Runic Games/Torchlight Quick Facts

• General – Who is Runic Games? / What is Torchlight?
• Torchlight – Why Single-Player? / And what about the MMO?
• Gameplay Mechanics – Stats / Skills / Classes / Story / Pet / Monsters / Dungeons / Items / Other Gameplay Mechanics
• Modding – What’s this about moddability? / What is Preditor?
• Technical – What engine will Torchlight run on? / What are the system specs?

Who is Runic Games?
Runic Games, Inc. is a company started by the former employees of Flagship Studios’ Seattle team, that was in charge of Mythos. In legalese, Runic Games is a developer of PC-based entertainment software, designing games that focus on quality, approachability, and fun. Runic Games is staffed by team with experienced members, including leads on “Diablo,” “Diablo II,” “Diablo II: Lord of Destruction,” “Fate,” “Hellgate: London” and “Mythos.” Runic Games is located in Seattle, Washington, United States.

What is Torchlight?
It’s still rather vague what exactly Torchlight is. We know for sure Torchlight is the Intellectual Property of Runic Games. In their official press release, Torchlight was announced as an Action/MMORPG, but we know that Torchlight is a single-player game. This contradicts the announcement and suggests that both games will carry the title of Torchlight. The games will both be published by Chinese company, Perfect World.

So why Single-Player?
To quote lead designer Travis Baldree,

There are quite a few parts to this – to begin with, since we’re starting from scratch and don’t have the benefit of any of the previous code or assets we developed for Mythos, we needed to get our feet back under ourselves.* Building a single-player game on a short timeline gives us an opportunity to do this – and ship it and polish it.* Apart from that, Mythos was only inches from the finish line for open beta before things collapsed, and we’re all a little anxious to ship something that people can see and play, from a psychological standpoint.* Building the single-player first has a host of other benefits – not least of which is the fact that the game will be highly moddable, and we plan to deliver some robust modding tools, which would never be possible with the MMO. It also allows us to get a little income during our MMO development to help ensure that we stay afloat.* Last, but not least – it’ll give us a chance to get all of your feedback early on and incorporate it into the MMO!

And the MMO?
All we know for sure is that the MMO is the ultimate goal of their design, and will be set in the same world as Torchlight’s single player game.

Gameplay Mechanics:
Stats:
Currently the game has an attribute system. All that is known is that it is a little different from the one in Mythos. This information is subject to change.

Skills:
The Skill System is still in development and no details have been given.

Classes:
The game will have classes, but none of them are currently finalized. The class in the game currently appears to be a sort of Barbarian or Warrior class, but again, this is subject to change.

Story:
The only information regarding the game’s story was found in the official press release, “Adventurers set out from the town of Torchlight into the nearby mountains in search of the magic ore that imbues their equipment with power, yet imperils their very existence.” It is unknown how this is meant.

Pet:
The game currently has a pet system similar to the one found in Fate. The pet has its own inventory as well as its own health and mana bars. Just like in Fate, when the pet is critically wounded, its status is set to “Fleeing” and it runs around until healed. According to Eaiin and Taylor Balbi’s GDC impressions, Shift+1 is the hotkey for healing the pet.

Monsters:
Monsters currently known to be in the game:
Skeletons, Skeletal Warriors, Goblin Gravediggers, Trolls, and a mysterious enigmatic shadow creature. The Goblin Gravedigger is capable of spawning undead by walking around a dungeon and digging them up using its shovel. According to Taylor’s GDC impressions, there are also three forms of Goblins in the game, melee, ranged, and caster-types.

Champion Monsters, a staple in Action/RPGs of the Diablo style are also verified to be in the game.

Monsters also bleed, and skeletons can have chips of bone fly off of their bodies when struck.

Dungeons:
The only environment in the game as of Taylor’s GDC impressions was a stone Crypt-like environment. It has been confirmed that several others are in the works and each will have different feels. As put by Level Designer Patrick Blank,

We aren’t just changing textures and colors, we are building each environment*differently to really separate them from the last. That includes huge geometry changes, and how the levels are laid out for gameplay.

Items:
Little is known currently about items. Health and Mana potions are tied into the interface itself, with 1 and 2 controlling their usage, respectively. Equipment is known to make a visual differentiation in character appearance.

Art and Graphics:
What does the game look like? Art Director Jason Beck described the game as “Dragon Lair meets Incredibles” and based on early screenshots, his description is quite accurate. The game is highly stylized, with a watercolor-style painting of most, if not all, assets in-game.

Other Gameplay Mechanics:
Fishing has been confirmed to be in the game, though no further details were given. It is possible it will be like the fishing found in Fate, where catching fish would allow one to mutate or evolve his or her pet.

The other key feature of the game so far has been the mention of the game’s moddability.

So what’s this about moddability?
Because the game is single player, and the development cycle between its release and the release of their MMO project will likely be fairly long, the developers have seen fit to make their game very mod-friendly, through the development of a toolset made to help users modify their game. This editor is called Professional Editor, or Preditor for short.

So what is Preditor?
As said by Greg Brown, the tools engineer,

Preditor: The Professional Editor (you heard it here first) is our unified tool that does all sorts of stuff like level design, particle creation, and unit (monster, items, etc) editing. *We hope to make the tool available for general use close to the same time as the game is released with the vast majority of the same functionality in tact as our internal version. *(Note the ‘we hope’ part.)

What engine will Torchlight run on?
The game engine itself is being developed in-house, but the graphical engine is the open-source Ogre3D engine.

What are the game’s system specifications?
This is not currently known, but the game is currently being designed and programmed without the user of Shaders, meaning the requirements to play could be very, VERY low!