You’ve been out in the wilderness or delving into some deep dwelling dismal dungeon, and you go back to town to refresh, before tackling the next big threat.
Not a really big, big threat, not like McCarthy or Cruz or Greene, just a virtual threat of momentary personal extinction, that’s all, and that can be corrected with a simple resurrection of self plus your merc.
Of course the merc dies when you do. That’s a given. The whole idea there is to keep the merc alive, and LET THE MERC DO THE WORK.
Okay, how complicated is that? How hard is it to understand “Let the merc do the work”??? You would be surprised at the sheer number of people who can’t learn this simple idea.
Well, maybe you wouldn’t be surprised. Look how many people voted for that son of a … well, skip it. Just skip it. Forget I mentioned it.
So you return to town, either with a Town Portal, otherwise known as a “TP”, or with a Waypoint, which we call a waypoint.
So in ACT ONE, you’ll return to Rogue Encampment, unless you can’t find it, in which case you might do better with a game of tic-tac-toe — forget I mentioned it. Forget it.
Hey, without memory loss and eventual erasure, guess what? You’d remember everything all at once.
Thank your lucky stars that you have failing memory, or you’d be cursed with Eternal Remembering of Everything, and believe me, you don’t really want that.
On the other hand, you didn’t believe me when I told you that people are stupider than you could ever fathom, and here you are, disappointed that they behave like snarling animals, but that’s what they are.
One of the ways in which Diablo ii Resurrected helps me to forget the likes of foul politicians is to make the game so bloody complicated that I have to commit all my mental resources to the project.
Everything is mutually affected by everything else. As a matter of fact, they have a 3D representation of what you look like, and it changes with what you’re wearing and carrying.
So what IS the ritual when you return to base?
- CHECK IN WITH CAIN — Get your new stuff Identified for free. Don’t waste gold.
- GO TO NEAREST MERCH — Press “CTRL” while placing gloved hand cursor over whatever you’re selling, and hit the mouse button to activate the sale.
- GO TO BLACKSMITH — Repair All Equipment.
- GO TO STASH — Put all money you picked up into a SHARED stash, and leave 10,000 in there to cover resussing your merc, and you may need more than that for Duriel.
- GO TO AKARA — Get a refresh of life and mana, buy LIFE and MANA pots as needed to fill your belt, and don’t carry too many pots in your backpack, if you carry any at all.
- PRESS THE GROUND to clear the trade screens, and continue on your way.
It seems and sounds simple, but you might be surprised at how hard it is to introduce this discipline, let alone insist on its constant use. Stay with the ritual and you’ll eventually understand how the Big Game is actually played.
What secrets did the ancients possess? They certainly knew how to play Diablo. So how does this affect your work in the Godd™ Engine & Editor?
I’m not sure.
I think my best game design ideas come to me by something suggested in gameplay some game, generally Diablo ii Resurrected or Team Fortress 2, both of which have great ideas and both of which provide me with a good amount of “thinking” time, to get ideas and come up with ways of manifesting them.
Hey, just because ANYTHING can happen in a Godd™ environment, it doesn’t mean that you necessarily know how to make it happen.
There are tricks. Nothing is what it seems to be. The actual event is masked by the apparency. Most of what’s happening is animation and projection, and that’s all.
You never actually leave the “Start” position. Check the map at any time. You’re always in the same spot. Unless you move the spot, it never moves, and it can’t move itself.
You’re in charge of your world, and it never lets you forget it. You may feel a sense of responsibility toward the creatures who inhabit your world, but don’t let that stop you from making changes as you see fit.
It helps if those changes are actual improvements.
One of your missions is to create the world, but the very next mission is to reduce the suffering of living creatures.
Suffering is the main feature of human life, and that’s why this is such a good training field for you Bodhisattvas out there.
Well, it’s time to get back to work, which consists these days of getting the next level on my Sorc.
Then I might take out my Druid or my Assassin for a while, limiting my gaming to about 8 hours, then I take a break. Generally 20 minutes is enough.
Just kidding. I temper my gameplay just like everything else, and vary the time I’ll play, and most of that time is between typing, graphic processing and audio processing.
Once in a while, I’ll drop everything else and go make a FRAPS video of a new Orb, and take the time to upload it onto youtube.
FOR YOU HISTORY BUFFS
One of the delightful things you can do with coin collecting is to specialize in something. My specialty happens to be twofold — ancient coins and EARLY AMERICAN coins.
Ancient coins are very specialized. I have some real exotics in my collection, particularly Greek and Roman, and some of them are going up for sale, to lighten the load a little.
Now, my Early American coins are spectacular and all of them were bought at highly competitive auctions.
Here’s my personal favorite:
I had this coin in my shop for $2400.00, but I’m blowing it out at the sale price of only $1850.00!
Why?
Because I have my collector’s eye on something even more spectacular, which I will hold for about six months and then let go, just like this prize.
It’s the same as wiping out my Level 99 char. No point playing past winning, unless you happen to be Polish.
I do happen to be Polish, and that’s not the worst of it in the New Amerika. I could easily be lynched as a smartass blog writer.
No, come to think of it, it wouldn’t be that easy. I was a non-com weapons instructor at Fort Ord, did you know that?
Here’s a photo of me at Trainfire class, Fort Ord, November of 1962.
I spent a number of my high school years at Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, Georgia, where I learned military basics.
Gosh, it would be a shame to let all that training go to waste.
Fortunately, I have an outlet for it — video gaming. If I only had one wish, it would be to transfer all human violence into video gameplay.
Wouldn’t you like to see some of those political bastards in a Knock-Down Drag-Down virtual match?
I don’t think they’d have a chance against me, but how about you? Are you up to a good fight with the avatar of some stinking political creep?
And that’s the point of the videogame I’m working on now — “Tesla Wars”. It’s a knock-down drag-out battle between yourself and the usual Forces of Evil.
So here I am again, back at programming a game — at the moment, it’s Tesla, but I’m almost done with the small but important finishing touches, and it will be on to Barbara for testing and packaging, and then to Claude for uploading.
After that, it’s up to you.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby