Vanguard: Master of Arms 2

[Myhrginoc]

* bump *

In celebration of the release of Master of Arms v2.01 alpha, this thread is now re-opened. Happy modding!

[Kraj]

It's good to be back!

[Molmoch]

Kraj,

I've downloaded and started a pally, and am working slowly to level 2. I did find a magic item in a chest in a house in the Blood Moor.


Is it possible to have an item with more than one enchantment? Ie, use the stones to give it both fire and cold damage? Just wondering.

[Kraj]

Thanks for the tip. Those mag/rar/set/unq items have proven to be quite tenacious. As it is, I doubt such occurances will have a significant impact on players' equipment choices in the long run and it might help getting some early gold together, so why not?

As far as multiple enchantments go, no that cannot - and will not - be done, since the theme is to make choices in what mods will be available to you on equipment. To address your particular situation, the Spectral enchanter on a weapon will bestow tri-elemental damage, but in lower numbers than a single element in the long run.

[Molmoch]

If I use a stone to enchant an item, when I try to enter a new game, it gives me a bad inventory data error message.

[Myhrginoc]

There are a number of special objects, such as chests in cottages. They all use object ID's higher than the maximum ID from Objects.txt, and have hardcoded results. Two ways to clobber this one: either edit the ds1 files where such objects are found to make them ordinary chests, or edit the objects table in D2Common.dll. Although the second approach is code editing, we know enough about the objects table to make it a simple set of hex edits. And you avoid searching through all the ds1 files.

Objects discussion

Here is a sample of the objects table (unfortunately v1.09d, it is from an old post), each entry is four bytes in reverse order (e.g. 44020000 = 244hex = 580 decimal). The order of these dwords is the sequence of Type 2 objects used by the maps and shown in Paul Siramy's map editor. If you search through the table and identify all such entries, you could change them to a normal chest (e.g. ID 5 = 05000000). That way you avoid hard-coded drops and get the chest treasure classes only.

Code: Select all

6FDD3630  52000000 02000000 51000000 54000000  R......Q...T...
6FDD3640  53000000 4E000000 3D000000 67000000  S...N...=...g...
6FDD3650  6C000000 77000000 [color=#9a00ff]44020000[/color] 82000000  l...w...D..‚...
6FDD3660  9F000000 A3000000 A9000000 A0000000  Ÿ...£...©... ...

[Kraj]

Thanks for the tip on the chests. I'll see what I can do with that, but I'm not much in either map or code editing at this point.

I never encountered a problem with the Stone enchanter in my playtesting before, but sure enough I was able to recreate it. I'll try and figure out what is happening.

[RaeVan Morlock]

Fun map--it'll be great when you finish it. I enjoyed the first version, though having no way to gain additional hammers always annoyed me.

I have a few suggestions.

1) Allow either Diablo or Baal to drop hammers. 1 in Normal difficulty, 2 in Nightmare, and 3 in Hell. This way, once the game is beaten, there's extra incentive to still play in order to max out all your equipment ^_^

2) Allow a player to level just 1 item to level 100 (if no other way, possibly by allowing only the amulet to level up to 100 since all chars can use it and only use 1 at a time). Equipping the level 100 item will turn the character into a new being and grant special powers based on which enchanter it's using (for instance, having the "Fire" one could turn you into Diablo and give you access to his abilities--or using stone could turn you into an uber version of the clay golem with all new abilities).

3a1) Have the hammers be stackable so they're not taking up so much inventory space.

3a2) Have the enchanters consumed in the recipes.

3b) If 3a is accepted, and a new recipe to "undo" an item. For instance, putting in a level 30 Ama Bow would result in a Bow, an Amazon enchanter, and a stack of 30 hammers. Then when cubing a stack of hammers with an item, proceed as normal but just subtract 1 from the stack.

This idea is presented to add flexibility to the game. It will allow players to experiement, to see if certain enchanters work better on certain items. It will also allow them to see how powerful an enchanter is at certain levels without risking the permanent loss of their hammers. (Additionally, when using things the Summoning enchanter, if you end up with an item that has a higher level req than it should, you can just take it back to it's base and add less hammers the next time.)

To discourage players from using situation-based equipment, in addition to the time it would take to add back all the hammers, you could have the "undo" recipe not give back the enchanter item.

4) This may already be planned, but obviously a wider range of equipment would be more aesthetically pleasing. For instance, a sorc doesn't look so good running around with a big metal bucket on her head. I, personally, much prefer to use circlets on them. The circlet could certainly have the same properties as the current helmet, but just provide a nicer look to the character.



Lastly, I have a bug report. The problem is that I can't believe it wouldn't have been noticed before the release, so I'll go into full detail of everything I've done with the mod. The bug is that a character can't be opened ("Bad Inventory"), but there are some other oddities mentioned at the end (involving loading the char in UdieToo).

So to start off, I made a sorceress to get a feel of what the game would be like. After gained two or three levels, I saved the game and deleted her.

Then I exited the game and installed PlugY to make use of the shared stash and double my 'per level' stat and skill points.

I started the game back up and made an Amazon character. I got to level 7 with all of my equipment enchanted. I also had her bow, armor, gloves, boots, and helm to level 5. I decided to use the summon enchant on th belt to have some pets provide cover for her. (All of these items were superior class, btw). So I enchanted the belt and then stuck in 5 hammers, one at a time, and found that--omg. I need to be level 12!

