@chest sound
I tried to do the chest noise for everyone at a point. Seems like that didn't work. I changed it to opening sound for the player only for now.

@healing potions wasted after death
The current healing button is for testing only. I think I will do something like the belt that you have in diablo 2. I may implement something to avoid health potion usage in town or something like that.

@unidentified items + scrolls of identify
I may introduce that someday. But atm I don't know any good reason for that system to exist.

@mercenaries
I guess no mercenaries.

@monsters getting hit by arrows should aquire a target
done. The monster will be ordered to attack the position of the hero while attacked. I might change that to be more effective when I add the chance to hit reduction for arrow distances (need to save the projectile's spawn point and calculate the distance). Then the monsters would attack where the projectile has been spawned.

@magical items with only malus
You will find way less malus items with raising character level.

@inventory/character screen hotkeys
I and C because I don't know why to use a and b.

@color flashing buttons
Doesn't work. I've no idea what the flash does.

@red requirements if not met
I will have a look at it and try to implement it.

@other arrow model
Very good idea, I just changed it and like it.

@mouse moved message
yes, thx. forgot to disable the output for player 4.

@chest to store more items
I will create something like that. I guess I will do something like a community chest for items for all of your characters. Then I might activate a level requirement for items. Diablo 3 does that.

@gems sockets
I guess not in near future, even if that would cost me only 7 custom values for that type of items.

@gloves and boots
I can still add more item types in the end. But I should add gameplay content instead of new items.

---

@shared experience & gold
Sharing gold drops and experience sounds very good. Gold based on damage seems cool. I would have to save the amount of dealt damage per player on each unit to calculate that. So I might do that.

@dungeon creation algorithm
I'm not identifying corners. Corners are only Wall tiles. I'm identifying walls, floor, chests, doors, stairs atm.
I've had small rooms/corridors possible before, but I made the smallest room size to be 5 (3 tiles + surrounding walls) to be able to spawn 1 chest or stairs.
I would need to add a possibility system for room sizes which would be superior to random(5, 14).
I could store every room temporary and add monsters & chest spawns better around the rooms areas.

Atm 1 dungeon level size is 52x54, if you want to think about dungeon algorithms.

So every dungeon level is created within the 52x54 area. Would it be possible to modify the extent or even the shape which the dungeon is generated in?

So, for example instead of it always being a square-shaped, you could have an L-shaped dungeon, or a narrower dungeon? With some sort of minimum size built in. That would give some nice variance.

What are you going to create next? I would like to see some more items and monsters with maybe 1 or 2 quests to try out. Balance it a little and get exp sharing implemented so it's not so damn hard

These were the original hotkeys. B can stand for bag, but a Im not so sure. But C and I also worked so w/e

It's pretty much standard convention for RPGs to use the following

I - Inventory
C (or S) - Character Screen
T - Talents / Talk
J - Journal
M - Map

At least, 99% of games I've played that have those features, mapped them to those keys.

You should probaly add something that diablo didn't have to make your game stand above it...

This.

And @flashing button: you are using Screen Buttons right?
You can use a Dialog Item of type Button instead and use the action "Set Dialog Item Color".

You can modify the button's flashing images. I'm using the orange button images for flashing, now.
Also, I've changed the hero's model to the imprisoned zealot and the shift + click melee attack has been improved.

Are the custom walls model coming along soon too?

MZ's being lame and not sending me his version + the UV map, and he didn't texture it either :uberrage: I don't know about cardinal's one, never seen him texture them so I dunno.

I can't texture but I can create the UV map and make a decent normal map using MudBox. I'm just unsure as to how the algorithm will place the wall pieces. Will I need to create 1 piece that can reside anywhere on a rooms' wall? Or will I need to create a vertical piece, a horizontal piece and a corner piece - and if that's the case, will the algorithm know where to place the respective parts?

IIRC Ahli is using structures as the current wall objects, and as such they are all using the default facing - but since they are cubes, that doesn't really matter.

Get back to me on this and I'll finish up my model by Monday.

I would create the wall pieces after the tile creations. So I will have a large grid of units. If I check the surrounding parts, I can measure what type of wall piece it has to be and create the fitting wall unit.

If the model is a square (wall with 4 sides), you can place it anywhere easily. If not, I would have to figure out hosting site operations because they can attach other actors to a unit. I can pretty much do everything.

The textures/model doesn't have to be perfect now. I would like to have a model to test it first.

I wonder how you will able to create the degrading armor and weapons diablo 1 i think (only played 2)

Degrading?
Do you refer to the cursed items that may lower the armor class, durability, damage?

I'm storing the hero's complete armor class as a custom value and calculate the new one by iterating through all items + stats armor class.

