Diablo 2: Resurrected remaster

[agris]

I think if you're sad D1 ended, playing through D2 1.0 with Pal with sword and shield gives you a bit of a relief.

How do you play classic 1.0 tho?

I have a physical copy but it installs with 1.07

This came up when I was thinking about it: https://awesomeopensource.com/project/fearedbliss/Cactus

I believe it is made by the same dev who made an earlier tool to manage patch versions, called either D2SE or Bliss. Google the name of the program (cactus) and you’ll see it’s legit. It’s an easy way to manage patch and mod versions in 2021.

 

[DDZ]

Shut up, nerd.

 

[agris]

I think if you're sad D1 ended, playing through D2 1.0 with Pal with sword and shield gives you a bit of a relief.

How do you play classic 1.0 tho?

I have a physical copy but it installs with 1.07

This came up when I was thinking about it: https://awesomeopensource.com/project/fearedbliss/Cactus

I believe it is made by the same dev who made an earlier tool to manage patch versions, called either D2SE or Bliss. Google the name of the program (cactus) and you’ll see it’s legit. It’s an easy way to manage patch and mod versions in 2021.

Shadenuat luj1 and any others interested in playing older versions of D2.

From the Cactus project I linked above, here is a great description of how the game played at various key patches, with "v1.05 being the closest D2 ever got to D1".

Cactus/README-SINGLING

from: https://github.com/fearedbliss/Cactus/blob/master/README-SINGLING.md

Patch 1.00 (Thursday, June 29, 2000)
This patch was selected due to it simply being the first version of Diablo II released. There are some things possible in this version that were quickly patched out, however, there are also many instabilities in the game that may result in crashes or even the character becoming corrupted.

Some things that can happen in 1.00 that were patched in subsequent Pre-1.07 patches:

• The Cow Level can be opened even if the King is killed.
• Whirlwind attack checks happen once per frame.
• Bonefarming
• Maggotfarming
• Corpse Explosion scales with the player count.
• Lord de Seis can steal your potions.

Patch 1.05b (Friday, February 2, 2001)
This patch was picked because it is the most stable and balanced version of the game before Lord of Destruction. It was also picked over 1.06 since the main reason 1.06 was released was to implement anti-duping code. Due to the way item generation works in these patches, you can legitimately find items that have the same fingerprint, and the anti-duping code would delete those items. Watch the following video for a demonstration of this.

If you are looking for a stable version of Diablo II that closely resembled the design, feeling, and balance of Diablo I, this is the patch for you. Patches 1.07-1.09 departed from a lot of the original Diablo II game design by refining and extending core elements of the game, but overall still had some resemblance to the original Diablo II. Two years later, Patch 1.10 was released and fundamentally changed the way the entire game was played. Original Diablo II before the Expansion is pretty much a completely different game. Even though Diablo II still retained a Classic mode after the Expansion was released, the Classic experience was fundamentally altered.

Some amazing and interesting things about Pre-1.07:

• Unique items have no level requirements.
• Unique item stats were very different than 1.07+.
• Uniques, Sets, and Rares can all be gambled for with a fixed chance of 3%, 5%, and 7% respectively.
• There are no immunities in the game.
• There are no spell cooldowns.
• Item drop rates are very low and everything means something.
• Slow game progression (No players #, but implemented in Singling).
• Item affix generation and possibilities are much better than 1.07+.
• Set items actually drop more frequently than Rares (Common -> Magic -> Set -> Rare -> Unique).
• More deterministic RNG.
  • If you have a Manald Heal and a Nagelring, then the next Unique ring will be a Stone of Jordan.
  • Failed Uniques have triple durability and drop as a Rare instead (i.e: If you already happened to have the Unique in the game).
• Mana potions cannot be purchased in stores and drop less frequently than 1.07+.
  • This makes Energy, Warmth, Mana Per Kill, and Mana Leech very valuable.
• Crushing Blow does not work on SuperUniques, Champions, and Bosses.
• Magic Find does not work on SuperUniques, Champions, and Bosses.
• No Partial Set Bonuses.
• Nothing from Lord of Destruction such as Runes, Charms, Jewels, Elite Items, and Improved Hirelings since the Expansion didn't exist yet.

For all Pre-1.07 versions, there seems to be a bug where monsters have 4x their intended attack rating. This pretty much makes defense rating practically useless in the majority of situations.

Patch 1.07 (Wednesday, June 27, 2001)
This patch was selected because it is the first version of Lord of Destruction that was released on the Expansion CDs and was the first massive change to Diablo II. Due to the game still being pretty buggy, 1.07 could only be played on Single Player, since people connecting to Battle.net were immediately updated to 1.08. Due to the state of the patch, it contains a lot of features, behaviors, and item generation combinations that were immediately patched out in patches 1.08-1.09. It also contains some bugs and differences that are fun to play with such as:

• Rejuvenation Potion Bug
• Mana Per Kill (MPK) rings
• The Original 1.07 Unique Items (Often called 1.08 Uniques).
• Static Field in the Expansion works the same as Classic.
• Shield blocking in Classic actually uses the Expansion formula. (1.07-1.08)
• Crazy +Damage Charms
• Dual Wielding Bug
• Crushing Blow works with full effectiveness on ranged weapons.
• Poison damage bug works even with melee weapons.
• Immunities were introduced but can be broken with full force.
• Triple immunities are possible.
• The sound for Gems was different than other versions.
• Magic Finding is effectively broken, and the primary way of getting items is by Rack Running.
• Runes are in the game but the available Runewords and their stats are vastly different than what was available in 1.08-1.09.

Patch 1.08 (Wednesday, June 27, 2001)
This patch was selected because it is a more stable version of 1.07 that still retains particular early expansion design decisions, such as still containing mostly the same unique items that 1.07 had, and better racking probabilities than 1.07. The patch seems to be closer to 1.07 rather than 1.09 but still sits in a healthy middle.

Patch 1.09b (Wednesday, September 5, 2001)
This patch was selected because it is the most stable version of Diablo II after Lord of Destruction was released that still includes some of the design elements and mechanics of the original Diablo II, and overall completed the refinements to the Expansion as originally released. This patch also introduced the players command and many other quality of life improvements and fixes. 1.09b was also picked over 1.09d because it contains players 64 and working CtC. 1.09d has broken CtC which means that you will see the animation of your CtC effect, but it actually won't do anything.

Patch 1.10 (Tuesday, October 28, 2003)
This patch was selected because it was the last patch released by Blizzard North after two years of observing the 1.09 community, and released around 3 months after the Blizzard North Exodus, where most of the key people left and formed Flagship Studios, Castaway Entertainment, and Hyboreal Games. Peter Hu was the Chief Architect for Patch 1.10 and from my conversations with David Brevik, Peter stayed behind to finish the patch. Afterwards, he left Blizzard North and joined Flagship Studios.

Patch 1.10 was the last and biggest update made directly by Blizzard North that brought Diablo II into the modern era. It massively redesigned and rebalanced the game, and for the most part is the Diablo II that we all know and love today. All further additions added to the game such as Respecs, Increased Rune Drop Rates, Faster Merc Leveling, and the removal of Iron Maiden from the Chaos Sanctuary, came after the Exodus. Other than that, the game hasn't changed much since. Some of the things introduced in this patch were:

• Rebalanced all character classes.
• Synergies
• Massively increased game difficulty.
• Guest Monsters
• Blocking Quests
• Experience penalty after level 70.
• Eliminated party experience sharing beyond two screens.
• Mana Potions added to Vendors.
• Lots of new Unique Items, Runewords, and Recipes.
• Improvements to the Treasure Class, Item, and Drop Systems.
• Uber Diablo (Online Only)
• A lot of bug fixes and a lot of other changes.

Patch 1.10 / Blizzard North / Flagship Studios Interviews and Presentations

• David Brevik discusses LOD and Patch 1.10
• David Brevik discusses Diablo was intended to be a Hardcore-only game from the beginning
• Flagship Studios Developer Interview - Formation of FSS after Blizzard North Exodus
• Mike Huang's Experience at Blizzard North

Patch 1.13d (Thursday, October 27, 2011)
This patch was selected because it is the last patch released by Blizzard that still retained the original program architecture. It contains all of the major changes and features ever released for the game after 1.10. This is also the last patch that supports DirectDraw, so if you are planning on using cnc-ddraw as your main video renderer, you should choose this version over 1.14d. Besides the internal compatibility fixes in 1.14d, they are both identical.

Since Diablo II: Resurrected is based on 1.14d, this will be the last version supported by Singling.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Heh.

And in reality, it's just an insert of a black guy who did all this art you liked so much, a Blizzard employe. I think he also drawn all the rogues with tits and legs (not sure), and he was added to the game as Paladin (or just made black Pal).
Same as developers added themselves in Fallout and whatever.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/a-bunch-of-art-from-the-diablo-2-character-artists/35871
he also made models of Cain, fallen and angry midgets.

Except, for the thousandth time, he is not a negro in any of the released character art, box art, manual art, or the game itself.

