mod questions

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helpmeplz
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mod questions

Post by helpmeplz » Sun Apr 29, 2012 5:24 am

:) just a few tiny questions about this mod so far. what uniques have been implemented, if any(like for the doom swords) and will runewords for 1.10 still work? also, in b4 will the necro skills change(hope not they are EPIC :) ) thats all right now, and thanks for this brilliant mod. i was ready to uninstall d2, then i found this, and it captured everything i love about rpg's so far. keep at it!! :)

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Re: mod questions

Post by Adhin » Sun Apr 29, 2012 2:25 pm

In B3.5 there aren't any new uniques, I think most runewords from 1.10 still exist (I didn't add any).

As for necro skills everything in B4 has changed, really though as of recent shift in... stuff... a lot of what exists in B3 as far as necro skills at least, still exist in some form.

Ehh for example, the Summon tab still got Shadows via a Shade Master tab which incorporates more stuff then just the summons. Still have skeletons though I got rid of the skel mages, replaced them with Archers which all share the same pet pool. So for example a higher end necro-char can have 12 skeletons out at any given time, can be any mix of archers or warriors, may change that to a higher number down the road, not sure yet.

Along with that kinda stuff though theres a lot more in general. For instance the skeletons are part of the bone tab. I have a new skeleton summon to go along with that (convert of the bone guard thing if you will) and some other stuff such as the Bone Dart/Shard spell is there. You also got a Bone Totem skill which gives any friendly undead ('any' friendly undead, or partial undead) a cold dmg buff. So between archers and that you can output some heavy ranged summon dmg that slow targets, kinda nice.

There is 5 tabs now instead of 3. 4 of them are unique per character (so necro has 4 skill tabs) and 1 general tab that all chars have access to. The general tab basically lets you make specific archetypes like switching to dex for melee instead of str, or mnt instead of dex with ranged. Shifting base stats to represent class Archetype Warrior or a Mage or whatnot.

Anyway if there's any specific abilities you liked there probably still in the game some where... though they'll of been updated. There is no copy/pasted stuff from B3 into B4 at this point. Besides just re-doing stuff so damn often I also re-organized the files. The random crash you've probably ran into on load? That's cause by a lot of little inconsistencies that, generally, don't matter but there's over a hundred of em and D2 freaks out. So yeah, re-organized, wont have that on-load crash anymore erm, whenever I get the damn thing out anyways.
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Re: mod questions

Post by helpmeplz » Mon Apr 30, 2012 2:47 am

thx for reply :) that sounds really awesome. I like the multiple classes. just one more question if ye got that on the final idea, is it still possible to
A)melee(with mellee skills i mean :mrgreen: )
B) make hybrids(like my current melee/shadow summoner)or will that be less possible or be too spread on skills to be viable, or will melee be gone out of neccy?thx again for response and if ye can nswer the above ill look foward to hearing more about this awesome mod, and good luck on its continued developement :)

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Re: mod questions

Post by Adhin » Mon Apr 30, 2012 5:36 am

Yeah melee still exists as an option - for everyone. All the weapons have been normalized across the board. Every character (all 7 of em) has a base of 15 frame attack for all weapons types from a dagger to a spear. So not only can you melee but you wont be limited to that 1 sword that happens to have a fast base attack while you somehow suck far worse with a larger weapon. Skill in the general tab (so everyone has it) that'll reduce that to 12 frames (for everyone) and it's really the only source of IAS in the game.

Normal attack is now a copy of Zeal where the number of hits you have is based off the Archetype you pick from General tab (again, all chars have that). So for instance the Warrior Archetype gets 4 attacks, 200 hp, 100mp and +20 AR (total of 70 base then). With out an Archetype you have 2 attacks, 150hp/mp and 50 AR. So every archetype will alter that somehow.

So if you wanna play a melee based necro type char I got a Tab that has melee-oriented spells (that work off VIT for dmg boost), some passives, 4 separate buffs spread out amungst 3 tabs that help out a lot. Actually the 1st skill into the Undead Graft tab (melee oriented) turns you 'partially' undead. So that Bone Totem skill I mentioned above with the cold dmg? You would get half the benefit of that. So if your archer/warrior skels get lets say 8-12 dmg, you'd get 4-6 cold dmg with in range.

Also a life leech 'oak sage' style summon that has 1/4th your total HP (and consumes some of your HP to cast) spell in the Undead Graft tab that'll give all undead life leech on attack - you get half of that, also a single target high hp heal spell (instant) in that tab - you'd get half benefit from using that then. That's basically 'Mend Undead' skill thingy returned.

Oohh one really fun (or least my 'favorite') skill in the Undead Graft tab is called Destructive Touch. Does high damage and if you get the upgrade for the skill 'Deathless', on killing an enemy with the ability you'll raise up an undead from there corpse. I'm 'hoping' to make it so that functions like 'revive' in clod where, on kill, it'll bring them back as a proper copy of them selves but it may end up just being a zombie or skeleton.

anyways this is my current layout, no skill descriptions but the names may help you get an idea for how it'll be layed out - http://kardon.biz/adhin/stuff/alukah.htm

Thing to keep in mind, at lvl 1 you have 2 skill points to spend (1 for Archetypes but you don't have to buy one). By lvl 30 you'll have 21 total to of spent, takes 15 skill points to 'max out' a tab but that's not really a necessity. For instance if you look at Undead Graft tab on that link there are 10 skills (in bold). The other 5 are skill upgrades, they alter how that skill works.