Well, I certainly didn't want to wait that long to start using my raven spell, so I decided to make a Barbarian character and use the shared stash to transfer over 5 replacement hammers. While running around and tearing it up, I actually ended up getting 15 hammers... oh well. It's my game, I can cheat all I want ^_^ I also procurred some rings and ammys which sell for a good bit (900-1200, I believe) so I ended up buying 2 1k enchanters and the rest of the lesser expensive enchanters (I like to collect things mmmkay). So I put the 15 hammers and all my enchanters into page 1 of the shared stash. Then I deleted the barb and tried to load my amazon.

OMG! It says I have a bad inventory.

Remembering that I had read something earlier about the Stone enchanter doing that, I felt for sure that that had to be the problem--it was on page 1 of the shared stash so it might, for whatever reason, be loading with my zon.

Since I had no way to access it, I uninstalled PlugY and moved the SharedStash file to another directory (just in case). I also replaced all my .dll and .exe files with fresh, clean ones to ensure that no other mods had data that would be messing with it and ensured that no "data" folder was present in the installation directory.

I still have a bad inventory!

So I used UdieToo (with the -direct switch) to see if I could find and delete the offending item. UdieToo loaded fine, but reported some an inventory item out of bands. It was a "Cold Elite Mace". I had it positioned 4 columns from the left and down as far as it could go. But UdieToo displayed it being 1 row lower then it should be, so the bottom (3rd cell) position of it was out of bounds. Other then that, all the graphics and item (equipment) positions were displayed the same as in game.

I loaded up the stash page and had more out-of-bounds problems. UdieToo does appear to have the bounds correct with the graphic, but for some reason, two of my enchanters were off to the right. I had started piling them in alphabetical order according to price--starting from the top-right corner. So the right-most column had the enchanters that cost 1000. To the left were those for 500, then 100, then 10. But now, my 500 gold-piece enchanters were in the right-most column and then 1k ones were out of bounds. I can't fathom for the life of me why this happened--maybe a problem with either 0 or 1 being the starting index... but I have things in the inventory that are as far right as they can be and they're perfectly fine.

So anyhow... after some strife, I eventually deleted everything from my inventory, equipment, and stash. The cube, hireling, and dead body were already empty--effectively leaving me with no sort of inventory whatsoever.

The game still says "Bad Inventory".

Realizing that I had never before loaded a character (I had created them and deleted them), I decided to create a fresh char, save her, and then try to load her again.

It still said "Bad Inventory".

Wanting to be utterly thorough as I type this out, I just started a Paladin character, dropped all his items, saved him, and loaded him back up.

"Bad Inventory!"

So for that reason, I'm quite convinced that it's a problem with the mod and not my system, but I can't believe that nobody has played the same char more than once!

So.... yup. That's my bug report.



Also, when switching to weapon slot 2, it uses the default graphics instead of the updated ones.... just a minor oversight that I thought I'd mention.

[Myhrginoc]

Thanks for the tip on the chests. I'll see what I can do with that, but I'm not much in either map or code editing at this point.

I thought of another approach today, which may well bypass the need to fiddle with maps or object tables. This is still code editing, but it is a ridiculously simple hex edit. This section of d2game.dll is in the treasure class evaluating function.

Code: Select all

6FC51993   85FF                  TEST EDI,EDI
6FC51995   8BF7                  MOV ESI,EDI
6FC51997   74 11                 JE SHORT D2Game.6FC519AA
6FC51999   83FF 9C               CMP EDI,-64
6FC5199C   0F8E A1020000         JLE D2Game.6FC51C43

EDI here contains your total item magic find, including your minion contribution if the minion makes the kill. The game checks to see if you have any item mf at all (TEST and JE checks for zero value). Then it looks to see if your item mf cancels out your player's inherent mf of 100%. At that point (EDI <= -100) you skip all checks for uniques, set items, rares and magical items, and jump to superiors, normals and low grades.

So for your mod we want to do this all the time! That means changing the JE to an unconditional jump so we don't care about any mf check at all. This requires you change only five bytes in d2game.dll. Open the file in a hex editor and go to file offset 21997. You should see this:

Code: Select all

00021990  00 03 F8 85 FF 8B F7 [color=#6400ff]74 11 83 FF 9C[/color] 0F 8E A1 02  .ø…ÿ‹÷tƒÿœŽ¡
000219A0  00 00 C7 44 24 14 01 00 00 00 8B 44 24 10 8B 0B  ..ÇD$...‹D$‹

Edit the five bytes I highlighted, 74 11 83 FF 9C, so they are E9 A7 02 00 00. This changes that section to

Code: Select all

6FC51993     85FF                 TEST EDI,EDI
6FC51995     8BF7                 MOV ESI,EDI
6FC51997     [color=#6400ff]E9 A7020000[/color]          JMP D2Game.6FC51C43
6FC5199C     0F8E A1020000        JLE D2Game.6FC51C43

and you will never execute the undesired grade checks for any ordinary treasure drop.

