[03-04] April, 2003
Description: Archived Keep updates.
Categories: Keep Updates
April 28th, 2003
by JBouley
There have been so many people who have contributed to D2 modding here at Phrozen Keep over the years, and even in the
days before Phrozen Keep really became 'mod central' for the world. But after a while, some drifted away to other games
and pursuits (and still do), and their names and contributions are lost in the haze of time. But no longer. We've started
to catalog, as much as we can, some of the major contributors to the modding scene, in our new
Hall of Valor area. Maybe one day you'll be one of them (if you aren't already).
Our Family Grows...
We have two more sets of names to add to our hosted sites: afterlife1488 and his
Valhalla Mod and MadBengerman and his Dark Sabbath Mod. Go visit them from time
to time and see what's happening.
Oh, You 'Bad' Boy
Our newest admin, the sinister-named but good-hearted Nefarius, has brought several more gifts to y'all through his
The Stairway to Oblivion site. And what, pray tell, are they? Well...
Ultimate Fixer Mod, v4.0
One of the classic mods that 'fixed' many of the things that Blizzard nerfed over the years gets a makeover and fixes
several more things.
(Get It Now)
Pre-Edited COF Files
One of the big things that will mess up animation changes in your mod is not having .cof files that work well with your
.dcc files for the monster or character. These will save you lots of work.
(Get It Now)
Necro-to-Diablo Plugin
Diablo's DCC/COF files from the first Diablo game, all ready and set for you to use to replace the Necromancer.
(Get It Now)
No Graphics TXT Plugin
No Graphics TXT files to make character conversions easier. (OK, I'm going to admit to some animation ignorance here myself,
as I haven't really done advanced animation editing, and I'll admit that I don't know what these are really for. But
if it helps, Nefarius says these are useful, 'As anyone that will aim at full character conversions would need to go thru
this step. (unless he wants to create over 1k animations).' If you are doing animation work of this sort, I will assume
that makes sense to you.)
(Get It Now)
River of Flame Plugin
At least, that's what I think this is. As Nefarius says, this is a Bridge4.ds1 change sent to him from Vendanna, 'that
makes it so you have to use all paths on this specific river of flame map.'
(Get It Now)
Other Hosted Site News
Nefarius isn't the only one working hard, though. Here are some other great offerings from other hosted sites here at
the Keep:
Deathfile's Sanctuary
A new section has been created for DT1 tiles, spurred byt some DT1 conversions 'Pool of Radiance' that were created by
Red Havoc
(Elven Arches) |
(Pavilion) |
(Pillars 1) |
(Pillars 2)
Cabal Wars
Joel Falcou releases COFEdit, which allows you to edit or create COF file for any DCC you want.
(Get It Now)
Ancients: The Fury Within
The download for the A:TFW mod had been fixed to replace the corrupted file people have been downloading
recently (which made it kind of hard to enjoy the mod).
(Get It Now)
I Want Runes!
Feel an urge to gamble for runes? Or to let players of your mod do so? Nefarius wrote a tutorial on the subject a while
back, and now Phrozen Heart has made a plugin from that information. You can find the Random Rune Gamble Plugin in our
Plugins Area, or you can just
click here.
So You Don't Like Their Looks, Eh?
We have a new tutorial, 'Character Graphics Conversion Tutorial 1.0' by Nefarius. Find it in our
Tutorials Section, or go ahead and click here.
April 21st, 2003
by JBouley
He's baaaaaaaack. Thanks to Phrozen Heart for covering me while I was out of town last week. Now, time for me to get
back to work. :-)
You've Got Mail!
No, it's not AOL I'm talking about. It's free webmail that is now available through Xfernetmail.com. If you want to learn
more, just click here.
You've Got Mods!
Three new mods options added to our Mod
Archives for you this week:
Economy Mod v1.0 - Megainv Edition by RelliK
With the application of the megainventory plugin kit, we can now offer you a slightly more storage-friendly version of the
Economy Mod...for those who loved the mod but thought the space was a bit cramped.
(Get It Now)
Meneldil's Mod v1.0 by Mike Meneldil
Intended to give players the chance to experience a lot of the fun things (like getting decent stuff) that they might not
ever be able to do in an unmodded game. This mod offers a lot of changes, some original and some from plugins here at the
Keep. Just a few examples of what's offered in this mod: It's easier to get runes, druids can cast most of their skills in
were-form, Horadric Cube available from two monsters in Act 1, hirelings level up faster, paladin shields include random
paladin skill bonuses, and much, much more.
