Next Release Early Info
V1.03 Notes: A smoother starting experience
The Starting Equipment has been revamped to assist the player with Health Regen and overall strength.
Both Female and Male options should give exactly the same starting stats and equipment.
Constitution Removed from Female option.
Revamp: The starting creatures have been considerably weakened to provide a smoother starting experience.
This should reduce downtime and allow the player more freedom to gain a few levels and begin to access vital skills.
Density Increase: New creatures and slightly higher density areas are being added due to the limited space for starting characters.
New Mob: Sand Crab (Lvl 15)
This MOD is now Available!!! - Infinity V1.01
Thank you to everyone trying out this mod.
Install Update: The entire mod folder is now included in the Zip (You may need to redownload the new version). Create a new folder under Mods named Storm and place all of the contents into this folder. Then select a custom game using the Storm option.
A release notes and install file is included in the Zip
Spoiler Images
Infinity Details
- New completely custom massive game world
- Includes various custom textures
- Unlimited Leveling
- Reworked all Stats/Formula’s
- All new Equipment
- Static Leveling (no scaling)
- Heavily Modified Skills
- New Customized Creatures
- This MOD is essentially it’s own Brand New Game
GAME UPDATES
5-29-2021 Excellent News!!!
While delays are never really desired, the outcome for this one is good. The development is on fast pace and everything is being enhanced.
Equipment: A complete overhaul of the equipment system is complete.
- All Tiers and Stats where modified for better balance
- Multi Variance A,B,C,D system. Hidden to the player many items have multiple versions.
+2 Rusty Axe A ----- Has a specific range of Affix/Suffix
+2 Rusty Axe B ---- Different Affix/Suffix
Thus the player will find a wide variety of +2 Rusty Axes, without needing to be aware of the versions.
Game World:
The game world is continually expanding on a daily basis. This includes new regions and detailing existing ones. New higher level creatures and being introduced to accommodate higher level players.
New Creatures:
The Dusk Fletcher is an example of a new creature testing the boundaries of what can be modified.
- Modified Skin Texture
- Can randomly cast chain lightning
- Chain lightning duration is extended
- Chain lightning can cause a brief stun effect
- Roaming speed, distance, altered
Character Selection:
The only classes available to choose upon release will be Solider and Arcanist. Other classes have been blocked off. Any skill in the tree that isn’t fully ready also can’t be upgraded in the skill menu. This is subject to change in updates as new skills or potentially classes become available.
5-16-2021 Intro & Update Video (Close to release)
5-4-2021 NPC prep for testing, Expanding Areas, Customizing Creatures
Intro NPC’s are being setup to help explain the game world, stats, and general information. This is in preparation of having a few testers try out the mod. To look for issues, balancing, overall appeal, suggestions. I may be joining the discords to look for adventures.
Some new areas and expansions are in the works. It’s fun being creative and using the assets in different ways to create entirely new regions. The use of elevation really comes in handy on top of the variety of assets.
Many of the built in skills are fabulous and can be used to create quite a challenging environment. However, the tools can do much more. By precisely controlling the activation rate, land rate, and reuse timers creatures can cast a large variety of skills without simply spamming them or being very repetitive. Some skills that rarely proc can be combined with other skills to create “bad situations” that are hard to deal with.
4-21-2021 Core Skills & Rotations are looking good!
Eviscerate (Amar Blade Burst) has been moved to the main skill tree. It’s an excellent addition to skill rotations. Skills generally have a reuse timer of 6-9 seconds. So it’s important to have 5+ skills in your rotation. The skills tree has been modified to pull skills from multiple classes that synergize and feel well together.
The auto attacks also include a lightning/stun upgrade and a strong bleed option. So along with your skill rotation many visual and CC/Dmg effects may also occur.
Lethal Assault has also been added to the main skill tree. In the picture it’s the second skill icon. The connector has been removed since the image was posted and it’s now a Square icon to indicate that it’s a stand alone skill. Lethal assault helps create skill combinations and rotations by applying a buff when Blitz is used.
4-19-2021 New Territory Expansion
New Save Location
New Creature, the Trapper Ghoul (Golden)
4-16-2021 The Hounds of Hell
- Fixed and Improved - The custom lava texture was not displaying since the move the new PC. All creatures and terrain using this are now functioning properly. In addition!!! New custom textures where added.
Welcome the newest creatures
Rough Hound
Demon Hound
Scavenger Leader
A scavenger camp currently being detailed
4-15-2021 A few details
Cadence Lightning Effect & Stun
Cadence was converted to a passive that has a random chance to cast the effect in the image. It does lightning damage and can stun the opponent.
Welcome our newest creatures to the game!
Black Collunder
Flesh Mauler
Equipment Overhaul:
This mod assigns a tier to all equipment which is displayed on the item.
Example:
+1 Endurance Ring
32 HP
4 Offense
2 HP Regen
Tier 1 (Determines the maximum amount of bonus stats applied)
Prefix Endurance (Determines a guaranteed stat, all Endurance items grant HP)
Tier Category (Limits the Min/Max amount of bonus stats)
The amount of stats and bonus are being increased for all equipment. This gives a little more variance and lowers the probability of obtaining the best possible roll. This was intended for higher tier equipment, but didn’t feel adequate when first starting the game.
