Grim Dawn : Developer Digest

Ceci est la première brève d'une série probablement longue. Dans cette série de Developer Digest, nous reviendrons régulièrement sur les interventions des développeurs de Grim Dawn sur TitanQuest.net et autres endroits où ils interviendrait. À l'heure actuelle il s'agit donc des interventions de Arthur "medierra" Bruno, co-fondateur de Crate Entertainment et ancien concepteur principal de Titan Quest. Pour cette première édition nous remonterons assez loin, histoire de mettre en évidence des interventions que nous avions ratées au cours du mois de septembre.

Les messages seront organisés dans la mesure du possible pour à la fois conserver la chronologie, mais également grouper les messages provenant du même sujet. Nous noterons également qu'un nouveau collaborateur de Crate Entertainment a rejoint les forums de TitanQuest.net : Rhis, programmeur chez Crate Entertainment. Nous essaierons également de proposer un rapide résumé en français pour chaque sujet traité. Ce format a toutefois un certain nombres de limitations, en particulier concernant le contexte de ces interventions.

Si vous avez des suggestions sur la forme que doit prendre ce rendez-vous régulier, n'hésitez pas. Gardez tout de même à l'esprit que les prochaines éditions couvriront une période beaucoup plus courte et ne seront donc pas aussi longue que celle-ci.

medierra wrote:

Well, you should be happy to learn that we won't have staves in the new game and caster items will all be one-handed. We've got some ideas that I think are a little cooler than wands. ; p Various changes in the gameplay will prevent this from causing imbalances... or at least, that's the plan.

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medierra wrote:

My current thinking, which is subject to change, is that there will be no caster-specific weapons and caster-types will be able to use the full variety of available weapons. Instead, there will be a caster off-hand item called a "fulcrum", which will be used to more safely and efficiently channel the volatile energy used in magic. I think this is a good direction since most casters will be more often using offensive spells than a weapon and due to their typical glass-cannon balance, it seems appropriate to promote the use of an off-hand item that trades defense for increased offensive power.

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medierra wrote:

There will be some attribute requirements to use more powerful items in certain classes but the primary limitation on most items will be your character's effectiveness using the item rather than there ability to equip it.

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Dans cette série il est donc question principalement de l'équipement des lanceurs de sorts. En effet, Grim Dawn ne proposera pas de bâtons, mais uniquement des armes à une main pour les lanceurs de sorts. Un certain nombres d'idées, et ce ne seront pas les traditionnelles baguettes. medierra laisse également sous-entendre ici des changements dans le gameplay par rapport à Titan Quest. L'idée actuelle est donc de ne pas avoir d'armes spécifiques pour les lanceurs de sorts, qui auront donc accès à toutes les armes et en feront usages, et en contrepartie utiliseront en seconde main un objet appelé "fulcrum" ("pivot" selon une traduction littérale, éthymoligiquement "pied de lit"), qui fera "effet de levier" pour augmenter et sécuriser les effets de l'énergie magique.
Enfin, il y aura certes des prérequis d'attributs pour utiliser les objets les plus puissants, mais le plus souvent les attributs agiront sur l'efficacité du personnage avec les différents objets plutôt que sur leur capacité à les utiliser.

medierra wrote:

We actually toyed with the idea of having more than two rings early on but dropped it for this very reason. Having more different types of items to collect allows designers to better restrict where certain types of powerful bonuses can come from and in what quantity the player can accumulate them. This balancing scheme was not properly utilized in all cases though and it lead to problems like players being able to accumulate 100% cooldown reduction because that bonus appeared on some item types it was not supposed to be allowed on. So, you can imagine how things like that would be even more difficult to control if players could get 4 or 8 of any item type, and thus that many duplicates of the same bonus. Its difficult to just make bonuses weaker since they have to also scale up - so the lowest level might end up being really lame like +0.5% lightning damage. We'd probably also have to disallow a lot of bonus types from rings in this case since some bonuses are very powerful even in small quantities.

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medierra wrote:

Limiting stats in that way would be a good catch-all mechanism but I think its better to make an effort to prevent it from happening. Otherwise you end up with all these hidden rules like warcraft where some items stack, other items sort of stack but have weird rules and some don't stack at all. I remember items with a plus to movement speed stacked in a weird way where the second item contributed some power but only at 50% value or something like that. Part of the reason they do that, is that they just have an inventory grid where any item can go into any slot. There is no way to limit which types of bonuses can go into which slot, so they have to add in hidden balancing rules. We do have caps on some things like movement and attack speed since too much of that could make the game look ridiculous and potentially hurt performance. However, I think we're better off making more of an effort to restrict which bonuses can appear where, than by adding in more caps.