You still have a few hardcoded "drops" that can be better than superior grade. This code doesn't affect Akara's or Ormus's quest reward rings, but those are simple edits already covered elsewhere in the Code Editing forum. And I don't think armor stands and weapon racks use this code either, so some research would be needed to nullify those sources.

[Kraj]

Myhrginoc - Thanks, that's a great approach! That should do nicely.

RaeVan - Thanks for the input. I was never too happy with the way hammers were handled in the first version either. I hope the new method is more fun. Here are my thoughts regarding your suggestions:

1) The spirit of the mod is limiting equipment choice, so the intention is not to allow players to have all the best possible equipment no matter how much they play. Of course, if an individual chooses to transfer hammers via multiplayer or PlugY, etc., that's their choice.

I do believe in creating incentive for players to continue after they've beaten the game, but I detest endless boss runs. I have not yet decided exactly how to implement this, but I have a lot of ideas - as more of the game gets implemented, I'll be able to better explain but there will be incentives to play much cooler than getting more hammers ;)

2) I've had some ideas along those lines and yours is a pretty good one. I'll keep that in consideration.

3a) Unless there is a breakthrough I'm unaware of, it is very hard to do something useful with stacked items. Usually the game treats stacked items as one item regardless, so there's not much I can do in that area. With the expanded inventory and stash, there should be plenty of room to stor quite a few hammers and, at this point, there aren't many things worth saving, so please let me know if you're running out of room and why.

3a2) Is there a specific reason for this? I did it this way as a convenience, so players don't have to spend more money early on. If you don't want them, you can always sell them back.

3b) See my answer to 1). I want players to have flexibility in choice of equipment, but allowing players to undo their equipment choices removes consequences. Just as when a certian skill point allocation doesn't work right you try again with a new character, so should it be with equipment choice.

So this idea will not be implemented in my mod. As far as the Summon item problem, that is bug and will not be an issue in the final version.

4) This is certianly a valid issue. For the alpha, I was concerned with functionality rather than asthetics. There is a lot I want to do cosmeticly, although what you're suggesting is tricky. I think it is important, though, and I'll see what I can do about it.

Bug Report - I have encountered no problem with replaying a character in the way you describe. I have not yet figured out what is causing the Stone item problem, so it is possible there is somethign crazy going on. However, I have not worked with either UdieToo or PlugY and have no idea how they would impact the mod as it is. However, since this mod is using an inventory plugin, and PlugY makes it's own inventory alterations, I'm guessing that is where the conflict is. Try deleting inventory.txt and bin, and the global\UI folder and see what happens. I think I'll use PlugY rather than that inventory plugin for the final version anyway.

EDIT: I believe I have found the problem with the Stone enchanters. It appears to be caused by unequal class skill numbers. I made the change and it seems to have fixed it so far. Anone who wants the corrected skills.txt can email me at gkrajenta@yahoo.com or make the change yourself. Just open skills.txt in a spreadsheet; at the bottom of the file are a few rows of skills I was working with. Just delete 'sor' from the charclass column for all the entries and it should be fine.

While investigating this error, I found other item problems which I will fix and offer an update via email, hopefully later today.

EDIT AGAIN: I think I've found and fixed all the obvious errors. I should have a good set of text files ready. Rather than bug Myhrginoc every time I do this, I'll distribute the files to whoever who needs them by email. The corrected files are 1.8MB zipped, so let me know if I need to split the size when I send them.

[RaeVan Morlock]

3a) Unless there is a breakthrough I'm unaware of, it is very hard to do something useful with stacked items. Usually the game treats stacked items as one item regardless, so there's not much I can do in that area. With the expanded inventory and stash, there should be plenty of room to stor quite a few hammers and, at this point, there aren't many things worth saving, so please let me know if you're running out of room and why.

3a2) Is there a specific reason for this? I did it this way as a convenience, so players don't have to spend more money early on. If you don't want them, you can always sell them back.

3a1 and 3a2 were just prerequesites for 3b--I don't so much have a problem with the current setup.

Bug Report - I have encountered no problem with replaying a character in the way you describe...

I'm not sure what the problem is either. I did 2 clean installs (excluding the use of plugy), and still had problems. But after the third, it worked fine. PlugY works fine with it as well.

Removing the inventory.txt and inventory.bin files actually causes the game to crash.

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I'm not sure if it was MOA1 or some other mod that had done this, but dyes would be really cool to have in order to add even more customization to the look of the equipment. Perhaps even have them fairly costly and with a single use so that they'd be something to look forward to, rather then your char having its ideal appearance from the very start.

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Back on the topic of hammers, I have a few issues still with them. The biggest of which is the way they're awarded. Getting 5 hammers per level is cool, but having them dropped on the ground kinda stinks. It seems sloppy, I worry that they'll appear somewhere that I can't reach them (since they don't appear at my char's feet), and there's the issue of playing multiplayer with a person that thinks it'd be funny to steal yours.

As for more stacking ideas--perhaps a method could be devised using counters. Similar to in some games where a counter is incremented on an item whenever you kill a monster or hit somebody, perhaps a counter could increment on the "Hammers from Heaven" item whenever you level up. And then cubing that item with a piece of equipment would deduct from the counter.

Alternately, using "charges" may work if there's a way to add and subtract from the maximum number of charges on an item (so that people can't simply repair their stone.

And lastly for hammers, would it be possible to right-click a hammer and then select a piece of equipment instead of using them in the cube? It would be a cleaner interface especially helpful when upgrading the belt since you wouldn't go losing all your potions.

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And lastly--why are rings and amulets found 'in the wild' sold for 900 and 1200 respectively, but those bought at store only sell for 2?

I think it's cool, actually, and a good way to make gold early on. It just seemed really odd.

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UPDATE:

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If you could find enough graphics, or an artist to help you, I was just thinking it'd be really cool to have 'tiers' of items.

For instance, you'd have some basic startup items. A hand axe, short sword, cap, etc. Then every 10-20 levels of the item, it's graphic would change to better reflect it's enchantment. So if you had some quilted armor with teh thorns enchantment, it would start getting rougher and eventually grow some spikes. But with a more magical enchantment, it could start turning into a robe with a hood and some ancient symbols on it.

This could also serve as an opportunity to make the more expensive enchantments have a little extra umph by making their overall changes more drastic and appealing. For instance, quilted armor with the fire enchantment may just turn a pretty color red with a flame symbol.. or something like that. And maybe it'll only change every 20 levels whereas a 1k enchantment could change every 10.

Also, to this extent, items could either change or gain a new property at each tier. The easiest example would be for the summoning enchantment. Start off with ravens, then move onto a clay golem, wolves, bears, fire golem, etc. Something more simple like the fire enchantment could start off with fire resistance, then return fire damage, then +fire damage, then fire absorb...

For example: at level 1, have 2% fire resist +2% per level. Then at level 20, add on +5 return fire damage + 5 per level. So at level 25, it would have 50% fire resistance and 25 return fire damage.

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Do you have any plans for the mercanaries? As it stands, I was level 12 in the Barracks and my merc was only 6--she couldn't really do anything. And giving them basic equipment is cheap, but there's no way I'd want to use my hammers to improve them.

Perhaps someone could sell "Merc Equipment" -- things with only 1 durability and high purchasing/repair costs so that they're useless for the player. And these could have stats that are based on the char's level, so as to improve in a similar fashion, but at a slightly lesser scale, then the player's stuff.

Also, could you boost the experience gain of the merc? It'd be really nice if there was a mod where the merc could actually stay at the same level as the char for once... just give her like 100x as much experience as the player since she'll be capped anyhow ^_^

[nazo]

I don't know if this is still a prob in MoA 2, but in MoA 1, the Upgrade Hammer from Charsi's quest would drop every time you re-visited it, mostly because you never complete the quest I think. Is this still a problem in MoA 2?

[Malifrax]

I haven't gotten very far in the mod yet, nor have I played the first MoA, so I have a few comments that may have already been covered:

• The Hammers From Heaven charm is sellable, but cannot be bought back from merchants as it doesn't appear in any of the equipment tabs. This effectively makes a character useless if the player accidentally sold the item, unless a new character is created to mule its charm/starting hammer over to the old character (easily done using PlugY). Making the charm not sellable would prevent any accidents such as this.
• Magical items can easily be obtained by gambling for them from Gheed (and probably any other merchant that offers gambling). Personally I don't have any problems with magic items being in the game, as they are limited in usefulness compared to the upgradable items. It would be interesting, however, to allow magic items to spawn rarely, but with better than average abilities along with the property of always being ethereal. This would make magical items that are quite useful for particularly tough battles, but are limited due to their fragile nature.
• Making all of the enchanters buyable seems a little too simple for me. It would be much more interesting if the base enchanters were sold by merchants, while more powerful or even special enchanters could be found while adventuring. This would add a great deal of replay value, as more possible enchanted item combinations would be available as the character progresses through the game.
• The alternative weapon switch background graphics do not match the primary weapon switch background graphics. I like the new inventory layout, and I hope you plan on changing the gold button and the close button too along with the rest of the UI in order to match the theme you've begun.
• Having enchanters consumed in the initial upgrade recipe along with being required for future upgrades would help create a money sink, making gold a much more sought after commodity. This, along with other types of crafting items available to purchase, would force players to decide what they want to spend their hard-earned money on. Also, this would make it more difficult to upgrade enchanted items that were made using rare enchanters only found while adventuring.
• Recipes to use body parts or other special objects only droppable by monsters in order to create new base item types would make equipment choices more customizable. (ex. fallen arm + fallen skull + leather straps = fallen bone club with an inherent +5% fire resistance)
• Unique items with no modifiers that are only upgradable using unique enchanters or components would be interesting as well for item hunters. Finding out what items are needed to upgrade the unique items would be trial and error for the player, with failed upgrade attempts consuming the components (or you could have recipe scrolls that can be found indicating what the player needs). An example of a unique crafting item would be the Tome of Lazarus, a book item that is equipped in the shield slot and has little to no defense, but is upgradable using Demonic Ink and an Enchanted Quill.
• I personally like the idea of having only one enchantment type on an item, this makes it more challenging for players in the long run. This feature will probably cause players to transfer items and hammers to different characters in order to have a wide variety of equipment choices they can select from. Muling of items using PlugY in this case is not necessarily a bad thing, as the level requirements on the items help prevent too much abuse as long as the mod author keeps in mind that many players will have a wide range of enchanted equipment in their stash. Choosing the right alternative equipment to carry when traversing an area could potentially add more tactical approaches to the game. Of course, to compliment this even more, the author could restrict town portal usage, so as to force the player to plan ahead on what equipment to carry for their long trek into the wilderness (rather than let them TP back to town to retrieve the appropriate equipment from the stash when an unexpected encounter with a particularly tough opponent occurs).
• If PlugY is going to be integrated into the mod, then D2Mod probably should be as well, as it compliments PlugY in many ways. Besides offering code edits through its own optional plugins, D2Mod is very useful as a mod loader and makes it easier for players to keep various files from different mods separate.

