Topic: Gothic 3 - Update: G3 joins GOG at $10

[MysterD]

This game just arrived today at my house, from Amazon.
Yay!!!


EDIT, first impressions -- w/ Patch 1.12 installed
-------------------------------------------------
First thing's first -- this game looks great at its defaults, but runs like junk at its default. Had to turn down and off a bunch of settings -- and the resolution down to 800x600, to make it still look and run ˝ way decent. Runs better than Neverwinter 2, actually....oddly enough....

Long gameloads, quickloads, saves, and quicksaves -- must take about 1 minute, for any of those.

Best Gothic controls ever -- period. Finally, it supports mouselook in the way it should've been, back around Gothic 2 for combat and all. And now, we can zoom into first person and out to third person; or switch w/ the hit of a hotkey.

Oh, the Intro video and the first battle sequence at The Starting Camp was awesome.

I'll need to give G3 some more time, to give my take on many of the other things the game has to offer -- such as bugs, issues, and all of that stuff.

[Xessive]

Sweet! Soon we'll be able to discuss the game in detail!

[MysterD]

So far, I like it quite a bit. I noticed a performance boost for this game, w/ the newest NVidia drivers; so, that's a start.

My biggest complaint, so far -- the "white-flickering" of the entire gamescreen that occurs, at times when moving around and when stuff is goin' on.

WTF is that all about?!?!?!?

Other than that, I like what's going on w/ this, so far.

Just don't hope I hit any vicious bugs or anything....

Made my way to The Slaver Camp.

[MysterD]

Here's Pirahna Bytes speaking on the ordeal w/ Gothic IP.

World of Gothic has some revealing quotes from both sides of the Gothic split that appear to show Piranha Bytes has ceded the future of Gothic entirely to JoWood. Here's a snip from their latest newsbit:

    For JoWooD's CEO Albert Seidl it is all perfectly clear. In an interview with Börse-Express.com last Friday, he claims the rights to Gothic 4 complete with all derivatives and possible sequels for his company. He also stated to be in close contact with a good and qualified developing studio. He just not mentioned its name.

    Today in our forum, Piranha Bytes' art director Ralf Marczinczik referred all fans to direct their questions about the future of Gothic 4, any AddOn or patches straight at JoWooD. Piranha Bytes is "no longer working with the brand" and therefore not in a position to answer any of those questions.

Here's the full post from Ralf on WoG's English board:


Hello to everybody here in the english speaking community!

Sorry that we (from the studio) can´t regulary post here. (Big thanks to Christopher Weckwerth, who is constantly engaged here)

As some of you know, we answer questions quite regulary on the German side of the Forum- but for some reason we rarely post here (even though, most of us are quite fluent in English).
(Maybe I get Kai to check in more regulary too...?)

You propably know allready that the publisher of the Gothic Games, JoWood, and the Studio parted a while ago. Sad story- and I am sure you read the news in the trades.

Any questions you might have about the future of Gothic IV, any AddOn or patches, please contact the publisher via their homepage. It´s not that we don´t want to answer your questions, but all those answers can only be given by JoWood, since we are not longer working with the brand.

And yes- we are not too happy about it too, but the step was necessary to protect our studio.

I hope you understand...

Piranha Bytes itself is still very much alive and of course we are working- allthough, it might take a little while until you will get any official announcements about WHAT we are doing at the moment.

Thanks anyway for your encouragement and welcome criticism about the split.

Best regards

__________________

Ralf Marczinczik
Artdirector
Piranha Bytes

[MysterD]

And here's the latest from JoWood, on the current future of the Gothic IP brand name.

This is quite interesting, actually.

This is in regards to future Gothic games; namely Gothic 4, a Gothic 4 Expansion, and Gothic 5.

JoWooD responded to an inquiry by print mag GameStar for a reaction to Pluto 13 / Piranha Bytes´ latest statement on the Gothic rights controversy.

Here is a brief summary. Please note that the legal terms used by JoWooD cannot be translated easily due to the lack of exact dictionary entries. It´s more than likely their German and / or Austrian meaning is different to that in your home country. I am not a lawyer. Please take the whole newsbit with a grain of salt.

JoWooDs´ writes:

    * JoWooD currently holds the exclusive usage rights for the "Gothic" brand. (1)
    * After the failure of the negotiations with Pluto 13 only JoWooD is allowed to produce the game Gothic 4 with another development studio and publish it worldwide.
    * Pluto 13 is not authorized to develop and release a Gothic game at the present time.
    * JoWooD owns the exclusive worldwide publishing right for conversions of Gothic 3 or Gothic 4 to other platforms.
    * JoWooD owns the exclusive worldwide publishing rights for Gothic 4 add-ons [plural; ed.]. Pluto 13 "will receive the first option" (*) to develop the add-on [singular; ed.] for JoWooD.
    * "With regard to a possible Gothic 5 Pluto 13 potentially has certain rights." (**) "But at any rate JoWooD has at least a first option right (*) and a last option right (**) to publish this game worldwide , too." (2)

Furthermore JoWooD refused to comment on the Gothic 3 add-on.


