by Sidestepper on Wed Mar 15, 2017 12:46 pm
Hello everyone! My contribution to the project has been fairly minor (mostly scattered testing and a little bit of design), but I do have the distinction of being involved with the project since very nearly the beginning. And let me tell you, this is not just some PoS hack.
Zayyeh has taken DtD modding far, far beyond what was initially thought possible. Way back in the beginning, I would propose a few ideas that I thought might be doable in a dirty, hacky kind of way, but then Zayyeh would figure out a way to implement it for real. I might suggest something like "Just put an existing stock monster in a subdungeon, it's just a mod, who cares" and he would come back with unique monster with totally new scripted powers and a lavishly decorated environment for it, along with custom animations and dialogue balloons. Both he and Avatar were always about the raising the bar, pushing for professional standards on what is, nominally, an amateur project.
So the new classes aren't just remixes of existing class powers. They have totally new abilities that have never existed in DtD before, and explore game space that hasn't been explored yet. The new dungeons have quests, dialogue, and unique scripted events. Avatar has done a good job of assuming Nandrew's voice, and a new player would be hard pressed to tell the custom content apart from the stock content.
We've tried to keep the new content as unobtrusive as possible. All of the new stuff fits in the theme and setting of the game, and we've kept it as opt-in as possible. You can ignore the new classes and dungeons and items if you want. Only a few of the new items end up in your shop pool, and we added extra veto slots so you can subtract them back out if you want to.
For people who aren't interested in new classes and dungeons, there are still things for you. I don't want to spoil anything, but there's a super challenge mode that you can add to any dungeon as a special preparation. It's not a simple stat up for the monsters, it's something far more interesting. If you've ever finished a dungeon with piles of resources left and wished there was more you could do with your ultrabuff hero before retiring, well this is for you. There is also the Dream Potion, which I won't spoil, but I will say that I think it will be a wildly popular feature.
A big thumbs up goes to the devs, who were supportive of the project and even passed on some technical tips.
And hey, if you have contact with any of the old forum regulars, let them know that this is coming. It'd be great to see some old names back here again.