I look forward to any updates that are released for the mod, but I do not have a public email address anymore that I can give out. Maybe you could distribute minor updates via BitTorrent or a website (such as Charsi's Forge) like some other mod makers and reserve major updates for the Keep?

//Edit//

• I found a magic small charm in Blood Moor that dropped from a Fallen.
• I found a white ring that dropped either from a chest or a monster that could not be enchanted using the enchanters. Most likely a result of whatever you did to remove magic items from the game.
• To fix the problem with magic items dropping from those special chests and appearing in the gamble screen all one needs to do is open Itemtypes.txt and change all the item types that have 1 in the Magic and/or Rare columns to have nothing in those two columns and a put 1 in the Normal column for those entries. Do not do this to the charm types, or else charms that spawn will crash the game when picked up. It's better to disable them from spawning totally or add a null magic modifier to them (which is explained in this thread).

[RaeVan Morlock]

I'm now hosting the updates on my server. You can get the patch for 2.01b from here.

[Kraj]

Wow. The amount of feedback is overwhelming. I'll do my best to respond/elaborate.

I'm glad you got a resolution, Rae. Did you remove the UI folder along with inventory.txt and bin?

A lot of the ideas you mention - such as dyes and right-click interface - were implemented in sir_General's Rune Mod. They are great features, but exist due to his expertise in code editing. I won't be able to implement them myself.

I realize that, as is, the graphics in the mod are quite dull. Rest assured the final version will have a variety, although I don't know at this point exactly how I will implement it. But right now I am concerned with functionality - cosmetics will be the final coat of paint, if you will.

I agree that the system for delivering hammers is flawed, but I think you'll agree that it is better than the original. You have some good ideas and I'll see what I can do, but the problem with using a second item in the cube recipie is I would need to be able to retain the mods on each item and modify them, which is not possible.

I think the rings/amulets that drop are actually original D2 items that continue to drop despite my settings. It's on my to do list.

As far as your description of mod progression, that is what happens. Most items have only a few modifiers available (otherwise you'd always have uber equipment no matter what enchanters you choose) but they tend to appear in increments. To take your example, the Summon enchanter adds 1 level to Raven each upgrade. Starting at level 6, it adds 1 level to Clay golem and so on. By the time you reach 90 you can summon any golem, wolf, Grizzly, Valkyrie, or Shadow.

I do have plans for mercenaries but nothing too specific at this point. My final plans actually include other methods of aquiring equipment, so you could choose that for mercenaries, or give mercs hammer items and use others yourself. I like your idea, though; that'll defninitely be a possibility.

Malifrax -

Thanks for pointing out the sellable charm - defintiely a problem I didn't notice.

Magic/rare/set/unique items will have a place in the final mod. I agree with your assesment of how magic items currently fit into the scheme of things and am glad their irritating persistance does not ruin the mod.

It seems the consensus is enchanters should be consumed on use, so I'll change that. I'm not sure how I feel about restricting which enchanters can be bought - my feeling is that upgradable items should be available at the begining of the game since the point is to be able to integrate equipment into character planning from the very beggining. I'm not even sure I like having some enchanters more expensive than others.

I do have many, many plans for other equipment choices - I still want the players to have fun finding rewards. The upgradeable items are intended to be a basic starting point. I had been planning on taking some time to implement skills, but I'm thinking that should maybe be the last thing I do (a la Ancestral Recall).

The current inventory setup is going away. It is not my design, it is a plugin and the weapon switch background thing is irritating. I liked the weapon-theme interface, but I'm instead going to intend for the mod to be played with PlugY.

I'd love to add more variety to base item types, but for every 1 base item type 2,270 cube recipies and 111 string table entries are needed. Sure, fine if I want to add a handful of items, but add in a whole system for dozens of crafted base items and, well, lets just say that's on my list for version 2.5.

I do have planned several unique items (and I'm always thinking of more) and my intention is to have them all upgradeable. My plan was to have them consume a large number of hammers for each upgrade, but I love Love LOVE your idea of using a "unique" ingredient to match it for an upgrade. Not only will it function better, but it adds a mystery element and my final version will be crammed with little secrets to discover.

I'm glad you like the way I've implemented equipment choice. I'm not sure what to do about town portals yet, but I know I want them to be much more valuable. One thing I liked about D1 was the risk... it was a pain to die because of the time it took to get back to your stuff. But town portals are so abundant that even waypoints are practically irrelevent. I'm thinking making the scroll rare will force players to make thoughtful choices about when they are used.

The next release of the mod will incorporate the D2Mod system.

