Word of Ember blazed across the land, and the town of Torchlight flared to life.

Ember is the essence of magic and the keystone of alchemy; it lures the restless with promises of power and riches. Miners burrowed deep beneath the dirt streets of Torchlight, discovering veins of the ore richer than any found in living memory- but they were not the first to covet these mines. The miners broke through into the buried past, a dangerous labyrinth of caverns and ruined civilizations, twisted creatures and the bones of those who came before. Evil bubbles up from the depths and threatens to overrun this town as it has so many others. The heart of a villain has infused the Ember, and his darkness seeps through the veins. To survive, the townspeople must break the cycle of destruction; they need a champion who can destroy the evil at its root. Removing the source of the rot may purify the Ember, but it is a long and perilous journey. The champion must battle through rock and fire, through lost cities and ancient tombs, into the palace of the villain himself.

The adventure is set in the mining settlement of Torchlight, a boomtown founded on the discovery of rich veins of Ember – a rare and mysterious ore with the power to enchant or corrupt all that it contacts. This corruptive power may have dire consequences however, and players set out into the nearby mountains and depths below to discover the full extent of Ember’s influence on the civilizations that have come before.

Players will choose from among three character classes, and venture from the safety of the town of Torchlight into randomly generated dungeon levels, with a huge variety of creepy monsters, endless variations of loot to find, and quests to complete. The endless randomization ensures a long-lived gameplay experience.

KEY FEATURES

  • Randomization – Our level layouts are randomly created, so each adventure is unique. Monsters, treasures, puzzles, and items are also different each time you embark on an adventure.
  • Easy, approachable interface – Torchlight is designed to be easy to play right from the beginning. The intuitive interface gives players easy access to a rich and varied world.
  • Retirement System – Once characters are sufficiently leveled up, they can “retire” and bestow specific benefits and perks to new characters.
  • Pets – Players will choose a pet to accompany them. Pets can level up along with the player, and will help in battle, carry items, and perform a variety of helpful services.
  • Character Classes – Players will create and customize a character and choose an animal companion. Through cosmetic choices, skill path decisions, and the treasures they acquire, each character will be custom-tailored and different.
  • Fishing – Players can take a break from the high-energy pace of adventuring to visit one of the fishing holes and relax and see what they can catch. Fish have interesting benefits for the player and pet, and other rewards can also be discovered
  • Included Editor – Runic Games is embracing our modding community by including an editor so our players can create and design their own content.
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21 comments by Henley on Sep 9th, 2009 digg this super bookmark


I recently had a chat with Travis Baldree, the president of Runic Games about their upcoming game Torchlight and the possibilities it posses as a modifiable dungeon crawler in the same vane as the epic Diablo franchise. As some of you may know I posses a love for the above mentioned type of game that Torchlight is and modding in general, as of yet I have not really been able to mix the two together and that is what really excites me for the release.

Torchlight uses a program called Preditor (The Professional Editor) which in short is a visual editor (WYSIWYG) with a focus on logic scripts that can be edited simply and effectively. With everything and I mean EVERYTHING being able to be edited within Preditor I'm really expecting Torchlight to catch on within ModDB and the modding community in general.

Travis_Baldree wrote: We've exposed just about everything to modding - you can create new levels, new artwork (our formats are open, so models, textures, sounds, music, etc), new quests, skills, classes, monsters, items, itemsets and recipes. All the stats are exposed for tuning modification, and we use a powerful effects system for skills and items that allows you to do some interesting things with them. Everything is basically editable from inside our tool, which also allows you to play the game inside itself (you can snap together a level and run around it, or make a new skill, or what have you, without starting the game proper). We've also got a visual scripting system that is drag and drop with connectable inputs and outputs, timelines, logic objects and so on. Particle editing is integrated into the editor, as well as game-world structure (dungeons, towns, regions, portals, etc). The UI is also moddable, and all our base filetypes (excepting textures and meshes, although there is an intermediate XML format for meshes) are all plain text until they are compressed. As long as you want to make an Action-RPG, you can pretty much make a new game.


