Shafts Everything And Anything - Topic

SaintValentine

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#7221

Aug 4 2012 03:48am

weekly torchlight 2 update

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Not A Blog Redux IV
by travisbaldree » Fri Aug 03, 2012 3:15 pm

It's Friday! Time for another Not A Blog.

I don't have earth-shaking new news this week or a specific 'featurette' in mind, so I'm just going to give you a dev update.

I'm now done with everything in Act 2 except the last boss - which I hope to mostly complete over the weekend. There will probably be a few trailing animations and FX that get picked up on Monday, but my aim is to be wrapped on Act 2 at that point. This makes me very happy. I think Act 2 has turned out really well, and am pretty jazzed about how very different it feels from the other acts. I was hoping to be done with the whole Act by the end of the week, but didn't quite make it, largely due to some unexpected bugs cropping up that chewed up a good day and a half of time.

We ended up putting together some new art this week for the three superchampions in Act 2 part 2 ( which are part of a boss chain ), and they came out pretty cool. Their previous incarnation was 'meh', and this is a big improvement.

This isn't a comprehensive list of other tasks - but here goes.
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This week Marsh and I ended up spending a good bit of time doing some bugfixing.

*There was an erratic issue with UI sorting which we found, due to an uninitialized variable somewhere.
*There were some 'dirty pathnode' occupation issues in warping situations that I fixed.
*We fixed an issue with dead boss units on level loads triggering certain events they shouldn't.
*We found a problem with ai-animations not properly updating when offscreen for level owners in certain situations.
*I fixed improper culling of scaled animated background room pieces. I fixed several problems with quest flags not restoring properly.
*We had a problem with magicfind where unnaturally high boosts (which we sometimes use in spawnclasses to guarantee nice items) could pass the max limit and cause unexpected results. I added in protective code which prevents that but maintains the ratio between itemtypes.
*I made it possible for any unit to consistently ignore your pet as a targetable.
*Marsh added the ability to have footstep particles ( he really needed it for one of his boss battles, because it felt lame not to have splashes ). I added some to desert and snowy regions after that went in.
*Some music fading issues with boss battles were resolved.
*I fixed some problems with certain kind of localonly triggerable units pingponging messages in multiplayer
*Matt Uelmen put together a even more cool ambient sounds which Patrick integrated
*Some special modifications were made to the level running up to the last Act 2 boss to make it cooler.
*Erich did some more fishing hole work and some unique work
*Erich did some magicfind balance and made merchants cooler
*Matt worked on NG+ UI stuff and some trailing portal/waypoint UI fixes.
*Achievements are now being hooked up.
*A new unit was made for the last Act 2 boss battle I'm working on right now which should make it much, much cooler.
*Marsh continued to make good progress on his act and fixed bugs
*Everyone everywhere continued with polish.
*Jeff added some more face and hair options, among other things

My plan for next week is to focus almost entirely on skill tree polish for the classes (although I may switch gears throughout the week to help Marsh out on Act 3 )

Thanks all!

Travis

from another dev

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Re: Not A Blog Redux IV
by PatrickB » Fri Aug 03, 2012 9:52 pm

Here is a bit more info on a few of these that I worked on this week.

travisbaldree wrote:
*Matt Uelmen put together a even more cool ambient sounds which Patrick integrated

Matt Uelmen and I have been talking for a while now about setting up random snippits(birdcalls) of extra sounds that can play ontop of the
general background ambient loop in an area at random intervals to add a layering effect. I put in A LOT this week. Here is an sample:

Catacombs Ambients
-BackgroundScary plays all the time
-DungeonBreeze plays every 15-30 sec
-GhostBirdcall plays every 30-40
-HorrorBirdcall plays every 20-30

So the BackgroundScary is always playing and constantly loops. While the other sounds will randomly fire off anywhere between the times set. Some levels have even more rare sounds that will only play every 60-120 sec. Some sounds are day/night specific, and some are weather type specific. This has really made the areas come alive, and feel great. Especially in the outdoor overworld areas where you now hear distant monsters roaring, or crows calling.

travisbaldree wrote:
*Erich did some more fishing hole work and some unique work

I just put these in today. Erich made 9(I think) new types of fishing holes. Some show up in all Acts, some only start showing up in Act 2, and some in Act 3. And there are a few really "special" fishing holes that will only show up in a particular chunk. Fishing is so much better in TL2.

Beyond that, here's some things I worked on this week.
-Several new custom chunks for the dungeon running up to the Act 2 boss
-Finalized decoration for a side mission dungeon, and propped an area that Travis got the boss in for this week. He's one of the coolest looking monsters in the game for sure
-Tweaked another boss room to make it flow a bit better, and added some cool effects around the room for more atmosphere
-Went back and had level design add in new props and monster traps to an area leading up to the above mentioned boss room. The areas look really awesome
-Added new lootable/trap interactables in the southern portion in the second overworld of Act 2
-Added new destroyable creature spawners in the eastern portion of the second overworld of Act 2
-Tweaks to a Act 3 boss room after Marsh got the boss working, and some special footstep effects. This is one of my other favorite bosses
-Started tweaking presentation for a very big easter egg in the game, need to hook up some scripting still and set a rarity on it, hopefully that will be done by mid next week

Act 2 feels great. So many neat things to find, all of the monsters are really cool, lots of content in side quests, and some really cool levels. Something about just wondering around the desert and exploring feels fantastic. I don't think people will be disappointed.

Act 3 is also turning out to be very, very cool. We are purposely keeping as much about Act 3, and 4 as secret as possible, including avoiding media of it before the game ships. We want people to go in fresh and discover those areas for themselves.

Those are my updates!
Patrick

This post was edited by SaintValentine on Aug 4 2012 03:54am