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On parle ici des bonus. L'idée générale restera probablement la même que pour Titan Quest, en évitant cependant cette fois les erreurs qui s'y étaient introduites, avec des types d'objets pouvant avoir des bonus qu'ils n'auraient pas du avoir, menant par exemple à la possibilité d'avoir -100% au temps de recharge. Même si l'idée d'avoir plus de deux emplacements d'anneaux leur paraissait intéressante, les risques de pouvoir trop empiler les mêmes bonus deviennent alors trop grands, et demanderait alors des méchanismes un peu obscurs, comme limiter l'effet du cumul de bonus similaires, de façon plus ou moins opaque et plus ou moins cohérente.

medierra wrote:

We are looking into some char customization options, but it all depends on what we're able to manage without too much engineering time. One possibility is to have hairstyles instead of helmets. The hairstyles themselves wouldn't have stats but you'd be able to give any hairstyle stats by socketing it with special relic-like items designed especially for the head slot. So, essentially the special "head-relics" would be like helmets in terms of their bonuses but they could be applied to any hairpiece, so the look of your character would be purely your own personal aesthetic and not based on what stats you'd be getting. We're also talking about modifying the dye system so that it swaps out the normal-map too, which would allow us to do complete skin and clothing swaps. Unfortunately, without investing in new tech to divide up the skin and clothing texture on the character, there won't be a way to control skin and clothing separately. So, we'll have to figure out how much time that would take to implement and decide whether we can do it. Personally, I'm not a fan of systems where stats change the characters appearance. To me its one of those cool ideas that usually doesn't play out the way you'd hope. I mean, part of character customization and games is the freedom of making your own choices. In Fable2 I naturally wanted my character to be a hot babe (what can I say? If I'm going to have to look at something for 10 hours...) however, things went horribly wrong as my character gained strength, intelligence, and ate food to regain health. I ended up with a fat, tattooed body-builder. My character was absolutely hideous. To make matters worse, I ended up wearing some old granny outfit because it offered the best bonuses of anything I'd found. Sure, I could have trimmed down had I played an additional 99999 hrs and gone to the store to buy the 1 stick of wilted celery that appeared everyday but after I lost the weight, I'd still be butch, tattooed, and wearing granny clothes.

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medierra wrote:

Yeah, the idea is that it wouldn't be just hair but have something like a circlet. hood, bandanna, or hat that would be socketed. The hair isn't magic silly ; p I'm not sure we'll actually do this though.

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medierra wrote:

Hey, alright, alright... no magic hair helmets ; p We are actually considering exchanging helmets for pauldrons that you can mix and match with different sets of armor. Part of the reason we want to move away from helmets is that its hard to come up with cool looking designs for the time period we're working in now. No decision has been made as of yet.

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medierra wrote:

Well, we have no desire to adhere too tightly to history and, unlike TQ, this game is not intended to take place in earth history. Grim Dawn is set in a fictional world but it is based on a period of earth history for the purposes of creating a consistent and believable culture that players can relate to. We're definitely taking some liberties and we aren't concerned about historical accuracy for the sake of accuracy. However, we do want characters to look cool and, based on our current designs, its not easy to come up with a lot of really viable helmet options. I'm sure we can figure something out if we decide we absolutely have to make helmets but we think some the other equipment options we're exploring now could more interesting. Don't worry, the pauldrons won't be big spiky nerf pauldrons you see in certain games that I won't mention by name. We're also hoping to avoid clown armor.

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medierra wrote:

Ok, wow... Well, people have made numerous requests for a character customization system that allows them to change hair, skin color, and such. We don't have the resources to create a major new system like Oblivion's complex facial customization but we can probably do hair, skin, and possibly some head swaps. We're trying to come up with a system that the community will enjoy and we're here on the forums discussing it and looking for feedback. So, if you have any suggestions for how you'd like to see that work instead of just ridiculously negative criticism, we'd be pleased to hear them. I mean, if for whatever reason the majority of the audience hates the idea of being able to change their hair at a barber or whatever after character creation, we can certainly leave it out and save ourselves some time. It just seemed like this was a feature people had enjoyed in other games like Fable and apparently Korean MMOs. ; p Hmm, if only there was some way of allowing people to vote on issues like this... some sort of new posting feature where it would show the results of these votes... we could call this new type of post a "poll"... if only we had something like that.....

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medierra wrote:

Hah, well I think you're envisioning it in the worst possible way. I mean, we are talking about a dark gritty world and the options we're envisioning aren't derbies and beehive hairdos with pink bows in them. In a dark gritty world everyone doesn't have to look identical though. We'll have options that visually fit the setting. Its really no different than being able to wear all the fruity multi-colored helmets available in TQ, except in this case you'll have hair and we're aiming to tone down the fruity multi-coloredness.

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Le cœur de cette longue série d'interventions concerne la personnalisation du personnage, mais revient également un peu sur le monde dans lequel se situera Grim Dawn. En effet, si celui-ci s'appuie sur l'époque victorienne que nous avons connu, pour une question de cohérence globale de l'univers, Grim Dawn se situera dans un monde qui lui est propre, et non dans un contexte historique terrestre, contrairement à Titan Quest qui se plaçait dans le contexte historique de la mythologie (principalement grecque). En ce qui concerne la personnalisation elle-même, Crate Entertainment étudie les possibilités, dans la limite de leurs ressources limitées bien entendu. Une des considérations est de ne pas disposer de casques comme pièces d'équipement, étant donné qu'il s'avère difficile de fournir une large variété d'aspects graphiques qui en même temps ne seraient pas incohérents avec l'époque. Les possibilités étudiées sont par exemple de proposer une variété de coiffures différentes pour le personnage, et de disposer d'un emplacement d'équipement invisible (une rune magique par exemple) ou très peu visible (boucles d'oreille, bandanas, etc.) qui apporterait les bonus d'ordinaires présents sur des casques. Une alternative serait également de remplacer les pièces d'équipement de type casque par des pièces d'équipement de type épaulettes, laissant encore ici la voie ouverte à une personnalisation durable de la tête du personnage.

