Heresy a Flare mod - FIRST ACT RELEASED!
Guys/girls i would love to know your opinion about the mod
Windows version, just unzip and run (recomended for Win users):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lvvrfbu4v93tufc/flare-_v1.11-261%2BHeresy.7z?dl=0
Windows updated engine:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_SzRi5R4w6z8gJXiNT2g2FpVqkO20qer/view?u...
Linux updated engine:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yvi0_6uhPennps8DSWsABOk0NaFYIFV2/view?u...
Heresy only Mod:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wrr11qsnihajtzq/HERESY%20only%20mod.7z?dl=0
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Hello, early this year i decided to start my own flare mod. My main idea is to make it resemble Diablo 1/2 as much as possible, so i changed lots of game mechanics for that. The base is already in place, a similar stat system, different weapon classes with att times, range, etc...; i also added some unused content and lots of my own created content, more use of elemental damage/resistances, some ideas like summoning pets... and a heavier focus on brutal combat and loot variety (and blood, lots of blood).
One major change compared to Flare is going to be the character growth, the skill tree will be empty at the start and the player needs to search for masters (from guilds) that will unlock them after joining their profession. The guilds will be shown along the game progression, each will present different playstyles, unique skills and late game equipment. There are 3 basic proffessions that will advance/specialize into others as the acts progress: Soldier, basic melee warrior skills: -Knight, oriented to defense --Paladin, Healing and resistances --Dark Knight, Leeching and debuffs -Mercenary, Attk oriented, better loot drops, an all rounder --Duelist, high dodge and mobility enhacing skills, some support magic skills Archer, basic ranged skills -Shooter, pure damage oriented, get the crossbows unique weapons --Master Shooter, get the heavy crossbows and other ranged unique weapons -Hunter, stealth/dodge, magic --Ranger, animal summons and support spells (like slow) --Assassin, high evasion and movility, short range weapons like throwing daggers and short swords (hybrid melee/ranged) Magician, a mage apprentice -Enchanter, pure damage oriented --Elementalist, more destructive spells -Warlock, attack and support spells --Necromancer, summons undeads, poisons, leeching and debuffs --Druid, summons monsters, turn into monters (melee/magic hybrid) (Necromancer and druid are pet based builds, they will depend a lot on their summons)
Now on to the story, I dont know if it will be too wordy for the average Diablo player, i will adjust text quantity once i can get feedback after i release a "first act". It will have dark humour(or my attemps), adult themes and bad language (not a child friendly mod); Im a Terry pratchet and horror movies fan so it will show in here. To resume it without spoiling too much, you are after some guys in a quest for revenge and it will get mixed with fantasy gods and Eldritch horrors. I have a post on FreeGameDev full of spoilers for anyone interested. https://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=14397&p=94459#p94459 I planned Acts in different biomes that will have a city or the like as a activity hub, with npcs for services and quest giving. The total work is humongeous, im adding lots of new enemies and art to the game, so it will take time. I would love to hear your suggestions and the like.
I lowered the chance for the lv2 rings and clothes to be like the others (15% -> 10%).
So you think maps are too big? What about difficulty?
Regarding items, currently they gift too many stats, will have to nerf them in the future; i was also told that level ups are hard to obtain, but if i soften the level curve, i will have to more clearly distribute enemies per lvs into zones, opposed to having just -1/+1 lv difference inside one zone. Im quite lost on how to do that, if you were able to understand what i mean, it basically means i need to estimate player level so any new zone is higher leveled than the player (which its not good either). I have no idea how big games do it without scaling mechanics (which Flare doesnt have).
Alchemy, i havent crossed it out yet, but since it adds so little at the moment i havent included it. My plans for it were a way to raise pet levels (Lv3 bat + Soul stone = Lv6 bat) or turn into elemental versions (lv 10 bat + ice stone = ice bat), same for some basic weapons and shields (Long sword + fire seed= Fire long sword). Maybe have books depicting recipes around the world, the main problem is that each recipe must be handmade (item X + item Y = Z item; this scalates wildly with many items), and just dropping the item as loot is way more simple and has the same effect with less item cluttering. On the good side it would force player to save rare alchemical ingredients and i could restrain it to just a handful of weapons per act that could be upgraded from common to unique with an element attached. Warrior and archer would benefit the most since mages spells are elemental damagers by nature...
See how everything scalates wildy? @w@
Hi Danimal
Im impressed with your mod, so much so, I have just joined up to offer my 2p.
Artifacts: I have not found any yet, are there any?
Death: When you die and lose 30% xp, it appears a bit harsh, I would go for 10%. However if leveling is easy then 30% is fine, if leveling is hard then I would say 10% is fine.
Respec: Is there a respec potion in Triston? If not could you put one in for 1gold, so I and others can help test out the Power trees?
Powers: I quess not all the Powers are working, please could you either put a line through the icons or remove the ones that are not valid, for now.
Item Drops and balancing: This is hard to get right, so I will say what I like/prefer.
I would like 2 more ring slots on the hero inventory.
More artifacts.
I would like a lot less item drops, but more gold.
Simplier items, by that I mean, they only have 1-3 bonuses, with the epic ones having 4+, meaning that they are epic when you get them.
That the vendors sell a lot more items, so when you have the gold you can buy the exact items that you want.
