If you don't know what torchlight is, look at Yahtzees new review. If you don't know what TorchED is, it is the Modding tool for Torchlight. I figured I'd review it because a) I'm bored, and b)Why not. I'll just tell you my experience with it (since i'm a noob at modding... everything except Dawn of War and Warcraft 3), and my experience with the modding part in general.
Pre-release, I figured that if Torchlight was so "mod friendly" it should have a simple, easy-to-use (maybe with the exception of scripting, or putting triggers down or something complicated), like Warcraft 3's Editor. I was wrong.
So to start, I checked out the Tutorials given with the release of the tool. However, I was lost two minutes in. The tutorial called for a "layout link" to be created. I looked closer at the tutorial, thinking I had missed something. Nope. So I spent the next 20 minutes looking and clicking around the TorchED screen, trying to find out wtf a layout link was. As I turns out, I needed to right click the left-hand pane, the go down to building blocks, then layout link. So, what did they expect me to know that?
So after I figured that out, I began making maps, and I got pretty good at it. Then I realized my maps were useless unless I made a dungeon. Dungeons are the rues for the map, what creatures can spawn, what setting it is, what order different sections of the level appear in, etc. So I looked at the supplied tutorial once again. And got nothing. Maybe it was the transfer to Windows 7 that caused a dual back-up of my torchlight files, or that I'm retarded when it comes to this sort of thing, but I had completed everything (the rules for the level, the level "chunks" as they call them... everything). Then it wouldn't save. I asked online, looked at a few (dozen) tutorials, nothing helped. I figured the least I could do was find someone to send them off to (because at this point, the only option I had was to get rid of all of my Torchlight stuff on my computer, reinstall everything, and re-make everything from scratch) to make it into an actual mod or something.
Then I realized that that would never happen. Why? because of the runic forums mod community. apparently, they consist of about two dozen people and the moderators/developers. It also took me a total of 6 days to get even one reply for two questions I had asked on the help forum.
Torchlights TorchED is great.... if you kow what you're doing. If you don't, be prepared to screw things up, even break the game. There are many tutorials out there, but they can get confusing if you don't do everything perfect.
I'm comparing this to Warcraft 3's editor, because I found that to be incredibly intuitive and forgiving when mistakes are made. TorchED, on the other hand, while has some features that are better than Warcraft 3's editor, is not intuitive at all and if one istake is made, say, putting something in the wrong folder with out knowing it, could screw everything up until you fix the error. Also, the provided tutorials assume that you know quite a bit already. Heck, if I knew that much already I would be modding the .dat files like those who modded before TorchED came out.
Please note this is not at all a formal review, and with Yahtzee's review of Torchlight I, as stated above, figured "why not?"
Although I am sure some of you will come up with some answers.
Pre-release, I figured that if Torchlight was so "mod friendly" it should have a simple, easy-to-use (maybe with the exception of scripting, or putting triggers down or something complicated), like Warcraft 3's Editor. I was wrong.
So to start, I checked out the Tutorials given with the release of the tool. However, I was lost two minutes in. The tutorial called for a "layout link" to be created. I looked closer at the tutorial, thinking I had missed something. Nope. So I spent the next 20 minutes looking and clicking around the TorchED screen, trying to find out wtf a layout link was. As I turns out, I needed to right click the left-hand pane, the go down to building blocks, then layout link. So, what did they expect me to know that?
So after I figured that out, I began making maps, and I got pretty good at it. Then I realized my maps were useless unless I made a dungeon. Dungeons are the rues for the map, what creatures can spawn, what setting it is, what order different sections of the level appear in, etc. So I looked at the supplied tutorial once again. And got nothing. Maybe it was the transfer to Windows 7 that caused a dual back-up of my torchlight files, or that I'm retarded when it comes to this sort of thing, but I had completed everything (the rules for the level, the level "chunks" as they call them... everything). Then it wouldn't save. I asked online, looked at a few (dozen) tutorials, nothing helped. I figured the least I could do was find someone to send them off to (because at this point, the only option I had was to get rid of all of my Torchlight stuff on my computer, reinstall everything, and re-make everything from scratch) to make it into an actual mod or something.
Then I realized that that would never happen. Why? because of the runic forums mod community. apparently, they consist of about two dozen people and the moderators/developers. It also took me a total of 6 days to get even one reply for two questions I had asked on the help forum.
Torchlights TorchED is great.... if you kow what you're doing. If you don't, be prepared to screw things up, even break the game. There are many tutorials out there, but they can get confusing if you don't do everything perfect.
I'm comparing this to Warcraft 3's editor, because I found that to be incredibly intuitive and forgiving when mistakes are made. TorchED, on the other hand, while has some features that are better than Warcraft 3's editor, is not intuitive at all and if one istake is made, say, putting something in the wrong folder with out knowing it, could screw everything up until you fix the error. Also, the provided tutorials assume that you know quite a bit already. Heck, if I knew that much already I would be modding the .dat files like those who modded before TorchED came out.
Please note this is not at all a formal review, and with Yahtzee's review of Torchlight I, as stated above, figured "why not?"
Although I am sure some of you will come up with some answers.
