[02-03] March, 2002

[02-03] March, 2002

Description: Archived Keep updates.

Categories: Keep Updates


March 27th, 2002

by Phrozen
Heart



Yeah, yeah, I know I'm supposed to be on vacation but I've
been emailed a few bits and pieces and I know I'll forget to
tell Jeff, so here goes...



Nude Assassin Mod

At one point, no one thought this was possible and with various
urban legends floating round about a naked assassin or sorceress
mod, it came as a mildly amusing suprise to come across this
impressive creation. While on one note, seeing a bare-chested
killing machine running round disembowelling demons is just a
simple novelty but on the flip side it shows that D2 mod making
is still evolving with people now actually editing their own
animations rather than just converting. Any cool animations are
always impressive but usually original ones are more so. The
mod in question was created by someone by the name of Blue Orange
and to get your hands on it, you need to download the 6 pieces
of the compressed RAR archive ( 1
| 2
| 3
| 4

| 5
| 6
). For the impatient perverts amongst you, click
here
for a quick screenshot.



Welcome to "The Ancients"


We welcome aboard another hosted site to our modding family here
at the Keep in the shape of Deathscythe and SilentX and their
Ancients mod! You can check out their site by either clicking
here
or checking out their link under the hosted sites tab
on our nav bar.




March 19th, 2002

by Phrozen
Heart



Adios...


A fairly short update for everyone today considering my parents
are visiting from England starting thursday so I won't be around
for a while but if things go to plan, Jeff should hopefully be
back with you all for the next update.



Annual Drunkard's Day

Hope everyone had a great St Patrick's day on sunday and didn't
get arrested :-)



Fileplanet Strikes Again

Once again the infamous Fileplanet has one of it's random freak-out
fits causing large numbers of people to not be able to download.
Upon clicking a link to a Fileplanet hosted file, visitors are
taken straight to the FP front page instead of their chosen link
for no apparent reason. To us, this is pretty much the final
nail in the coffin as far as FP is concerned so hopefully our
file database conversion should be available shortly. Remote
access to the other server has been resumed and everything is
uploaded, I just need to make time to link it all through the
database.



Even more animations

Thanks once again to Zeruel for submitting even more animation
plugins to the Keep. I'm pretty sure they're all from BG2, check
out Sarevok,
the John
Irenicus
and the Djinn.
All three are available from the animation
plugin page
or by clicking their names here for direct links.
Zereul also pointed out to me the Ice Demon from last update
is actually the ice golem from Icewind Dale not BG2 :-)



Feeling colorful anyone?

Thanks go out to Paul Siramy for submitting a useful resource
that explains the use of colorshifts on magical items which I
think many people will find useful. Check out the resources
page
for this and a wealth of other useful information. Paul
has also sent us a nice little command line program called DC6Color
that allows you see what your DC6 files will look like with the
various color shifts D2 applies, very cool. Click
here
for the direct link or check it out in the tools
section
.



WinMPQ


Mod makers might be interested in checking out a mod utility
that was recently brought to my attention by Fusman named WinMPQ.
I haven't really had a chance to experiment with it yet but at
first glance it appears to be a combination of MPQ View and MPQ
2K through a winzip looking windows interface. The utility was
most likely developed for use with Starcraft but as Blizzard
uses the same MPQ format uniformly across the board then there's
no reason why we can't make the most of it. The utility requires
the visual basic run time 4 files and a special direct x control
but I've added both to the winmpq zip before I uploaded it to
the Keep. Click
here
to download v1.47 from this site or you can check out
the author Shadowflare's site by clicking
here
.



Finally one that works...

As much of a novelty as it is, I've uploaded a newly generated
datafile for use with MPQ view that is actually complete. Some
of the previous datafiles we've had uploaded at the Keep have
been either flawed or outdated which resulted in users not being
able to extract the files they need. I've reuploaded MPQ with
the new datafile which can be downloaded by clicking
here
as well as uploading the datafile as a stand alone zip
file which you can download
here
.



WoC mod updated

Spawn contacted me regarding his Waves of Chaos mod and pointed
out that the beta 2 version I uploaded recently is actually a
slightly older version with beta 5 being the current release.
I've uploaded the new version and redirected the link in the
tools page to cater for WoC b5.



IG testing closed

We are no longer taking applications to be part of the first
round of beta testing of the "Idiot's Guide to D2 Mod Making
v1.2" tutorial. Thanks to all who didn't reply in time,
the opportunity for further rounds of testing will be available
in the not too distant future. For every who has received a reply
on the subject, I'll be contacting you all shortly with the first
full length draft of the tutorial.



Coming soon...

Well we're still waiting for the administrative cogs to grind
into motion regarding Riparious getting hosted at the Keep, he's
sent me some screenshots of the new inventory graphics he's working
on right now which just look simply awesome in my opinion. HREF='sshots/elemental.jpg'>Click here to check out the great
new elemental swords.




March 14th, 2002

by Phrozen
Heart



Sorry, no PHP just yet

Sorry people but the PHP update is going to have to wait a little
longer due to FTP problems I'm having with one of the servers
we're using. The whole setup is working fine but without FTP
access, I can't add in the latest material. We hope to have everything
up and running ASAP.



Deadline drawing ever closer

Just in case anyone out there can't count, Blizzard has seven
days left to respond to the letter from the EFF regarding Bnetd
before their software is re-instated to the site.



Plugin Drive


To all the mod makers and animation converters out there, we're
having somewhat of a plugin drive here at the Keep and we're
asking for everything from BG and D1 animations to regular plugins
for beginners. Send your submissions to my usual address at HREF='mailto:phrozenheart@planetdiablo.com'>phrozenheart@planetdiablo.com.



