The Warring States of NPF - Torchlight

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- - Torchlight - surprisingly addicting (http://www.nuklearforums.com/showthread.php?t=36388)

Torchlight - surprisingly addicting

Anyone playing Torchlight?

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Torchlight is an action role-playing game developed by Runic Games, Development of the game is led by Travis Baldree, designer of Fate, and Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer, co-designers of Diablo and Diablo II, joined by the team that developed Mythos.
Runic Games will initially release Torchlight as a standalone Single Player game, Torchlight was released october 27 as a download for various digital distribution for about 20$. Following the single player release, work will commence on a fully-featured MMO version.

In the game the player controls either the Destroyer(Melee), Alchemist(mage like) or the Vanquisher(Hunter/rogue) who explores a series of randomized (procedurally-generated) dungeons, where they fight large numbers of enemies and collect equipment, gold, and other loot. The game also features a single town which serves as a hub, to which the player can periodically return to buy and sell items to NPC vendors and obtain quests.

As the player delves into the dungeon, they are presented with a series of quests and battle a series of unique bosses that advance the main storyline. Optionally, players may take on side quests, random quests and visit branching dungeon areas. The graphics are 3D and viewed from an overhead perspective, similar to the isometric perspective used in the original Diablo. The game is controlled using a point-and-click mouse interface and keyboard hotkeys.

Players will also choose a pet to accompany them. Pets can level up along with the player, and will help in battle, carry items, and perform a variety of helpful services such as go back to town and sell loot for the player, they can also be equiped with two spells, so you can have a summoning pet who summons skeleton warriors or zombies, or a pet that shoots fireballs and heals you.

Torchlight is designed to allow extensive modding by players, and Runic will release the game editing tools they used to create the game as a free download. The editor, known as "TorchEd" is intended to be intuitive to use and allows the user to switch between editing levels and playing in them without leaving the editor. Player, monster, and item statistics, language translations, and even particle systems can be customized within the editor. TorchED is also capable of editing quest events, scripting, and global game balance. Further, the game uses publicly available file formats, allowing users to import models and animations with relative ease.

some screenshots:

in-game shot from my destroyer:

http://i35.tinypic.com/23l0e3n.jpg

the classes:
http://i34.tinypic.com/xn828y.jpg

I'm interested in the game.
But I don't think I'll get it just now. I'd have to retrieve the password for my paypal account for it.
I'll wait for the Multiplayer version. (Unless it's already out, which, as far as I know, isn't the case)

Besides, I'm one of those old-fashioned people who prefer a physical copy, If that ever happens I'm in for the fun immediately.

A buddy of mine made me dl the demo. Haven't played it yet but it looks interesting.

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Originally Posted by InsaneGenius (Post 984278)

the mmo version won't be out for atleast 18 months. and it will be free2play.

they should release a boxed copy sometime in january i believe.

I like the bulky, slightly cartoony art style.

You should be careful, krissgjeng. People with that vowel:consenant ratio that are endorsing a video game look suspiciously like spam bots.

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Originally Posted by Megaman FTW (Post 984393)

You should be careful, krissgjeng. People with that vowel:consenant ratio that are endorsing a video game look suspiciously like spam bots.

Well, it actually amounts to Kriss G. Jeng, but I have to admit, coming in with this on the first readable post is a bit suspicious, especially with those levels in the screens.

Still, I actually got a link to this in my mail courtesy of Perfect World just within the past week, so it's not like it's not out there. If anyone actually has anything to share about it, this would be a good place to do it. Personally, I really don't hold much interest in it, because I'm not big on hack 'n slash, much less the original Diablo, and I already got messaged by PW telling me it's been forever since I used it, so I really don't need the MMO, either.

Kept getting Runtime errors on the demo I downloaded through Steam, decided to uninstall it before I even talked to my first NPC. :(

I tried it out, and thought I'd offer my own (mediocre) review:

It is a half-decent game if you want an ARPG to tide you over until Diablo 3... but holy lord is it ever "short." The official campaign took me maybe 10 hours. There's no secondary or tertiary difficulty level, though there's an "infinite"* dungeon once you finish the main quest. A lot of Diablo 2 is just farming gear for whatever reason, which you can kind of still do in Torchlight, but it just doesn't feel quite as extensible as Diablo 2. I think they're banking on the community adding life to the game through mods.

On another note, playing as the Alchemist, a lot of their Ember abilities are strangely reminiscent of the Wizard from D3. One of its abilities is a beam of bright white fire that is extremely similar to Distingrate. It also has a lightning-type attack that leaps to one nearby target, also almost identical to Electrocute. I'm told the Destroyer's skills closely mimic the Barbarian's gameplay videos as well.

Additionally, while the art direction (particularly in coloring and textures) is more... artistic than realistic, the way levels and rooms are designed seemed similar to the game play videos I've viewed from Diablo 3, particularly in the sense that you can view lower, mostly inaccessible levels rather than entirely flat like such games have been in the past. Finally, if you don't recognize the inspiration (or, dare I say, source) of the town music, play Diablo 1 for about 30 seconds.

