D2 re-programmed beyond any recognition ;)

[DemonicAngel]

I can't wait to play this once it comes out... not asking for a release date, just wondering about how much you have completed for where you want the mod to be when it's released? Or are you still just testing things and working in new ideas as they pop up?

[Nefarius]

Codewise it is 70-80% done, so I'd say in total (taking into account that the code changes compose about 1/3rd of what I intend to do [code/text/media [=gfx,sfx,tiles etc]]), it's ca. 25% complete (:twisted: 80*0.33 = ~25 ).

[icrlym-tfw]

nice

[Necrolis]

why do alot of those screenies look so familiar nice work, love the shrine and darkness(those palettes look freakishly good)

[DemonicAngel]

[quote=Nefarius";p="357582"]Codewise it is 70-80% done, so I'd say in total (taking into account that the code changes compose about 1/3rd of what I intend to do [code/text/media [=gfx,sfx,tiles etc]]), it's ca. 25% complete (:twisted: 80*0.33 = ~25 ).[/quote]

Only 25% complete?
Well, at least you're almost done with the code editing.

We're going to be waiting along forever for this mod...

[sPoT]

That's pretty obvious thing regarding new mods in development... To be honest I don't have D2 installed, thus it is much easier to wait for new releases without going mad.

[DemonicAngel]

[quote=sPoT";p="357883"]That's pretty obvious thing regarding new mods in development... To be honest I don't have D2 installed, thus it is much easier to wait for new releases without going mad.[/quote]

Yeah, but I'm still playing Median while I'm waiting for this new one to come out.

[Nefarius]

More shots of new AI code (skeleton mages worthy of that name) [please be aware that this has no relation to final content, this plethora of skills is only a demonstration]

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/4493/skmage1rs8.jpg
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/3139/skmage2ol0.jpg

[sPoT]

As nobody have decided to post their ideas, I'm just coming up with some stuff. Although I really don't know what are you able to do Nef, I will describe some of my "nice-to-haves".

Distinct counters for Magic/Rare/Set/Unique. Because of the same counter being applied to all those kinds of items, it is quite unbalanced. Because you have increased chances for finding some set items, doesn't mean, that you must have equally high chance to find unique items.

I don't know whether it is possible, but a very surprising thing to see, would be "increased chance of finding jewels/potions/keys/axes/helmets/whatever. I believe it would have something to do with treasure classes.

Another thing worthy of implementing are new damage types, but the sense of doing so is to have some damage types that always hurt our bodies. This could make players choose between different resistances and damage types. Some damage types could be applied to specific kinds of creatures. I'm not sure about additional damages' features. It sounds much like deep mechanics.

Permanent counter for: kills, deaths, found items etc. Not really necessary feature though...

More mercenaries to choose from. Add beast mercenaries, not just only humans.

Allow multiple-use imbue. For example: 5 imbues per difficulty.

Add some morphing enemies. I have never seen a feature like that.


Well, that's really not much what I have written here, but I would like to get some feedback before I write more. .

[DemonicAngel]

I figured he'd have his own ideas, ones that'd be better than mine anyway, so I didn't post any.

[sPoT]

[quote=Nefarius";p="357391"]Well lets hear what ideas peoples have, they are all welcome to post them here[/quote]

I try to obey the rules.

[dyze]

this is insane, remarkable work!

i was just wondering, adding more tiles to existing tilesets?

and wishing, resolution 1024?

[Nefarius]

Distinct counters for Magic/Rare/Set/Unique. Because of the same counter being applied to all those kinds of items, it is quite unbalanced. Because you have increased chances for finding some set items, doesn't mean, that you must have equally high chance to find unique items.

The whole way the entire quality evaluation works has been rewritten from scratch (all the TC related code for that matter), it bears no resemblence to D2 --- MF does what it's supposed to do, add a better chance to find random magical items (Magic, Rare), unique and set item chances are not effected by it.

