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Original post by Manic_Gamer [...]But one comment is when reading about levels. As Armor Upgrades.. I dont know exactly what you have in mind, However if the Armor Upgrades Means New 3d Models.. Then you could have a rather large work load for your 3d Artists.[...]

I plan on the player characters always being inside a kind of 'powered armor' like that worn by Samus, so most upgrades will be icons that you drop into a slot on your suit. They might change the color of the suit, but very few items will actually have any physical appearance. I think for items lying in-game, it'll just be a generic square-ish 'techy thingy'. Maybe the items have different colored auras to represent what it is (yellow for shields, blue for weapon, green for suit-slot module, etc).

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[...]A Suggestions on Skills and Spells.. well spells anyway is one keep them.. just becous its futuristic doesnt mean that magic has gone away.. I would just recomend creating magic that would have a different feel and purpose then your heavy weapons.[...]

I don't like the idea of adding magic. Magic and tech can mix in wonderful ways in games like ShadowRun, but it's just not the way I see my game world. Psionics is ok, but I'm still having a hard time thinking up effects that don't belong elsewhere (on weapons, as suit modules, etc). Most positive abilities ('buffs') already belong on items of different types, and duplicating them as spells or skills seems redundant.

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Original post by Gnarf [...]Think I'd prefer to use energy just for special abilities/skills rather than ammo.[...]

Sure, but there needs to be a decent selection of skills/spells/etc that you'll use often for that to make any sense.

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[...]What you could do is to make 3 different weapon types, say, light, medium and heavy. Medium would be more powerful than light and heavy more powerful than medium. Not all classes would be able to wield the heavy weapons, or dual wield things (some classes could be able to dual wield light weapons, or all classes could dual wield light weapons while some could have a medium in their main hand and a light in their offhand, or some such). In addition, certain effects could only show up on certain weapon types (no explosives on light weapons, for example).[...]

A problem with this is that it sounds rather arbitrary. Also, it depends on classes that don't yet exist (and making classes solely for different weapon-wielding abilities would be odd imo, though perhaps that could be a skill).

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[...]Skills could increase the power of all weapons, certain weapon types, certain effects etc,[...]

I really don't like those kinds of skills, because it can be _extremely_ frustrating to find a new item that is far better than you current item only to find it's worthless to you because you didn't know that kind of weapon was good and put all your points in 'Axe' instead of 'Lance'. At the very least, this kind of skill mandates some way to 'unspend' points.

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[...]spend x energy to spin around firing oh-so-rappidly for y secconds, or to jump and fire at the ground beneath you (might be decent for some heavy-explosive-weapon-wielding fella if swarmed by critters)). Some could be passive while others would cost energy to use.[...]

These are decent skill ideas, and definitely more arcade-like. I'm still not sure there is enough to make distinct classes with their own skill trees. If there aren't enough skills that one will generally be quite helpful at any time, mana/energy won't be a resource so much as a waste of time and screen space.

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[...]That way there'd be different classes and builds that are more/less effective for certain things, and prefer certain kinds (dependant on weapon type (size) and/or its effects) of weapons.[...]

Well, there should already be better/worse builds in the system as is, since taking a slow-firing explosive weapon means you need to have backup (either an ally with a faster weapon or your secondary weapon is essentially a submachinegun).

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Original post by Alpha_ProgDes I figure skills would be Skills. but split up into two sections inherent skills and armor-based skills. example: the player might be a natural with stealth, his armor gives him the skills of super fast computation or defense maneuvers only done with the suit on. Spells would be, for me, any items which give an effect. examples are: portable shields, sound disrupters, satelite guided lasers, mini tanks that capture enemies and not be detected (or very hard to detect).

While those are good ideas, I'm not sure how well they fit into the arcade-ish type of gameplay I'm aiming for. For example, a laser tripmine could be useful, but I'm not sure there will be enough tight spaces to make it meaningfull. A proximity mine/grenade, on the other hand could be very useful, but it makes more sense as either a single-use item or as a secondary weapon.

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Original post by tstrimp [...]Also, why mess with what people know? Is there any reason to call it anything other then experience? That's what it is but when you rename it you remove that instant association people get when they read experience.[...]

