Randomized Barriers

Grim Dawn Development Updates
61

agreed 2012 will be a good year for ARPGs

i just hope we will get our hands on grim dawn this year as well. would be sorely disappointed if we couldn’t even get the alpha client by 2012

been beta testing path of exile for a while now and it’s looking promising. still waiting for custom leagues and pvp though

i’m not particularly interested in beta testing d3 at this point because i’m already too jaded against all the content the beta has to offer from watching so many let’s play vid’s of it on youtube lol. was disappointed when they decided to have such a small beta for d3 from the beginning. not sure what their reasoning behind that decision was. i hope at some point at least they will do a stress test

i have seen several good games fall flat recently because of lack of proper/sufficient testing / testing scope coughskyrimcough

in the mean time i have been trying to keep myself entertained with several indie games on steam: dungeon defenders, qube, bastion, etc…

reached max level on dungeon defenders and kinda got bored of it. also way too many people hacking their stat’s to do anything with pvp in that game

downloaded and beat qube in 4.3 hours lol…

bastion is kinda meh. i like the narration but the gameplay is maybe a little oversimplified. on the surface the game looks like it isn’t too linear but then you realize that out of all the choices of different locations to go, you can only choose 1 or 2 at a time because of level restrictions so the choices are kinda made for you.

been taking a break from skyrim due to several big quest lines getting bugged and not feeling like starting over. seriously that game needed like another 2 months at least of testing and bug fixing.

started playing portal 2 with my bro from china after gifting it to him on steam. we stayed up 'til 10:45am the next day (my time) the first play session LOL. had some mad fun with the co-op campaign. also, he’d never played a portal game before

it really sucks that torchlight 2 got delayed so much, i’m not even sure if i will be in the mood to even try it out anymore once it eventually comes out

dungeon siege 3 was a gigantic flop because of its horrid multiplayer and console-baby approach to the controls/UI/gameplay. fucking console-ports ruining good game series. that and 2nd/3rd generation dev’s fucking with the tried and true formula of the inventor of the game

been trying out swtor recently, but gotta say it is a bit grindy around lvl 20ish. somewhere along the line i just suddenly noticed that i’m sitting there hitting a space pig with a freaking LIGHTSABER like 20 times just to kill it… then i think of the movies where a jedi stabs a guy or an animal once with a lightsaber and it goes down… makes you realize how stupid the space-pig-hitting-20-times thing actually is. and anyone who tries to argue “balance” over what makes sense and is fun deserves to have to power their games by running on a treadmill the rest of their life while smacking their heads into their keyboards over and over. i do enjoy the voice acting throughout the game though - unlike conan where they only had voice acting on tortage…

soooo… On-topic: i haven’t seen a news update on the site for over 2 months now. what’s goin on? is anybody still working on this game?

62

This was missing from TQ, I love the idea of randomizing the level though barriers…

I guess the question is does the world generate the barriers on char creation or every time you load?

63

@PhamTrinli

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2955

then you missed this update, which was posted on the ninth of this month

so work is continuing, and the devs have said, more interesting news will be released in the near future

but I’m still waiting for a new video, which med promised:D

64

:confused::confused:to the baord of grimdawn…im asking you guys if this game will be dependent on the online community or will you consider the dis advatages of having a game the rely on the net…ive been waiting for 1 game that is most famous as we all know but i will not mention the name of the game…and ive read thier forums that they will set the game based on online…im RPG addct ive plyd a lot of games specialy rpg both online and offline…so pls as you realese this game…make it off line and online optionally,…i will buy the first day as you released as soon as availble in store,ty…more power to your compny congrats…:stuck_out_tongue:

65

the game will be offline, but will have MP, but no secure servers, but all the MP features of titan quest will be available,

and you shouldn’t need to be online when entering the reg code either, hope that answers your questions

66

I meant on the dev blog, although I wouldn’t really call what is posted there an “update” as far as progress goes.

67

You must not have played Knights of the Old Republic I & II since it also played the same way too and plus the reason why in the game’s lore that you’re not killing them with 1 hit is because they have shield absorbtion and why they take a few hits before they die instead of one.

