The Phrozen Keep http://phrozenkeep.planetdiablo.gamespy.com/forum/printview.php?t=18842&start=25 Non-Hosted Mods - Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Alkalund Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 1:40 am Post subject: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And here we have the official announcement of the next version of Master of Arms, by Kraj: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 Project Name - Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 Author - Kraj Version - D2 Exp v1.10 final Project Details - Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 builds on the concept of upgradeable equipment and expands it into further reducing reliance on random drops. The backbone of the mod will be upgradeable equipment instead of random drops but players will have a lot more choices. The main features of the mod are: Upgradeable equipment Crafting (not what you think) Rune Trees New item modifers New skills (dependiing on what I can make work) Some monster and map editing (depending on what I can make work) Vendors much more focused Reduced random drops Little to no magic and rare items The equipment upgrade system will be considereably different than in the first version of Master of Arms. Base items of all types will be available, as well as an enchanting item of some sort. A player can then choose which basic item to grant what type of powers by cubing it with an enchanting item. So instead of having to purchase the pike to get a lightnign damage weapon, you can now choose a sword or axe or bow or pike and make it "lighnting enchanted". Furthermore, there are no set levels and rigid stats for the items. Once you have a lightning enchanted sword, you can upgrade it at any time and the item will gain bonuses based on what level you are. The higher the player level, the more powerful the stats that are added to the item. An item can be upgraded as many times as you want at any level, but the catch is the item's level requirement goes up by 1 with each upgrade. Crafting: Crafting will be a big part of the mod, but nit 'crafted items'. Crafting will be done by combining ingredients with some kind of factilitating item to produce an effect. The effect could be creating ammunition or a potion. It coule be adding sockets or repairing and item. What makes this system unique is that the more you perform the craft, the better you get at it. For example, if you use your PotionCraft ability to create healing potions instead of buying them, at first you will only make minor healing potions and then increase to light, regular, greater and super, and then potions more powerful than you can buy. This occurs without altering the ingredients used. In case the advantages of this system are not yet clear, take RepairCraft for example. At low levels, it may be more expensive to buy an iron ingot for a couple gold to repair your armor with than it would be to pay Charsi, because wehen you do it, you only repair one or two points to the durability. But after you've done the repairs yourself many, many times, for the same price of the little iron ingot you can fully repair the item. Rune Trees: Runes will play an important role in the mod. Their primary function will be for use in runeword, which are organized in "Rune Trees". Runes will add no bonuses to items when socketed by themselves but are associated with a certain bonus. Meaning an 'El' rune will add no bonus on its own, but any runeword with 'El' in it will have a strength bonus, for example. Runes will be more easily obtainable to facilitate experimentation. Experimentation is also facilitated by the rune trees. A rune tree is a set of runewords where the more complex runeword build off of less complex ones. For example, a player may try different 2-rune combinations an find that ElEld is a working runeword. You then know that there is a 3-rune runeword that has ElEld in it, such as TirElEld or ElEldThul. If TirElEld is a working runeword, then ZodTirElEld might be and so on. The purpose of this system is both to help players find runewords for themselves and to elminated the need to search through endless lists of runewords to find what you want. The items that the runewords will work in will be as least restrictive as possible. Most runewords will either work in any weapon or any armor. Vendors More Focused: A wider item variety will be available to buy, but you may have to go to particular vendors to buy them. No more cookie cutter set of vendors for each act. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: kingpin Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 8:46 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I see forward for this project, i have always liked Master of Arms a lot. Its very different from anything else. Good luck with your Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 6:48 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next edition to MoA seems far better than the first. The crafting skills seem like an excellent idea, mostly because of the high price for repairing and low pont healing of the poitions, except full rej of course. I can't wait for it to come out. Good luck with the mod. It seems like it will be a long process to creat it...but it shall be well worth the effort... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Wed Dec 17, 2003 7:20 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've been working a lot the past couple weeks, so I haven't had much time to code items yet, but here's a couple of tidbits I forgot to include in my announcement. Magic and rare items will most likely not exist. It's a mammoth task simply try to balance these two item classes and still have anyone care about them. They might possibly make cameos as vendor items or from gambling and such. We'll see. Set items will be different than the previous version. The plan is to have a superunique associated with each quest in the game. That superunique will drop or have a chance to drop a specific set item. Every act in each difficulty level will have one full set to collect. So...if you do all the quests, you'll get a set. The intention is to encourage playing more areas of the game. I played with runetrees a bit and wasn't