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Runic Games shut down (Torchlight devs)

shihonage

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So Treyarch using the Infinity Ward engine for "COD: World At War" meant that the game was actually made by Infinity Ward. Also, giving out keys for a game is the same as making it.

:lol::lol::lol:

got it bro
 

LeStryfe79

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Damn. I remember playing Hellgate and one of those guys gave me and my friend alpha keys to Mythos. The possibilities seemed endless back then...
shihonage

I meant guys who worked at Runic not guys who worked on Hellgate since this is a thread about Runic and all.

Get it?
 

mwnn85

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Grossly overrated as far as I'm concerned.
Didn't think much of Torchlight or it's sequel. Didn't bring anything new to the table or did anything particularly better than anything else.
Hob seems like a bit of an arty-farty Zelda knock off. Since it's Zelda-like I'll have to have a go of it.

:dead:
 

Metro

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Torchlight 2 had all the cool Diablo 2 features on paper, but they fucked up the graphics style, area design, multiplayer, and character classes. Overall, it actually ended up being worse than Diablo 3.
TL2 had great character classes and talent trees. Area design was fine along with tons of randomization and secret levels/vignettes. Graphics style was also fine, deal with it, h8r. Not sure what your issue was with multiplayer. That it wasn't some rigid policed thing like Battle.net? D3 just stole a bunch of ideas from TL1 and dumbed down talents and ruined itemization.
 

Metro

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Get back to me when you can articulate an argument and not just post shitty gifs.
 

LeStryfe79

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Original Mythos was fun as Hell. In the beginning it was just Travis and a couple other guys. Playing as monster races and doing the random maps was fun. It had this feel to it I can't explain. I liked both Torchlights, but to me, they never quite captured the right vibe
 

shihonage

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PREVIOUSLY ON:

Damn. I remember playing Hellgate and one of those guys gave me and my friend alpha keys to Mythos. The possibilities seemed endless back then...

Hellgate was Flagship Studios.

No shit. Where do you think the guys from Runic came from?

Not from the makers of Hellgate:London, which was developed by Flagship Studios San Francisco. [...]

Damn. I remember playing Hellgate and one of those guys gave me and my friend alpha keys to Mythos. The possibilities seemed endless back then...
shihonage

I meant guys who worked at Runic not guys who worked on Hellgate since this is a thread about Runic and all.

Get it?

LeStryfe:"Man too bad about Runic - remember Hellgate and Mythos? Those were the days..."
Me: "Hellgate wasn't a Runic game"
LeStryfe: "YES IT WAS DUMBASS"
Me: "No it wasn't because facts"
LeStryfe: "Uhhh ehhh what's your point? Uhh ehh I wasn't talking about Hellgate, because this is a Runic thread derp derp":shredder:
 
Last edited:

LeStryfe79

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PREVIOUSLY ON:

Damn. I remember playing Hellgate and one of those guys gave me and my friend alpha keys to Mythos. The possibilities seemed endless back then...

Hellgate was Flagship Studios.

No shit. Where do you think the guys from Runic came from?

Not from the makers of Hellgate:London, which was developed by Flagship Studios San Francisco. [...]

Damn. I remember playing Hellgate and one of those guys gave me and my friend alpha keys to Mythos. The possibilities seemed endless back then...
shihonage

I meant guys who worked at Runic not guys who worked on Hellgate since this is a thread about Runic and all.

Get it?

LeStryfe:"Man too bad about Runic - remember Hellgate and Mythos? Those were the days..."
Me: "Hellgate wasn't a Runic game"
LeStryfe: "YES IT WAS DUMBASS"
Me: "No it wasn't because facts"
LeStryfe: "Uhhh ehhh what's your point? Uhh ehh I wasn't talking about Hellgate, because this is a Runic thread derp derp":shredder:
Flagship Seattle wasn't even a real studio at the time. It was pretty much Travis doing research for the main studio. Then, Mythos actually became a good game and more people joined. Yes, the people working on Mythos were technically working on Hellgate. Also, my brother works for a document company that files legal papers and he filed the Hanbitsoft papers when they took over Flagship. It was actually legally the same company. I saw the paperwork and chatted with the devs. You didn't and your use of memes stink. Too bad for you that there was a one in a million chance of me being right on all ends but that's the way it goes, my friend. Maybe next time you won't be so unlucky.

