Doubts on what's possible to do or not and how.

[Psych6demon]

I have been lurking for awhile and decided to finally make my own mod and would like some insight if these ideas are possible.

Can i create a new Weapon Type? Like new Off-hand stuff and etc... (Without a sprite, just appears on inventory but it would be like the character has nothing on Off-hand, or if i can, attach some graphic to it like a aura when equipped and etc...)
Yes, this is a fairly easy accomplishment.
I even considered the crazy idea of drawing the sprites, because some of these would have like just 2 sprites and would be class specific. (If this is possible let me know).

My idea for the mod it's to create new classes for the existing characters, erase the old ones but create more options like: (Sorceress can be - Battlemage, Cryomancer, Thundergodess and etc...) This would consist in changing the character creation menu to give more options of classes for the given character. This is actually my biggest concern because it's the biggest change i want for the game. (It's not like having more tabs on the character skill tree, it's like a new character with the same graphic).

I want to remove the campaign from the game. The idea is to have just a city and from there u go into random generated dungeons and stuff thru portals or WP (the easier one probably), there will be no need to go thru acts and etc... Is this possible?
I will remove NPCs and stuff and just have the ones necessary for the game to work (Vendors, identify items and etc...)

I want to create also some secondary effect for the other damage types like, fire causes burning, stacking instances of poison, cold already has it's effect and etc...

Is it possible to create new rooms, maps, mixing different tile sets to creating new dungeons?

Can i mess up with monsters colours or size to create more variety?

Can i remove some item stats from the game (Ex: % Damage to Undead).

Can i create a new "race" and give it to monsters (Classify every monster with Undead or Demon or create a new tag for them) so "% Damage to "Race"" would be more interesting?

Can i create new item stats?

Can i change the colour of skills graphics? (Like a fireball but blue and etc...)

Thanks for your time and consideration.

[tomasemma]

"Can i create a new "race" and give it to monsters (Classify every monster with Undead or Demon or create a new tag for them) so "% Damage to "Race"" would be more interesting?"

there's the damage_vs_montype & attack_vs_montype modifier. haven't tried it. there are lots of monstertypes, for every main sort of monster. check montypes.txt.

there's also insect monster type, although there's not many insect monsters. you could make a level with just insects though? there's hellswarm, scarab, mosquito & arach.

as you see from the txt, there's undead, lowundead (can be affected by highundead), highundead (can cast spells / heal / resurrect lowundead), there's also zakarum and them priests who cast spells on them, and council members who use spells on friends. and overlords and their frenzied minions.

there's also the skeleton montype, which are immune to leech. i'm currently in my mod which my kicksin in act II hell, i've beefed her up to all hell with 4 new masteries, and she's getting roasted and toasted in the serpent temple. skeletons have huge physical resistances, and the no leech is just too much. takes like 200 kicks to kill one, and then there's their friends who resurrect them.

there's even a "golem" subtype, how about fighting golems? like an überboss... making an iron golem out of an item and fighting it? would be neat.

and there's "construct" montype. is this for fire towers and the like, or for assassin traps? i fought a fire tower for like 10 mins, it was almost more of a struggle than duriel even...

"I want to create also some secondary effect for the other damage types like, fire causes burning, stacking instances of poison, cold already has it's effect and etc..."

i tried to give knockback to a bunch of spells; didn't work. i wanted it specifically for lightning spells. not sure how.

anyway, you could give bleeding (it does a lot of damage! even on /players8!) to fire skills, stun to lightning, howling / curses to poison, piercing (going through monsters) for cold skills. you need to edit all skills manually for that though. stone curse would be cool, earth spells!

"My idea for the mod it's to create new classes for the existing characters, erase the old ones but create more options like: (Sorceress can be - Battlemage, Cryomancer, Thundergodess and etc...) This would consist in changing the character creation menu to give more options of classes for the given character. This is actually my biggest concern because it's the biggest change i want for the game. (It's not like having more tabs on the character skill tree, it's like a new character with the same graphic)."

if it was possible, median xl would've done it. for the sorceress it says ingame in median xl that "you're only allowed to put points in 2 different skill sets", but there's no limit for it. you could make skill gems, and only have it possible to use skills with them (and lots of +all skill item drops) , and only have a couple of sockets in each item. then do something like colouring the character depending on what skillset they are: red for fire sorceress, transparent for cold, white for lightning, and so on...

or you could do it like, characters start with a +50 skill tome, and only possible to put points in 1 of each different skill tab / element. then when you've got all 50 points in it, it grants possibility to put points in the subsidiary skills?

you could do it even so there's only 1 character type. and you get all skills from drops. would be a million combinations that way.

you could make "training quests", so you start just as a weak sorceress, then there's skill tomes which grant you ability to specify your element? as you might know, some elite/lod sets give a unique graphic when it's fully equipped - you could do this for the different char subclasses? you could go up against a fire elemental, or cold elemental - and then they grant you that tome?

good luck. =)

[HarvestWombs]

Can i create a new Weapon Type? Like new Off-hand stuff and etc... (Without a sprite, just appears on inventory but it would be like the character has nothing on Off-hand, or if i can, attach some graphic to it like a aura when equipped and etc...)