Il est cependant improbable que Grim Dawn propose un impact des caractéristiques du personnage sur son apparence, à la manière de Fable 2. Si en effet une telle fonctionnalité, demandée par certains, apporterait une immersion plus intense et un certain réalisme, l'effet pervers est également qu'elle peut apporter beaucoup de frustration : quelle déception de créer un personnage qui est une jolie jeune fixe très sexy, et de se retrouver très rapidement à mesure que le personnage gagne en force et endurance, à regarder une culturiste obèse bardée de tatouages de prisonnier !
Le denrier point intéressant de ces interventions, si l'on omet les réponses à un utilisateur particulièrement hostile pour une raison étrange à la personnalisation des coupes de cheveux, pensant que cela mènerait à avoir des personnages masculins avec des coupes féminines rose fluo en contradiction avec l'atmosphère sombre du jeu (oui, il y a quelques cas...), est très loin d'être assuré. En effet, Crate Entertainment aimerait pouvoir modifier le système de teinture. Toutefois, afin de pouvoir séparer la texture de la peau et la texture de l'équipement, et donc agir séparément sur les deux, il leur faudrait investir dans l'évolution du moteur sur ce point technique. La disponibilité de cette fonctionnalité dépendra donc grandement du temps que cela prendrait pour la développer, et des ressources disponibles compte tenu des autres impératifs de Grim Dawn.

medierra wrote:

I think you guys will like what I have in mind for difficulty balance on the new game. I got a lot of pressure working on TQ to reduce difficulty and ensure that even legendary wasn't too hard for most players to get through. On this project, I don't want to make normal too difficult and actually want to make it faster for hardcore players to jump into higher difficulty modes. Each mode though, even normal, will have sidequests that take you into areas of extreme challenge. Now, with total freedom in the design of the game, you can expect i'll be taking the gloves off for higher difficulty moves. I want to avoid nonsense like totally random 1-shot kills but I think you'll encounter some fairly insidious enemies. Since we're reducing the amount of items enemies equip, we will be able to have more enemies on screen. I think having larger groups of hero type enemies that can use a wide range of skills sounds like a fun challenge!

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medierra wrote:

The first thing I'd ask is, if you have enough bodies onscreen that its slowing down performance, how bad was performance when they were alive? Living enemies are FAR more of a performance hit than a bunch of dead ones. Once enemies die their AI and animation ends, after which they're bodies are just a mesh and aren't much more performance intensive than an environment object like a rock. Of course, if you put enough rocks on-screen at once, that would eventually slow things down too. The equipment enemies drop is also about as performance intensive, so if you killed 100 enemies in one location and they each dropped 3 items, that's 400 objects on-screen, which could be a slowdown. But once again, if the enemies aren't causing issues for you when they're alive, they shouldn't be a problem once dead. It seems like the dead bodies would only be a real issue if enemies were continually spawning and being killed in the same location, which doesn't really happen under normal circumstances. Once you move far enough off-screen from the bodies, their meshes vanish and they're completely unloaded from memory. The reason bodies remain at all is that at Iron Lore, some people felt that the bodies should remain until you'd left the area both for the sense of realism and because of the satisfaction of crushing a big camp of enemies and being able to see all the bodies piled up afterward. I don't personally care that much whether the bodies remain or not and was considering the option of setting most or all creatures to dissolve a few seconds after they died (maybe I should make a poll to see what the community thinks). This could help performance slightly in cases where you killed a large group of enemies and then moved up causing a new group to spawn before you'd gotten far enough away for the bodies to unload. However, it wouldn't be that much of a savings. What will help a lot more is reducing the number of items each enemy drops on death. Beyond a certain point, the problem is that the game just wasn't designed to handle over a certain number of enemies. We may be able to go from having 30 to 50 enemies on-screen at once, or something like that but I don't think we'll be able to make it support 100 enemies at a time unless we re-engineer enemies to be simpler and contain less data.

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medierra wrote:

Done and done! I have just implemented the first Dactyl-like enemy as per your request, upgraded though of course to be 38% more evil. I'm thinking of using them as a basic fodder creature, sort of in the same role satyrs filled in TQ.

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medierra wrote:

I'm not an engineer, so I can't say this with total authority, but I am pretty sure the issue is draw-calls to the graphics card and CPU usage more so than a memory issue. If you have 208357238904562934856 satyrs on screen that all use the same 512x512 skin texture, then only 1 skin texture gets loaded into memory. However, each instance of an object on screen has to do a call to the graphics card to draw it. Sometimes each object requires multiple draw calls depending on whether it is normal mapped and what shaders it uses. So each satyr, each sword, each rock, on screen requires draw calls to the graphics card that have a performance cost. Also, there is a performance cost to the CPU for every living enemy that is animating, performing AI functions, calling all sorts of routines to determine a path to the player around objects, update that path, decide if its in range of the player, update its health and energy, call for help to other monsters, etc. Of course, once an enemy dies, it stops doing all these things but it still has a draw call. In terms of database records, they work much the same as textures, if satyrshaman01 is onscreen, the satyrshaman01 record is in memory. If there are 230959723408957 satyrshaman01's onscreen, there is still just that one record being called, but, of course the CPU is tracking separate instances of them all and trying to remember how much health each has, what different equipment each is wearing, where they are on the map, where they're trying to go, the state of all their skill timers and such... The big satyr camp is a problematic area because it really has too many guys too close together with too many art assets even for the normal game. It really depends why the game is slowing down at that point. If its just a CPU issue from the sheer number of living enemies, then removing dead enemies won't help. If its a graphics card draw-call issue, then dissolving the bodies could help somewhat but you'd still have a lot of equipment lying around. In terms of draw-calls, a potion bottle, rock, or sack of gold is just as bad as a dead satyr. Also, note that draw-calls only occur for objects visible on-screen. Even though bodies may still be loaded in memory once they are off scree but not far enough to be unloaded, they aren't being drawn. Reducing the number of items that enemies wear isn't really much of a compromise. It's something we want to do anyway to just reduce the sheer volume of loot dropped in the world. I think it will make finding items, even common ones, a little more rewarding, allow us to regulate drops better (so, for example, we can ensure hero monsters always drop better loot). it will improve performance, and it will allow for a better balanced economy. I have some exciting new features planned for loot... but I'm not quite ready to talk about them just yet. ; )