Volunteers Wanted

I've been tinkering with the Idiot's Guide to D2 Mod Making that
Mordini and I wrote and brought it up to v1.2 but I need a small
group of modding beginners to try it out before I post it. What
I'm looking for are people who've never really attempted modding
or never managed it successfully to try out the guide and provide
feedback and suggestions. All contributors will receive full
credit as usual.



New Cube Tutorial

Check out 54x's great new tutorial in the tutorial
section
on how to add new cube recipes to the Horadric Cube
or click here to go direct.



Mod Releases

A few new mods for you this week plus a couple of re-releases
due to popular demand. First up I've uploaded the standard MPQ
versions of Phrozen Solid by Mordini (click
here
) and the 8play mod by Fusman that I updated (click
here
). As for the new releases, check out the
Ancients mod
by Deathscythe and SilentX, Waves
of Chaos
by Spawn_VN and Middle
Earth v1.6 Final
by Varaya and Khan. All five mods are available
from the mod archive.



I am paying attention, honestly....

Jeff was kind enough to point out that last update I forgot to
mention a couple of plugins which I added to the animation
plugin section
which were for the Silver
Dragon
by Ratsbane and the BG
Iron Golem
by Apocalypse Demon. Sorry people :-)



More BG Plugins

Thanks go out to Zeruel for sending us three new Baldur's Gate
animatation plugins, this time in the form of the Ice
Demon
, the Dark
Ninja
and the Naga
Princess
. All three are available from the animation
plugin page
or by clicking their names here for direct links.



Cool New Graphics

Riparious (who should hopefully be joining us as a hosted site
shortly) has created a bunch of new graphical materials for D2
modders including a complete skilltree background replacement
for the sorceress (click
here
) and a bunch of great new and edited inventory graphics
for gems (click
here
) and general equipment (click
here
) which are all available from the plugins
section
. For more information and screenshots, you can check
out his existing site by clicking
here
.




March 12th, 2002

by Phrozen
Heart



Just a quick update, the real one will be here in a few days
hopefully.



Bnetd Teams Up With EFF

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

has taken up the Bnetd case and issued a response to Blizzard's
cease and desist letter stating that unless Blizzard does something
about it, Bnetd will go live again in 10 days. You can check
out the piece at Yale's
LawMeme
or read the official press release from bnetd and
EFF by clicking
here
.




March 7th, 2002

by Phrozen
Heart



Yep, sorry people but you're still stuck with me for this
week :-) I've spoken with Jeff via email and everything's going
as planned plus he let me in on what some of his uploaded files
from last week are so I've added them to this update.



Beginning of the Transition

Not sure when exactly, but sometime over the next few weeks (hopefully),
we'll be unveiling part of the new PHP site re-write in the form
of the php/mysql file center I mentioned last update. This should
hopefully make the whole downloading experience a much simpler
one compared to the pain of messing with Fileplanet's 'public
servers' at the moment.



Round 2 to Bnetd?

Looks like the rebuttal to Blizzard's
"Intelectual Property" dispute with Bnetd and other
server-emulation organizations by members of the LawMeme project
at Yale Law School has had more of an impact than everyone previously
thought with Bnetd re-opening
their doors for the moment. This fight still seems to be leaning
towards the Blizzard camp
though due to them having the resources to conduct a lengthy
court battle where Bnetd

doesn't. For the full story directly from Bnet, click
here
.



Mod Releases

Prior to his departure, Jeff released v1.02 of his excellent
Sanctuary in Chaos mod which you you can download
directly here
or as usual it's available from the archive.



Another mod to be added to our mod archive
is Devil's Uprising v1.0 which includes features such as increased
stash, cube and inventory sizes as well as a new magical item
called a "Holy Cross". Either check out the archive
or click
here
to get the file directly.



Resource Rampage

Well okay, maybe it's not much of a rampage considering there's
a few new things but I just felt like being enthusiastic considering
we haven't had much stuff to add to the resources
section
in a while.



First up, Nefarius has updated his monstats.txt guide for
v1.09 which you can check out
by clicking here
.



Nefarius has also supplied us with a thread he started in
the forums which contains useful reference information to use
when creating new cube recipes. Click
here
to check it out.



Thanks go out to Scott Weaver for his amendment
to the Ric Faith's skills.txt guide
which explains how the
SrcDam column works.



Today marks the welcome return of modding resources by our
old friend 54x with a general overview resource for anyone working
with the magical modifier codes. Click
here
to take a look along with it being available in the
resources section



New Tools



The long awaited v1.10 of Phalzyr's D2 modder utility has
been released as a beta upgrade which now supports D2 v1.09!
You can check it out at Phalzyr's
site here
or from our Tools of the Trade
page
. Just so you know, this upgrade DOES require a previous
full version first.



Clannad has released the latest version of his great D2 image
tool DC6Maker v3.0 which should be a staple in any real modder's
arsenal. It's currently available by either clicking
here
, from our Tools of the Trade page

or from Clannad's
website
.



With all the graphical conversions from D1 to D2 going on
at the moment, Myhrginoc has created a datafile for use with
Simply Red's MPQ View utility that shows the file structure for
the D1 MPQ file. Click
here
or visit the Tools of the Trade
page
to download the file.



Dead Link Fixed


While I've been working on the PHP rewrite of the site, it appears
that some of the current pages are badly in need of some work.
I've fixed a dead link to Bartuc's Freestyle mod v1.2 and if
anyone else finds other dead links, let me know.

Link to this article: Select all

[url=https://www.d2mods.info/forum/kb/viewarticle?a=134&sid=4fc59d67ab2068b9fb5e250520191db8]Knowledge Base - [02-03] March, 2002[/url]