Diablo 3 bought and installed! And I must say it's an extremely well developed and polished game. It's too bad network and server issues are still plaguing what is otherwise a fantastic game. I've only been able to put in around 4-5 hours gametime, but I have been disconnected twice for server maintenance. I'm not too concerned because I know things will get ironed out quickly. But there is a small minority of people on the forums that haven't been able to play for more than 5 minutes, or not at all. Unfortunately I believe these people to have network issues that made it impossible for Blizzard to be aware of.
I also believe that Diablo 3 uses an encrypted tunnel between the client and the server. Any loss of packets will produce disconnections. This helps prevent data mining and keeping the online environment pure, but considering that every person's network is just as unique as their computer, it was impossible for Blizzard to make sure that Diablo 3 would work on everything. Of course, this is all speculation.
One thing that I'm testing if it's really the computer or the network that has issues playing the game. I've installed the game on two computers now; my main computer; i7 Xeon 2.53 quad core / NVidia GTX 460, and my wife's computer; Core 2 Quad Q6600 / ATI 5770 and both computers work flawlessly. The final test I have tonight is getting the game to work on an old laptop; Core 2 Duo T2700 2.16 / ATI FireGL V5200. The video card is on the unsupported list but it should still be capable of running the game on everything low.
If the game works on all three machines with this variety of hardware, then the theory that the issues revolve around networks (Computers to ISP to Battle.net) instead of computer hardware seem to be valid. I'll update when I've tested the old laptop.
But anyways, Diablo 3 loves a Gamepad. Using the same script I used for Torchlight and binding the left stick to the dedicated move key in Diablo 3 works extremely well. The only issue I had is that the dedicated move key overrides SHIFT to root your character. I resolved this by having the L1 (SHIFT) button open a different set in XPadder where the left stick is unbound to any key, but the script still manages the ranged portion very well.
This whole setup makes maneuvering, combat, positioning, everything work so fluid that it's a wonder Blizzard didn't implement official gamepad support. It's amazing how well this works. It does take a little getting used to but not very long. By the end of the beta content I was extremely content with the layout and functionality.
The whole point of getting it to work on the old laptop is to play on by 37" TV and surround sound from the comfort of my couch!
I'm only level 14 Wizard right now but the available skills already make it complex enough to make it a considerable decision about which skills / runes to use. I died once, but it was because I got overconfident and the skill layout I chose was not the best for the impending situation. Combat is getting fast and frenetic and it's just so much fun even exploring. Maps and dungeons are regenerated every login, unlike D2 single-player. But it makes sense considering not only dungeons and mobs are randomly generated but also certain events, like finding the black mushroom in the Cathedral level 1.
Anyways, loving the game, my only complaint is that I wish I could play it more :)
Friday, May 18, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
Setting up the Gamepad
Setting up the game pad for games like Guild Wars or Tera or even Mass Effect using XPadder was inherently easy, just took some time to make sure I had all the buttons necessary to use all mapped out. But how does one setup a game pad for a game like Diablo 3 or Torchlight? There are no mechanics to control your character via the keyboard, these are mouse driven games.
Well, with a little thinking outside the box and some help from some simple AutoIT script programming, I actually got it to work. I tested this with Torchlight last night and I was able to level a Destroyer to level 10 and even continue leveling my 29 Rogue all with just the game pad, and NO hand cramps!
Here's the gist of the coding behind my AutoIT script:
Well, with a little thinking outside the box and some help from some simple AutoIT script programming, I actually got it to work. I tested this with Torchlight last night and I was able to level a Destroyer to level 10 and even continue leveling my 29 Rogue all with just the game pad, and NO hand cramps!
Here's the gist of the coding behind my AutoIT script:
- Place mouse cursor at the center of your character (different from every game, but is offset of Y from the center of your screen, different for each resolution)
- I call this the center of gravity, because your cursor always gravitates towards this center and you use the left stick to force the cursor away from the center of gravity.
- Force of gravity determines how far away you can move your cursor away from center when the stick is pushed to the edge
- Going to try and build some code to detect resolution and the game you are playing to auto-adjust values for the center of gravity.
- Detect left stick movement beyond the dead zone, which is defined by raw values of stick movement and center.
- Using a series of If/Then statements detect stick's X/Y as +/- from center (65536 / 2)
- Define Force to gravity; essentially take the raw data from the stick movement and divide by a certain amount to keep the cursor within 100 points of center.
- In order to account for ranged attacks I added a modifier that if SHIFT (button mapped by XPadder) is held down, the range increases (force decreases) to about 500 points from center allowing easier targeting and aiming at a distance.
