From Hellgatewiki.com

Given the oodles of information that Ivan has dumped into various forums, it seemed useful to have a big page that contained all of the forum info he's posted. It runs about 36 pages in MS Word, so there are a LOT of details here.

I believe I have all the posts that Flux has made that summarise Ivan's answers, although I may have missed some.

Contents 1 Monday 11 September 2006 2 Friday 1 September 2006 3 Thursday 31 August 2006 4 Wednesday 9 August 2006 5 Tuesday 25 July 2006 6 Monday 24 July 2006 7 Friday 21 July 2006 8 Wednesday 19 July 2006 9 Monday 17 July 2006 10 Saturday 15 July 2006 11 Wednesday 12 July 2006 12 Monday 3 July 2006 13 Saturday 1 July 2006 14 Monday 26 June 2006 15 Friday 23 June 2006 16 Thursday 15 June 2006 17 Saturday 10 June 2006 18 Thursday 25 May 2006 19 Monday 22 May 2006 20 Saturday 6 May 2006

Monday 11 September 2006

Ivan hit the forums again over the weekend. Enjoy the highlights.

From our beta questions thread -- how much game in the beta and how will it be distributed?

Though we don't have the specifics nailed down, I can promise it will not be the full game. We will also be pursuing third-parties to host the client via direct links. You know, places like GameSpot, Fileplanet, XFire, 3D Gamers, Fileshack, etcetera.

Sniper rifles and soft aiming?

This is currently all in limbo. It may happen that we do soon incorporate and reveal weapons with true aiming not bound to any soft or auto aim, which, of course, is the exact opposite of everything I've been saying on the subject since the dawn of time.

What's a guy to do? It's development, you know?

I still think it's a bad idea, BTW. But then I'm liable to advocate we cut our emphasis on shooting and focus on the action-RPG. That's me, though.

Anyway... It's being worked out. Soon we'll know for sure how shooting with such a weapon will work. But, even if it is soft aim, the weapon will still feature the characteristics of a long-range high powered rifle. Even turn-based games have such weapons, so that's no biggie.

Currency in HGL?

FYI, right now it looks like our "gold" will be called Palladium, the mysterious supernatural metal used by our survivors for a variety of things (defense, offense, good utensils, etcetera).

Heaven and Hell in HGL?

We have some versions of Hell, Demons and even Demon discussions. We do not have a Heaven. We have supernatural areas and supernatural entities that are categorically good, but they are designed to be more representative of the virtuous potential within us rather than the omnipresent glory of Heaven itself.

Our Hell is about the corruption and consumption of life. And, in fact, I try not to refer to it as Hell in our story. Though that does inevitably happen. I try to keep such references down, anyway. But, if ask anyone where Demons come from...

Weather effects in HGL?

I think a variety of weather -- both mundane and supernatural -- would be a terrific inclusion. In addition to looking cool and giving our otherwise desolate environments some extra amount of activity, weather would help us create a more diverse set of areas and enhance the impression of randomization. Degrees of weather could be layers added to light, color and set pieces to create dramatic instances and instances with more personality.

So, imagine your variables being something like:

Luminosity: Morning Noon Twilight Evening Pitch Black

Color: Red hues Blue hues Green hues Yellow hues

Set Pieces: Markets Shops Plazas Boulevards Alleys Pits Holes Etc...

Weather: Hail Ash Rain Nebula Haze Lighting storm Tornados Vortexes Explosive Etc...

Of course, there should be degrees of intensity associated with each effect. This would just increase the uniqueness of each instance. I'm really going to push for it post TGS / GStar, too.

What's the current status of shields? If you mean are they final, yes. Shields for the Templar will be in the final game. Some shields even come with different attributes. You can use smaller ones to bat enemies and larger ones too turtle, for instance.

Shields do not currently accept mods, but we are planning to implement that. Shields do not expand the inventory, no.

Elsewhere: There is already a shield bash in our game. We want the effect of the bash to include knockback, stun, paralyze and other specials.

How will guild members look special?

We honestly don't know how guild members are going to be distinguished just yet. But no, it would certainly not be unreasonable to request things like banners, emblems, colors, tabards, surcoats and other devices to show your guild status. We want to incorporate things like this, but I honestly don't know if we'll be able to for launch.

HGL gameplay movies are teh suxor!

You've obviously never seen Tom McNamara's BF2 Masterbit. He just wandered around for like 10 minutes and specifically made a point of not shooting at anything. Then he tried to climb a mountain that was obviously way too steep and fell down a good dozen times before giving up. Most frustratingly boring game video ever.

The problem with Hellgate is that it's an action RPG with a heavy emphasis and cooperative multiplayer that's designed to be played for hours on end. The game inherently does not do well on video.

HGL needs more classes.

Classes are just names. Action defines role.

For example: If you have 2 classes and each class is capable of a thousand actions, is that not better than a thousand classes each capable of 2 actions?

Friday 1 September 2006

Ivan returned to the forums on his second day back from Leipzig, and gifted us with more Hellgate-y goodness. Here are the highlights, starting with a bunch from our forum.

Will Hardcore and Softcore modes be balanced differently?

I don't think so. I think when you play hardcore on whichever difficulty you choose, you're claiming to be hardcore. Thus, scaling the difficulty for you would defeat the purpose of the mode.

Will it be possible to personalize items with your name or an icon?

That is currently under debate.

Can you describe the environment and what it feels like to play HGL?

I play Hellgate quite a bit. As such, my perspective on the game has become somewhat skewed. I find myself critical of nonexistent faults and protective of bits that need to be burnt to ash.

Despite my biases and generally insane outlook, I'll tell you that Hellgate is a game to be played for hours, not minutes. It's an action-RPG with a heavy emphasis on the action. But to specifically answer your question...

Environments currently feel more like static guidelines than interactive nightmares -- instances are comprised of pretty walls that feature little in the way of maze-like structure.

We have recently integrated some cool pieces of technology to make the exploration of said areas more enjoyable. One thing we're doing is combining instances. No longer will you walk into a portal and then find yourself in a sewer until you walk out of a portal. Now the instances will bleed together -- randomly, of course. This gives Hellgate a much more interesting, dynamic feel. Sewer to street to tunnel to tube to crypt, and all at once thanks to new transitional pieces. That's the plan.

Also, we've recently hired a background layout artist. He, along with our recently instated art producer, is ensuring treks through these locales are littered with interesting bits and unique décor.

Finally, the game's most exciting areas (the new Hellrifts, the new Hell instances, some exotic rooms) are all being developed as we speak.

What I'm getting at is this: The environments aren't up to spec. We want them better, and are so making them better. Unfortunately, this means my current play experiences in regards to your question aren't very positive. Then again, this could also be somewhat attributed to my tainted perception of our game and self-deprecating, overtly critical attitude.

In any event, it's all rainbows for the future, assuming things on paper are as pretty on-screen.

Will the highest difficulty be almost unplayably-difficult?

Nope. Our hard should be damned hard, but it won't be Data East Teenage Mutant Turtles on the NES impossible, nor will it rival the first Battletoads, which I am absolutely convinced Rare didn't even bother creating an ending for.

Will there be a customizable difficulty level, with player-set monster density, speed, etc?

I do believe that is / was being considered. Though I'm not privy to the details, I wouldn't expect such customization to make it into the final game. Seems like that might adversely effect balancing in too many unpredictable ways.

Other people asked questions too. Here's a pair of questions from a German fan:

Will level layouts be predictible? Probably not. We do have select preset gameplay instances that feature planned out routes, but most of it is totally random.

Will the sun ever be visible through "the burn," perhaps after completing a major quest? 2) I really, really, really want this to happen. There are critical parts in the story where the player and his/her comrades achieve a victory. I'd like that victory to create a global change so that success can be conveyed visually. It's the Zelda-effect. You beat a dungeon and the dungeon gets flowery and pretty. Something like that applied to our whole world would really drive home the point that all is not lost -- that humanity can still win.

Will Spanish fans get to participate in the Beta?

I would imagine so, though please note that I am not responsible for determining which territories may and may not participate in our beta test.

Will there be randomly-generated quests, what are they like, and how big is the world of HGL?

We do have randomly generated quests, yes.

So, a randomly generated quest could be randomly found within an instance, first of all; then, that quest is made of basic components that could point a player to a random place and have that player do a random thing. That's the basic gist of it. The 'doing' and 'going' could even be based off more unique gameplay mechanics players have wandered into throughout the course of the storyline.

