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 Post subject: State of HU?
PostPosted: Mon Nov 07, 2016 12:29 pm 
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Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2009 12:21 am
Posts: 224
How's the population? How are the most recent patch updates in terms of content, balance and challenge?


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 Post subject: Re: State of HU?
PostPosted: Mon Nov 07, 2016 1:48 pm 
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Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 11:28 am
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Location: Vancouver, BC
The most recent patch was 1.6, it started in January, and had a bit of a rocky beginning. I didn't play it much since PureRage and I have been preparing v1.7 for release around next January. With about a couple months to go for v1.6, school midterms, etc, I think the current population is relatively low (I often see about 5-10 games up, and I think that implies 5-10 players since often folks load in extra chars into their games).

HUv1.7 was based largely off of HUv1.3 (I was away from the HU community for a couple years, so v1.3 was what I had to work with), so it is quite different from v1.6. I can describe v1.7's balance as being a little more similar to the earliest versions of HU, where trash was a bit tougher. I tried to structure synergy groups so that builds used 60 points and grouped synergies so that a build had one skill per element or purpose (single-target, AoE, defensive, buff, etc). The goal is to promote more variety. In testing earlier this year, v1.7 was found to be relatively challenging, but I think that once folks get used to the changes of v1.7, it'll be the next patch that makes things a bit harder.

One of the things we're thinking of trying out is to have two strains of HU, one played on the realm and the other offline and being updated and tested. With that in mind, HUv1.8 is expected to be based on HUv1.6, and would be online in January 2018, while HUv1.9 should be based on v1.7, and would be online in 2019. Since v1.6 and v1.7 are quite different, the patches based on them could feel different enough that after a year players might feel like they're exploring HU for the first time yet again.

Some changes in v1.7 that might be handy to include in other versions:
  1. All weapons and armor are balanced around having about 100%ED, so upgrading them to exceptional and elites is very effective (upgrading recipe made easier to achieve)
  2. Most white items have automods to narrow the gap between Uniques and Runewords, or between Rares and Magic items.
  3. Rare affixes have been changed so that an important mod (like %ED) occurs on nearly every affix in a small amount. This way Rare items are more consistent for that mod. I suppose this might be against a modder's goals, but to each their own.
  4. All monster spell damage is based on their mLvl, controlled by a single formula in the Attack skill line of skills.txt. This makes it very fast to tweak monster damage. There are adjustment points to control skill damage based on the skill level (e.g. Bosses have level 20 skills and 2x TrashDamage, ActBosses have level 40 skills and 3x TrashDamage. Both multipliers are adjustable). A nice benefit of this is that a Solo version of the mod can be quickly produced if it just means a nerf to monster damage.
  5. skilldesc.txt has been edited to refer to the cells in skills.txt for most numbers, making it a bit easier to tweak a skill without bothering to modify the description.


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 Post subject: Re: State of HU?
PostPosted: Mon Nov 07, 2016 6:58 pm 
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Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2009 9:01 pm
Posts: 1413
He lives!

1.6 was indeed a bit rough to get going the way it was meant to.
Normal is relatively straightforward, though D can be a sticking point for some at first as it should be).
Nightmare was easy til Meph as a melee at least...those bone cages have a bloody ton of hp now...this makes having movement skills essentially paramount.
Have not played hell, as I had other pulls when I got to the end of NM...fighting spam more than devilkin again.

1.7 will be a very big change from the current state. Probably the most important to revisit are from 1.5 (Mrawskrad's work) to level HP to a degree, and to make only 1 red and 1 blue potion that was based on %health only (though i do believe the double dose from high str was still there). These worked quite well imo overall. There were also a lot of skill reworkings that are quite fun to use...haven't played 1.7 much sadly so I don't know how many of these made it over to that patch.

Ensely (made us 1.6a-c) recently got a well established SC2 streamer to give it a whirl on stream...this led to his dropbox bandwidth being completely used for the month! There has been a small uptick in forum traffic from new folks as a result.

So, we are still goin, still modding, and still playing! Thanks for letting us play with your toys.

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 Post subject: Re: State of HU?
PostPosted: Fri Nov 11, 2016 11:24 pm 

Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 7:13 pm
Posts: 112
I truly wish there was a HU for D3. It would have been so unbelievable if that game were able to be modded as well. I think HU is at a point where single player is much preferable to the realm. Terry/soulmancer gave a wonderful mod to all of us who continue to play D2 however.


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 Post subject: Re: State of HU?
PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2016 3:20 pm 

Joined: Tue Dec 06, 2011 9:27 am
Posts: 73
hey. new season anytime soon? those spam bots are hilarious :'(


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 Post subject: Re: State of HU?
PostPosted: Sat Nov 12, 2016 11:30 pm 
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Rix wrote:
hey. new season anytime soon? those spam bots are hilarious :'(


And that is with deleting them about daily...

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 Post subject: Re: State of HU?
PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2016 2:24 am 

Joined: Thu Nov 25, 2010 4:55 pm
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The entire community is dead because people came in and tried to change what made Hell Unleashed so popular in the first place. There's a reason why this MOD fostered and achieved huge success under Soulmancer's vision, and HIS mod.

