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steffire3

Feb 28, 2018 @ 1:00pm

Can we legally make a game to replace our need for a better Torchlight 2?

Originally posted by DxDark:
And now they're dead.

Wonder how long until someone remakes TL2 in Unreal/Unity Engine and includes mouse controls from this decade...

Thanks so much for giving this community such a wonderful idea!

To protect the project from the Legal monster it would be nice if this was done as a Fan inspired tribute where all the names and lore are changed yet clearly based off similar numbers and pace of Torchlight 2.

Or even better just go Patreon, Donation, Open Source, Community Driven and make a "new" world that again is clearly made to improve what this game could not and still legally respect what is now Arc Games Property without stepping on their toes.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/404790/Godot_Engine/

That way more stuff would be possible (like all the content that didn't make it into the official game) looking at the mod "Unearthed Arcana".

Also to include items that do extend the game's combat options like the mods of "Sniper Rifles" and the Light Swords, Flamethrowers, True Rifles, Machine Guns of "Ruination" and the Throwing Axes and Elemental Shields from "LAO III" even finally making a functional "Improved Arrows" for Bows and Crossbows (let's also include that idea of allowing small Crossbow meshes as One Handed Pistols).

Let's also remember what the now abandoned "Synergies" and "Adventure Pack 2" were trying to accomplish and also Corley's new "TL2-E" mod which adds a farmable Act 5 which includes many vanilla dungeons rarely accessible in the vanilla game and improves the Vitality Stat.

Then implementing the "Warbounds" to create a fully dynamic npc squad of battle helpers probably nerfing their damage by 90% to keep things balanced and dependent on the Player.

Include more Class ideas from "Parallel", "Variant" and "Darkthan's Packs 1 and 2".

Let's also remember "FEP+" and extend the items to include asian themed options.

And the mods that have attempted to extend and fix Gems, Items and Item Skills like "LAO 2.0 Chaos" and probably nerf the weapon damage by 50% to keep things balanced.

Extending the Craft System like "Torchfun" and the Fish System like "Better Vanilla Game Simple".

Finally that unreleased "Naruto" mod has some very original methods of activating Skill attacks which is something worth considering.

Extending the Hair and Face options beyond "Rainbow Redux", "Themed Faces", "Extended Options" and "Non playable Faces".

Also including UI fixes (look at all of Doudley's mods) and adding more hues and images on items and battle animations for easier ID.

It's also worth considering adding Minion all stats increase into Dexterity to finally support dedicated Summon builds which would actually make Dexterity more valuable past 500 points especially in a mod like "LAO III".

= = =

And to see all this in an Engine that amps the visual graphics would be highly appreciated.

And now we can finally get Shared Screen Multiplayer, Fix the Internet Multiplayer Connection Issues, Removing the issue of separating Multiplayer in New Game Plus, Actually have First Person Cameras (Adjust Battle animations and Attack Controls to help this), get some Real Feeling Weather, Fog of War Options (fight by lamps to avoid the true dark), Implement a true survival wave mini game better than the mod of "Corpselight", extend the dungeons to the unseen side, enable the ability to climb and fight from cliffs, support true Mouse, Pointer, Keyboard, Console, Touch Controls, and much more.

Last edited by steffire3; Mar 1, 2018 @ 12:49pm

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Showing 1-15 of 17 comments

Corley

Feb 28, 2018 @ 1:19pm

@steffire3 interesting idea and thread - looks like you have taken the best of TL2 and summed it up nicely, if something comes of this or a team starts up I would be first to offer my services in developing. I will wait to see what others say first :)

steffire3

Feb 28, 2018 @ 1:54pm

Originally posted by Corley:
@steffire3 interesting idea and thread - looks like you have taken the best of TL2 and summed it up nicely, if something comes of this or a team starts up I would be first to offer my services in developing. I will wait to see what others say first :)

Ah yes. I know the feeling!

I wish to keep my distance from the actual script / programming of Open Source Game Replacements of the community's Torchlight needs however I am one of few members here who repeatedly writes of the ideas from past mods on the Steam Workshop and informs anyone of the future what needs to be added into the new base game because these features are too awesome to leave out.

And finally the limit of 10 mods or non functional mod packs will be no more! ^_^

A truly Open Source development will enable the Community itself to become the mods and developers that the base game needs.

And finally a modded version of an old prediction by my fellow modder Doudley has an opportunity to come true:

"The Player is the Mod Class and the Mod Class is the Player."

That cryptic statement makes more sense if this article is read:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/200710/discussions/0/133255603285071449/

I've watched the Open Source Engines of Godot, Krita, and Open Office get stronger over the years under an Open Source Donation environment because of needs.