YOU'RE FIRED!!!
 

shihonage

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Flagship Seattle wasn't even a real studio at the time. It was pretty much Travis doing research for the main studio. Then, Mythos actually became a good game and more people joined. Yes, the people working on Mythos were technically working on Hellgate. Also, my brother works for a document company that files legal papers and he filed the Hanbitsoft papers when they took over Flagship. It was actually legally the same company. I saw the paperwork and chatted with the devs. You didn't and your use of memes stink. Too bad for you that there was a one in a million chance of me being right on all ends but that's the way it goes, my friend. Maybe next time you won't be so unlucky.

YOU'RE FIRED!!!

Y'know, instead of this sad display of mental acrobatics you could've just said, "oops, I stand corrected", several posts ago. SMH
 

ortucis

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I remember playing FATE (when it was released), it was Diablo-lite with pets, simple and fun. So I was kinda excited for Torchlight.. which had same developers, but turned out to be "meh" since it was same thing only with slightly better visuals and combat.

Torchlight 2 on the other hand, should've been the first game. Open with NPC's and proper story. Still, never finished any of the Torchlight games since they came up with some of THE most generic plot for the player to spend so much time in, plus the gameplay gets stale very fast. Still, I was looking forward to what they would do with Torchlight 3. Then they just stopped working on the IP completely, which is a weird decision when you haven't even created something worth remembering so far and just created a generic clone of something that came out years ago.

A shame. Would've liked to see T3 with Grim Dawn like improvements (and a better story, not that Grim Dawn is anything amazing on that front as well).
 
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^ All of that. Runic was started by Max and Eric Schaefer and Travis Baldree. People who were behind stuff like Diablo 2 and Fate. TL1 and TL2 were great. Then for some reason they got in bed with the Chinese. The Chinese wanted to push some shitty mobile MMO with Torchlight. Max, Eric, and Travis left to make their own studios. HOB is utter shit designed by C-list developers.

To add: Eric and Travis founded Double Damage games and made Rebel Galaxy -- a budget Freelancer type space sim on a 2D plane. Their current project is a spiritual sequel that is closer to Wing Commander Privateer (cockpit view, etc.). This should be announced in about a year.

Max and some other people founded Echtra Studios but have yet to release anything (although they're apparently working on an arpg).

This is the shit that Torchlight has become:




LOL, 23- 29 seconds in that video is fucking hilarious.
 

Infinitron

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Why not? Now that the company is shut down, I'm sure there'll be some tell-all interviews soon.

How Microsoft Almost Published Torchlight, And Other Memories From Runic Games

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Last week, publisher Perfect World shut down Runic Games, the Seattle-based developer of Torchlight and Hob. To commemorate, we asked one of the studio’s co-founders to share some thoughts and anecdotes.

Runic was founded in 2008 by Travis Baldree, Diablo co-creators Max Schaefer and Erich Schaefer, Peter Hu, and members of the defunct Flagship Studios, best known for Hellgate: London and a game called Mythos that never came out.

Although Baldree left Runic in 2014, he’s got plenty of thoughts and memories from his time there. When I asked him to share some, here’s what he wrote:

* * *

I ran Runic games as its president and was the lead engineer and I guess you could say game director. After Torchlight 2 shipped, and a subsequent false start (which was the genesis of Rebel Galaxy), and once we had gotten a prototype for what eventually became HOB put together, I left with Erich to start Double Damage Games and get back to teeny-tiny development again.

My story with Runic ends there, at least in a professional sense - but the team went on to ship HOB, which had a great critical reception.

That’s all just a line to hang things on, though. I don’t want to grind out a boring history lesson, and you don’t want that either. Corner me with a beer sometime if you do.

I just want to tell you some cool stuff about Runic Games. I want to share some of the gooey center with you - what I want to remember.

This is all filtered through my experience, and anyone else at Runic could give you a hundred other anecdotes about the place. If you meet any of them, I hope you’ll ask.

I want you to know how the team of sixteen was willing to hang on in the face of uncertainty while we tried to pin down a future for ourselves for six months, when they all could have scattered to more secure jobs after Flagship’s closure.