That's basically 7 points into the Shrouds tab to max out the Shadow summons 'and' get the Shadow Shield spell. Leaves 13 points to throw into Undead Graft, which isn't really 'required' to be a good melee necro, but it has the most melee oriented stuff.

Hell you can technically make an all melee build using just the general tab on any character, the unique skills are just the flavor.

-edit-
As a side note how many skills you have by 30 is kinda of up in the air still, 21 is just what I got now. May end up switching to 26 or 31. Good chance it'll be 26, wouldn't let you max 2 tabs but get close to it.
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Re: mod questions

Post by helpmeplz » Mon Apr 30, 2012 5:46 am

8-O
thats what im talking about!! :) i like the mix of melee/ undead summon from kills. makes him feel like a true deathnight :twisted: thanks for the tree, its makin me very excited about this mod, and the changes are just gettin better. arrrrggghhhzzzz i want it now :cry: now no matter what PLZ DONT STOP IT :x :) also kinda curious to see how the new stats are worked in, is it that certain skills gain buffs from certain stats, or does each "damage type" gain buffs for stats(like mana powers cold, vita powers melee) :?:

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Re: mod questions

Post by Adhin » Mon Apr 30, 2012 5:49 am

Don't plan to stop but it'll take awhile. Next version probably wont have any quest in either which is gonna be a bit of a downer for a lot of people I'm sure. Still haven't decided how I'll deal with that exactly but I'll probably just give general access to A1 and 2 (Warriv will just automatically give you the option to travel to A2 from the start) let people just kinda... wander around and kill stuff.
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Re: mod questions

Post by helpmeplz » Mon Apr 30, 2012 5:54 am

itll be certainly a nice teaser to test out whatever new skills are implemented, and see the new maps(if they are in yet :cool: )and as for time, quality takes time so hell with it, it gets done when it done ;) the concepts look amazing so keeprolling em out :mrgreen:

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Re: mod questions

Post by Adhin » Mon Apr 30, 2012 6:13 am

No new maps, just the tristram shift which I think has been in since B3, or at least I know its in B3. After all the chars get done I want to get the start town done, get the death plane stuff in and then kinda populate via patchs. So B4 will be classes in, B5 will probably be done in stages with starter content then adding in quests and whatnot.

I know I want the bulk of the thing to be setup in and around a big City, kinda like BG2 was. But I'm not much of a writer so not sure how well any of that'll turn out, least the maps and whatnot will be good... probably. :P
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Re: mod questions

Post by helpmeplz » Mon Apr 30, 2012 9:28 am

1) new trist is in, and absolutely beautiful :) the town system is definitely reminiscent of baldurs gate 2, which i liked(minus the creepy shopkeeper) and for story, good stories dont have to be complicated, and i would know, im a writer :P . and if the other maps are even half as good as new trist, you havnt much to worry about, my jaw dropped when i saw it 8-O also, im a little curious as i saw in a post something about the monster encounters being hand crafted or something instead of diablos random generated monsters, what is that mean exactly(kinda curious on how that would be implemented as it sounds...interesting :) )

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Re: mod questions

Post by Adhin » Mon Apr 30, 2012 5:09 pm

Well I had a lot of ideas on that originally, but after the current monster test I ended up deciding ill shift the focus when I actually get to the map/story stuff. Frankly not sure If I'll even 'have' an overarching story, may end up just being a stream of adventure stuff. Maybe throw in a bigger story if I think up anything.

As for the monsters originally I was going to create a large library of pre-set monsters to use as I made the maps and whatnot, seemed like a good idea at the time at least. After the testing I realized it meant I needed 5 or so version of most the monsters just to compensate for level differences.

So with all that in mind I ended up deciding if I had to handle it that way I might as well just make monsters based off there area. Well, for the most part anyways. So current list of monsters I got in I'll keep for B4 and they'll ultimately be scrapped once I start doing the actual map stuff and do monsters to populate the maps semi-by hand.

D2 at its base spawns monsters randomly around. Completely random which can be kind of a pain in the butt. For example lets say I design a monster with the idea, level for level, the player should have a difficult fight 1 on 1. Probably can't handle 2 at once right? If I use normal D2 spawning with that, good chance, even if I set it to super low density and only to spawn 1 at a time (no group spawn)... it'll still throw a few spawns 'right next to each other'. You end up getting group spawns of something that was designed as a single.

It's kinda like if every time you went to go fight Diablo, half the time there was just 3 of them. Maybe only 2, but rarely ever just 1. It's because even on low density population of a map it'll spawn 'multiple groups' with in distance of each other. Ultimately it's not the easiest thing to control.

Now for some stuff - that's ok and I intend to keep using that every once in awhile depending on the map. Some maps 'maybe' random and might as well throw in some group oriented monsters via that system. Other things it'll have to be more specific.

Past that I also have tested some ambush like stuff where you don't see the monsters initially. But get up to an area and the demon-bat stuff will 'fly down' from the sky around you. Got plans for stuff like umber hulks bursting out of walls and whatnot. All trigger based stuff but makes things a bit more interesting if you don't see the group your running at. Probably do a good bit of that kinda stuff, like spiders descending from the canopy in jungle areas or whatever.