It's real big. Right now we have something like 3 - 5 towns per Act and three transparent Acts. That should give you an idea of how large the gameworld will ultimately be. First Act (which is near finished now), looks like it may take between 15 and 20 hours to complete, which actually has Erich worried it could be a bit too long.

Thursday 31 August 2006

Ivan has returned from Leipzig and on his first day back he hit the forums. Here are the highlights. A Korean site reported that HGL was 75% complete. Ivan doesn't exactly disagree, but...

What we can do and what we want to do both determine how close we are to completion and since what we want to finish vs. what we can accomplish varies regularly, any percentile measurement of our status is irrelevant.

Ivan answers a few reality-based questions in this thread:

Why potions? We don't really have potions. We have sprays and injectors and kits. I suppose we have a vial filled with some kind of mysterious blue substance, but every game needs one of those!

Why gold? Gold is an international standard for currency that can be used independently of local currency. I believe its use is also temporary in any event.

Why not call backpack a vault? We don't call it a vault because no sane man calls his invisible backpack with uncanny carrying capacity a vault...

Why hardcore mode? Because we said so.

Ivan explains why more specific info hasn't been released in this argumentative thread. The bold quotes below are from forumgoer Brother Laz.

I'd be very happy if Flagship hides in its shell and just releases one skill and one item type per month... This is what makes you one of the minority. Hard as it may be to comprehend, most gamers are not interested in learning how much percentile damage a Superior Holy Negotiator does to a Hellmeat on any given day, nor are they inclined to study skills before they can use them.

Your interest in such things is fine. It even implies you're an enthusiast gamer with an eye for RPGs. But that doesn't mean we should cater our flashy site to your specific wants. On the contrary, our flashy site is designed to be what it is...pretty and filled with explosions.

we get too much information about all those different weapons and the designers' pet quest of the month, but key points like how many item slots there are and what the skills are like have been left unanswered. And how am I supposed to answer these questions without stating inaccuracies or outright lying?

Item slots...? In your inventory, there are as many as Erich feels like there should be at 10:15am. For wearable items, you can have leggings, helmets, breastplates, shoulder pads, gauntlets, eyepieces and an item in each hand. We also have slots for shirts, pants and cloaks. They do nothing... GUESS WHY?

And skills? Well, they change every single day. Everyday. Like, today they've changed. Tomorrow they will as well. Most don't even have names yet.

I suggest that if you want to learn more about our skills, you just make something up like "Fabulous Arch of Power" then describe to yourself exactly what it does. Tell no one. But rest assured that the Fabulous Arch of Power has as much chance of being incorporated into Hellgate: London as anything else.

It's development, man. Worse, it's an organic development process. We don't have an overarching plan. So most of the stuff you want to learn about is going to be totally irrelevant in a month or two.

Still! I will endeavor to create more RPG centric articles in the future.

Ivan made a bunch of replies in this thread on a German fansite:

Charms in HGL? I don't believe we have any inventory idle items that buff stats outside of a few story critical ones (they're not exactly what you're imaging, however).

Will boss runs be possible in HGL? Yes. But they are all tied to story quests, random quests or factional quests. Bosses don't just linger in instances at all times. You have to trigger their presence by accepting whatever quest the boss is tied to, then you can be assured that it will be where the quest character says it will be. So, it'll be up to your party leader to undertake such a quest.

Resurrecting items? Not currently, but that's a good idea. I love playing the medic in games like Enemy Territory and running through heavy fire to revive people. So yeah, I have submitted it to the team and Erich said he will consider it.

Ranged weapon skills? Sure! We have plenty of skills for ranged combat planned.

Heal other player skills, or buffs to raise strength, accuracy, or defense? We don't have a heal other player skill in the game right now, but all of the buffs you're curious about are planned.

Customized glove graphics in the first person POV? Gloves in the first-person are different high detail models representative of whatever gloves you are wearing. There are even male and female variations!

And a few more from another German site's forum:

Are there a variety of helmet colors? Absolutely. We have dozens and dozens of color schemes and many different helmets, too. Speaking generally, my favorite scheme right now is a black helmet with red sights.

Will there be emotes and /dance? We have a variety of emotes planned. I do not believe dance is one of them.

Are there +skill items in HGL? Not currently. but I believe skill specific items are in development, yes.

Are there super rare items that set a skill to the max points? No. I do not believe so.

Will we learn about the world outside of London in HGL? Nope. This game leaves the rest of the world a complete mystery

Will it remain possible to hide all the interface buttons during play? That is currently possible, yes. I do it for all the movies and screens, too. I can't imagine we'll omit the feature in the final.

And finally, there's still no confirmation of the alleged HGL code theft, and at this point it's looking like there probably never will be. Ivan says it doesn't matter anyway.

The reported theft has had no influence on us whatsoever.

Wednesday 9 August 2006

After being otherwise occupied last week, Ivan returned to the HGL fansite forums on Monday. He made a veritable avalanche of replies in our Ask Ivan thread, so I'll start there, after encouraging you guys to post more questions for the man, now that he's plowed through the entire backlog.

Rykuss asks what Flagship's doing to prevent offensive player names?

I have no idea. I seriously doubt anyone here has a solid answer to that right now, too. Seems like censorship is a relatively minor concern, all things considered. And so I'd imagine we'll implement some basic find and replace tools much later into development and then see where we need to go from there.

Ultimately, you cannot escape assholes on the Internet, so regardless of what we do, they will find a way to insult you and other players with an amazing assortment of ampersands hyphens and asterisks.

Meatbag goes after my own heart by asking if Exospecters will be shoot-down-able, and Ivan says no. (Well, he actually says "N," thanks to Meatbag's multiple choice answer format.)

Brother Laz asks three good questions. Socketable armor?

Not yet and possibly not ever for first-run Hellgate. Ongoing content (be it expansion or whatever) should definitely have modifiable armor, but the current game does not and may not when it launches.

Skills like Multishot or Strafe that affect ranged weapons?

Absolutely. We have lots of skills that alter firing rate, spread, homing capabilities, etcetera.

How will rushes/turbos be handled/limited in HGL?

In terms of gameplay, only storyline critical segments will be required and we will not force side quests upon players as prerequisites to storyline critical quests. Thus, I suppose Hellgate can be "rushed" through. But the rushing will still take you a good long time. We do not want to overburden players focused on progress with excessive story or extraneous content. If people want to level up and complete objectives and beat the game as quickly as possible, that's alright with us.

Superdave wants to know if Flagship/HGL will be at the new, downsized E3?

Attendance is dependent upon our publishers. And I am not privy to that information.

Thecla asks if HGL combat is more about managing large groups (ALA D2) or individual battles (ALA D1). Also, is there friendly fire in HGL?

1) Large groups. Though we also feature many 'champion' fights that highlight one-on-one combat, players are encouraged to take on multiple enemies at once. Skills apply to both individuals and groups. I'd say our skills are predominantly designed to impact a group or to provide a bonus against a group, however. I suppose our combat is more like Diablo 2 in this sense. 2) There is no friendly fire in Hellgate.

Thecla follows that up with a 9-part question I'm only excerpting part of. Large or small mobs?

Both. Specifically, we do whatever we feel like... And then the game is also totally randomized. It's a lame answer, but I'm not trying to be an ass or anything -- that's just the way it is. If we decide to put some more guys up in that, we'll put more guys up in that. Then it'll all get randomized anyway. So maybe you'll fight one zombie one second and fifty the next. Who knows?

What sort of crowd-control abilities will characters have?

Many aura effects influence crowds, as do sweeping attacks and splash attacks. The answer is thus an undefined "many."

Is it easy to run away from combat?

Right now it depends on what you're fighting. Some monsters teleport and others are pretty quick. But, we do have speed boosts that make escape in open environments pretty easy. Some of our more claustrophobic areas are difficult to flee, however.

Can monsters stun or slow you to keep you from running away? (Flux: Poison attacks slowed you considerably in the E3 build, as well as turning you green and draining your life.)

Yes. But this is a very tricky balance, because webbing a player can be incredibly frustrating.

Will the action be more above or below ground, and will there be a variety of "dungeons" to explore? (Flux: I saw much more surface than tunnel at E3, but that was somewhat luck of the draw, and I only played the beginning levels.)

Instances are highly randomized. I would say, however, that about half our game takes place above ground, with the other half being below street level. "Dungeons" are designed to be fairly compact. We want players to go through many areas, as opposed to one big area.

We have multiple surface variations: river, riverX, riverY, street, street boulevard, street alley, street shops, street park(?), and various other set pieces that can be interjected into these surfaces. We also have multiple variations of hell and then we have tubes, tunnels, maintenance rooms, sewers and catacombs. Each has variations similar to the surface areas. Those are our equivalent of dungeons. We call them instances. And I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch.

Elsewhere, Ivan talked about how they'll distribute the HGL beta. (Flux: For more info see this thread in our forum with talk about the past Blizzard beta tests.)

We'll most likely have a third-party handle the distribution of our beta (like GameSpot, Fileplanet, IGN, Xfire, Whatever The Nuts). The third-party is has yet to be determined.

How does Hell look in HGL?

Our Hell isn't nearly so defined partly because we haven't the fiction to justify its boundaries but also because we haven't any art prepared to deliver such a representation. As such, Hell in Hellgate is currently a place that is simply, "not here."

Click to see the full image.

(Flux: Evidently the mini-hell levels don't count towards what the whole thing will look like, when/if we reach it in some HGL sequel or expansion?)

As part of a long reply about why there haven't been more regular features on the official HGL site, Ivan explains:

See, I was going to do that weapon and demon of the week thing... Then we stupidly went and put like a whole damn bunch of 'em up on the site at one time. Whoops.

I was also going to do regular Podcasts... Then we went and answered something like 60 questions in a week and no one cared. Whoops.

I was also going to put up more regular video features... Then I realized few people are capable of participating when needed and I am hard-pressed on time to edit a solid feature together especially when I'm limited to what kind of gameplay footage I can use.

There are also all the completely random editorial plans we must fulfill before divulging more details...

In a thread full of people who have never played the game complaining about how the game appears to be played, Ivan gave an interesting bit of info about play testing.

I'd like to point out that people instinctively run backward when fighting not because of any particular gameplay bonus but rather because monsters that are all up in your face seriously annoy.

The perpetual backpedal is a complaint some of us FSS employees have and it is being addressed.

(Flux: I noted this in my e3 play time, and thought it could be solved easily; just make walking backwards much slower than forwards, so if players want to actually get away from swarming monsters, they have to turn and run. More detail in this forum thread.)

Someone asked about stealth skills in HGL, and Ivan answered the question in two different forums:

Right now it's basically invisibility, which allows a player to assault an enemy without any repercussions. [link]

We have some basic stealth concepts in mind. Invisibility, namely. [link]

Can you cast something like Lower Resistance in HGL?

I don't believe we currently have any skills that alter monster resistances.

Can you smash walls and such in HGL?

Nope. There're no environment interactions in the game like that at all.

There may be more interactive objects interjected into the game's many environments in the near future (large setpieces with predetermined states), but our title is nowhere near as interactive as you think. It's not like F.E.A.R. or Red Faction or Stranglehold.

In the E3 build there were plenty of barrels, crates, chests, bookshelves, old cans of vegetables, and more lying around that you could blast/slash/laser, and health packs and such popped out of them, but the actual walls and abandoned trucks and such were permanent. Sounds like that's not changing.

Tuesday 25 July 2006

Ivan hit the forums again Monday, and here are the highlights.

What are the current character customization options?

It is currently possible to edit:

• Gender
• Face type
• Skin tone
• Height
• Weight
• Hair style
• Hair color
• Eye color
• Class

We are considering ways to make each level even more configurable. We'll see what happens.

What do the maps in HGL look like? (Much better look at the act one station map here.)

We have two maps. There's the world map that shows how our instances are interconnected and there's the in instance automap that fills as players explore. The world map is in-game and takes up the center of the screen (what you see in that You Tube link). No menu navigation is required. The Automap functions the same way, but can either be positioned in the center of the screen or it can be tossed up in the right-hand corner. Further UI accessibility options are being developed into the game as we speak.

Someone listed a bunch of real demon names and asked if any would be the name of the final (unknown) boss in HGL. Ivan obviously couldn't comment on that, but he did have something mythologically-interesting to add.

Those are real names of Demons from various religions and mythologies and whatnot. Some are also real names locals have given to Demons. A lot of those are actually the same character, though. For instance, Æshma-deva and Asmodeus are the same creature. He goes by many names and is often referred to as the Lord of Lust. I have him in the game as Sydonai, an Elder Demon. Other names he has gone by include: Asmodai, Ashmadia, Ashmedai, Sydonaios, Asmoday, Asmodée, Asmodee, Asmodei, Asmodeios, Asmodeo, Asmodeius, Asmodi, Chammaday, Chashmodai, and Sidonay. I personally think Æshma-deva is the best alias of the lot, but it seemed a little too complex for the masses to grasp.

Anyway, to directly answer the first post... The First is the head of Demonkind. The First is He Who Challenges the Creator or He Who Challenges Life -- the shadow that was wrought as a counter to all Creation. I also refer to this nameless entity as The Well of Midnight, for it is from The First that all Demonkind draws its power and it is to The First that corrupted and consumed worlds go.

How about player profiles and other account info online?

The "hope" is that it will be in-game. We also want to have the equivalent of gamer profiles, sort of like Xbox Live. So, if you're in the game, you can see other people's profiles just as easily as you could online. These profiles would contain stats on your characters, achievements, etcetera. The 'omnipedia' would be bound to your profile, so like Metroid or Serious Sam or whatever, you'd only ever see in your own profile that which you've accessed or killed or met in-game. But, you could conceivably look at someone else's and see all that they've done and slaughtered.

That's what we want to do. It requires a good bit of work, though. So we'll see what happens.

Brother Laz asked how shields will work in HGL, "(Halo-style total absorb, damage reduction, physical damage reduction, automatic recharge or not..." Ivan said:

Our force field-like shields provide a globe of defense applied to all incoming attacks. Their effectiveness depends on how they've been activated. Percentages are determined by a variety of things, skill not the least of which. The functionality of our traditional shields is currently being worked out.

Meatbag wins today's prize for question that yielded the best answer. Away we go with Ivan's discourse on damage types and effects.

Okay. These types of questions are pretty damn specific. And honestly, I don't want to put that much time into detailing every damage type we have and how they impact players of certain configurations. That being said, I believe this is the general layout...

Damage Types:

Physical (Direct & Splash -- Stun & Knockback) Spectral (Direct & Splash -- Stun & Knockback & Continued) Fire (Direct & Splash -- Stun & Knockback & Continued) Toxic (Direct & Splash -- Stun & Knockback & Continued) Electrical (Direct & Splash -- Stun & Knockback & Continued)

Armor Defense:

All Purpose & Specific. Armor will defend against everything with specializations based on damage type. Armor rating determines effectiveness. Ineffective defense results in a loss of life. Armor can still be functional and reduce the loss of life upon each sustained attack.

Shield Defense:

All Purpose & Specific. Shields will defend against everything with specializations based on damage type. Shield rating determines effectiveness. If Shield is ineffective or is sufficiently reduced, Armor sustains attack and effectiveness is then calculated for that Armor.

Attacking:

If you hit, you hit. There is no impact without a hit. If you impact an enemy's bounding box, you will hit that enemy.

Critical Hits:

Chance of Critical based on experience level and how many points have been spent on Accuracy. Chance of Critical is also dependent on item rating.

And finally, adding something to our recent forum discussion of soul bound items, comes this.

We do not have user-bound items in our game. Our trading system has yet to be worked out, however.

As always, adding your query to our Ask Ivan thread is a very good way to get a reply from Flagship's community manager, so if you've got a question, hit it.

Monday 24 July 2006

Chinese HGL guild/fansite 21RPG submitted a bunch of reader questions to Ivan Sulic, and posted the answers. In Chinese. Luckily for the rest of us, they also sent an English translation to Hellgateguru. I'm not sure how this differs from the Ivan forum highlights I post just about every day, but I guess if they're all on one page it seems more cohesive. Anyway, here are a few of the highlights, and you can read the whole thing here.

Is there any replay function in HGL that could let players make some cool videos? Ivan Sulic : Unfortunately not. I've requested this for my own purposes (since I take so much media of Hellgate), but it looks unlikely that any sort of replay functionality will get implemented into the game.

Are there any emotion actions? Like /kiss etc Ivan Sulic : Yes. We have some basic emotions going into the game right now, actually.

Do long distance weapons lose or gain damage depending on the distance between player and monster? Ivan Sulic : No. I do not believe range currently factors into how much damage is applied to an enemy.

Does the hit point damage done by the Cabalist's evocation skills rely on the focus item? Ivan Sulic : We do plan to have different Focus items and those should impact the effectiveness of a Cabalist Evocation skill, yes.

