Modding
Jerich: Now for another topic, modding... It's probably best to start with an open ended question. How is modding being handled this time, in the details from installation to actually playing together with other people?
Travis: We're still working through a lot of this right now, but the basic plan is to have a way to package mods from the editor. They'll have a unique GUID and you'll be able to version those things. Installation... what were planning to attempt is for the game to be able to enable or disable mods kind of at will from the mod folder, so each one would be kind of its own contained package. Then when you're going to play a game that's modded, in selecting it, it will look for the GUIDs available for the mods on that game, it will select them locally, and then either relaunch if it has to or not depending, and then join the game with only those mods enabled. That's the current operating plan, that's what were trying to work through. It's really complicated, especially when we get into things like modded classes and modded items and I've got a modded item and I'm joining a game that doesn't have that modded item... what happens to my modded item? So we're going to mess around with that quite a bit before we're satisfied with how that works I'm sure.
Jerich: That sounds good... Moja asked this... I think you kind of answered it: How friendly is the mod switch system. Is it simple to switch between mod sets on the fly, and you basically said, Yes, but you are still in process of deciding what the exact mechanics will look like.
(Jerich's note: Travis kind of already answered this question above and I asked this question while trying to sort through about six user questions he had already partially touched on.)
Travis: It's not easy for me to give you a definitive answer, but we're definitely planning on making this a more streamlined process than this was in the first game.
Jerich: Drivehappy, the guy who was trying to do the multiplayer mod for Torchlight 1, asked this: “Will you condone or allow reverse engineering and open sourcing work like you did with Torchlight 1. This would be for projects such as adding additional features unavailable through TorchED.”
Travis: We have no problem with you messing with the game. You bought the binary, muck around with it.
(Jerich's note: Wow... I wasn't expecting this clear of an answer here. In my opinion, Travis's response here is worth of being slashdotted. Happy modding, you crazy reverse engineers!)
Jerich: Dusho asks: “How many character based meshes are there? Still two?”
Travis: There's a human male and a human female. We do have the ability for you to alter the bone scale on the characters, so if you actually look at some of the shots from the Beserker versus the Embermage, they're proportionally different. So in the unit data file for any character actually, if it's wardrobed... you can push and pull the size on individual bones. So if you want someone to have a big head or large biceps or muck around that way you can, and we will dynamically adjust all the wardrobes to fit to that character.
(Jerich's note: It looks like it is going to be much easier to add class mods this time around. It does make multiplayer somewhat problematic (since you can't actually player your new character without the mod), but I think we should eventually see some standard class compilations that people commonly use. While it will be easier to make and wardrobe human classes, Greg told me it may be more challenging to make completely different classes like the Robot class that one guy was making.
Also... I didn't ask a ton of the modding questions to Travis since I already talked a lot to Greg, Matt and some to Marsh. I will put more modding information in a future system's analysis post. (Bear in mind I am not a modding expert though.))
General Systems
Jerich: Nice! Let's move on to revamped systems, there's been a lot of talk about revamping enchanting, which we've already talked about, fishing, crafting, retirement, the skills system, even how pets work. What do you think is going to be touched in general, what hasn't been touched and what's still on the drawing board?
Travis: I'm not sure if anything will be untouched. Pretty much everything... the combat models different, the stats are different, the damage soak is different, damage dealt is different, fumbles work differently, armor absorption works differently. There's a lot of changes even as to how were approaching development of skill trees. I don't think much of anything is going to be identical.
(Jerich's note: While the game looked incredibly polished even now, a lot of minor systems haven't been touched yet. It will be interesting to see what they have time for and what happens to them in the next two or three months. Most of the large parts seem to be done and they are starting to work on the smaller pieces).
Jerich: k4llus asks: “Will there be any type of runeword crafting system.”
Travis: We don't have immediate plans to do so. We will be doing some kind of item combination, but I'm not sure were going to mess with runewords right now.
(Jerich's note: This seems like it would be more of an expansion type thing like it was in D2 if they decide to put an expansion out.)
Jerich: mAv asks: “How is the skill system going to work? Will we see Diablo type skill trees or is Runic developing something entirely new?”
Travis: We're still doing skill trees, were still doing three panes, some skills may have dependencies although we tend to try and stay away from dependencies for the most part. We've talked a lot about how fame might or might not figure into those. It's still not fully decided yet. I can say we're trying to go away from shared passives for classes at all and we're trying to have unique passives for each class. And as far as spells go, we're going to try and pack a lot of party support kind of stuff in there so that it doesn't act as dead weight in the single player skill trees.
(Jerich's note: I learned a lot about skills and will go into what I learned in a future skills analysis post. Watch for it.)
Jerich: You kind of answered this... So each class is then going to have a unique skill set, around 30 skills and there is most likely not going to be any shared passives?
Travis: That's right, that's the goal.
Jerich: k4llus asks, “Can we get some more information about your New Game + mode? For people that played Diablo II, is Nightmare a good analogy of what it would look like or do you anticipate it playing differently?”
Travis: It might be, it's hard for me to say yet. We want you to be able to continue playing from the end of the game, starting over, with a character you had previously. The world has to level up. It should be more difficult, but the exact parameters of that are not set in stone yet.
(Jerich's note: I am really excited to hear more about this later. I don't think they have balanced the first playthrough completely yet, once they do that they can work on balancing new game+. Oh, and Travis said the day before that the new game+ would probably replace retirement.)
Jerich: Okay... Omnifas asks: “Are there any other end-game features you can reveal with us at this time?”
Travis: So the current plan is to attempt almost a combination of the map system and the endless dungeon system, so at the end of the game there's a mechanism for you to basically do a small adventure and then complete it. So instead of going back to the beginning of the game to do a boss run, we might take a boss from elsewhere in the game and make a special dungeon for them that you can repeatedly do running through multiple depths that will auto level, so that you can actually accomplish something in the end game instead of just trolling endlessly downward.
(Jerich's note: This makes sense. An endless dungeon doesn't really work in the context of multiplayer because it would fragment players too much. Doing bite-size adventures with your friends seems like a fun end game activity)
Back to your friendly neighbor editor, Webbstre! That's it for today! Tomorrow we're going to hit on the topics of Multiplayer (which is quite long), Story/General Questions, and Future Plans. After that I'm not sure in what order we'll be putting things out, but you can expect more Class breakdowns, skill analysis, Modding, the compilations of your Questions and Answers, and more in the following days. Check back tomorrow for the second half of the interview!
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