I want to tell you about the prototype for Torchlight, with a licensed model from TurboSquid which looked like a dual-wielding Jesus, and who, incidentally, stabbed himself in the face with both swords while he ran.

I want to relay the dread and relief of our first Christmas, when the snow was so deep in Seattle that buses were high-centering, and our bank account was negative, and I was so incredibly drunk, refreshing our Wells Fargo account page over and over, waiting for the wire that would ensure our survival to come through, while the rest of Runic celebrated and trusted that it would all work out.

We pitched Torchlight (when it was still codenamed Delvers) to Big Fish Games here in Seattle. No pitch was off the table! I had a horrible cold, and was loopy with Sudafed. Their conference room was oddly set up, with a table projector, but no nearby power outlets, and a distant wall that was at a 30 degree angle. I stretched the cable from my laptop to an outlet high on that wall, balancing my computer on some books, while the PowerPoint presentation was projected trapezoid-ally at an off-angle. I can barely remember anything from the pitch - I’m sure it was awful. And someone leaned forward over the table afterward and said, “this is all great, but we don’t really make... games.”

We sat down with Frank Gibeau at EA Redwood Shores, did our song and dance, and at the conclusion, he said: “The ink will be dry on the contract next week”. We never heard another peep.

I can still clearly remember my first visit to Perfect World’s old offices in Beijing, wandering through the long tables of artists and engineers and the incredible (and colorful) proliferation of animal-themed humidifiers scattered everywhere, blurting steam. The big tiled bathrooms, cold because of open windows, where everyone was smoking cigarettes.

Zynga contacted us out of the blue. They had been looking at leasing Flagship’s old office space in San Francisco, and had seen a video of Mythosrunning there. We met with Bing Gordon and a few other folks in their old offices, seated at a table covered with dry-erase scribbles. We talked about their games, and at some point, Bing leaned back in his chair, jutted out his lower jaw and made suggestive wiggling motions with the first two fingers of each hand as he said, “And now, I’m going to part the kimono,” and prepared to divulge their secrets.

I wish you could see the first technical prototype of HOB - I used Wind Wakermodels, animations, and effects. We had a little Link running around on Outset island, pushing blocks, throwing rocks, cutting grass, swimming, scaling walls, and shouting ‘hya!’ from an isometric camera, just to make sure that the fundamental navigation would work.

It took us so long to find a name for the studio, that in the interim we were incorporated as ‘Surprise Truck’, Max’s vote for the company name. Since my phone number and address were used, I got a steady stream of phone calls asking if ‘Surprise Trucking’ could assist in a cross-country move.

We pitched Torchlight to Microsoft and had extensive meetings, a company vetting, and it all seemed to be going so well. To our shock, at the end of the arduous process, they decided they’d rather have us make a Fable game for them. We declined. Right before Torchlight shipped, a Microsoft rep came up to me at our first PAX and cried “Why didn’t you come to us to publish this?”

We came very close to becoming part of Turbine, and working on a Hobbit themed title. I had the best Old Fashioned I’ve ever had at our first dinner with them.

Now, with the passage of time, it’s just funny that a mobile game calledArmed Heroes stole assets from Torchlight, and when they protested, I pointed out that they even had the same misspellings for their filenames.

Max Schaefer and I always argued over floating damage numbers, so one day I added floating text for EVERYTHING - including footsteps.

…and I want to talk about the human element that gets baked into the games.

Especially, I think, for teams the size of Runic and smaller. I’ve always been fascinated by the people who make games, and if you are too, I’d recommend you snuggle up and read the incredible essays penned by Jimmy Maher over at the Digital Antiquarian (www.filfre.net)

If you give 10 different chefs a recipe, they can all bake the same thing, but you won’t get the same result. They alter the outcome. The same is true for games. The people who build them influence the flavor of the thing you get in surprising and often untraceable ways. That’s part of what I love about games - that they’re ultimately very human expressions of a group of individuals, the product of a secret recipe, and seasoned just so because of who was tossing things in the pot.

That was certainly true at Runic.

Runic was a company where our ‘Minister of Culture’ Wonder Russell’s dog ended up in the game as a pet, and has his own Facebook page. (Falcor!)