Yes, this is a fairly easy accomplishment.

I even considered the crazy idea of drawing the sprites, because some of these would have like just 2 sprites and would be class specific. (If this is possible let me know).

This one is tedious, and by tedious I mean an extreme amount of work, as you'll need to create graphics for each char multiplied by the amount of animations multiplied by frame count, you can image this will quickly rise into the thousands of frames.

My idea for the mod it's to create new classes for the existing characters, erase the old ones but create more options like: (Sorceress can be - Battlemage, Cryomancer, Thundergodess and etc...) This would consist in changing the character creation menu to give more options of classes for the given character. This is actually my biggest concern because it's the biggest change i want for the game. (It's not like having more tabs on the character skill tree, it's like a new character with the same graphic).

This would require some serious code editing skills, If you are not familiar the shortest answer is, no.

I want to remove the campaign from the game. The idea is to have just a city and from there u go into random generated dungeons and stuff thru portals or WP (the easier one probably), there will be no need to go thru acts and etc... Is this possible?
I will remove NPCs and stuff and just have the ones necessary for the game to work (Vendors, identify items and etc...)

Same as above.

I want to create also some secondary effect for the other damage types like, fire causes burning, stacking instances of poison, cold already has it's effect and etc...

More code editing.

Is it possible to create new rooms, maps, mixing different tile sets to creating new dungeons?

Mmmm, kind of. Preset maps you can do whatever with, generated maps is a slightly different story. Once you start map editing you'll find out your limitations quickly.

Can i mess up with monsters colours or size to create more variety?

Sure, you can clone each animation set and resize them, and create new palletes for color shifting.

Can i remove some item stats from the game (Ex: % Damage to Undead).

Absolutely.

Can i create a new "race" and give it to monsters (Classify every monster with Undead or Demon or create a new tag for them) so "% Damage to "Race"" would be more interesting?

This is already possible with a slight caveat (iirc) that the display portion of this is broken and would need a code edit to fix.

Can i create new item stats?

For the most part, yes.

Can i change the colour of skills graphics? (Like a fireball but blue and etc...)

Simple graphics editing.

[Nizari]

It seems HW was faster, however I'd like to make some clarification comments about the other post.

as you see from the txt, there's undead, lowundead (can be affected by highundead), highundead (can cast spells / heal / resurrect lowundead), there's also zakarum and them priests who cast spells on them, and council members who use spells on friends. and overlords and their frenzied minions.

It's not that highundead can cast spells or heal etc, it's the AI that allows/disallows that. Same for zakarum priests and their spells, overlords with their minions and such. All of that is a matter of AI and has nothing to do with undead/highundead (which are both displayed as 'undead') and demon txt fields.

there's also the skeleton montype, which are immune to leech. i'm currently in my mod which my kicksin in act II hell, i've beefed her up to all hell with 4 new masteries, and she's getting roasted and toasted in the serpent temple. skeletons have huge physical resistances, and the no leech is just too much. takes like 200 kicks to kill one, and then there's their friends who resurrect them.

It's not the monster type (montype) that makes a monster immune or resistant to leech, it's the drain, drain(N) and drain(H) field in monstats.txt and can be applied to any non player unit in the game.

there's even a "golem" subtype, how about fighting golems? like an überboss... making an iron golem out of an item and fighting it? would be neat.
[...] and there's "construct" montype. is this for fire towers and the like, or for assassin traps? i fought a fire tower for like 10 mins, it was almost more of a struggle than duriel even...

Once again, monster type doesn't decide how tough the enemy is. It's all about the setup in monstats.txt and potentially in monlvl.txt.

i tried to give knockback to a bunch of spells; didn't work. i wanted it specifically for lightning spells. not sure how.

Check the missile that lightning spells uses and find it in missiles.txt, then go to knockback field. Works in percentages (value = chance for knockback).

I want to create also some secondary effect for the other damage types like, fire causes burning, stacking instances of poison, cold already has it's effect and etc...

anyway, you could give bleeding (it does a lot of damage! even on /players8!) to fire skills, stun to lightning, howling / curses to poison, piercing (going through monsters) for cold skills. you need to edit all skills manually for that though. stone curse would be cool, earth spells!

More code editing.

Some of these are possible without code editing. For example stun to lightning can be added easily by 'stun' dmg attached to its missile. Piercing aka going through enemies for cold projectiles can be done too via changing collidekill field of missiles.txt to 0.

[Psych6demon]

Nice, thanks a lot!

Hmm is there a way to work thru the "campaign removal" without hardcoding? Like, blocking the exit of rogue encampment and all the dungeons and stuff will be accessible from cube recipe portals or items? If possible to remove the quests or to change them i would implement them in specific portals/dungeons too. (But if it leads me into much trouble i would stick to the normal campaign and just work for endgame content.)