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Difficulté, ennemis, performances... C'est de ça que l'on parle ici. Tout d'abord concernant la difficulté, medierra revient sur celle de Titan Quest et les contraintes qu'il avait lors de sa conception. La mission pour Titan Quest était que le jeu ne soit jamais trop difficile pour le majorité des joueurs, y compris en légendaire. Pour Grim Dawn, medierra a les mains libres. Ce qui est prévu pour l'instant est un mode normal qui permettra aux joueurs peu expérimentés de se familiariser avec le jeu et le genre, tout en permettant aux joueurs plus expérimentés et avides de difficulté de se rendre rapidement dans les difficultés supérieures. Toutefois, chaque mode de difficulté, y compris le mode normal, possèdera des quêtes secondaires proposant un challenge conséquent, permettant ainsi de pimenter un peu la progression si on le souhaite, sans pour autant complètement bloquer ceux qui ne goûteraient pas autant que d'autres cette difficulté.

La discussion a également porté sur des considérations de performances, avec certains soucis rencontrés par certains dans les zones avec de nombreux ennemis et de nombreux cadavres, puisque rappelons les les cadavres d'ennemis dans Titan Quest restent visibles jusqu'à ce que le personnage se soit suffisamment éloigné de la zone, pour l'immersion, et la satisfaction de voir le carnage que l'on vient de commettre. En résumé medierra nous indique, bien que rappelant qu'il n'est pas un ingénieur technique, que la plus grosse cause de performances dans Titan Quest dans ces situations (en particulier avec certains MODs augmentant le nombre d'ennemis) n'était pas temps la multiplication des cadavres d'ennemis, mais plus le nombre important d'objets que ces ennemis laissaient derrière eux en mourrant. Il en profite alors pour nous rappeler un choix de conception qui a été fait pour Grim Dawn, et qui selon nous est sur la bonne voie, à savoir réduire énormément la quantité d'objets en améliorant leur qualité moyenne. En effet, y a-t-il ne serait-ce qu'une personne qui a joué à Titan Quest plus de quelques minutes sans mettre un filtre d'affichage des objets sur au minimum la qualité "normaux", et plus généralement même au minimum "magiques" si ce n'est "rares" depuis que cette option a été introduite dans Immortal Throne ? Pas grand monde. Ces objets que tout le monde ignore sont donc bel et bien au final parfaitement superflus, et nuisent qui plus est aux performances.

medierra wrote:

We haven't made a final decision yet on how and where the game will be made available but at the moment Steam seems a likely choice.

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medierra wrote:

More like: going console is all too often looked at as being the only way you'll likely get publisher funding for your project and avoid going out of business. The less you understand about the nature of a problem, the more obvious the answer usually seems. In the case of ILE going console, the decision wasn't a matter of who was going to buy the game, it was a matter of who was going to fund it's development. While working on Immortal Throne, Iron Lore created and pitched a concept to THQ and other publishers for their next mythology inspired PC ARPG. THQ said they were not interested in another Titan Quest product and the message we got from other publishers was that a PC focused product was a non-starter. At the time most were looking for Xbox360 with PC port and some wanted Xbox360 and PS3 with no PC port. The outlook on PC at that point in time was very negative for publishers. Iron Lore was almost out of operational funds and on the brink of closing its doors when some supporters from THQ came through for us with the DoW: Soul Storm project. The money from that project would keep Iron Lore afloat for another 9 months and allow development of a new game concept. Unfortunately, there were a lot of reason why Iron Lore would have liked to stay PC-only and one of those was the problem of porting their engine to run on console. It took a significant amount of time to get a demo running on console. This did not leave sufficient time for the company to pitch Black Legion and survive through lengthy contract negotiations. Iron Lore did generate a lot of publisher interest with Black Legion and got into serious talks with a couple publishers. It looked like a publishing deal was on the horizon but, sadly, the owners realized in Jan of 2008 that they did not have enough funds to keep the company open as long as it would likely have taken to sign a deal. They made the difficult but commendable decision to close down while they still had enough money to pay their employees severance. With regards to Crate pitching Black Legion... Given how close Iron Lore had seemingly come to landing a deal for it, we thought it made sense to pick up where ILE had left off. Unfortunately, the timing was terrible as the economy was sinking further into crisis and some of our best prospects in terms of publishers were undergoing massive layoffs and canceling projects. Under such economic conditions, it seemed very unlikely that anyone was going to take a risk funding a small start-up. So we started thinking of ways we could develop something independent of outside funding. Fortunately, we happened to know some people that could license us an RPG engine and toolset at very reasonable costs. ; ) And so, here we are, on the path of virtue once again!