So, in short - it'll be a mix of stuff, but there will be a lot more static map design then Diablo 2 had at base, and often times monsters designed specifically for that area instead of just random list of random stuff.
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Re: mod questions

Post by helpmeplz » Tue May 01, 2012 3:25 am

ahhhh so what will be in this mod is monster spawns are, instead of the difficulty being in their numebers, itll be in their strength, so large groups wont be as common right?I like that, kind of gives monsters more of a dangerous feel instead of cannon fodder, though I hope that there will still be alot of "group" oriented monsters, so i can summon my little undead legions :)

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Re: mod questions

Post by Adhin » Tue May 01, 2012 6:37 am

Well it depends, I have some stuff based off swarm like the bats. But it depends on a few things, monster and where it is. The bats, again, as an example are a lvl 1 encounter. Takes 2 hits to kill with a 2h sword with 20 str. 3-4 with a 1 hander. They don't do a lot of dmg in melee but they can (rarely-ish) do a electrical nova (small radius) that ends up pretty solid dmg. Also being elemental it ignores all the armor base damage reduction stuff.

So, alone - not an issue. Go up against a pack of them and, while you can kill them individually quickly, the more there are, the most often you'll get hit with the sparking if your not careful. Later in the game may run into the rare ambush swarm of these storm bats. 30 of em, all flying in around you. They maybe level 1 encounters, lvl 1 can take on 1-3 of these with out to much issue but even at 20+, 30 of these can cause some serious problems if there not delt with fast simply because of there sparking. In Groups they often spark up and discharge the nova rather constantly.

So if in situations like that your first thought is 'lol lvl 1 stuff, no biggy' - you just starting meleeing them thinking you wont take much dmg, then a few seconds later you get electrocuted to death. Seen it happen in play test - to my amusement.

The next version, B4, whenever I can get it out, still uses D2 style spawning so. No real handcrafted levels or monster placements but it'll give a good idea of how monster difficulty is. I'm trying to go for quick fights that're difficult but fair? Kinda thing where if your paying attention and keeping on top of things it can go by with little trouble but if you start getting lax it can go real bad, real fast.

So in short - a mix of mass groups vs single enemies. Little more focus on smaller numbers in most fights but there will still be swarm encounters.
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Re: mod questions

Post by helpmeplz » Tue May 01, 2012 8:39 am

thats good :) . as long as the fights are frequent numbers wont matter, and this ambush sounds like a simply awesome idea, and i bet alot of players are gonna be in for a suprise when they find first act critters causeing real damage :twisted: so what will be the state of elemental resist, seeing as they can still rough ya up? i'm assuming it'll be at much lower max, or much harder to get? and i saw somewhere that all chars will have a base health in later versions of 1000 with a few ways of increasing it, so how will this mesh with future difficulty levels? and thirdly,whats the set/unique system looking like afterwards?( or if you arent that far yet, please disregard any questions that might not be fully worked through :) )

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Re: mod questions

Post by Adhin » Tue May 01, 2012 6:47 pm

I'll try to answer all that in some kinda order best I can but the 1k hp things changed, no longer get DR from vitality.

Health is 150 base for everyone, Archetype shifts that around - 100 for mages, up to 200 base for Warriors, others in between. Get 10 hp per vit regardless of Archetype. Exact same system is used for mana. Should be noted that health and mana do not increase via any other means. Archetype shifts your base, ability scores alter it and they have a specific cap to them as well. You start with 10 in all ability scores, get 20 points to spend at lvl 1, can't bring any of em past 20 at lvl 1. Now 'saving up' wont help any as the cap goes up by 1 each time you gain a new skill point up to lvl 20 anyways. Get an point to spend in that every even lvl (2, 4) and the cap sets at 30 once you hit 20, stops moving till you get past 30 but 30 is the general lvl cap.

Balance wise what this means is health and mana are a bit more static then they are in other games and your ability score plays a greater role in how all that ends up working. Unlike I had before the attack chain you possess is now based off Archetype alone, instead of advancing by level. So Warrior always has 4 attacks for instance, instead of 'eventually' having 4 attacks. Nice thing about that, from my perspective at least, is due to the way that all works was 2 enemies was more of a challenge with only 1 hit, once you got 2 hits you needed 3 to be a challenge and so on for the fighter-types. Well now I can just balance for Warriors with 4 attacks as a base. Anything else is going to have more a focus on another play style. Basically means other then the 1-2 large targets that'll take a bit to take down 'smaller groups' will often be about 5 things. Can keep 4 at bay but there will always be 1 landing hits on you.

Items only the 'magic' stuff is in, no unique/sets in atm but I have a general system setup I plan to follow. Basically I use a +modifier like DnD does and past that you'll get 1 extra suffix to go with it. Game runs entirely on suffixes. Rare's don't exist, and Unique/Sets get 2 suffixes instead of 1 (making them mildly more powerful). They can also have unique stuff, or in unique values the magic stuff wont have. Sets are treated same as uniques but they only show up (for the most part, always exceptions) as armor sets. Armor is split up into 3 parts, Torso, Arms and Legs. So every set is at base, 3 items of that. May get one that also has a helmet, or shield, or both but...yeah. Again only magic item stuff is in, rest wont be in B4 as I kind of want a lot of it to be based around stuff that happens in the game and... I just dunno where that'll all go yet.

As for resistance there some spell/skills that boost it by small amounts (10-20%), can only get it on armor/shields as random drop stuff. Ioun Stones have one that's I think 10%. Basically its hard to stack up a lot of it, let alone 'all' at once. Oh and Ioun Stones as a side note are all unique, no magic. There's about 30-ish of them. Not much else to say about resistances heh... not to many ways to raise em but if you can get multiple players together and stack effects you could probably get the whole party to sit around 50-60%, a 'tank' with setup with all resist items could probably manage higher. Do plan to put in some sets that give straight immunity but at the cost of another resist. For instance one that makes you fire immune but completely screws over your cold resist, setting it to -100%.


