Some questions on how to make Diablo a shorter game

This is the place for people to research themes and ideas for their mods as well as for others to post their suggestions for mod makers to make use of.

Moderator: Nefarius

Post Reply
User avatar
Desocupado
Forum Regular
Angel
Posts: 548
Joined: Sat Aug 31, 2002 8:26 pm
Location: Brazil
Brazil

Some questions on how to make Diablo a shorter game

Post by Desocupado » Mon Aug 04, 2014 3:48 am

I have played lots of Binding of Isaac (it's a shooter/roguelike where each full game takes 25-60 minutes) and I felt in love with the shorter but fast paced game.

Since I'm not very knowledgeable about Maps and Quest mechanics, I need to make a few questions: (feel free to answer them)

Map related questions
1 - Can Outdoor maps be reduced in size?
2 - Can Transitions (I think they are called warps) be one way (like duriel chamber) without quests?
3 - Is there a limit on how many warps a map have? (i.e. Could I link bloodmoor to 3+ maps using warps?)
4 - Can I make a maze map with a straight line map?

Quest related questions

1 - Do I need to complete any quest to be able to finish an Act (besides killing the act boss)?
2 - Can I spawn a quest item in several spots? (i.e. let's say kalim eye is dropped from several superuniques at act 3)
3 - Can I spawn a quest boss in several places? (like putting "the Smith" in both cold plains and inside the monastery)
4 - Is there any level requirement/limit to complete any quest/act? (if so, could it be bypassed with a simple CE?)
5 - Are there several ways to remove Nightmare/Hell difficulties? (besides removing the true Baal superunique in the last map)
Last edited by Desocupado on Sat Nov 05, 2016 1:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

MarvinC
Posts: 11
Joined: Mon Jan 05, 2015 4:07 pm

Re: Some questions on how to make Diablo a shorter game

Post by MarvinC » Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:08 pm

I have no answers for any of your questions, sorry for that, but:

I like your idea to make the game shorter.

The most simple way would be to highly increase drop rates for unique items and increase useful affixes on rares / magical items.
This way you get to try more character builds in less amount of time.

A more difficult approach would seem to be to decrease many game's values like enemy hitpoints/damage but also affixes on items and variations on items, since farming various useful items takes way more time than high character levels for example.
To compensate for reduced item variation one could make character stats and skill more varied to encourage people to concentrate on the character growth by leveling up to try out different skill/statpoints-variations.

I would really like to see a more ''Baldurs Gate like'' approach to a Diablo 2 modification in which you chose a characters items professions from different possibilities like short swords, long swords, axes, halberds, etc. You could even do the same thing in every other inventory slot.
However inventory items should be highly situational, like this:
A heavy halberd might be good for slaying a big strong foe, but against small critters nothing more than a short sword with far less weight is sufficient so no need to struggle with carrying heavy weapons around for these.
If your character is specialized for heavy weapons though, his body has adapted to using those heavy items and as a result he slightly loses out in dexterity/movement speed compared to a fighter who has trained more in the light inventory department.

I also think, not all items should be able to be repaired infinitely. Sharpening blades takes a tiny bit of material away, repairing armors is very expensive, because damaged parts have to be replaced at some point and so on.

User avatar
Desocupado
Forum Regular
Angel
Posts: 548
Joined: Sat Aug 31, 2002 8:26 pm
Location: Brazil
Brazil

Re: Some questions on how to make Diablo a shorter game

Post by Desocupado » Sat Nov 05, 2016 1:47 pm

Well - tweaking drops while making enemies weaker isn't the direction I want.

What I wanted was more akin to playing a sidescroller - I might solo or call a friend or two - then I defeat the game (5 acts) in one sitting of 1-2 hours.

User avatar
devurandom
Forum Regular
Angel
Posts: 897
Joined: Sat Mar 07, 2015 9:07 pm
United States of America

Re: Some questions on how to make Diablo a shorter game

Post by devurandom » Sat Nov 05, 2016 4:32 pm

Desocupado" wrote: Quest related questions

4 - Is there any level requirement/limit to complete any quest/act? (if so, could it be bypassed with a simple CE?)
One I can think of is Rogues Rescue Cain. Should be possible to bypass this but Its a bit time consuming to nail down the code related to that, but I think it could be done with a simple code edit.

Searching all code sequences at are possibly related to a1q4 gives about 24 results in 1.13c

push 1
push 4

Then you'd place breakpoints on those, and find the correct BP for rogues rescue cain & normal cain rescue setting the quest completion function to be the same in both cases.
Assembly Reference | 1.13d Code Edits | UVLoD | BaseMod Plugin

Fiat paper money is the most elaborate and well devised form of slavery the world has ever seen..

Post Reply

Return to “Mod Concepts & Research”