And ultimately I keep seeing players returning to Torchlight only to correctly complain of it's features lacking without mods and most mods which are so troublesome to connect especially when made by authors using different methods.

So far only few modders have made mods that reduce compatible issues like "Doudley", "Viz", "Corley", "Torch Modders" and potentially "Haxley" as he works hard to fix "Naruto" for release.

= = =

Thanks for acknowledging this article! "@ Corley" ^_^

Last edited by steffire3; Feb 28, 2018 @ 4:32pm

Hydris

Feb 28, 2018 @ 11:20pm

Have you tried contacting Runic Games on making Torchlight II open source? That can probably save a lot of time and effort working with existing code than replicating everything from scratch.

It's not common, but proprietary games have been made open source before long past their release.

steffire3

Mar 1, 2018 @ 1:27am

Originally posted by Hydris:
Have you tried contacting Runic Games on making Torchlight II open source? That can probably save a lot of time and effort working with existing code than replicating everything from scratch.

It's not common, but proprietary games have been made open source before long past their release.

Torchlight was out of Runic hands.

The problem is that the IP property is owned by Arc Games who is the publisher who bought Runic back in 2010.

If they are willing then that's great although I would be surprised.

Thing is there are alot of limitations in the code anyway so going from scratch with an Engine and avoiding legalities is a truly hard work yet the potential is there.

I decided to write this option for the community although I certainly do not want to be the one who drives this directly just gather info and inspire in case others start pursuing this in the future.

Last edited by steffire3; Mar 1, 2018 @ 1:27am

Hydris

Mar 1, 2018 @ 2:36am

It doesn't hurt to ask; though companies probably prefer a large quantity of interest expressed, so its best to get as many people involved as possible. I'm interested as well in Torchlight II becoming open source because I believe that adds true longevity to a game.
I think the game as software is already showing its age.

steffire3

Mar 1, 2018 @ 2:44am

Originally posted by Hydris:
It doesn't hurt to ask; though companies probably prefer a large quantity of interest expressed, so its best to get as many people involved as possible. I'm interested as well in Torchlight II becoming open source because I believe that adds true longevity to a game.
I think the game as software is already showing its age.

Agreed.

From Runic choosing not to implement certain control options at the time and just the fact that so many innovations happened for it's rivals in the Genre since release while the Mod Editor itself stares at me with it's lack of features.

Even the comment that inspired this article mentioning Unreal and Unity speaks of where players may wish to take this game now that Runic and it's limitations have faded away.

Last edited by steffire3; Mar 1, 2018 @ 2:46am

StreamWhenGuy has Torchlight II

Mar 1, 2018 @ 6:25am

I think you should relax about Torchlight. After 350 hours invested into this game I can say that It's an overall bad ARPG abandoned since release even by its developers in terms of content and balance tweaks. Five years of modding didn't bring anything massive either (Synergies is just as unbalanced as the original game, it just throws everything and more everything at your face). A very small dedicated community is still playing though (I wonder why really), and seeing @steffire3 in every thread kinda proves that it's indeed small.

Along with Diablo 3 (who would've thought it's still alive), we now have PoE and Grim Dawn. Grim Dawn is the best example of how a single-player ARPG should be supported, even by small indie-kickstarter devs. You just keep dreaming about something big that most likely will never happen, even impossible, not with the community efforts.

The whole franchise (if you even can call Torchlight that way) needs a complete reboot made by professionals, but I doubt there is a publisher who wants to throw money into the dead horse's face. Torchlight is long gone in my opinion.

steffire3

Mar 1, 2018 @ 10:22am

Originally posted by KamisantaLolz:
Along with Diablo 3 (who would've thought it's still alive), we now have PoE and Grim Dawn. Grim Dawn is the best example of how a single-player ARPG should be supported, even by small indie-kickstarter devs. You just keep dreaming about something big that most likely will never happen, even impossible, not with the community efforts.

The whole franchise (if you even can call Torchlight that way) needs a complete reboot made by professionals, but I doubt there is a publisher who wants to throw money into the dead horse's face. Torchlight is long gone in my opinion.

Exactly. Torchlight is gone yet the "design" remains.

Diablo 3 is ruled by Blizzard for better and worse.

Path of Exile is a good option yet not all players like it.

TL2 is currently in no position to be helped by any "professionals" (we know Arc Games prefers a Torchlight Mobile design) and the Grim Dawn Team has it's roots in other games (the result of Diablo, Titan Quest and Warcraft).

TL2 is still an older game yet contains something (we still see people playing it) not found in it's rivals who have long surpassed it in features and support from the start.

That's one reason it keeps being modded (no updates to break older mods) which is also a problem with it.

Unless a talented group rises from the community it will otherwise stay as is.

A recent comment spoke of Game Engines which is a mention I didn't see when Runic was still around.