Now as for difficulty settings and all that... I don't want people replaying the game 3 times over as 'progress'. I wanted to use them, straight out the gate at lvl 1 as something you pick. Generally 'normal' would be intended for single player. NM/Hell would be multiplayer oriented but could also be used as challenges for anyone who wants to try to solo that. As for making it 'harder' as you level up in relation to what you face, just more powerful enemies really. Your characters main growth is in there abilities. Items improve you in small amounts, but often make a bigger difference then a lot of people may realize (same could be said for d20 3.5E). Not sure what else to to say to that but... yeah. Health, DMG, different resistances. If you know 3rd Edition rules - imagine if Fighters had 200 hp from the start and all there attacks. HP from Con was static instead of x lvl. The real issue is balancing the early levels at that point and it's not to hard. Just a matter of upping the lower lvls stuff HP and keep them all in line with the same system. Higher lvl mobs will have more skills and ultimately use more tactics then lower level stuff. And some of that lower level stuff (such as the storm bats) will be designed with larger groups in mind - but come at you in small numbers early on.

So I guess... balance for lvl 20-30, scale down for lower levels so they don't get trashed.

-edit-
Realized I keep mentioning Archetypes but haven't ever listed them out or explained them to much. Basically there all on the general tab, there's 5 of them (and 20 other skills). There all passive and you can only pick 1 Archetype (the other 20 skills aren't limited that way). You don't have to take one, I generally encourage it but I know some folks who would let em rot just to try it out and use that extra skill elsewhere. Another thing to keep in mind is there's no skill leveling. Everything is just a single pointer, some skills have upgrades but not on the general tab - they all do what they do. Oh and all types have a base of 50 AC. Armor/Dex add to that and a new hit formula to go along with it which I'll explain after Archetypes.

No Archetype
Health: 150 | Mana: 150 | Attack Rating: 50 | Number of Hits: 2

Warrior Archetype
Health: 200 | Mana: 100 | Attack Rating: 70 | Number of Hits: 4

Templar Archetype
Health: 175 | Mana: 125 | Attack Rating: 65 | Number of Hits: 3 | +5 to Arcane/Divine Spells

Rogue Archetype
Health: 125 | Mana: 125 | Attack Rating: 60 | Number of Hits: 3 | 200% Sneak Attack DMG | Picks locks

Priest Archetype
Health: 150 | Mana: 150 | Attack Rating: 60 | Number of Hits: 2 | +10 to Divine Spells

No Archetype
Health: 100 | Mana: 200 | Attack Rating: 50 | Number of Hits: 1 | +10 to Arcane Spells


Now as for that hit formula it's pretty basic. Attack Rating vs Armor Class = 50% vs equal values. So 50 AR vs 50 AC = 50% hit chance. Every point of difference between them is 1% in whatever direction. The fun part comes into how we cap the extremes which is the part that's based off player level. I basically wanted something that was more... consistent then D2's was but still have something based off char lvl. So necro and me kinda came up with the idea of scaling min/max values. In D2 its 5-95% right? Can't get better then 95% chance to hit.

Are min/max values basically 10-90% but that scales with level difference, every difference in level you get shifts that 1% on both ends depending on if your above or below the monster in question. So lets say your level 20, and your fighting a lvl 10 monster. You'll have a 20-100% cap on that, meaning you 'could' always have a 100% hit chance but you wont ever drop below 20%. Now a lvl 30, vs a lvl 1? Heh, that'll be 39-100%. There really isn't a limit on that either other then 100% hit rate. So if you managed to somehow get into higher levels of 50-60 (the 'cap' is 100 but games softcapped at 30, meaning end game is lvl 30... can keep going if you want to keep using the same char for stuff and whatnot). Anyways, could end up with a 100-100 cap basically where you never could miss simply because you out-class them by such an extreme but that's wildly unlikey to ever happen (I mean, lvl 91 vs 1 is...your never hitting 91).

Now past the base values, you gain AR from STR for mele, DEX for Ranged. So say your a Warrior rolling with some weapon or another, got 30 str you'll end up having 90 AR base. Every plus on a weapon is about the same as 2 in str or dex depending. So a +5 weapon will give you +10 AR. Then you got abilities dishing out +5-10 AR and whatnot. And of course, most monsters are sitting at around 50 AC in relation to this system so you can look at your total AR and get a good idea of what your 'general' %hit chance is. Got 80 AR? You got about 80% hit chance vs most mobs. Bosses get more AC, fast dodgy monsters get more, so do flying monsters. Some monsters get penalty to AC like massive monsters or zombies. But that's ultimately why you got a reason to go above 90-ish AR even as a Warrior - the real difficult monsters. Good to make sure your always at your max if you can but the systems setup so its not a necessity (..but worth it).

Also with Weapon Finesse in general tab you can play a high AC high AR character that fore goes pure damage output for that level of survivability. Also, as you'd expect, good for rogues and whatnot. Oh and Sneak Damage is amazing on bows since you don't get hit 'as' often playing ranged. Basically instead of it being position oriented (like a backstab) you get Sneak Damage bonus as long as you haven't been directly hit by melee/missile attacks (AoE like an aura don't count). So... Rogue + Opportunist, stack up that extra Sneak %dmg is a really good way to get Bow damage up (one of the few ways at that, Dex wont up bow dmg).
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Re: mod questions