- Using SHIFT also keeps your character still so you automatically try to attack using ranged or use area skills when you press this modifier.
- When the stick movement is detected and placed on the screen, the left mouse button is pressed every .2 seconds (done with XPadder)
The only issue I had while playing Torchlight is that I would pick up EVERYTHING that was dropped very easily by just moving around. But this is an issue with Torchlight, the left mouse button controls movement and ALL interaction. This is also an issue while in town as I would talk with people constantly, and sometimes would trigger going up a dungeon level just after I went down it because the mouse clicks are so fast. The range trigger helped with these issues once I implemented it, but I had to remember to use it.
But really, I had such a blast playing Torchlight last night, I honestly feel that this should have been a viable control scheme integrated by the designer. But even games like Diablo 3 which are cutting edge action RPGs completely ignore game pad integration! It's mind boggling how well this works and how easily it was implemented (still needs some tweaking though).
Even better, is that Diablo 3 has a dedicated move key. When pressed it will automatically move you towards your cursor without interacting with anything. This is awesome because I can modify XPadder to use that key instead of mouse click and all my small issues with Torchlight will disappear! D3 begs to have official controller support like this!
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Twiddling my thumbs...
This year, 2012, Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2. Two games that, to me, are going to be an evolution of epic proportions. Not revolution, though, and that's a good thing.
Diablo 3 sets out to bring about the next evolution of the aRPG genre, doing away with skill trees and trying to remove the ability of creating a "broken" character.
I played Diablo 2 and it's expansion since it was released, but I only leveled ONE character past 90, EVER. I re-created more characters than I can possibly count simply because I came to a point during the came (sometime during act 2 or act 3) in which the skills I had leveled were no longer working and I kept dying. Playing a game like Diablo 2 and having to build your character a certain way (read: not MY way) in order to play the late-game is not fun.
Diablo 3 changes this, in that it makes ALL skills viable throughout the entire game. The damage of your skills are based on the weapon you are carrying. So, if I am a wizard carrying a two-handed greatsword, my skills will do a lot of damage but with slow attack rate, and I won't be able to use an off-hand orb. Or I can have a knife and be a fast caster with an off-hand orb, or I can find (or craft) an awesome wand and just devastate everything. I'm not limited to only using wands and staves!
Also, attributes are auto-assigned when you level. This has caused quite a stir in the community, but again this prevents players from creating broken characters. Plus, anyone can modify these stats by using gear that adds to them, and using gems in crafting to beef up certain stats.
Blizzard seems to have done an amazing job making sure that everyone who plays will have a viable base character with which to customize via skill-set, gear, crafting, gems and anything else we haven't seen yet. Plus every class gets more than 100 skills that all work with your character and wont get obsolete in late game, and you can outfit your character with the skills that work well with your play style, up to 6 skills assigned at any given time.
So, if I get my wizard to level 30 and I find that my current skills and tactics aren't working on mobs anymore do I need to re-roll? NO! Just search through the myriad of skills for other working combinations, find better gear, and upgrade the artisans for better crafted gear!
Guild Wars 2 sets to bring about the next evolution of MMO's, doing away with the standard quest structure, "skill cancer" bars, and in general players competing against players for EVERYTHING. Need to go and "kill 10 rats" but that other player doing the same quest killed the last one in the area and now you have to wait for another rat to spawn? No, not fun. Player competition should only be in PVP, PVE should be player cooperation!
I think the only time that I had to talk to an NPC quest give was during the tutorial area, since then I just roamed around and events would pop up in my hud and I would stop by and help out!
I also like how there is very little hand holding when it comes to events: I remember my first event in the human starter world, it was on a farm and I could help the farmer by doing many things:
-Water crops
-Weed out worms
-Feed cattle
To weed out worms you had to find their burrows and stomp on them to get them to come out, defeat them and move on. To water crops you had to FIND buckets of water and pour them on the crops. To feed the cattle you had to FIND some feed and bring it to the cattle.
All this was done WITHOUT hand-holding markers on maps, exclamation points over objects, or tooltips in the event description or hud. Seriously it actually took me several minutes to find the crops to water with the bucket I was carrying! I like that kind of difficulty, the kind that actually rewards players for thinking it through or discovering it for yourself. Also, this is when I noticed that there aren't any enemy dots on the map with easy to read aggro circles. When you target an enemy; if an enemy is orange he is docile, if an enemy is red he will aggro you if you get too close, but you don't really know how close is too close.