While some of this may be excusable, given that the major partners of Runic Games originally worked at Blizzard North so many years ago, I feel the game almost reeks of plagiarism. I can't attest to the other two classes, but it's like they took the gameplay videos Diablo 3 has released, simplified the art, and made a fast game out of it, while throwing in Fate's animal companion. BrotherLaz, who codes the MedianXL mod for Diablo 2, commented months ago that it "looked unoriginal and is simply there to leech off the market", which I think is a pretty accurate way to look at it.

It's okay to play for a couple hours now and again, but it's not going to last very long for hardcore fans of Diablo. I am interested in seeing what mods can do with it, though.

*The infinite dungeon may or may not be infinite, but your character is capped to level 100+55 fame (fame is a secondary leveling system gained by killing only named minibosses, rewarding you skill points per rank of fame). I don't believe the infinite dungeon increments in difficulty with each level (instead the level of the NPCs is adjusted to yours when you first enter it), but if it does scale then there's a practical limit to how deep you can go.

Edit: All things considered this does seem like blatant advertising. This poster has only 3 posts (though only two show up in the search) and they only joined yesterday. Perhaps a mod can adjust the screenshots so we can keep the thread for discussing it anyway.

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Originally Posted by Megaman FTW (Post 984393)

You should be careful, krissgjeng. People with that vowel:consenant ratio that are endorsing a video game look suspiciously like spam bots.

well it's short for my first and last name, it's my usual username.

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Originally Posted by Niveras (Post 984429)

it's not strange that you recognize the music it's from the same composer that made diablo 1 and 2's music. Matt Uelman.

sorry if the post came of as blatant advertising/spamming, that wasn't my intention.

i'm a fan of 8-bit theatre and haven't had a reason to sign up till now, just thought i would reccommend the game.

edit: reduced the amount of screenshots

In so much as I have absolutely no interest in Diablo Clone number 253...

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Originally Posted by Niveras (Post 984429)

On another note, playing as the Alchemist, a lot of their Ember abilities are strangely reminiscent of the Wizard from D3. One of its abilities is a beam of bright white fire that is extremely similar to Distingrate. It also has a lightning-type attack that leaps to one nearby target, also almost identical to Electrocute.

I don't know if accusing a game of having a heat beam spell and a lightning spell that arcs to other enemies is really a good marker for plagiarism. You'd have a harder time finding games with mages that DON'T have spells almost exactly like this.

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Additionally, while the art direction (particularly in coloring and textures) is more... artistic than realistic, the way levels and rooms are designed seemed similar to the game play videos I've viewed from Diablo 3, particularly in the sense that you can view lower, mostly inaccessible levels rather than entirely flat like such games have been in the past.

Silverlight did it before either of them.

But really, is there such a thing as an original Diablo clone? Is there one where your classes aren't extremely similar, where the story doesn't amount to 'there is somethin' scary down thar', and where 90% of the game is grinding gear like it's an MMO, except it's not?

Pretty much every top down dungeon crawler I've ever seen I've dismissed because it's like, man, if I wanted to play Diablo I'd go find my old Diablo discs.

Isn't Runic Games made up of some of the original staff that worked on Diablo?

Saw the quick look on Giant Bomb; really would have been nice if they had included multiplayer in it. As this looks like the kind of game that would thrive on it.

Ah, LAN'ing it up on Diablo 1 & 2 ... those were the days.

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Originally Posted by Megaman FTW (Post 984393)

You should be careful, krissgjeng. People with that vowel:consenant ratio that are endorsing a video game look suspiciously like spam bots.

I googled this dude's name and e-mail long before any of you replied here and even the name alone is enough to see he's legit. Don't get me wrong, it's good you're all keeping an eye open, but at the same time if an account is a spambot it's not going to "be careful" and if it isn't there's no problem. And we're usually pretty good at finding out.

tl:dr: consider the report button. :)

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Originally Posted by krissgjeng (Post 984451)

sorry if the post came of as blatant advertising/spamming, that wasn't my intention.

Yeah, don't worry about it. :)

I kinda like the cartoony art style. The Alchemist (at least in name) sounds out of place though with the other two. You have the Destroyer, the Vanquisher, and the Alchemist.....I don't know, it just would have sounded better if the magic using class was a "something"-er like the other two. Burninater? I got nothing.

Anyway, I'm with Krylo on this one. If I wanted to play Diablo, I'd just go play Diablo.

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Originally Posted by Tev (Post 984517)

Anyway, I'm with Krylo on this one. If I wanted to play Diablo, I'd just go play Diablo.

Then there are people like me, who played Diablo to death and are sick of the mostly filthy cheating community. And those who aren't filthy cheating bastards do the same thing the filthy cheating bastards do, except without cheating.
They don't play the game, they just Level their characters as quick as possible.
Today you can only play the game with newbies and have a decent experience.