 

[ChaDargo]

I think if you're sad D1 ended, playing through D2 1.0 with Pal with sword and shield gives you a bit of a relief.

How do you play classic 1.0 tho?

I have a physical copy but it installs with 1.07

This came up when I was thinking about it: https://awesomeopensource.com/project/fearedbliss/Cactus

I believe it is made by the same dev who made an earlier tool to manage patch versions, called either D2SE or Bliss. Google the name of the program (cactus) and you’ll see it’s legit. It’s an easy way to manage patch and mod versions in 2021.

Shadenuat luj1 and any others interested in playing older versions of D2.

From the Cactus project I linked above, here is a great description of how the game played at various key patches, with "v1.05 being the closest D2 ever got to D1".

Cactus/README-SINGLING

from: https://github.com/fearedbliss/Cactus/blob/master/README-SINGLING.md

Patch 1.00 (Thursday, June 29, 2000)
This patch was selected due to it simply being the first version of Diablo II released. There are some things possible in this version that were quickly patched out, however, there are also many instabilities in the game that may result in crashes or even the character becoming corrupted.

Some things that can happen in 1.00 that were patched in subsequent Pre-1.07 patches:

• The Cow Level can be opened even if the King is killed.
• Whirlwind attack checks happen once per frame.
• Bonefarming
• Maggotfarming
• Corpse Explosion scales with the player count.
• Lord de Seis can steal your potions.

Patch 1.05b (Friday, February 2, 2001)
This patch was picked because it is the most stable and balanced version of the game before Lord of Destruction. It was also picked over 1.06 since the main reason 1.06 was released was to implement anti-duping code. Due to the way item generation works in these patches, you can legitimately find items that have the same fingerprint, and the anti-duping code would delete those items. Watch the following video for a demonstration of this.

If you are looking for a stable version of Diablo II that closely resembled the design, feeling, and balance of Diablo I, this is the patch for you. Patches 1.07-1.09 departed from a lot of the original Diablo II game design by refining and extending core elements of the game, but overall still had some resemblance to the original Diablo II. Two years later, Patch 1.10 was released and fundamentally changed the way the entire game was played. Original Diablo II before the Expansion is pretty much a completely different game. Even though Diablo II still retained a Classic mode after the Expansion was released, the Classic experience was fundamentally altered.

Some amazing and interesting things about Pre-1.07:

• Unique items have no level requirements.
• Unique item stats were very different than 1.07+.
• Uniques, Sets, and Rares can all be gambled for with a fixed chance of 3%, 5%, and 7% respectively.
• There are no immunities in the game.
• There are no spell cooldowns.
• Item drop rates are very low and everything means something.
• Slow game progression (No players #, but implemented in Singling).
• Item affix generation and possibilities are much better than 1.07+.
• Set items actually drop more frequently than Rares (Common -> Magic -> Set -> Rare -> Unique).
• More deterministic RNG.
  • If you have a Manald Heal and a Nagelring, then the next Unique ring will be a Stone of Jordan.
  • Failed Uniques have triple durability and drop as a Rare instead (i.e: If you already happened to have the Unique in the game).
• Mana potions cannot be purchased in stores and drop less frequently than 1.07+.
  • This makes Energy, Warmth, Mana Per Kill, and Mana Leech very valuable.
• Crushing Blow does not work on SuperUniques, Champions, and Bosses.
• Magic Find does not work on SuperUniques, Champions, and Bosses.
• No Partial Set Bonuses.
• Nothing from Lord of Destruction such as Runes, Charms, Jewels, Elite Items, and Improved Hirelings since the Expansion didn't exist yet.

For all Pre-1.07 versions, there seems to be a bug where monsters have 4x their intended attack rating. This pretty much makes defense rating practically useless in the majority of situations.

Patch 1.07 (Wednesday, June 27, 2001)
This patch was selected because it is the first version of Lord of Destruction that was released on the Expansion CDs and was the first massive change to Diablo II. Due to the game still being pretty buggy, 1.07 could only be played on Single Player, since people connecting to Battle.net were immediately updated to 1.08. Due to the state of the patch, it contains a lot of features, behaviors, and item generation combinations that were immediately patched out in patches 1.08-1.09. It also contains some bugs and differences that are fun to play with such as:

• Rejuvenation Potion Bug
• Mana Per Kill (MPK) rings
• The Original 1.07 Unique Items (Often called 1.08 Uniques).
• Static Field in the Expansion works the same as Classic.
• Shield blocking in Classic actually uses the Expansion formula. (1.07-1.08)
• Crazy +Damage Charms
• Dual Wielding Bug
• Crushing Blow works with full effectiveness on ranged weapons.
• Poison damage bug works even with melee weapons.
• Immunities were introduced but can be broken with full force.
• Triple immunities are possible.
• The sound for Gems was different than other versions.
• Magic Finding is effectively broken, and the primary way of getting items is by Rack Running.
• Runes are in the game but the available Runewords and their stats are vastly different than what was available in 1.08-1.09.