After helping the farmer for a while, the mother worm shows up and she's huge! That's when the dynamic event popped up and everyone around joined the battle to take down the worm without having to group up, everyone got experience and loot. When we all finally felled the beast the event was cleared. And just when I was thinking "where do I go now?", I walk down the road a bit and another event pops up in my hud, a different challenge with different goals.
This has encouraged me to discover, to walk off the beaten path, and explore the map even beyond what the map obviously shows. Explorers are rewarded in this game, and it's so much fun! If you walk the beaten path you still get events, but there's just so much more if you just take the time to explore off the road.
I better stop now, I could go on forever. 2012 is a year for evolution, the game mechanics of ye' old are dead, it's the start of a new era where fun and cooperation without needless mechanics to get in the way are here!
Diablo 3 sets out to bring about the next evolution of the aRPG genre, doing away with skill trees and trying to remove the ability of creating a "broken" character.
I played Diablo 2 and it's expansion since it was released, but I only leveled ONE character past 90, EVER. I re-created more characters than I can possibly count simply because I came to a point during the came (sometime during act 2 or act 3) in which the skills I had leveled were no longer working and I kept dying. Playing a game like Diablo 2 and having to build your character a certain way (read: not MY way) in order to play the late-game is not fun.
Diablo 3 changes this, in that it makes ALL skills viable throughout the entire game. The damage of your skills are based on the weapon you are carrying. So, if I am a wizard carrying a two-handed greatsword, my skills will do a lot of damage but with slow attack rate, and I won't be able to use an off-hand orb. Or I can have a knife and be a fast caster with an off-hand orb, or I can find (or craft) an awesome wand and just devastate everything. I'm not limited to only using wands and staves!
Also, attributes are auto-assigned when you level. This has caused quite a stir in the community, but again this prevents players from creating broken characters. Plus, anyone can modify these stats by using gear that adds to them, and using gems in crafting to beef up certain stats.
Blizzard seems to have done an amazing job making sure that everyone who plays will have a viable base character with which to customize via skill-set, gear, crafting, gems and anything else we haven't seen yet. Plus every class gets more than 100 skills that all work with your character and wont get obsolete in late game, and you can outfit your character with the skills that work well with your play style, up to 6 skills assigned at any given time.
So, if I get my wizard to level 30 and I find that my current skills and tactics aren't working on mobs anymore do I need to re-roll? NO! Just search through the myriad of skills for other working combinations, find better gear, and upgrade the artisans for better crafted gear!
Guild Wars 2 sets to bring about the next evolution of MMO's, doing away with the standard quest structure, "skill cancer" bars, and in general players competing against players for EVERYTHING. Need to go and "kill 10 rats" but that other player doing the same quest killed the last one in the area and now you have to wait for another rat to spawn? No, not fun. Player competition should only be in PVP, PVE should be player cooperation!
I think the only time that I had to talk to an NPC quest give was during the tutorial area, since then I just roamed around and events would pop up in my hud and I would stop by and help out!
I also like how there is very little hand holding when it comes to events: I remember my first event in the human starter world, it was on a farm and I could help the farmer by doing many things:
-Water crops
-Weed out worms
-Feed cattle
To weed out worms you had to find their burrows and stomp on them to get them to come out, defeat them and move on. To water crops you had to FIND buckets of water and pour them on the crops. To feed the cattle you had to FIND some feed and bring it to the cattle.
All this was done WITHOUT hand-holding markers on maps, exclamation points over objects, or tooltips in the event description or hud. Seriously it actually took me several minutes to find the crops to water with the bucket I was carrying! I like that kind of difficulty, the kind that actually rewards players for thinking it through or discovering it for yourself. Also, this is when I noticed that there aren't any enemy dots on the map with easy to read aggro circles. When you target an enemy; if an enemy is orange he is docile, if an enemy is red he will aggro you if you get too close, but you don't really know how close is too close.
After helping the farmer for a while, the mother worm shows up and she's huge! That's when the dynamic event popped up and everyone around joined the battle to take down the worm without having to group up, everyone got experience and loot. When we all finally felled the beast the event was cleared. And just when I was thinking "where do I go now?", I walk down the road a bit and another event pops up in my hud, a different challenge with different goals.
This has encouraged me to discover, to walk off the beaten path, and explore the map even beyond what the map obviously shows. Explorers are rewarded in this game, and it's so much fun! If you walk the beaten path you still get events, but there's just so much more if you just take the time to explore off the road.
I better stop now, I could go on forever. 2012 is a year for evolution, the game mechanics of ye' old are dead, it's the start of a new era where fun and cooperation without needless mechanics to get in the way are here!
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