Torchlight is the direct descendant of the first Diablo game. It follows the first Diablo in every aspect. One town to get quest. A deep deep dungeon to kill monster for items and gold. Just about everything in that first Diablo game you can find here in Torchlight. The game has a number of old Blizzard devs on board that helped make the first Diablo game so the similarities maybe obvious. The music was done by the same guy who did the music for the first Diablo. So it is no surprise that on more than one occasion it reminded me of the music from the First Diablo.

Torchlight has a very cartoony feel that one suspects was influenced by World of Warcraft.

The game does bring a few things from the Fate games (which themselves are inspired by Diablo). The pet for instance is pretty much something retained from Fate. This pet though is handy since you can send your trusty dog (or cat) off to the surface to sell when you fill up your inventory. A few other things worth mentioning is that once you beat the main quest you get the option to retire your character and pass down an item to a new character. When you do this an infinite dungeon opens up as well. So reply value is up there.

The game has three classes. Follows the usual templates with minor variations. You got a big bad warrior, a magic user, and a ranged type of rogue. All of them can specialize in melee and they all get 4 spell slots. And of course a three tiered skill tree to specialize in different buffs and powers.

Torchlight is single player only. Only on the pc. The game sells for twenty bucks. They eventually will put out the games editor so you can make you own levels, monsters, and items (just for a start). This currently is only available online from the games website or third parties like Steam. The devs mention a free to play mmo is on the table next.

It’s turkey day. Which is my favorite holiday. I’m at my brother’s house were technical difficulties have paused the cooking of the turkey. After a little fire clean up everything will be back on track.

Here is a contact email I got and it reminds me that I need to address this kind of thing in the faq.

Hey Turk, got a question for you, it’d go better on the forum but registration is close :(

I’m working at a startup hotel, can you give any suggestions for some good front desk software systems? We’ve got a lot of work to do to get this started but the software will be the best investment for the future, so cost is relevant but not completely limiting. Thanks!

I’ve used three systems total. Encore, WinPM, and now Opera. I don’t have a clue what the stuff costs. I’m just an auditor when I’m not on the internet. I really don’t have a clue what this stuff costs. I’m sure a google search would reveal the answers you are looking for better than I can.

About the forum. With registrations open all of the scum of the net sign up to post spam. So I closed it down. The forum does mention how to get a forum account. It requires more work than the usual simple forum registration I suppose. But until the scum of the net die it is just the way it is.Reprinted below is a slightly altered text one can find on the night audit page.

1. Fill out the Contact Us form found here.
2. Enter your name and real email address.
3. Make sure to select the Registration Invite option for the subject.
4. Answer the random question to prove your not a spammer.
5. Leave a desired username (can be different than the name you put in the your name text box) and password in the message text box.
6. Hit send.
7. Wait for me to email with your forum details.

I did recently buy the vBulletin 4.0 upgrade. When I get around to installing it I will turn back on registrations (temporally) to see how it handles net spam scum.

This is old news and I’m sick of seeing this long ass post. Short story is vBulletin 4 sucks. Stay away from it and use an older version or something else.
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