Also, Ivan can't comment on PVP, says titles are being considered in the potential stat tracking, says there won't be mini-games, says re-specing is not supported, but that gamepads will be.

Friday 21 July 2006

Ivan Sulic returned to the forums again on Wednesday, but for whatever reason the majority of his posts were chatty stuff about this or that, which is why this news item is (much) shorter than these posts usually are. The fault lies not with Ivan though, since he can only answer the questions that are asked. If you look at our ongoing Ask Ivan thread, it's up to 90 posts, and Ivan's answered every single question asked in it. In other words, pony up to the forum and give the man something to do, for dog's sake.

On with the show:

When asked about the game plot, and the five sigils a player must activate, or possibly deactivate on one quest, Ivan got right to the point.

That story of the five signs (what we called the Sigil Points) has since changed dramatically. I basically scrapped all that when I came onboard to create a new story that revolves around other things. The Sigil will still come into play, though its role is significantly different now.

I didn't remember anything about these sigils, but fortunately google pointed me to the answer, embarassingly (for my memory) found on our own pre-E3, needs-to-be-updated, Quests Page:

Templars using a device called the "sigil" hope to wipe out the demons or at least create a larger, protected area. --Bill Roper, Gamespot Interview, April 28, 2005

Since that the sigil thing sounds inversely-identical to the Gidbinn dagger quest in Act Three of Diablo II, I doubt any of us will really miss it all that much.

The only other semi-newsworthy reply of the day came in this Gamespot thread, when someone asked for the maximum players allowed in an individual instance would be. Ivan said:

I believe we're currently shooting for 24 - 32.

Scratch that. I think it's 16 - 24.

That's it for the posts of the day. Help make the next update more interesting, won't you?

Wednesday 19 July 2006

Ivan was a busy guy again on Tuesday, and here are the highlights.A fair-sized discussion about targeting and soft aim broke out in our Ask Ivan thread, and when Ivan weighed in he clarified/explained that point and several others for Brother Laz:

"Is it possible to break the soft aim by pointing at a different target? As in, when you use a slowing weapon (HARP), and this causes another enemy to overtake the stunned stationary target, will the weapon now target the new enemy and is there anything you can do about it?"

Yes. If I hold down the trigger on a beam weapon and then turn onscreen, the beam will hit each target within my firing arc as determined by the soft-aiming mechanism. Players never really "lock-on." It's not so rigidly defined as that.

"Is there anything to prevent people from using a macro or script to instantly switch out mods on the fly, even during combat?"

I sure goddamned hope so. Anti-cheat is not a field I'm intimately familiar with, however.

"So the cabalist has direct damage spells - don't they fulfill the same role as weapons? Considering there are at least 50-60 guns (not weapons - actual guns) and the cab would probably have 10-15 direct damage spells at most, won't this limit the options of the cabalist compared to the actual gun-using character(s)?"

I wouldn't say it's limiting because classes have specific weapons assigned to them, so it's not like XXX class will be designed to outstrip the Cabalist in terms of option potential. However, I will admit that it seems a bit redundant and even undesirable, especially when you consider that our guns have no ammo, but the direct hit attack skills of the Cabalist require an ammo equivalent, in our case "Power" (think mana).

Game difficulty. Diablo 2 has many ways to completely immobilise, slow to a crawl, scare off or render harmless large crowds of monsters, while Diablo 1 had only the single target Stone Curse. Is Hellgate London intended to be 'difficult' like D1, or 'light entertainment' like D2?

I have no idea. That's all in Dave and Erich's head and even then, they could be liars. I suspect you and I will only be able to find out after completing the entire game in its final form.

In the same thread, I asked if there would be any attacks that used the shield to hit the target, and if shields were going to be Templar-only items, to which Ivan replied:

We have no plans I am aware of to bind attack functionality to physical shields. I also do believe that they are indeed attached to the Templar, specifically. Cabalists have their own mystical forms of protection.

And finally, Lanth asked some technical questions:

"I think this has been answered before, but is there likely to be any support for hardware-accelerated physics? Whether that be PhysX or the ATi/nVidia multi-GPU path."

We will support Havok FX physics on GPU. But we offer no PPU support that I know of.

"Is there going to be any optimizations or benefits for using a dual core CPU, or will the game only use a single core for 99% of the work?"

We're currently working on dual core and multicore support, from what I understand. All benefits associated with those are thus speculative, but I'm told there should be some appreciable performance increase. The only way to know for sure is to wait until it's done, however.

In response to some questions about whether the demons would fight amongst each other, Ivan drops a whole big chunk of HGL cosmology.

Here's a very basic Demon primer:

A storm of supernatural horrors now driven by the lashes of Dark Wills whom have devoured countless civilizations, Demons are as old as time itself.

Born as a direct consequence of the Creator blessing the absolute nothingness of space with ever-expanding life, Demons are the antithesis of life. They are coalesced evil -- manifestations of hate, fear and unknown sins that thrive off mortal impurity.

Though most in the Shadow's thrall exist as nameless beasts and ethereal nightmares, the Dark Wills are those that have consumed countless billions and have endured the unceasing expansion of the cosmos -- that sickening spread of life they so abhor. Those select few have attained identity and rank through conquest (mortality has given name to the nameless). And these beings of absolute malevolence now govern the seemingly senseless slaughter and rape of worlds. They command the ever-starving Darkness that ravages without conscience. In turn, they and their legions vast are endowed with the power of newly corrupted civilizations. Their Burn purges whole worlds of life and supplies their unnatural birthplace of fire and decay with nourishment that propels the Shadow forward to ravage again and again.

Above them sit The Eldest, demons of even greater renown and power. And above all sits The First, the icy heart of all evil everywhere. The First is consumed by a desire to undo that which The Creator has done. He is the opposite of all that is good. He is death to life, hate to love, horror to joy. He is the end of all beginnings. Dark Wills are but specks of dust to The First. The Eldest are but vague hints of his terror.

Their incessant consumption of worlds is destroying Demonkind from within. As the Legion grows, so too do those who command it. Each corrupted and consumed world provides a Lesser Demon with an opportunity to advance and become an identifiable Greater. And when evil lords of great power meet, surely there will arise a conflict of interests.

"Well from the current game standpoint I dont see that monsters would kill each other."

The problem with evil is that it's evil and will invariably turn in upon itself.

Just in case you didn't get the idea that monster AI isn't working yet from all the mentions of it in our Ask Ivan thread, here's Ivan commenting on it again,when someone asked if there could be burrowing monsters that would pop up beside you. (They're called Fellbores and they were in the E3 build and have been mentioned in a couple of previews as well.)

We have that, but they're all still dumb as rocks. A burrowing or flying monster will sometimes appear in front of the player, turn hard to the right, and then shake giddily in front of a wall. Even though all this AI will get fixed prior to launch, I really kind of want that specific routine to remain intact.

How do the Cabalist transformation skills look?

From what I understand, our transformation skills apply only to parts of a character. That is, a Cabalist can get a Demon arm or face or whatever the ****. Something like that. No Ghost Wolf, anyway.

A guy with a lot of short questions got several short answers. How do you pick up items?

Players press "F" to pickup items. Alternatively, it's possible to hold "Alt" and then freely move the in-game cursor around to snatch up items.

We are indeed currently working on other ways to deal with item accumulation. There is, however, no word on what those currently are.

Will there be bags to increase inventory space?

I believe we do plan to add this, yes.

Will there be a stash for permanent storage in each town like in Diablo II?

We have the equivalent of a player bank planned, yes.

A pair of questions about skill prerequisites and class-specific items get explained here:

Our skill tree is still in a state of flux. Prerequisites, if there are any, have yet to be determined. Right now only a play er's level acts as a prerequisite.

Throughout the game players may be able to earn access to the weapons and skills of other classes by participating in tasks related to those classes. But, there is no way to actually become a Cabalistemplar or whatever.

Monday 17 July 2006

Someone asks about Easter Eggs in HGL, and Ivan replies with some hints and a humorously-obvious closing:

Let's see... There are buildings named and addressed after own offices. There are pictures of developers and a developer's hobbies / interests hanging from certain walls. We have a few abnormal items. There're character references to other games and fictions. All kinds of stuff, really. If I mentioned them all specifically they kind wouldn't be Easter Eggs, though.

Will there be angels or super robots from the future or other salvations for humanity in HGL?

...we've created a fiction and a universe in which there are no robots or androids or alien interventions. Basically, if anything is to triumph over Demonkind, it will have to be humanity.

Players can control the colors of their disparate items, but will item sets have preset color schemes?

I believe so, yes.