I don't know whether it is possible, but a very surprising thing to see, would be "increased chance of finding jewels/potions/keys/axes/helmets/whatever. I believe it would have something to do with treasure classes.

This is fairly easy to do using my changed engine

Another thing worthy of implementing are new damage types, but the sense of doing so is to have some damage types that always hurt our bodies. This could make players choose between different resistances and damage types. Some damage types could be applied to specific kinds of creatures. I'm not sure about additional damages' features. It sounds much like deep mechanics.

I've already added several new damage types (vide screenshots)

Permanent counter for: kills, deaths, found items etc. Not really necessary feature though...

Fairly simple to do, I have infinite savegame space anyway (entirely new extra format)

More mercenaries to choose from. Add beast mercenaries, not just only humans.

This functionality is also already implemented , there will probably also be another type of mercenary that joins you depending on other aspects and stay with you until they die.

Allow multiple-use imbue. For example: 5 imbues per difficulty.

Don't think in D2 dimension --- there are going to be enough things like the D2 imbue and types of quest rewards nobody has yet dreamt off.

Add some morphing enemies. I have never seen a feature like that.

Vanilla D2, Minion -> Suicide Minions --- I have multishape bosses that change into the next shape each time they are defeated until you fight the final shape.


Thanks for the ideas

[sPoT]

As if it is ok to post my ideas here, I'm just coming with some more...

Please, solve the delay issue. Currently the timer is applied to all the skills using this feature, no matter what's the delay, i.e 100 frames, 5000 frames - all the skills always equalize with the highest delay skill. I'm right, aren't I? So my request would be to distinguish every delay from another, so that every skills uses nothing, but only its own delay. None the less I believe, that you have already solved that thing.

Think of some conjuncted-type modifiers, as [can be used only by X, Y, and Z, so that the given item could be used by caster characters (or whatever), and another item could be used only by HTH characters. It messes up the balance though... Consider it as a brainstorming affected idea .

How about skill points affected by skill usage? Let's say, that we use a lot of "healing" skill, that allows you to heal your and your allies' wounds. When you use the skill, your vitality/life could rise, because of the great interference in vital power. So, maybe a counter that adds +1 life every 1000/10000/other number uses of the skill. Or just to make things seem more real, +1 skill point to a given skill for every 1000/10000/whatever uses of that skill. I would be very thunderstruck to see it in D2 some day.

Monsters, that use a wide variety of properties, like 10% chance to cast XXX on struck (let's say, that monster may cast some unpredictable skills, even if the chance is low, it would be a nice variety), or colorful glow, homing missiles. Maybe monsters, that take the control over your mercs/summons? That would be nasty!

This is another bit of my thoughts. I'm brainstorming it in the real time, so that some may sound nice, and some foolish. Even though I believe I'm just a little helpful .

Greetings Nefarius, much luck on your project!

[Nefarius]

Please, solve the delay issue. Currently the timer is applied to all the skills using this feature, no matter what's the delay, i.e 100 frames, 5000 frames - all the skills always equalize with the highest delay skill. I'm right, aren't I? So my request would be to distinguish every delay from another, so that every skills uses nothing, but only its own delay. None the less I believe, that you have already solved that thing.

I don't have any skill delays , they were just a really lazy attempt to prevent sprite overflows from certain skills (noteably all-things-fire). I have far better means to prevent skills from being used that won't interfere with the games balance the way these lame timers do. Though in general this is quite easy to fix, by simply using a stat with a paremeter equal to the skill Id instead of a state to store the frame used for the last cast of the spell + the delay for each skill seperately.