Text: There are a lot of spelling and grammer errors, but for now I will not bother with them, better that you concentrate on the game mechanics and balancing. I know English is not your first language. Your humour, intent and content is fine. :-)
Keep up the good work, Im looking forward to the next release.
Hi TheDog, thanks for your opinions.
Let me answer, if by artifacts you mean necklaces, so far there is only 4; you get to choose from 3 at the end of the goblin missions and the last one is awarded if you manage to kill the "Forgotten hero" zombie, spawned by touching the tombstone near the pond in Green forest. I´m taking a drop by drop approach with skills and items, it builds ups nicely, but I hope people dont get turned off by it.
Death penalty of 30% may be too harsh given the slow level ups, I have to decide if leaving the xp tables as if, or switch to easier lv-ups, which are more fun, but make the zones way too level dependent and less "free roaming" friendly. So far lv 7-8 is the most common at act end.
I´ll add a re-spec as a temporary measure, I wanted to do it later as a base upgrade, but its been very requested.
As for powers, so far only the first row is working with a few exceptions (earthquake, fireball, warcry); players are not supposed to see them this early ingame ;) Its very hard to balance them, and most are not coded yet, they are in a WIP state along with the pasives. It´s more of a declaration of intentions. The thing is you unlocked them all with the Modder, normally you only see the 3 from the class you choose.
As for items, I finally got an item generator, so now I can finally add them by the hundreds instead of creating each one by hand, variety will explode. More rings slots just means weaker rings to keep the balance... right now they are also pretty unbalanced. More gold drops is easy, but there is the problem that vendors can´t sell randomized items, I´ll look into creating some kind of item-slot machine as a money sink. Simpler? I dont undertand that; normal qualities have no bonus, magic got 2 bonus, rare 3 bonus and unique 5 bonus.
Text, I´m using a web corrector now for all dialogues and getting to remember the rules of this barbarian language ;)
So far the next iteration has lowered lvs exp, de-populated and rebalanced enemies, created safe buffer zones in maps, erased "welcome parties" when entering new maps, corrected ortography and replaced naming convention to avoid linux bugs. As for planned, re-specing potion or similar, quest indicators, adding generator created items, rebalance all items, useful pasives skills.
I don´t want to start a second act until I iron all bugs and manage to get the Diablo feel.
All sounds good.
I vote for leaving the xp tables, simialr to now, but with say a 10% loss of xp on death.
You have probably consider this...
Have 3 very easy quests Easy, Normal and Hard this will yield as rewards, the following Passive Powers. 4 2 0
or similar, but by completing one, the other two are lost.
I assume you are using something like Notepad++, if so you can load all the text dialogues .txt into it and do a mass find and replace on things like space i space and replace them with space I space.
Dextery should be Dexterity
triston should have a capital T.
Lesser Protection Ring, text has Lesser Proteccion, should be Protection
Well, I´m kind of doing that already with classes and professions, pick one and you get shut down of all the others skills, magician weapons and runes being the exception. I dont think it´s a good idea to be so restrictive, I´m even planning to allow learning all except for last profesion skills inside the same class, like players can get all skills up to tier 3 but not all the utimate tier 4 inside the warrior class. But for that you need to have a base, upgrade it and find a trainer that will suck you dry of money. This is hard to explain like this... see the magician skills? they are nicely bundled per each profession.
Thanks for pointing those errors, they totally slip by me, i´ll fix them.
What class did you use? i have the ranger and mage very under-tested.
I did not explain well, the simple quests I was describing was to set the difficulty level of the game for the player, ie. If they want a Hard game then they get 0 Passive Powers and if they want a Normal game, 2 Powers, an easy game they get 4 Powers for their starting hero.
Mage, my favourite class, died so many times in the Cathederal cellar.
But he started to survive the more armour and items I got, Im not used to using melee weapons.
Then I had enough gold to buy a wand and killing improved.
Please display the range of Magic Bolt as its the Mages primary weapon. I would like the range to be longer and the damage less, because I would pull multiple enemies to me and then use Freeze to kill them.
Currently I have a Throw Axe Rune, oh my it appears over powered, it has a LONG range and high damage, please check its stats. I use this to pull enemies as its better than than my wand/Magic Bolt.
Home Portal and Magic Blast do not work, hopefully they will in the next release.
If a Power has Requires Strength 2, I guess its not working/coded?
I will start a new hero when you post your update.
Sadly, there is no way to decide difficulty, the engine has many limitations, like every enemy is handcrafted, levels and stats, instead of being created from a table. Same for items...
I have lessened the difficulty of Chuch Cellar and many others maps, it should be more manageable now. I´ll also add a lv0 trash weapon for ranger and magicians, so they can switch faster to it.
As for spells, they improve greatly with each point invested; the magic bolt will get longer reach, damage, armor penetration and lastly multiple enemies piercing. Same for the others spells/skills.
Axe rune may seem overpowered to you, but it´s just a fixed damage, those are good starters but get old pretty fast when you lv-up. You discovered a nice combo with bolt and frost, I´m wondering if putting a few books explaining skills/spells future specs.
Yeah, only the first 3 skills/spells work, the others are hidden unless you decide to take a peek at the future with the Modder. Home portal is a spell to teleport to a future homebase, its the "World map" spell you should be using for fast travel in the world.
Thanks for the support :) next update will be big.