Patch 1.08 (Wednesday, June 27, 2001)
This patch was selected because it is a more stable version of 1.07 that still retains particular early expansion design decisions, such as still containing mostly the same unique items that 1.07 had, and better racking probabilities than 1.07. The patch seems to be closer to 1.07 rather than 1.09 but still sits in a healthy middle.

Patch 1.09b (Wednesday, September 5, 2001)
This patch was selected because it is the most stable version of Diablo II after Lord of Destruction was released that still includes some of the design elements and mechanics of the original Diablo II, and overall completed the refinements to the Expansion as originally released. This patch also introduced the players command and many other quality of life improvements and fixes. 1.09b was also picked over 1.09d because it contains players 64 and working CtC. 1.09d has broken CtC which means that you will see the animation of your CtC effect, but it actually won't do anything.

Patch 1.10 (Tuesday, October 28, 2003)
This patch was selected because it was the last patch released by Blizzard North after two years of observing the 1.09 community, and released around 3 months after the Blizzard North Exodus, where most of the key people left and formed Flagship Studios, Castaway Entertainment, and Hyboreal Games. Peter Hu was the Chief Architect for Patch 1.10 and from my conversations with David Brevik, Peter stayed behind to finish the patch. Afterwards, he left Blizzard North and joined Flagship Studios.

Patch 1.10 was the last and biggest update made directly by Blizzard North that brought Diablo II into the modern era. It massively redesigned and rebalanced the game, and for the most part is the Diablo II that we all know and love today. All further additions added to the game such as Respecs, Increased Rune Drop Rates, Faster Merc Leveling, and the removal of Iron Maiden from the Chaos Sanctuary, came after the Exodus. Other than that, the game hasn't changed much since. Some of the things introduced in this patch were:

• Rebalanced all character classes.
• Synergies
• Massively increased game difficulty.
• Guest Monsters
• Blocking Quests
• Experience penalty after level 70.
• Eliminated party experience sharing beyond two screens.
• Mana Potions added to Vendors.
• Lots of new Unique Items, Runewords, and Recipes.
• Improvements to the Treasure Class, Item, and Drop Systems.
• Uber Diablo (Online Only)
• A lot of bug fixes and a lot of other changes.

Patch 1.10 / Blizzard North / Flagship Studios Interviews and Presentations

• David Brevik discusses LOD and Patch 1.10
• David Brevik discusses Diablo was intended to be a Hardcore-only game from the beginning
• Flagship Studios Developer Interview - Formation of FSS after Blizzard North Exodus
• Mike Huang's Experience at Blizzard North

Patch 1.13d (Thursday, October 27, 2011)
This patch was selected because it is the last patch released by Blizzard that still retained the original program architecture. It contains all of the major changes and features ever released for the game after 1.10. This is also the last patch that supports DirectDraw, so if you are planning on using cnc-ddraw as your main video renderer, you should choose this version over 1.14d. Besides the internal compatibility fixes in 1.14d, they are both identical.

Since Diablo II: Resurrected is based on 1.14d, this will be the last version supported by Singling.

Do you have any personal experience with playing 1.05b vs 1.14d? A lot of the things it doesn't have seem to really make the game more interesting to me. LoD always seemed more about finding gear by making the fastest build for killing bosses (with the rest of the game being almost meaningless) so that you could eventually make it through the last difficulty and do the same shit to those bosses... at which point I lost interest.

Playing Diablo 2 as if it were at least somewhat of a methodical challenge would be fun (I played it only after LoD). Then again, I could just keep getting into Grim Dawn (just started recently) and keep Blizzard and all its decade+ of cuckery in my rear-view mirror.

 

[agris]

ChaDargo i only have my original, pre-LoD experience. I played a bit after lod but not enough to make it meaningful - only enough to cement my preference for D1 over D2.

That’s my primary interest in revisiting D2 v1.05 or 1.00, to see if it scratches that D1 itch more than I remember. I know modern 1.09+ does not, with level gated gear and Skinner box itemization maximizing dopamine hits. I much prefer low and slow.