Nazo, no quest rewards or items have been altered as of yet. I don't plan on making the same mistake with Charsi's quest item. You can have your imbue. It's not like it will help you :roll:

[Molmoch]

Kraj,

Finally got my own bugs worked out over here, and started a new char. I leveled up very easily (compared to the first time which was quite a burden) and got stat points and skill points when I did. Did something in the new files tweak the level up issues? Or is my understanding of the mod wrong? I thought there were no stat / skill point on level up.

[Kraj]

I thought there were no stat / skill point on level up.

Nope. In its current form the mod only alters equipment. Character skill and stat development are the same.

[RaeVan Morlock]

Oi! Sorry it's taken so long to respond--my email client was labeling the reply notifications as junk!

I'm glad you got a resolution, Rae. Did you remove the UI folder along with inventory.txt and bin?

Removing the inventory.txt and bin files caused the game to crash. I'm not really sure what I did to get it working since I tried fresh installs 3 times--and then it just magically worked. PlugY works fine with it as well.

A lot of the ideas you mention - such as dyes and right-click interface - were implemented in sir_General's Rune Mod. They are great features, but exist due to his expertise in code editing. I won't be able to implement them myself.

Well you should bug him until he gives away his secrets ^_^

I think the rings/amulets that drop are actually original D2 items that continue to drop despite my settings. It's on my to do list.

I figured that. Did you create new ring/amulet items instead of modifying the originals?

As far as your description of mod progression, that is what happens. Most items have only a few modifiers available (otherwise you'd always have uber equipment no matter what enchanters you choose) but they tend to appear in increments. To take your example, the Summon enchanter adds 1 level to Raven each upgrade. Starting at level 6, it adds 1 level to Clay golem and so on. By the time you reach 90 you can summon any golem, wolf, Grizzly, Valkyrie, or Shadow.

Yay!

I'd love to add more variety to base item types, but for every 1 base item type 2,270 cube recipies and 111 string table entries are needed. Sure, fine if I want to add a handful of items, but add in a whole system for dozens of crafted base items and, well, lets just say that's on my list for version 2.5.

The recipes are all very similar though, right? Like.. if you include a circlet as an additional helmet choice, you could take the recipes for the current helmet and just replace it's ID with that of a circlet. Even C&P'ing those lines into Notepad and using it's find & replace feature should suffice.

The strings might be a bit harder to do since they have their own funky file format, but it likely wouldn't be too difficult to make a small app that could "type" all the new values out for you into a string editing program.

I'm glad you like the way I've implemented equipment choice. I'm not sure what to do about town portals yet, but I know I want them to be much more valuable. One thing I liked about D1 was the risk... it was a pain to die because of the time it took to get back to your stuff. But town portals are so abundant that even waypoints are practically irrelevent. I'm thinking making the scroll rare will force players to make thoughtful choices about when they are used.

You can remove the Tome of Town Portal item, so as to make it more 'costly' to hold onto a large number of town portal scrolls. And then remove them from shops and lower their chance of dropping.

There's a mod that did something similar to this, and it also includes a "portal waypoint" near the bosses that don't have a nearby waypoint... it's really pretty neat. And I'm 90% sure that the "portal" stays open even after leaving the game.. if you save&exit and then come back later, the portal is still there.

[nazo]

Perhaps charms could be blankified, as the rings and amulets were, and only super uniques would have a chance of dropping one. Small charms could hold 1 modifier, large could hold 2, and grand could hold 3. The modifiers, or enchantments if you're picky, would be exclusive to charms, not appearing on anything else, would only be upgradable every 5 levels, and would consume 2 hammers per upgrade. This way charms would be much more useful, yet not abused. In any case, 'twas just a though.

[RaeVan Morlock]

Meh.. hammers are already severely limited. If anything else is to be upgradeable, it should use some other item to do so.

[nazo]

I know hammers are limited, that's why the charms would only upgrade every 5 levels. You'd be upgrading an item 5 levels with only 2 hammers. If hammers aren't going to be used, then perhaps the enchantments could be tied to the person's level. Rather than using hammers to upgrade the charm it would grow better bit by bit as the person leveld up. It wouldn't tie up any hammers, and the charm is still useful. And if that's not going to work, perhaps it would require the enchanter(s) plus a couple hammers to get the enchanment(s) on, then it would progress as the character does.

[Kraj]

I'm back with some more tidbits. First off, to wrap up this topic:

The recipes are all very similar though, right? Like.. if you include a circlet as an additional helmet choice, you could take the recipes for the current helmet and just replace it's ID with that of a circlet. Even C&P'ing those lines into Notepad and using it's find & replace feature should suffice.

The strings might be a bit harder to do since they have their own funky file format, but it likely wouldn't be too difficult to make a small app that could "type" all the new values out for you into a string editing program.

You are quite correct. Copy, paste, find/replace is how I did all the items/recipies. Adding a circlet as a helm choice would not be that big a deal. What is a big deal is that if I add a circlet as a helm choice, then why not have two or three options for all equipment? It only makes sense. And THAT would be a huge job.

