Comments on: Torchlight Screenshot Special

By: Maj

Maj — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 07:18:04 +0000

Alright, the descriptions are all done. I’ve added a download link above, which contains all nine original PNG screenshots as well as 32 additional variants.

By: Maj

Maj — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:14:01 +0000

It took look a lot longer than i expected/hoped, but i finally finished the three Alchemist screenshots and added them to the post above. I still have to write up descriptions and post the original PNG files. I’ll try to get to that sometime tonight.

By: Maj

Maj — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 06:24:27 +0000

Somehow i doubt they’ll do much to address my concerns about the genre, but i’ll probably still watch their launch trailer at the very least.

Thanks for the link. I was wondering what happened to their release date. Anyway i certainly hope they succeed and continue trying. But if i ever buy another PC RPG again, i’m definitely not going to allow myself to sink more than 20-25 hours into it.

By: his1nightmare

his1nightmare — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:00:24 +0000

Well what you wrote sadly applies to Torchlight fully. It really IS all about, you may call it, pointless grinding.
But the developers actually admitted that, especially the fishing was just downright flawed. And you were just searching for certain fishes… you can also get some other things this way, which are even MORE rare; this ends up easily in months of pauseless fishing just to get something you can’t even show off without problems.
Thankfully Torchlight had full support for mods, so people created things like fishes also dropping from regular enemies or you being able to buy fishes. Those kind of mods which improve the game, not turning you into a cheater.

Diablo 2 meanwhile had a working trade(-community) and totally reasonable drop rates, looking at the outcomes. Diablo 3 has an auction house, which was probably the only good news about this game I ever read…
Runic Games postponed Torchlight 2 with the reasoning that they wanted to avoid doing the same mistakes once again. If you are interested, you may check the news here:
http://www.torchlight2game.com/news/2011/11/17/an-update-from-travis-baldree/

best regards

By: Maj

Maj — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 09:50:47 +0000

In reply to Maj. I didn't realize i had so much to say about this game/genre, but i went ahead and expanded that into an article on Sonic Hurricane. Might even write one more at the end of the week, though more constructive.

By: Maj

Maj — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 21:23:25 +0000

Oh cool, i didn’t even know what rimlights meant. Usually when i play PC games, i try activating every graphics option that my computer can support. Anti-aliasing is the big one that always seems disabled.

To be honest though, i kinda hate the open-ended RPG genre now. Those games are completely sadistic toward their players. Seriously, some of their basic design choices are outright cruel in ways that seem entirely unnecessary.

Believe it or not, the whole reason i got this game was because the XBL description said that you could transform your pet into different creatures, including elementals. I’ve had a soft spot for elementals since Warcraft (the original one).

What they didn’t say is that you have to “play” their braindead fishing “game” for 5-10 hours straight in order to catch one extremely rare fish to permanently transform one character’s pet into a (random!) elemental. I mean, why??

Can you imagine how many human hours have been utterly wasted in search of that tiny bit of satisfaction? It’s not even a challenge. It’s just dumb, pointless grinding. How evil do you have to be to put something like that in your game? Torchlight is so cool in so many ways, but i can’t bring myself to recommend it to anyone for the simple reason that open-ended RPGs are addictive torture by design.

By: his1nightmare

his1nightmare — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:41:29 +0000

In reply to his1nightmare. in front of*, not behind, god.

By: his1nightmare

his1nightmare — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:37:34 +0000

Haha you are my man, not just you actually even love Diablo/Torchlight (I may raise at least once that I still play it after 11 1/2 years and still consider D2 to be the game of the games), you even post viewtiful screenshots about the latter.
Good job, Maj, once again I am surprised by the flexibility of your awesomeness.

I may add two things:
– I personally had disabled rimlights, as I did while playing the game, looks nice sometimes but is just adding a totally illogical light source. Awesome that the game Dark Souls picked that idea up and has a fixed light source behind your character, slightly to the right. Even when staying within complete darkness.
– http://img6.imagebanana.com/img/9s4zop51/Torchlight2.jpg

By: Maj

Maj — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 00:30:33 +0000

Btw this must seem kind of random, but i played a lot of Diablo and Diablo 2 back in the day, so i couldn’t resist the Torchlight demo when it showed up on XBL.

Anyway i’ll be adding three more screenshots featuring the Alchemist class, hopefully tonight. Then i’ll add detailed descriptions and upload an archive of the whole set for anyone who wants to save the original PNG files.

By: Maj

Maj — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 22:00:32 +0000

In case anyone’s curious, here are the settings used for the screenshots:

Fullscreen / Rimlights / HW Skinning / VSync: ON
Antialiasing / Render Behind Walls: OFF
Resolution: 1280×800
Shadows: Very High
Particle Detail: High
Netbook Mode: OFF
Show Tips / Show Event Info / Show Blood: OFF

Basically everything is either default presets or as high as it would go – causing my laptop to overheat and shut down within ten minutes, unless i kept it elevated in the air so the table wouldn’t obstruct the CPU fan. None of the available settings helped to prevent overheating. Netbook Mode did nothing, which was pretty lame – and surprising, because this has never happened with any other game or application.

Unfortunately anti-aliasing was inaccessible, same as with Street Fighter IV on my PC.