[02-08] August, 2002
Description: Archived Keep updates.
Categories: Keep Updates
August 31, 2002
by JBouley (Jeff)
Only the briefest of brief updates this weekend. Phrozen Heart and I were going to take the weekend off entirely
(at least in terms of updating the home page), partly because he's been busy with work and having to move into a new house.
As you can imagine, his wife would probably not be pleased if he blew off getting the house hooked up, set up and all
that to update the Phrozen Keep File Center. Plus, it's a national holiday here in the States this weekend: Labor Day.
;-)
However, on the bright side, next weekend's update should be a real blow-out! Expect lots of goodies unless something
goes desparately wrong with Phrozen's efforts to get the house together and get his Internet access restored.
But, because I'd hate to leave you with nothing new at all this week, here are a couple of items I have uploaded recently for
Phrozen to add to the File Center. These links are to a temporary folder, so I'll post new links next weekend when they
officially become part of the File Center, but at least the links below will do for now. Here ya go:
Demon Trip 2 Mod
Brother Laz's second fantastic players-as-monsters mod. May 'Demon Trip 3' be even better when it's finally done.
:-) (click here to download)
New TBL Editor
Evil Peer brings us a new .tbl editor with some cool features. You need to install the .NET framework from Microsoft on
your computer for the new editor to work. Go to Microsoft's Web site to download the .NET installer if you don't already
have it.
(click here to download)
August 25, 2002
by JBouley (Jeff)
I'm going to repeat a bit of late news I tacked onto the last update: Maxx Power, our staff reviewer, is trying to do
something a little different for his next review. He wants to get together a group of people to play a mod with him online,
and then for all of the team to contribute to a review of that mod and its playability for open bnet or LAN mod players.
Obviously, he needs help. Check out his Phrozen Forums thread on the subject by
clicking here.
For those who might have assumed that modmaker 54x got carted away by aliens or was incarcerated for debriefing and
dissection over at Area 54 (people who are not into UFO trivia can just scratch their heads and wonder what I'm referring
to)...well, you were wrong. Instead, he seems to have been doing a bit of traveling and/or moving, without his computer.
In any case, he's made the latest round of fixes to the New Dawn mod (one of our hosted mods. You can link
to it through the navbar at left or click here.) 54x tells me that this
will likely be one of the last updates to the mod, and that he has a new mod in the works: tentatively titled
'North Star.' He will keep me (and the rest of you) posted on progress and alpha/beta testing, I'm sure.
And now, on with the rest of the show...
Two New Mods to Play With...and More on the Way
OK, one of them isn't really 'new,' it's the latest version of Phrozen Heart's Cubaholics Mod (version 0.83 to be
precise). You can hit the 'Staff Mods' link in the File Center portion of our nav bar, or just
click here to get it.
The truly new mod this time around is the Unique Mod v1.55 by Duck Man, which offers increased drop rates for uniques,
as the name implies. Visit the 'Mods' portion of the File Center for it, or just
click here.
For whatever it's worth, I'll soon be starting a new mod of my own, 'Rise of the Old Gods,' and I hope to be able to
start alpha testing in the near future. Also, by next week we should have a link up for you to download Brother Laz's
Demon Trip 2 Mod.
Mordini Fills in Again
Deathscythe, our staff interviewer, just returned from an extended vacation. But before he gets back into the
thick of things, Mordini has pitched in to provide an interview this week, this time with Zhoulomcrist, who has authored
D2 mods in the past and is currently working on a great-looking one called CryptForge. Go to our
Interviews area to read it, or just
click here.
New Map for Duriel
We've received a nifty new map plugin from deathfile that restructures Duriel's lair to make it bigger and prevent those
'instant death lags,' as well as just alter the flavor of the fight with 'Mr. Wormy.' To get it and find out more, visit
the Plugins area and go to 'Map Plugins,' or for instant teleportation,
click here. Also,
deathfile has sent me several other nice toys to share with you all, which should appear over the next week or two.