Sure, it's labeled experience, but it doesn't represent quite the same thing (even though it works exactly the same way). Such shallow games don't mess with what people know, they just make up different excuses =-)

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[...]One thing that kept a lot of people playing Diablo was their unique weapons and in D2 and D2:LoD it was the set items. [...] So what kind of history do you have that would support those unique or set type items?[...]

Well, the game takes place in a huge top-secret underground military labratory, so just about anything as far as equipment goes could be made unique. As far as set items, I was thinking of having the random items give bonuses that would encourage the use of groups of equipment (such as "+X% explosion radius"), especially in "item enhancement modules" (that fill slots aka 'sockets' in items). However, making 'uniques but more common with more bonuses when used together' isn't any different than uniques IMO, so it's also easily possible.
One simple thing to do would be to steal ideas from other game, such as making a doom-like BFG as a unique item, a redeemer from unreal tournament, etc. As far as what to base sets on, I'm not really sure. Any ideas?

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[...]Instead of an alien invasion why not set it in more of a cyber punk type world ala Shadowrun? It had a mix of magic and low tech and hightech that worked quite well.[...]

I don't want my game to be shadowrun-esque. In fact, my visualization of the game world is almost the exact opposite - a very ordered, clean, shiny environment (think cleanroom). That is, until the player shows up and firefights break out.

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[...]Another thing that I think you might be missing is the swarms in Diablo. What happens when all of your enemies have ranged attacks like you?[...]

They don't =-) The aliens had superb shields that rendered ranged weapons useless, so the arms race switched to mostly melee with a few special ranged weapons that can pierce shields. Since they were fighting melee among themselves, they stopped wearing the shield technology and instead switched to heavy anti-melee armors. Lucky for the players, humans took a different tech path and have shields that work decently against both ranged and melee attacks. Of course, the best shields were being worked on in the lab, so you'll have to salvage them if you want Real Ultimate Power =-)

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I really don't like those kinds of skills, because it can be _extremely_ frustrating to find a new item that is far better than you current item only to find it's worthless to you because you didn't know that kind of weapon was good and put all your points in 'Axe' instead of 'Lance'. At the very least, this kind of skill mandates some way to 'unspend' points.

Sorta agree and sorta disagree. If you chose 'Axe' because you wanted to chop heads off of folks, then I don't see the problem, as a lance is no good for that. If you chose 'Axe' and there's no real difference between axes and swords in terms of gameplay, then that's a problem.

Anyways. I'll just add an example here, that can be considered adding to my previous post or addressing comments on the previous post where appropriate :P

(some of the things here, like using cooldowns rather than energy, are sorta just for-the-sake-of-an-example)

No energy. Activated skills use cooldowns (some skills can use shared cooldowns). 3 kinds of armor suits, and 3 kinds of weapons (light, medium, heavy).

3 classes.

One class with a lighter armor-suit thing, can wield light and medium weapons and can dual-wield light weapons. It runs faster than the heavier classes and has low-cooldown jump and roll skills that are quite effective for avoiding various attacks. It also has a kick ability that knocks an enemy away and dazes it for a little while. This class relies on its speed and abilities to avoid being swarmed by enemies while taking'em out somewhat randomly (firing all over the everything while really focusing on avoiding enemies/damage).

One class with a medium armor-suit thing, can wield light, medium and heavy weapons (no dual wielding). When wielding heavy weapons it moves slower. It's got an ability to do double-shots, shooting twice at once, and can do that jump'n-fire-at-the-ground ting. This class can take out grouped enemies quite easily, but has a harder time if the enemies are more spread out, particulary if they are also using ranged attacks.

One class with a heavier shield than others, can wield light and medium weapons (no dual wielding). It can do low-cooldown charges, dealing damage to enemies in its mellee range while charging, (sorta-)low-cooldown 360 degree spins dealing little damage but knocking back enemies in mellee range, and high-cooldown 360 degree spins dealing massive damage to all enemies in mellee range. This class charges around, trying to get swarmed by mellee enemies (knocking them back every once in a while if still waiting for more to come nearby) then killing off loads with the spin. It wouldn't do as well against ranged enemies, unless it could somehow lure them to come close.