Just been to the Church cellar again forgot to mention before;
I went in to find items for the quest Gather Magic Ingredients, but I must have found them, but I did know I did had.
I think some quests need to say who gave it to you and where the quest giver can be found and in what direction they can be found.
eg. Gather Magic Ingredients - Witch Adriana - Triston - NE
When I did the Wyvern mines there was no significant end boss drop :-(
Text
Outside label says Eagle Tribe, it should say Wyvern Tribe.
Outside label says Antlion, it should say Mole Clan Lair.
Knock-Knocks text
bussiness should be business
others should be other
Fetishes
The fetishes could be aligned to the class types;
You get the idea.
This means that a class could only summon 2 Fetishes, not 6
Fetish Icons dont look like their models;
Boar icon looks like a turtle
Antlion icon looks like a cat
Bat icon looks like a wolf
The Weird vendor does not sell the Rat Fetish.
Item drop
Killing the Boar Shaman there was no worthy item drop.
Fantastic ending to the Act :-D
Let´s see, the chuch stairs lead to the final boss of the act, they will open later, most likely you teleported over and nothing happened since none of the triggers are yet activated; at this game point teleport is impossible skill or item wise unless you cheat/talk to Modder.
There is a message and sound when you kill the unique monster and it vanishes from the mission log, I might add actual items for them someday but at the moment it´s not worth it, there are far more pressing things to add than tail or eyes items. As for the quest giver location, there´s only a handful of quest givers in town, I´m working on a quest sign for them, have you clicked on the mini-map to zoom/un-zoom? that should help traveling the city.
The iron mines are a newbie sidequest after the cellar (your version is way harder than the next planned) and the 2 unique monsters in there have their quest rewards, plus Greywold thanks. The boss loot (shamans) is tricky and dependant on luck; they have from 6 to 12 rolls for loot when killed, with increased chance for the "Blood priest" set (new armor model pending), sometimes i got 3 items for the set + money and items, others I got nothing... The RNG gods are random.
Fixed the tribe names, thanks for the catch. Dialogues are already corrected as well.
I don´t want to put pre-requisites on the fetishes, so a magician can have a boar tank and a warrior a stun-capable ranged slime to compliment their styles. As for the fetishes icons, since I´ll give the treatment of pets to most game monsters i decided to loosely order them into these categories (I´ll die if i have to make one for each):
Bear fetish -> Frontline Attackers, high damage, good health (wolf)
Cat fetish -> Agile attackers, high evasion and good damage, low health (rat,bat)
Owl fetish -> Ranged/magical attackers (slime)
Turtle fetish-> Tanks, high health, average damage (boar)
I´ll need to explain that somewhere, they are not be sold in this act yet, I was reserving that for a pokemon mock next act, Pouchmon! the pouch monsters!. You are supposed to only find them as drops in this act.
Thanks for all your feedback and words; what level and character build did you end the act with?
Church Switch
For the Church switch, I cannot take a screen shot, its just a black image.
If the switch was relocated to the north wall, then I and no one else can "lean" through the wall and flip the switch.
To be clear the hero is outside the room not inside it when I flip the switch.
Quest givers
On the mini map are the people/quest givers supposed to show up as dots?
On my mini map no people/quest givers show up.
Fetish Icons
I can see where you are aiming.
So I think you need more imagery on the icons, in the four corners.
This is to guide the player as to what the fetish can do.
Character
Mage, Level 6, Magic Bolt L5, Shield L2, Freeze L4, 2 items of Blood Shaman & 16000 gold
I did use the Flare respec once, exec repec=powers because I had picked 3 powers that did not work.
I´ll move that switch to a safe spot, that was totally unexpected to me...
They show up as green dots, see pic below. New quest maker included as well, maybe they are too big?
I need to find a way to flesh the fetishes a bit more but from a different angle, the icon is so small that fine details are lost. Maybe a monster encyclopedia or bigger descriptions?
I´m playing as mage now, initial mana spending is too big and regeneration too low, I made a starter item with free lv1 magic bolt, but jumping to a real weapon makes you mana dry too fast.
I think rising the base mana regeneration should help, also adding one more skill point per lv-up and coding the first pasives which are ways to specialize the character into a path.
As for spells i think increasing the range of freeze lv1 and lv2 which is too short; i love freeze lv5 by the way, but i dont know if i should make all the hail frontal or leave as circular.
Edit: my god, magician is a never ending money sink, unlike with warrior or archer I was always hurting for money for mana potions. It got better once I got some equipment with mana recovery and the mana steal effect from Mana bolt lv3, but even so equipment is lacking compared to the others. After grinding some levels i was steamrolling, but that broke the initial pace very badly, at first i could barely kill anything without running out of mana FAST.
I think I´ll add mana steal at Magic bolt lv2; Adding some kind of magician low strengh shield and releasing the book for lower levels would help as well.
As I have only played one class and once, I dont feel qualified to comment on your suggestions, however I will say;
Mages Wands/rods
I think that Frost is better than Blast is better than Shield
I think that Shield wand/rod is almost useless compared to the other two wands, I think its because it has a long duration effect.
Frost spell
I would leave the Frost as a cone, because I think its good as is, almost too good, I was going to suggest nerfing the spell.
Why, tactics are Shields up, run at the mobs, collect 5+ together, run in a circle, the mobs bunch up, and Freeze them to death.