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medierra wrote:

Well, the point is that it isn't same thing. Obviously publishers aren't going to fund something that they think people wouldn't buy but there are also reasons why they may not fund something that people would buy. [...] I'm just saying, though the decision for Iron Lore to go console may not have made sense from an audience perspective, they didn't have much of a choice.

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medierra wrote:

The main impediment to doing something like that is that we don't have a console-ready engine. Unfortunately, given the sales figures I've seen and the cost to put out a game like this on XBLA or PSN, it doesn't seem like it would be our best shot at avoiding starvation. ; )

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medierra wrote:

Sorry but we cannot provide support for TQ in any official way since it is owned by THQ. We also do not posses the right version of the engine or any of the resources that would be necessary for such work.

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medierra wrote:

ShadowDweller wrote: Grim news. I wonder... Does THQ itself pay any attention to TQ?.. It does not seem so.

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medierra wrote:

We are considering Impulse and various other services besides Steam, although Steam does have one of the largest audiences, so we will definitely be there. We are using the same localization system but it could be some time before we're able to localize in other languages. I'm not sure that we'll be able to afford V/O in other languages just due to the cost unless our initial launch turns out to be more successful than our baseline estimates. We realize that a lot of our potential audience is overseas though and will try to do whatever we can to accommodate them.

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De retour pour une longue séries d'interventions, centrées cette fois sur la méthode de mise à disposition du jeu, la localisation, et un rappel de ce qui s'est passé depuis que Iron Lore a commencé à essayer de vendre son projet Black Legion. Dans l'ordre, Grim Dawn sera commercialisé en version électronique. C'est plus que probable qu'il sera disponible sur Steam, mais Crate Entertainment s'intéresse également à Impulse, la plateforme de distribution de StarDock, ainsi qu'à d'autres services en plus de Steam.
Au niveau de la localisation, Grim Dawn reprendra le fonctionnement de Titan Quest, permettant donc d'avoir à disposition plusieurs localisations et de passer de l'une à l'autre dans le menu de configuration, peut-être également pour les voix. S'il est très improbable qu'il y ait des voix dans une autre langue que l'anglais, et qu'il n'est pas assuré que les textes eux-mêmes soient initialement disponibles dans d'autres langues, la reprise de ce système permettra assurément aux différentes communautés non anglophones de proposer au public des traductions dans différentes langues.

Enfin un petit retour sur ce qu'il s'est passé pour Iron Lore. Ainsi, comme nous l'avions relaté il y a quelques temps, Iron Lore avait commencé à développer un concept pour un nouveau H&S sur PC pendant qu'ils travaillaient sur Iron Lore, Black Legion, et à essayer de trouver des investisseurs, entrant en discussion avec THQ et d'autres. Les premiers retours furent assez tranchants, les éditeurs alors n'étant pas très friands de jeux purement PC, mais plutôt de jeux Xbox360 avec un port console, voire Xbox360 et PS3 et pas de port PC du tout. L'avenir ne semblait alors par rose pour Iron Lore, et ils ont eu une bouffée d'oxygène en ayant l'opportunité de travailler sur Dawn of War: Soulstorm, ce qui leur a donné de quoi tenir 9 mois de plus. Iron Lore s'est donc attelé à développer une version de démonstration de leur projet sur consoles pour essayer de vendre le projet désormais comme un H&S pour consoles avec peut-être un port sur PC. Le projet attirait alors l'intérêt de plusieurs investisseurs dont THQ. Malheureusement, arrivé en janvier 2008, Iron Lore arrivait à bout de ses fonds et n'était plus en mesure de payer ses employés suffisamment longtemps pour aboutir à un accord avec un investissuer, et a donc fermé l'activité pendant qu'ils pouvaient encore payer leur dernier salaire à leurs collaborateurs.

Lorsque Crate Entertainment s'est formé plusieurs mois plus tard, reprendre là où Iron Lore s'était arrêté semblait être la décision la plus logique. Malheureusement la crise avait commencé, et chez les éditeurs qui étaient les plus intéressés par Black Legion quelques mois auparavant, licenciements et annulations de projets étaient alors au programme. La suite on la connaît, Crate Entertainment s'en retourne aux racines, le jeu PC, avec un projet de H&S d'ambition plus modeste, utilisant les technologies développées par Iron Lore, qu'ils purent obtenir à prix d'ami auprès de leurs anciens patrons d'Iron Lore. Le moteur de Titan Quest n'étant pas compatible avec les consoles, et les coûts des différentes validation pour XBLA ou PSN étant relativement élevés, l'option d'une version console de ce nouveau projet était de toute façon indisponible.

Pour finir sur cette série d'intervention, en réponse à une question posée, medierra nous indique qu'ils n'ont aucunement la possibilité légale d'apporter officiellement quelque modification que ce soit sur Titan Quest, puisque entièrement possédé par THQ, et que de toutes façons ils n'ont ni la bonne version du moteur, ni les ressources nécessaires pour un tel travail.

medierra wrote:

I think we basically just need to balance the economy better. The WYSIWYG loot drop system and the sheer number of junk items that are available to sell as a result are a big part of the problem. We also need tighter control over item prices. But yeah, I agree with what you're saying and hopefully we can achieve better results this time.

