Once upon a time...
there was a computer game company called Runic Games. Among them were some brilliant foxes and they developed a very successful game called torchlight. After a "short" they came up with a sequel to answer the demand of many enthusiastic followers. Torchlight II was born and celebrated!
But something was growing in the dark, first it was small but with every day of experience it grows and got stronger. It was a group of people, foxes like the creators and they could not be satisfied by Trochlight II the way it was.
Even before Runic published the GutsEditor they started to work on modifications to create an even more exciting world with all features the hard code can offer. So they set down, fingers over their keyboards, to fix all these little things that want to be done!
Boys and girls, watch out! There might be some major changes coming around the corner very soon?!
Hm.. how to start such a topic? Simply bluntly: I want things to be done!
So why do we mod again? Well there is vanilla... and there are we, the feedback. And they gave us the power to create.
Guys, I've red so many brilliant Ideas in all these forums, new skills, classes, pieces, layouts, dungeons and maps. New attributes, game mechanics and difficulties, items, monsters and all there is.
But they all got lost in the variety of thousands and thousands of tiny mods for private adaptation or never got finished.
This might sound utopian but I want to be part of a bigger thing over here. I want to start a real Collaboration, collecting all these Ideas and combine them in something worth the name "torchlight II.2"
Another sequel or a pre sequel, a stand-alone away from vanillas classes and systems. Tons of new maps and quests, reworking the Item system and the players rewards, all in all a new word to discover.
This forum is the best place to let this happen! lets come together and get things done. First of all we would need to decide about the basics like the charge- or the attribute system, then skills, classes, rolls and the plot and with all that outlined go into detail.
I'll stop here because this has to be in-time -developement, nothing being planned...
But I'm really excited about your replies...
Torchlight II.2? It's catchy, for sure. A standalone or an expansion? Well...
A standalone game, even made using GUTS, would be a huge, multi-year project requiring a team that is pretty dedicated to it and has the time and motivation to spend modding for that sort of commitment.
An expansion might be more doable. And Deezire has already started something of an expansion. Were he interested, we could certainly help provide content for Unearthed Arcana. An expansion, however, wouldn't allow for us to muck about with the framework (classes, stats, skill models, etc) as much. But it would be much more likely to be completed.
Just airing some ideas as well.
I'd be happy to be involved and help out/contribute. Unearthed Arcana technically isn't an expansion per se, although that was my original intention. What I've actually ended up doing is making a mod that fixes a lot of niggles and bugs in the game and along the way I stumbled across a huge amount of unused content & assets that I've put back in, which in many cases has required a fair bit of work to implement and get working as they should.
I guess where I really always wanted to go was an Act V which I'm just getting in to, but I have to admit progress is slow when you 'go it alone' and I keep hopping between that and 'completing' Unearthed Arcana (if indeed that is ever possible with such a mod). As a result, both projects have suffered because I only have so much time on my hands. The joy has been that I've learned a heck of a lot along the way. Admittedly, I'm enjoying Act V better since this is the way I can add my own stuff to the game.
My 2 cents is that if we were going to come up with something new, something big, together, then the best bet (if you're going to call it an expansion) would be along the lines of this;-
- we'd need a new class with skills, animations, models etc etc. That's a lot of work, without some new original class it wouldn't expand much. IMHO, the best one by far I've seen was OedipusTex's Theolentist class. Alternatively, we'd go with Phanjam's TL1 classes but have to work hard to fit the lore to justify their re-introduction.
- it would need a new Act to extend the storyline in a cohesive manner. That's a lot of work too as it would involve fleshing out ideas on areas/zones & dungeons plus creating them.
- we'd also have to expand itemisation, especially for any new class.
- we'd have to look at an addition or enhancement to the 'endgame' as an alternative to the Mapworks (or at the very least supplement this with more maps based on our new dungeons).
- finally we'd have to look at some quality of life improvements and this is the trickiest bit because this can be so subjective across the player base. For example, I personally am not very keen at all on a lot of the UI mods out there, other people love them.
It would be a huge undertaking and certainly a remarkable thing to do - it's definitely been done in other communities. Whether this one has the staying power and number of people to make it happen I think remains to be seen. There's a very real danger from what you describe however that all we could end up doing is effectively creating a 'super' mod compilation not entirely dissimilar to what you see on Steam, and there's a world of difference both in terms of content and context between that and truly expanding the original game. And all of this is of course contingent on avoiding feature creep which is stupendously easy to fall into - if you really want to know when your 'pride and joy mod' becomes a boring chore and you tire of it, ask somebody like Salan who has worked endlessly on Synergies since pretty much the day the game came out.
@gytfunke , you are absolutely right, what I meant by "standalone" is that its not an "ingame addon", more something like your LoE Idea, yes an expansion.
... a team that is pretty dedicated to it and has the time and motivation to spend
thats exactly what i wanted to point out. The motivation to mod is given, we just have to combine our creativity and together focus on a bigger thing
@DeeZire , thank you for your post, it's great! I've to read more about your Arcana and would be pleased to build up from what you got so far (as i already said I want to combine all the good things)
- we'd need a new class with skills, animations, models etc etc. That's a lot of work, without some new original class it wouldn't expand much. IMHO, the best one by far I've seen was OedipusTex's Theolentist class. Alternatively, we'd go with Phanjam's TL1 classes but have to work hard to fit the lore to justify their re-introduction.
- it would need a new Act to extend the storyline in a cohesive manner. That's a lot of work too as it would involve fleshing out ideas on areas/zones & dungeons plus creating them.
- we'd also have to expand itemisation, especially for any new class.
- we'd have to look at an addition or enhancement to the 'endgame' as an alternative to the Mapworks (or at the very least supplement this with more maps based on our new dungeons).
- finally we'd have to look at some quality of life improvements and this is the trickiest bit because this can be so subjective across the player base. For example, I personally am not very keen at all on a lot of the UI mods out there, other people love them.
these are good points, I'll create a list to collect and add more of such points..
to be continued