Of course, all of this could be achieved in without classes, perhaps allowing for certain combinations of them and such (and it could probably be more skills/abilities/classes; those are from-the-top-of-my-head stuff, sorta). Anyways: I wouldn't mind that much that I might find a really awesome weapon that wasn't all that interesting to this kind of character, or couldn't be wielded, as I chose to build that kind of character because of the way it'd play (not because it'd be oh-so-powerful), which would either way be different if I was using that weapon I'd just found. That said, it's just a matter of opinion; if it's not what you're going for, then it's not what you're going for :) You could just as well let all those abilities be available to any character (or any character of a certain level) or whatever...

Hellgate London (soon to be released) is exactly a Diablo clone set in a sci-fi world where you collect guns & armor & ammo. It plays _exactly_ like Diablo and has procedurally generated levels.

-me

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Original post by Palidine Hellgate London (soon to be released) is exactly a Diablo clone set in a sci-fi world where you collect guns & armor & ammo. It plays _exactly_ like Diablo and has procedurally generated levels. -me

And takes place 3 years after Diablo 2035! Although I'm not sure how they play exactly alike since it seems like Hellgate London is a first person game.

Edit: Ah... looks like it can be 3rd person as well. Still not quite the same feel as Diablo. Closer to Phantasy Star Online except slower.

Space Hack ( http://spacehack.rebelmind.com/en/main ) is a Diablo clone in Sci-Fi theme released somewhere around middle 2005.

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Original post by mctb32Space Hack ( http://spacehack.rebelmind.com/en/main )

Linkified for easy access

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Original post by Gnarf Quote: I really don't like those kinds of skills, because it can be _extremely_ frustrating to find a new item that is far better than you current item only to find it's worthless to you because you didn't know that kind of weapon was good and put all your points in 'Axe' instead of 'Lance'. At the very least, this kind of skill mandates some way to 'unspend' points. Sorta agree and sorta disagree. If you chose 'Axe' because you wanted to chop heads off of folks, then I don't see the problem, as a lance is no good for that. If you chose 'Axe' and there's no real difference between axes and swords in terms of gameplay, then that's a problem.[...]

In a game like Counter-Strike, it's a real problem if weapons aren't distinct and yet still ballanced. In a game like Diablo, there isn't really a way to make weapons distinct because all the things that are different about them (damage per hit, swings per second, etc) are also different between the same class of weapons (not only do you have 'hatchet' and 'great axe', but you have 'great axe +5 speed') and thus the divisions only affect the range of attributes (instead of 'hatchet', call it 'great axe +1 speed' and the difference is only graphical).

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[Classes]

Your classes don't really fit the kind of gameplay diablo has IMO. Most of the skills/spells listed so far in this thread seem to be really targetted at a kind of tactical/stealth gameplay that just doesn't exist in this type of game IMO. I am also thinking about a game somewhat similar to counter-strike except iso/ortho (Infantry, perhaps?), but that game would be only superfically similar to this one (both top-down, etc).

Actually made a futuristic dungeon crawler-ish game some time ago [and boy was it terrible looking, but the mechanics were fun and it made a lot of sense within it's own context. I liked it, but programmer art means I'm the only one who will ever like it :P], and while it wasn't a direct adaptation of diablo, as you're describing [which sounds pretty neat], it was future-ish in setting. My general method of implementation is that it took place on a spaceship, that got shot down, and crashlanded on an alien planet, and the ship has since been infested with quite a number of local alien wildlife [mean critters, people-eaters], and a bit of a dispatch of those who originally shot your ship down, that have come to assure that there are no survivers [recon teams, robot probes, those kinda things]. In star-trek fashion, the ship was civilian/military/scientific all roled into one, and the military section of the ship was destroyed by the weapons used to shoot it down. The civilian/research/general city like sections had weapons illegalized, and were only allowed in military sections [you don't want some dork shooting a hole in the hull of your pressurized spaceship]. Boils down to what is effectively a fully formed, but largely abandoned, futuristic city with sections of the outer landscape, thrown at an alien planet like an apple at pavement :P. Weapons mostly had a certain improvised and hand-crafted feel. Electrical discharge weapons made of old ship circuitry, guns machined out of reckage, that sorta thing [no kill-everything laser super guns or anything], with improvised armor to deal with a situation that was more or less sprung on a space-city turned planet-crater.

It was fun, but ugly as sin, and so short :P.... really wish i had developed it better.

