We are Beamdog, developers of Baldur's Gate I & II: Enhanced Edition and the recently released Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition. Ask Us Anything!

I know Mr. Oster has mentioned Baldur's Gate III is a goal of his.

Well... How's it coming?

On another note, thank you so much for founding BioWare and for enhancing these awesome games.

First of all, Mr. Oster is way too formal, Trent will do nicely. We are interested in doing a Baldur's Gate III. We continue to pester the fine fellows at the Wizards of the Coast on a frequent basis about developing the game. To date we haven't managed to come to an agreement. The plan is to wear them down on until they just give in ;-)

Hey man, I'm just trying to respect a CEO.

Good plan. What really is the hang up on development agreements? If its not too complicated to explain. Thanks for answering me and the awesome work.

"Hey man, I'm just trying to respect a CEO."

Don't let it go to your head, Trent.

My head is a big as I ever want it to be. Any larger and I'd topple over

At the moment we just can't come to a common vision on BG3 and what terms the deal should have. We continue to talk and hopefully it can happen.

Follow up question/suggestion. Are you willing to buy Obsidian's technology (Pillars of Eternity) in BG3 game, if you are going to make it in the first place? Please do! It looks fantastic, real remake of Infinity Engine.

I had reached out to Obsidian to discuss licensing the Pillars tech, but given both our busy schedules, a discussion hasn't happened yet. I think it would be a funny reversal as Icewind Dale was built upon the Infinity Engine, which was Licensed from Bioware when I was a Project Director there. We're still talking through our future technology options as there are many paths we could take.

That's awesome!

BTW, there's one game I'd want even more than BGIII. It's Icewind Dale III. Just imagine all this beautiful snow and ice on full HD screen (with Obsidian's tech). wow...

I always found it funny that we at Bioware in frigid Edmonton, Alberta, Canada did the sunny south in BG and BGII and the guys in California did the frozen North in Icewind Dale

I'm just repeating questions from the official forums that people who couldn't make it requested be asked.

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/37101/new-beamdog-ama

1. You said the BG2EE patch would go to beta. Now with all this time passing, haven't you changed your mind? Maybe it's better to release the patch as soon as your inner testing is over?

2. Will that patch (or at least a beta-version if you still consider it's the only way to go) be released before Christmas, 2014?

3. Will the Adventure Y be released as a standalone game?

4. Who will be the main character of this Adventure? Is it CHARNAME from the BG line?

5. Will there be new NPCs in this Adventure? The ones we can take into a party I mean.

6. Will there be any quick patch for IWDEE before Christmas, 2014?

7. What changes from IWDEE will be ported back to BGEE? Max HP option, additional druid spells, bard songs? Anything more?

8. What is your current view on making IWD2EE? PSTEE?

9. If you're thinking about the new game instead of IWD2EE and PSTEE, what will it be like? Can we say it will be like what we can imagine by IWD3 title?

10. Will there be NPCs and party interactions in your new game?

11. How do you evaluate your work on BGEE - IWDEE now? Was it a success? Has it brought what you had expected? Has it generated the money to start thinking about BG V?

12. What were the most pleasant and the worst moments in these 2 years?

13. If you make a new game, how long should we wait till it's released: a year from now, 2, 3, or more?

14. Will there be any additional content for BG2EE and IWDEE in terms of quests and areas in the future?

15. What do you want to say to the community in general: will you work on IE-related games in the next 5 years or will you do something completely different?

And these are additional questions from other forum members:

1. (from Aedan) When will more colors be addeded to BG1&2EE, IWDEE to customize skin, hair and dress?

2. (from Aedan) Is that true we will see Weenog in Adventure Y?

3. (from Aedan) Will Adventure Y be dubbed?

4. (from O_Bruce) When can we expect the original content non-enlgish voiceovers for BGEE and why never?

5. (from wubble) Are Beamdog's plans for future games(after adventure y and not EEs) using D&D ? If so are they set in the forgotten realms or another setting?

OMG

How do you evaluate your work on BGEE - IWDEE now? Was it a success? Has it brought what you had expected? Has it generated the money to start thinking about BG V?

I think our work on BG:EE was ok. We shipped a game and it was fun to play, we had some bugs and with the 1.3 update we actually have a game I'm happy with. On BGII:EE we caved to pressure and shipped early. I F##ked up. I pushed my biz partner to ship the game when it just wasn't ready. I've been very happy with our work on the 1.3 Update for BGII:EE and when it hits I think fans will be very happy. On IWD:EE I am happy. I personally functioned mostly as an enabler, allowing talented people to do the work and just trying to unblock them or get them the resources required. In a way it felt odd, I'm a pretty hands-on guy and working so hands off was odd for me.

If you're thinking about the new game instead of IWD2EE and PSTEE, what will it be like? Can we say it will be like what we can imagine by IWD3 title?

