Today’s dev chatter topic: Torchlight Frontier’s Fort feature!



Jordan from Echtra stopped into the official Torchlight Frontiers discord (link: https://discordapp.com/invite/f5HU7Zv) and, alongside Max Schaefer, dropped a ton of Fort related information on us.

The latest iteration of the forts takes it from a barren environment when you first gain access, to something far more vibrant and enticing to begin building in. The feature has clearly evolved a bit since Alpha 2. Below is a transcript from Discord, edited for flow and clarity by grouping questions and answers into an easier to read format.

You can join in on the discussion regarding Torchlight Frontiers on Echtra and Perfect World’s official Torchlight Frontiers Discord! Feel free to join us for further discussion on The Ghar Station Discord. You can follow us on Twitter: @TheGharStation. We are also now on Patreon!



echtra_jordan

Been having fun getting to do real game making stuff, been ages since I got my hands on this kind of work. Had to share… so here’s a wall of sharing! We’re tightening up the first time player content and part of that is your fort. It used to be that a starter fort was a barren landscape of nothingness. We want the starting fort to actually feel like a place in the world not an empty level. We also want players to start out with a set of decor items you can immediately start re-arranging in the fort and making it your own. All this needs to be interesting and feel fleshed out, but leave plenty of room for the player to want to get better stuff, more stuff, etc … and thus a happy beginning to a long life of fort decor collecting and interior decorating.

We started with this set of props as our kit to play with – enough small/medium/large things to work with, some built stuff, some natural stuff, some decrepit clutter you’d want to clear out to make way for better stuff

Default fort prop pallette

Staging out the shape of the place

Jordan took a pass a cluttering up the place, without using TOOO much stuff

echtra_jordan

Faye re-did the place much betterly…. but heckin heck I don’t have a screenshot on hand. Gimme a sec

Fox

you guys planning an option that lets you blank out the added props if you’re wanting to start fresh?

echtra_Max Schaefer

Yeah you can remove or reuse anything in the fort

echtra_jordan

Yeah so all these props are place-able stuff. You can immediately pick them up and re-arrange or put in storage

echtra_jordan

We even got the Account Stash to work like this



Fox

I was just moreso talking like a “Store All” button =P

echtra_hobbs

Ah, you want a +new button or a clearall(edited)

Glyth

Wait, anything? We can move that town portal?

echtra_jordan

The portal and the quest npc, not yet. [It’s] on our list to make this happen. We have a plan

Yeah we got Stash moving. The thing with Portal and NPC is the player can get in a real bad place if they don’t have it out and, for example, a quest required you to use it. The stash doesn’t have that problem

Jordon got a shot of the new actual starter fort decor

Christs

Would be great to be able to invite npc’s in.

Fox

god i love that lighting makes the fort feel eerie

echtra_jordan

Yeah we keep talking about how to put more “life” into the fort, some good ideas are coming down the pipe as this feature gets more baked. I want my personal one to feel like an active little village of war



echtra_Max Schaefer

I want a lava pit in mine.

Fox

Someone mentioned the idea of being able to change the music that’s playing in your fort. I think that’d be a cool way to give a different type of ambiance to your fort. though i actually loved the prepicked music xD

Might be cool to be able to choose what type of lighting your fort has as well, for those of us who want to make our forts Diablo-esque XD

Christs

Or have it change based on time of day.

echtra_jordan

[What I’d like to say is:] In The Fullness Of Time

Is-Hooman

I’d rather not have a fort, I just wanna roam



echtra_Max Schaefer

You’ll have no shortage of roaming!

echtra_jordan

roam on! your fort will at least look like a place, and not a barren non-place

ShellFace

For moving the portal/npc do you need to put them away, or could you have them just movable while not storeable?

echtra_jordan

ShellFace, I think our best pitch right now is to move those elements outside the decoration area. That way the player gets the full use of their fort area to themselves and we have a “safe” place for portal and required npcs. That might not be the final/best answer but it’s what we are kicking around

Fox

what if the way point was the one that’s just outside the fort instead? maybe have the required NPC the one standing guard near the forts, but just outside of them



echtra_jordan

Yeah that’s basically what I’m sayin Fox, sorry that wasn’t clear

echtra_jordan

Okay so credit due – Faye has the eye for making things look nice (she’s hardcore into Starbound furniture) and Paul is helping with the naming. I just did data wrangling and being the hype man

Jordan’s internal development names on the left. Faye’s display names on the right

echtra_jordan

When my wife was working in VR she told this story – they had a rug on the floor of the “home” space you started in, kinda like the loading lobby before going into experiences. The designer had rumpled the rug to make it feel more realistic. Literally every person they had playtest the experience, the first thing they do is try to reach down and straighten the rug. There was no rug straightening feature, they hadn’t built decoration until much later. What I got from this story is “We can get the player interested without making it a tutorial. Just mess the place up a bit so their first reaction is, I need to clean up this place”. So that’s the default fort – rumpled rug syndrome. I hope it works and people who start the game for the first time get a little side-tracked messing around with the layout when they realize it’s all move-able.



Later, jordan weighed in on the Wardrobe feature. (For details, checkout the official blog post here: https://www.torchlightfrontiers.com/en/news-article/11071923)



echtra_jordan

I gotta admit. I was skeptical of the wardrobe thing. I kept thinking “it’s not what I imagine we need, it’s not right”. Now that we have it in game I’ve come around full circle. I love what wardrobes do. Storing my gear sets this way works fine. Having a place to pimp my rare gear I’m not currently using (instead of it living in a stash hidden away, or just selling it) is awesome. It also makes me want to go out farming items literally just to place on wardrobes in my fort. So fun

I’m trying to convince the art team to make one that’s a giant ooze with your armor trapped inside.

clowd

How many statues can you have?

echtra_jordan

hehe. Right now there’s not a limit. This is a rapidly emerging feature. I don’t think there’s a technical reason to limit these differently than other decorations (there will someday be a cap on how much total amount of stuff you can place at once).

But don’t count that as a promise. Tyler would know better if there should be a cap

Fox

hmm, are relics going to be stored on the statues as well?

echtra_jordan

relics are still in reliquary. interesting point. I think changing your relic is more like changing out your skill/passives build though.

(which wardrobes also don’t do)

remember I said I was initially skeptical of wardrobes? It’s because I was thinking “just copy games that save whole character loadouts, and put it in a UI dropdown”

Is-Hooman

For our area, what if we just made it a giant forge?

echtra_jordan

So like, you have a bunch of furnaces and kilns and anvils and stuff? enough to fill out the whole space. like you’re a crafting village focused on metal arms and armor? because that I think we can do, and it’s very Torchlight

Papi [GMT+1]

I would also suggest having Pet [toys] in your frontier, so while you are doing your super important legendary sorting in your chest, your pet can do something rather than dying from boredom.

An interactive ball with [physics] which it can punt around, or a [little] house for it to sleep in. Feeding tray that would give it bonuses if fed from the MONEY SHOP.

echtra_jordan

We’re 100% on the same page with more variety in floor tiles. There are a few different pieces of flagstone style in now (looks nicer but yes it’s still just one style) and we’ve got some plank style pieces now. Floor, wall, doorway variety are on our radar for the next round of decor content, along with just a lot more kinds of objects to create spaces that feel lives in, with purpose.



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