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medierra wrote:

Yeah, I hear ya. I was playing the other day and found this incredible necklace at the store. I just needed to go farm a little more gold but by the time I got back it was already gone. It really removes that satisfying element of working to save up for some great item. I'm probably dating myself in saying this but I remember that feeling best from playing Dragon Warrior on the NES. I'd always rush ahead in that game, trying to dodge my way through areas where I'd get my *** kicked so I could make it to the next town, get some item I wasn't supposed to have yet and then bring it back to earlier levels. Anyway, its an easy change to extend the time items remain on vendors. Here is the question though - are vendor farmers going to be pissed that it takes forever for vendors to change inventory? I think to really have a chance to go out an earn a substantial amount of gold for an item you've seen, you'd need items to remain on vendors for 30mins, possibly an hour. I should also note that this game will have less vendors. I currently expect that there will only be 3 vendor locations in the world. We want to build the world so players return to the same areas more frequently and interact more extensively with familiar NPCs. So that could potentially make long item refresh times more frustrating. I know there are also times when I am desperately looking for a certain type of item like a +attribute ring so I can equip a new piece of unique armor or resistance gear so I can better survive enemies in a specific area. I'd like to hear what other people have to say but overall, I'm in favor of longer refresh on vendors.

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medierra wrote:

Haha, in-game lay-away. Wait, what if the vendor would give you a "credit" so you could purchase the item immediately but over time you'd be charged money for the money you borrowed... it could maybe be called "APR". If you didn't pay it back you'd eventually start to get annoying dialog pop-ups and then finally hero monsters would show up to break your legs. I think we already have leg-breaking tech in the game. I think its a cool idea though, I'll have to see if we can squeeze something like that in.

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medierra wrote:

Well, I think the purpose of the vendor is to help fill the couple equipment slots at any given point where you've just had no luck finding anything good. Like when you're level 32 carrying around those level 7 unique boots with cool stats but 3 armor and you're finally tired of getting your *** kicked. I think there should also be the possibility of occasionally finding a really good piece of gear but not better than the best stuff that drops off enemies. If the frequency of finding good items on a vendor is about equivalent to that of one dropping off an enemy, then vendor farming is just a more boring way to obtain loot while not earning XP. An additional means of balancing this is to select 1-2 item types where you might find a really good version on a vendor and configure most other item types so that you have almost no chance of that.

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medierra wrote:

This is a great idea! We'll just make them squeak! That will save us the expense of V/O. Actually, I'm not sure yet how much V/O we will have. On TQ the owners felt it was important to have V/O for all dialog. I think sometimes there are valid reasons not to do that but, more practically, I know we don't have the V/O budget to do that unless we really limit the amount of dialog in the game. We want to be able to add a lot of quests and story content to the game though without incurring a huge V/O expense, so we won't be able to have it for everything. Merchants might be one of the areas where it makes sense to skip the V/O. If merchants are as they were in TQ, just glorified buttons to open up the shop UI, then maybe skipping the repetitive V/O intro for them will make some people's day. On the other hand, it may be possible to make them into story or side-quest NPCs also. I don't have a lot of experience with the quest editor, so I'll need to dig in at some point and get up to speed on everything it can and can't do. I suspect vendor NPCs will remain glorified shop buttons though. ; )

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medierra wrote:

A hot and courteous shopkeeper would break "suspension of disbelief" and ruin immersion. I mean, this is a fantasy game, but we do have to maintain some semblance of realism. ; )

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De l'économie et des vendeurs. Ces interventions interviennent principalement dans le cadre d'un échange avec la communauté, afin d'aboutir à un système plus efficace. L'objectif premier est d'améliorer l'économie du jeu par rapport à Titan Quest, qui souffrait du même défaut que la plupart des jeux du genre, à savoir qu'on commence sans jamais avoir les ressources pour acheter quoi que ce soit, et qu'on finit à avoir des ressources à ne plus savoir qu'en faire (même si Immortal Throne a largement amélioré la situation). Selon medierra, le système WYSIWYG pour le loot, unique dans ce genre de jeu, et l'abondance de loot qui en découle, est en partie en cause. Comme mentionné dans d'autres discussions, il y a de fortes chances que le système disparaisse, bien que très apprécié de beaucoup sur certains points, et bien qu'étant le "bébé" de medierra, du fait des nombreuses contraintes et difficultés associées.

Tout joueur de Titan Quest a probablement un jour trouvé un objet qui l'intéressait beaucoup chez un marchand, sans avoir à ce moment là les ressources pour se le payer, et lorsqu'il avait enfin pu les amasser, l'objet n'était plus disponible. Quelles solutions possibles ? La plus basique, augmenter le temps nécessaire pour la réinitialisation de l'inventaire des marchands, mais ce n'est pas sans effets négatifs, lorsqu'on cherche un type d'objet particulier par exemple. D'autres pistes sont explorées, comme par exemple la possibilité d'acheter l'objet à crédit, en payant ensuite des intérêts régulièrement jusqu'au remboursement de la dette, ou encore la possibilité de demander au marchand de le mettre de côté. L'élément certain qui ressort de la discussion est la philosophie avec laquelle la problématique des marchands est considérée : les marchands ont pour but premier d'aider à combler un vide pour les joueurs qui n'auront pas eu la chance de trouver une amélioration pour un emplacement particulier en plusieurs niveaux.

