Diablo II eXtreme Mod engine

engine files
base files

Graphics Pack

ItemManager
AutoBackup
Character Renamer
Item Files
Game Patches
v1.05B
v1.05
v1.04B
v1.03
v1.02
v1.01
No CD Patches
v1.05/1.05b
v1.04c
v1.04b
v1.03
v1.02
v1.01

Generic No CD
Daemon tools
CdrWin 3.8d

Screenshots

AutoBackup
Character Renamer
Item Manager
eXtreme Diablo II mod engine

(Screenshot of the Diablo II eXtreme Mod Engine)

News

5 April 2001

I've trawled around the net and found another web provider, and started to put the stuff back on the site. You should now be able to download the mod engine files and the graphics pack. When I've got access to the rest of the files, I'll upload them as well (which should be later today)

4 April 2001

This site has been hosted on free web space for several months, and today they finally managed to delete the entire site, why, I have no idea. This page is here just to say that I will be putting things back up over the next day or two, but the links on the left hand menu currently don't work. Please bare with me and everything should be back to normal soon.

2 April 2001

A new version of the eXtreme mod engine has been released today. I've found and fixed the problem with the armour editor, and I've also finished the weapons editor, both of which I've played with and seem to work. The one thing I did notice is that specifying a weapon with maximum damage over 255 doesn't seem to work. I found this out by setting a gothic bow to 100-500 (instead of 10-50). It did come out much higher in the game, but not 500, so I am assuming 255 is the max (not including magical bonuses). Let me know what your experiments reveal.
Remember, if you want the graphics to show up in either weapon or armour editor, you need to download the graphics pack into the same folder as your mod engine files, which should then create a sub folder called 'images'.

1 April 2001

No, its not an April's fool joke, just another update. I hope to have the weapons editor up and running in the next day or two, and WillieBubba mailed me to say that the armour editor didn't seem to be working. I've checked it out and there does seem to be something stopping the changes made in the armour editor, getting into the game. I'll find out what, and  tomorrow, I'll post a new version. For those interested, here's a sneak preview of the weapon editor, it still has a little work to do but its mostly complete. The interesting thing about the screen shot is that it shows that according to blizzard's official website, a gothic bow does 10-50 damage, but according to the mpq file, thats the damage for '2 handed', not missile damage. I think its just another example of blizzards programming teams getting confused. For those who have been playing with the mod engine a fair bit, you may have also noticed some strange things, like a balrog's resist fire goes down from 100 to 80 when you move up from normal to nightmare difficulty, then it goes back up again to 100 at hell difficulty. Yet more bugs in the mpq files I suspect.

26 March 2001

Fixed a small bug in the d2 mod engine which was stopping monsters appearing if you ticked the 'Monsters appear on Automap' box. Hopefully they should now appear. I'm also investigating how to get certain monsters to have a health bar when they are included in a level (Quill Bears for example). Thanks to BlackMajikMage for spotting pointing these two out.

23 March 2001

A day late, but another update to the mod engine. The armour editor is now in place, and the weapons editor is nearly there. A couple of things to mention. First, the download has now been split into two files, the base files which never change, and the engine files which do. You only ever need to download the base files once, and if you've already downloaded a previous version of the mod engine you'll have them already. The other thing to mention is that the armour editor (and weapons editor) can make use of the same graphics pack that was originally used for my now defunct item manager; download it from the link on the left and extract it into the same folder as your mod engine files, you should then get a sub folder called 'images'.

21 March 2001

Cleared out the old news from the site today, and finally got round to uploading the remaining official game patches and no cd patches, so there should be one there for every Diablo II version.

Later on today I hope to finish the weapon and armour editors and upload a newer version of the eXtreme mod engine. I'm also going to split the download into two files, because its only one file that usually changes (the D2mod.exe file). The next addition to the mod engine will probably allowing the edit of all the 'other' items that fall outside the armour and weapons editors, and then a skills tweaker. I'm also going to try to massage the amazon into a fighter/mage class, and if I can get it to work, I'll post it as a file you can throw into your overrides folder if you want to use the new class.

