Good one. :>
Oops, I had forgotten to report this.
Me want!

Very good report there, Cardinal.

What I'd like to add would be that having bigger dungeons would be appreciable. What about using a larger portion of the map, and recycling the area for other randomly generated areas?

Cardinal suggested doing acts...
and I can remove and recreate dungeons ingame, so...

So every act would consist out of 8 normal dungeon levels + special quest areas...
I fixed chests & made a loading screen.


I should add a scaling for the other level difference, too...

It's funny - before I signed on to Battle.net I was filling out an application as a game tester for Blizzard - then I realised I'd have to move to Irvine, California and actually work in their headquarters... So much for 'global' recruitment. Temporary, non permanent, un-guaranteed hours... and move to california yipee.. So no thanks...

Yea I think Acts would kick ass. But the problem then comes when it's like 'What if...' a level 1 player new character joins a game, and theres a level 50 player there too, and to complicate matters, the other players are all between 14 and 24. Would they do Act 1? or would all Acts be available? (Map size constraints)...

I'll sleep on it or think about it and give a detailed suggestion/reply sometime later today/tomorrow. Because random dungeon creation and recreation is something that you absolutely have to do, Ahli, I hope you realize . Locked doors and keys would be cool also - and ideally a way to pre-programme (read: save) a variety of pre-built room configurations/terrain layouts. Then find a way in which to incorporate certain, or random selections of these pre-built dungeons into the grander randomized one generated in the map.

Anyways, keep workin Ahli and if you want help with anything dont hesitate to ask.

Its seems pretty complicated gl so far

Yes? maybe, but I like to work on it and see it growing step by step.
I just made the npcs turn around to you and look at a hero as long as someone has opened a dialog menu with the npc.
And after the talk/trade they continue to walk around or turn around or doing their hair.

But does someone know how to make the hyperion's armorer to use his fidget animations? doesn't work atm...

1) Implement town portal as soon as possible
2) When pressing 'Alt', the text messages should be colored based on the attributes of the item
3) Left-click some times prioritize picking up items instead of attacking
4) Trying to switch a weapon with a 2-handed weapon while you have an armor should output an error sound
5) Maybe you should give a speed buff to the heroes if you detect no monsters in the current area?
6) I would personally prefer that when you click on the "Exit" button while trading, it closes the generic NPC dialog (Talk/Trade/Goodbye) as well.
7) Spells!
8) You might want to increase a bit the drop-rate of potions.
9) "Repair all" button pl0x.
10) Doors, Keys, and Locked Chests.
11) Try to prevent the kind of cluster fuck we get every single time we try to pass to another dungeon level: hundreds of monsters surrounds you automatically. D:

@1 town portal
I'm annoyed about the current run paths myself.

@2 color on itemnames
I may color bad prefixes/suffixes red. I don't like to have 20+ colors for prefixes/suffix types. And I will surely add other types of magic items like rare Items and unique items. I'm not pleased to have set items because of reasons Blizzard announced themselves: you never get the complete set in low level games and therefore they are useless. So only endgame set items would be plausible to be existent, if any unless you can level the set items somehow.

@3 left click target priority
currently the nearest target is chosen, I will improve it to prioritize attacking over everything else and item pickups will be done through clicks only. Atm you just grap everything on your path while attacking.

@4 trying to swap to a 2 handed if you cannot
I think you mean shield. I don't see that necessary because the area is drawn red. I may make the 2handed information colored to make it faster seen.

@5 running faster if no enemy is around
I've thought about that, but since respawning monsters came to my mind that is something I will do with abilities. Running faster in the town will be done. First I thought of raising the movement speed once the whole dungeon level was cleared.

@6 exiting trade window exits npc's dialog window, too
I could do that.

@7 spells and abilities
... yeah, but I've still 1 exam left. I will see how much thought I can bring into it during March. I guess I can't send test versions then because of a very slow upload rate.

@8 potion drop rate
Will see about that..., need to fill the dungeon with some other stuff first and add .

@9 repair all equipped items
I like to have one... I will add one after messing with the screen somehow raising the usable space on screen with lowest resolution.

@10 doors, keys, locked chests
How should that system run in detail? The locks in diablo2 were silly. I could lock up entrances deeper to the labyrinth easily and chose 1 preplaced monster in the level to drop a key.

I also see problems regarding the implementation with the current dungeon creation algorithm.
Currently the dungeon building system starts with 1 random room in the middle and adds 1 random room randomly to any existing wall.
If I have monster respawn points around the dungeon, it might be difficult to realize that there aren't spawning to many inside locked areas flooding the whole area. So I don't know about locked doors inside the normal dungeon area.

Doors are a problem, too because the units might would try to run through the doors. Monsters might be to easy to kill if you let them out one by one and close the door if a problem occurs.
Maybe only openable doors? Else I would have to teach the monsters to open doors somehow and I don't know much about how I can influence the monster's behavior atm.
It would be great to have different AIs for different monsters, so archers tend to flee in melee combat [e.g. "after getting hit" would be easy to do], but how about making some monsters walk in circles around the hero like the Balrogs did in D1 [surround the hero, try to stay in a distance and attack with inferno spell]...