For Our Non-English Speakers
I don't think we'll ever get to the point where we are truly a multilingual site (unless someone wants to donate a few
million dollars so that Phrozen Heart and I can make this site a full-time job/business instead of a 'hobby'). But, we do
try to make sure we aren't completely fixated on the English language, since we know there are many people out there among
our members and visitors for whom English in not a first language. One of our first small steps in the direction of
non-English offerings comes this week from Paul Siramy, who has translated his explanation of D2 colorshifts into French.
You can get to it by clicking here. You
can also go to our Resources section in the Mod Making box in our nav bar, and you'll find
it right under the English-language version of the colorshift info resource.
To Animation Modders: Rip Away!
To help those of you who want to convert animations over from games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment,
we now have in our Tools area Infinity Explorer v0.75, which will allow you to grab the animations
you want or need. You can
click here for 'immediate' download.
Once Again, Animations Galore!
Last week, we only had one 'flavor,' of animation plugins, those .gif conversions that still require you to figure out
things like offsets, and require than you convert the images to .dcc as well. Well, this week we have four animation
plugins that are already designed to replace existing monsters in D2, two that are already coverted to .dcc file format
(but still require you to figure out offets and such), and three .gif conversions. Go to our
Plugins area and enter the 'Animations Plugins' subsection, or just use the links below.
REPLACEMENT ANIMATIONS
(by Har'lea'quinn, MinionOfDestruction, and Joel Falcou)
Bone Golem (Baldur's Gate 2) to replace Iron Golem (click here)
Air Elemental (Badlur's Gate 2) to replace the Blood Golem (click here)
Red Dragon (Baldur's Gate 2) to replace Foul Crows (click here)
Drow Magus (Icewind Dale) to replace Vampires (click here)
DCC FILE CONVERSIONS (by King Cold)
Tanari from Baldur's Gate 1 (click here)
Wyvren from Baldur's Gate 1 (click here)
GIF FILE CONVERSIONS (by Phrozen Heart)
D1 Rogue with Heavy Armor, Sword & Shield (click here)
D1 Rogue with Heavy Armor & Staff (click here)
D1 Rogue with Heavy Armor & Sword (click here)
August 19, 2002
by JBouley (Jeff)
Sorry about not updating the home page over the weekend. I've been fairly 'on time' lately, but my stepson was in
town the past week, and not wanted him bored out of his skull, I let him have the lion's share of the Internet access
time. So, I'm a bit behind both in Phrozen Keep work and my freelance writing work this week.
Big news! We actually have been fed a little tidbit of information about the 1.10 patch, from someone who knows someone
who knows something at Blizzard. It is a new feature that has already been added regarding cube recipes, which allows you to
keep an item's properties but change the base item. Phrozen Heart's guess is that it might be called 'usemods' or something
like that. In any case, this new recipe code will be sort of the opposite of 'useitem,' and it's a pretty cool addition,
in my humble opinion.
And now, in other news:
To the Dearly Departed...
The Magic: The Gathering 2 mod project has bitten the dust. It's dead. Taking a dirt nap. You get the idea. My sympathies
for anyone who was waiting anxiously for that mod to come to fruition.
...But Another Rises
In happier news, Zhoulomcrist's CryptForge site is up and running
on Planet Diablo, at www.planetdiablo.com/cryptforge, finally making his in-progress mod one of our officially hosted mods.
If I may say so, Zhoul's mod is one of the most-anticpated mods for me personally. I cannot wait for him to finish it up.
Cheap Shot?
OK, a little bit of 'lowbrow' merriment has been added to our Humor section...a screenshot of a superunique monster you
might not want to stick around to fight...for hygienic reasons. To view it, visit our Humor section using the nav bar at
left, or just click here. You can thank dudeman734 for the screenie; you can blame me
for any stupidity in the accompanying caption.
