Some questions and suggestions Thread - UVLoD mod for Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

Hello,

First, thanks for the mod. It's well done :-)

So, first, my suggestions. The mod comes with a .ini, but there are very limited options. Would it be possible to have a .ini and, ideally, be able to control 100% of the options of the mod (so you could basically turn EVERYTHING off, and have a D2LOD vanilla experience). If this is not possible, or would be too long, how could I achieve this myself? Could I modify your mod myself? I've heard several times of modifying TXT files for the softcoded changes (are all your changes soft coded?). However I have no idea how to do this, what I need, etc.

Also, would it be possible to use PluggY with your mod? I know as of now it will break, but this would be very handy. PluggY and UVLoD share many things. UVLoD adds more feature in addition. Why not base your mod on PluggY, instead of re-developing many features already done by PluggY? (and I'm thinking of the shared stash/unlimited pages for example, that would save you time). Or at least, if I find my way to disable enough feature from UVLoD, I could have it to work with PluggY without conflict. I'm really attached to PluggY because I have a lot of characters and items that depends on it, and my shared stash is quite huge now. I wouldnt want to loose everything if I want to play your mod.

Thanks for taking the time to read me, and I look forward to read your thoughts.

Arthur

Edited by: rtur0

Hi Arthur,

Good Questions..

A lot of the changes are softcoded in txt files.. these get encoded as .bin files and the .bin files go into the mods mpq file. You can run this mod with a vanilla PatchD2.mpq file and eliminate all the softcoded changes. Whats left is the hard coded changes, and there's a hundred or more of patches & code to do this and that.

An example would be the change that removes the button to closed battle.net from the startup screen.. But if someone logs into closed battle.net with the mod they'd get banned right away. So why would I want put an option to re-enable that in an ini file.

You can use this mod as a base for your own mod... Its actually meant for people to be able to do that. All I ask is that you leave the credit on the game startup screen "UVLoD" or "PlugUV"

I have heard of one person using this mod with PlugY, but they had to disable some things in PlugY to make it work.. There's several area's where the 2 might conflict.. pandemonium portals, World Event, Ubers, which mod generates them, things like playerX at game startup, are a few that come to mind.

I don't know that much about PlugY.. I've never installed it, and don't plan to. You see, I was hell bent on playing 1.13d.. at the time and there was no PlugY available for 1.13d and it hadn't been updated in over 5 years. So I created my own mod... then some of the D2 old timers found a coder to update PlugY to work in 1.13d.

Anyway I've developed this mod independent of PlugY.. I don't use any PlugY source, because It defeats the purpose of learning how to code it yourself, and that's what I do for my entertainment.

Edited by: devurandom96

Alright I understand your position.

I went through the pain of moving my vanilla plugy stash to gomule, and well... gomule is actually a better way of managing the items I think! Much quicker.

Regarding the .ini file. Maybe I was a bit extreme with changing 100% of the options, but I mean changes that affect gameplay. The cube recipes, drop rates, countess drops, etc. I really like the mod, but still I would like to change some stuff. Do you have some resources/links where I could learn how to update your text files? Most of what I find online is completely out of date, with broken links, etc. It's a bit tricky to get up to speed!

I'm planning to make it easier to mod the txt files in the next releases.

There's going to be a couple of options at install time in the next releases.

1) Standard MPQ
2) Vanilla MPQ

-Standard MPQ is UVLoD.. a closed MPQ (no txt modification)-Vanilla MPQ will be an open MPQ (full txt modification).
includes a few txt files from UVLoD (Full Equip Merc, Stackables, and Cube). All the rest are plain txt files from vanilla LoD.
There's no drop mod etc.

If your not already using it: GoMuleX allows expanded stash in Gomule

Modding txt files file guides.. this is what I use:
D2mods.info

That sounds awesome man. Looking forward to the next releases.

Yes I am on GoMuleX, this is great!

Thanks for the link, I will have a look.

Hey there,

I have one more question! Your mod removes the experience penalty above lv70. In addition, there is an option in the .ini to remove the 10 lv diff penalty. If I disable the ExpMod option, is the lv70+ penalty kept disabled?

Something else, I am struggling to find the following:
* Essence of *** (to make the recipe for respec)
* Key of *** (to open uber portals)
* Generally, I am just can't find any "white" items (to make runewords on them). I feel like 90% of the stuff I drop are at least Magic. I got rid of my MF items to see if it is more balanced. I will report after a few hours of play.

Do you think you could make some tweaks for the next releases, especially regarding the Essences and the keys?

Cheers,

Edited by: rtur0

Hi,

Experience penalty above lv70 is softcoded, its txt based. Lvl 10 diff penalty happens when the player is above level 25 and the monster is 10 levels below or above the player...Then there is an experience formula computed and penalty applied. I think it was a response from blizzard to players rushing the game (online).

Level 70 penalty will be back to normal in the vanilla version.. Lvl 10 diff is hard coded penalty will still be togleable. The 2 Experience penalties are completely separate.

Essences and Pandemonium Keys drop with about the same frequency .. Keys only drop in hell mode, seems like essences do too (i forget), and the drop rate is about 1 in 40 from the various bosses.

Edited by: devurandom96