4-13-2021 Ongoing Progress
The Game World is expanding with new terrain and enemies. Adjustments are being made for balance and to improve performance.
Active Skill Conversion:
There are many optional skills in the game that are essentially basic skills with added effects. Damage multipliers, a larger arc, or the ability to hit more targets. The problem with these skills is that you are essentially limited to one. These are generally just replacing your auto attack spam.
Cadence has been modified to become a passive enhancement to basic attacks. One of the skill tree options adds a lightning effect that can stun enemies. It’s actually auto casting a skill similar to doom bolt. This is the equivalent of having an item that auto casts.
The benefit to converting these to auto attacks passives is a larger variety of customization and perks. While not really losing out on any skills because you could only use 1 anyway. This does not impact any active skills or their rotation. This is just a mega enhancement to basic attacks which plays a key role in the combat.
Optimal damage consists of a good skill rotation, but basic attacks fill in the gaps between reuse timers and mana resources. This keeps the combat highly active, but doesn’t encourage mashing skills or spamming 1 or 2 skills.
4-12-2021 The Dream is still alive!!!
Major Overhaul:
Level Rate - The amount of exp per level was reduced about 30%. This was done to move toward a more playable phase with rates suitable for a new player. This is also to keep the game progression moving a little quicker. All levels currently grants 3 skill points and 1 stat point. Ideally the goal of this mod is to be playable by casual ARPG fans, but at the same time cater to the most hardcore players. Not every area or creature you come across is intended to be defeated upon discovery. There may excessively rare items as well.
Combat with a Purpose
While it’s fun to mash through mobs and become an unstoppable beast I believe strategy oriented combat provides a higher level of game play that is more sustainable in the long run.
The Right Skill at the Right Time
Creatures are being crafted with specific weaknesses and strengths. While this is a common feature and included in the main campaign the Storm Mod is pushing it a little further. You can customize your build and debuffs for specific purposes.
Frailty Debuff - This debuff can be customized for specific creatures. Some creatures have abnormally high damage which is much easier to deal with upgrading the damage reduction. Others may have excessive evasion that can also be countered by adding cunning reduction to frailty.
Healing techniques - Forcewave and other skills can be customized for life leach, damage, stun, cooldown reduction. This is an essential part of a skill rotation to maintain health. The balance is intended to not have 1 shot mechanics, but instead to struggle to maintain health and mana.
Skill Rotation - The storm skill design prohibits spamming, except for default attacks. This forces a more proper rotation of multiple skills to be effective. The rotation may change depending on the situation or creature you are fighting.
Fluid Combat - The mana cost was heavily reduced across the board so mana is still a useful resource, but does not hinder combat. This was important to maintain proper skill rotations and fluid action combat.
Equipment - A base equipment was established, but it did not suffice even for the beginning stages of the game. The equipment lacked variety and will be going through an overhaul to dramatically increase the variance and strength of the equipment even from the first drop.
9-21-2020 Module Dungeon Design
The exterior walls have been closed off, but a large area is available for expansion. This modular design essentially treats each room like an individual module that can be combined with others. So when I want to expand the dungeon I simply remove portions of a the walls and construct new rooms.
Modified Custom Floor Tiles
The poor mans way! The art assets are intended to be created with old MAX software. Some of these are rather complex because they are generally not a 2d image, but rather contain a lot of detailed information such as hit box, mesh, etc. Even tiles used for terrain may have a lot of attributes such as blade count, height of grass etc.
However, in some cases it is possible to make use of JPG/PNG images and integrate them into the game. I won’t cover the full details here, but the images below are demonstrations. On the brick tile set the tiles on the top use the original tiles on the bottom, but alter one of the tex files to create a new appearance. The result is a fused new tile which actually resembles the new and old.
Meet the Aged Troll
9-15-2020 The Power of Creation
The game world is turning out quite nicely and while it has a long way to go it has the potential to become the largest ARPG game world ever created. It may even rival any RPG created!!! This is an important element of the game that provides a sand box style of open exploration. Over 20 years ago I hoped that one day games would truly be expansive enough that you could roam freely and get lost in them. Sadly that never really happened. While the technology improved to create seamless game worlds no developer really went that far with expansive dungeons or land mass. Procedural generation really doesn’t fill this void either.
Last Nights Addition to the game. A place of pure Evil.
A new high level area!!!
Some Architecture
9-14-2020 MAJOR CHANGES this weekend
Improved AI
The Skull Priest has been enhanced to randomly heal opponents for a set amount of HP on a regular basis. This balancing has made it much more essential to target the healers first as it will be possible to kill targets being healed, but much more diffult.
AI Details
The default setup simply did not function in this manner even though it appears to have all the ingredients to make it happen. So I created a “Null Skill” which can be fully controlled. This is just a basic skill with all the elements removed so it essentially does nothing. As with normal skills you can apply a weight for how often it’s selected, what the reuse timer is, and the probably of it actually being applied. Those details are perfect for randomizing it and determining how often it will occur.