Forget to say, do you know how I can get the people to display in the village mini-map?
I have fixed the people dots on the mini map.
Installing your Flare link it works.
However the Flare install created 2 Aug 21, off their download page and then adding in your mod does NOT show the mini map people dots.
Your Flare.exe is also much smaller by about 700KB.
EDIT
I now have item compare omg how I missed that.
Flare install created 2 Aug 21, does NOT have item compare.
Just found
https://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=14397&start=50
Danimal would you prefer I posted here or the above site?
I dont think it was too hard, you just had to be careful and not rush around.
As mentioned before, rather than remove too many creatures, I think it would be better to give players the choice as one of the first quests in the village. If thy want a;
Hard game reward them with 0 Powers
Normal game reward them with 2 Powers
Easy game reward them with 4 Powers and a cheap Belt or a knife.
The webpage version is outdated and pending of a nearby big release, the ones i posted are the most recent builds which work quite well.
I´m raising frost range a bit since i think its too short at the moment, and speedy enemies cancel your tactic, but I´ll raise the mana cost to balance. The current enemies are easy as well, expect archers and mages next act that you can´t kite and pelt around. The frost tactics won´t be viable anymore.
As for wands/staffs/all items, they will all be replaced by randomly generated ones so it will be up to luck what stats and magics they come with.
I want the mod to be fun and challenging, not punishing; so while i like facing monster hordes other players do not. Finding that balance is hard; less enemies to kill equal less loot as well.
The engine can´t handle the difficulties as you propose, the only thing I can do is to create an npc to trigger a hard mode, that would consist of a trigger to activate extra layers of enemies. It´s the only possible workaround and adds a lot more work for me, so I´m not too convinced on it.
You can keep posting here, i check both threads almost daily.
I still have not given up on 3 levels of play
How about giving free XP from a quest giver?
Or giving items to make it easier at the starting levels?
Personally I would take the hard option, so I am not asking this for me.
Someone rised difficulty somehow, I´ll try to contact him.
Danimal, I would like to help you make your mod.
For example I could make the items, how many do you want 100 per Act, assuming 4 Acts, thats 400 or more ?
As for the npc "crowns" yes I think they are too big.
Sorry for late answer, I'm currently away from home and any computer (writing on my cell phone).
Thanks for the helping offer, but the item side is already covered. Someone helped me get one random generator in gamedev forums; but that doesn't mean you can not help with anything. After replacing items, new balancing will be needed, magic items will be heavily nerfed. I will need testers.
After I feel the first act is totally ready I will start the second, do you know about mapmaking or blender 3d modeling? Are you good at concept art? I will need many new models for a third act.
I can help with balancing and testing,
Probably some coding.
Cant do art in any form.
Good enough :)
I have been testing with a Ranged Hero and the Slime Fetish.
The Slime Fetish seems to get stuck/left behind so I changed the
flee_range=4, was 6, in Lv1_Slime.txt
and now it happens a lot less.
With the Ranged hero I like that I can hold a Ranged weapon in off hand and a Melee weapon in the Main hand. Some mods only allow one not both. :-D
Thanks for the slime tweat, i will correct it. As for the ranged/melee I wanted to add one handed ranged weapons and melee at the ultimate archer class "assassin" a mix of melee/ranged which would wield dexterity based short swords and hand crossbows(short range, fast attack speed). But normal archers have to use both hands to handle bows, it's only fair.
Hey Danimal,
pretty cool stuff you've put together there. Keep it up!
I've just finished the game as a Ranger, which seems somewhat easier than Warrior. At least, I didn't die much, and I'm usually not that good.
Now here are my suggestions:
Some skills, runes or tools are disabled without obvious reason. I noticed that the rat/wolf/something fetishes don't work below a certain MP level. However, the icon does not tell you what's missing. The red text in an item's description should only mark out missing requirements, but not negative properties of the item. Also tricky: I couldn't equip a slingshot without putting the ranged skill on a hotkey or mouse button. I think the skill should map to a button automatically.
Btw: I like the idea of having a slingshot in one hand and a club in the other. Unfortunately, the slingshot is more powerful than the ladle right from the beginning, so nobody will use the melee weapon any more.
The skills that pop up at level 5 (I think) are so overwhelmingly many that the player doesn't know what to click. I'm not sure if all the skills are actually working. I'd remove those that don't do anything and add some more description to those that do.
The enemies' behavior of forgetting about the player when he moves around the corner makes sense for the vermin, but more intelligent enemies might remember and follow the player even if out of sight. Also, it seems that enemies return to their starting point as quickly as they can. While it makes sense to get them back to home positions eventually, maybe they should return more slowly, so in case the player comes back, they are ready to strike again.
The second basement of the cathedral has so many cool new monsters, it seems a waste to put them all in one level. As you surely remember, good old Diablo I introduced only up to two or three monster classes in a level and repeated them with just a little different paint. This way, the cathedral basement would be good for, say, four separate levels of stupid monster killing. If you put a teleport stone on each level, the player can pick up a lot of items without having to climb the stairs and re-kill the other levels every time. And if you feel like adding quests or unique monsters later on, you will have some space to put them in.
I'm looking forward to any updates on this cool Diablo clone (makes me feel some 20+ years younger). As someone pointed out, you might want to put the mod on Github, so anyone willing to test can fetch changed files quickly.
Once again: great work!