As a developer who has been making games for over 16 years, I have about two hundred competing ideas for our next new game. The only constants are: we really like D&D and we think Baldur's Gate kicks butt.

What were the most pleasant and the worst moments in these 2 years?

Best moments: When we signed the agreement to do the Enhanced Editions. When we launched the BaldursGate.com site and 1.6M people hit it. When we shipped Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition.

Worst moments: When we found out Bioware had lost all the source art assets to the game. When the BaldursGate.com website crashed seconds before it went live. When we looked back after launching BGIIEE and started seeing all the bugs.

Who will be the main character of this Adventure? Is it CHARNAME from the BG line?

Yes

Will there be new NPCs in this Adventure? The ones we can take into a party I mean.

Yes

1. You said the BG2EE patch would go to beta. Now with all this time passing, haven't you changed your mind? Maybe it's better to release the patch as soon as your inner testing is over?

We've kept kicking the build back to development when we find showstopper bugs. We learned a big lesson in shipping a buggy BGII:EE and we are going to ensure a quality version of the game and it will take us some time to pull off.

Will there be any additional content for BG2EE and IWDEE in terms of quests and areas in the future?

We are actively developing new content, right now the majority is targeted at the BG storyline.

What is your current view on making IWD2EE? PSTEE?

We are interested, but we still need to do more research. The codebase changes in both titles are large and we need to understand the work before we dive in.

2 .Will that patch (or at least a beta-version if you still consider it's the only way to go) be released before Christmas, 2014?

With our focus on a quality release, our ability to predict timelines gets worse. We are hoping to release the Update before Christmas.

Will Adventure Y be dubbed?

If you are asking will "Y" have voice over, yes, we are going to record English voices for the major characters. As for other languages, we'll have to wait and see and the costs are very high for the quality we demand.

What is Adventure Y?

Adventure Y is something we've been working on for quite a while now. As always, our plans have grown over time into something much larger than originally planned. We've also shifted the production timing around multiple times for a variety of reasons. The project is in full production and is going well. We're stretching the capabilities of the engine and adding new gameplay you just haven't seen before. We are really looking forward to shipping it out and seeing the reactions of our players.

What do you want to say to the community in general: will you work on IE-related games in the next 5 years or will you do something completely different?

I'd say "Community, you guys/gals are awesome. Thanks for your support". We love being an independent developer and we could not be here without your support. I think there is something magical about the IE games and given our time with the games and engine I think it has become part of our DNA.

What changes from IWDEE will be ported back to BGEE? Max HP option, additional druid spells, bard songs? Anything more?

We are still reviewing what we want to bring back. Some items are very straightforward, others not so much.

If you make a new game, how long should we wait till it's released: a year from now, 2, 3, or more?

We're not sure. As our focus is on a quality game, our predictability has gone down. We are hard at work and we want to get something new out as soon as we can, so it will be as soon as we can get a quality release we're proud of.

1. Will the Adventure Y be released as a standalone game? We are still talking this through with everyone involved. So far we are still leaning in the expansion direction.

(from Aedan) When will more colors be addeded to BG1&2EE, IWDEE to customize skin, hair and dress?

We have some ideas on this, but so far, no coding has been implemented

Will there be any quick patch for IWDEE before Christmas, 2014?

If no major issues emerge we will wait for a 1.4 update

What are the chances of "enhancing" Icewind Dale II and Planescape: Torment? I heard it would take some additional time due to changes in the Infinity Engine they made developing the games.

I'll tell you this: I'd love to play both, especially P:T. UI of original version is very clunky by today's standards, and it really keeps me away from this game (I tried!). IWD II on the other hand was one of my best RPGs ever and I'd love to replay it, possibly with multiplayer coop. I'd be awesome!

Planescape:Torment: Enhanced Edition, besides from having too many colons in the title, is something we are interested in working on. With that said, we have a lot of work ahead as we prepare to re-launch Baldur's Gate II:Enhanced Edition and bring it to three new platforms; Android, iPhone and Linux. We realized BGIIEE was in a bad state and was a buggy release, so going forward we've vowed to never cave to external pressure and ship a buggy game. We plan on doing the right thing, taking the time to ensure we craft a great game and release it at a high quality. This is going to mean our development efforts are going to take longer and our predictability for launch dates is going to suffer, but this is how we are going to operate our business going forward.

I understand you pursued Enhanced Editions of Fallout 1 & 2 but initial talks didn't pan out.

Any chance you renew those talks given your success with BGEE 1&2 and IWDEE?

I really want to play those on my android tab...

We made a pitch on the concept, but so far, no dice. I'm sure over time we'll shoot some more e-mail back and forth. It would be pretty awesome on tablets, wouldn't it.

On a scale of 1-27, how frustrating was the existing code to work with for the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale Enhanced Editions?