Think of some conjuncted-type modifiers, as [can be used only by X, Y, and Z, so that the given item could be used by caster characters (or whatever), and another item could be used only by HTH characters. It messes up the balance though... Consider it as a brainstorming affected idea

The entire character setup doesn't resmble D2

How about skill points affected by skill usage? Let's say, that we use a lot of "healing" skill, that allows you to heal your and your allies' wounds. When you use the skill, your vitality/life could rise, because of the great interference in vital power. So, maybe a counter that adds +1 life every 1000/10000/other number uses of the skill. Or just to make things seem more real, +1 skill point to a given skill for every 1000/10000/whatever uses of that skill. I would be very thunderstruck to see it in D2 some day.

The way my spell system works (note I said spells not skills) is entirely different from D2. As for skills like the D2 skill tabs, there are going to be four tabs: Low Level Abilities, High Level Abilities, Masteries and Proficiencies. All tabs have their own independant skill points and what you can use and can't use depends on your profession (not class ), the rest of the arsenal is obtained by other means (and I won't say what means because that would be a spoiler). Just this much, the level and power of spells is dependant on the character using them and what he specializes in, also their effects vary with level, thats a Fire Ball first just doing a normal exploison and say at mid level starting to leave fire patches on the ground (etc).

Monsters, that use a wide variety of properties, like 10% chance to cast XXX on struck (let's say, that monster may cast some unpredictable skills, even if the chance is low, it would be a nice variety), or colorful glow, homing missiles. Maybe monsters, that take the control over your mercs/summons? That would be nasty!

Every single AI I added to this game has the ability to use all the 8 skills allocateable via monstats --- most higher monsters are also going to be fully equipped, so what they get at you with is quite random. The AI can do everything a player can do skill wise, you should not think within the D2-box but more alongside the games using the Infinity Engine and the AIs there (and my AI stands for Artificial Intelligence and not Artificial Idiocy )

[DemonicAngel]

I'm more intrigued with every answer Nefarius gives.

[evilsnack]

The way Nefarius is describing his own work, it sounds like the D2 team at Blizzard got caught up in simply upgrading D2 to the point that it was deliverable to the stores, but overlooked a lot of potential that could have been realized with a simple redirection of their efforts.

Admittedly, a great deal of the work in D2 revolved around the game art. There are lost of and lots of 3d models that had to be created and rendered for that game.

[Nefarius]

[quote=evilsnack";p="360628"]The way Nefarius is describing his own work, it sounds like the D2 team at Blizzard got caught up in simply upgrading D2 to the point that it was deliverable to the stores, but overlooked a lot of potential that could have been realized with a simple redirection of their efforts.[/quote]

Well I'd actually say it's not really Blizzards fault, they are not a standalone company, they are owned by Vivendi, around the time LoD was being development Vivendi was nearly bankrupt (if I got the timelines aligned properly in my head) and they were likely putting great preasure on all their child companies to release things. This much for why I think LoD ended up as such a huge mess (hey if you do a beta test just for testing the server stability and not for any other purposes, what do ya expect --- based on an official statement).

As for classic D2, we know how bad deadlines influence games (like 3/4ths of D1 content being cut out so it is released to match the deadline etc). For D2 we have the case that it was originally meant to ship on 4 CDs, they claim that they didn't have to remove anything to achieve this, yet I very much doubt this, there is evidence everywhere in the code that the majority of act 4 was removed (there are references to 3 more quests, some still with fractions of code present, remains of some NPCs in the code that were removed and more stuff like this). Not to mention the Assassin was intended to be a 6th class for Classic D2.

Now to v1.10 and all the bugs it introduced, this wasen't developed by a team, but pretty much was a one-man-job so bug hell is actually expected, people who beta tested v1.10 in the public beta are a bit more to blame for not noticing most of these pretty obvious bugs in time IMHO. Of course, what I'm doing now code-wise (other people are working on some of the softcoded stuff) is also a one-man-job and ends up without bugs, but oh well not everyone looks over every piece of code he writes in a debugger to verify every single instruction does what it should


[quote=evilsnack";p="360628"]Admittedly, a great deal of the work in D2 revolved around the game art. There are lost of and lots of 3d models that had to be created and rendered for that game.[/quote]