Thanks TombRat (that´s a nice creature idea btw), I´m cooking a very modified version atm with all the input I got, some of the changes that I can remember:
- Replacing all items with random ones made with my own item generator
- Reworking stats and skills by using value tables instead of my feel
- Adjusted difficulty with less treacherous maps (fewer welcome surprises)
- Basic quest markers
- Proper spelling
- added starter weapons for ranger and magicians (new ladles :D )
- Stats reset...
The list of things to do is endless, sadly my free time is not.
Ranger has always been overpowered in Flare, but I hope that will change once proper ranged enemies appear, they should be weak to that. Runes now have what they require on their description (like MP). The need to drag the different attack types icons is one I can´t fix easily since if I do, the melee/ranged combo won´t be possible anymore (I want to add variants of hand-crossbows) but I know it´s pretty counter-intuitive and needs explaining.
I´ll hide all the planned non-working skills on next release along with dev items, they are there to give me direction on what I want to integrate to each character and a peek to the future for players. The enemy behaviour depends fully on the engine, so that kind of complex acting needs some research from my part.
This being a first introductory arc as well as my learning experience to Flare (and a homenage to Diablo 1) was intended to be short, next arcs will be more expansive with bigger maps, so I don´t consider to expand upon it, rather, I´ll refine it until I´m happy, then I´ll start the next one with all the "know how" gained.
About Github, I´m doubtful, the reason is that I´m chaotic as hell (I broke and redo stuff quite often) on my development, maybe in the future when everything is more settled. Do you know of any platform that tracks number of downloads and has no stupid limits?
Thanks for your feedback, I´m happy people appreciates my effort. ;)
Hi Danimal,
the Tombrat was one of my favorites in Diablo Hellfire. It just moved so cool.
I'll stay tuned for your updates and any future mods you may dream up.
Regarding Github: Using git might actually help you with your chaos, since it will allow you to reset to a previous state for the whole mod as well as for single files. I think Github will also count downloads of each release. Maybe that will scratch both itches at the same time.
Showing you my appreciation for your work was actually the main reason for signing up here. If you're happy, you might be more motivated to cough up more cool stuff.
Have fun, and so will your testers!
*cough* https://github.com/flareteam/flare-game/discussions/854 *cough* https://github.com/clintbellanger/wandercall-assets *cough* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmIL_WdiAos Achhoo. I must have been delirious. Looks quite good! If only we had some more plate mail hmm? One can dream XD.
nice activate wndows
:P Already did.
So I'd like to try this mod, but I actually have no idea how to use FLARE. I've had my eye on it for a few months now but no idea where to start. I started building some environments in GIMP and was trying to nail my aesthetic. I'm really shooting for the dark-fantasy theme as well.
It looks like you're several miles ahead of me in this so I'd love to see how you do some of this for your game.
I'm also on MacOS.
There are instructions on how to get it to work on the project wiki. Playing the mods shouldn´t be hard.
As for development, sincerely, don´t do it. Flare is very lacking in many aspects, poorly documented if at all, take it only if you like pointless challenges.
Most of all I did was learnt by reading posts on this forum and extracting hard to understand information, bumping my head on walls all the time; that there is not proper tutorials anywhere (or any tutorials at all) should be a good hint on the use difficulty and lack of care from the creator.
I sincerely wanted to make a full campaign, but as I advanced I saw the many ways in which the engine falls short, the worst in my eyes are:
Items: Which need to be created one by one by hand, stats included (another option is making an external item definitions generator by yourself like I did), but then the items need to be added to two different list (items and loot) and individually maintained in case you change something somewhere else. TL,DR: no random item generation, all are predefined, variety can be faked but at a high labor cost with many limits.
Enemies: Also created by hand, one by one, you need to create an enemy definition .txt for every enemy lv and type (boar_lv1.txt; boar_lv2.txt,...) and set their full stats per each one as well. So no dinamical enemy lv scaling, upscaling or downscaling (again way too much work for something trivial in any other engine).
Development has almost halted; the engine is just being maintained. So all above issues will never be resolved.
Should you want to try your hand at it you can use my mod to learn or base yours on it. My old posts contain lots of wisdom nuggets from tools install, to creating enemies, to new powers or workarounds to make not-possible things possible. I was left so dissapointed at the engine that I can´t be bothered anymore about it. Pity because I really digged the Diablo retro style.
Yeah I had a strange feeling this would largely be the case so I probably won't get started with it.
Abyss Engine may be a ways off but I think it'll be better to wait for that one to be completed as well as Essial's tools. FLARE development is still possible but as a solo dev, this seems nigh impossible unless I spent the next several years learning different systems. From what I have read or heard, Diablo was largely made using automated systems that Brevik often had to create/tweak until the finished product is what they arrived at. We would need a whole team of people with the knowledge necessary to make these systems / tools so the process can be expedited somewhat.
I have several ideas for some games and I think I'm laying Retro ARPG down for a while until we get some new tools that are more friendly towards solo devs.
Yeah, wait for something better. While possible to solo a flare mod, it will be a poor product unless you pour way too much time on things that are taken for granted today in any decent engine. Everything about it is hard to learn, apply and use.
Hell, for example, once you finish a map for it in tiled (no random map generation either) you need to use a script if you included even a single new sprite not included into the lacking basic sets, generate a new kind of terrain definition for the change to get used, save it into the terrains folder, THEN save the map, edit the map file and add inside the new terrain definition over the faulty autosaved one, or the map won´t load(and game crash) or be gibberish if you are lucky.