Anyway!, yes make it! we need more futuristic games in general that aren't FPS :P The orcs vs' human deal has been beaten to death [at least give us new fantasy creatures! stop riding tolkiens poor tired races] and space is damn sexy.

As far as spells are concerned, since those are the topic-to-add-to,could always consider them sorta like add-ons to a specialized weapon [you have your shoot-to-kill weapon, then your utility weapon, that can do neat things like push doors open, knock enemies down, put up force feilds, throw gravity at the bad guys]. For the different classes, you can have versions of the suit [heavy suit = warrior aka just a straight out grunt, light suit = rogue aka only efficient at longer ranges, carries long range weapons, relies on stealth... and a research suit that represents the wizard, using mostly the special weapon]

You could always do what most thriller games do and put very very little ammo in the game. If you go trigger happy, you have to do melee. Makes the monsters a bit scarier when you know you only have 3 shots left. This also gives you an excuse to put in more melee weapons than normal :) Just make sure the melee weapons are consistant with the world... such as crowbars (HL + HL2), Fire axes, knives, bars. shovels, billy clubs, shock sticks / sick sticks (Minority report),

As far as psionics go, look at System Shock 2. It had psionics and it was futuristic. The type of psionics you had depended on the type of class you were. One was heavily on psionics... which you still had a device to use your psionics through. And the other two classes only had psionics as more of a backup or support roll like healing and second sight or something like that.

One thing I was thinking about doing in my game is scaling everything both down an up. What I mean by that is that levels/rares/etc would come less often, but be a very noticable increase in power.
For example, in Diablo 2 when you level up, you get 5 attribute points. While that may seem like a lot, after playing for a while that tiny difference doesn't really matter much. By the time you make it to 'hell' difficulty, items are giving far larger bonuses than levels. At the beginning of the game, level requirements come into play almost as often as attribute requrements.
If, in my game, you get 3 points(scaled down) to spend on attributes, but 1 point of attribute is about the same as 5 points in d2 (scaled up), the difference will be far more noticable and thus acts as a larger reward.
In d2, skill points after the first offer RAPIDLY diminishing returns, so in many cases it's better to go for breadth instead of depth. The same won't be quite as true in my game, but it must be to some degree or people would only buy a single skill. In addition to that, each point can make a much larger difference if levels are designed to come less often and they should make such a difference to make levels worth it.

Now, if levels don't come often, there don't need to be as many skills, and they can be more powerful. For example, a skill that temporarily gives your gun 3-way multishot (or triples the multishot if already present) could exist even though it would be VERY powerful. Or maybe it gives ((SkillLevel-1)/3)+2 multishot (2 for level 1-3, 3 for 4-6 etc) with increasing duration and decreasing penalties to damage (ie at level 1 it might do -50% damage, so it just makes you hit more enemies but not do more damage, but at level 2 its -45% so you do 110% damage total, at level 4 its -56% so you do 130% damage {3x shots}). In addition, there could be stuff like temporary invulnerability, infravision, etc (maybe there are different skill trees and you get a point for each one?)

This would also apply to item modifiers. I don't like the way that diablo has +1% defense for a total of 3 defense on a low-level item. I'm thinking that that kind of modifier might come in increments of 25 percentage points, and will always be enough to add at least 1 point (so a 2-damage weapon will not have +25% but might have +50%, etc). Since numbers are smaller but represent larger amounts, the bonuses are not only high but much more meaningful. By scaling everything in this way, I'm hoping that maybe finding a 'rare' (item with many modifiers) will be an awesome event, kind of like finding a unique in diablo 1 was (until you noticed your two-'fix item was much, much better). Also, I think that most modifiers will come in pairs - one that is a static bonus and another that is a per-suit-level bonus, both affecting the same item property, so that items will last longer (as they would not with only static bonuses) but not indefinitely (as they might with only level-based bonuses).

Now, despite all this, I think it might be a good idea to make single-modifier items (without the pairs) drop rather frequently, because it allows you to fill your equipment slots as you want and it gives you a chance to have backups when your ('rare') primary weapon isn't appropriate (ie a high-damage gun for bosses, explosive multishot for everything else, etc).

Thoughts/Comments/Suggestions?

[Edited by - Extrarius on May 26, 2006 5:18:12 PM]