D1 is the equivalent of listening to Black Sabbath’s self titled album, where modern D2 is to it much like late-stage Ozzy. Yeah it was more popular (I think) but it definitely wasn’t as good…

 

[ChaDargo]

ChaDargo i only have my original, pre-LoD experience. I played a bit after lod but not enough to make it meaningful - only enough to cement my preference for D1 over D2.

That’s my primary interest in revisiting D2 v1.05 or 1.00, to see if it scratches that D1 itch more than I remember. I know modern 1.09+ does not, with level gated gear and Skinner box itemization maximizing dopamine hits. I much prefer low and slow.

D1 is the equivalent of listening to Black Sabbath’s self titled album, where modern D2 is to it much like late-stage Ozzy. Yeah it was more popular (I think) but it definitely wasn’t as good…

I agree completely. Playing D1 as a kid was an amazing experience, first game I ever played online. D2 was pretty fun for being fast and flashy and new, but it was so heavily feeding off of my love for the art/setting of D1. Same reason I prefer Starcraft BW over SC2. At some point Blizzard slowly started turning into a company that churned out games to sell copies to anyone while pandering to their core (I guess all these fuckers learned to be "creative" this way in college?). So, I too would like to see if D2 could have that better pacing/immersion and not just be a boss-run fest.

Edit: In a few days I'll try whatever version I can get to run (I'll check out the Cactus Project) and report back!

 

[agris]

ChaDargo if you love D1, check out DevilutionX https://github.com/diasurgical/devilutionX

it’s more than just playable, it’s the best way to play vanilla D1 with or without hellfire. You can even give it custom widescreen resolutions and it lets you disentangle game resolution from window resolution, an option far too infrequently present for these old 2D isometric games.

What does that mean in practice? Well if you have a 1920x1080 screen, that’s a 16:9 aspect ratio widescreen right? Devolution let’s you render the game at 960x540 (a 16:9 resolution that is very close to the games original 640x480) with that view enlarged to occupy your full 1920x1080 screen. That’s perfect integer scaling / pixel perfect mapping onto your monitor.

the guys maintaining the repo are pretty serious software devs which means they will be refactoring forever, but that shit is done and bug free with some optional qol stuff like alt to highlight and walk over gold to pickup - all optional tho.

 

[Zeriel]

Synergies kind of made the game too easy for the classes that worked in 1.0. The big problem with earlier versions is that Necro summons were absolute trash and only work on Normal/Nightmare and even NM is pushing it.

ChaDargo i only have my original, pre-LoD experience. I played a bit after lod but not enough to make it meaningful - only enough to cement my preference for D1 over D2.

That’s my primary interest in revisiting D2 v1.05 or 1.00, to see if it scratches that D1 itch more than I remember. I know modern 1.09+ does not, with level gated gear and Skinner box itemization maximizing dopamine hits. I much prefer low and slow.

D1 is the equivalent of listening to Black Sabbath’s self titled album, where modern D2 is to it much like late-stage Ozzy. Yeah it was more popular (I think) but it definitely wasn’t as good…

I agree completely. Playing D1 as a kid was an amazing experience, first game I ever played online. D2 was pretty fun for being fast and flashy and new, but it was so heavily feeding off of my love for the art/setting of D1. Same reason I prefer Starcraft BW over SC2. At some point Blizzard slowly started turning into a company that churned out games to sell copies to anyone while pandering to their core (I guess all these fuckers learned to be "creative" this way in college?). So, I too would like to see if D2 could have that better pacing/immersion and not just be a boss-run fest.

Edit: In a few days I'll try whatever version I can get to run (I'll check out the Cactus Project) and report back!

Honestly I still think D2 is the better game. D1 is just better aesthetically and in terms of execution of its "tightness", ambience, everything being perfectly matched to each other. D2 is a sprawling sequel with downsides and upsides, but it's way more replayable than D1 which is basically a singleplayer game you play through once or twice until your memory of it fades enough for it to be worth playing again. It's more like a PS:T or BG in that way, at least in my opinion.

The major thing I remember sucking about D2 at release compared to D1 was the animations. D1 animations are just so much more richer, "juicy". And the ambience in D1 was a lot better. But everything else in D2 was arguably better.

There's something about the earlier sprite-based games that just have so much more artistry in them, and then the transition period where it was sort of 3D, sort of not, still mostly sprite work, the artistry seemed to fall off.

 

[ChaDargo]

Synergies kind of made the game too easy for the classes that worked in 1.0. The big problem with earlier versions is that Necro summons were absolute trash and only work on Normal/Nightmare and even NM is pushing it.