;-)
Talking With Folks and About Them
In the Interviews section, we have a fresh new item, a chat with Deathscythe and SilentX by
Mordini. For an immediate peek at it,
click here. Deathscythe and SilentX are, by the way, the creators of the Ancients: The Fury Within mod. We also
have a new mod review from Maxx Power, the man who dared to...(ahem) er, I mean, did a review of the latest
version of my Sanctuary in Chaos mod. Seriously, though, it's a well-balanced review and pointed out shortcomings and
strengths of my mod, and I was pleased to see the care that went into doing it. I was a little afraid he'd be completely
soft on me, but fortunately Maxx is professional enough to do a real review, not a slap-the-'boss'-on-the-back kind
of thing. It's in the Mod Reviews section, or you can
click here to pull it up now.
Dungeon Building for Beginners
There a new tutorial in town, 'Creating Multi-Level Dungeons,' which was put together by SilentX. Obviously, it's in
our Tutorials section, and you can also just
click here to read it.
Getting at Original Diablo Files
From Alkalund, we have a Diablo 1 Datafile for both MPQView and for the 'stormless' editor. Get it in the
File Inserting/Extracting subsection of the Mod Making Tools portion
of our File Center, or
click here for immediate download. The author of the datafile is actually still unknown, but Alkalund dug it up for
us so that people wishing to extract D1 files using various MPQ utilities could do so.
Taking a Bite Out of Megabytes
Also in the Mod Making Tools area, but this time in the 'Miscellaneous' subsection, we have a nice little tool to help you
download those large files if you need to stick them on diskettes. It's a freeware utility called Splitter 3.1, and it
breaks down large files into smaller pieces that it can put back together later on. To download it right now, just
click here.
Item Building Made Easier
Phrozen Heart has provided a 'Base Item Models' resource in, where else? The
Resources area of the File Center. This is a Microsoft Excel workbook which contains all non-quest items from
weapons.txt, armor.txt and misc.txt, all of them sorted and grouped to make it simpler for you to clone them and then
create new items. Get it right here, right now by
clicking here.
You are Here: The Original Tristram
Also in the Resources portion of the File Center, we have a map of the original Tristram from the original Diablo. It's
a collection of screenshots pasted to make one image. Deathfile submitted it, and he provided it primarily for
the purpose of helping people who are trying to recreate the town in more or less its original form for their D2 mods. Get
it by visiting the File Center through the nav bar, or by
clicking here.
Crafting for Classes
In the Plugins portion of our File Center, in the 'Standard Plugins'
subsection, we have another treat from Phrozen Heart, a collection of new Cube recipes for class-specific crafted items.
Just download the .txt file and add the new recipes to your own cubemain.txt file for your mod and have at it. You can also
click here to find and
download the file more quickly.
Animations Conversions in GIF Format
Considering Phrozen is in the process of moving to a new house, I don't know where he's finding the time, but he also
brings us a new set of animation coversions from the original Diablo, in .gif format, for those who want to change some of
the existing monster/character animations. With the exception of a couple monsters, most of these are character animations
from D1, specifically the Rogue and the Mage. For those who think the rogue mercenaries don't look tough enough in D2, you
might want to think about tweaking some of these images to 'beef her up' a bit.
;-)
In any case, here are the animations (again, all in .gif format and all of them from D1) and links to them (or you can
just visit the Animations area of the Plugins section of our File Center later to get them):
Rogue with Heavy Armor & Axe (click here)
Rogue with Heavy Armor & Bow (click here)
Rogue with Heavy Armor & Mace (click here)
Rogue with Heavy Armor, Shield & Mace (click here)
Sorcerer with Heavy Armor, Sword & Shield (click here)
Sorcerer with Heavy Armor & Staff (click here)
Sorcerer with Heavy Armor & Sword (click here)
Unarmed Sorcerer with Heavy Armor (click here)
Demon Skeleton (click here)
Goatman Archer (click here)
LATE ADDITION (August 20, 2002): Maxx Power is trying to do something a little different for his next review,
and he needs help. Specifically, he needs volunteers to play some mods online together for his next reviewing effort.
