Keep Update 06/08/2007

[Myhrginoc]

The summer season is just about upon those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, and with summer comes a lot of time for your favorite activities! This week the modding crew have shown their readiness to provide nifty mods and tools on which to spend that time. Enjoy this grab-bag of off-beach reading!

Three Days Later...
GuyAskingQuestion hit us for a triple release of his latest project, The Third Day. He sent us an update patch v0.94e, but before we even had time to announce it he went straight to full releases of v0.95 Standard and v0.95 Extended. As this mod uses the advanced D2Direct3D plugin developed by Sir_General and SVR, Guy included a set of 8-bit greyscaled skill icons for people who prefer to use DirectDraw or Glide video modes. You can find out more about this project at the (freshly renamed) Mods by GuyAskingQuestion Forum.

The Sun Rises Early
...but you won't catch tsuru and reiyo_oki napping! They are in the select group of modmakers such as Brother_Laz and Kato who not only make a great mod but never stop refining it. Eastern Sun 3.00 build R4G is now available at our File Center and at tsuru's Eastern Sun website. Learn more at the ES Wiki including what changed with this latest build, then swap tales with your cohort at the ES Forum.

Plugins for D2 v1.11b Are Coming!
Those of us who keep a playable v1.10 of the game have long enjoyed the benefits of the D2Mod System by SVR to play the game as Blizzard never imagined it could be played. Our indefatigable master coder Nefarius has been burning the midnight oil to replicate that concept for the latest game version, especially important since SVR has hung up his modding spurs for the forseeable future. You can get a beta copy of the NefEx System along with these plugins: User Interface Extensions, Extended Levels and Extended Objects. Hats off to Nefarius for filling a vital need! We have recognized him with a new name for the D2Mod and PlugY Forum, which is now the PlugY|NefEx|D2Mod Forum. Be sure to stop by the NefEx Thread to post kudos or bug-sightings.

Plugins for D2 v1.10 Are Still Coming!
As if releasing multiple versions of his own mod aren't enough for a week, GuyAskingQuestion has taken a turn at producing his own D2Mod plugin. Enter the D2 Mod MonString Plugin v. 1.1 (we know how prolific Guy can be), which enables modmnakers to use the dmg-mon% property without getting the generic "an evil force" string from it.

Map Maker's Delight
DarthDevilous returns to the foray with his GUI Loader for Win_ds1Edit v2.0. If you have used Paul Siramy's amazing map editor, you know it is a powerful tool with an opaque start-up process. The GUI Loader eases that pain for the rest of us. You can get the full package with required supporting DLLs (QtCore4.dll, QtGui4.dll, mingwm10.dll) or the much smaller "lite" package without these DLLs (if you already have them). Find out more details here.

Screenshot of the Week
This week's screenie shows off skill icons in stunning 32-bit color. It comes from GuyAskingQuestion's The Third Day Mod featuring the Sir_General / SVR custom D2Direct3D.dll.

If this doesn't bake your noodles, you haven't any in the pot!