I'm alive! I think... what's new?

[Malkor]

This may or may not be the right forum for this. If it isn't, I am sorry.

Some of you may remember me... I was working on a mod called Khan the Destroyer quite some time back. I had Paul create me a custom version of his editor with higher doodad limits for my ridiculous 256x256 maps. I also encountered a lot of weird map errors due to this that became really hard to solve.

Then I disappeared for a while.

Then I came back, started work again since I believe 1.10 came out. I was pestering one of you... possibly laz, in pm, regarding all sorts of questions.

And then I vanished again.

Well, let me tell you a little story. I was starting work on a d2 mod, but there was a lot of complications and it got pushed to storage on my D drive. The D drive had lots of valuable data on it, such as all of my KTD maps and other months of work.

Then on my 19th birthday (Edit, I can't believe I'm so foggy about this. It could have been my 18th... my memory is really bad, but it sucked), that drive hard crashed. All of the data was irrecoverable. I lost everything I had ever worked on for d2, including the maps I had spent weeks upon weeks just to get working at all. Needless to say, I was quite dead in terms of motivation to bother with the game anymore. I actually haven't done any serious modding at all until recently when I started on a small mod for starcraft involving ridiculous units being built by computers.

Anyways, the point of this post...

I'm an old fool. I can't adapt to the fangled new technology and programs demanded by newer games. My starcraft mod, once it is finished, may very well be my last mod. I'll probably disappear from online communities. I have high-functioning autism, and it is literally driving me insane. It is very hard for me to concentrate, and so I cannot learn things like C++ or 3ds max.

But while I am working on my starcraft mod, I am working with a very large number of Diablo graphics that got converted to SC format by Nottingham Systems, 7-8 years ago. They're long dead, and these are the only graphics I got, so I'm looking into converting more, and possibly some of the bg2 graphics on PK, to sc's format. It'll be tough work. There's no easy way to mass renaming these things.

But, more importantly, it brought me back to this site, which still seems to be alive and kicking. It made me think, "Why don't I finish this SC mod, and when I do, I try to mod d2 again?"

I was never a hardcore d2 modder. I know next to nothing about items and skill editing. I instead tried to force huge 256x256 non-random pre-built maps into the game and populated them with large varieties of creatures. In KTD's first map, you had the potential chance of running across very slow but very deadly level 30 melee monsters. There was also swarmers, casters, ect. You could get an hour of gameplay on players 1, just exploring the first map. I really want to rekindle that feeling.

But I ran into a lot of problems with my 256x256 maps. They had a habit of overlapping and even though I tried to fix this (I forgot how I tried to fix it.. assigning world space or something), they'd still do it. This was many patches ago, though. I only vaguely remember some of the things 1.10 introduced.

So, the point of this long-winded thread is this.

What's new? Should I try to mod d2 again? What's new since 1.10? Is my pile of 256x256 maps a reasonable task, now?

When my SC mod concludes I'll pretty much be free of any and all "responsibilities", so my current plans is to just fade out from modding and probably just spend the rest of my days writing my novel or the like. But, d2 is something I enjoyed modding, I'm just not sure if anything I want to do is really feesable.

I don't think I would get too heavily into skill editing. Just stuff like Bone Spear novas, bone spirit novas, ect.... stuff that the bosses and things would use. If I made a mod, I'd probably balance it in a way that due to the immense size of the levels and variety of monsters you'd face, you could get level 99 in normal difficulty. I had once heard that you could convert other difficulties into new acts, which would be something I'd also consider if I could find information about it, but that would be a "in the future" kind of thing.

Cheers,

Mesk

[GuyAskingQuestion]

[quote=Malkor";p="366086"]This may or may not be the right forum for this. If it isn't, I am sorry. [/quote]

Well, you're a member and you're announcing something!

[quote=Malkor";p="366086"]
Some of you may remember me... I was working on a mod called Khan the Destroyer quite some time back. I had Paul create me a custom version of his editor with higher doodad limits for my ridiculous 256x256 maps. I also encountered a lot of weird map errors due to this that became really hard to solve.[/quote]

If it's to do with worldspace issues, talk to Nefarius.

[quote=Malkor";p="366086"]
Then on my 19th birthday, that drive hard crashed. All of the data was irrecoverable. I lost everything I had ever worked on for d2, including the maps I had spent weeks upon weeks just to get working at all. Needless to say, I was quite dead in terms of motivation to bother with the game anymore. I actually haven't done any serious modding at all until recently when I started on a small mod for starcraft involving ridiculous units being built by computers.[/quote]

This sort of problem has killed many a mod, I've lost 2 mods this way myself. When you have done so much work it's probably the worst thing that can happen.

Anyways, the point of this post...


[quote=Malkor";p="366086"]I'm an old fool. I can't adapt to the fangled new technology and programs demanded by newer games. My starcraft mod, once it is finished, may very well be my last mod. I'll probably disappear from online communities. I have high-functioning autism, and it is literally driving me insane. It is very hard for me to concentrate, and so I cannot learn things.[/quote]

Props for just saying that mate. Your not alone on that, so many people just do not have the logical/mathematical mindset to program, and C++ is one of the hardest high level programming languages.

If Nefarius can help you with the mapping issue, then you really should try to get your mod out to the world. Defeat that hard drive!

[Malkor]

Alright. When I'm done with my SC mod, I'll give Nefarius a little poke and see what he says about the mapsizes.

I fortunately still have all of the answers Laz gave me regarding my earlier questions about missiles and skills... so with some searches I can probably get back up to speed.