Comments and analysis:
(*) The terms "the first option" and "first option right" are not defined. They can mean, for example, the right of first (good faith) negotiation(s) about a development contract, or the right of first refusal. The former is relatively weak while the latter is strong because it usually requires a detailed offer for the other party to decide about. It´s not even clear both terms have identical meaning.
(**) "Last option right" sounds like the right of last refusal, also known as "matching right" in response to the best offer by a 3rd party.

(1) "Currently" does not mean indefinitely. It´s possible JoWooDs´ Gothic rights will expire sooner or later. "Usage rights" are not necessarily the rights to the brand itself. This sounds like Pluto 13 owns the Gothic brand and JoWooD can use it exclusively.
(2) Now it seems the situation is reversed. JoWooD has "at least" the two options, "Erstoptions- und Letztoptionsrecht" in the original source, and Pluto 13 "potentially has certain rights" on a possible Gothic 5. This implies that (a) Pluto 13 generally holds all rights for Gothic 5 and (b) it´s Pluto 13´ s decision whether or not a Gothic 5 will be made. JoWooD on the other hand is protected by the explained options, which will give them a good shot at the worldwide publishing rights for Gothic 5.

Source: Gamestar

[Xessive]

I thought this might be of interest!

Community Patch v1.4

Here's the changelog.

[MysterD]

As far as I know, JoWood ain't patching the game, anymore.
They are letting the Community do it.

[Xessive]

Yep, which is pretty shizzy of them. This patch actually convinced me to reinstall G3! Now I can finally finish it!

[MysterD]

Community Patch 1.5
Community Patch 1.5 let loose.

ChangeLog
ChangeLog is here -- and it's EXTENSIVE.

[Xessive]

Sorry for the unannounced revival:

If you'd like a complete compilation of the Gothic games then Gothic Universe will very likely interest you.

[MysterD]

Well, here's some good news that can ever come from any new patch: The game's COPY PROTECTION has been actually removed (with Patch 1.5.2).

New Community Patch Version 1.5.2 released.

[MysterD]

Even more good official news.
OFFICIAL PATCH coming next year!

Basically, the Community Patch Team and Spellbound (who are also are working on Gothic 4) are working together on a BRAND NEW Official Patch.

Here's so far, what is what has been fixed so far w/ the V1.6 they are working on.

Gothic 3 v1.6 Patch status 20.12.2007

Community Patch Team Fixes

- The Hero's death will not cause a Quest failed-message anymore.
- Frozen NPCs and creatures will unfreeze after a while in any case.
- Rune and Zapotek do not attack anymore when the player picks up ham or wood for a quest.
- Quest items like barrels of fish, firewood, etc. disappear from the game when you delivered them to decrease the amount of unusable quest items in the inventory.
- NPCs in charge of relevant quest items do not retreat anymore after a city's liberation but keep fighting.
- The hero does not stab NPCs anymore when they already lost their last health points.
- NPCs who the player is asked to follow will walk to their designated destination instead of standing around after they get knocked down.
- Chests are now being closed after NPCs used them.
- When a ranger is being attacked by the player other rangers will approach to help him out.
- Krush Tarachs, spears and halberds dropped by NPCs are now worn.
- After the message Not enough reputation the amount of missing reputation will be shown as well.
- Tutorials may now be deactivated permanently
- NPCs retreating after a revolution will now die directly when you remove their last health points.
- Whetstones may now only be used after the player learned Hone blade.
- Dialog choices concerning part deliveries of goods referred to quests have been corrected.
- Dialogs concerning success or failure of a quest are now put into the questlog as well.
- Menus may now be closed pressing the menus button even if the player had magic equipped when opening them.
- You cannot challenge more than one NPC at the same time in the arena anymore.
- Whenever a Guru appears a log will be saved automatically.
- The chest name's colour now shows if already looted.
- Taking a Follow-Quest will automatically cancel any other active Follow-Quest.
- The Hero may sell Sanford out to Marik even if this results in a duel between the Hero and Sanford.
- Unnecessary Marlo dialog option continue has been removed.
- Dialogs concerning success or failure of a quest are now put into the questlog as well.
- Questlog entries for some quests added.
- Logic of dialogs with Folleck corrected.
- Kor-Shach does not appear as a teacher too early now.
- One sentence by Emet is now played.
- Porgan's dialog order has been corrected.
- Wrong armor values for the paladin's shield have been corrected.
- Snapper leather and fire lizard leather are now sorted in the inventory tab hides and hunter merchants will pay twice the price for them.
- Gold values of some ancestor stones have been corrected to 50 gold.
- Torches and burnt torches now have a buying value of 3 gold, selling value is 1 gold.
- Golden necklaces and rings are now sorted in the inventory tab valuables and thief merchants will pay twice the price for them. The value of necklaces has been adjusted to 250 gold.
- Wrong armor values for the light rebel armor have been corrected.
- Icons have been visually improved again
- Strafing speed of ogres and goblins has been adjusted.
- Female slaves do not wear weapons or shields anymore.
- The Orcs in Al Shedim now react to the death of one of them with aggressive behaviour even if the player already handed all five artifacts to one of the gods.
- Some orcs now sell orcish weapons as well as their standard equipment.
- Integrated rain-sand-snow storm sound effects
- fmodex improvements
- Updating fmodex to newer version
- Some internal improvements