Now on to other matters. I have moved on to the wonderful world of skill editing. I have completed the skill tree design and I think that all of the things I want to do should be doable or I should at least be able to get it close. My plan is to create the skills as a seperate mod and then merge it with MoA. Here's the plan:

First I'll start by explaining a few of my opinions on skills. 1.) Synergies are cool but were implemented horribly. Blizzard succeeded in allowing more variety in viable builds. But instead of using synergies to make weaker spells useable later in the game, they simply encourage pouring points into useless skills to improve the uber you would have used anyway. Blah. 2.) Level 1 skills should be useful for something. A maxed level 1 skill should serve a purpose in Hell difficulty. 3.) Getting all the skills for your final build by level 30 is boring. 4.) Prerequisites give skill trees theme and continuity. However, a prereq should not be a wasted point. 5.) When one skill that has an area of effect is similar to another skill that doesn't, the AoE skill should be less potent.

That said, here are the general changes to the skill system:

The tiers for skill prereq levels will be 1, 5, 15, 30, 60, 90. Each tree generally has two lvl60 skills and one lvl 90 skill. The level 90 skill tends to have a dramatic effect, kind of like a reward for being level 90, but will not be a Screen-Wide Destruction(TM brother Laz) skill.

To prevent "I'll just pick the two best skills in every tree"-ism, putting a skill point in a level 60 or 90 skill will prevent you from putting a skill point in a level 60 or 90 skill in the other two trees. :twisted:

Max levels for each skill tier scale down; level 1 skills have max level of 30, level 5 have 25 and so on to level 90 which have 5. This encourages spending points when you get them and rewards heavy investment in early skills.

Synergies are almost exclusively backward, meaning a level 60 skill increases the effectiveness of a level 30 skill, but not vice versa. The exceptions are when a higher skill has an ability directly related to a lower skill. In that case increasing the lower skill often increases the higher, simply by association.

Most skills will have a skill timer. The length of the timer is based on the req level of the skill, the numebr of points you have in the skill, and your level. A level 5 skill might have a 1 second timer, but if you only put one point in it, by the time you hit level 35, there will be no delay. Put five points into the skill and the timer is about 1/4 second. By level 40 the timer is gone again. Some skills will have minimum timers.

To tie skills in with the Master of Arms theme of equipment there will be an "enhancements" feature. Players will very much want to give up equipment slots for some nice socketed items. Why? Because socketable items will drop that directly affect the effectiveness of a skill. I'm not talking "+1 to such and such skill"; I mean "+1 yard to aura ranges" or "+10% to missile velocity" or "-50% to skill timers".

I'll be back later with descriptions of the skill tree changes and specific new skills I have planned.

[RaeVan Morlock]

That all sounds really cool. I've always wanted a mod that would make skills that build on each other, and your ideas are the closest I've heard yet.

For an example of what I mean, consider the current situation with the Sorceress's cold skill tree. When Frozen Orb shatters, it releases tons of litlte ice shards that look just like the projectile of Ice Bolt. My idea would be to have Frozen Orb, at its most basic level, be simply a frozen orb projectile. Then for each level of Ice Bolt, Frozen Orb's explosion effect would be greater. For instance, the number of shards released could be twice the level of Ice Bolt. Since Ice Bolt is a prereq to Frozen Orb, you'd be guaranteed at least 2 shards.

To take this idea even further, you could incorporate Glacial Spike, Ice Blast, and Frost Nova. Now when the Frozen Orb comes into contact with something, it will freeze and damage everything in a small AoE [Glacial Spike], release a ring of frost to chill enemy's in a greater AoE [Frost Nova], release numerous ice shard projectiles [Ice Bolt] which freeze and damage each enemy they hit [Ice Blast].

Not only does this provide for a devastating ultimate ability, but it encourages you to level the prerequisites.



Another nice example would be the Paladin's auras. He could essential have 1 offensive aura and 1 defensive aura--teh rest of the aura abilities becoming passive to enhance them. Leveling the base offensive and defensive auras themselves could decrease mana drain, increase range, or (possibly) even increase the frequency of the effect.

For instance, a high level of the defensive aura along with the health regen and mana regen passives could give +50 health and +25 mana to nearby allies every 1/10th of a second.

Or using the base offensive aura with the fire, lightning, and cold auras could deal fire, lightning, and cold damage to all enemies on the screen twice per second.

[Kraj]

As promised, here are the descriptions of the planned skill trees. I do not consider this set in stone since I never know when I'll get an idea that's better, but I'm pretty happy with this so far.

Sorceress - Probably the most changed class. No longer is the Sorceress the master of dishing out massive amounts of elemental pain. Why? Because its boring as hell. Meet the new sorcy:

Conjuring - The conjuring tree deals in creating something out of nothing, notably illusions (variations on Decoy and Shadowmaster) and elementals (little fiery friends to play with). The sorceress can also concentrate mana into physical form with some interesting and nasty results.
Nifty skill: Fire Shield - cast and go. Getting hit dispells it but, unless he's fire immune, the one who hit you won't be happy about it.

Enchanting - To further introduce the sorcress to a concept called strategy, I've taught her how to enchant allies and enemies. Now she can buff party stats, weaken enemies and even alter the flow of time.
Nifty skill: Time Bubble - (if I can make it work right) slows all players, minions, monsters and missiles. A powerful sorceress just might be able to resist the effects of her own spell.

