Torchlight

A place to show off your latest screenshots and for people to comment on them. Only start a new thread here if you have some nice images to show off!
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tbaldree
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Re: Torchlight

Post by tbaldree »

We didn't actually use any of Ogre's existing tools - we rolled our own exporters and a plugin for 3dsmax that allows us to set some basic material properties, shifters, add layers, specmaps, and the like.
Planning to release them with the game and game tools.

Yeah, we don't have anything to prevent intersections - those shots were just lucky, and we try to be careful about it. We also have many cases where we can mask the transitions with a projected-texture render that happens to match up in scale. Which is hard to explain.
Programto
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Re: Torchlight

Post by Programto »

One area where Ogre really suffers (just about the only major area) is the lack of tools. There's no great editor where you can make good nodes and attach things to custom nodes, add materials and normal maps... Or on the high end even test the game in the editor. I can't wait to see some of the tools :)
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Azgur
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Re: Torchlight

Post by Azgur »

Programto wrote:One area where Ogre really suffers (just about the only major area) is the lack of tools. There's no great editor where you can make good nodes and attach things to custom nodes, add materials and normal maps... Or on the high end even test the game in the editor. I can't wait to see some of the tools :)
This is partially due to Ogre's limited scope. Ogre is not a full game engine, it's just a graphics engine.
As direct result it'll be more limited on the tool side as well as many features you'd want in your toolchain are dependent on other middleware.
But Torchlight and many other projects done with Ogre prove there's a huge advantage to rolling your other tools anyways.
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Re: Torchlight

Post by Oogst »

Indeed one could not make an Unreal-like editor in Ogre, because that one is very game specific. However, exporting/importing more animation things (like texture scroll, for example), is a generic thing that could be done in Ogre. And the option to start an interface that lets you browse objects on the disc and drag them into the scene, and select and position/scale/rotate/delete objects, change their materials, etcetera. These are all generic things that are not specific for game engines.

But I am drifting away from Torchlight. This game is looking awesome! :)
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Re: Torchlight

Post by TaylorBalbi »

A few more weeks :) I'm pumped for the release of this game. In less than a year you guys have made one hell of a game.
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Re: Torchlight

Post by Lord LoriK »

Very interesting indeed. I loved Diablo and Diablo II and spent countless hours playing both games, so I'm definitely going to play this one too. I love the graphic style and praise the effort you made to make a game that does not ask for bleeding edge technology. I hope other companies follow suit.

Congratulations!

Just one thing I want to know and I haven't found a good answer: how much customization can we do with the mods? Do you use a script language like Lua or a data-driven approach? Obviously a script is harder to write for casual gamers/modders but far more flexible for programmers and hardcore modders, and some recent/announced go as far as having a custom script language, so I think it's an interesting topic to talk about.
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Re: Torchlight

Post by tbaldree »

Our scripting system is visual, flowchart-style - sort of like Kismet in UnrealEd. You drag and drop any object from the scene into a logic pane, and connect the various inputs and outputs, and run them through logic objects. Pretty straightforward, although the web of interconnections can become dense for complex scripts. We also allow you to link 'layout links', which can encapsulate other scenes and their own chunks of logic.

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Re: Torchlight

Post by elias4444 »

Ok, back to the no shaders thing...

You look like you're using some dynamic shadow maps around the main character. How many passes are you doing to pull that off? The only method I can think of is cubic shadow mapping which would require 6 additional passes to create the map. What are you doing to keep your requirements so low with that?
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Re: Torchlight

Post by Dotren »

Just wanted to post and say congrats to you and your team.. the game looks great! I never got in to the original Diablo game too much (I made the mistake of playing Diablo II first and Diablo's hero seemed to move sooooo slow.. never found out if there was a run command :P ) but I loved Diablo II and still drag it out every now and then.

