More replays would be helpful. I might figure it out then.

New replay. Happens at 47min.

Attachments:

Sadly (or maybe I should say fortunately), I don't get the bugs you're referring to, but I haven't played the map more than twice so far, will let you know if I encounter it but nothing so far. But I agree with all the changes you want implemented.

I'm guessing you didn't want to reply to the questions on my previous post Ahli?

Apparently, there's a bug with wirt being a vendor? he sells negative modifier items unlike griswold (unless this is intentional).

Another bug, you can't talk to npc in dungeons if you have a spell selected as your left-click instead of attack.

Relating to left-click using a spell instead of attack, there seems to be something that doesn't work intentionally (doesn't work the same as D2/D3), when you left click and hold it down, your character moves to wherever your mouse is held to even if you move the mouse cursor around as long as the left-click is held down, however, in this mod, if your mouse cursor moves over and near enemies, it fires off the attack or spell instead (which shouldn't be programmed this way). It should work that way if you unhold the left-click and click on the monster instead of the ground or if the shift key is held down.

Do you think it's possible to have stat reset (maybe from cain, which cost gold) for the next patch (you should account for black mushroom quest reward too)?

There seems to be too many good suffixes and not enough good prefixes, I suggest moving of Piercing/Puncturing/Bashing (just drop the of, it works as a prefix) and of Devastation (changed to Devastating) over to prefix to allow more balance between the modifiers of prefix/suffix (nothing too extreme), they can still be only on weapons and jewelry. Because, as of now, you only care about resist all and damage (weapons)/defense (armor) for prefixes (especially on rares).

BTW, do armor piercing stack?

Post has been edited 9 time(s), last time on Feb 20 2014, 8:54 am by mrdorkus.

Durability affixes just determine the initial durability of the item. So, you can raise it without a problem.

They aren't in the game. Only the ones with an ID number are in it. Atm you already know all unique items in the game.

I'm using some of them for monster auras right now, but I've planned to use them as skills for the warrior.

You require a level 26 monster to be able to find them or gamble them with character level 24. The chance to find them is equal to the chance to find an item with the maximum amount of sockets.

Multishot adds an arrow per level, but the skill isn't levelable so far.

As mention previously, no gems benefit sorcerer in weapons, so at least make it so that life/mana life (skulls) will work with physical spells (which is the new single target spell u want for sorcerer).[/quote]
I made a note in my TODO file.

I don't want quests to give the players a lot of items, especially the later quests as they would reward you with a potentially higher-leveled items.

I've added it, thank you.

Intended.

Thank you for the report. I've fixed that.

D2 on monster: you execute the ability on the targeted monster regardless where your mouse moves
D2 on free space: what you describe I assume

my behavior: target is searched at the mouse pointer => initial bad clicks due to lags/stuttering/etc are forgiven and you don't need to click onto every monster to execute your ability on it unlike D2. I think my design is better for the delay on SC2's battle.net (wich drastically decreased since release).

No and stat reset-points would be made possible via a usable items, I guess.

I won't move the suffixes over, I assume. But I will think about that when I've time.

Yes.

I've updated the map on Americas.

It contains debug code that should help me narrow down the problem with the stopping monster AI.
Please post a replay when the monsters stop, so I can come closer understanding and fixing the problem.

Well, I play on Europe And haven't played in a while now..

Upating Europe for that then, too. It should be up in a few minutes.
edit:
updated on EU

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 28 2014, 5:22 pm by Ahli.

Unfortunately the AI bug is not fixed

And superweird! It happened at the same time as last time!

Hope replay helps!

Attachments:

Well, it couldn't disappear as I didn't change anything except for adding more lines that tell me the area where the code stopped.

Alright, I will check it now. Thanks.

Hi, here are some updates from what I've done and what I'm planning to do:

- I didn't find the bug with the monster AI, yet. So, I've added a workaround that restarts the AI thread when it stops. Hopefully that works, so it doesn't completely mess up the game.