Post by helpmeplz » Tue May 01, 2012 7:22 pm

looks like im going for the warrior archtype neccy with the zombie legion :) now, there is one thing im a little concerned with is the difficulty being multiplayer -oriented. now, I'm a majorly single player as i dont usually have large amounts of time to dedicate to online play. now i remember hell unleashed, which i found to be a very good mod with multiplayer, but when i couldnt keep up with my group on it, i switched to singleplayer, and swapped for the single player patch, and found the difficulty still horendous for a lone character,to the degree of impossible end-game. now my question is :?: , will my characters on singe player be able to have a good chance of doing the other difficulties without dying to every unique quill rat, ex. (if this isnt the case i reeaally hope you consider leaving it viable for single players like me, cause thats a big plus, going to the next difficulty, and continuing the developement of my char :mrgreen: )and thanking god on the resistance and health setup, as i like my rpg games to really challenge my chars, and keep me from being too comfortable even in the early acts. and lastly, i got a little confused on the for attacks thing. does that mean my character warrior type begins with 4 attack skills :)? variety is golden

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Re: mod questions

Post by Adhin » Tue May 01, 2012 8:39 pm

Well it's balanced for single player, or will be. Currently I haven't even touched NM or Hell and the 'single player focused' balance I had in mind scales fine in MP as is. Key point to all this is, NM and Hell isn't a level shift in monsters. It would ultimately be a HP and mild dmg shift, with group-limits increased. Multiplayer players increases hp beyond that regardless of difficulty.

Take a Stormbat, as I've mentioned takes 2 hits from a 2H'er with 20 str. That's a single player 1 on 1 thing, your doing 20 avg dmg with that weapon, so the bat has 35-40hp base. Throw a few players in and they got more HP already, 4 players and its closer to 160hp which is fine and all but theres more of you. Ultimately combined players is more powerful then HP increase its self can handle. So NM mode would buff the dmg slightly and would increase the 'group count'. Same situation, lets say, instead of 40 base HP I give them 60 and +2 dmg or something basic. Key is I make there avg group from 5, to 10.

Playing in normal diff as intended, 5 bats you can take on. 4 you hit in a single attack attempt, other ones left unharmed, you can kill all 4 in 2-4 hits. Stick and move, not to big of an issue but you'll take some damage. If you where to solo in NM instead it would take 3-6 hits instead and you would have twice the bats to contend with. Meaning instead of 1 extra hitting initially before you kill 1 off, you have 6. Meaning you have to kill off 6 bats just to bring the odds back down to 4 vs 1.

That's really the main difference I was talking about. Adjusting not just hp like D2 does but actually adjust spawn sizes to compensate for more players. Or give the crazy something stupid to tackle in single player if they want. But like I said earlier the difficulties are just that, difficulties. Not a game progression. Think of it this way, in D2 the games stupid short linear ride. You beat it, then you beat it again with the same char cause you where only 1/3rd the lvl and barely had much to go on skill wise. In a game like Baldur's Gate by the end of it your chars nearing the end of the level cap and is a true power house. Same concept applies for my mod, you wont be replaying 3 times (unless you really want to) for the sake of advancement. I plan to make the quests and such moduler so I can just keep adding stuff in. You can, of course, always take that char into NM and have a go at it when your higher lvl if you wanted but its not part of my intention for the game design.

As for the attacks as I mentioned earlier, base attack was replaced with Zeal functions. So when i say 4 hits/attacks I mean just that - a 4 hit chain. So you can hit 4 targets at once. I use a faster roll back so theres only 2-3 frames between each hit instead of the full attack frames as base in D2 (D2 has a lot of IAS sources and weapons all have varying degrees...mine doesn't). So as my example above, a group of 5, you can hit 4 outa the 5 and keep them from damaging you to much via get hit animations, but that 5th will be getting hits on you. Also I made the GH animation fast for everyone (including the player, think a base 200% get hit speed up rate, so you can't easily stun-lock larger groups by target switching).

To recap real quick - games balanced for single player and there wont be much need other then maybe your own desire to attempt playing in NM or Hell as there not part of the 'natural progression' like they are in D2.
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Re: mod questions

Post by helpmeplz » Wed May 02, 2012 4:01 am

ooohhh i get it now the game will probably with the map extensions get alternative paths and areas to extend gameplay, so by the end of normal, your full strength or close to it. and by then if you wish the other difficulties are a side/ optional, for challenge sake, and purely that...I LIKE IT :) gives my completed char extra fun. and the zeal function sounds fun as hell for a normal attack. so players 8 for example would not be a good move, cause then your looking at bigger spawn groups, and thus a very potential monster rape :lol: the other difficultes are gonna be a fun as hell test of how a character is too, which is really making them feel less like a chore, and more of a fun alternative :) . now, a question i have and am prolly the most excited about, is what i mentioned above. whats the plan on maps? i know they are changing(thank god) nut will there be optional dungeons, just for item find, and what kind of extentions to quest length are we lookin foward too?( i definitely like a longer single player campaign myself, so thats gonna be awesome :mrgreen: )

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Re: mod questions

Post by Adhin » Wed May 02, 2012 9:47 pm

Baldur's Gate 2 style is the simplest way to say if you've played that. D2 is kinda a linear fake-open world type thing. Which is fine but the links and all that's kinda awkward. I don't really plan to do it like that at all, also don't plan to set it up like an open world because that tends to have a lot of useless excess and it's not very modular in letting me just 'add stuff'.

So Baldur's Gate 2 style. I haven't exactly planned out map layouts or anything like that but my basic plan, I guess is to start off at a small road-stop like 'town' (basically an Inn with few folks living there). Something small, basic - the land it self around it will be relatively but static, the 'wilderness' and the town I want to make 1 large map basically. Your in town, you talk to some NPC, you just walk out and do whatever. Basically just an intro and a guy in town will take you to some larger city which is gonna be the bulk of the game. City will probably be made up of multiple maps... not sure if I want to cut off parts of the city or what but you'll also travel out side of the city.