Spellbound Fixes

- New memory manager implemented to improve performance and stability
- Error handling in memory pool improved
- Fixed memory allocation error when saving
- Memory is now freed correctly
- Improved memory allocation for memory streams in filesystemstreams
- Fixed a potential memory leak which would result when an insert operation fails
- Fixed memory leak which produces 84+20 bytes leaks for each savegame when entering the load screen
- Remaining memory impact during saveload reduced from 100MB in some cases to typically less than 1,5MB - thus increasing game stability significantly
- Fixed memory leak in game_script
- Fixed some potential memory leaks in scripts
- Several shader enhancements to improve memory usage
- Fixed several uninitialized memory reads (potentially resulting in unstable or unpredictable runtime behavior)
- Improvements to the memory logging system - giving more detailed protocols of memory allocation activities
- Improved caching
- Unload caches before game restart (further reduction on memory leaks while savingloading)
- Purged all regular caches before loading a savegame - further reducing the memory leak during saveload
- Fixed access violation exception on program termination - crash during exit
- Fixed a crash bug where entities were cached out even though they were still in use
- Fixed crash bug in physics and character controller - occurs potentially during main gameplay
- Fixed crash bug within entity manager - occurs potentially during main gameplay
- Fixed one crash bug when using teleport stone
- Changed control order for PrefetcherJob destruction to avoid deadlocks (and possible crashes)
- Fmodex.dll updated to version 4.10.01 (fixing potential freezes or crash)
- Changes to the filesystem for Fmodex to avoid file format errors
- Memory performance improvements in the mesh renderer
- Fixed some memory fragmentation for performance improvements
- Performance and memory improvements to the container templates
- Slight performance improvements in ThreadPool
- Reused vertexbuffer declarations in several locations
- Error handling in vertex processors improved
- Created vertex buffers in default pool instead of managed pool if managed pool fails
- Fixed memory overwrites in the shader module
- Fixed rendering of zero or less vertices
- Fixed DX9 issue complaining about different vertex stream strides for lightmap
- Fixed DX9 issue about impossible MIP filtering
- Various small cosmetic fixes for the world
- Some fixes to avoid playing sounds with empty filenames
- Fixed bug where objects could be off color

[MysterD]

OFFICIAL Patch 1.6 has been released.

[MysterD]

Gothic 3 -- Community Patch Version 1.70 Plans
Some plans here for G3: Community Patch 1.70.

List of all known information about the Patch 1.70 until now:

    * Estimated release date in march (when there will be no heavy problems again)
    * Size: between 800-1000MB
    * Contain all previous patch versions, including Patch 1.12
    * Patch can installed over each version (but it is recommendable to make a complete new Gothic 3 installation)
    * installed modifications must delete (or make a backup) before installing the patch because modifications will be not compatible with the Patch 1.70
    * Patch is for all languages
    * Begin a new game is a must
    * Savegames from version 1.60 and before are not compatible and will be not shown in the menu
    * around 700 changelog entries (with every small changes and world changes there are several thousands bugfixes)
    * Sword sound, weather sounds
    * Alternative Balancing (changes at items like weapons, armors, perks, magic etc.); can be switched on/off but after that restart the game; this balancing replaces not the original fight system but it is only alternative
    * Hero can attack by 1-3 enemies in melee fight at the same time (depend on the difficulty); work only with activated alternave balancing
    * new AI (new melee fight system); can also be switched on/off; opponents are much smarter and better
    * increase performance (depend of the computer of the player)
    * Release of Humanforce's quest package at the same time (first in German, also in English I believe)

[MysterD]

Community Patch 1.7 released (for ALL version of Gothic 3)
Community Patch 1.7 released for Gothic 3.
880 MB file download.

EXTENSIVE Change-Log
Here's one huge log with over 700 fixes, changes, additions, and etc listed. Read them here for yourself. VERY Extensive.

