Modding ideas

are those ideas for Dungeon Siege or Dungeon Siege II?

The ideas are for dungeon siege 2.

_ Inventory mod (a button or a shop where you can enlarge your inventory) - well inventory mods exists but the thing is have to make a new grid art wise which takes time and then u will have to code an ui gadget into the invertory to record and save the inventory grid size but even then still limited to like 255 items per container page.

_ Racial skill mod (a little skill tree by race) - races have skill trees?

_ Weapon's rune mod (a bit like enchanting but you can get rid of the rune to put it on another weapon) - would have to edit components.gas to make a rune, then would have to code it like enchanting, would have to write a skrit to "change properties etc"

_ Better effects mod (just an idea to create more realistic effects) - what the effects aren't pretty now? perhaps some newer effects would be nicer

_ HD textures (enhancing the textures of the game to add some realism) - iryan I think is working on that

_ Terrain rework (like adding grass on the terrain to a better look) - think that is covered in the HD textures, but would be nice if could take a life-like grass and put it in the game be more real

_ Backpack mod (like it was in DS1:LOA) - started that a few years back, problem is gotta edit Components.gas, then u gotta rewrite all the skrit, imagine if one used the stash as a starting source they could make a ds2 backpack, but getting the game to save the contents after a save, and the 255 limit would still apply as the backpack items count towards the 255 limit.

_ Enchanted spellbooks (like it was in DS1:LOA) - enchanted spellbooks u mean they aren't enchanted in ds2?

_ Total shop rework (making much more harder to find anything (spells, armor weapons) like in DS1:LOA) - does super shops mod count?

_ New race (skeleton, gargoyle [import it from DS1:LOA ??]) this one can be done since ds/loa exists but the author of the gargoyle would have to make it work with ds2, I aint touching the gargoyle, skeleton should work with the conversion just add to heroes.gas etc files and boom he should work

_ Skill table overhaul - ?????

_ Piercing damage, move speed, range modifiers - isn't that what spells are for?

Very Good Ideas. I firmly believe that modding of Dungeon Siege 2 has only scratched the surface for various reasons. There's still enormous potential in modding the game and just look at what KillerGremal has been able to do with extending the flick functions.

I'm not really an advocate for inventory mods and I think they're superfluous in DS2 because of the town portal spell. Besides I've never really found an use for all the money I accumulate anyway once I've recruited all the available characters. The dropped loot is vastly superior to that found in the shops and the enchanting system underwhelming. I would like to see a proper crafting system in Dungeon Siege 2 where useful equipment could be made or enchanted.

I think what Hardless means is some more differences between races rather than 1 or 2 points difference in strength, intelligence or similar to really distinguish the races. As it stands now the race selection is purely cosmetic. Maybe if dwarves had a 10% strength bonus but 10% reduction in intelligence and speed, elves a 10% bonus in speed, intelligence and ranged abilities but 10% reduction in strength, etc. They could also have bonuses specific to their own race, which could be unlocked. Maybe like dryads could make plant like creatures fight for them, dwarves could find valuables randomly hidden in the ground, etc.

The effects in DS2 are nice but a bit limited and hard to extend. DS1 was better in this regard with the wide range of effects for weapons, armor and spells. Just look at how the spell system in DS2 has been reduced to just a few different spells with just different names for the same thing (lesser, normal, greater and master). The addition of curses, buffs and powers was great but I miss the variety of DS1 spells and their effects.

Sadly I'm not working on HD textures for the game, just resampling the existing ones to add enhanced detail and bloom. The game engine will support HD textures but consider that these will be about 20 times bigger than the current textures (4Mb compared to 256 bytes for 1 texture). There's so many textures in the game that I estimate a HD various of DS2 would be about 40GB in size. Plus just because the current game engine can display 1 or 2 HD textures, doesn't mean it could display about 10,000 such HD textures. I suspect memory issues would quickly surface, especially as the game engine is already prone to memory leaks. Plus to take advantage of HD textures, they would need to be redrawn from scratch and many of the textures in the game are quite complex to draw. For instance a common cobblestone path consists of about 12 or so different textures all arranged so they can fit together in different ways to create the path.

There's already grass available in the game but used sparingly in certain areas. Maybe the textures of these could be improved so they were more "life-like" but "putting it into the game" really means that it would have to be added to the maps by hand. This can be done but would be extremely tedious (I know as I have done these sorts of things). It's not simply a matter of "plonking them there", each instance needs to be rotated and quite possibly resized so it looks unique. Otherwise the result appears very artificial.

Backpacks would be a better idea than an inventory resize. As Darkelf said it would take a lot of nifty writing of skrit and components to make it work. But it would be very nice and I would use them in playing the game for sure.

Rather than a total shop rework, I would prefer a more cleverer shop rework like in Morrowind and Oblivion. Where doing tasks or quests for a shopkeeper would unlock certain items or effect their cost. This could also tie in with racial advantages mentioned earlier. Humans for instance could have a merchant skill than made shop's cost cheaper or made available rare items.

I've already ported the gargoyle and skeleton as heroes in DS2. The problem is that they lack the animations for dual wielding and throwing weapons. Also Snowfox's Goblin and Ghastley's Naja. Otherwise they work well. Witness's dark/light elves and Strider's Orc on the other hand work perfectly as they use farmgirl's animations from DS1 and can use the human female's animations from DS2.