So if you've every played BG2 the city was made up of a few maps, quest took place in it, you'd go into the sewers, abandon buildings, so on so on. You'd also leave the city via a map system and just select an area away from it. That's the kinda thing im going for, what that comes down to for D2 (regardless of if we can get an actual map in or not) is instead of you running along and finding Waypoints to 'activate' so you can get there quickly. I'll be activating WP 'for' the player that takes them to where ever. Get a quest in the city, go hit the gate to travel out of the city and you select which location to go to. Many of them will be basically same style as the intro 'town' is. A large outside 'area' that may or may not have a town. As another example one quest may take you to some forest thing of which you have to explore to find some forgotten ruins or something. Find that, go in, and 'that' maybe a random-ish dungeon that leads to a second floor that's more static build by hand and whatnot.

So yeah - like Baldur's Gate 2, least in general exploration and travel. Not open world, not D2 style fake-open linear world. Static outside maps, some dungeons will use random map stuff. You use the WP system in reverse to travel to rural towns/areas for things.
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Re: mod questions

Post by helpmeplz » Thu May 03, 2012 8:00 am

well, being a huge fan of baldurs gate 2, i gotta say the maps setup sounds very fresh, what i for one need from d2 now :) so will the towns in each act be the same town? and if im understanding, basically wp will activate when certain quests do, and will thusly take place there. thats actually really badass, and with (hopefully :mrgreen: )side dungeons, its gonna make exploring the "quest areas" a real treat, with pretty new maps of hopefully large size, and if one returns for exp or items later itll be still quite nice :cool: you really have some extremely unique concepts so far that i havent even seen close to in other mods so far, im impressed :cool: :) . now, what will gamble, shopkeepers be like? actually good for once, selling good gear like in baldurs gate(even though i could never afford it :roll: ) and will gambling be a good cash investment? and, lastly what will the lil' cube offer us? :mrgreen:

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Re: mod questions

Post by Adhin » Thu May 03, 2012 8:49 am

Yeah something like that, but it knida depends where you get sent to. If a location you get sent to from the city is to a 'town' area it'll have a large wilderness and should have side-quests for extra stuff around the town not just the main reason you end up going there. Think of the ranger quest thing in BG2, small town, shadows are murdering people but no one knows what it is. Think of that size of a town with a map like that surrounding it. Though it'll be using D2 tilesets (mix of anything from any act). That right there though is what I mean by 'modular'. For instance first release with actual content will be one of those small towns as a starting area, it and the death plane system will all reside in Act1 for sure so, anytime you die in a 'later act' you'll end up loading to A1 heh but that's something else. Anyways, once I get the main city in I can add to it, or add a notice/quest giver in that city that sends you off to a new area/town with NPC and such, so each 'addition' could be something like that. Hell of a lot easier to add in content that way but also means the start will be rather small.

As for the 'same town in each act'... maybe? I'm not actually sure how I will be handling 'acts'. Hell one may take place in an entirely different plane for all I know. I may make the city its self split up into 3 chunks or something and each chunk is in a different act (2, 3 and 4? or whatever). May do it all in 1 act and just have certain quests take you into a long expanse with in another act (like the underdark in BG2). I haven't decided to be honest, and wont really know how to handle it till I get there. Though I'm not really held down by D2 conventions of a town per act in that type of way they do it. I can do multiple 'towns' in an act, I could do the entire city in 1 act and all the other areas in other acts. The 'acts' them selves is just how I would try to 'split it up' for loading purposes (or maybe even exposition movie scenes if I end up even managing something like that.

As for Merchants that is the plan to make the bulk of things bought opposed to just constant loot farming, though 'end game' things will probably be loot farmed if thats something you want to do. I kind wanted to also make super tough (in any difficulty, though group oriented) end game content outside the main story type... thing (if there is even a real 'main story'). But as for gambling and merchants, not sure on gambling? Gambling is really just a chance drop where it 'forces' a drop that's always at least magical. Good amount of unique/sets will be boss specific though. I kind of wanted to bring that back from D1 and infinity engine style games where when you kill some specific monster guy, he always drops his sword and armor, or special ring or whatever few items he has that's themed around him. But yeah - merchants should have more useful stuff. Also should have, if we get the stuff in, multiple 'pages' per type. So when you look at 'Weapons' you get normal and magic weapon stuff, with a few pages of the stuff. Currently that's not in but you still find better stuff there then you would of in cLoD. Part of that is due to the suffix system being less... crazy I guess, and magic being the primary item source in the game. D2 that was rare/uniques, magics where mostly a throw away so merchants became useless outa act 1 for the most part.

Now as for that cube - no freakin' idea. No idea what it'll be in mine, or what purpose it would handle. If any 'crafting' is involved in the game at all I in tend to do that via crafting NPC. Never liked the idea of an adventurer, someone who literally does NOT have the time to spend there life behind a forge to 'actually' just become a master smith as a goddamn hobby. It just doesn't make sense - which is really unimportant, its all semantics in game play. All it means is you can't craft out in the field (if/when I get crafting in) but in towns with an NPC who's capable of that. So yeah, no idea wtf the cube from D2 will be. May end up going with the same concept, have you earn it at some point in the game and have it make awkward little trinket stuff. Or maybe use it to break down items or.... maybe use it to be a means to generate random magic items though that would bypass gambling.