So it would be easier to revamp the character skills by creating a "class" for each tab and having players being able to chose just 1?

Also can i create a item that grant skills and limit the player to have just one or two of this type? This way i would give the player some general skills thru these items (Maybe charms?), but not being able to have all of them at the same time.

Also i want each class (tab) to use a specific weapon type and to do so, i can add a modifier to their skills so it can only be used with a certain type of weapon?

Is it possible to add more tabs into the skill tree without hardcoding or maybe just adding more skills into one tab (This way i would create like, 2 or 3 classes in one tab).

I wanted to revamp the way gems work by giving them random stats "like the jewels" but to be used in recipes like, a white weapon plus couple gems will add their stats to the item (If it's easier to do it with the jewels then i'll probably will).
This way i would give the player a way to use their gems or jewels plus runewords.

For now i think that's it, i'll start trying new changes and learn more but this was very helpfull so i don't waste time into things that leads me to hardcoding and etc...

Thanks a lot guys

[tomasemma]

Ok, master coders, I apologize for spreading misinformation! I'm just a n00b, take it easy!

"I wanted to revamp the way gems work by giving them random stats "like the jewels""

I tried this actually. If you randomize the stats, as in, give a different min/max values, it, well... you have to see it to believe it. Stats for gems and runes are generated in real time, unlike other items, set items for example which in some ways are set in stone as fast as they're generated. so anyway... you get a crazy animation of stats before your eyes 25 times per second. and you never know which bonus you get until you put the piece into some equipment.

" but to be used in recipes, a white weapon plus couple gems will add their stats to the item (If it's easier to do it with the jewels then i'll probably will).
This way i would give the player a way to use their gems or jewels plus runewords."

there's the crafting method with the cube. you'd have to make a lot of crafting recipes though... median xl has this. basically, you add like one stat per item, say... +5% damage. then you can add that infinite times to the same item.

"Is it possible to add more tabs into the skill tree without hardcoding or maybe just adding more skills into one tab (This way i would create like, 2 or 3 classes in one tab)."

no. but you can add 17-18? skills per tab. in skilldesc.txt there's the skillrow & skillcolumn for adding more. you can also add starting skills, and skills from items.

[Psych6demon]

Hmm interesting!

Mmmm, kind of. Preset maps you can do whatever with, generated maps is a slightly different story. Once you start map editing you'll find out your limitations quickly.

Preset maps are like, maps that are always the same and not randomly generated? Because if so, my intentions are to work with maps that are not randomly generated. I would implement the random maps in other ways and i wouldn't change their tiles sets or graphics.

I tried this actually. If you randomize the stats, as in, give a different min/max values, it, well... you have to see it to believe it. Stats for gems and runes are generated in real time, unlike other items, set items for example which in some ways are set in stone as fast as they're generated. so anyway... you get a crazy animation of stats before your eyes 25 times per second. and you never know which bonus you get until you put the piece into some equipment.

About this, would i be able to create a new item type just for that then? Would this be easier?

no. but you can add 17-18? skills per tab. in skilldesc.txt there's the skillrow & skillcolumn for adding more. you can also add starting skills, and skills from items.

Hmm i see, so i'll probably create these classes inside the tabs, if i'm able to create at least 2 classes per tab i would end up with 6 classes for each character wich is quite a lot.

One last question i forgot to ask is about a dodge manuveur or something like that, i know that i can make something like this using a run button like median, but is there a way to make a fast dodge thing like, u point toward somewhere and the character just slides to that point "Like charge from pally but without the graphics/animation".

Thanks a lot for the infos guys, also if you know any good tutorials around some of these ideas to share it would be awesome!
I'll take a look and change a bit the ideas for my mod and probably focus just on the endgame content, map creation, items, runewords, skills and etc...
The idea is to give as much possibilities to each character and the player as well.

[Nizari]

Ok, master coders, I apologize for spreading misinformation! I'm just a n00b, take it easy!

It's all good, you just wanted to help, I took it easy - decided to answer your post for educational purposes

Preset maps are like, maps that are always the same and not randomly generated?

Yes. You can have several versions of a preset map. IE the cementary, which is a preset, but has more than 1 version.

One last question i forgot to ask is about a dodge manuveur or something like that, i know that i can make something like this using a run button like median, but is there a way to make a fast dodge thing like, u point toward somewhere and the character just slides to that point "Like charge from pally but without the graphics/animation".

No, definitely not without code editing.

Thanks a lot for the infos guys, also if you know any good tutorials around some of these ideas to share it would be awesome!

I will give you 2 advices - read and learn txt file guides as first, because you definitely need to get some basics of modding. Second advice is to join our discord where you can live chat with most of Phrozen Keep's community

[Psych6demon]

Thanks a lot and i'll surely get into discord!
But all of this already clarify lots of things for me hahaha
I already know a bit of the basics, messed with d2 mod stuf before but never really got into it but i'm looking forward to really make something!

One more time, thanks a lot for all the help and info!