Reality is that this is not 2009 anymore (Runic's era and belief)... we don't need official companies to get stuff done.

Funny thing is if we tell people they cannot do this then we are basically suggesting they have no right or freedom to do this just stay enslaved to Arc Games "free to play, cheap design, pay the way" empire (look at the "sequel" Torchlight Mobile).

And that requires breaking from Torchlight Lore and Names but not it's possibility as a game forged by people (not the majority but the ones who decide to work to play something better and once that happens then the majority follows because again donation based and freely accessible Source even if that code is not from Torchlight because it was forged elsewhere which saves us from massive legal problems).

What I am suggesting is no different than what any other start up has already faced because I do agree that if people keep giving their time to other games then TL2 stays as is.

Dreams don't directly birth movements or teams yet someone has to translate them into plans in case people start breaking the "impossible".

Last edited by steffire3; Mar 19, 2018 @ 2:23am

steffire3

Mar 1, 2018 @ 11:20am

Originally posted by KamisantaLolz:
I think you should relax about Torchlight. After 350 hours invested into this game I can say that It's an overall bad ARPG abandoned since release even by its developers in terms of content and balance tweaks. Five years of modding didn't bring anything massive either (Synergies is just as unbalanced as the original game, it just throws everything and more everything at your face).

A very small dedicated community is still playing though (I wonder why really),

and seeing @steffire3 in every thread kinda proves that it's indeed small.

Torchlight is alot easier to access than Grim Dawn for certain players. There is an audience for it.

Synergies is limited in method and is the reason I mention it with other mods rather than alone.

Runic was tied by Arc Games and it shows by their own admission that they couldn't finish the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUCoec2cP3s

And Runic admits how tired, lost and limited they were. Because they "are" the industry not a community driven project because this is the price to pay as an official company and unlike Crate they didn't have the foundation from big games past.

Why should that history stop us now? We should free ourselves from Runic who gave this up to Arc Games long ago. Give up because they did? Big deal, companies are over hyped because they are just people who learned skill and that is more accessible to everyone now more than years before.

If someone wants to use Torchlight as an inspiration using a game engine then let them.

Of course they need to be people who have the skills to make a game (well duh! games are first seen by dreamers yet they are built by planners).

Also I'm not saying to save Torchlight. That is the one thing we must let go of more than anything.

Throw the theme away and drive the design forward.

A small dedicated community plays this game and already for 5 mod years because they enjoy it. Do we have to understand why people are different from us?

So who's to say that one day making a new community game is not possible? Is that a 100% Impossibility?

Seeing me in every thread... ^_^ that proves what one person can do... what happens if more show up?

Indeed Small and look at just a fragment of the great mods that have been made!

https://steamcommunity.com/app/200710/discussions/0/810925579978511813/

Originally posted by steffire3:
Then first I followed Vsuchinoko (Additional Classes) taken over by Draco1122 (Add On) then stayed to help Danielmratliff21 (Better Vanilla Game Simple) while playing Darkthan9800's (Classes 1 then 2) when suddenly Doudley came back (UI, Warbounds, and "ReMods") followed by Viz (Variant and FEP+) then Corley (TL2-E).

Of course these are just modders yet the potential for a game is there.

I still agree with you since it all depends on a big "If" yet that's what life is about... or play it safe and avoid even mentioning to break from status quo yet that is not for me.

Last edited by steffire3; Mar 19, 2018 @ 2:25am

Hydris

Mar 1, 2018 @ 11:49pm

Side commentary on the alternatives of the genre.

Diablo III - never going to play a Battle.net 2.0 game and deal with Always Online DRM. It didn't turn out to be a good game either.

Path of Exile - always online though not because of DRM- lagged, constantly rubberbanded, etc, impossible to play Hardcore with those conditions.

Grim Dawn - my interaction with this game was very limited. I don't recall anything really about it, but I had no intentions of supporting the developers because of some anti-piracy scuffle.

Mainly what I want from an open source TL2 is to have persistent support so the game would stop dropping frame rates to ~30.

#10

steffire3

Mar 1, 2018 @ 11:57pm

Originally posted by Hydris:
Mainly what I want from an open source TL2 is to have persistent support so the game would stop dropping frame rates to ~30.

Should I email Arc Games about making the Torchlight 2 Source Code available (Is that the proper question for me to ask or should I word it differently?) or is there another method I should also consider to contact them?

Do companies (like Arc Games) have any preference on royalties, % cuts or other extra agreements I should be aware of? (who knows what they will answer yet I might as well ask this here).

I assume Arc Games will want something out of this (if they allow it?) since they bought Runic back in 2010 this must be an IP they don't want to lose completely.