Too many people came in thinking they have any idea how to mod a game that can appeal to a lot of people and end up actually burying the community entirely. Even Mathemetics thought he could Mod, and create his own version of HU but it was never as successful as what Soulmancer created.

If you want to bring people back to the mod then you need to figure out what version of Hell Unleashed was the most popular and build off of that slightly. Trying to change too much shit, and innovating your own ideas of how to make the mod too challenging only drives people further away.

There are ways to make the game challenging without drastically changing everything, and making everything ridiculously too hard. Forcing people to play in parties in such a small community is also pointless at this point.

Again as long as people keep throwing in their own ideas of what they want the mod to look like it'll stay dead.

Just my opinion and it's probably closer to factual.

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 Post subject: Re: State of HU?
PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2016 11:45 am 
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Joined: Tue Sep 01, 2009 9:01 pm
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Wow, long time no see Lee!

I agree in a number of ways, but there are things we forget about the game's state as we rumble forward. The strength of melee was seen as too much, 1.3 prolly went too far in some cases to nerf them. Still they were playable (wasn't this when pious made his 100k str barb?). There was a lot of input for most of the 1.3s, yet some were still unhappy throughout. We also got widescreen during this...something which blizz tried and failed to do well.

People were tired of the same things they had been playing, and were very vocal about wanting larger changes. 1.4 did too much with no notice it was (on bosses at least).

1.5 did a lot to standardize, to simply clean up several files that were in horrid shape, and gave new skills in replace of many unused/lackluster ones. There was a lot that was good in this patch imo. A way to control boss burst damage was given for some of their new spells (maybe a bit overused, but the idea is nice).

1.6 was done when nobody else was motivated, and people were wanting a new patch. No matter its shaky start, there have been a number of new people coming to play it. We also got a full file tree for the game (i am still insanely greatful for this).

So even though there have been some questionable changes, we have come a long long way from 1.21z

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 Post subject: Re: State of HU?
PostPosted: Thu Dec 08, 2016 7:12 pm 

Joined: Wed May 19, 2010 6:32 pm
Posts: 61
For whatever it's worth, I know a lot of people are really excited for 1.7 to go live, myself included.

I do my best to spread awareness about this mod to my friends. You guys should do the same. If there is one thing that is universally true across all diablo-esque RPGs it's that they're more fun when you play with friends.

I know myself and two buddies of mine are gonna be rolling HC as soon as the patch goes live!


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 Post subject: Re: State of HU?
PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2016 4:48 pm 

Joined: Mon Sep 07, 2009 9:40 pm
Posts: 102
Brevan wrote:
I think the current population is relatively low (I often see about 5-10 games up, and I think that implies 5-10 players since often folks load in extra chars into their games).

  • All monster spell damage is based on their mLvl, controlled by a single formula in the Attack skill line of skills.txt. This makes it very fast to tweak monster damage. A nice benefit of this is that a Solo version of the mod can be quickly produced if it just means a nerf to monster damage.


Lee wrote:

There are ways to make the game challenging without drastically changing everything, and making everything ridiculously too hard. Forcing people to play in parties in such a small community is also pointless at this point.



Kramuti wrote:
There was a lot of input for most of the 1.3s, yet some were still unhappy throughout. We also got widescreen during this...something which blizz tried and failed to do well.


I have been playing HU for many years, though unfortunately, never on the realms simply because I cannot devote the same amount of time to games as I used to. As such, I'll play in spurts - a couple weeks at a time, every few months. E.g., I hadn't played D2 since the spring, yet in the past ~3 weeks I started a PhoenixSin and am about to face Norm Meph, to give you an idea of my pace.

Also for that reason, I'm still playing Solo Edition 1.21 along with PlugY. But I'm excited for (and sad to be missing) so many of the awesome changes in recent patches. I don't wish to derail the point of this thread (and by the way, a sincere "Thank you" to Terry for starting us on this journey) but I would appreciate clarification on a few points quoted above:

1. Would it be possible to edit the Skills.txt Attack formula in 1.6, or 1.7, to create said Solo edition as a client-side edit? Or are there other compile-time dependencies?

2. Widescreen support came along in 1.3? Is that native to the mod, or using something such as MultiRes?

3. I checked the 1.6 full filetree post (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=14003) and it says you must use 1024x768 in order for PlugY to work, which nullifies #2, I suppose. But 1024x768 is still better than 800x600 :-D.

4. Are save files compatible between 1.21 and 1.6/1.7, or would this be a fresh start even for Solo?

Many thanks!
-BaTz


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 Post subject: Re: State of HU?
PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2016 4:59 pm 

Joined: Wed Dec 12, 2012 7:24 pm
Posts: 1031
1.6 has already been updated to a SP version, though not in the same way that 1.7 is. The main reason it was done was to give all the new players from Twitch streams a more viable SP experience and maintain interest until 1.7 The Twitch streams resulted in a lot of downloads so even if only 5% of them stick with the game to 1.7 it was a success.

The default game resolution is 1024x768 as opposed to the classic 800x600. It is possible to zoom it out more but I don't think it looks good and it's really hard to click on things when they get really tiny.

Save files from older patches will always result in "bad inventory data" so you'd have to start over whether its in SP or on ladder.


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