Alpha2 Release (Various)

[Al-T]

Hi Myhrginoc,

I just downloaded and started playing the Alpha2 release and have a few questions and a crash report which I will leave to the end.

Starting chars have no tps or id scrolls and none of the Act1 NPCs sell them. Is this correct?

At level 2 I got 7 stats and 10 skill points. At level 3 I had 14 stats and 30 skill points. Is this correct?

Stats requirements for gaining skills - are these base values or do total values (with items adding to stats) count? I was playing a Barb and noticed that "Sword Mastery" has an energy requirement of 25. Normally I wouldn't put any energy on a Barb as generally items add enough. Barbs don't generally need mana but will they need it in this mod aside from skill learning?

The fulminating potions were useful early on to kill demons and by the time I was level 2 and had run out I was able to punch them into submission (had only found magic weapons and no ID scrolls). At level 3 I did manage to find a low quality club but unfortunately as soon as I used it to kill a normal quill rat the following crash happened....

Unhandled Access Violation (c0000005)

[EDIT]:- I was going to include the error code here but it doesn't seem to be working when I "submit" the post. It works fine when I "preview" the post but as soon as I hit the submit button it messes it up. Do you want me to try a PM with the code inserted or send the error log to you via msn?

[Myhrginoc]

Rule #1 to self --- never assume familiarity with a mod on a conversion!

There are no scrolls. Knowledge Soda and Recall Soda take their places. (The ambiguously named Potions of the same types are the original books, I should probably rename them.) That is unchanged from the previous mod.

All characters, regardless of class, start with 10 in each major stat, no skills, no equipment except for two potion packs and two minor heals. You get 7 stat points each level. You get an increasing number of skill points, but as you discovered each skill has certain requirements. Yes, you need to invest in more than one major stat depending on which skill tree you concentrate in. And the requirements are base stats. So some skills won't be readily available for a while. (Several mods use different approaches for the same result, this was my idea.) Beyond that I might have ideas for off-stat requirements but that will come from monster and level development.

In alpha1 there was a serious weapons bug that made equipment very hard to find. In this version my test characters were able to find something useable before I ran out of potions, but it was a close call for the magic-users (they were terrible tossers for some reason). If I had mentioned the sodas in the readme, you would have found out that very low-level magic items might not go for much more when identified as they sell for as unknowns. Which leads me to...

Vendors are very stingy! They see lots of adventurers, especially in Act 1, and can only buy so many damaged short swords, cracked caps and low quality bucklers. Seriously, if I could put in a real market economy without a lot of work, I would. It was quite difficult to build wealth early in Diablo 1, but Diablo II became too generous. I swung the clock back here.

I am really curious about your crash! Not to mention dismayed at how early it appeared. After I cleaned up the weapons fiasco, I didn't run into any more crashes while testing, except when I was experimenting with levels or had done something really boneheaded at intermediate steps. I played quite a bit, including some sessions with the final patch file release as if I had just downloaded the mod. I would like the error log if you would PM it, just copy-paste the crash header and about thirty lines of stack dump (I don't need the whole file.) Please do check for a line near the session top that says "A valid load of TFW has been confirmed."...that way we can rule out likely installation problems.

[Al-T]

PM on it's way.

I am happy with no id scrolls etc and gold being important again. I just wanted to be sure I hadn't corrupted something. Another mod I play...yes you know the one....also makes gold useful again so I am very comfortable with this approach and if my barb needs mana then so be it (I don't have to like it but it's a part of the mod...I just have to take my blinkers off ).

The "feel" of the mod so far is pretty much identical to V1.02 so don't worry on that score. All in all I could really get into this mod.

Keep up the good work Myhrg.

Cheers,

Al.