I also wanted to give props on your distribution of choice. I looked on Amazon and couldn't find it but then I went to your website and saw that it's going to be available on Steam. Thats a huge plus in my book as I literally have boxes full of old software media and being able to digitally download it through Steam is perfect. The fact that it auto updates the software and lets you re-install it later is awesome and I wish more companies would go this route.

On a more technical standpoint, I was curious about your choice not to use shaders. Admittedly, I don't have any survey data to pull from or anything but I just kind of figured that most people these days would have graphics hardware with at least some shader capability. Do you think there is still a sizeable group of game players (hardcore or casual) that lack shader capable hardware?

Congrats again and I can't wait to play!
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Re: Torchlight

Post by Rambus »

An early congrats on the release! I just pre-ordered my copy on steam :)
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Re: Torchlight

Post by Rambus »

Double post/bump fun:

Downloading now- The game was released today on steam.

And I had so much to do today :(

Congrats again guys.
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Re: Torchlight

Post by betajaen »

Rambus wrote:Downloading now- The game was released today on steam.
Don't forget the demo is on there as well for those who are still on the fence on spending £15. :)
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Re: Torchlight

Post by spookyboo »

Just played it for a few hours. :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:
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Re: Torchlight

Post by jjp »

After playing it for 3 hours I can say that I like the game. It is no revelation and really very close to Diablo & Diablo 2 gameplay-wise. But this is something positive as basically all hack&slay games in the past which have tried to be better than Diablo 2 have failed - mostly because they added unnecessary features and neglected details that are vital for such a type of game. Torchlight gets the details mostly right. Just as in the Diablo games the game actions just feel right. And that is what makes brainless clicking-monsters-to-death fun :D

Graphics, sound and music are great, by the way. Although it would be nice to have a little more presentation for the story, simple cutscenes in a graphic novel style would have done the job. And 4 difficulty levels look like overkill to me. Just having the "easy" and "very hard" level could be enough, I guess.

In terms of gameplay I've only discovered 3 minor nuisances so far:

- When I press ALT to display items lying on the floor the item descriptions can and do overlap. This makes picking up items hard when many are lying around.
- You have to hit an inventory slot to place an item on it. If you don't hit a slot but the border area between slots then nothing happens. It would be better if the item would snap to the closest slot. I notice this mostly when I am selling items by moving them to the buyer's inventory. Because I do this very quickly it happens that I try to place an item on the border between slots, which interrupts my flow.
- Targeting enemies seems to be slightly more difficult than it is in the Diablo games.
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Re: Torchlight

Post by Danoli3 »

I bought the game knowing its Ogre roots ;D!
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Re: Torchlight

Post by jacmoe »

I read some of the reviews and they were very positive! :)
One of them, however, is totally lame:
I wasn't sure what to expect when I first loaded up Torchlight - everything I'd seen of the game had shouted "Diablo clone!" at me through a megaphone, but who's to judge a book by its cover?
WTF? I mean, it's made by the people who made Diablo??!
But it also says:
Torchlight might be a Diablo clone, but it's a damn good one.
And all the other reviews I've read says the same.
Congratulations! :D
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Re: Torchlight

Post by betajaen »

Danoli3 wrote:I bought the game knowing its Ogre roots ;D!
I've been browsing their forums and the modding section is full of people using the Ogre mesh importing/exporting tools. I expect we may have a few committed modders posting here in the future.

I must admit, I did have a sneak peek at the Torchlight directory, it made me smile when I saw OgreMain.dll, and all of those meshes and material files. ;)
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Re: Torchlight

Post by Brocan »

betajaen wrote:I must admit, I did have a sneak peek at the Torchlight directory, it made me smile when I saw OgreMain.dll, and all of those meshes and material files. ;)
Yeah, I was feel the same, and, in fact, the first thing that I have done it's go to see the directories to see the ogre references :lol:

Bought via steam, nice game :D
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Re: Torchlight

Post by haffax »

I noticed the cegui dlls in the demo folder. Is this game really running cegui for the GUI?
Because if it is, then I somehow have to have made something wrong myself using cegui. Your GUI is beautiful and very responsive.