But it does essentially nothing? This is true, except when the skill is cast it chains another skill that can be applied to allies. This is the actual heal effect that is then applied to allies of the creature. If you put this skill directly into the tree without the chain method it won’t cast on allies, it will be considered an offensive skill. There are special categories for self buffs etc, but again those don’t seem to work efficiently for this.
Skill Changes
A lot of modifications where made to various skills.
- Blitz Range extended
- Blitz knock down has been changed to crumple
- Forcewave dmg changed to Aether
- Forcewave initial skill now has a chance to apply a life leach dot
Class Tree Bonus Revised
The Soldier & Arcanist main skill bar have been revised to compliment each other. Soldier provides HP, Health Regen, Str, Dex while Arcanist provides MP, MP Regen, Int, Dex as the main stat bonus.
More more more
As usual new items have been introduced, areas have been improved graphically, and the land mass is expanding. Minor tweaks to skills and balancing have been conducted.
9-11-2020 Showcase Video for the Best Skill in the Game
War Cry is being modified to provide several additional benefits.
- (Change) Reuse 24 seconds
- (Default) Total Damage Mitigation (Modified Scaling)
- (New) Resistances Option
- (New) Regen Burst Effect
- (Default) Skill interrupt
Critically important This is where most AAA games completely fail. While they profile top notch graphics, animations, and things like character customization they nearly ALL fall flat when it comes to AI, and combat mechanics.
The solution The Screecher is a good test subject for this. Before it casts a ranged slow debuff it pauses for a moment and does a casting animation. When the timing of this animation is set properly it allows the player enough time to react to the situation and use a skill like War Cry to interrupt the cast. The same could be done with a large magic attack where a defensive boost skill should be timed accordingly.
Other games do this with indicators, but they rarely spend the time required to really make an impressive system. You simply move out of the way or in many cases just dash around constantly using the “flea method” of evasion.
9-10-2020 I can’t believe how well these turned out!!!
New Custom Creature Textures
A new Tutorial Video was post on Map Terrain
9-9-2020 I discovered the best skill in the game!!!
Blade Trap has been moved to the soldier skill tree
This skill has been modified to make the target immune to damage while it’s rooted. It has a slighter lower radius, but increased duration. This is a pure Crowd Control skill and it’s magnificent!
Blade Trap is an essential skill in adding an extra level of complexity to the combat. It’s used to separate creatures to lesson physical damage taken, but does not prevent the rooted creature from attacking. This adds a layer of positioning and targeting that is often lost in today’s games.
When coupled with creatures buffing and healing it adds more strategy to the game. You may want to root the melee targets first and clear out casters or a healer as primary targets then move on to the tankier creatures.
In addition it was a very productive day bringing new items, map detailing, skill adjustments, and various balancing to creatures.
An important note about the 2 class selection
There appears to be plenty of room for all the necessary skills in just 2 class trees. Technically the tree can be modified to even add additional nodes that didn’t exist. Another great method is to reduce the nodes for a skill. Blade Trap was originally a Nightblade Skill that used 2 nodes. However, it has been moved to the Soldier tree and only consumes 1 node now. The skill simply should not do damage and doesn’t need many modifiers. This is especially the case in skills with 3-4 Nodes. They can be altered or the effects can be combined into a single node.
9-8-2020 Lots of News!!!
The updates have been moved to an Archive Post (see bottom) to clean up this post a bit.
Lets get started with “beyond the gates”.
And a few other mapping regions to showcase
How skills work
As explained in the video below there may be only 2 classes available. Don’t panic!!! Read the explanation first or watch the video. Nearly ALL of the active skills are being extracted and set into the Solider/Arcanist skill tree. The result is a very action orientated combat system that wasn’t possible in the normal game.
These skills are being reworked so that proper skill rotations exist. What does this mean exactly? The default reuse timer for many skills is nearly instant. That means the skill is spammable without the need for a proper rotation of mixing in other skills. You would simply re use the same skill repeatedly. Grasping Vines is a good example of this. It now has a proper re use timer so it may be used in rotation, but not spammed.
Overall between 2 modified classes A LOT of skills can be used and by optimizing it (removing a lot of redundant skills) there are still a lot of valid builds within the 2 trees. Many passives are similar and a lot of skills are not often used or only 1 can be used.
Ideally your entire hotkey bar will be full of skills you use on a regular basis. These skills will chain together rather quickly and using them is optimal. A few are used at range, but you should be engaging in direct melee combat then enhancing your debuff/dmg output by slipping in quick action skills.
Further Customization. Curse of Frailty (Originally Occulist skill)
This skill has 2 upgrades, Frailty and Vulnerable. If you apply points to Vulnerable it will decrease the creatures Dexterity. With the formula changes that significantly reduces ranged piercing damage. So if you are having issues with Archers, Mosquitos, etc you can spec your build to use Curse of Frailty on them.
SHOWCASE 9-7-2020
For a full list of updates please refer to this post:
Video Tutorials on how to MOD (World Editor, Stats & Formulas, Creating Mobs)
