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Editor's Notes

Official

News is a big thing for gaming and so far we have only dabbled into the blogging news field, up until now that is. Welcome to the Editor's Notes, updated with news that relates to the modding and indie scene. Not only will we fill you in on the news but also offer our opinions, giving the community a chance to discuss topics relevant to there interests.

Blog RSS Feed Report abuse Torchlight and Modding

21 comments by Henley on Sep 9th, 2009

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.

[ Part Two of the same tutorial ]

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!

Report abuse MSUC Additional Winners

4 comments by Henley on Aug 28th, 2009

The Make Something Unreal contest is a big thing and so it's only natural that a few mistakes should come up during any of the stages. There was a few errors with moving files around via FTP for the final judging of Phase 3 of the Million Dollar contest, here is the official word.

Steve_Polge wrote:After we announced the results for Phase 3 of the Intel $1000000 Make Something Unreal Contest, we discovered to our dismay that a small number of entries had not been judged because of some problems which occurred while moving entries between FTP sites.

We've gone back and judged all the entries which were missed, and have the following additional awards and mentions to announce. These are additional to the existing awards, and do not affect already awarded prizes.

Archasis II: Finalist and Fourth place best Non-FPS mod (tie with current fourth place)
DM-CBP3-Cydian: Honorable Mention for Best CTF or DM map.
WAR-Iridi: Finalist in the Best Warfare or VCTF Category.
WAR-RockPaperScissors: Finalist in the Best Warfare or VCTF Category.

Make sure you check out the rest of the Winners here.

Report abuse Leave the Indie way!

6 comments by Henley on Aug 14th, 2009

Back in April a programmer known as Farbs left his job from 2K Boston Australia using the medium of a video games. Personally I felt it was the best possible way to hand in your badge being from field that he worked in. Following in Farbs footsteps is William David who is a developer over at Ubisoft. Will has also left his position in search of a Independent career, and like Farbs he has his send off marked with a small flash game.

This was a much nicer send-off then the previous one, with the heavy use of music and simple sprites. I can only look forward too what he will create next without the restraints of a big publisher like Ubisoft on his back. Good luck Will!

Report abuse MSUC Phase 3 Winners

20 comments by Henley on Aug 5th, 2009

The winners for the Make Something Unreal Contest have been announced over on the official MSUC website. Having played just about all the mods that where mentioned I can honestly say they really do deserve the winners seat with mods like The Ball, The Haunted, Prometheus and Sanctum both being regarded highly by the staff here on ModDB and by the players as well. Here is the list of winning mods for the Phase 3 of the comp.

Category: Best FPS Mod

1st Place - The Ball: Teotl
2nd Place - Prometheus
3rd Place - Angels Fall First: PlanetStorm
4th Place - Sanctum Alpha
5th Place - Crucible Weapons Pack

Category: Best Non FPS Mod

1st Place - The Haunted
2nd Place - UT2D Killing Time Maps
3rd Place - Steam Racers
4th Place - Coda Mod
5th Place - RoboFonics

Category: Best New Character Customization Pack

1st Place - Savior Character Pack
2nd Place - Polar and Dumon Soldier
3rd Place - Skaarj Model
4th Place - Rankin Character
5th Place - GoB-Ba

Category: Best CTF & DM Map

1st Place - DM-Foundry
2nd Place - CTF-Stratus
3rd Place - DM-CBP3-Incapacitate
4th Place - DM-Chronomancer
5th Place - CTF-Austere

Category: Best vCTF & WAR Map

1st Place - VCTF-CBP3-Refuge
2nd Place - VCTF-CBP3-Artemisa
3rd Place - WAR-Araja][
4th Place - VCTF-Octopus
5th Place - VCTF-RocketForst

Category: Best Use of Physics

1st Place - TickyTicker
2nd Place - Project: Swing
3rd Place - Light Toys
4th Place - Steam Racers
5th Place - The Ball: Teotl

Category: Best Graphics in Map

1st Place - The Haunted: Forsaken Canyon
2nd Place - VCTF-CBP3-Refuge
3rd Place - The Ball Teotl: Oztoc
4th Place - VCTF-RocketForst
5th Place - PlanetStorm: Meudeverre

Congratulations to all the winners of the Phase 3 part of the MSU contest, you guys certainly have raised the bar for Phase 4! Good luck if you are entering again! Oh and make sure you check out all the finalists and honorable mentions from Phase 3 as well!

Report abuse D2MultiRes

48 comments by Henley on Jul 26th, 2009

I really do love me some Diablo 2, so much so 2-3 times a year I'll do a massive co-op runs with my mates, and have done so ever since its release. The problem is the game is old, and my pc is well... new. Because of our humanly ways to keep making advancements in the field of computing its getting quite difficult to come back to a game who's highest resolution is 800x600. As that size be tiny yo.

Thanks to the talented skills of a modder who goes by the name Sluggy you can now play Diablo 2 in any resolution that your pc can support! This is great news as no longer will my mouse slip out of the small window and open flash, no longer will my spells refuse to cast as I accidentally click my desktop instead! Finally. It comes at a cost though as you will not be able to participate in any Battle.net multiplayer stuff which is a shame I guess but in my opinion Diablo 2 is much better with close friends at a lan hyped up on coke (the drink you fools).

Diablo 2 showing off its stuff in 1280x1024.

Mod_Author wrote:This unofficial "patch" allows you to play Diablo II in resolutions other than 640x480 and 800x600. It is, for the most part, completed, but there are still a few issues that have not been worked out. The "patch" lets you select any resolution 640x480 or higher that is supported by your current display adapter/monitor. There are no other changes to the game other than this.

Anyways you can download the mod from your favourite modding website ever, in the mean time enjoy the awesomeness that is these fantastic screens.