I had an idea for a mod a while back. It sprang from my unhappiness with D2's set of uniques and set items. The idea really crystalized for me when I read a post (I don't remember where) about a person, playing a Barbarian -- while doing the battle.net thing, he stumbled across another Barbarian who happened to be identically equipped (down to the last ring and amulet) ...
Gah!!! And don't even get me started about set item drop rates...
Anyway, my idea is to modify drop rates, magic affixes, and properties to eliminate uniques and sets but still preserve their various cool capabilities... My idea is to change the game from a quest for uniques into a quest for rares, but with a small amount of tweaking the items affixes can attach to, at least some mystery will be preserved, say, about where you're going to find that '+2 to all skills' you're seriously coveting...
Anyway, I've started studying some of the text files buried inside my LOD-1.11b example set to get a handle what I need to change (ItemTypes, MagicPrefix, MagicSuffix, for starters) as well as what I need to understand (all of those plus Properties, UniqueItems, and perhaps AutoMagic) and I was wondering if you folks might helpfully toss up some suggestions for things I might have overlooked or that you recommend I take a closer look at.
And, of course, if you were to decide to hold my hand through the (frankly awful) process of figuring out how to open my ver 1.12 MPQ files -- Man would I appreciate that!!
Anyway, I'm still plugging away (dear me, a pun), but I'd love any feedback you can spare,
R.
Things I want to change, soliciting your advice
Moderator: Nefarius
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RichMayo
- Posts: 60
- Joined: Thu Oct 15, 2009 11:08 pm
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AngleWyrm
- Posts: 23
- Joined: Sat Aug 29, 2009 5:12 am
Re: Things I want to change, soliciting your advice
Extract this txt file into your main diablo2 directory (it wont overwrite anything)
Get an MPQ editor; http://www.zezula.net/mpq.html is good. In the editor do File->Open Patch_D2.MPQ. A dialogbox of options comes up: check 'use external listfile' and select this patch_d2.txt file. It should now show files and directories instead of filexxxx.xxx
On probabilities and chances: The easiest way for me to think about them is in terms of frequency, which is 1/probability. If I want something to happen about every 200 tries, that's a frequency of 200. Then I can work out the probability as 1/200 = .005
Something else to be aware of when working with chances: More dice means more middle. If theres a bunch of rolls involved to get a treasure, its going to make the bell-curve of possible treasures very steep and pointy in the middle and very flat and rare away from the middle.
Get an MPQ editor; http://www.zezula.net/mpq.html is good. In the editor do File->Open Patch_D2.MPQ. A dialogbox of options comes up: check 'use external listfile' and select this patch_d2.txt file. It should now show files and directories instead of filexxxx.xxx
On probabilities and chances: The easiest way for me to think about them is in terms of frequency, which is 1/probability. If I want something to happen about every 200 tries, that's a frequency of 200. Then I can work out the probability as 1/200 = .005
Something else to be aware of when working with chances: More dice means more middle. If theres a bunch of rolls involved to get a treasure, its going to make the bell-curve of possible treasures very steep and pointy in the middle and very flat and rare away from the middle.
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RichMayo
- Posts: 60
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Re: Things I want to change, soliciting your advice
Certainly I understand the bell curve, but can you give me an example of multiple (virtual) D2 "dice rolls"??
Thanks,
R. <- still not highly educated on the treasure drop process....
Thanks,
R. <- still not highly educated on the treasure drop process....
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AngleWyrm
- Posts: 23
- Joined: Sat Aug 29, 2009 5:12 am
Re: Things I want to change, soliciting your advice
Roll a monster encounter in levels.txt that generatess possibly several creatures. Then for each creature, roll on their TreasureClassEx.txt, which can generate several picks and re-roll on another treasureclass. The end-result is similar to rolling an 18 on 3d6; the exceptional result on several steps. To make something rare is to make something else common.
Monster encounter chance is on a per-tile basis, so in order to calculate the odds, we need to know the total area of walkable tiles in the region. That can change due to random insertion of unwalkable terrain by the level generator. So best we can get for a given region is a statistical estimate: On average, how many encounters are generated with a given level.
It could be counted as Tiles/Encounter. And if we take the square root of Tiles/Encounter, we get an estimate of X by X square territory size 'owned' by mobs in that region. This process is reversable, so we can start by assigning a 10x10 area per encounter, square it to 100 Tiles/Encounter, and flip it to 1/100=0.01 chance Encounter/Tile. Doing it this way, the number of encounters per level change according to level size, which will change the amount of XP and loot the player gets for that level.
Monster encounter chance is on a per-tile basis, so in order to calculate the odds, we need to know the total area of walkable tiles in the region. That can change due to random insertion of unwalkable terrain by the level generator. So best we can get for a given region is a statistical estimate: On average, how many encounters are generated with a given level.
It could be counted as Tiles/Encounter. And if we take the square root of Tiles/Encounter, we get an estimate of X by X square territory size 'owned' by mobs in that region. This process is reversable, so we can start by assigning a 10x10 area per encounter, square it to 100 Tiles/Encounter, and flip it to 1/100=0.01 chance Encounter/Tile. Doing it this way, the number of encounters per level change according to level size, which will change the amount of XP and loot the player gets for that level.