68

KOTOR 1 is a good game, not played too, but that has a lot of missing content with it, there is a restoration project to restore the content, but last I heard the project is dead?

but the whole star wars lore is to me very messed up, KOTOR 1 takes place 4 thousand years before star wars 1, and SWTOR takes place 100 years after KOTOR

to me, this can not be, and just makes the lore silly and senseless, how can this take 4 thousand years before the films? (and if your wondering where I’m getting the 4 thousand figure from, then play KOTOR as it says so in its opening rolling text

yet the technology between them is pretty much the same, wtf??? look at human development and how far we have come in 4 thousand years

the setting is wrong, the lore is wrong, I don’t think George Lucas had anything to do with any of the old republic games, so who ever came up with this setting should have been fired

might have been better if it was 500 years before the films, then it might have looked better / lore and story wise

I just think the setting is too far back in time to make any sense, ok the original films were made in the 70’s 80s but if you have stuff 4 thousand years back that looks pretty much the same, droids, been able to hyperspace around the galaxy, then something is seriously wrong somewhere

anyone else got thoughts on this?

69

As long as there is some hidden loot we are all happy.:slight_smile:

70

I don’t understand the design choice here.

Wouldn’t it be better to either just give us the extra areas to explore or force a change for higher difficulty levels to promote continued and higher level play? Forcing a change of tactics in terms of not only enemy strength but level design, by including more varied terrain in areas accessible during second and third playthroughs could ad more variety and difficulty than what seems to be a waste of time trying to accomodate randomisation that just isn’t possible.

71

Not sure what you mean by ‘randomisation that isn’t possible’. The barriers are working and they lead to slightly different playthroughs.

You can argue whether that difference is worthwhile, and I would argue that even the randomisation of D2 and TL was not worthwhile to me and essentially accomplished the same thing, a slightly different route through what otherwise is the same general area.

The advatage of this over more regions in higher difficulties is that it is easier to make than new regions (and that some players might feel cheated out of regions if they are only available in legendary - granted I doubt you find those players on this forum :wink: )

72

My response would be basically what mamba said.

The randomized barriers were created in very little time by just slightly modifying another feature we had already created. Building extra sets of levels for large parts of the world would be a massive amount of work.

73

medierra, I like the idea. This plus your other post of randomized camps, objectives, npc’s … ect… give me a bit of light. Many of us will play this for hundreds if not thousands of time and a little variance means a lot.

74

I want to answer one thing. You will make random path through blocking some paths, this will not make some areas to be inaccessible?

Sorry if my English isn’t so good.

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The last sentence sounds as if parts could be completely closed off - it’s just important that you can reach all exits and quest objectives etc. These barriers cannot be totally random. There needs to be some pathing check, when creating them.

76

Lol yeah it would be funny to walk out of a town and find your path completely blocked by a fence. :smiley:

77

The barriers can only appear where designers have placed barrier proxies. The proxies can either be independent and just have a chance to spawn or they can be linked together in groups. When proxies are linked in a group, they can be configured so that only one barrier will spawn or all but one will spawn.

This allows us to control things so that there is always a route through the level. In many cases, it is also possible to break through destructible wall objects to get around the barriers if you really want to go a certain way.

We would only allow a chance of an area becoming completely inaccessible if there was nothing special there, it was small and you didn’t need to go through it to get anywhere else.

78

So this is actually my first post on this forum. I found out about Grim Dawn from the kickstarter. Anyway, as a future Game Designer I think its fantastic that you’re so open with the development.

Anyway, as I expect from the TQ design, Grim Dawn’s actual game-spaces themselves are not randomly built/selected from a list. Its good to see that Grim Dawn will feature at least some elements of Game-Space randomization.

Now, I am curious about how much of these barriers are destructible, because every time the player breaks a barrier, they’re expanding the game space, and reducing its design complexity. A hill, for instance could appear in two variations that have radically different progression paths, even though its the same base hill for each. If the barriers that restrict the game-space and there by create the progression path are breakable, then not long after beginning to explore and fight in the area, destroying barriers along the way, then suddenly there aren’t two progression paths anymore. The game space is just inevitably reduced back to its base through the destruction of the environment - which reduces environment complexity and creates (potentially) a scenario where a lot of work gets put into randomizing which is wiped out very quickly. So, how much of the barriers will be destructible?

79

None of them are :wink:

80

Ah. Well, I’m now an ass for not reading, sorry.

But that raises the question of why not? Certainly all elements being static allows you to funnel the content experience, but why not have areas that are otherwise blocked off that can be broken into, expanding the game-space through the player’s own volition? If your looking for player experience, then I would imagine that having those opportunities to break down a gate to open a small side graveyard - or blasting down a weak looking barrier to create another avenue of advance or exploration - would be rewarding and exciting. It shouldn’t be much, certainly, or the randomized barriers lose their purpose of creating random(ish) environments.