19 March 2001

No new updates today, although work continues on the eXtreme mod engine to incorporate the next set of features. I'm currently working on item editting, so you can do things like change names, graphics, and the stats of items (damage, defense rating etc).
I have also done some experimentation with a skills modifier. I was really hoping to be able to create a custom class using all the skills in the game (including monster skills too) and use one character class as a base. Unfortunately, whilst you can tweak the existing skills (turn ice arrow to 'fire bolt' for instance), I haven't yet been able to replace it with say zeal. I got some of it working, but there's obviously something I'm missing which I suspect is coded into the game dlls, and unless I do some serious code hacking, it means its not something I can do via the mpq files. I may still implement a skill 'tweaking' page to the eXtreme mod engine, which will let you do things like alter the mana cost, level requirement, prerequisite skills, damage etc, but not fundamentally change what the skill does. In any event I've got to finish the item editting part first :)

17 March 2001

A couple of additions to the mod engine today. If you select a monster in the locations box, it will automatically set the spawned flag for you in the monster editor so you don't have to remember to do it. I've also implemented an overrides folder which will allow you to update the game with files modified by other mod makers.  Here are two mod parts that were taken from www.phrozenkeep.com which I've modified slightly to work with the eXtreme mod engine. To use them, just extract the zip files into your overrides sub-folder of your eXtreme mod engine folder. The first is a mod that increases your cube, stash and inventory size and gives you a couple of stones of jordan (at least it did to the character I tested it on), and the second stops XP loss on death at higher difficulty levels.

Download the latest eXtreme mod engine from the link on the left.

17 March 2001

Yet again my web host has lost the last upload of the eXtreme mod engine file, but I've uploaded it again, so apologies for those who tried to get it yesterday. Its a very slightly older version than that posted yesterday, but the difference is minimal. Remember that when you add a monster to an area using the locations button, to check that monsters 'spawned' value in the monster editor. If it isn't 1, I don't think it will appear. I also haven't tried adding boss monsters (Andariel, Duriel etc) to the locations boss list . I have got them to appear by adding them to the regular monsters list, but there is a slight side effect in that they don't get the red health bar above their heads; otherwise they work fine.

16 March 2001

Having played around with the eXtreme mod engine for a while, I thought I'd post up some screen shots of the kinds of things you can now do with it :) This first one shows my Valkyrie in the middle of a group of Quill bear, which never make an appearance in the original game. There is also the boss mephisto, and even more of him off screen, firing lightning at me. Oh yeah, and I throw in a claw viper for good measure too!
The second and third screen shots show another unused monster, this time the RatMan Shaman and the Undead RatMan. Interestingly enough, the ordinary Ratman does make an appearance in Act 3.
One last thing to mention. Because you have to set the spawned flag in the monster editor to 1 if you want monsters to show up, I'm going to make the monster area selection do this automatically whenever you insert a particular monster into a location. It saves you having to remember to check this flag in the monster editor.

If you have some nice screen shots of patches made using the eXtreme mod engine, post me a link, and if they are good enough, I'll include them here!

16 March 2001

More updates to the eXtreme engine today. Some of you may have noticed that if you add bosses or certain other monsters to the list of monsters to appear in an area, they didn't show up, this is because each monster also has a 'spawned' flag which determines whether it can appear randomly or not. The good news is that this field, along with the most common monster stats, can now be editted in the new monster editor. Download the latest eXtreme mod engine from the link on the left and start editting those monsters. I've also tweaked the monster list to remove monsters that are set as 'dummy' or 'unused' because there are no graphics available for these, and if you try to add these to your game it would crash.

14 March 2001

I've uploaded another version of the eXtreme mod engine because (yet again), the last upload got corrupted. The good news is that this version has a new page which allows you to edit the monster locations so that you can make any monster appear in anywhere in the game. (Hell Bovines in Act1 anyone?)

13 March 2001

The updated mod engine has now been uploaded, so you can now tweak the number of monsters that appear. My next task is to enable you to fight against monsters that aren't currently used in the game, and also let you set where monsters appear (Balrogs in the cold plains for instance). Watch this space :)

12 March 2001

Apologies for those who have tried to download the eXtreme mod engine today. I made some updates and uploaded it again, only to find it hadn't uploaded, so I've put the original back up for you, and when I get access to the updated files again (on a different PC), I'll upload those (tomorrow). The updated engine now also allows you to change the size of the monster groups, so you can have a large numbers on screen at once. Download the new engine tomorrow which will have that update, and fix a minor bug with the blocking code.