ChaDargo i only have my original, pre-LoD experience. I played a bit after lod but not enough to make it meaningful - only enough to cement my preference for D1 over D2.

That’s my primary interest in revisiting D2 v1.05 or 1.00, to see if it scratches that D1 itch more than I remember. I know modern 1.09+ does not, with level gated gear and Skinner box itemization maximizing dopamine hits. I much prefer low and slow.

D1 is the equivalent of listening to Black Sabbath’s self titled album, where modern D2 is to it much like late-stage Ozzy. Yeah it was more popular (I think) but it definitely wasn’t as good…

I agree completely. Playing D1 as a kid was an amazing experience, first game I ever played online. D2 was pretty fun for being fast and flashy and new, but it was so heavily feeding off of my love for the art/setting of D1. Same reason I prefer Starcraft BW over SC2. At some point Blizzard slowly started turning into a company that churned out games to sell copies to anyone while pandering to their core (I guess all these fuckers learned to be "creative" this way in college?). So, I too would like to see if D2 could have that better pacing/immersion and not just be a boss-run fest.

Edit: In a few days I'll try whatever version I can get to run (I'll check out the Cactus Project) and report back!

Honestly I still think D2 is the better game. D1 is just better aesthetically and in terms of execution of its "tightness", ambience, everything being perfectly matched to each other. D2 is a sprawling sequel with downsides and upsides, but it's way more replayable than D1 which is basically a singleplayer game you play through once or twice until your memory of it fades enough for it to be worth playing again. It's more like a PS:T or BG in that way, at least in my opinion.

The major thing I remember sucking about D2 at release compared to D1 was the animations. D1 animations are just so much more richer, "juicy". And the ambience in D1 was a lot better. But everything else in D2 was arguably better.

There's something about the earlier sprite-based games that just have so much more artistry in them, and then the transition period where it was sort of 3D, sort of not, still mostly sprite work, the artistry seemed to fall off.

I agree with a lot of what you said. D2 has smoother and more varied systems (a consequence of it being more modern), but I wish it had the soul of D1, which is sort of what you're talking about. I've been playing Grim Dawn lately and I think it strikes an amazing balance between the two games and steps everything up a notch. I can even sit on my couch and play it because of how great their gamepad support has become.

And GD is never like playing fucking D3--at least not on the higher difficulties. Normal is really easy starting off, but it's useful if you don't want to deep-dive into the thousands of build guides and just want to fuck around and see how shit works. You can spread your points out all over your the trees of your two classes (dual classing is a must), figure out what you like, and respec once you've found your preferred skills and synergies.

Still. Nothing beats the nostalgia of D1/2 for me and there's just something about D1, the slowness, the creepiness, the mystery. It's like you said: you indulge in its treasures until they wear off. D2 definitely gives you more of that "find the best new shit and destroy the new big shit" thing that really can suck us into the genre. I think GD beats D2 at that, however.

 

[Kruno]

https://d2mods.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=217&t=67270

Hey team,

I figured out how to swap the player characters into various creatures. Next up, I would like to swap their skills to the monster's skills.

I remember in Diablo 2 Legacy, we would have to hex edit in order to achieve this, but I recall in an interview one of the devs said they were going to be moving this to data. Does anyone know how to go about doing this?

Skills can be swapped by moving charclass and skilldesc around. So for example, if you want to swap Jab and MephistoMissile, then in skills.txt:
(1) For Jab, delete charclass=ama and skilldesc=jab.
(2) For MephistoMissile, set charclass=ama and skilldesc=jab.
The skill will still appear as Jab in the skill tree, but it will function as MephistoMissile. If you want to give it an accurate description, you should look into the skilldesc.txt guide. You can also reference MephistoMissile's srvmissile=mephisto damage by using miss('mephisto'.edmn) and miss('mephisto'.edmx). This will take the minimum and maximum elemental damage of the mephisto missile. For the physical damage, you can reference it by using miss('mephisto'.damn) and miss('mephisto'.damx). This will take the minimum and maximum physical damage.

This is how it works in D2 anyways, looking at the D2R txt files I'm guessing it's about 99% the same.

The game is quite a bit more moddable than people give it credit for.

What I would like to see are the client skill start and end functions given external script access so modders can add their own functions. These functions are very powerful and add the complicated behaviours to skills. This is what people would need to binary edit to get complicated skill changes in.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Auto-walking gold is fine but a get all is just as good if customizable:

GET ALL OPTIONS:
Gold
Keys
Mana pots
Health pot
Weapons
Etc etc.

Maybe too complex, I dunno. I'm probably just too usedto get all in certain games I play.