New PDF Manual Released
New PDF Manual Released for Gothic 3 - Community Version 1.70

Servers everywhere getting slammed.
Think I'll wait a bit for things to settle down, to see if I can get this...

[MysterD]

Quick Patch 1.70 Impressions

Leave it to The Community to fix a game the dev's shouldn't have screwed-up so much in the first place...

Whoa! Technical in-game performance is much better with this patch. Game looks better with more stuff turning on and now the game runs fine in 1024x768. AI is smarter and combat is more interesting with the Alternative AI settings cranked ON. Game is nowhere as unfair, as you won't have 20 monsters running after you at once trying to slay you -- since the game isn't easy as is, anyways; they'll just wait on you, if you got too many already attacking you. If you turn Alternative AI off, then it'll go back to the old way for you insane over-hardcore gamers that want to get slaughtered.
 
Good news is load times are better but...bad news is it is not by much, really....

Ummmm....why couldn't Gothic 3 have came out like this in the first place? 

Okay, gonna go play a bit more with this patch installed and tinker with it -- and gonna have more impressions, too...

[MysterD]

More on Patch 1.70

Settings I got in on now.








Screenies.

[MysterD]

Community Patch 1.71 HotFix is out now
NOTE: You must have installed Com Patch 1.70 first
Find Com Patch 1.71 HotFix here!

Community Patch 1.72 (which basically only includes both 1.70 + 1.71 HotFix in one file)
Get it here!

Kill The Stuttering Issues Yourself - Font Tweak
For real, this has got to seem like the silliest way to fix the game's in-game performance I've ever seen -- and it freakin' works big time! Game barely stutters now!
1.You take the original "Gothic3.tff" file and rename it to "Gothic3_old.tff"
2.Download G2: NOTR's (weak and simple) font file "GII_-_Die_Nacht_des_Raben.ttf file"
3.Move that NOTR font file right into your Gothic 3 Directory
4.Rename NOTR's font to "Gothic3.tff"
5.Boot the game and enjoy the lack of stuttering!

NOTE: It's also recommended you also do the font tweak procedure on Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods, as well...

[Xessive]

That's a weird bug! The font they created probably causes a rendering error.

[MysterD]

That's a weird bug! The font they created probably causes a rendering error.

It has reduced my stuttering quite a bit. I can tolerate this a little bit more than what it was.

[MysterD]

Community Patch 1.73 planned for September.
Here's what it will entail.

Announcing Community Patch 1.73
Surprise! there will be one more Community Patch.

The original reason for this was to offer the modders somewhat more and to add some tools which should help modders with their work. Still in the meantime the modkit for G3 and G3FG has been announced, we decided not to include any tools anymore.

Some of us have had a good mind to change some things which couldn't create anymore in previous CP 1.7x versions.

Release: estimated in September
Patch: Full-Patch only, NO Update-Patch

Changelog:

    * + HDR Rendering.
    * + Improved bloom effect.
    * - Bug corrected where audio system always cached out sound even if property said "no".
    * + Some Info/Quest commands added.
    * - Saturas now also hands out his key when the hero first talks to him after exploring Al Shedim.
    * - Texture/Shadow/Light flickering (usually occurs on ATI HD4xxx serie cards) eliminated.
    * + Leaf subsurface scattering (only with activated Rim Lighting and Shader 3.0)
    * + Heat haze (at minimum Shader 2.0; always on; exception: few fire places because of recompiling the world).
    * - Mana recipe icon corrected.
    * - Faraway trees project terrain shadows corrected.

[MysterD]

Gothic 3 - Community Patch Version 1.73 Released.

ATTENTION!
The patch can be installed on all g3 versions and is available for all languages.
It's only for original G3 game, not for Forsaken Gods.

The CP 1.73 contains all previous patches. So you need only this patch to update Gothic 3.

1.7x savegames are compatible with CP 1.73. Older savegames (1.60 or earlier) are not compatible.

If you have installed modifications then save it before installing the patch. The patch will delete all superfluously files during the installation. We can't guarantee that all modifications will work with the CP 1.73.

If you have installed the quest pack then you should install it again after the 1.73 installation.

And now here it is - the Gothic 3 Community Patch 1.73!

Data size: 913 MB
Compatibility: All Versions!

Here's the changelog, if you wanna see what has been changed w/ CP Version 1.73.

[MysterD]

Jowood Forums -> Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods - Enhanced Edition patch has been announced for Q4 2010.
Same mod team that did G3 - Enhanced Edition is working on this FREE patch.

[MysterD]

Gothic 3 joins GOG and is $9.99 - patched up w/ Community Patch 1.6.
For those who are curious, Community Patch 1.74 is the newest version of the G3 Com Patches.