It was a company where our original tech artist Adam Perin is literally wieldable as a sword, complete with mustache crossguard and glasses - and a few select quotes.

If you’ve played Torchlight 2 you’re probably going to stumble across just how much Patrick Blank, the lead level designer, loves the Goonies. And Claptrap appears secretly late in the game, due to Patrick’s history at Gearbox.

Fishing and pets are in the Torchlight games because of Fate, a game which now makes me feel old because I’m told again and again about that time someone played it on their parents’ Dell when they were a kid.

A game is the sum of a billion tiny decisions, most never discussed, that push it one way or the other. I can look at Runic’s output and see the expression of individuals in a thousand nuances that most people will never explicitly recognize. It’s almost like a cryptic photo album.

Jason Beck, our original Art Director, has a particular affinity for thorny corkscrew designs - which you can see in the first Runic Games logo, but also in some of the interface & logo artwork he did for Fate.

The precision texture tiling of Tim Swope in the tilesets he built is impossible for me to miss when I see it.

A Torchlight player mentioned that they had a condition called ‘Nystagmus’ which meant that camera shakes would render the game essentially unplayable. Marsh Lefler added an option to disable it right away.

The different flourishes our two animators, Colin & Matt, applied are unmistakable to me.

Kyle Cornelius’ chunky, physical concepts that benefited from his mechanical design background. Mike Franchina’s bold shapes, lovely metals, and religious iconography.

Jeff Mianowski’s gorgeous and complex character wardrobes.

Matt Uelmen’s scores as binding agents that hold it all together.

And these things are direct influences on the final products - there are plenty that are more difficult to identify, but all contributed to the feel of the place.

During the first six months of Runic’s existence, when we were trying to secure our future, we almost became part of PopCap - to the extent that we had a get-to-know-you party with PopCap folks. This was in 2008, and then the economy cratered, and on the day we thought we were heading to PopCap’s offices to handshake the deal with John Vechey and Dave Roberts, it died instead. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little moist-eyed that afternoon.

But even the act of pursuing that, the mental gearshifts we were all making in thinking about our potential future at PopCap, and how we’d approach development, persisted in us. I think you can see a partial expression of their philosophy in the games we made, in trying to make them welcoming and accessible and playable anywhere. I think it’s one of the reasons we added a netbook mode to Torchlight. (I know - netbooks? What are those?)

Even people outside of Runic had an influence - uncountable interactions with fans at PAX tweaked the trajectories of the games we made, from overheard comments, to direct discussions, to tweets and posts.

Runic Games was a special place. That particular arrangement of wonderful people will never happen again. Even if, somehow, we all ended up in the same studio, in the same configuration, at some future date. People change over time. The flavor of those games will always, always be unique.

There’s a melancholy to that.

But...

I also know that these wonderful people will be adding their own fingerprint to whatever it is they do next, and that, when I see it, I’ll recognize it for what it is.
 

Dux

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People might disagree but I think if you're going to make a Diablo clone you need something more than just the familiar gameplay. Torchlight I and II had the familiar gameplay but none of the atmosphere. Their sense of aesthetic were like if nu-Blizzard wanted to take it a step further with the awful WoW cartoonish shit and that just boggles the mind quite frankly. I don't get it. Diablo I and II can stand on their own legs because of a variety of factors; Torchlight only had the basic gameplay - nothing else. There was nothing special about these games. Bland as they come.

So it's no big loss, really. A hundred game developers could've done what they did - and probably better. Grinding Gear Games is one example.
 
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People might disagree but I think if you're going to make a Diablo clone you need something more than just the familiar gameplay. Torchlight I and II had the familiar gameplay but none of the atmosphere. Their sense of aesthetic were like if nu-Blizzard wanted to take it a step further with the awful WoW cartoonish shit and that just boggles the mind quite frankly. I don't get it. Diablo I and II can stand on their own legs because of a variety of factors; Torchlight only had the basic gameplay - nothing else. There was nothing special about these games. Bland as they come.

So it's no big loss, really. A hundred game developers could've done what they did - and probably better. Grinding Gear Games is one example.

You forgot about Grim Dawn, a looter adventure game that played like Diablo 2 but had IMO a better class and skill system.
 

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