Good work on that, I really like it.
Thanks for the update, medierra! This is awesome news!! As was said already, randomization was the only thing missing in TQ. =)
Oh God, I can’t wait even more now, it is unbearable! 
Looks a bit awkward to my taste. Why do you jam the passage instead of making the wall solid? This kind of “obstacles” annoyed me a lot in Dragon Age 2 and looked very unnatural. Your implementation looks better, but solid wall would be even better in my opinion.
Btw, this wheat field looks very TQish. 
Maybe a bit better.
Oh right, medierra, does the pathfinding work with the new randomized content, IIRC you were talking about it being broken with the new system. Might remember wrong though. 
Hmm, I don’t know which is worse, not getting updates and wondering what happened to the genius’:eek:,
or getting updates and screenshots and not being able to play it yet.
It’s definitely an interesting way to force players to take different routes. The kind of block seems a bit unnatural though, I think I’d prefer to see a closed wall instead of a bunch of debris ‘accidentally’ growing in the entrance’s location.
Can this implementation dynamically change the path?
I mean it would be cool if a river 's ford is uncrossable during rain.
Or for a quest you must go on top of a mountain, there it is two path a series of mines and a little trail on the mountain flank, but blocked by falling trees.
So you go in the mines, but a jerk burn all the supports with his napalm catapult and the entrance collapse.
So you get on the top of the mountain, kill the jerk and use his catapult to burn the trees and finish the mission on the trail and ashes.
GJ so far, semi randomized quest, path, terrain and enemies will greatly boost the replayability of Grim Dawn.
Very good job, I can’t wait to play this game. Randomization will add replayability… and I strongly want to play the game more than once
I think this will solve a very important problem that TQ had.
Sometimes the map was too wide. I would always find myself circling the edge of the map and then wandering through the middle of it to collect any extra XP. This always felt very sloppy, like I was somehow cheating the game.
I still hug the edges of the map, just in case I lose a cave or a bone pile or something.
I think with maps designed with barriers in mind it will force players to explore without mindlessly following a single wall.
The level of precision required to properly orient and position a wall piece so it joins up right is not possible with the current tech. The tech that allows us to create randomized barriers was not specifically designed for that purpose. It was designed to create randomized scenery and that scenery has the ability to block pathing. So from that, the idea to use it to create the randomized barriers arose. Getting wall pieces to line up properly would require new tech, which isn’t likely to happen. I live in New England, which is covered in old fieldstone farm walls and it is not uncommon to see this very thing where they are interrupted by larger rocks that have brambles and small trees growing among them. It could probably be made to look a lot better if placed by hand but that’s what you get with randomized systems.
cool update.
It would be even cooler if you could use such types of barriers during boss fights.Gunslinger’s dream.
This is about right, farmers dump random rocks and brush in to holes in the fence line all the time. Those field stones gotta go some where, so fill those dips and holes. Besides keeps the trespassers and their vehicles out of my field.:furious:
As long as these barriers fit in with the surrounding environment and don’t look artificial, it seems like a good idea. In the example above the “barrier” blends in very well.
Doesn’t this mean a lot of extra work for you guys, though, if you have to create optional areas that some players won’t even get to see? And are these barriers truly “random”, or are they affected by certain conditions, such as quest choices or amount of play-throughs? I just figure it would be annoying if you took your character through the game for the third time, and the RNG always placed the barriers in the same locations…
I like the idea of alternate paths that would open up on your second or third play-through. Things like shortcuts and/or areas with especially challenging creatures.
I have a question.
Would these barriers be only on a second play through, or do they show up on a reload?
Most games that have had randomness like this in the past generated the landscape and map when the game loaded, and many didn’t save that info when you closed the game. So, you could swap characters to access your storage on another character, then load back the original and see things had changed.
Or will this all be decided as soon as we start the game, meaning it’s seed based and totally possible that you get the same seed again…with a mod tool or something?
I have the same question as Staalker. And that has me of two minds with the implementation.
Completely randomising every time a new game session starts has its own perks, creating a unique environment each time and appealing to the adventurous spirit. However, I also like the idea of a game map being fixed say, per difficulty. Much like how Diablo 2 worked with the randomness in single player mode. The advantage of that is it provides a means of not having to traverse a new path each time and stumble across dead ends. Good for doing boss runs. The disadvantage is the player can be unlucky by having a terribly long route to traverse each time they decide to play through a particularly long area.
Or, would it only randomise when the game is started up initially from Windows? And multiple playthroughs across multiple characters yields the same map and barricades?
Either way, I love the idea. Great work Crate!
Cant wait for the alpha!
Nice to hear about this new feature. Randomized levels are a great enhancement, for me too this was one of the few things i missed in Titan Quest.
The barriers randomize each game session. They generally don’t set you off down a long alternate path though, as you may be envisioning. Rather, each barrier tends to only be a minor divergence but there can be several in an area so that they collectively mix things up quite a bit. Often it is still possible to loop around and explore the full area. The purpose of these is not to totally change the gameplay experience but just to get people doing things a little differently each time.
The person above who described themselves as always running along the same level wall out of habit is exactly what we hope to alleviate. That is the type of thing I might do and I think many others do just out of habit or for the sake of efficiency.
As an example, before we had the barriers, I had created various possible routes through the starting area but in playing, I realized that I almost always go the same way without really thinking about it. The barriers prompt me to deviate off the normal path now and it keeps things fresh.
Yessir, you DO live in Alberta. Best. Post. Seen. Today.
Cheers,
Alberta-ite.
The screenshot really looks good, and this is the first pick that looks like titan quest to me.