Level editing uses tilesets or otherwise known as building blocks, think of this system much like you would Lego. These building blocks can have any number of triggers, animations, or collisions set too them, you can quite literally create a world that will react to the player and what he/she decides to do or even create a complex trap filled dungeon to explore. It will be very interesting to see how Runic Games is going to allow modders to integrate user created quests within the world as it is at release, will people be accepting user made quests from key NPC's in the game? I sure hope so, creating a world and adding to an existing one really is two different things.

Travis_Baldree wrote: As far as 3d model formats go, we're using Ogre3D's native model formats, and they've got exporters for just about every conceivable 3d package. We'll release our own 3dsmax exporters as well, and probably some models, tilesets, and rigs for people to use as a jumping off point. It's conceivable that we may release the full rig/meshset for the characters (hoping we will), but I can't say just yet - it would certainly make custom skill animations an easy thing for people to do.

The support for modders does seem quite high, in-fact they already have a wiki setup for just that, I have yet to get my hands on the editor myself to have a play and explore the options and abilities myself but it does look very promising! Keep an eye out for this title to drop late next month, I have a feeling it will be a great game for user-made content!

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Potion Deluxe

Potion Deluxe

Nov 01, 2009 Full Version 0 comments

Mod adds 2 new types of potions to the General Store The Rejuvenating Potion The Regeneration Potion

Comments  (0 - 10 of 21)
Monkeynutz
Monkeynutz Nov 13 2009, 6:30am says:

I'm looking for skilled texture artist(s) that can help me texture my New Class model, armor sets and weapons.

I will upload some WIP to my account.

If you are interested please PM me.

+1 vote     reply to comment
DedMustDie
DedMustDie Nov 6 2009, 3:46pm says:

Very good game! I've 35 warrior ;p so meaty guy )
Very nice hack'n'slash game.
Must have!

+1 vote     reply to comment
Drakenlord
Drakenlord Nov 14 2009, 9:09am replied:

that's nothing

My mage is level 42

Im in the Shadow Vault right now!

+1 vote     reply to comment
kut2thachase
kut2thachase Nov 4 2009, 8:19am says:

This is not an "action-rpg", it's a point and click rpg.
Action rpg are games like oblivion.

0 votes     reply to comment
wbokunic
wbokunic Nov 5 2009, 10:03pm replied:

You just proved how little you know about the action RPG genre.

+1 vote     reply to comment
Darthlex
Darthlex Nov 3 2009, 5:14am says:

The *only* thing I can say, negative, about this game is: Where's the ability to do this multiplayer? Even just LAN? :\

Apart from that, dang it's a nice game :)

+1 vote     reply to comment
kayinangel
kayinangel Nov 10 2009, 1:29am replied:

from my understanding, this is just the beginning for Torchlight. The developers plan to turn it into an MMORPG, and just wanted this single player game out so that they have a released game under their belts and to introduce people to the Torchlight game world.

It is a shame they didn't stick in a LAN based co-op into this for now.

+1 vote     reply to comment
TheOneKnownAsMe
TheOneKnownAsMe Nov 2 2009, 6:38pm says:

Great game, will definitely help pass the time until D3 is released.

+1 vote     reply to comment
technoblue
technoblue Oct 28 2009, 9:31am says:

Love it.

+1 vote     reply to comment
MagnusMastah
MagnusMastah Oct 27 2009, 7:25pm says:

HECKA TIGHT!! I've been playing it all day!!

+1 vote     reply to comment
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Torchlight
Platform
PC
Developer & Publisher
Runic Games
Engine
Ogre Engine
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Official Page
Torchlightgame.com
Release Date
Released Oct 27, 2009
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Style
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Role Playing
Theme
Fantasy
Players
Single Player
Project
Commercial
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