In our Ask Ivan thread Meatbag asked several good Q's in a row:

What's the maximum leveling time going to be?

Under debate.

Will it be possible to rush through the game and reach really high levels very quickly, like in D2?

I have no idea. We won't know until we have all items in the game with finalized attributes and a set pace from start to finish (across the main storyline). We'll then have to see what happens with replays and ongoing content. So the final determination probably won't happen until we balance post beta.

How winding is the layout of the streets and subways?

2) This is actually another area that's being tweaked. Right now the streets are more like a snaking map with a few offshoots that lead to dead ends. Most of our instances are also fairly small. The idea there being you'll be required to travel through many in rapid succession, as opposed to just one big one. Underground things can get a little more mazelike. This is even true in tunnels with slow curves that are connected by crazy maintenance corridors.

Any release date update?

We probably won't saying anything until after the beta completes and we can be sure we won't miss a date.

In response to my news post/forum thread about the HGL action figures debuting at the SD Comic Con, Ivan said:

There are a few. I've seen four so far, but we have some other plans with them, too.

Saturday 15 July 2006

As part of a discussion about the new and very pixelygameplay movie posted on the PC Jeux site, Ivan agrees that it looks awful, but when someone asks him to post a HQ movie, reality sets in:

I can't. Online videos are all promised. I can't just toss one up willy-nilly without incurring the wrath of Tricia Gray. The wrath usually involves cupcakes and jokes, but still. It's the principle of the matter!

In a thread about monster naming in HGL, Ivan says:

We might include randomized names for our randomized equivalent of champions (those are basically tougher versions of scrubs with special powers), but the actual legions of the damned will be generically categorized, I'm sure.

(As far as I could tell at E3, the monster naming in HGL was essentially identical to D2. Normal monsters were named by type (Blood Zombie, Grave Lurker, etc), Quest bosses had preset names and locations, and randomly-occuring bosses were found here and there, and had random names picked from lists of possible words. This may well change by the final game, of course.)

In response to someone complaining that Ivan didn't reply to every question in the entire forum, (If someone posts something this whiny/dumb in our forums, I will so ban you.) Ivan shares a bit more reality after some more sensible users point out that he has a lot more to do than answer questions in forums.

...And I write the story. And I generate promotional content for the game. And I fulfill asset and editorial requests from our publishers and distributors. And I participate in lovely meetings that sometimes manage to sap all life from my body. And then there're the million unexpected "little things" that just don't fit anywhere but manage to waste hours upon hours of time. Plus, I need to find time in there to beat anyone who dares think they're better than me at Fight Night. That's the most important part.

1) I do lots of other stuff.

2) Reading through pages upon pages of repetitive threads on dozens of boards simply takes way too much damn time.

3) Like most people, I sometimes simply have nothing to say. Unlike most people, when this occurs I typically elect not to respond.

4) Many threads are not questions, but rather wishlists or debates I either have no opinion on or am not capable of offering an opinion on. Like, when you debate the pros and cons of Magic Find or whatever, what am I going to say? "Hey jerks, screw the lot of you! I hate Magic Find and we don't have it! So tough damn luck." Yeah, I don't think I'd be too popular for long if I started doing stuff like that.

5) Fewer posts make for special posts. Another way to look at this is an abundance of magic is no longer magical. Rather, it's quite ordinary.

In a discussion about AI in HGL, kotoko points out that a fast-action RPG like HGL doesn't really need that much AI. Ivan agrees, but elaborates on the issue:

While this is basically true, I don't believe it's something we would willingly want to use to justify the lack of solid AI in our game. Monsters should do things that are interesting. Having them saunter forward mindlessly because that's what games of the type have done for years seems like kind of a copout. Admittedly, this is pretty much what they do right now. They're basically stupid as rocks. But again, we're working hard on fixing that and implementing new routines every single day. Our game won't be FEAR or Halo or whatever, but it'll be better than nothing, for sure.

Someone asks about the estimated "40 hours" to play through HGL.

Forty hours for the main quest sounds about right. That does not include random tasks and the like.

And finally, Ivan gives a flurry of answers on a new Brazilian HGL site forum:

Are there lances, spears, axes, shields, etc?

Shields, yes. Lances, spears and axes... Not right now. We have a variety of swords and some of the more outlandish ones resemble these weapons, but we do not classify them as such. We are hoping to get some actual weapons of that type put into the game as we near launch, however. We'd certainly like them in, anyway. We'll see what happens.

How about vehicles or mounts?

Nope. The final game will not ship with vehicles or animals that can be piloted.

Item drop sharing in multiplayer?

Right now they're first come, first serve. If you click on an item first, you get it. We are working on several other solutions, of course. But that's just the way it goes now.

Are there instant health/power boost items in the game?

This is still under debate. We hade such items in the game, then we didn't, then we did, then we didn't, then we did. Etcetera. I'd imagine the results of our beta tests will determine the final outcome.

Is there gambling in HGL? (At E3, Peter Hu told me they were considering gambling and magic find, but that they weren't in yet. If there's no gambling, it'll be interesting to see what HGL has as a late game gold sink.)

We do not currently have this in our game, nor have I heard of any plans to implement it.

How will PVP work?

PVP is still in development and so exact functionality has not yet been finalized. We have a few ideas on how we're going to handle it, but it'd be premature for me to speak about them.

"Do you think the Beta test release date will suffer a delay because of the stolen source code?"

Nope.

On that last crucial point, here's another one from our Ask Ivan thread. "Any update on the source code theft we have been hearing about? Nobody has confirmed or denied it yet." -- Shadow

Not yet, nope. An update also won't come from me directly. It'll come from Bill and / or Tricia.

Wednesday 12 July 2006

Flagship's Community Manager Ivan Sulic hit the forums Tuesday, and as always, we've compiled the highlights. First off, Ivan displays the patience his job requires by politely*answering a question about HGL's system requirements for the 4,217th time.

While we have not announced specific requirements yet, a high-end rig will not be necessary. We realize that millions of people on underpowered machines thoroughly enjoyed Diablo and we're working to appease them with our game. Thus, Hellgate is highly scalable.

And then questions about the next character announcement, beta test, and release date for the 4218th times:

• We plan on announcing a new class late summer or early fall.
• We have no officially announced release date at this point.
• Beta should be by year's end. We plan both an open and closed beta. Further specifics are TBA.

Getting to some more interesting stuff, here's an update on the ongoing "one char/skill tree without soft aiming for FPS fans to play with."

Disabling our soft aim is currently not possible. But we are still discussing it as an option. I doubt very much that'll happen, though. And you're right in that it would have strong PVP implications.

Ivan explains the folly of trying to quantify damage or skill effectiveness at this early stage in the game development, when asked about the damage of Spectral Lure by a very early-adapting Cabalist fan.

Right now the Spectral Lure, which is basically like an oversized bug zapper, doesn't do very much damage. Balancing is something that'll happen once we implement all of our skills and weapons. Then we can sort the crap from the cool and tweak what needs to be twoke. That's right. I just made up a word... Who wants to fight!?!

When another "I'm planning my char build a year in advance" fan asks about starting Cabalist strategies, Ivan takes pity and gives him some info. Most-to-all of which will probably change before the beta anyway.

For starters, I'd go with a simple life and power leech combination and then I'd augment that with a powerful secondary weapon, or perhaps a gun like the HARP, which is designed to hold enemies in place. Then I'd continually create a wall of physical Elementals to protect myself while relying on a Templar partner's fear aura to keep monsters at bay. That's the basic low level strategy to success, me thinks.

Bill Roper mentioned hypothetical Templar sub-classes in a recent interview, and when asked a follow up question about them, Ivan added some good detail.

Okay, so I figured out a little more about these subclasses... First, we're only talking about this for right now; it's not a sure thing yet. That being said, the idea is if a character is predisposed to use skills from a certain discipline, like Evocation or Transformation or whatever we end up calling them (those three tabs for each class), then we may associate visual identifiers with that character. It's as simple as that. These "subclasses" wouldn't force people down specific paths, however.

When asked about monster vision and AI, Ivan gives an honest assessment of how far along the game is in those areas.

As for the vision, I have no idea. Right now every monster just runs right at you because every monster is absolutely broken. AI is something that is being developed as we speak, actually.

When asked by a certain clever webmaster *cough* if Skill Nodes and random skills are still in the game, Ivan says no... for now, at least.

Simply enough, they're actually not in the game anymore. It's amazing how often we add and pull content on a whim. Who knows if skill nodes and randomized skills will reemerge? And, if they do, there's really no telling how they'll work.