happy. Originally they were going to be random runes, but it made for really dull runewords. So what I've decided is that runewords will fill the function that uniques do in vanilla d2. They will be themed to a degree and still be organized in trees to assist in discovery. Also, a theme of runewords is the stats will be highly variable, so you can make and remake the runewords once you find one to try to get the best values in the mod range. And finally, the uniques. Uniques will be extremely rare; a character should not acquire more than one or maybe two through the normal course of gameplay. Uniques will also be very powerful, but more importantly, each one has an ability that no other item in the game has. For example, there is an armor that gains a socket each time you right-click it, and returns to one after the sixth socket. You can use the armor to create any (armor-based) runeword and it's the only item that can remove the runes from the sockets to be reused. Another is a bow that fires a different energy missile depending on what is quivered. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Fri Dec 19, 2003 11:50 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I had an interesting experience while tinkering around with d2 files. I had originally intended for all of the gems to be random, meaning that in every grade of gem there would be different quality gems. The gem property values were supposed to be random, but it turned out differently. The gems were like rouletts, the numbers rapidly cycling through the limits I had set. It made for interesting equipment. A gem would have one property when you set it in, and it would stay that way until you put another gem/rune in the item, or you saved and exited. When you come back the gems would re-roll and be different. Perhaps you could fit this kind of randomness in any gems or runes you create, perhaps even the unique items themselves. It was just a thought... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Myhrginoc Date: Fri Dec 19, 2003 8:13 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In 1.09x the variable stats would end up in the middle of the range. I don't know if that bug still exists. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Mon Dec 29, 2003 6:24 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The controversy of rune trees continues... I don't like the themed either; they are too much like the upgradeable equipment. So for now runewords are scrapped until I can find a better fit for them, but runes will still have a strong showing in the form of talismans. Talismans will be crafted jewels based on the runes inputed that get more powerful as you progress. If you do it enough, you can get an idea of what runes give you what result and design your own equipment (to a degree). Edit: Finished planning the attributes for the upgradeable items. There are 19 base items (armor and weapons), a ring, and an amulet; and 32 'themes' to combine, making a total of 672 equipment options. Additionally, the 19 base items will have exceptional and unique versions available in NM and Hell, allowing you to create more powerful equipment later in the game by using better base items. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Sat Jan 17, 2004 6:07 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wow. Sorry about the long hiatus. During the holidays my partner went into the hospital and just came home a couple days ago, so I haven't had any time to work on the mod. But I've still been getting ideas so hopefully I'll make a lot of progress in the next couple weeks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Tue Feb 10, 2004 8:05 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally! Some good progress. I got a big chunk of the upgrade system done today and will probably finish it tommorrow. I still have to code the actual upgrade recipies, including designing the mods on each item; and once the system is working I'll do the string table and customize the graphics for each item. So the upgrade system is about half done; all the items are coded into weapons, armor and misc and the recipies to create an "enchanted" item from a base item are done. I'm looking forward to finishing this part of the mod and moving on to new things. The ideas keep coming! 2/15 Edit: The upgrade system is nearing completion. The mammoth task of creating the cube recipies is finished (barring any major problems I have yet to find). Now I just have to design the item mods (also mammoth, but more fun) and put the final touches on the string table. Then it will be on to new game elements! Like the crafting skills...yay more cube recipies. Current cube recipie count: 46,440. PS. I also just realized I never posted the change to the upgrade system. Due to many issues, the original idea of correlating upgrades with character stats proved to be infeasible. This was a bit dissapointing, but I'm happy with the current solution. Upgrades will have set attributes per upgrade, independant of any other factors. This time, however, items can be upgraded every level but do not have to be. Each time you upgrade, the item's required level goes up one, so be careful: you can upgrade beyond your current ability to equip an item. Also, upgrade hammers will be distributed more evenly: you get five hammers every time you level, and probably get fronted with a start-up stash. No more waiting to finish a quest to get an extra hammer or two. And you'll need every hammer you can get since you can only upgrade half your equipment each level at best. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Keeshi Date: Tue Feb 24, 2004 8:31 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I had a question.... What kind of stuff are you going to do for quests? And what about a storyline? Can't wait to try btw ^_^ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Wed Feb 25, 2004 7:20 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have already listed every major element of the mod. There will be no changes to storyline or quest structure. There will, however, be changes to monsters encountered in quests and the rewards. There will also be additional incentives to completeing all the quests. I won't know the extent of these changes untill I go to do them, but there will be some. Monster additions will pretty much be limited by what the wonderful folks at Infinitum churn out, since I spent many hours on COFs and Animdata entries for the converted dcc files previously available and 75% of the monsters I added had major problems and I have no idea why. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Wed Mar 10, 2004 8:20 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Huzah! FINALLY... all the upgrade recipies are done and appear to work. Now I just have to test every friggin' one to find any bugs and tweak power, and then it's on to new features! EDIT: I've also come up with a new idea for runewords. Any unique items I have planned that do not require special itemtypes, automagic or other built-in properties will instead be runewords. There will not be many of them, but they will be more powerful than the items you would otherwise be able to equip. Runewords recipies will be listed on an item that drops. That item will also be part of the recipie. So to make a runeword, you need a special item to drop and it will tell you the recipie. If you already know a recipie, you still need the item to drop. That will prevent the abuse of the overpowered runeword. What do you think? BTW, the idea was inspired by Zy-El, which uses the same system for delivery of cube recipies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Alkalund Date: Sun Mar 14, 2004 3:19 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kraj wrote (View Post): Runewords recipies will be listed on an item that drops. That item will also be part of the recipie. So to make a runeword, you need a special item to drop and it will tell you the recipie. If you already know a recipie, you still need the item to drop. That will prevent the abuse of the overpowered runeword. I do think this is very nice, it indeed does prevent runeword abusing and is good for players, who won't have to play with a printed runeword list in hand -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Sun Mar 21, 2004 8:55 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks for the feedback. I may start on those next just to break up the monotany of cube recipies. Speaking of which, I've gotten the first of the crafting systems done - socketcraft. You will now be able to add any number of sockets to any item whenever you want...if you've used your socketing ability enough, that is. Hopefully the other systems will work out as well. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: WarWolf Date: Sat Apr 10, 2004 3:09 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I hope you are still working on your mod, I liked the first one and this looks very interesting... just continue your work -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Thu Apr 22, 2004 1:27 pm Post subject: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't worry, the project is still alive. But I needed to take a break, so I've been having some fun on Battle.net for awhile. I'll pick it back up soon -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Thu May 20, 2004 5:56 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's been far too long since I've been to phrozen keep. I'm glad to know that you're still working on the mod and that you can still manage to pump fresh ideas into it. If you have time to, and don't shoot the screen over frustrastion just to do it, could you throw in class specific items can be made? You could still buy an assassin's claws from Charsi, but other things like armor, or in the sorc and necro's case a ring/amulet, would have to be made. Of course there would have to be a reason to make a class specific item. The reason would be that all of the class specific weapons would be very fast attack and the armor would give them skills in that class. A sorc amulet, for example, might giver her +2 to firebolt, as well as mana/energy, or a barb's bone plate, again just as an example, might give him vitality/strength as well as iron skin or something. I'm pretty sure you get my point. Like I said, this would be something to throw in if you have the time/patience to do it. Don't shoot the computer over frustration or quit modding out of boredom just to do it. We need you to make mods! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Fri May 21, 2004 10:28 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks for the encouragement, although I've hit a point where I just have no desire to work on the damn thing. I've just posted a call out to anyone interesting a helping with the project. (care to?) So we'll see. I may end p taking a long hiatus until my interest is worked up again. As the items are so far, the only class-specific item is the assassin claw, since as far as I am aware, it has to be for her to dual wield it. If I can change that, I will. However, each class has an "enchanter" item associated with it, so you can create items that skill class-specific skill bonues. It wouldn't be too much trouble to add/alter recipies so certain classes get bonuses to certain items no matter what, or certain items get bonues no matter what. I've also got some class-specific sets in the works, but so far those are intended to foster unconventional builds. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Fri May 21, 2004 2:11 pm Post subject: Thanks but... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I really don't know very much about modding. I know only the basics, and even then the knowledge is kinda thin. About the only things I know how to do are modding monsters a bit (like HP, group size, easy stuff), moddin weapons a bit (again, only the easier stuff), and inserting monsters into levels. If you need anything like that done then sure, but if it gets any more complex I'm afraid I'd have to decline. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: L337onimusha Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 10:21 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello! I just DL'd the mod a while ago, and it's great! Finally, a change to 5 (?) years of menotomy! I remeber the you (Kraj) said somewhere along the line that when 1.10 came out, you were going to include some gameplay changes. How's that coming? I know nothing about modding, nor do I have the time to explain it, so I'll just give an example. The mod with the best gameplay changes that I've seen is Hell on Earth 2. Unfortunately they stopped working on it, but c'est la vie... Anywhoo, the changes to the difficulty were the greatest I've ever seen. Also, their modifications to the skill tree are the most extensive I've seen, and they just plain make the skill tree make more sense. Plus, you no longer have to worry about wasting SP on a lame skill to get the good ones. As to the main focus of the mod, being the item crafting, I really see no need to change anything. It's perfect as it is! I'm sure that any change you make will be well justified, and I place my trust in you. I always thought that it would be cool to spend some time with your equipment. In all the tales you here, the heroes always have their own items that are unique to them. The only suggestion that I have for this, though it's probably impossible to implement, would be to have the ability to name your equipment. That's just my idea though. I thought that it's fit with the idea behind it. Thanks for the greatest mod ever! I can finally play D2 without being bored! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: L337onimusha Date: Fri Jun 18, 2004 6:36 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hmmm... Don't tell me that the mod is dead. That'd suck. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: L337onimusha Date: Thu Jun 24, 2004 6:04 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Thu Jun 24, 2004 10:14 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This mod is not dead, but is currently on hiatus. I'm confused as to teh nature of your posts; you seem to be inquiring about whether there wil be a 1.10 version of the mod, which this is the thread for. Look at the top and you will see a great deal of information on the mod features. I'm glad you like how I've handled equipment, but the new version will be completely different. The concept is the same, but items will be immensely more customizable and far less restrictive. Depending on what you like, that may eb a drawback, but I decided that if someone wants to make a pike Barb, they shouldn't have to setle for lightning as their elemental damage. The new system will allow any combination of items with mods, as well as a more linear upgrade progression since you can upgrade your equipment every level. As far as naming items, I'm assuming you mean giving your item a name such as appears on a unique. First off let me say that is a kick-ass idea and worth posting in Mod Concepts & Research. However, what I visualize is, say, a quest reward that prompts you for an item, then prompts you for a string and adds the string to your item. In thoery this should be possible since the pieces are there in the game code. But that is waaaay beyond my abilities. I have thought of a non-coding possibility, though, but I'm pretty sure it won't work. I'll test it at some point and let you know. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Super Cat Of Doom Date: Sat Sep 04, 2004 5:54 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ugg i wish i had an ounce of knowledge about anything to do with modding, so i could help you with this. This looks like the coolest mod in quite a while *The Meow Mix Avenger salutes you, brave modder* -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Myhrginoc Date: Tue Sep 07, 2004 6:05 pm Post subject: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You may not have noticed Kraj's last post was three months ago. He announced the mod is on hiatus. I am closing this thread in keeping with our policy that non-hosted mods with three months inactivity will be locked down until such time as the modmaker resurrects an inactive project. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Myhrginoc Date: Wed Oct 27, 2004 5:48 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * bump * In celebration of the release of Master of Arms v2.01 alpha, this thread is now re-opened. Happy modding! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Thu Oct 28, 2004 5:30 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's good to be back! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Molmoch Date: Thu Oct 28, 2004 5:41 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Thu Oct 28, 2004 5:48 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Molmoch Date: Thu Oct 28, 2004 8:02 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Myhrginoc Date: Thu Oct 28, 2004 3:13 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: 6FDD3630 52000000 02000000 51000000 54000000 R......Q...T... 6FDD3640 53000000 4E000000 3D000000 67000000 S...N...=...g... 6FDD3650 6C000000 77000000 44020000 82000000 l...w...D..‚... 6FDD3660 9F000000 A3000000 A9000000 A0000000 Y...?...©... ... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Thu Oct 28, 2004 6:29 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: RaeVan Morlock Date: Fri Oct 29, 2004 8:57 am Post subject: Suggestions and Bug Report -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Myhrginoc Date: Fri Oct 29, 2004 1:20 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kraj wrote (View Post): 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: 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: 00021990 00 03 F8 85 FF 8B F7 74 11 83 FF 9C 0F 8E A1 02 .o…y‹?t?y?Z? 000219A0 00 00 C7 44 24 14 01 00 00 00 8B 44 24 10 8B 0B ..CD$...‹D$‹ 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: 6FC51993 85FF TEST EDI,EDI 6FC51995 8BF7 MOV ESI,EDI 6FC51997 E9 A7020000 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Sun Oct 31, 2004 5:25 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: RaeVan Morlock Date: Mon Nov 01, 2004 6:58 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kraj wrote (View Post): 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. Kraj wrote (View Post): 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. ---------- 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. ---------- 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. ---------- 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. ---------- UPDATE: ---------- 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. ---------- 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 ^_^ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Mon Nov 01, 2004 9:50 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Malifrax Date: Mon Nov 01, 2004 2:51 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: RaeVan Morlock Date: Mon Nov 01, 2004 7:05 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm now hosting the updates on my server. You can get the patch for 2.01b from here. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Wed Nov 03, 2004 6:37 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Molmoch Date: Thu Nov 04, 2004 7:46 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Thu Nov 04, 2004 6:15 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Molmoch wrote (View Post): 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: RaeVan Morlock Date: Mon Nov 08, 2004 5:11 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oi! Sorry it's taken so long to respond--my email client was labeling the reply notifications as junk! Kraj wrote (View Post): 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. Kraj wrote (View Post): 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 ^_^ Kraj wrote (View Post): 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? Kraj wrote (View Post): 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! Kraj wrote (View Post): 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. Kraj wrote (View Post): 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Thu Nov 11, 2004 12:20 pm Post subject: Charms... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: RaeVan Morlock Date: Thu Nov 11, 2004 2:19 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Meh.. hammers are already severely limited. If anything else is to be upgradeable, it should use some other item to do so. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Fri Nov 12, 2004 9:43 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Thu Nov 18, 2004 12:13 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm back with some more tidbits. First off, to wrap up this topic: RaeVan Morlock wrote (View Post): 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: RaeVan Morlock Date: Thu Nov 18, 2004 12:44 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Fri Nov 19, 2004 5:58 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: blinky Date: Fri Nov 19, 2004 7:49 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- i think KoT did combine multi arrow and strafe with elemental , he has fire strafe and multi ice arrow, ? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Fri Nov 19, 2004 6:53 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good thing I've only ever played Sir_General's Rune Mod and Ancestral Recall or I might be accused of ripping off other people's ideas :) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Tue Nov 23, 2004 10:18 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Paladin skills, they were, let's face it, cheap and noobish. To be godly, you needed only holy fire and meditation. Holy Fire added a hellovalotta fire damage and low levels and meditation gave mana regen as well as hp regen depending on the level of prayer. Please say you'll change the godly paladin into a more humble creature. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Tue Nov 23, 2004 10:21 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- nazo wrote (View Post): Holy Fire added a hellovalotta fire damage and low levels and meditation gave mana regen as well as hp regen depending on the level of prayer. I meant to say AT low levels... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Tue Nov 23, 2004 11:54 am Post subject: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's what the Edit button is for. I doubt the accuracy of your assessment of the "godly" Holy Fire/Meditation combo since such a build is virtually non-existant on the relms. Additionally, this comment has nothing to do with the specifics of my mod and is neither helpful nor constructive. Please refrain from making such generalized comments in my MoA thread. Thanks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Thu Nov 25, 2004 11:49 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I didn't see an edit button, though I'll keep it in mind for the future. As for the stupid post, it wasn't stupid. You didn't give the usual in depth description of your plans, but a vague description. I was asking if you were allowing skills such as meditation and holy fire into the mix, for both are too powerful. Meditation gives hp and mp regen, and holy fire, as well as holy shock and vengence, give huge amounts of damage. So before you criticize my posting, think for a moment. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Myhrginoc Date: Thu Nov 25, 2004 8:10 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay, take five deep breaths and don't work yourselves up. I think nazo was intending his comment to be specific to this mod, but his mentioning realms probably made it seem a general comment. However, kraj's comment echoes my experiences on realms, I never saw a holy fire or holy shock paladin combined with meditation. Is that a relatively new variant? It has been quite a while since I was on realms, certainly not since 1.10 came out. In the old days, holy fire and holy shock were used by unique monsters (aura enchanted, these were two of the four or so options), but for monsters it was much more effective than for players. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Mon Nov 29, 2004 10:54 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I didn't exactly mean using them both at the same time. One or the other really. I know that you can't have an aura on the left, or at least not that I know of. I was meaning more so Vengance/Meditation or Vengance/Holy Fire/Shock. I probably should have specified that. Oh well. My bad. In either case, what are your plans, Kraj, to give some of the more powerful Paladin skills a drawback? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Mon Nov 29, 2004 6:16 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once again, in regards to the specific skills of Meditation and Holy Fire/Shock I completely disagree with your assessment of their power level, so do not expect any changes I make to reflect that. However, the ultimate goal of my skill tree design is to balance skills as much as possible. My attempt is to make every skill potentially usefull throughout the game. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Fri Dec 17, 2004 12:45 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- close to 3 weeks without a single post? The modding isn't on hold, is it? My second guess is that you've just been soooo very busy with the mod and the holidays that you haven't had any time to post your progress... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: DarkSlash Date: Mon Dec 20, 2004 3:40 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey I just thought I'd give you a head's up on something that can be abused in your mod. Now, this is something often forgotten by players and modders alike, but often in Act 1 a very good source of early cash is by selling damage potions(poison and flammable). Unfortunately, when you make a mod where a couple of gold pieces is valuable, you don't want to have players who know this selling potions at up to 500 a pop . So you might want to fix that. Cool mod, keep it up! Cheers, DarkSlash P.S. I'm desperately tryin to finsh some hw and whatnot so if the message seems funny it's cause my mind is in shambles. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Tue Dec 21, 2004 9:15 am Post subject: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DarkSlash, thanks for the input. I'll be sure to pay special attention to those when final balancing is going on, although I'd expect to have all new potions since selling them in Act1 Normal is all they're good for. Nazo, four words: skills are a b!tch. Slowly but surely it's coming along, but I'm still a beginner on skills. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:04 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kraj, four words: I feel your pain. Something simple like giving the sorc arctic blast can turn into an hour of headaches. Of course I was jumping right in without any previous knowledge. I guess it would have helped if there were any useful faqs on skills around here. I don't blame anyone for not writing one, though. Skills have got to be the worst part of modding. Just make sure to take a couple advil before diving into the skills. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: L337onimusha Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 12:56 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello. I found another thing that could be abused. If you buy a ring or an amulet from Charsi and enchant with any old enchantment stone it in the anvil, you can sell it back for 800-1200g. Just wanted to give you a heads up. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 6:27 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- nazo wrote (View Post): I guess it would have helped if there were any useful faqs on skills around here. I don't blame anyone for not writing one, though. Don't tell that to Joel. He is in the process of writing a comprehensive skill guide. The first section is posted in the skill clinic and I've learned a ton from it. Unfortunately subsequent entries are slow in coming -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: kingpin Date: Wed Dec 22, 2004 11:15 pm Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: Don't tell that to Joel. icon_biggrin.gif He is in the process of writing a comprehensive skill guide. The first section is posted in the skill clinic and I've learned a ton from it. Unfortunately subsequent entries are slow in coming Don't count on that guide, if he was really working on it. He would be done with it at this point. Instead I guess he has either abannoned it, or temporarly stopped working on it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Thu Dec 23, 2004 5:47 am Post subject: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Must you shatter my hopes? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:41 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This thread must be taking another long pause... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 4:44 am Post subject: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The work is slow and unsuccessful. I may need a new approach to skills. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: nazo Date: Mon Jan 31, 2005 10:56 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Skills can be tough. Describe what you're after and I MIGHT be able to help. If it's too complex then I can't. You'd probably be best off posting in the "help wanted section" and try to get someone who know's what they're doing to do the work for you. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: Kraj Date: Thu Feb 03, 2005 11:46 am Post subject: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For those who might have missed it in Member Announcements, I'm officially calling it quits. No break or hiatus on the project - I'm moving on from D2. I'm sorry to everyone looking forward to this project, but my enthusiasm to implementing it was far outpaced by my design ideas. If anyone is interested in taking over the project I will be more than happy to turn over my files, notes, ideas, designs, etc. I would also be happy to offer support in the way of design feedback as well as any knowledge I have. That way, anyone who feels they are too "noob" to try their hand at a mod will have something to build off as well as a personal assistant I just have zero desire to play this game anymore, in any form. So if anyone wants to take me up on the offer, feel free to email me at gkrajenta@yahoo.com or I'll be checking in on the Keep from time to time. Peace all. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: onyx Date: Fri Feb 04, 2005 4:45 am Post subject: Re: Vanguard: Master of Arms 2 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thread locked. If some day you feel like continuing the project, contact me or another administrator to unlock the topic. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All times are GMT - 12 Hours Powered by phpBB 2.0.6 © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group