On a scale of 1-27, I'll go with -1 because the int overflowed.

It was built with several main threads that share the list of game objects, and properly locked before use, etc. The problem is that none of the original developers had multi core CPUs, and few had dual CPU machines, so only one thread was actually really running at a time.

Also, it was built to run on machines with 16 MB of ram. This means that you can never store anything in memory, you need to read it off disk all the time.

On a modern machine, the original Infinity engine spends most of it's time locking and unlocking data.

There are general "Engines" which manage what screen you are on, so there is a World Engine, Journal Engine, Mage Book Engine, World Map Engine, etc. The separation is relatively ok, but there is not a good GameStateManager, or anything like that. This means that there are three copies of code for moving players from one area to another. When you click on the World Map, it's one bit of code, when you transition va a script, it's some other code, and when you click on a door, it's a 3rd version of transitioning players. There is a lot of duplicated duplicated duplicated code as you could expect.

We've generally taken an approach of fixing what we can, where we can, and replacing entire systems if possible, but some times it's very hard to actually find out what a system is doing.

The current infinity engine(not EE) when running in OpenGL mode will do a texture upload and draw per 64x64 background tile, or piece of the GUI.

In the EE versions, all the texture uploads happen during the frame, and then at the end of the frame all the draw calls happen. This is what fixed our performance issue on the Intel GPUs, and helped out the iOS and Android ports a lot.

The current infinity engine does a disk seek twice per string of text you see on screen. The EE versions memory map the .bif files, and dialog.tlk.

I guess you all felt like an archaeologists discovering ancient knowledge and figuring out how-the-heck Mayan calendar really worked.

We refer to it as code spelunking. Some times you end up standing in a pile of bat guano, sometimes you find a treasure. Most of the time it's the guano.

Why is that? Coding standards have improved? Will programmers in 10-15 years tell the same things of code of today's games? Or maybe they just cut the costs back than?

The game was developed with the constraints of Windows 95 in mind. As none of those constraints exist today, many of the work-arounds implemented just don't make sense on modern computers. The 16 mb of Ram limit is a great example.

We spent most of our time planning on how to capture Scott Grieg (original lead programmer) and do bad things to him in retaliation ;-)

Thanks for the detailed reply. Awesome. I remember random tweets from Trent cursing the code as development was ongoing, but didn't fully grasp the magnitude of the issue. Thanks again, you guys did amazing work.

We didn't grasp the magnitude early on either ;-)

How did you decide on the new NPCs in BG:EE and BG2:EE? Was it based on class (like a strong thief was lacking) or was it more because you thought they really added to the game's fun (I just played through with Dorn, so much carnage)?

The EE NPCs were selected before I arrived, so I can't really speak to that. I can say that I personally am more concerned with making characters fun than I am having them fit into a strategic combat unit, but mileages vary on that, both in office and out. Substantial effort is made to ensure the mechanics balance, but very little of it is made by me. I usually just plug along until Phil or Keith wanders over and says "Yeah, dude, the Goddess of Baloney Sandwiches is cool and all, but it's not going to work in-game."

Stop spoiling people about our next game, Andrew, jeez!

I wanted Dorn. Rassad is Phil, so he's to blame there. Neera grew out of a desire for a fun take on a wild mage.

Any hope for NWN:EE? I still play it to this day and I havent found a multiplayer experience like it since, the human DM aspect adds so much and has never properly been redone, I play with a group of 8 people on the weekends and our characters have been there since 2002. Aurora toolset was great.

We've talked to the fine fellows at the Wizards of the Coast about such a thing. The sheer number of people involved in the contractual side of all things Neverwinter is mind-boggling. As such, we are not making much in the way of progress. It currently sits in my "waiting on external approval" pile. We did some work with the Aurora Engine a couple years ago, as a possible platform for a new project, but it died when we could no longer acquire a license to the engine.

EVERY ONE if you love BG then you need to check out Pillars of Eternity

Gus and Chris are great people. The game looks great.

Thanks for the AMA.

1. What's your favorite party composition?
2. What're the chances, roughly, of a BG3?
3. Will you keep to the isometric RPG market?

1 - I subscribe heavily to the Minsc theory of party composition (swords for everyone!), so I tend to run fairly melee-heavy. A good-PC run in BG2 for me will usually be a f/t, Minsc, Keldorn, Jaheira, Imoen and Nalia/Aerie/Neera. It tends to make the spellcaster-dominated late game a little harder, but I definitely prefer close combat.

Trent's covered the BG3 question at the top of the thread, and I'll defer the isometric question to someone a little higher up than I.

I'm with Pete. "Swords for Everyone".

We really like the tactical focus that comes from the isometric perspective. makes the game much less "whack a mole" and much more about planning and revising strategy

Question for the writers: What are your favorite fantasy books? Just looking for some recommendations.