- I've implemented dungeon level 16, but I still don't have models for walls or doodads in the dungeon. So, Diablo can spawn and be killed now, but the hell dungeons still look horrible.

- I'm planning to cut three spells from the spell book to add them to the Sorcerer's spell alterations which will form his skills. The spells are Fireball, Chain Lightning and Flame Wave. I will add a Meteor as a new fire spell to remain with 5 skills per element type for Warrior's & Rogue's skill synergies.

edit:

Also I'm thinking about making the miss chance less punishing since missing a lot of times just isn't fun. They will receive a chance to deal half and a chance to deal 25% damage.

The result of the change would be the following:



Since defense is mainly created via armor, this system still makes sense. Against strong defense values, you just deal less damage and against weak defense values, you will most likely deal your full damage.
Being able to deal damage more frequently, it will feel less frustrating.

Critical and devastating hits will still only occur for full damage hits.
I might alter this for arrows in case they become too strong.

So, in a vacuum, this design would allow:
- high CtH with high Critical kind of builds
- high base damage with low CtH and low critical builds

So, that's something I could develop my game into with new affixes.

Spells will remain at the 25% damage when missed.

Most likely I need to alter the damage of monsters after this change, too. I will see...

edit:

Also, items will spawn for each player like in D3. This should help new players in multiplayer games. The amount of gold dropped is still increased with each additional player and the gold is still increased.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Apr 5 2014, 6:57 pm by Ahli.

Thanks for the update, and I'm glad that items spawn independently now. Have you been playing RoS?

Yes, I did. I lost a whole week of my life to RoS.
But after a while I noticed how non-random their dungeons are... Their rifts are just tiles put together by hand + random lightning + random set of monsters. =/
Btw, ice wizards are OP. -lightning wizard =/
Regardless of that, I think Mr. Mosqueira and his team did a great job. Hopefully their ladder won't suck as that's something the game needs badly. With the faster progression, the top tier of players will have near perfect gear in a timely fashion and after that there is nothing left to do.

Today I'm on a barcraft, so I won't push the bugfixes and other little improvements out, yet, but those should arrive in a few days. I will activate level 16 when I'm further with skills. Currently, I try to focus on them and try to implement as much as I can.

(Also, another annoyance in D3, DH has 2 skills to regenerate 6 hatred per attack, but for some odd reason they are both fire. I wish they would just make one have a different element. I would alter the Tinkerer rune to be something else than fire.)

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 6 2014, 12:39 pm by Ahli.

So, a few more days past, but time flies if you are busy with university stuff all day...

Updated to version 0.428.

Patch is live on all servers.

If there are problems, notify me.

Other news:
- I've added a few more skills which will become available once I've added all skills, skill window UI, etc. The most interesting one to implement might have been "Ablaze", a spell alteration of the Sorcerer which is essentially the Disintegrate ability from Diablo 3.


^ Ablaze spell coming someday, Sword model for swords items, new damage number display

I stoped playing this map for couple months since I was busy as well. Now I cleared hell (got disapointed into diablo's portal saying "haha you fucktard, go away this isn't built yet" (bit more polite).
I found out that some items that spawn on the ground instantly disapear... WHY WHY WHHHYYY is that your "only visible to other player?"

No, that's not intended to happen. The goal is that you shouldn't notice that items drop for other players at all (and if you are playing in singleplayer they can't even happen). I will check it out this evening.

Well, level 16 including Diablo has been build, but I didn't allow you to play it, yet. I will delay him until I officially release the map. Maybe I will participate in Blizzard's Arcade contest even if it is unfinished.

edit:

Also, I just found this nice video about my map from TalesOfLumin:


edit:

So, there seem to be a couple of weird problems:
- new item models from D3 (sword/bow/mace/axe on the ground) don't use their texture (but have some form of texture as they appear white instead of blue)
- someone's sc2 crashes when he goes near the caves entrance (which he shouldn't be able to see as he is only level 1) [alright I can reproduce that... that's great, so I have a real chance to prevent it... I just don't get the sc2 error reporter as sc2 just dies quietly]

edit:
I think I know the system that causes the crash... I don't know what exactly is going on, but I will make a few tests as I can easily reproduce it.

edit:
I've found the crash issue, reported it to Blizzard and prevented it from happening in my map and I assume the texture issue was a problem with a flag I forgot to tick in SC2's art tools when exporting the model.