And this is just one example of too many infuriating ones; quality of life is non existant here.
Yeah why bother there? Did you switch engines already? What did you switch to?
I will settle on PSX style JRPG in Godot or Unity. I haven't done much homework on the two.
No, if I start something it would be completly different genre and into a mature engine like Unity.
Mate, don't use Unity it is a waste of money and time. The engine and asset devs suck and don't care if you make good or terrible games they just feed off of shovelware and incomplete games and no good games come from it. The best hits of Unity has to show of nearly a decade on the market are a joke. As in shitty mobile games and very ho hum indie games that could have been made better elsewhere. Millions of dollars and nearly a decade of time and the engine devs still can't polish a turd. Don't be me and waste nearly a decade of work trying to make tricycles into helicopters with shovelware assets and blow 15k in assets and shitty freelancers and have 6-7 shitty incomplete broken games too crap to launch with irreparable fundamental engine issues. Go to Unreal 5; it's worth your time and money and its easier to use for 1-5 people size groups with more efficient workflows. Unity is dogshit. After working out hopefully the last features with Justin / Dorkster with Flare and hopefully making a commercially viable game or two on Flare, I'm hoping to get into https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/ascent-combat-framework-c-action-rpg-creator .
What "irreparable" Unity engine features you had? I also had some problems in the past with interface, but I fixed them myself, Unity isn't a game you mod, it's an engine, you can do anything you want.
Looks like a scam to me, I can recreate it on Unity from scratch in less than a day. Physics based WASD movement with blending animations, weapon mesh appearing/disappearing in right/left hand depending on what weapon equipped, animation changes depending on what weapon equipped, shooting projectiles with raycast checks, swinging weapons with raycast and distance checks, 5 years old child can do this.
Unity does indeed has a problem - it's very easy to use (C# and a lot of documentation). And that's why ~99% of the games will be shovelware. Unreal Engine is much harder to use (C++) and requires good hardware (my machine will barely run it with a lot of lags) and that's why you don't see that much shovelware made with that engine. Yes, this is the only reason. Unity's problem is not Unity but its users. Just look at their forums or Q&A site, look what questions people post there. I can't even imagine what broken bugged horrors they will release.
Another problem can be Unity version. New Unities (~2020+) are very slow and clunky. But personally I don't see a reason to use them, unless you really need new features from there. It's just human brain often thinks that highest version = best version. It's not always true.
And possible third problem can be availability of paid assets. I don't know that, since I prefer to do everything myself, so it's just a guess. Third party tools/plugins will always be unoptimized, since they're general purpose solutions, and I'm obsessed with optimization, so I'll never use someone else's code in my game. The only other people's work I can use are animations/textures/meshes/audio, and even then I'll edit it and make more optimized (meshes/textures).
Edit:
Here, everything you'll use to recreate this on Unity, either A or B, depending if you want true 3D game (A), or fake 3D game using 2D physics (B). The difference between the two is:
A - any Witcher, any Elder Scrolls, any modern shooter.
B - Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2, Doom 1-2, Neverwinter Nights 1-2. These games are 3D, but they use 2D flat space for positions with height being fake axis.
It means with A you'll use 3D physics, and with B you'll use 2D physics (and 3D too for stuff like rag dolling and shooting), which is much faster, because it deals only with 2 axes, means much easier calculations. But it matters only if you're true optimization fanatic or if your game will have hundreds characters and is more strategy than action.
A:
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Rigidbody.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Physics.Linecast.html
B:
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Rigidbody.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Physics.Linecast.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Rigidbody2D.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Physics2D.Linecast.html
Either A or B:
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Input.GetKey.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Vector2.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Vector3.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Animator.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/MonoBehaviour.Update.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/MonoBehaviour.FixedUpdate.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Coroutines.html
this is all you need to know to recreate everything you see in your link + you'll need animations.
The the rest are details, like booleans for swinging weapon / drawing bow / blocking / dodging checks, which may affect the logic, like - don't allow WASD movement if player is dodging or don't allow running if player is blocking.
+knowledge of C# and Unity, like when and how to abuse local variables the most with coroutines for max optimization, how to design code structure for max optimization, e.g. use static arrays for all character values inside your main class, instead of creating hundres of classes which will slow down your game and skyrocket system requirements. Deactivate and reuse characters and objects instead of destoying them, etc. Basically you should fight the same NPCs, shoot the same arrows over and over and cast the same fireball. It all can be done with a simple array or list (arrays are ~x8 times faster than lists in C#) which will contain deactivated stuff, an array for every type - character, projectile, house, whatever, then reactivate and move them. Open world - again easy, just create either a hex grid of cells or square grid, if player moves too far from center, change meshes of those cells, move player in opposite direction back to center, deactivate NPCs who are too far and move other NPCs like player, load NPCs in new cells (activate deactivated NPCs and change their values/appearance and move/rotate them where needed), deactivate houses/trees which are too far, spawn/reactivate new ones. Use LOD - low quality meshes for static objects far away and even low quality armor/body/clothing for NPCs who aren't near camera. Creating open world ARPG with boring WASD raycast combat on Unity is a matter of few days. The problem is idea and environment, character development designs and other stuff like story and atmosphere.