(Get It Now)
Simply Charming by Mordini
Zombies drop a lot of charms. If you want to get lots of charms, this is your mod.
(Get It Now)
You've Got Maps!
Have you figured out I don't have much creativity for headlines this week? Anyway, we've deleted the DOS version of
Paul Siramy's DS1 Editor at his request as it's obselete now. But at the same time, we have in our
Mod Making Tools area of the
File Center the March 18, 2003, release of his latest DS1 map editor (still an alpha version...but a really useful
alpha). So, out with an old item but in with a new one. To get this newest version of Paul's DS1 Editor for Windows, just
click here.
You've Been Plugged!
Ummmm, I don't know what that means, either...and I don't think I want to ponder it too long. But, we do have five new
items for you in the Plugins area,
running a wide range of needs. Here they are:
Demogorgon Plugin by MadBengerman
Last week we offered a .dcc conversion of Demogorgon from Baldur's Gate 2. And already someone found a nice token for
it and made a nice, easy plugin for y'all. This plugin replaces the BK token, which is used for Foul Crows, Blood Hawks,
etc.
(Get It Now)
Kill Counter Plugin v 1.2 by Sir_General
Well, not really new but updated, this is an upgrade from version 1.01 of the plugin, which gives you a counter
for how many kills you have of various types of monsters, sort of along the lines of what D1 did.
(Get It Now)
Enchanted Arrows Plugin by Phrozen Heart
Nefarius wrote the tutorial on how to make magical arrows, and Phrozen made a plugin from it for your convenience.
(Get It Now)
Infinite Throwables Plugin by Phrozen Heart
Another plugin born of a Nefarius tutorial, enabling you to throw those weapons as long as you want.
(Get It Now)
Organ Drop Plugin by Phrozen Heart
And yet a third plugin spawned from a tutorial by Nefarius, this time implementing a workaround for the disabled
'organ drop' function we used to have in D2 before the expansion came out and Blizzard killed it.
(Get It Now)
Good-Bye!
All right, I've milked the 'You've Got Mail'/AOL thing too long. Time to leave before you start throwing things at me and
demanding that Phrozen Heart fill in for me all the time on the home page.
8-0
Until next time, folks. :-)
April 14th, 2003
by Phrozen Heart
Lucky You
Yep sorry people but you're going to have to put up with me this week as Jeff is off visiting his home state
which oddly enough is the one I'm in but that's a whole different story....
Skeletons in the Closet
Well first up, I've been digging through a handful of old backup CDs and by some strange twist of fate,
I came across a somewhat antique version of the Keep back from the latter part of 2000. I've retro-updated
our news archive page to reflect the site news for october and november of that year just for those of you
who are curious about the gradual progression of the D2 modding scene =) I've also run off a handful
of nostalgic screenshots for your viewing pleasure (1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5).
The Community Continues To Grow
On the hosted sites front, we'd like to welcome aboard Chaoticdeath and Firefrog with their 'Corrupted Death' mod as well as the general mod making forum's new moderator kingpin and his Dark Alliance mod. You can find links to both sites in our navigation bar or by clicking the corresponding mod name in this news item.
Endless Font of Knowledge?
Thanks once again to our newly acquired admin Nefarius for his latest tutorial on 'Creating Infinite Javelins' which can be found in the v1.09 tutorials section of the Keep.
Damn, That's Ugly
Also thanks to one of our senior forum moderators Alkalund who has submitted a great looking new DCC monster animation conversion for the Demogorgon from Baldur's Gate 2. You can check it out in the file center by clicking here. In my opinion, this little beastie would make a great replacement for Andariel as the new act 1 boss.
Something Old, Something New
Nice little glut of mods available for you people this week starting with Stephen Gorrell's Gemstone Mod v1.4. You can check out both the Direct version and the MPQ version in the LoD v1.09 section of our mod archive.