Accessoirement, la discussion fait ressortir un élément nouveau concernant Grim Dawn : en effet, Grim Dawn ne devrait proposer qu'un nombre très limité de marchands, probablement seulement 3, le jeu étant organisé non pas selon une progression très linéaire sans jamais revenir au même endroit comme Titan Quest, mais plus comme un Diablo, où l'on reviendra régulièrement aux mêmes endroits, permettant des interactions régulières avec des PNJs plus familiers.

medierra wrote:

We've made some decisions since this thread was first posted and I think most people will be happy. We've decided to go with a Victorian Era-inspired setting. It is a fictional world, so there will be a lot of liberties taken and probably a fair bit of anachronism - but all for the best. We will have gunpowder but we'll also have big-*** brutal melee weapons and armor. I haven't finalized the ranged weapon design yet but I'm thinking there will be guns and also a choice of mechanical repeating crossbow. However, even though there is gunpowder, in many ways the world will feel more primitive than you might expect of that era. We don't want to go in a steampunk direction. I actually don't normally like RPGs in settings with gunpowder myself but I think the look and feel we've come up with for this game is pretty cool. There will, of course, be plenty of magic too. In terms of the setting, it won't be London high-society with poofy ruffled shirts and corsets. We're thinking more rural New England, Sleepy Hollow style. There will probably be a larger sized city in the game but, wouldn't you know it, the world and most of its cities will be ruins. (no, don't worry, everything won't be all charred and boring looking). The world will have sort of a "haunted" vibe and humans will exist only in small, isolated pockets, trying to recover from a supernatural cataclysm that released "the others". Its a world where paper money and gold has no value - salt and iron are the new forms of currency. As for cut-scenes, have no worries. I think companies often add them for marketing purposes and as an attempt to make the game more cinematic. In my opinion you need to go one way or the other. I think cinematic story-telling can have its place in a game, if you're making a game totally focused on story, but most of the time I think they just get in the way. There is nothing I loath more as a player than getting yanked out of combat to watch some lame cut scene and then finding that my character has somehow been magically transported to perfect spot in the level for an enemy ambush. Right now I have no plans of putting cut scenes in the game and, if we do, they certainly won't interrupt combat. As for bloom... I'm not that we'll actually use it. After doing a little testing I came to the conclusion that its a little too performance intensive for the subtle effect that it has. We might be getting a few little graphical enhancements that will have much less impact on performance and a far greater effect on the look of the game. Overall, we're being very cautious about performance.

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medierra wrote:

Its funny you should ask about an unarmed qualifier. I actually already added that in. I did it to simplify enemy balance on enemies that can spawn with and without weapons. Rather than setting damage and other attributes on each individual enemy I've created passive skills that grant base stats and damage according to level. The unarmed qualifier automatically disables the damage skill in the event that they spawn with a weapon. Had to figure out some ways to do things more efficiently since Crate is a small operation. So, that does create the possibility of unarmed combat skills - a thought that had crossed my mind. I don't know yet whether we'll be able to allow for modding, at least with the initial release due to potential legal and budgetary issues. If we can't ship it with the first installment, it might be something we could release later. Honestly though, I don't even have all the information I need yet to make a decision since, thus far, I've been totally focused on developing the game itself, managing the project, and dealing with the business end of things.

medierra wrote:

The cataclysm that's effected this world isn't really a "scorched earth" type of event. So, there will be plenty of vegetation and interesting scenery.

medierra wrote:

Bloom and distortion are totally separate. I'm a big fan of the distortion effect and it isn't too much of a burden on performance when used in moderation. Unlike bloom, I think distortion gives you a lot more bang for your buck. There are a lot of cool little ways it can be used to enhance the look of skills and ambient effects. We only added the distortion tech in Immortal Throne, so most of TQ is without it. This time we'll be able to take better advantage of it throughout the game.

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medierra wrote:

In trying to think of a parallel, the first thing that came to mind was "I Am Legend". Its not really a very exact parallel since the cataclysm is supernatural in nature, not biological and the time periods are obviously very different. However, it works in the sense that the world itself has not gone up in flames. Reality has been distorted and there will be some evidence of that in parts of the world but it won't be a scorched wasteland. We want the setting to be a little creepy, and, living in rural New England, I think the ruins of an old colonial farmhouse set amongst overgrown fields and twisted trees in autumn achieves that better than a barren wasteland. This is kind of the direction we're headed if you can envision it. That's where the Sleepy Hollow reference comes from.

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Cette série d'intervention se situe dans le contexte de l'environnement dans lequel se situera Grim Dawn. Il est donc confirmé que Grim Dawn se déroulera dans un environnement inspéré de l'ère victorienne, mais cela restera toutefois un environnement original, et non un environnement historique. Le choix de l'environnement du jeu ayant un impact sur beaucoup d'éléments, le sujet est assez large. Tout d'abord, la poudre à canon sera présente dans Grim Dawn, et les armes à distances, bien que non finalisées, seront probablement des armes à feu et des arbalètes à répétition méchanique. Parallèlement, Grim Dawn proposera cepednant de nombreuses armes de mêlée brutales. De façon générale cependant, le monde apparaîtra beaucoup plus primitif que ce à quoi on pourrait s'attendre pour l'époque, mais le jeu n'aura pour autant pas une orientation Steampunk (pas comme Silverfall donc). L'environnement général sera plutôt comparable à une Nouvelle Angleterre rurale, dans la veine de Sleepy Hollow, plutôt qu'à la haute société londonienne de l'époque.