I think that the comparison between Unity and UE5 is similar to comparing Logic Pro against Fruity Loops Studio.
Ease of use combined with accessibility make FL Studio users generate, at large, some of the worst projects you can come across. Logic Pro being a more complex DAW with much finer and sensitive tools at the user's disposal means that the average quality of production coming out simply out performs the FL users. I've seen this in full practice for well over a decade now. If you can't tell, I'm much more versed in audio rather than programming/development.
That being said, you've got extensive knowledgte on how all of this works. Got any decent content creators I can absorb or any insight on what specifically to learn for a turn-based RPG?
WithinAmnesia, here are screenshots of open source Fallout4 clone with a focus on settlement building and strategic gameplay. It took me like 2 days to make, until I realized that the idea is actually stupid. There's no combat implemented, but it's not hard, I can just copy paste it from my previous project and change it for 3d. The game is also uses 2d physics a lot, but it supports heights and non-flat terrain, similar to RTS games. Resources are implemented, but they're just integer values which are displayed, although building maintenance is also implemented and is even shown as negative income. Farms, factories, laboratories and generators give slots of workers which you can assign and these workers will improve resource income. You can see in two screenshots that player doesn't really move in open world, it's the world that moves from time to time, when he walk away too far from center. You can see that 2 structures are moved from -1 (central sector) to north east sector, because player moved south west. Same happened to characters. Each sector knows what structures and characters it has, characters can also transition between sectors and the game will never spawn the same structure or character twice.
Griswold, I can help you with turn based mechanics, I have a project with 1:1 copypasta reverse engineered combat from Age of Wonders 3 on Unity with engagements, attacks of opportunity and flanking.
And here are screenshots from it too :D
It has 10 dnd classes, dndish stats and skills, rebalanced for AoW3 combat mechanics. If you want, I can share the project with you.
Vrs1 that´s quite amazing; what Unity version do you recommend to install?
Is there any good unified tutorial place for unity (free if possible)?
Also could you send that project to me? I only want to have a look at the code, I promise I won´t use it for anything else.
I actually always wanted to make a game mixing "Mount and Blade" freedom of movement and city management(shorta) in a sandbox world with the style and class progression system of "Disciples" and a dash of pokemon. I never decided in the combat system for the battles though, if real Time like M&B or TBS like you posted.
My other project (I´ll never do but dream to like the previous one) would be something very distinct, I doubt any of you have ever played "Idle car manager", but it´s a game where you design cars by researching their pieces, selling cars to the market and using the money to rise a company, make more and better cars to sell and win racing competitions. I would like to switch from car to mechs, a galactic setting with roaming and research trees with the goal to become the biggest space warmonger supplier.
Danimal, I sent link as personal message. You can also do whatever you want with it, I don't mind. I could send it right here on OGA forum, but unfortunately my project uses animations from Mixamo, they're completely free and can be used anywhere even in commercial projects, but... their license forbids distribution. It means that if i openly upload the project - I'll violate license, unless I remove all animations. This is really stupid, but I have plans how to avoid it for future open source projects - I'll probably just change those animations so much, that they will be unrecognizable and then I'll be like "Mixamo? Whos that? Never heard of him!".
Edit: I use Unity 2017.2.5f1 but it's personal choice. I use it only because it's the last version that supported DX9, which means games made with this unity version can be run even on old windows XP, which no one probably even uses today. Newer Unity versions use more advanced shaders, so if you're planning to use someone else's shader or may be some unity plugin, then you better use newer version. For example my open world game uses custom shader with radial fog rather than liner fog and this shader is based on 2017.2.5f1 standard shader, so I don't know if it'll work on newer version, but it still may work. I know there're some cool free water shaders you can find on different places and they won't work with this old unity version, so if you're planning to make some AAA quality 3D game with all these cool effects you'll need to either find some old shaders or even create them yourself. Although Unreal Engine is probably more suitable for AAA 3D game. If you're not planning to have really beautiful and complicated visual effects, then Unity 2017.2.5f1 is ideal, as it's fast, I have low end machine and it runs perfectly smooth, while newer versions of Unity are very slow for me, and has anything I need.
Another problem is Unity Asset Store, it works really terrible. For example if some guy uploads 3D mesh or textures there using new version of Unity, then you'll also need that version or higher to download it... yeah, that's stupid, asset store simply won't let you download it saying that your version isn't suitable. But.. it's just 3D mesh and textures! You don't even need Unity to use them! That's why if you're planning to use something from their asset store, you'll need newest version of unity installed on your machine anyway, just in case.
As for tutorials... when I started with Unity, it was 2015 (when Unity 5 appeared), I simply used its official tutorial, but after few videos I started to do everything myself, simply because I already had some experience with game modding and pseudo code before. I then used microsoft's C# doctumentation + Unity's documentation to see what I'm even capable of with these tools. My first game was a MMO with Unity's built-in networking, I even made it and played it with my friend! It had only flat plane and characters looked like cylinders who would damage other cylenders in front of them! They had stats and inventory and you could even register characters with passwords and they were stored on my machine! This is also the reason why I became so obsessed with performance and optimization, because I had crazy idea to make a MMO which can be hosted from home computer and home internet. Yes, sounded absolutely mad. And then I started to experiment with all kinds of approaches and tested performance speeds for anything. So in the end I'm mostly self taught, so I can't help with tutorials much, sorry. But I can help in discord if you need help with something.