I am not a Diablo fan, but I found the Torchlight demo curiously addictive even though (or maybe because) the gameplay is as simple as it gets. The game is extremely polished and responsive and fast. My PC is pretty old, yet I had no problem playing the game with full quality settings. 1280x1024 2xAA and all video options set to the highest possible. Athlon XP 3000+, gf7900gs, 1.5GB.
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Re: Torchlight

Post by betajaen »

haffax wrote:I noticed the cegui dlls in the demo folder. Is this game really running cegui for the GUI?
Apparently it is. There's tons of CEGUI files in the zip file, and one of the developers mentioned it in their forums.
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Re: Torchlight

Post by jacmoe »

Travis said so on the first page of this topic:
tbaldree wrote:UI - Actually, we're using a combination of CEGUI and 3d meshes for our UI
I alerted Crazy Eddie and the rest of the CEGUI team when I saw that. :)
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Re: Torchlight

Post by Kojack »

I took a look at the blues news comment thread on torchlight. Usually they are pretty critical of every new game, but so far everyone in there says it runs great and is worth buying. Oh, and part of the discussion is that it's morally wrong to charge money for a game using a GPL graphics engine, but some less stupid people have pointed out the real license.

I'll grab the demo tonight when my quota goes into off-peak. :)
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Re: Torchlight

Post by joew »

I bought it from Steam today and played for a few hours :D I was playing it on my Mac Pro using VMWare Fusion 3 (which was also released today.. great timing!) / Windows XP VM at 2560x1600 full screen and it looks and runs amazing. They've done a really awesome job with this game.
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Re: Torchlight

Post by banal »

I pre-ordered Torchlight on Steam and was finally able to play it yesterday evening.
Damn it is good! It was really hard for me to stop. My Destroyer cut and stomped it's way through the monster hordes like butter :twisted:
Normal difficulty seems to be rather easy for a Diablo2 HC Veteran like me, but it is definitely the best ARPG since Diablo2 so far. Sound and visual effects are very nice and it runs smoothly on my MacBook (booting into XP) on a 1600x1200 screen. So cool that this is built on top of the 3D Engine we all love.

I'm really looking forward to try the Level Editor too. I'm curious how the levels are built...
Congratulations Runicgames, this is an awesome game!

@jjp:
- When I press ALT to display items lying on the floor the item descriptions can and do overlap. This makes picking up items hard when many are lying around.
- You have to hit an inventory slot to place an item on it. If you don't hit a slot but the border area between slots then nothing happens. It would be better if the item would snap to the closest slot. I notice this mostly when I am selling items by moving them to the buyer's inventory. Because I do this very quickly it happens that I try to place an item on the border between slots, which interrupts my flow.
- Targeting enemies seems to be slightly more difficult than it is in the Diablo games.
I think the overlapping item problem will be addressed in the future. You're not the only one that brought up that complaint ;)
Didn't notice the inventory slot space thing. Probably because I always transfer or sell/buy using shift click.
Yes,the targeting felt somewhat harder than in diablo. But I got accustomed to it rather quickly. Would be interesting to hear from the developers how they implemented this.
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Re: Torchlight

Post by Olemars »

I played for a bit yesterday too after the steam servers stabilized and let me download, and I have only praise to give. The graphics might be more stylized and cartoony than diablo, but they're so beautifully done and crisp clear. Coupled with the music, the atmosphere of the game feels just right. And it runs smoothly even on my horrendously outdated laptop with an integrated go7200. Gameplay and interface is great too. I'll be playing this game a lot.

The only little problem I've had was the targeting issue that others have mentioned. My hands are expecting a diablo-esque clickfest, so I click too fast only to have my character run behind the enemy instead of cleaving them in half like I wanted.

Best of luck to the Runics. Considering the polished feel and attention to detail you must have put down a huge amount of work in this game.
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