Adding a New Helm

Adding a New Helm

Description: by Fusman

Categories: Tutorials (1.00-1.06x)


I'm going to assume that
you have already read the basic tutorials before reading this tutorial and
you therefore already know how to extract txt files and insert
them into the patch file.

Armor.txt
Start off by opening up armor.txt, from the latest patch, with
excel. Since we are adding a helm the easiest thing to do is to
copy a line of an existing helm, for example the great helm. So
select all of line 6 and copy and paste it below in line 7. You do
this by clicking on the 6 on the far left on your screen, this
should select all of line 6, then you right click on the line and
select copy. Now select line 7, right click again and select
'insert copied cells'. 
Now you have your new line and you are ready to change some values
to make your new helm special. If I dont mention a column you most
likely do not have to change it from what is already given for the
great helm you just copied. 
Selecting a name is the first thing to do, for this example we
will choose the name 'Chaos Helm' and put that text in
column A, called 'name' column. Next up is column D
called 'rarity' this tells the game how rare the helm
is, for example if the helm is suppose to be valuable you
probably want it to be pretty rare. Putting 1 in there is for
normal helms, 2 is more rare than 1,  3 more rare than 2 and
so on. However this column doesnt seem to do a hell of a lot in
making an item any more rare than normal items so dont put a lot
of thought in it. For this example we'll throw in 2 for the rarity
column.
Now to decide just how much armor this helm will provide, in
columns H and I, called 'minac' and 'maxac'.
Lets say you want to make a helm that tops even the best crown
that has a maxac value of 45, so lets put in 47 for minac and 55
for maxac. This should make your helm a good one but it is not
totally of the charts. Next you choose the required strength for
your new helm in column L called 'reqstr'. Since it is
such a high ac helm you might want to have high requirements to
keep the balance of the game ;-). So lets put 70 in there since
the great helm requires 63 but gives lower ac. Column N called
'durability' decides how much durability your helm has,
of course. Keeping with the theme of it being a chaos helm lets
put a decent number in there like 60, that is 10 higher than the
Crown has. Column P called 'level' is next up and I find
it pretty safe to put in a number there that is just about what
level you will be when you find one. Lets say you already decided
that this helm will drop in act 4 so you might be around level
23-25 when you find one, so for this example we'll put 25 in the
level column. Column Q, called 'cost' decides how much the helm
is going to cost. Since our helm is pretty much top of the line
for normal difficulty it might suit to price it accordingly, take
a look at the price for crown and decide how much more you think
your helm is worth. For this example we'll just stick 10000 in
there.
Next column, R or 'code' column, is very important. The
code you put in there is the code you also put in the string file
later. You have to choose a 3 letter code that is not being used
in any other code column in other txt files, like weapons.txt,
misc.txt and armor.txt. Lets put in xxh for our new helm. Remember
this code because you have to put it in the string file later. Next up is column S, called 'alternategfx' the
codes that are already in there for helms are the only codes you
can use. This tells the game what character graphic to use when
you equip the helm. As you can see by looking at the file in excel
the codes that are available are:
cap = cap
skp = skull cap
hlm = helm
fhl = full helm
ghm = great helm
crn = crown
msk = mask
bhm = bone helm
lit = no animation, like the new xpack circlets.
These are your options, you'll have to choose one that looks like
the helm graphic you have chosen for your new helm. Since we chose
the helm from d1 that looks pretty much like the great helm we are
going to choose 'ghm' for our alternategfx.
Next up is column U, called 'ubercode', this column is
also important like the 'code' column. This tells the
game which item is the exceptional for this item. If you put in 0
the game will treat the item like an exceptional and give it a
level requirement of 25. But since our item is for normal
difficulty and we are going to add an exceptional version of it as
well then we have to find another 3 letter code to use for our
exceptional that is not being used elsewhere. Lets choose xx9 for
our example.
Columns AB and AC tell the game if and how many sockets our item
has. Column AB, called 'hasinv' turns sockets on(1) and
off(0). 1 if it has sockets, 0 if it is not available with
sockets. Column AC, called 'gemsockets' tells the game
how many sockets the item has if it has sockets turned on. For our
example we'll stick in 2 for number of sockets like the rest of
all the helms.
Column AD, called 'flippyfile', is next. It tells the
game what animation to use when the item is dropped, you know that
animation of an item flying and flipping when you or a monster drop it on the
ground. Like with the alternategfx column we are pretty much stuck
with using what is already in the game so pick something that
looks like the item you are adding. In this example it is flpghm
