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Baldur's Gate
II: Shadows Of Amn Improvements
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One
of the many improvements made to Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of
Amn was to the graphics of the game. Not only has the general
background art quality improved but all graphical effects including
spells, creatures and background animations has, as well. Our
art team has learned many "tricks" to take advantage of the engine,
and the overall quality of the game has improved because of this.
One
of the most spectacular improvements to the look of the game was
to the background images. The detail level has risen to a whole
new level. Jungle areas now have lush ferns, vines, shrubs and
mushrooms etc. Tons of detail in the game world that will really
grab the player and immerse them, adding to quality of game play.
Many sources were used as reference when creating these areas.
Some of the artists were walking through the river valley here
in Edmonton, looking at the trees and undergrowth. You can imagine
them coming back all muddy with twigs in their cloths from doing
"research". Because of the rich diversity that BG2 has in regards
to the backgrounds much imagination had to be used. Places such
as the Underdark, Hell, the Astral Plane, elven cities and mind
flayer layers all had to be made, with little or no direction
from official source material.
 
 
We
added over 150 new spells in BG2 and they all have new effects.
We also re-did the majority of the original BG1 spells as well.
Add in the fact that we added 3d card support, with specific 3d
spell animation version of the art you will see that the whole
spell side of the game received a major overhaul. New 3d Studio
Max plug-ins and new techniques learned from other projects such
as MDK2 really helped to "up the ante" when it came to particle
effects and other effects used to create spells. Source materials
have very little direction for what spells actually "look" like
so we had a lot of freedom when creating spells. You may think
that after our 300th spell we would be running out of ideas, you'd
be wrong. We actually had to pull back the number of spells and
spell effects, otherwise the game would be shipping sometime in
2005 =).
We
have also spent more time on the background animations. Background
animations can be anything from water lapping up on a beach, to
a demonic machine that huffs and lurches in the background. We
have a specific team of people that run through the game and identify
things that look like "they should be animating" and we do it.
This adds so much to the world and the "realism" of the game itself.
Because of engine improvements we can now have much bigger animations
in the game. This means whole sections of areas can be animated.
Huge machines, thundering waterfalls and anything else that our
artists can dream up, we can now animate.
 
We have doubled the amount of monsters that exist in the game
from what was in BG1. At last count there was something like 230
monsters types with over 120 unique monster models. This does
not include any townsfolk, or humanoid creatures such as evil
clerics etc. In total there are literally thousands of creatures
in the game. We have changed some of the underlying code to support
VERY large monsters, as a matter of fact some are so big you have
to scroll the screen to see them all. We will be letting out a
bit more information about these in the coming weeks.
So,
in summation, the world of Baldur's Gate series has evolved a
lot from the original Baldur's Gate. In depth, size and in quality
the graphical elements will genuinely make playing BG2 a more
immersive and engrossing experience.
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