=> I've patched the map in all regions (when NA publishing works... cancelled it at 100%... other servers have the crash fix).

edit:
I still can't update the map on Americas. It fails in the last step: transmitting header file.

edit:
Apparently the update worked even if it throws an error message for the header file transmission into my face...

edit:

My next patch will bring skills, whenever I will publish it... I've added a basic UI for it and all the other stuff to make them work and integrated what I've already inside the map.

I hope to get as much as possible done for the Arcade contest. Even when I'm not finished, it would be stupid to not throw something into it. At least this motivates me to work hard on my map, so I should end up with major progress at the end of the month.

Sadly, that doesn't mean I will have hell dungeon models.

edit:
Some questions...
- what do you think about skill trees?
- If no tree, should I group skills into level requirements or give every skill to every player from start (I kind of dislike that because having a lot fo choices is bad for new players, but that's what I use for testing atm)?
- How many skill points should be refundable? Atm I'm experimenting with the last 3 points, but when I add a tree or groups, I might double that.

edit:



edit:
Next update will be on Saturday May 17th for the arcade map contest playtests. I hope to publish as many skills as possible and hope to get some feedback to improve too weak ones. Most likely I won't be able to add all skills by that time, but you should be able to test all skills I've added then.
The contest entry version will most likely refund your skills to allow me to add a skill progression system...

edit:

May I leave that here...

Post has been edited 13 time(s), last time on May 5 2014, 12:24 am by Ahli.

I have to say first off that that twitter picture you posted looks simply AWESOME! I am really looking forward to when this map gets skills implemented for all classes. I do want to say though that I believe it would be a bad thing to allow every class to possess all skills. Additionally, I think that the other two classes besides the sorceror should still be allowed to learn spells, but perhaps limit either their maximum level of spell learning(this would mean that spells are no longer limited by the maximum magic the player can achieve alone), or only allow each class to be able to learn up to a certain spell tier. The sorceror would, of course, not have this limitation since that would be his primary means of attack. All characters would still have access to the weak first level spells with this idea such as healing, fire bolt, charged bolt, holy bolt, etc.

I know some of you would probably shun the idea of limiting the other classes abilities to learn some spells, but I believe the skills each class will gain would most likely cause low level versions of most spells to be obsolete in later character levels and dungeon depths.

I do like the skill tree idea, but I was also thinking about making some skills learn-able similar to how spell books work right now. You could find these skills as "spell books" just like you find spell books currently. Perhaps this would be the requirement in order to "unlock" skills for further mastery. In essence, you could use this as a way for characters to achieve at least level 1 in every class skill(or only certain skills are unlocked in this way). I understand that Ahli may dislike this idea considering the possible limitation of variety to different characters. However, it would allow people more of a chance to determine what different skills are like before they invest points toward improving them. I believe it might also be beneficial for there to be some kind of window that would show what the maximum output for the skill would be(based on current stats etc.). That way players would have a good idea of just how good a skill would become by simply comparing some of the numbers between skills they like.

I also wanted to add a few things regarding the skill point refunding issue. I personally like the ability to experiment with different character/class builds, but the cost should definitely make it expensive enough that people can't just do it over and over again. I was thinking that the cost might want to be scaled based on the current character level(you would have to decide what the starting point for this would be). As for the number of skill points you could refund, why not have different refunding amounts available to choose from? Perhaps allow each character one free complete point reset just in case they messed up early on or something. The player should be given the option to either use a standard reset or their one-time full reset. After that, allow maybe a reset equal to double what the character normally gains for skill points each level. This could encourage players to stick with a character even if they may have made a few bad skill point selections allowing them to fix the issues by leveling their character enough times. I suggest this mainly because I dislike having to start all over on a new character just because I made some bad calls early on relating to skill point allocation.