I'd agree if D2 was developed by a bunch of hobbyists, but we're talking about a commercial game here. The eye and ear candy is being created by completely independant teams, while granted they all have some programming experience (game artists need to know how their things are going to interact with in the code to make them fit the purpose). The stuff is developed alongside the code and not in individual steps (well NORMALLY it would be done this way, and in D2/LoD terms it was done like this too, evident from placeholder gfx in dev screenshots etc). Of course I will be the first to say that most modern games are nothing more then flashy graphics and sounds wrapped around game mechanics that have been around for well over a decade just to be re-marketed to the seething gamarz that want 1337 graphics, I don't think this applies to D2 when you look at other games from that period and their gfx.

[DemonicAngel]

Of course, what I'm doing now code-wise (other people are working on some of the softcoded stuff) is also a one-man-job and ends up without bugs, but oh well not everyone looks over every piece of code he writes in a debugger to verify every single instruction does what it should

You're not really working under time restrictions, either.



I'm glad to hear that your mod should have exactly 0 bugs when it's released. I'll be expecting that.

[Vendanna]

[quote=DemonicAngel";p="360697"]I'm glad to hear that your mod should have exactly 0 bugs when it's released. I'll be expecting that. [/quote]

Well, then if you see steel scarabs during playing the mod, polítely ignore them and their attacks

[kingpin]

Of course, what I'm doing now code-wise (other people are working on some of the softcoded stuff) is also a one-man-job and ends up without bugs, but oh well not everyone looks over every piece of code he writes in a debugger to verify every single instruction does what it should

You're not really working under time restrictions, either.



I'm glad to hear that your mod should have exactly 0 bugs when it's released. I'll be expecting that.

I'm sorry but I will make you dissapointed. It's impossible for a programmer to make his work completely bug free. You will find numerous of bugs once Nef's work is released. Regardless how bug free Nef think it are

[DemonicAngel]

Of course, what I'm doing now code-wise (other people are working on some of the softcoded stuff) is also a one-man-job and ends up without bugs, but oh well not everyone looks over every piece of code he writes in a debugger to verify every single instruction does what it should

You're not really working under time restrictions, either.



I'm glad to hear that your mod should have exactly 0 bugs when it's released. I'll be expecting that.

I'm sorry but I will make you dissapointed. It's impossible for a programmer to make his work completely bug free. You will find numerous of bugs once Nef's work is released. Regardless how bug free Nef think it are

My thoughts exactly. I was being sarcastic when I said I expected 0, it was more of a challenge to Nef to see how well he can do and a statement that I don't think anyone can make a mod perfect on it's first release.

[Nefarius]

Sure I had retarded mistakes in my code just like you'd find everywhere else (I'm almost only human after all), but I'm also obsessed with perfection - I'm not going to go the 'turd polish' route taken in the software industry in general (push flawed product to the public and treat the initial release as a extended beta as an excuse for lazy or over-hassled development) - thus most of the retarded mistakes are vanquished usually within 5-15 minutes after the initial code is written. There are always those things in development that you don't notice even after in-depth analysis because they are extremely cryptic (especially when reversing code you didn't write originally), most of the bugs I did find in my own work were miscommunication between my code and the underlaying blizzard engine (us D2 coders have to fabricate our own documentation, which is inheritely flawed because it's largely a inductive process and not a deductive one).

Though what I can guarantee is tthat if I can't fix something during development I'm not going to resort to workarounds and say I can 'always fix it later', I'll just not include it until I get it to work properly.

[DemonicAngel]

Sweet. So even if the number's not exactly 0, it'll be a very small number. Because either you fixed the bugs before release or didn't release the bugged parts.

Makes me happy to hear such things.

[tsactuo]

Great things Nef!

I have a question though:

Are you going to release a bug-fix only mod soon? Or you are going to release all things at once?

Also is there going to be any update on your crazy but excellent AntiBalance mod?