If you're interested, check out his Phrozen Forums thread on the subject by
clicking here.
August 11, 2002
by JBouley (Jeff)
After two updates the size of small novels these past couple weeks, you get a more digestible update...our more
'normal' size.
;-)
First off, Phrozen Heart rebuilt the patches section of the Keep's File Center a bit to include the clean patch files
(To get them, click here.)
We're working on things behind the scenes whenever we can spare the time to make sure this place stays in tip-top
shape, and we hope to keep getting it right or, better yet, making it better and better. Now, on to the newest offerings
we have for you.
Set Items Mod Gets Official Home
I announced Spiral Simian's 'Big Set-up Mod' last week, but just so that y'all know, Phrozen Heart got it situated
in the File Center's Mod
section, or you can just
click here to download it. So, for those in need of a way to hunt down missing set items, this might be your mod
(existing characters from 'normal' D2 should be able to go between this mod and unmodded D2 without problems...though
you should always back up the save files for your character before trying this). Or, if you just want to see sets dropping
all over the place, over and over again, grab this mod and start playing.
Online View of DLL Offest Info
We already had a DLL offset sheet created by spin here at the Keep. But now, Myhrginoc has converted spin's sheet into
Web page form, which you can view in the Resources area.
Updated Plugins for Druid Shapeshifting
A couple updates ago, I mentioned the animation plugins to make a Druid wereform be a Balrog or Succubus. Those have been
revamped with skill/string updates by Har'lea'quinn. Get the updated Werewolf-to-Balrog plugin by
clicking here and get the Werewolf-to-Succubus plugin by
clicking here.
Source Code for Tools at the Keep
It's always a challenge when we get some great tools like map editors, character editors, and so many other software tools
made by D2 fans and modders...and then the creators of those tools drift away to other interests, sometimes making updates
to those tools difficult or impossible. So, we are trying to get source code up for as many tools as we can, so that people
with the talent and interest can pick up where one person left off, or make an even better tool in the future. This week,
Paul Siramy, who has made so many great tools for editing images and maps in D2, gives us the source code for a number of
programs. To get the newly available source code, you can visit the Tools area of our File Center
via the nav bar at left, or use the links below for instant access. Here's what he's given us:
'COF Info' program source code (click here for access)
'D2 Info' program source code (click here for access)
'DC6EDIT' program source code (click here for access)
'DC6Extr' program source code (click here for access)
'DCCINFO' program source code (click here for access)
'DS1Info' program source code (click here for access)
'DS1scene v0.61beta' program source code (click here for access)
'DT1 Tools BETA v0.97' program source code (click here for access)
August 3, 2002
by JBouley (Jeff)
Phrozen Heart reworked the Tutorials
page a bit to organize items a bit better, to eliminate some of the obselete ones, and to remove a few that now appear
in the new 'Idiot's Guide to Modmaking' as examples of simple things you can do to get starting on modding Diablo 2.
And, speaking of the updated 'Idiot's Guide,' that new version is now available in the
Resources section of
the File Center. The download is a Word file with extensive instructions on how to start modding, complete with some screen
captures to help guide you along. It has been updated to reflect changes since the previous versions of D2 (this is for v.
1.09), and to reflect new links and resources since the Keep's redesign. Phrozen Heart will someday create a Web-page
version as well (when time allows), but to be honest, the .doc file you can download now has many advantages over Web
pages, such as being easily printable for later reference. ;-) You can get the Idiot's Guide download 'immediately' by
clicking here
And just so you know, none of us here at the Keep (admins, moderators or otherwise) think that any newbie
to modding is an 'idiot.' For those who don't understand the reference, there is a series of books out there on every
topic under the sun (from gardening to Web page making to beer brewing to starting a new business) marketed by a certain
publishing company, and they're all called 'The Idiot's Guide to...' Myrhginoc is the author of this new 'bible' for
fledgling modmakers, and I thank him mightily for his efforts.