 

[ChaDargo]

Not to derail the thread, but besides replaying D1 with some improvements or old-school D2 (I've played these games for hundreds of hours) or a remake by a company I loathe, what are my options for meaty ARPG's besides GD and PoE, the latter of which I've never tried because I don't like F2P games and my first glance at the game showed some goofy systems and somewhat bland gameplay (if I'm wrong about that, I'd still try it, but I don't give a shit about online play).

There's Torchlight 2, which felt hollow to me, like I was on rails; there's Victor Vran, which had this overly instanced feel to me, like a shitty MMO. Is there some game I'm missing in this genre? Because I really wish someone would fucking take up arms and bring it to its apex. Maybe GD is that and I should just shut up and keep playing it lol

But I like to make sure my time is valuable and the codex hasn't ever failed to help me find the greatest options. I guess I'm just trying to take advantage of my fellow ARPG/Dungeon Crawling enthusiasts. Also, tt seems like the ARPG is a dying breed and the D2 remake (and D3/D4) are the death knell. But I'd love to be proven wrong and I'd love to see someone actually making something unique and interesting in the genre.

 

[Sykar]

Also actual gameplay was upgraded massively. Original D2 was laways laggy mess via bn and this time desync rarely happens while hit reaction is pretty dead on. It is not POE lockstep mode but definitely upgrade over original.

I remember those lags back in the day, when you kept walking, while all enemies disappeared and then you just exploded in the middle of bone fetish pack.

Anyway, I tested pure Blizz sorc, and while it could easily solo NM (as can everyone else), Hell was a massive pain in the ass. You can't break those immunities in Hell. Moreover, I discovered that pretty much everyone else had the same idea. It hasn't been uncommon to play with a full party of cold sorcs with hilariously tragic results. So I respeced to Meteorb and now I'm ready to kill Diablo.

Mono ele needs a strong mercenary with a good weapon so you can static+merc kill. Support with TK after. Does not work that well against larger mob groups thanks to the retarded AI of the mercenaries which I am sure they improved as much as the graphics.

 

[ChaDargo]

Also actual gameplay was upgraded massively. Original D2 was laways laggy mess via bn and this time desync rarely happens while hit reaction is pretty dead on. It is not POE lockstep mode but definitely upgrade over original.

I remember those lags back in the day, when you kept walking, while all enemies disappeared and then you just exploded in the middle of bone fetish pack.

Anyway, I tested pure Blizz sorc, and while it could easily solo NM (as can everyone else), Hell was a massive pain in the ass. You can't break those immunities in Hell. Moreover, I discovered that pretty much everyone else had the same idea. It hasn't been uncommon to play with a full party of cold sorcs with hilariously tragic results. So I respeced to Meteorb and now I'm ready to kill Diablo.

Mono ele needs a strong mercenary with a good weapon so you can static+merc kill. Support with TK after. Does not work that well against larger mob groups thanks to the retarded AI of the mercenaries which I am sure they improved as much as the graphics.

There's also the problem that double immunities and shit like that is the most ridiculous way to make a game like Diablo2 difficult. So then they made it so you can farm some stupid items that bypass immunity or play with a bunch of friends who are geared fittingly for all 5 acts... In all honesty, LoD was just a game for people to use bots to farm specific locations and get specific runes and items until you could break the shitty and superficial difficulty.

I knew a lot of guys who did that, multiple Hell Baal runs (why keep doing Hell Baal?). At some point Diablo 2 only appeals to people that are like grandmas at a slot machine. Fuck all of that. But Diablo 2 on a Normal/Nightmare run is the shit. No doubt. Just wish I could get the challenge without the ass fucking =/

 

[Harthwain]

Is there some game I'm missing in this genre?

You could check out Din's Legacy:



There is a demo both on Steam and GOG, so you don't have to buy it to try it out in action:

https://af.gog.com/game/dins_legacy_demo?as=1649904300

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

16 player LAN PARTY possible.

you could play.... NOX or Darkstone.

 

[Reinhardt]

Darkstone

My guilty pleasure game...

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

I liked Shadowflare way back in the day, not sure if it holds up now but I recall it being a fun game.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

.......Gateway to Apshai!!!!

 

[Zeriel]

Not to derail the thread, but besides replaying D1 with some improvements or old-school D2 (I've played these games for hundreds of hours) or a remake by a company I loathe, what are my options for meaty ARPG's besides GD and PoE, the latter of which I've never tried because I don't like F2P games and my first glance at the game showed some goofy systems and somewhat bland gameplay (if I'm wrong about that, I'd still try it, but I don't give a shit about online play).

