also be a fun occasion to get some actual unique dialogs out of those hirelings. Although I could imagine that including spoken dialog for all of them might be a bit much for 12 "extra" characters. Then again, if there is only a little bit of that, it might still be doable!

So what do you all think? Are you playing or considering to play Trials of Tav? And would TBP3 be a gamemode or "official mod" that you would like?

[Ghost]

Considering that they've said they're done and the game's not really built for that like D:OS 2 was, I think that's pretty unlikely.

They've also stated they wouldn't be releasing extensive creation tools, so wouldn't expect much if anything to come from modders on that front either. But who knows, maybe someone will be able to work with the Divinity tools and figure out how to port something.

[yaerav]

Yeah, I heard them on that. Still, though... When maps load in, you will often first see arather basic layout of the land, which is then populated with objects. So clearly, they are generated in a modular fashion,

I can't imagine that it would be impossible to have some sort of editor for that that might at least theoretically be made available- although maybe Larian is not keen to do that for business-related reasons, maybe they just want to keep some specifics about their engine secret. Then again, if they are not planning to release anything BG-related besides just BG3, but might do it for Divinity, then why wouldn't they allow this?

What might speak against my hope is that there is plenty of info on where models and textures can be found in the pak files, but not much about where maps are stored (I assume somewhere in the 18 GB Gustav.pak file, but no idea how to even read those. Not that I would be able to do anything with them if I could, although I do feel mildly motivated to learn... probably wouln't be able to finish such a project before halfway of next decade though ;-p

[Reeva!]

I'd love the ability to test builds in this game. The only way to do a proper test build in this game is to actually progress, and my barely-sentient roleplaying brain refuses to repeat that so I just go murder-hobo even in proper campaigns. If I could murder-hobo in scenarios like an arena, that'd be awesome, can actually see if a theoretical build is worth the trouble, or if I'll just be spending 30h on a mediocre build with tons of utility and negative damage, considering all the "special" bonuses that later enemies get; I personally love killing myself by attacking a certain someone with my specialized elemental damage type...

[Chroniver]

Even if the official editor might not allow new lands, it's possible modders might find a way themselves.

In Cyberpunk 2077 I think the official tools don't allow that either, but modders did design third party tools for it.

Though it's still limited.

[Ghost]

Originally posted by yaerav:

I can't imagine that it would be impossible to have some sort of editor for that that might at least theoretically be made available- although maybe Larian is not keen to do that for business-related reasons, maybe they just want to keep some specifics about their engine secret. Then again, if they are not planning to release anything BG-related besides just BG3, but might do it for Divinity, then why wouldn't they allow this?

Given that D:OS 2 had a level editor and BG3 is running on an updated/upgraded version of the same engine, I'd guess that has far more to do with Hasbro and licensing issues than Larian. They (Hasbro) are really not consumer friendly and absolutely hate people doing their own things with what they see as theirs.