The characters and themes of Torchlight are owned by them so there's that restriction if we take this specific road rather than constructing a new theme in a game engine from scratch yet keep the design ideas and back it with a Patreon Community Invite (still don't know of anyone who wants to script the code at this time or in which engine specifically).

I also don't mind the option of keeping this Discussion active to catch future support.

Originally posted by DxDark:
Wonder how long until someone remakes TL2 in Unreal/Unity Engine and includes mouse controls from this decade...

I see validity in this Discussion for players and coders to rally around the idea of TL2 (or similar design under another name and theme if Arc Games rejects the former) inside a game engine and fix all the issues we have had in the past.

Last edited by steffire3; Mar 2, 2018 @ 12:36am

#11

steffire3

Mar 2, 2018 @ 1:28am

Vkoslak kindly decided to list the requirements for maintaining this game in a Unity environment:

https://torchmodders.com/forums/help-wanted/can-we-legally-make-a-game-to-replace-our-need-for-a-better-torchlight-2/

Originally posted by Vkoslak:
My day job is software engineer, and I've poked around with unity and I've converted torchlight assets to work in unity in a VR project.

I'm looking at that list, and thinking about the requirements, and resources needed. That is massive.
Also, different people are going to want different things from it. Balancing that will not be fun.
Keeping the art style consistent will be entertaining too.

Even if you can get programmers and 3d modelers, and animators, sound and music people to make assets or customize other assets from the unity store. You would need someone acting in a product manager capacity. Like what Phanjam did with T1CP mod. This will be a huge time suck for whoever does it.

Doing a unity open source project would be tricky if you are using anything from the unity asset store.

If I was going to make an arpg, I'd probably start off with something like this to get going.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/packs/action-rpg-framework-31419
and start with a small team. Maybe 5 people. Keep the source private to the team, but the exe freely available and extendable via mods.

It has been my experience that the programming side of games is actually very small compared to the art side for a game like torchlight.
You will need to make sure that the game is architected for mods and multiplayer from the get go.
Someone will need to be in charge of code quality and make sure peer reviews get done.

I'm not saying it can't be done, I just want you to have an idea of what it is going to take.

I'm glad he took the time to state all of this as it gives us all a better idea of what is required.

Last edited by steffire3; Mar 2, 2018 @ 1:31am

#12

Hydris

Mar 2, 2018 @ 1:56am

Originally posted by steffire3:
Originally posted by Hydris:
Mainly what I want from an open source TL2 is to have persistent support so the game would stop dropping frame rates to ~30.

Should I email Arc Games about making the Torchlight 2 Source Code available (Is that the proper question for me to ask or should I word it differently?) or is there another method I should also consider to contact them?

Do companies (like Arc Games) have any preference on royalties, % cuts or other extra agreements I should be aware of? (who knows what they will answer yet I might as well ask this here).

I assume Arc Games will want something out of this (if they allow it?) since they bought Runic back in 2010 this must be an IP they don't want to lose completely.

The characters and themes of Torchlight are owned by them so there's that restriction if we take this specific road rather than constructing a new theme in a game engine from scratch yet keep the design ideas and back it with a Patreon Community Invite (still don't know of anyone who wants to script the code at this time or in which engine specifically).

I also don't mind the option of keeping this Discussion active to catch future support.

Originally posted by DxDark:
Wonder how long until someone remakes TL2 in Unreal/Unity Engine and includes mouse controls from this decade...

I see validity in this Discussion for players and coders to rally around the idea of TL2 (or similar design under another name and theme if Arc Games rejects the former) inside a game engine and fix all the issues we have had in the past.

Typically for open source games that were previously proprietary, the company still owns the assets for the game (and still sells them). Meanwhile the game engine and code is relicensed to fit an open source release; usually its GPL.

For example, idTech engines were made open source, and the Quake, DOOM games as old as they are, are still sold. Meanwhile id Software/Bethesda still owns the intellectual property to continue making games in the series.

You can contact them via email to pitch the idea of an open source Torchlight II, but it's likely going to take a full-on campaign of players, users, et al to express interest in the idea for them to do it.

#13

Graeystone has Torchlight II

Mar 8, 2018 @ 9:09am

Why Torchlight 2 has lasting power - The devs. atually listened to the players at a time when even the 'big guns'(EA, Blizzard) weren't.

#14

Thuumking

Mar 13, 2018 @ 7:04am

you can always play Diablo 2 median xl.

as for legality, you would need permissions and have no monetary gains from it (in game purchases) honestly it would be easier for a bunch of modders to build an new ARPG as opposed to try and copy TL2. As for game engines you could always use unreal 4 engine also. its a very good engine and easy to work with.

#15

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Date Posted: Feb 28, 2018 @ 1:00pm

Posts: 17

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