There's Torchlight 2, which felt hollow to me, like I was on rails; there's Victor Vran, which had this overly instanced feel to me, like a shitty MMO. Is there some game I'm missing in this genre? Because I really wish someone would fucking take up arms and bring it to its apex. Maybe GD is that and I should just shut up and keep playing it lol

But I like to make sure my time is valuable and the codex hasn't ever failed to help me find the greatest options. I guess I'm just trying to take advantage of my fellow ARPG/Dungeon Crawling enthusiasts. Also, tt seems like the ARPG is a dying breed and the D2 remake (and D3/D4) are the death knell. But I'd love to be proven wrong and I'd love to see someone actually making something unique and interesting in the genre.

Play Sacred 1 if you never did, it is legitimate A+ tier unless you hate the storytelling style I guess.

 

[spectre]

Not to derail the thread, but besides replaying D1 with some improvements or old-school D2 (I've played these games for hundreds of hours) or a remake by a company I loathe, what are my options for meaty ARPG's besides GD and PoE, the latter of which I've never tried because I don't like F2P games and my first glance at the game showed some goofy systems and somewhat bland gameplay (if I'm wrong about that, I'd still try it, but I don't give a shit about online play).

You should give PoE a chance. Just click off all the global chats etc. and play it like a single player game. Not sure what you mean by somewhat bland gameplay. It's not any different from your typical arpg fare, even better than typical because you have this completely freeform allocation of points and skills. If anything, I'd say the game has grown too much fat to keep the zoomers interested with teh shiny that could use some serious trimming. It does get stale (like any arpg out there) when you go up a difficulty level and basically do the same content.
Still, you should be good for a few playthroughs, though I'd recommend that you figure out shit on your own instead of looking up builds and optimization guides.
For what it's worth, it's been the best diablo clone on the market for years and (unless something changed fundamentally in the last year) I think it's the the good kind of F2P game, where you can ignore the online bits and
they keep themselves afloat by selling cosmetic items, so you can freely decide if and how much you want to throw at them.

You can get Titan Quest for peanuts (I think it was even free on Steam at some point), it plays a lot like Grim Dawn, I think it even re-uses some of the basic animations. I played TQ first and rather enjoyed it, but couldn't get into GD afterwards.
The aesthetics is greek mythology which gives a somewhat unique feel.

Throne of Darkness is a rather forgotten clone you can look into if you're bored. It's got dweeb aesthetics that feel rather unique, making heavy use of jap folklore with shit like fat reptile demons grinding people into a bloody flour in a mill.
Has a few unique mechanics (like immediately switching characters) Nice if you want to try something different.

Also, not sure what does "meaty gameplay" mean to you, but you should totally try getting into roguelikes if you can stomach turn based gameplay (pradoxically, it doesn't take away from the action and/or tension in any way). If ASCII is a problem, plenty of them have tilesets.
ADOM is my long time favorite, it's even got a nice graphics and UI update, or you can try DoomRL for something totally different.

EDIT: Forgot one other thing that actually caught my attention for a few hours. Hades plays a bit differently from a typical diablo clone, because you are expected to go down the main dungeon multiple times (dying is fun and all that shit) and youd build develops sorta organically each time. It's more of a typical action game where it's more important to have good twitch reflexes to dodge stuff instead of researching builds and itemizing, but can be refreshing.
It's also loosely based on greek mythology (in a very modernized fashion, different from Titan Quest), which ties rather nicely with the game's mechanics.

 

[cvv]

what are my options for meaty ARPG's besides GD and PoE

If you don't insist on a Diablo-like looter aRPG specifically check out Darksiders Genesis, a different subgenre of aRPG. Ton of fun to solo or co-op.

 

[DDZ]

There is also Chronicon, which I ignored for a long time because of the pixel graphics. But when I finally was so bored with games I gave it a go, and it's really good.



https://store.steampowered.com/app/375480/Chronicon/

 

[hello friend]

In all honesty, LoD was just a game for people to use bots to farm specific locations and get specific runes and items until you could break the shitty and superficial difficulty.

I knew a lot of guys who did that, multiple Hell Baal runs (why keep doing Hell Baal?). At some point Diablo 2 only appeals to people that are like grandmas at a slot machine. Fuck all of that. But Diablo 2 on a Normal/Nightmare run is the shit. No doubt. Just wish I could get the challenge without the ass fucking =/

A lot of the problems with Diablo 2 disappear when you don't group with randoms and limit trading to trading with friends playing with the same self imposed limitations.