In addition to this new release, during my rooting around with the old version of the Keep I came across a handful of mods from CD2 v1.03 that we didn't have in the filecenter. These classics include: Little Sister v1.1, Arsenal v1.2, D2 VKmod 1, Eastern Sun v1.33, Ender of Gods v1.02, Evilright's Mod v2, Sunny Weather v1.0, Tweaky Mod v0.2 and Werzion X v1.02.
April 7th, 2003
by JBouley
If you were looking for the Eastern Sun forum on Sunday and had trouble finding it, it's because of a slight
miscommunication which resulting in me shifting it to the 'Non-Hosted Mod' forums section. The forum is back where it
belongs in the 'Hosted' area. The actual ES site is still to come. Perfect Cell is finishing up an upgrade of his site.
Also moving around...or 'moving up' actually...is Nefarius, who is now a site admin along with me and Phrozen Heart.
He's been a great moderator and a huge contributor to the modding commununity, and we're glad to bring him aboard.
In other news, for the Spanish-speaking modders among us, you can find the Diablo 2 Latino's Beginner's Guide to Modding
(in Spanish, of course) at the site www.diablo2latino.metropoliglobal.com,
or you can head to the 'beginner's guide' page at the site directly by
clicking here.
Our Sites in Action
Got some news from some of our hosted sites (head to the nav bar at left to visit them):
The Stairway to Oblivion
Nefarius has been busy as usual. At his site he has two plugins related to the funny (and often mentioned in these forums)
movie, 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail.' The first is the
Deadly Bunny Plugin and the second is the
Holy Hand Grenade Plugin.
Brother Laz, perfectionist that he is, was never truly satisfied with his Demon Trip mods (as much as the rest of us
liked them), and apparently D2:BLACK hasn't passed muster for him either. But he isn't dropping from the modding scene.
Instead, he's shifted gears to work on a project he had already been talking about for a while: 'Acid Reign.' We've
updated the link in the nav bar to point to his new site here. Currently, it's
just a preview site, but oh, it's looking nice so far. Let's hope patch 1.10 comes out soon so he can finish it.
Joel (The 'Cabal Wars' site) has released his txtdc6-install.exe tool, which allows batch creation of these hard-to-do
Entering ... level messages by just using a simple text file. It's in the 'Hosted Sites' area of our File Center,
under the Cabal Wars category, of course. To download it, just
click here.
Helping You Make Those Mods
We have other tools to share this week in addition to Joel's new addition. These ones are in our own
Modmaking Tools area of the
File Center. Here are the details:
Experience Generators v 2.0 by *Astalion*
This one is more suited to 'normal-level' mods, whereas version 1 (still in our File Center) is better for extremely
high-level mods.
(Get It Now)
Peer TBL Editor v3.36 by Evil Peer
A new update to the popular string-editing tool.
(Get It Now)
Beginner's Toolkit compiled by Phrozen Heart
To make things easier, Phrozen pulled together several useful basic tools to start out with for modding.
(Get It Now)
Mods: Something New, Something Old
We've got two 'new' mods this week (Both in our
Mod Archives area):
Manos: Mod of Fate by Syniq
Upgraded version of the mod (to version 1.2) for D2: Lord of Destruction
(Get It Now)
Diablo 2++ Mod v 4.5 by Rana Loreus
An 'oldie but a goodie.' This is for classic D2 version 1.06, but it's still sought-after by many D2 fans who play mods.
Somehow, it got lost from our File Center a while back, but we've got it back now
Get It Now
Learning the Ropes
We have several new tutorials in our Tutorials area.
The 'Demon Portal' Spawner Technique 1.0 by Nefarius
(Read It Now)
How to Turn Wilderness Areas Into Caves by Kingpin
(Read It Now)
How to Make a New Entrance to the Moo Moo Farm by Kingpin
(Read It Now)
For Your Reference
We have new and updated resources and file guides for you. Here they are:
>>Resources
Updated Magic Code Master List by Nefarius
(Click Here)
Passive Skill Offsets in D2COMMON.DLL 1.09b by Nefarius
(Click Here)
>>File Guides
cubemain.txt File Guide by Nefarius
(Click Here)
difficultylevels.txt File Guide updated by Nefarius
(Click Here)
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[url=https://www.d2mods.info/forum/kb/viewarticle?a=147&sid=dc362d20c5d80f9f3d5773a4aa207654]Knowledge Base - [03-04] April, 2003[/url]