The Hairy Guy With the Tail Strikes Again
Spiral Simian has produced another 'simple' mod (though this turned out to be a bit more complex than he originally thought,
it seems). This time around, it's The Big Set-Up Mod, which makes it much easier to complete sets. However, unlike
other drop mods that tend to be somewhat 'random' in their approach, this one 'assigns' various types of monsters to the
task of dropping items from certain sets. Because nothing but the dropping of sets has been changed much from the original
D2 game, this means that higher-level sets won't be found until late in the game. So, if you're looking to get Sazabi's set
right away, forget it. But if you want to play D2 and be assured you'll find sets, or bring an existing D2 character into
this mod to try to complete a set you have started gathering, this is the mod for you.
When Phrozen Heart gets a chance (if he hasn't already done it), the mod will be added to the
Mods section of the File Center.
Until then, you can get it by
clicking here. You can also use that link if you happen to go to the Mod download area after Phrozen uploads
the file but before it has mirrored to the free public servers.
New Recipes for You
Mooron provided us with a nice little cubemain.txt plugin so that you can add to your mods more than 100 recipes that were
apparently removed by Blizzard for version 1.09. I didn't even realize there were Horadric Cube recipes
that were once part of the game but got taken out. Silly me. Visit the
Standard Plugins
subsection of the Plugins area in our File Center to find the 'disabled 1.08 cube recipe plugin,' or
click here to download the plugin right away.
Monster Animations Galore!
Also in the Plugins section, but this time in the
Animation Plugins
subsection, we have a bunch of new animations, either to replace specific monsters (DCC plugins), or in .gif or .dcc
formats for you to play around with yourself.
Starting with the easiest category, the simple DCC plugin for a specific monster, Incandescent One brings us
the
Bone Golem from Baldur's Gate 2 to replace the Sand Raider-type monsters in D2.
The .gif and .dcc monster animation files this week all come from the game IceWind Dale, through the combined
efforts of Joe Falcou and Har'lea'quinn, as follows:
Orc with Gold Axe, GIF version.
Orc with Bow, variant 1, GIF version.
Orc Shaman, variant 1, GIF version.
Orc with Bow, variant 2, GIF version.
Orc with Bow, variant 2, DCC version.
Orc Shaman, variant 2, GIF version.
Orc Shaman, variant 2, DCC version.
Another Unsullied Patch File
We've added a clean v1.09d Patch_D2.mpq file in the
Clean Patch Files portion of
the Mod Making Tools part of the File Center, for those of you who may have forgotten to save a clean back-up before
modding the patch or who have accidentally deleted it. It joins the 1.08 and 1.09b files already there. If you want
delivery of the file right now,
click here.
Coverting Palettes From the Original Diablo
In the Image Editing area
of Mod Making Tools, we've added a small program that will convert D1 palettes to D2 palettes, courtesy of iowan. Or,
click here to
get to it right away.
Animation Offets...Right Before Your Very Eyes!
In the Animation Editing
part of the File Center's Tools section is the CvDcc AddOn Version 3.0 from Bilian Georgiev Belchev, a new resource to go
with the CV program available here at the Keep (also in the Animations Editing section). What's so special about this
add-on? How about the fact that with it, you can now visually preview animation offsets, saving you a lot of
pain and suffering as you work with animation files. For quick access to the download,
click here.
Changing D2 Maps
We have two gifts from Paul Siramy in the
Map Editing area of
'Tools,' an updated version of his
DS1edit program, and
a
Windows version of DS1edit.
Confused About Poison Damage?
So are most of us. To better determine how poison damage is calculated when you add poison damage to an item or to a
monster's attacks, use the
Poison Damage Calculator by Joel Falcou, which is in the
Miscellaneous
area of 'Tools.'
Link to this article: Select all
[url=https://www.d2mods.info/forum/kb/viewarticle?a=139]Knowledge Base - [02-08] August, 2002[/url]