As part of our ongoing discussion about booting other players from your game, and the risks of people booting you just before a boss drop, Ivan puts it into context. (Also keep in mind that this is exactly the sort of thing they'll be using the public beta to test out.)

Vote. And remember that the game is instance based. You must first party with people before venturing out, if you choose to venture out at all. And, how likely will it be that you consistently party with assholes? Further, the exact way we handle the redistribution of kicked players has not been worked out. They may get their own instance or a limited retreat time. Who knows?

How about ebay sales of items once HGL is released? Will they be allowed or prohibited or will some ingame HGL auction system offer a better option?

I don't have the answer to this. Such steps come later into development.

Monday 3 July 2006

Ivan tells us the company's got the next couple of days off, (it's Independence Day in the US) and though he'll be working on game plot and fiction, he won't be spending any time hitting the forums. Since the 4th of July is a national holiday, and since he made these posts on a Sunday, I hardly think we can complain. To the newest batch of forum highlights:

Will the regular game or the Collector's Edition have better, less-compressed graphics? (You should really read the whole question, since it's far too detailed and D2-related to summarize here.)

The current plan is to have a Collector's Edition of our game. Though I doubt it will include any sort of graphical upgrade like what you speak of. All of our base content should be available in the standard box, in fact. And I haven't heard of there being any space constraint or compression issues, either.

In addition to the above reply, Ivan answered a bunch more from our ongoing "Ask Ivan" thread. To summarize very briefly: there is an option to boot people from private games, there is at least one stealth skill in HGL, and poison damage is now called "toxicity."

How will HGL play on lower end machines?

While I can't offer you specifics, nor am I technically qualified to provide you with details regarding shader version requirements, I will say that our game is extremely scalable. We want millions of people to at least be capable of playing it around the world. Thus, much work is currently being focused on making the low-quality versions of our game. When Tyler Thompson and Chris Lambert become capable of providing me with more exact details, I'll let you guys know.

Will there be a Mac version of HGL?

We'd love our game to come out on Mac, but we're not developing a Mac version. If our publishing partners elect to create one, we'd certainly support it. Likewise, if a third party (such as Aspyr or any other AAA Mac publisher) opts to port our game, I'm sure we'd support that, too.

Why don't demons bleed when you cut them?

Uh... Dude, we have all kinds of blood and exploding monsters and stuff. We even have a Blood Zombie. You can blow its arms, head and upper body apart. And then, even as it's squirting blood everywhere, it will still try and kick you to death. What we do not have is a system whereby a player can selectively cut a monster and the realistically watch it bleed to death. We do, however, have sustained damage effects. So, a monster that is on fire or poisoned or being electrocuted will eventually die even if you don't continually shoot it with new pain inflicting goodness.

How many "towns" will there be in HGL?

We don't have an exact number pinned down. But we're capable of creating as many as the story requires.

Will the Flagship audio interviews be translated into any other languages?

Not unless a fan translates them, unfortunately. We don't script our Podcasts and I honestly don't have the time to transcribe them. Besides, if I did transcribe it, someone would just have to translate that transcription into whatever language... Thus, it's smarter if a bilingual fan just transcribes and translates a Podcast at the same time.

Saturday 1 July 2006

Thanks to some email problems on my end, here's a double batch of recent Ivan forum posts, with our usual paraphrased questions and quoted answers.

Will there be more Weapon of the Day posts?

The problem is that we released a great deal of weapons on the first run for the website. And so now we have a whole bunch of others we're just not ready to talk about or show yet. Some aren't done. Some are secret. Some are going to get replaced or changed or cut. This makes keeping the old Weapon of the Day feature up-to-date difficult. I have been, however, alternating the new little Weapon of the Day blurbs. But no, new ones have not been put up yet.

What are towns like and what can players can do in them? (See our photo of the Act One layout from E3.)

We have towns and safe areas that may or may not be bound to towns. Towns are useful in the same ways they were in Diablo. It's all about story, items and rejuvenation in towns. Our towns are also bound to major sections of the game, but forward and backward movement between them is possible. Unfortunately, our towns are not dynamic environments in which players can do many things. But I'll put that on my request list. And if you come up with more ideas, I'll steal those, too.

Is there weather and day/night in HGL?

Unfortunately, we do not have dynamic day and night cycles in the game, nor do we have dynamic weather cycles.

Will guild membership will be required to enjoy all the content in HGL? (This gets asked all the time, and here Ivan gives it the usual answer.)

Guilds will not be needed.

Needed is the operative word, of course. If you want to play in a guild and have more fun that way...go nuts.

However...

Guild members may, however, gain access to guild specific goodies such as halls and emblems and separate stat tracking tools. We honestly aren't yet sure what we will and will not be able to include guild-wise in the first run. We want there to be some benefit, obviously, but we do not want to shaft players who don't want to join any guilds. It's a tough balance to strike when considering the time constraints we're under.

And finally...

As for guilds, our exact level of guild support is still TBD. It's this way because advanced guild functionality is not a critical requirement and is not prioritized quite so high as other components of Hellgate we must first work on. Still, we have many plans regarding guilds. Whether or not they make it in at launch will depend on how well things go in general.

Will there be another cinematic trailer? (See Ivan's comment in this post for more on HGL cinematic plans.)

I don't think we'll actually be releasing another CG trailer, at least not separately from the game. It's not a part of our plans, anyway.

A question about the game story, grinding, and missions, yielded a long response.

... I sure hope the story is good...since I'm writing it. Everyone here seems to really like what I've done so far. I must be doing something good. Unless they're all liars. If they're all liars, you're totally screwed.

About leveling, a big point of our game is being able to access levels quickly. You go real fast in Hellgate. There's always something new to get and do. That's our plan.

We have no escort missions planned. If we do implement one, that which you must escort will be indestructible or will be designed to die. Promise.

How about vehicles and interactive environments?

So, though it's all pretty much been answered, the official line is: No vehicles. No watery environments (unless you count the sewer and its trickle of unpleasantness). And minimal environment interaction / scripting. The last point is most unfortunate. We're seeing what we can do to make our obliterated world seem more lively (for as oxymoronic as that sounds), but I can't make any promises.

Will item grabbing repeat Diablo II's "The Quick and the Poor." style?

By default, the "F" key picks up all items in the player's immediate area. Alternatively, the player may hold down the "Alt" key and bring up an on-screen mouse cursor. Holding down "Alt" also brings up descriptors and identifiers for visible items. In this way, a player can more selectively pick up in-game items. For multiplayer, we're working on several additional ways of item acquisition management to prevent people from storming in and just grabbing everything greedily. We'll see how they turn out.

How about the promised PVP arenas?

By arena, I mean PVP is held in designated areas. You cannot simply wander about the game world killing other people. Though that would be pretty impossible anyway considering you'd have to first party with the people you wanted to kill in order to be in an instance with them. We're also considering limiting PVP to specific servers. But anyway, right now it plays terribly. Though that's only because it doesn't really work. Basically, it's still under development and has a long way to go. We have plenty of plans, but it's going to be a while before they come to fruition.

And finally, lest you think Ivan's only chores are forum posts and website updates... think again.

I wrote an entirely new outline with new characters that have not been released publicly. Just about all available content was not actually done by me. But as it stands, it looks like the game's final plot and dialogue will mainly be the Ivan show.

At least we'll know who to blame him if it sucks?

Yeah... I probably should have kept my mouth shut, huh?

Monday 26 June 2006

Flagship Community Manager Ivan Sulic sent us another long list of his recent forum activity, and as always, here are the highlights:

Is the whole world being attacked by demons, or just London? (Someone needs to read our Story & Plot page.)

The rest of the world is also being attacked by demons. This will be hinted at in our game and even in the prequel Novel that's in development, but it will not be a major theme of our game. We're leaving sequels and expansions open to anything right now. We'd obviously love to make them, but who knows what'll happen there exactly.

Click to see the full image.

Someone in another fansite's forum asked which character is shown in this screenshot, and amusingly, someone else posted a link to our captioned version of the shot, which Ivan quickly confirmed as correct:

That's almost exactly right. It's a male Cabalist in a starter suit, which is the crap clothing you get at the beginning of the game. I just used him to skip ahead to the temporary Lights Out quest because I originally posted that screen in response to someone's question about flashlights on a different forum.

Will single player characters be usable online, and vice versa?

I can tell you that singleplayer characters likely will not carry over to multiplayer.

We are planning to allow an online to offline transfer. It works even now, too.

Is the storyline and end boss complete?