Hope these ideas help with regard to skills and skill-trees.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 6 2014, 4:49 am by SeraphicStar.

I think I will end up using groups of skills. Skill trees normally enforce specific skills to be bought which you might hate. If I group them, the player has more choice over the spells that he needs to pick.

RIght now, the Sorcerer has the ability to alter a few spells. For example, having 10 levels learned in Firebolt allows him to learn up to 10 levels of an alteration of that skill which would be Fireball (-> more aoe, more damage, higher mana costs) or Magic Missile (as seen on todays screenshot; I'm going to tweet one every day until release) which is able to hit up to 2 targets behind each other (so it pierces onces) and dealing some magic damage instead.

Every class learns different skills from spending skill points received by level ups and the same spells from spell books. But the spell books are less important for the Warrior and Rogue. I didn't implement that, yet, but the amount of books read per type will passively improve your skills, so every character will gather magic equipment in the stash to be able to read as many books as possible.

Right now, the last 3 spend points can be refunded (for free), so it is easy to test all skill mechanics. But you still need to commit to a few skills to max them out. Requiring to find items before you are able to use skills isn't ideal. Also, I'm thinking about giving an NPC an expensive full skill refund feature with increasing costs per level. But implementing skills and trying to balance them is much more important right now.

Also, I don't know if I can patch my map between the contest deadline and the decision afterwards. I've send a mail to Blizzard to clarify that. So, I might end up uploading a second version to bypass their rules in case they try to stop that. On release, the map isn't going to be complete, but it should be playble for a normal playthrough. Everything else will come afterwards...

It feels great to see that I'm making a lot of progress and the pressure of a deadline helps me to work hard...

Glad to hear that you're accelerating the completion of this map, good luck to you in the contest, I wish you the best.

Hey Ahli, I discovered a rather strange bug regarding your new item dropping method. Sometimes I play with "AI" players filling the slots so it will drop items as if they are actual players in the game. Normally these items aren't visible to me which is, I am guessing, the intended effect. However, I recently noticed that when I went to the catacombs and then went up to the cathedral level 4 it seemed to cause an issue with the item hiding feature. If I went to a different dungeon depth and then came back to the dungeon depth I was at before, it would show all of the items as visible. I couldn't pick up these items of course so that part of the triggers is still working.

I would post screenshots of the bug, but this is the kind of bug that you wouldn't gain anything from a screenshot since it would just look like a bunch of items stacked on top of each other. I hope this is something you are able to fix, and I hope I did not report it too late to possibly make it into your big May 17th release.

I also had a question regarding the mana gain from adding stat points to magic. It appears that the Sorceror class no longer only gains 2 mana points from every added point in magic. Is this a new change to the way mana increases work related to points added to magic? I was thinking it might have something to do with my current magic stat which would lead me to believe that a character with a higher magic stat earlier on could possibly gain more maximum potential mana. Or would each character have the same potential regardless of equipment worn?

P.S. I doubt it matters much but I was playing the Sorceror class, and I was around character level 15-16.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 15 2014, 9:06 am by SeraphicStar.

Thanks for the report. I will check it out and see what is causing that.

Sorcerer's max mana function: 2.5 * (mag + plusMAG) + plusMP + 2.0 * clvl + 2
So, Magic grants 2.5 mana, leveling up grants 2. The end value is an integer, so there is no rounding. This means that 10.5 will become 10. So, you will see increases of 2 and of 3.

The other classes have different formulas:
Warrior: 2.0 * (mag + plusMAG) + plusMP + 1.5 * clvl + 1
Rogue: 2.2 * (mag + plusMAG) + plusMP + 2.0 * clvl + 3

edit:
Thx, I've fixed that bug.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 15 2014, 11:18 am by Ahli.