So yeah cube = no idea.
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Re: mod questions

Post by helpmeplz » Thu May 03, 2012 9:25 am

wait..you could really make the entire thing in act 1 8-O (im no modder so no clue) i woulda thought that would crash the game, or make progression impossible, or something that made no sense :o though i like how the opening up a part of the city with each act thing, that really sounds very cool :) and i gotta say THANK YOU for boss specific drop sets, i know will have motivation to farm them :lol: question is, with the style of game your shooting for, will the cube have a purpose :?: bosses are gonna get sick i imagine, cuz i remember champions:return to arms bosses were horrible fights, always resulting in a death or two(for me at least :mrgreen: ) whats your plan on these guy? epic fights with lotsa flash and such going on i hope.

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Re: mod questions

Post by Adhin » Thu May 03, 2012 10:26 am

Well there maybe memory issues but the game, ultimately, streams in 'content' as you go. The load you get at the beginning from my understanding is basic setup stuff such as each individual acts Palette. Most things in the game (most objects, all monsters, all missile effects and GUI and so forth) use a 'general' palette that uses the first 200-ish colors in all act palettes (which are identical) the other 50-ish colors are meant to be unique colors to that act to make the tiles a bit nicer in color. I'm currently using a tilesets volf did a long time ago that convert the acts into the general palette so they work with out any awkward graphical glitchs in any act. Well I am for A1, 2, 4 and 5. 3 is the one that suffers the most from the shift and also had the most transparency issues so I kept that 'as is' and just put the act 3 palette in all 5 acts. So I can currently use ANY tile from any act in any act I damn well choose.

And yeah no idea on cube but I'll figure something out. As for bosses that's... I dunno. I'm not sure I'd say 'lots of flash' but some of it will be learning the signs of whats going on to avoid death and less just Diablo fire spam or getting 1 shot in melee. In my current version I have a re-done Andariel as my first try as that I had an idea for already. I basically replaced all her attacks with some mildly different functioning stuff. For instance instead of a poison wave type thing she now does that same move and about 15 feet in front of her, about a second later, a line of pink/purple-ish explosions all get set off. She also does a ranged attack where she spawns 5 orbs around her that quickly auto-target and shoot off at whatever. They can be avoided, so can the explosion-line but you have to be on the ball and act quickly and run to avoid it.

Got some other ideas involving large multi-second charge up sequences that'll blast the area with enough dmg no one can survive it. But to give it an obvious animation so you know to get the {filtered} outa range, that kinda thing. So for some of the bigger fights it'll be important to learn the signs, and avoid the more dangerous stuff. I wont have the awkward amount of control you get in MMO's where they're is a specific 'pattern' to follow exactly like '2 minutes into this fight he'll start doing this' or whatever. I could technically do stages by making each time you kill the boss it recreates a different one, probably have a fight or 2 like that in. Get his health down, think that'll kill him but it just starts up stage 2 of the fight. None of that is a constant 'system' though, so each boss wont have stages, each one wont have specific death triggers to avoid. Some will just be big, beefy SOB's you have to widdle down and kill. Hell some maybe weak ass mages like the fake summer in Act 2. Guys kinda a {filtered} but he dies in 1-2 hits once you get to him, part of me really likes that idea that theres this irritating, dangerous thing you have to get through all his minions... and then he falls over like some frail old man heh. That's quest type stuff, really depends on the situation im trying to present at the time I guess.

Some epic fights with some flash for sure though, I don't like doing crappy spell effects. Also good to keep in mind I don't like doing massive screen wide non-stop rainbow {filtered} either. So you wont be fighting any bosses tossing out 5 types of novas in multiple colors all over the goddamn place. This isn't some flight, scrolling shooter. Also not sure 'farming' will be to required other then on some specific more end game related stuff. If you kill a boss around lvl 6 and I design lets say a sword and ring that drops off him. He will 'always' drop that sword and ring. So it can be part of the idea of 'well if i make a warrior and want a sword, I know I can go get a decent one in that quest'. Think Butcher Cleaver in D1. or the vast majority of magical items in BG series. You know they're there, they're always there, and there all worth using.

Part of the fun of this kind of system, anything you find - even if its not 'exactly' what you want - its worth using. You could technically kill all kinds of stuff with no magic items at lvl 30 vs lvl 30 monsters. Say your playing a Warrior, lvl 30 already, you got 4 attacks and you have some Sword +5 with 30 str. K the difference between that sword and a plane sword, is basically 100% dmg. Now that sounds like a lot, but your base dmg on that 1h'er is 5 avg (3-7). Now 30 str? 200% dmg (or x3 weapon dmg) so that +5 is basically like adding 10 str onto it. Worth it? Heck yeah your going from 15 avg dmg to 20 avg dmg per hit. So it's always worth using something better then what you have (thats kinda a no brainer I guess) but unlike D2 where weapon dmg means absolutly 'everything' since STR doesn't give {filtered} out... it's not the case here. You can kick ass with out any magic equipment 'at all'. So having all magic, instead of uniques? more then viable. Uniques/sets just give you a little bit extra edge, but usually not in direct dmg.

For instance a magic Sword of Flame +5, could be sword dmg 5 avg, fire dmg 5 avg and +5 enhancement. A unique version of that may come with +2 vit on top of it all. It may cut the fire dmg down a bit say 3 avg but also give 3 avg cold dmg. More dmg overall but not as huge of a boost as going from a base sword to a +5. Ultimately, bulk of your dmg in melee (outside of skill use) is from your ability score, more so if you focus on 1 stat via items. There is a very specific amount of sutff ability scores can spawn on, glove/boot/belt/helmet. There are no rings or amulets currently, was planning unique trinket items for that but... not sure where that's going but 1 of them is an ioun stone slot. Max is +4 to any given score. So if you manage to get a high end Ioun stone of str, max out all +4 str stuff on all items your looking at a max of +24 to any given stat - but only that 1 score. Anytime you find an item with 2 ability scores on it they're lesser values, max being +2/+2.