Le monde de Grim Dawn aura subi un grand cataclysme supernaturel ayant libéré "les autres", et il ne restera plus beaucoup d'humains, regroupés dans quelques zones isolées, et utilisant le sel et le fer comme monnaie. Il s'agit cependant d'un cataclysme supernaturel, pas d'une destruction totale, la végétation sera donc bien présente. L'atmosphère devrait donner la chair de poule : imaginez plutôt une vieille ferme isolée en ruine en Nouvelle Angleterre, perdue au milieu de champs où la végétation a repris ses droits et d'arbres affectés par quelque chose de supernaturel, à l'automne. D'après ces descriptions, la référence faite par medierra à Sleepy Hollow nous donne je pense une bonne idée de l'atmosphère qui pourra régner dans le monde de Grim Dawn.

La possibilité de combattre à mains nues à été évoquée également au cours de cette discussion. Le méchanisme général est d'ailleurs déjà intégré par l'équipe, avec un but premier de simplifier l'équilibrage des ennemis qui peuvent ou non avoir une arme, puisqu'il leur fallait jusqu'à présent définir individuellement leurs attributs et compétences. Ils ont donc intégré un qualifieur "mains nues", ainsi que des compétences passives qui donnent des dégâts en fonction du niveau, le qualifieur désactivant ces compétences si l'ennemi est créé avec une arme. Bien entendu, cela ouvre la voie à la possibilité d'avoir une compétence de combat à mains nues pour les joueurs, ce qui est actuellement envisagé chez Crate Entertainment.

Il a également été question d'effets graphiques et de modding. Tout d'abord, il n'est actuellement pas prévu d'insérer dans le jeu des scènes cinamétiques, et si jamais il en était fait usage, elles n'interromperont pas l'action (on peut penser donc que s'il y en a, ce sera plutôt des scènes cinématiques en fin d'acte ou quelque chose de similaire). Au niveau graphique, l'équipe n'utilisera probablement l'effet "Bloom", jugé trop consommateur de ressources pour un effet trop peu visible, mais ils ajouteront des améliorations graphiques peu consommatrices et avec un effet bien visible. En particulier, l'effet de distorsion, qui a été utilisé dans Titan Quest Immortal Throne a certains endroits, sera probablement utilisé également un peu plus dans Grim Dawn, cet effet étant jugé plus visible et moins consommateur. Les développeurs sont particulièrement prudents avec les performances, et de façon générale utiliseront de préférences les effets graphiques les plus performants en termes de ratio effet visuel / ressources nécessaires.

Une petite note négative cependant dans cet échange, qui nécessitera de suivre de plus près les évolutions sur ce point : il n'est pour l'instant pas certain qu'il soit possible de modder Grim Dawn, du moins lors de sa sortie, pour des raisons légales et budgétaires. Si ce n'était pas disponible à la sortie, cela pourrait être disponible plus tard. On reste toutefois dans le domaine du conditionnel dans les deux cas. En effet, medierra est actuellement particulièrement occupé avec le développement d'une part, la gestion du projet d'autre part, et enfin les affaires commerciales courantes de Crate Entertainment, et ne dispose pas de toutes les informations nécessaires pour prendre une décision. Nous en saurons probablement plus lorsque le développement sera un peu plus avancé.

medierra wrote:

We expect it will take about 12 more months. Although the initial release will be of a smaller-scope, our team is also smaller than Runic's, so we expect its going to take more time.

medierra wrote:

We'll probably trickle something out towards the end of the year and then ramp up a bit more next spring.

medierra wrote:

We're not quite as secretive as other companies seem to be here at Crate. I don't think its really very beneficial for small, lesser known companies to be so restrictive about the flow of information to their potential audience.

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medierra wrote:

Its been considered, however, it seems like a lot of our potential audience is here and I'm not sure it would be good to divide up the community. It is perhaps something that we should think about down the road.

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medierra estime qu'il leur faudra encore environ 1 an pour terminer Grim Dawn. Même si la publication initiale sera de plus faible envergure que celle de Torchlight, l'équipe de Crate Entertainment est également plus petite que celle de Runic Games. Crate ne prévoit pas d'appliquer la politique de secret que de nombreux autres studios et éditeurs appliquent sur leurs projets en développement. De plus, ils devraient initier la communication concernant Grim Dawn à la fin de l'année, pour ensuite l'accentuer progressivement au printemps 2010. Enfin, il a été envisagé de créer un forum officiel pour Grim Dawn, mais d'un autre côté une grosse partie de leur audience (anglophone) est sur TitanQuest.net, et ce serait dommage de diviser la communauté. Ainsi TitanQuest.net restera pendant au moins un certain temps la communauté officielle de Grim Dawn.

medierra wrote:

Single classes? Good gods man, what kind of a show do you think we're running here?

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Intervention assez isolée, elle nous indique tout de même qu'il n'est pas question de passer à un système à classe unique, et il est assez probable que le système de classes reste similaire si ce n'est identique à celui de Titan Quest.