10 March 2001

Attention all mod makers. I'm keen to start developing the mod engine to allow users to alter pretty much anything they like, and I would like your input. If you've created a traditional mod that you think has come cool features, and would like them included in the next eXtreme mod engine release, email me at [email protected] The advantage of using the mod engine is that users will be able to customize their mod as they see fit. Any developers whose work is included in the eXtreme mod engine will be naturally creditted in the about box of the application.

8 March 2001

Finally got some more time to update the site. Firstly a couple of things. For those who don't know, the patches for 1.04 seem to work fine with 1.05, so if you haven't found a 1.05 no cd patch yet, use the 1.04 ones off this site!
The big news is that I've now finished work on my first mod. Its more of a mod engine that a true mod, because it alters your diablo II files on the fly. It allows you to modify various characteristics of the normal single player game to simulate the increased difficulty found in large multiplayer games. The beauty of the mod engine is that unlike traditional mods which you can't modify, if you don't like the settings you've made, simply re-run the software and change them.
Download my eXtreme Diablo II modifier here or from the link on the left.

16 January 2001

Well, it seems the gamecopyworld cracks DO work, at least with Windows 98. For some reason they don't with NT 4. Now I've been able to test it, I've posted a copy which you can get from the link on the left. There are two, one for 1.04C which I haven't tested, and one for the regular 1.04B patch.
After some deliberation, I've decided not to implement another item manager, this means that it will only work for Diablo 2, versions 1.00 - 1.03. The reason I've decided not to do any further development is because I came across a rather excellent editor written by a coder called Jamella. You can check out his editor, which works with 1.04 right here. Whilst there are still some bugs in it, there are fairly minor. There are improvements I could make to the user interface, which I also had planned for the next item manager, but I really can't devote the time to it. All that said, I will be sending Jamella an email to see if he's willing to cooperate on a joint project.

So what am I going to do in the meantime ? Well I am still very much active with Diablo 2, and am currently getting my hands dirty writing mods. What I want to try and do is re-map one of the acts, to make it completely new. If I can do it, then I'll start on the rest. The idea is that the items and characters won't change, which means you can use them in regular games with no side effects.

9 January 2001

I tracked down a couple of no cd patches for v1.04 from www.gamecopyworld.com but they didn't work. Whether its because I was testing them using Windows NT 4.0 and not Windows 9x/ME I'm not sure. This lead me to try an alternative method using a program called daemon tools, which you can download from the link on the left. This basically allows you to either play with a copied CD, or, make a disc image of the play CD and use that as a virtual CD rom. Daemon tools reads a wide variety of disc images, including those generated by cdrwin, which again, you can download from the link on the left. Some of you may need to download aspi drivers for cdrwin to work properly but they are easily found on the net (I didn't post a link because the aspi drivers you need depends on your operating system). When I have some more time, I'll post up a step by step guide for those who can't work it out from the daemon tools documentation.

4 January 2001

Work on the new item manager goes ahead well. Most of the item fields for the two new item formats have been discovered, and its just a case of getting time to code the changes. I've also thought I'd found a no cd patch for version 1.04; it was originally written for v1.03 but reportedly worked for v1.04 too, although I've tried it and unfortunately it doesn't.

I'm looking at ways of converting all the items in the old 27 byte format to the new 15 or 31 record length. If I can work out how its done I'll post up a utility to let you alter your item files, and also make sure the item manager reads the old format too.

1 January 2001

Whilst recovering from the christmas break, I've finally found a few minutes to update the site and post up a little news regarding the new 1.04 patch that came out a short while ago.
I've received a large number of emails saying that the item manager no longer works with Diablo 2, version 1.04, and after a little poking around the save game files I can see why. In short, the item record format inside the save games has changed; from a standard 27 byte record to either 15 or 31 bytes, which means I need to work out a few fields all over again. Rest assured that a new version of the item manager will be out, and will handle the new patch, I'm just going to have to drag myself away from Baldurs Gate II for a few hours...

Overall, the reaction to the v1.04 patch seems fairly positive, although there are some glaring bugs that have been introduced as a result of the patch. Most of you will have encountered the durability problem, or if you haven't yet, you will soon. If you aren't sure what its all about, you can check out the latest reactions on the alt.games.diablo newsgroup.

I've uploaded the 1.04B patch if you haven't got it already, and I'll keep my eyes out for the no-cd patch when it appears.

Check back in the next week or so and I'll try to have a version of the item manager ready for you. Oh, I've also found out why some of you get the 'file is already in use' message, when its not, and that will also be cured.