So at 20-30, max a stat can be is 30 + 24. Best you can get outa STR by 30 with the 'right items' is 54. Or base dmg x5.4. So that 1h +5 sword nets you 32 avg dmg with that. Which is pretty damn high up there in general (keep in mind, 4 swings for a Warrior, so that's a potential of 128). If you have no magic items but the same str, 15 avg dmg. About half but that'll still tare through things. So yeah, items make a difference but not 'as big' a difference as D2. If you look at D2 a base weapon is something like 60 avg dmg on an Elite. With 300 str that's basically 240 dmg which, as you know in Hell mode - wont hurt a goddamn thing. You get a 'unique' that does 300 ish avg because of all the stacking effects and that goes fro 240 to 1200 with 'out' the use of skills. Why I hate D2 system in general, stats mean little, skills mean a bit more, but ultimately unless your a caster your overall damage output will be horrible since it 'requires' special base dmg enhancer crap on weapons. I mean that same 300 dmg on a Druid Shifter throws out 14k dmg. Even 8k vs 240 is... that's a huge difference, not even close to half heh.

And I forget why I went on a tangent about items.... soo... yeah.
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Re: mod questions

Post by helpmeplz » Thu May 03, 2012 10:51 pm

the tangent was awesome though :) very much brings nostalgia from the older rpgs i played(BG still up there) i like the stage boss idea, its about time d2 bosses stopped being so damn bland as the same, run hit till dead, or where other mods(median cough,cough)where ya run up and get smoked cause so much is going on, as the mentioned rainbow nova {filtered}, that the game hits sprite limit.(not bashing median, just...too much, too quick to a nuts degree for my taste,got all the charms though :mrgreen: ) but anyway, thats actually a good diablo 1 trait too, all items in diablo were always useful, unlike in diablo 2 vanilla where if ye find a set, its prolly isenharts...again...however maps are gonna be fun with all the variety, make sure dark forest looks like a forest actuall :mrgreen: an offset silly question, will there be any"morph" items like delirium just for taste, always found those, when tactful, to be colorful. looking foward to a few suprise deaths when confronting a new boss now :twisted: and i will happily debase myself with the losing the grind, cause in the current 3.5 blackened necro, i have rerun meph more times then i can count, and i got 2 sanders 1 unique voulge, and 8 isenhart breastplates, so good riddance to that :x

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Re: mod questions

Post by Adhin » Fri May 04, 2012 8:04 am

I have no idea if I'll do an item that shifts the player, and if I do it'll probably involve a item-only skill you use to shift instead of it just shifting on equip. Druid has 2 separate tabs planned for shifting. I had kind of swapped between 2 styles of shifting from B2 to B3 and again in B3.5 so with the extended skill tabs and how its setup now I can just kinda go all encompassing on that now.

As his first tab shows here: http://kardon.biz/adhin/stuff/nydrah.htm - Child of Selune is the 'lycanthropy' oriented tab. The shifting is permanent (on/off, no timer) but before you pick buy in you have to pick between Wolf and Bear. Can't be both, gadda pick your animal. Bear will have more HP/DMG, Wolf will get an AC/AR with a Walk/run speed boost. But then everything else past that point is equal with the 2, they all get to use all the abilities with in that (all of which you have to be shifted to use). The 2 self buffs at the lower path on the tab are self-auras, or well they function like an 'aura' skill but they only effect your character.

Then you got the Shapeshifter tab below that which are more varied, also Arcane oriented stuff instead of Divine. Got 7 total forms, quick-fast moving starter, Phase Spider is weaker-ish but can teleport+attack around. The 4 elements are just that - elementals shifts and they all can be upgraded to get a skill to use while your shifted with em. Last one is basically a huge giant who you can upgrade to get, what amounts to throwing a large boulder at things. He's huge, high STR, high VIT, hes a beefy SOB but kinda slow. They're all timed summons till you get Timeless Shift which removes the duration on all of them and turns them permanent.

Asn also has a shift tab (half-sized red Andariel) which should be an interesting one. Don't think anyone else really has anything else oriented around shifting. But I have a hundred or so 'saved' lines in the skills file for use for item only stuff for unique/set stuff. Doesn't mean I'll use all of that but I got room just incase.

-edit-
Oh and here's an example of how the skill tabs are layed out. This was an old test for Necro bone tab, layouts changed a bit but the idea remains the same.
http://kardon.biz/adhin/b4_screens/bone_tab_test.jpg

Basically 1st skill on the left is the one everyone has to buy to get access to the tab (and its an actual skill not just a wasted point). For bone tab that's skeleton warrior. The up/down smaller skill stuff are the skill upgrades. With the Druid were-wolf/bear thing is kind of reverse for that where you buy a wolf or bear then the skill is a freebe. At which point the other 'reverse-upgrade' (wolf or bear) gets blacked out. So yeah the upgrades change how the main skill works somehow.

Good example of that is on the Undead Graft tab, Ghouls Touch. It basically turns a target to stone for a short time. 'Plague Bringer' upgrade for the skill adds a poison cloud that expands from your target if you land a hit. Good control skill for larger targets with lots of little minions. Stone the big guy, it'll poison him and everything else around him. Good utility skill that also does good AoE dmg.
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