for the great helm flip animation.
Column AE, called 'invfile' tells the game what
inventory picture to use for you item. You can download a file at
the end of this tutorial. The game uses dc6 format files for the
inventory graphic files so you will have to use dc6maker to
convert bmp files to dc6 files, doing that is simple and I will
not go into that here. Simply download dc6maker from tools of the
trade and convert the file, it is a simple windows program. Once
you got your dc6 file ready you'll have to give it a name, for
example invxxh would be good cause it follows the pattern already
in the most of the txt files. So the file would be called invxxh.dc6 after you
convert it, and you put 'invxxh' in column AE
then. 
Now it is time to decide just who is going to be selling this new
helm of ours, well, since we already decided to make the helm drop
in act 4 then it would seem reasonable to make either one of the
npcs in act 4 carry the helm. Remember though that since you
copied the line for great helm you'll have to go through the line
and make Hratli not sell it by putting 0 in columns CL, CM, CN, CO
and 255 in column CP, do the same for all other npcs you dont want
selling this item. Yes I know you'll see Cain has settings in
there to sell stuff but those columns dont work. Columns DP to DT
are for Halbu in act 4, so lets add some numbers in there for him
to sell this item. The 'halbumin' and 'halbumax'
columns tell the game how many normal versions of the item halbu
will carry when you go see him, not always 100% precise but close
enough. Lets put 1 for both min and max, so he should always carry
1 of these helms. The 'HalbuMagicMin' and 'HalbuMagicMax'
columns tell the game how many magic versions of the item halbu
will carry. Lets put 1 for both min and max there too, so he
should always have 1 magic chaos helm. HalbuMagicLvl column is set
to 1.
Sometimes when you add your own graphics they get corrupt when the
game tries to change their color with magic codes, like the plus
max damage makes items black. If this happens to your item
graphics you need to put 0 in columns EG and EH, called Transform
and  InvTrans.
Now to make the exceptional version of the new helm. Copy the line
for the new Chaos Helm and insert copied cells above the grand
crown. There are only a few columns you need to change in this
copied line to make the exceptional. First column A, change the
name to 'Berserk Helm'. Next up is column E, called
spawnable, put 0 in there for exceptional items. Since it is the
exceptional it needs higher ac values in minac maxac columns, so
lets put something like 120 and 135 in those two. More strength is
required for exceptionals so lets put 130 in column L, the 'reqstr'
column. Up the level of the item to about 45 in column P also
increase the price to something like 40000.
Change column R to xx9 or the code you selected as ubercode back
when you were making the normal item. Change column U to 0 like
the rest of the exceptional items.
You dont want Halbu selling these helms in normal so put 0 in his
min max columns, DP-DS and put 255 in column DT.
Now save and close the armor.txt file.
Treasureclass.txt
Open up treasureclass.txt in excel. Find line number 81 called
'act4-hth' change the 23 to 24 in that line and also add
your item code xxh behind the last item in that line. This will
make some monsters in act 4 drop this new helm.
Save and close treasureclass.txt file.
The string file
Fire up tbled 1.02 and open up the string file from the latest
patch.
Hit the 'add key' button and type in xxh and press OK.
Have the new key 'xxh' selected in the list on the left
and put in the name for the helm, Chaos Helm, in the big window on
the right. Now press 'add key' button again and put in
xx9 and press OK. Have xx9 selected and put in the name of the
exceptional in the window on the right, Berserk Helm.
Now save the string file and exit tbled.
Next you have to add all the files back to patch_d2.mpq.
This is what the script file looks like that adds these 4 files
needed to the patch file:
O patch_d2.mpq
A string.tbl data\local\LNG\eng\string.tbl
A armor.txt data\global\excel\armor.txt
A treasureclass.txt data\global\excel\treasureclass.txt
A invxxh.dc6 data\global\items\invxxh.dc6
C patch_d2.mpq

Save this file as newhelm.txt and then create a bat file that
looks like this:

mpq2k s newhelm.txt
Save this file as newhelm.bat. Make sure all the files
mentioned are in the same directory (not your d2 directory,
however). Mpq2k, your armor txt file, your dc6 file and all the
others AND an unmodified copy of the latest patch_d2.mpq. Now you
simply double click on your bat file and the mod is ready. Just
copy your modified patch to your diablo directory, make sure you
have a backup of the original patch and your characters. Note that
when you add new items to d2 your old chars will not work with
that mod.
The files:
newhelm.bat
newhelm.txt
invxxh.bmp
invxxh.dc6
string.tbl
armor.txt
treasureclass.txt
that are used in this tutorial can be downloaded already modified HERE.
To download mpq2k and tbled check out the tools of the trade
section.

click on the image for a screenshot of the chaos helm

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[url=https://d2mods.info/forum/kb/viewarticle?a=429&sid=7857ee0e277a300330fef44ce9109c4c]Knowledge Base - Adding a New Helm[/url]