Nope. That's actually what I am primarily working on right now. I know who/what the end boss will be, but we don't know exactly what the end boss will look like. I have a good idea, but it's not developed yet.

Why do developers keep their cards so close to their chests?

First, I don't think we keep our cards close to our chest. Second, we don't talk about stuff because:

1) It's promised to someone else. 2) We honestly don't even know. 3) We don't want to spoil something major.

There's no conspiracy or special reasoning. It's just that simple.

In addition to posting on fansites, Ivan has to venture forth to do battle with the uninformed masses on general purpose gaming sites. Next time you find yourself thinking what a fun job he must have, check threads like this one, or this one, where people complain about HGL being an FPS, having no magical items or game editor, etc.

Friday 23 June 2006

Ivan's been busy in the forums this week, and here are some highlights.

Will the storyline allow your character to start evil and become good, or vice versa?

Nope. We should have some consequence associated with failure, but clearly drawn moral lines will likely not factor into Hellgate as far as player progression is concerned. NPCs will make good and bad choices, but the Player is designed to evolve into a champion among men.

Is HGL wide open or linear in construction?

Hellgate is not at all laid out like Oblivion. That game is super open. Ours is a much more linear, structured game.

Will there be adult content and themes in HGL?

We're neither actively attempting to insert or omit profanity at present. In the end, there probably won't be any real cursing, but there will be plenty of adult themes. I don't have any obvious sexual encounters laid out, but there's plenty of love and loss and brutality.

World map and other geographical boundaries?

The world map isn't complete yet, but since our game is instance-based, geographical boundaries of the sort don't even factor in. So we neither need nor have THE MOUNTAINS OF DOOM, over which no man can cross until he is level 70 or whatever.

Will there be a Collector's Edition of HGL with extra stuff?

Yes!

Will HGL support modding like D2 did?

It's true that we love mods and those ones in particular, but Hellgate just wasn't designed from the ground up to be mod-friendly. Whether or not it happens anyway remains to be seen, however.

Are combat combos in the game?

Not really, no. We have assault skills which are essentially elaborate animation routines that play out. But we do not have active participation combos. Nor are any of these skills bound to weapons.

How does splash damage work?

Certain weapons have splash damage with varying levels of effectiveness. If an enemy is missed, but falls within that weapon's splash radius, he may yet perish.

And finally, from our scary/funny HGL Photoshop thread:

That's one of the scariest images I've ever seen. The only thing worse is trying to visualize the sort of home redecoration we'd do together.

Thursday 15 June 2006

Flagship's Community Director Ivan Sulic has been busy in the forums once again, and here are a few quotes from his June 14th action. His answers are quotes; the questions are paraphrases to cut right to the point.

Why wasn't there more new stuff in the first Flagship newsletter: (See it here.)

Yeah, there was nothing of real importance in that. It was just a way to make sure the lists were working and the templates were working (the latter was not). Future Newsletters should be styled and will also feature...stuff! Stuff worth looking at, even.

How many cinematics will be in the final game?

Right now the E3 2006 is actually one-third of a larger movie. The final game will feature all three parts of that introduction as well as an end-game cutscene. That's the plan for right now, anyway.

Will any skills affect monster corpses?

We don't support any corpse interaction right now because there can be dozens of corpses on-screen at any given time. Being able to interact with each and every one of them would be a serious performance killer.

What type of pistol was Lyra the Templar using in the E3 2006 cinematic?

The pistol Lyra was using in the church during the latter half of the E3 2006 cinematic is no actually in the game just yet (maybe it never will be)...The giant gargoyle dude just got added, though! He's 'Reaper.' Some of his variants are Netherlord and Blood Baron.

Can you play HGL in widescreen proportions?

Absolutely. Widescreen play is already in the game, actually. I play at 1680 x 1050 all the time.

Will "masteries" in particular weapons limit your character's effectiveness with different types of weapons?

Well... Right now we don't invest experience or skill point into weapon mastery, so as your character excels in the game, so will he/she excel at every weapon.

Can you keep the flashlight you get for that early game quest?

Right now we do give out the flashlight early on in the game as part of a special event quest we call Light's Out. But the flashlight itself is just one of many goggles. We have all kinds of goggles in the game that players can find and keep and many are more useful than that. But to more directly answer your question, yes, you can keep the flashlight and yes you can use it in other dark areas, too.

Shots from the Lights Out quest can be seen here, here, and here. The light is on a monocle sort of mask that you wear, and not only could you keep it in the E3 build everyone naturally did, since the item granted you 5-10% bonus damage, and since there wasn't anything else in that game build that fit in that inventory slot. (There will be additional eyewear choices in the final game, of course.)

Saturday 10 June 2006

After laying low for most of last week, and likely working on something a lot more important than fansite forum posts, Flagship's Community Manager Ivan Sulic's returned to the forums. He posted a few good replies in this thread on 4hellgate.de earlier this week:

1) Unfortunately, we do not currently have a Linux version planned.

2) Nope. Items do not currently wear out over time.

Level up special skills during use? 3) We do not feature skill leveling based on use, but it is possible to accrue skill points in ways other than simply leveling. (Flux: One early quest gave a skill point reward in the E3 build.)

4) Nope. We don't have careers in our game. Players simply choose a class. And, since all classes are offense oriented, players simply start killing things.

5) Uh... I'm not 100% clear on what you're asking, but basically we do not currently have skill paths that funnel players down specific career lines. Further, players are never discouraged or forbidden from accessing skills.

Class upgrades at higher levels? 6) Nope. We do not currently have specializations of that sort in the game.

7) Right now, skill points cannot be removed once assigned.

And there's more today, from this thread on in-hellgate.de, another of the fine German HGL sites.

Yes, we will have lighter armors that do more protection than heavier ones even though it doesn't seem logical at a glance.

1) Next class should be revealed late summer or early fall.

Cinematics? 2) Don't know about this. I'm not sure we'll ever be releasing a new one. The other purposed cinemas could just be for the game alone.

Online Play? 3) We won't be using Battle.net. But since we helped build the damn thing, we certainly have an idea of how to go about creating our own unique online service.

Game length? (More here, from our E3 report.) 4) Right now we're planning the main storyline to be about 40 hours. This does not include randomized events and tasks. It's just roughly how much time it will take a player to blast right through to the end of the game's storyline.

5) We don't yet have minimum specs nailed down. And actually no, we don't yet know. So it'd be premature for me to say anything specific in that regards.

We have a ladder system planned. Specifics are so far unknown.

In regards to in-game music, we have ambient scores, industrial tracks and harder quasi-metal tunes. How they are bound to the game is unknown to me.

We really don't have a trade system nailed down yet, it's just something we want to do.

We also don't have our max levels set yet.

Dodging attacks? It's useful, but only to an extent. Most attacks have splash damage and lock-on capabilities. So while dodging is a natural reflex that can help some players avoid more direct types of projectile attacks, it is not a basis of the game's combat system, nor does it completely negate any chance of hit statistics we have built into the game.

Thursday 25 May 2006

Flagship's CM Ivan Sulic has been very busy in various HGL forums so far this week, and since he was (as always) nice enough to compile his posts into a .doc and send us a copy, I'm able to share the highlights with you guys.

After mentioning plans to pass out lots of beta slots to fansites, Ivan said, "Bill has said that there will likely be both a closed and open beta." Which was expected, (after all, they've got to stress-test their new online gaming service before it goes live) but it's nice to hear anyway. He then moved on to some guild features stuff:

[Also] We're planning the equivalent of housing and guild halls and storage, but those things may come after launch. They're not necessities, but we really want them in. Thus, if we finish in time and can implement it all for lunch, cool beans! If not, we'll get to it in good time.

And some info about possible implementation of guild insigna:

We have some plans for Guild emblems. One I've heard tossed about is a sort of bannerman's hologram that rises up out of the back of a guild member, much in the same way a real feudal Japanese bannerman might have carried the emblem of his house. We'll see if it actually happens. There're are few sureties in game development.

Click to see more.

Curious, I looked up some more info, and found some good stuff on the ever-handy Wikipedia. The banners Ivan's referring to are actually called "sashimono." You see one on the left, and here's a*quote from Wikipedia.

Click to see the full image.

A white vs. red deathmatch.

Sashimono were small banners worn by Japanese medieval soldiers for identification during battles. The sashimono are usually fitted to the backs of common soldiers, known as ashigaru, to elite samurai, and in special holders on the horses of some cavalry soldiers. The banners, resembling small flags and bearing clan symbols, were most prominent during the Sengoku period —a period of long civil war in Japan from the middle 15th to early 17th century.