@11 mass monsters invading heroes that entered the next level
I will try to. Other problems that might appear are that the monsters don't recognize you and you get kills without the chance of being harmed. I can try to lower the rate of monsters in the area around the stairs that lead into the dungeon.

You're eventually going to need a dice-rolling system to determine what members in a party get to keep the loot.

Like in Diablo 2 - the monster amounts and monster levels were all scaled to the number of players in the game. It was generally assumed that everyone will be in the same party. Maybe only initiate the dice-rolling for rare or 'magic' items. If exp is being shared, then maybe gold drops should be shared also? Because otherwise the Rogue will just get very fucking rich

You can create a region using triggers? So, if you know where the two opposite corners of one room are, you can create a region between the two points. This would also give you greater control in where/how the chests and other scenery will be created.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 21 2011, 6:25 pm by Ahli. Reason: merged posts

I didn't get the chance to test it, but what happens if two people are watching the same trade inventory and one buys an item? Is it refreshed for the other guy?
Also, why keep this only for 4 players? Let at least 8 people in! D:
Oh, and for when the walls?

Less players = more games played per hour = higher ranking on map popularity list = win.

Then you release an 8 player map at a later date and give information on how to search it on the loading screen of the already popular 4 player version. Also, it's easier to test games with less players

Every player sees his own trade window and his own trade items designed for his char level.
The levels aren't big atm. If I change everything to be in acts, I might raise the player number...
But there is much work on the road until that happens.

They changed it to game time I thought.

They did, Cardinal just fails.
More players => More fun => More time stayed in-game => MOAR POPULARITY!

Good news regarding archers. I've improved the arrow spawns with pathing cost checks.
Now the archers won't pump arrows against the walls all the time.
But they stay on their position as long as any monster sees the hero within the archer's range...

I was wondering if I could be a tester, though Im currently on the US realm.

poke payne that he hosts it for you. He has recent version.

Ya that works

Some suggestions are proposed by Mp)Cheese as well. :3

- When someone opens a chest, wherever you are in the map, you hear the sound of the opening chest.
- Implement "Identification Scrolls" too please.
- Prevent players from using a healing potions for about 1 second after their revive (to prevent unwanted wastes).
- Items with "malus" should at least have one bonus, else they really just are useless.
- Why aren't you making it Diablo 2? I want Gloves and Boots!
- Will there be mercenaries?
- Rogues should have a determined number of arrows they can use, requiring them to pick some on the ground.
- An enemy getting hit by a ranged attack should automatically Acquire Target.
- What about using the Zealot Prisoner model instead of the normal Zealot's one? It just looks cooler and, as Cheese says, it fits more the theme of the map.
- Use a different projectile model for the arrows. Suggestion: enlarged hydra spine.
- Whenever the player left-clicks somewhere, a "mouse moved" message appears in the chat box (it looks like this doesn't happen to player 1 since I never saw that).
- Add 'b' shortcut for inventory as well.
- Add 'a' shortcut for stats.
- "Inventory" and "Stats" buttons are hard to notice for newbies. Move them or something?
- That flashing stats button is barely noticeable. Try a color-flash instead?
- When requirements are not met for an item, highlight the requirements that aren't met in red.
- With the "game timer" activated, once it passes to 1++ hour, the stats button overlaps it.
- Will there be any sort of Chest implemented?
- And what about Gems/Sockets?

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Feb 24 2011, 4:54 am by payne.

Payne a lot of those features are Diablo 2 only.

Because it's Diablo 1. It would be extremely hard to recreate the terrain aspects and scope of Diablo 2 within the current editor limitations - without having to publish various maps.

Someone asked at BlizzCon whether or not functionality would be added allowing players to embed maps within each other, increase the maximum size of a map and use more textures in the terrain tileset object. The person on the panel who answered these questions was clueless.

I think, Ahli, you must make a choice, whether or not you are going to go 100% Diablo 1 - and get the nostalgia etc. Or make it Diablo 1 with tonnes of cool shit. losing some nostalgia but gaining innovation.


I havn't played recently, but gold-sharing is a must. Last-hitting becomes pretty much null and void when you have armour class, chance to hit, chance to block, chance to miss etc factored in. So, when a unit dies, make the gold it drops share between all hero's in a region centred on its location at death - and maybe scale the gold awarded by the damage taken. So that a player who just stands there doing nothing will get 2 gold, whereas the rogue who crit-fucked the zombie in the eye will get 20 gold.

This. Answer please , it should work. You told me that Walls, Corners and Doors were all identified by their hitpoints, if that is the case, you should be able to modify your algorithm to call a function with creates a region between two Corner points - and therefore you can start identifying rooms which are not the random middle room. You can then also call functions to see the sizes of certain rooms (by the region), and decide how many chests etc to put in there.Storing all created regions in an array - and then deleting the ones which are less than a certain size. Spawning x monsters in rooms with x size, and y monsters in rooms with y size, etc.

One thing I noticed your algorithm didn't do was create corridors. Play around with the minimum and maximum params and see what results it kicks up? a 2x8 or 1x10 room could be cool, especially if the algorithm can add rooms on to the corridors.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 24 2011, 11:08 am by Cardinal.