Or do you mean that the items lose durability when they are used (armor on getting hit, melee on hit, shield on blocking, bow on shooting)?
Custom values again + random integer.

---

news:
-tooltips: "2-handed" has a color (bright green), all requirements have a color (bright red orange) and if they aren't met (red).
-starting items have now class requirements enabled.
-fixed a bug with monster's minimum Hit chance (15% now, heroes have 5%).

edit:
Great Success!
I was able to give Archer Monsters a functional targeting system.
Now they won't shoot at walls all the time. They will walk around or shoot on other targets, if there are no walls in the way and the target is seen by any monster.

I've introduced a new problem, too. You can't pick up items anymore because I've disabled the holding mouse item pickup.
Will fix that tomorrow...

also, new screenshot at first post.

edit: fixed the item pickup bug

edit:
-Gained xp is now scaled down by 10% per level for every level that your char is below (monster level - 4) OR above monster level.
-Minimum experience gain has been set to 0 from 1.
-Experience is now shared between all players in the same level.
-Gold from Monsterdrops is now shared between the active players that damaged the monster. The amount is shared with the dealt damage percentage of all damage on the unit.

Post has been edited 6 time(s), last time on Feb 28 2011, 2:51 am by Ahli.

Sigh. Sorry. Jack kept messaging me when I was doing other important stuff so I kept forgetting to get him my version of the model with the UV map. It's not better than Cardinals but I guess It's better than nothing.

INFRONT OF EVERYONE IN THIS THREAD. I promise that I'll upload it later today. If nothing else is going on with my day I'll finish texturing it. I was half way done with it until I realized I could have saved my self the trouble of certain things if I had mapped it a little bit differently. i should be able to pretty much copy and paste some textures the way I should have mapped it to begin with. I'm so nub.

I still think Cardinals model should be used. It's hawt sauce.

My model is a pain. I'm in the process of converting it to 100% triangles for the low-poly real-time (in game) mesh. I've had some problems unwrapping it and getting the UV islands correctly placed, so the normal map I've created (sculpted some cracks, added definition and detail) doesn't apply nicely and makes it look worse if anything else. I'm not sure whether this is because of the unwrap or because of how the SC2Material works.

I've been hunting for tutorials/explanation on how to use their custom material properly but not really finding any definitive results.

So I'd say use MZ's model as a stand-in until I get mine to the quality I want it to be at (perfectionist, sorry).

Also, the only problems I can think of are the poly count of my wall model (currently at 500 ish), causing problems relating to performance. And the other problem was already discussed but not really answered... would I need to make North/South Wall sections, and East/West Wall Sections and Corner Sections? And would it be possible to integrate these 3 models into the algorithm which generates your dungeons, Ahli?

Not really sure how this sort of model would be used but I'm assuming it would be like some sort of doodad? I'd imagine you would only need to make a wall piece and a corner section because I figure the wall model would be rotatable.

I thought.

I was told one time that most if not all game engines auto turn quads into tris. :-0

Ahli uses an algorithm to randomly generate rooms - or, walls - in various sizes from 3x5 to 7x7 (i think). As such the objects used as walls need to block vision, fog of war and have pathing - so they're currently structures. And structures can't be rotated (easily). So this is why I want to know if the algorithm knows when to place a corner-object, or a north/south or east/west wall object. Because as it currently stands, my model would look shit if it were just placed with the same orientation throughout the dungeon.

Optimization. If I do it manually before exporting I can have a lot less tri's. If I export a 300 quad object I will have 600 triangles. If I convert the 300 quad object manually myself I can have 450ish triangles. Especially when a good normal map contains a lot of the detail held by the high-poly version (which is currently on 1200 quads).

Edit: @MadZomb - have a read of this http://nic.sarahparsons.co.uk/images/normalmapping101.pdf, very useful. Or this one here http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3ds-max/how-to-bake-a-flawless-normal-map-in-3ds-max/, it's for max but covers the basics.

my version with 114ish faces/quads. Pretty much Jacks version but edited for easier UV mapping and with a higher ... er.. wall to arch ratio. Thought it would look better. Idk. This image contains 3 (arrayed) of the actual model. Just to show how it would 'tile' or what have you.

Worth texturing?

also does smoothing carry over to sc2? I didn't want to make a to of faces for the pillars. :C

edit: @cardinal

Yea, I once saw someone turn a 5000 quad model into a single face and it was still pretty much the same thing with all the normal mapping. It was some sort of handle. :3

I don't think smoothing carries over. You want all polygons in the same smoothing group and then if you pass it to me (unwrapped) I could normal map it for you - the normal map is how SC2 treats smoothing and high-polygon-density-detail, with low-poly-ish models.

? :C

used blenders geometry normal...thingy. Not a normal map. Just did that for fun.