Thank you guys for making these games. They are irreplaceable parts of my childhood.

Does science fantasy count? I'm just gonna barf out some books/book series I like:

The Black Company series

Iain M. Banks' (PBUH) Culture Series

A Fire Upon The Deep

Wizard of Earthsea

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Ma- aha just kidding nobody can read blue mars

The Algebraist

The Malazan Series

there's a bunch more but i have a bad memory and also too many books

edit: how could i forget dune. i am a waste.

Glad to see some Malazan love. That series is absurdly detailed and so good. Erickson and ICE deserve so much more love from fantasy lovers.

I tried to poke him regarding a game around the series a few years ago. His Agent said "no thanks" using two other words.

Any chance of seeing Baeloth in the Baldur's Gate 2 maingame? I feel like that guy's ironic punishment shouldn't be over that fast ;). Btw, great voice acting on that one :)

Credit Mark Meer of Commander Shepard fame for the voice acting. He is a funny guy.

How happy are you with the commercial success of the EE's? Any thoughts on Android vs. iOS vs. PC?

I was surprised by the success of Android. Early on in development we were told repeatedly that it was not going to pay off. Android has actually be a good success for us and we're anxious to get the BGII:EE on the platform.

Can we has Fallout 2 enhanced edition?

Only if Bethesda says Ok and we can work out a deal.

Thank you so much for creating a great multiplayer experience on my favorite games ever. My wife and I get to joyously relive our childhood. Icewind Dale is a blast.

What's the writing process like for the original content created for these games? Any unique constraints or advantages you have?

Andrew has covered the basic points well so I won't reiterate what he's said. One unique issue Andrew has to face during the writing is putting up with my terrible puns. All day. Every day.

Writing collaboratively can be an issue, but Andrew and I work well together which is a huge advantage. We come from different writing backgrounds so it's great to work with someone who's a strong writer and be able to bring my perspective and experience to the table.

Both of you have forgotten the "Seagull Factor" where Phil, Cam or I (mostly me) either hear something, see it or play it and then come zooming in asking all sorts of questions and hurling about broad declarations.

To the whole team: What is your favorite pass-time that ISN'T video games?

I build and road race a 1988 Mazda RX-7 turbo. I love the multi-level challenge of engineering a car, maintaining it and driving it in competition. Racing is amazing.

So You guys.. Ill bet you have a crush on Dragonlance..

So have you ever thought of doing a game in that world and whats holding you back ?

I do. The main hold back at the moment is the amount of work we can accomplish in a given day. We'd love to do it, but as a small company we have to focus and deliver on the best opportunities we have. At the moment the opportunities outnumber our working lives about 15 to 1.

What's been the biggest challenge on the digital distribution front? Obviously with giants like Steam and Origin to compete with what inspired you to go after that market?

As is, we've decided to back off on the Digital Distribution front. We're going to sell only the games we've made and focus much more on the game development side. I think it just makes us all happier.

Any chance for a Neverwinter Nights Enhanced edition? I love that game to death!

We've talked with Wizards about it. At the moment the issues around the Neverwinter property ownership are quite thick.

Will we ever be able to play bg through bg2ee in one game?

Yes, 1.3 patch should really help things out. We feel pretty shitty about the state of the initial release, as Trent can attest.

Philip I was referring to an official BGT style thing where you don't have to quit out of one game to continue the adventure.

Oh man have we got something in store for you.

What? or whY?

I see what you did there.

Hey! Really enjoyed the re-release of BG and looking forward to Icewind Dale!

Because I have to ask a question, any idea if this will run on an x86 android tablet? I got a neat little tablet from Intel, but I only have it to test out the x86 apk support for Unity. Would be way more convenient than PC though.

Otherwise, keep up the good work and tell Amber that "Scraw" says hi :)

We just might have such a device in house which we may just be poking.

Are you willing to use Kickstarter (or other crowdfunding platform) for your next project (whatever it may be)?

I love the idea of Kickstarter as I'm a huge fan of many of the core tenants behind it. We've discussed the concept with the fellows at the Wizards of the Coast and together agreed it was not the right method for the games we've worked on.

What's happened with the storefront?

We stopped selling games that didn't sell. Basically, we're going to pull a Blizzard and just sell our games. I did some accounting and BG:EE was 99.7% of our revenue so we decided the effort of selling other developers games was not worth the small amount of money we were seeing.

Have you considered the idea of releasing a game - perhaps that's BG3, or IWD 3, or 4, or etc. for a platform that could appeal to an audience that wasn't intrigued by the original version of the game?

In other words, could you maintain the same engine, storyline, music, and feel on a platform such as XBox1?

Yes. We have considered releasing something for a different platform. But, I think we have a great convergence with PC's and Tablets which allow for engaging, tactical, role-playing games and we want to define what is possible in that space.