Elsewhere, Ivan jumped into another of the "We want FPS aiming in HGL." argument threads with a quick (and ultimately unsuccessful) effort to pacify the unpacifiable FPS fans.

We don't want to make a shooter. We want to make Diablo with flash -- Diablo with camera angles. We want the millions upon millions of people who purchased and enjoyed Diablo to buy our game and say, "Oh yeah, I remember this kind of thing. This is pretty nice." That's the plan, man. But if the complaints keep rolling in, maybe some option to accommodate other types of players will be made. Who knows?

p.s. Claiming people can easily come to grips with the more advanced mechanics of a modern FPS just because modern FPS titles have been around for some time is an unsubstantiated and entirely insane generalization that does not take into consideration the sheer number of gamers on this green Earth.

How about some info on armor? (You remember weapon's ugly little brother.)

1) Right now it looks like there will be six types of armor sets with three major variants within each set. Further, each variant has an innumerable amount of randomized types. Any class may wear any piece of armor. And though they'll share names across classes, the armor will always look different. So, a Templar that picks up and wears our Tech-Heavy-Superior armor will look significantly different than a Cabalist who picks up and wears the same armor. Everything has been designed so that no matter what a player of a certain class picks up and uses, that player will always look like a member of that class.

To more directly answer your question, no, you cannot place a Templar's head on a Cabalist's body.

2) Ritually scarred.

3) Sure. There can be dudes and ladies who just wear bits of leather. Cabalists start that way, actually.

Some tidbits on the current state of weapon development:

One: Right now we only have swords in the game, but there is a big outcry for axes, hammers and other types of weapons.

Two: 1) Right now only weapons are moddable. But some people around here want armor and focus items (like the Cabalist's Focus Drive) to eventually be moddable. It'd be cool, anyway. Though I don't think it's realistically going to happen.

Three: No to hand grenades and yes to cool finishing moves (those are planned, anyway). We do have a grenade launcher, FYI.

Four: Right now The Holy Negotiator is one-handed. There are no two-handed weapons in the game right now, either. Hopefully that will change soon.

Five: Like Superior vs. Inferior vs. Rare vs. Broken vs. Unique vs. Etc. Each type of randomized weapon comes with its own set of unique attributes. Further, each randomized weapon comes with a randomly determined amount of mod slots based on the maximum preset limits we have imposed and listed on our website. I believe the Firebrand is the better weapon, in general.

Absolutely there will be different damages and different sub-types of weapons like Flawed or whatever. And absolutely mods will be diverse in their abilities, too! You can get a piece of **** ammo clip that adds like 5% fire damage, or you can get a relic that does some goddamned crazy aura explosion thing. Who knows? It's all random like that.

Some recent forum conversation (pushed almost exclusively by people who have not seen the game in person, or by reviewers who played for just a minute or twol) has been about the animations in HGL. People don't think the animations and movements they've seen in various gameplay movies are that great, and they're complaining about it.

...I honestly think that players who sit down and game for a little while won't be bothered by the animations too much. The in-and-out quickies are the ones throwing gripes, and rightly so. One-on-one fights are swimmy, but when you've been wading through thousands of enemies for 40 hours...

Given that our title looks so much like a conventional shooter, it can be hard for people to more fairly lump it into the greater RPG genre. When compared to other action and MMO RPGs that are around and about, Hellgate is hardly lacking visually.

As Ivan's said, there's only one person at Flagship now working on animations, since that's not a priority at this early, pre-Alpha stage. I personally thought the animations were fine at E3, especially when you consider that the game is nowhere near finished, and that additional animations and small details like body movements and such are greatly expanded on in the final, game-polishing stages. It's not something worth worrying about yet, IMHO.

And finally, Ivan detoured into some discussion of his E3 favorites.

Simply, BioShock will be an awesome, awesome game. It was easily my game of show. The amount of art, atmosphere, emotion and story Irrational is pumping into that title is virtually unrivaled in this industry. Amazing.

I also thoroughly enjoyed checking out WarHawk simply because I love that type of flight action game and Incognito is certainly capable of creating something nice. Other notable titles at the show included Naughty Dog's unnamed PS3 action adventure IGN is calling "Jungle Guy Attacks" and there was also Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, which was very cool, and Rainbow Six: Vegas. Though none of these games held a candle to BioShock, good as they were.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to check out Mass Effect, which I hear runs right alongside BioShock for Game of Show contestation.

Monday 22 May 2006

After their customary post-E3 time off, the Flagship guys are getting back to work, and for Community Manager Ivan Sulic, that means forum duty. Here are a few quotes.

It was pointed out that Flagship registered a ton of HellgateCity.com URLs, including Boston, Miami, Paris, New York, San Francisco, and more. Expansion packs? Here's what Ivan said :

We registered all kinds of crap just in case. Brent in IT is complaining that we now own like 150 + domains. Beans!

There was some concern after E3 that the Cabalist's transformation skills had been removed, since none were in the E3 build and she didn't have a skill tree of that name. I speculated in my Cabalist report that those skills were still in the game and just not ready for E3, and happily, Ivan confirms that they remain.

About Transformation... The abilities have not been cut; the skill tab has just been renamed. We like to rename stuff around here a lot. It can make things hard to keep track of, so I can understand the confusion.

And finally, someone asked about online play, and Ivan replied at length , speculating about possible online revenue models.

We will definitely have some form of free online multiplayer. However, we have not yet figured out how we're going to fund the ongoing operation of our MMO-like game... It could conceivably cost something. It could revolve around micro-purchases. It could focus on expansions and episodic content. It could be anything. The point is, we need to generate revenue for ourselves and our publishers so that we can maintain continual support while not screwing over the user. Without ongoing funding, we will be hard-pressed to justify spending money on patches and new content updates, the reason being: why work for people who are no longer making you money when you can focus on creating a new product to sell?

The games industry is still a business, remember. We at Flagship desperately want to make the best game we can for all of you and then have you play it forever. We also want that experience to be supported during that time... Now how do we make that happen? How do we convince our investors that ongoing support is of paramount importance? Easy! We prove that ongoing support earns a profit.

Anyway, expect an announcement regarding our MMO-like online plans in the near future. For now, rest easy knowing you will at least have access to some kind of free online game.

Saturday 6 May 2006

While Flagship Community Manager Ivan Sulic has not yet graced our new forum with his benevolent presence, he's long been a busy boy in various other HGL forums. Yesterday, for instance, he went to town in the forum of German siteinHellgate.de. They've got an interesting system there; Ivan doesn't speak German, so readers post questions, the site admins translate them into English, and then when Ivan replies they translate his posts back into German. Fortunately for we non-Teutonic commoners, Ivan's replies in English are left untouched, so we can follow along.

The latest page of the thread can be seen here, and here are a few of yesterday's goodies:

Life and mana restoration? Leeching? Ivan: Actually now it is possible in the game. We currently have both power and life drain skills available for the Cabalist. That's just how quickly development changes.

In terms of other methods of regeneration, we have medic pickups and some enemies that die drop immediate health gain power-ups. We also have actual doctors at towns and there are in-instance bonuses that can be found. Additionally, some skills allow a character to regenerate health. I'm not sure how the loot pickups will work, however.

Will we get group-XP for killing monsters? Is there a system to share stuff or how will the items be looted in such groups? Ivan: Right now you get individual XP. And there is currently no system to share items. Both features are subject to change.

Do we find the same monsters in this instances as in regular games - but stronger... Or will we find new or unique enemies in "40 Players" Instances that can be found only there? Ivan: I am not aware of any plans to create specific unique monsters solely for use in instances where there are many participants.

How many people can be around the stations at the same time? Ivan: The on-paper limit right now is a hundred or so. When more people try to enter a station, a duplicate of that station will be created and those people will be funneled into that duplicate. Of course, their groups will always be maintained, first and foremost. So, when a group of 10 tries to enter a station with 95 people in it, the whole group will be transferred to a duplicate of that station. This entire process will be completely transparent to the end user.

Ivan also clarified the current weapon switch method:

...anything you put into your three weapon hotkey slots does not take up inventory space. That space can accommodate a total combination of up to six one-handed weapons and/or three two-handed weapons.

As you probably remember, Diablo II allowed one weapon-switch, to quicky go from a sword/shield to a two-handed weapon, for instance. Hellgate: London is doing the same thing, but upping the options from 2 to 3 weapons. And as Ivan said, either one can be a pair of one-handed weapons, or a single two-handed weapon.