Mystical - True to her roots, the sorceress still can dish out pain. This time it's in the form of magic damage, and plenty of it. Here she finds some personal buffs as well as the good ol' Teleport - with a twist.
Nifty Skill: Chaos Bolt - What if you could do huge damage to a single target? What if that damage could be any element? What if you had no idea which enemy it will hit?

***

Necromancer - The Necromancer is still the same basic guy, just with some of his particular abilities changed...

Summoning - ...For example, golems suck and he can no longer cast them. But now he can summon some nifty demons straight from the pits of Hell.
Nifty Skill: Doom Cage - a Bone Prison that damages its "guest".

Curses - Some of the Necro curses have been gifted to a different class. The Necro has a few less options in the curse area, but most of them won't be missed anyway. The curse tree gives the Necro some fun with poison, because the poison and bone tree is gone.
Nifty Skill: Curse Mastery - Increase the radius and duration of your curses.

Soul - The Necro Soul tree will have a lot of those old "bone" skills, but this time the Necromancer must Harvest Souls in order to power them. The more souls the Necro enslaves, the more powerful these skills become.
Nifty Skill: Call of the Underworld - Transform into a demon with a power boost to your soul skills. Too bad you can't cast any curses or summon anything.

***

Druid - So, if the Sorceress doesn't get all sorts of elemental spells, who does?

Elemental - While lacking in precision, the Druid has always been proficient in dishing out elemental damage. Fire, lightning and wind are his toys.
Nifty Skill: Ball Lightning - between this and Moulten Boulder, we might see Bowling Druids.

Summoning and Shapeshifting - I think these trees work fairly well as is, so don't expect many changes. Say your goodbye's to the vines and spirits you never play with.

***

Assasin - The assassin also has a great deal of changes. Remember that whole "power of the mind" thing they were supposed to have?

Martial Arts - Essentialy the same setup.

Traps - I HATE the way traps were implemented. How can we make a sorceress more boring? How about letting her cast skills repeatedly with one click while two screens away? Ugh. Traps will now be interesting - you'll set your trap and have to lure monsters to them to do damage.
Nifty Skill: Hades Ring - Step on this puppy and get surrounded by a ring of fire. Will the monster wait safely inside? Doubt it.

Psionics - Yay! The assassin's mental abilities now do more than Mind Blast. She can now telepathically screw with enemies, enchance her survival with some precognition, or lay the smack down with telekinesis.
Nifty Skill: Stun Wave - Pimpslap a screen full of baddies to set them up for the kill.

***

Barbarian - The Barbarian had an entire tree full of boring passives. Gone. Now the Barb has the most unique tree I designed.

Prowess (not sure if that will be the final name) - The Barb may choose one and only one skill from a set of passives. That passive adds its bonus to the other attacks in the tree. For example, selecting Brute Strength adds crushing blow to any of the four attack skills in the tree when you use them.
Nifty Skill: eh, no single skill stands out. This tree is nifty when the skills combine.

Combat - If you ignore the path of the Prowess tree, these will be your main attacks.
Nifty Skill: Blood Lust - You pay for the damage you dish out with your own blood. And you dish out damage really hard and really fast.

Shaman - Enhance your party with warcries...other than Battle Orders. Ritualistically devour your slain foes to enhance your virility.
Nifty Skill: Mutilate - Desecrate a corpse to break the spirit of nearby enemies and make them more susceptiable to your attacks.

***

Paladin - The Pally has his most intersting auras combined into one tree now and has expanded combat skills and spells.

Auras - Increase your strength, dish out elemental damage, immunize yourself from an element, reduce your enemies' resistances, heal life and mana. It's all here. Sorry, no more "no brainers" like Defiance, Salvation and Fanatacism.

Combat - Dispatch your enemies with grace. Or with a shield to the face. All the oldies but goodies are here, with a special nod to hammers.
Nifty Skill: Hammer Throw - chuck that baby right into oncoming traffic. For when Blessed Hammer doesn't provide the precision you need.

Divine Aid - What fun is being a Paladin if you can't call down the wrath of God Himself? Your prayers are answered through angelic aid, the angry Fist of the Heavens, and the ability to heal...effectively.
Nifty Skill: Angelic Host - It's about time Tyrael did something other than get his ass kicked. How about raining fire?

***

Amazon - The Amazon trees are the same in theme, different in execution. The worst offense of the Amazon tree is all the early skills are nothing more than syngeries for later skills. The Amazon now has a reason to use a variety of skills.

Bow and Crossbow - Fire and ice arrows combine with multishot and strafe for good, clean fun.
Nifty Skill: Wouldn't it be cool if Strafe and Multishot could be combined with elemental arrows?

Javelin and Spear - You've played with Lightning Fury enough. Kiss it goodbye. Say hello to actually using other skills in the Javelin and Spear tree.
Nifty Skill: Ricochet - a javelin of chain lightning that gets weaker as it hits more.

Magic - You get to keep most of your passives here unless I come up with something better before the mod is done. It would be too mean to rob the Zon of her only summonable, so I added a second one
Nifty Skill: Rogue Wall - With enough invested in this skill you'll be able to call an army of archers armed to the teeth. Just don't stray too far since they won't tag along.

***

I hope you enjoyed the preview. Now I hope I get some time to work on this!

[blinky]

i think KoT did combine multi arrow and strafe with elemental , he has fire strafe and multi ice arrow, ?