Thank you VRS, what kind of changes are you planning for the TBS to make it more X-comy? Ranged attacks?, also are these the steps to make a full game or just proof of concept?
I'm not 100% sure if it'll be a full game, but yes, plans are for a full game.
Yes, ranged attacks, overwatch and cover. Basically I'll "upgrade" AoW3-copypasta combat into AoW:Planetfall-copypasta combat. And characters won't have any "perks" or "feats" or whatever, just stats like in old X-COM or Jagged Alliance 2, while all "abilities" will be on items, like jetpack will allow you to jump, or grenades are basically AoE abilities, etc. The reason is - I want permadeath and non-fixed party, so if I make leveling controlled and complicated (like in Fallout or D&D), then death will simply act as "go back to level 1" which makes no sense, since player will simply again create absolutely the same character and will again make the same leveling decisions. But if characters will start with randomized stats which slowly improve themselves like in old X-COM soldiers, then permadeath makes sense.
The general idea of the game for now is to be similar to Dark Matter TV series - you'll start on your damaged space ship in the middle of nowhere with 0 memory of who you are, then you find out that you're a crew of dangerous wanted criminals. The game will have galactic map with stars and planets you can travel to with your ship. Basically something similar to Pillars of Eternity 2, but instead of sailing ship on water you'll have space ship in space. Quests will be given by different corporations and they will send you to do dirty work, like kidnap a scientist or steal something or intimidate/kill locals on mining colony. Basically I'll take episodes from that serial and turn them into generic repeatable quests. Then I'll need to make some main story, but that's only if the game reaches more or less playable state with at least those generic repeatable quests and all other mechanics.
Edit: oh, and space combat will be in the game too, similar to Space Rangers or Master of Orion 1-2, in other words it'll be turn based too. And ship boarding of course, so you can roleplay space pirate.
Edit: btw, some years ago I was making Space Rangers clone and I still have this project, I'll use some stuff from it, so "world map" will probably look something like this:
That looks awesome, do those planets rotate their suns?
Yes, it's not hard to make rotating planets on any engine :D This is very old project with almost no mechanics, there's just 1 player ship and many randomly generated AI ships who just blindly flying around at random positions. Galaxy is randomly generated with stars choosing random position with proximity checks and then nearest are randomly connected by 1-2 lines, thus creating random chains of stars. The only thing you can do in this "game" is to tell your ship where to fly and then skip turns one by one and all ships are flying at the same time. It does have working field of view (ships outside radar range are hidden), and has parallax effect nebulae making star map look very 3D and volumetric which destroys my framerate, but it looks cool when you drag camera around.
The idea was to make turn based space RPG where player is just a ship, I had no animating/3d modelling skills at that time, couldn't even edit existing meshes, because I thought that 3d is something magical and beyond understanding. So space game with static meshes was my only way.
I just tried playing the game, and was at it for 3-4 hours, and came to the conclusion that it was pretty good, but generally way too much of a slog. I got from the first level under the church that the character was dirt-poor and the learn to fight by killing agricultural pests... and by then I bought that part of the story despite the fact that the level took twice as long to make the point as necessary. The forest level, with a near-infinite number of wolves, antlions, rats, goblins, etc., was just too damn long, and the fact that it removed experience every time I died... it was just too much to wade through.
You may rest assured that the whole point of poor, unexperienced, has to kill rats in the forest to earn enough basic equipment not to die when faced by a wild-boar... made far too well for me. So I noped out.
The disappointing thing for me was that everything else was so well put together - the quests were intelligent, the fact that you had to visit the bishop and other NPCs twice was good, so was starting the character as someone very weak... everthing worked except the fact that it takes too much EXP to level up and the removal of experience when the character died. What killed it for me was "oh fuck, this is boring."
I´m happy you more o less liked it; I had a big overhaul in the works but the deficient engine killed it. Feel free to get the cheat items after talking with the map character ( using the teleport for the first time and after that by buying them from the globin) if you want to follow the story to the end of the arc. I´m kinda proud of the last arc battle.
I did dive back into it, and was more careful to do the whole fight, retreat, and fight again thing, so I eventually succeeded in getting to third and fourth level. But it does need some tweaking - maybe no more than 10-15 percent experience loss, and less experience needed to get to 3rd level. (And I'd cut half the creatures from the forest, because that's such a long, boring slog.) I think I only beat the forest because I found a wolf fetish. Also, too many magic items - I started thinking of them as magical toxic waste - you could cut those by 50% and everything would work much better. (I thought the mortar and pestle/mana crystal/aloe vera mechanic in Flare worked nicely.)
Honestly, I'd worry less about the engine (Flare works just fine) and more about creating/adding content. You've got a great story - I love the implied story about the character's immaturity - and probably shouldn't worry too much about the 'rules' Flare imposes, but instead find ways to keep telling that story. BTW, I noticed some more things you did right - the goblin chief in the forest level was great, I loved the wolf-fetish - it gave the character a dog, which was fun - and I thought the boars were perfect, because at first you had to run away from them, and work your way up to killing them. They were a perfect example of the character putting in the work, and maturing a little.
I've been DMing since 1982, and if you tweak the experience/slog thing a little you'll have a great mod. Anyway, off to clear the mine.
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