If somebody was willing to make throwing and dual wielding animations for the Gargoyle, Skeleton, Goblin and Naja, then they could be released as playable heroes in DS2.

I think the work you've done with the Ancient Gifts mod was wonderful so a skill table for a Nature/Ranged character would be fantastic. Especially as 99% of rpgs have rangers very closely associated with nature. You need some incentive to forgo the attractions of specializing in one skill if you're going to dual class.

Something that would be nice is multiple hit weapons as seen in theresnothinglft's Sot3k weapon packs. I was able to port the weapons to DS2 but sadly not the multiple hit bonuses from weapons like polearms.

Further modding ideas are extending the Inn's character limits (only about 40 characters can be stored there?) and something that Darkelf suggested in another thread, a Pet Inn where pets could be stored (as if they're stored in the Inn they go towards the character limits).

Hi iryan,

I have been absent for a while, what KillerGremal has been able to ?

The backpack idea will be much more harder to do so the inventory idea was a way to do something a bit close to the original idea.

If you ever played in elder scrolls game ever races have their own "skills". Like a high elf learn destruction skill faster than the others. This is pretty much what could be done in dungeon siege.

Adding new particles textures in dungeon siege 2 can make a better render in the game like I have tested. It's really easy an can be quickly improved.

HD textures is a big work but if we could try in order to see how the engine can render the whole thing. In don't really think its really doable but it could be fun to have a try.

What I was trying with grass is to edit the siege nodes and adding some nice grass meshes. But the problem is about exporting the node and reimport it into the game. The game crash on starting the map. I'm not really friendly with siege max and siege editor so I don't really understand where is the problem.

A clever shop could be nice, I think that dungeon siege can take some idea from other game that have some better shop especially.

Like I said I'm not good with siege max and animation is even harder or seems at least :).

Strangely there is a multiple hit skrit already coded but not used in the game so using this could be perfect.

With me, I think the worlds and landscapes in DS2 look fantastic, especially with Aranna Legacy and Legendary Mod, which add quite a bit more scenery as well.
So I wouldn't overhaul the whole thing.
But here's an idea;

From personal experience I've noticed, time and time again, although the studded leather armor doesn't look all that special, it just seems to have the best-looking textures compared to the rest. It seems the least pixely, which I suppose could be in part of the color scheme, and it just looks nice.
But what if we improved the appearance of the game - but only where it needed it?
Take, for instance, the character's faces. With these camera mods we have that let us zoom close enough to smell their eyebrows, I think it's time for the faces to get a visual update. That extends into the base body for all the races/genders, improve the clothes they all wear to match an HD face. DS2 could certainly handle that much.
What about the armor? Here, there might be a bit more of an impact I imagine as if you have a full party of 6 wearing all this HD Glory-goodness armor, that's when you might get Lag spikes.
So let's just improve the textures where they need improving the most.

Basic Leather armor body piece is VERY quite pixely. The Mythril body piece is too.
Lorethal's armor is pixely, but to me the most obvious problem is that the armor piece itself is not NEARLY as bright as the boots/gauntlets/bascinet. That's really weird to me. And considering I'm soon to do a playthrough Roleplaying as an Elf who is attempting to bring back the Crimson Raiders to fight Valdis, and then by extension repair the world afterward, Lorethal's armor is something I'm going to look at a lot. So improve the body-armor texture to better match the boots/gloves and leave it at that.

Any armor's that show a little bit of skin beneath it, besides Dryad Armor and Nature's Vigilance.
The armor mostly looks fine, until the part where skin is shown beneath it. A specific example would be the female variant of the basic Cloth Robes.

The Mercenary Armor could use an update, heretofore, the Morden maybe could too.

Preserver Armor/Istauri Robes/Watcher Armor/ Etc, the body piece looks pixely and the ornaments (i.e, shoulderplates) look almost as HD as we're looking for in DS2, I imagine. So that could use some tweaking.

So most of the things that need improvement the most, because we probably notice it the most, is the selection of armors and some of the weapons. We don't need to overhaul EVERYTHING and make it all stunning, just a visual update that DS2 should be able to handle. Bringing everything on the same balance of quality. I think that option should be seriously considered if anyone is looking to make a good texture overhaul.

Doable but an immense amount of work. These textures aren't even really HD as they're only 1024x1024. The base textures they replace are only 256x256.

It's also obvious that mipmaps would be a necessity with higher resolution textures.

The biggest problem is finding enough free to use textures to adequately replace the textures in the game. It would even be harder to replace the armors as they would need to be redrawn from scratch. Skins can be done as well as somebody has demonstrated last year (I can't find the post and the lack of a proper search function for these forums is a killer).

Racial skill can add a lot in dungeon siege but we have to think this really nicely as it is in the elder scrolls. The idea of having mor races come also from the elder scrolls with a large amount of choice in the races. But perhaps adding new skills like trading enchanting could be really cool as well. We need to have more suggestions about this I think.

About the multiple hit skrit it works very well because I have used it in the ancient gifts to recreate the triple hit spell that there were in dungeon siege 1. Adding it on a weapon as a component should be easy enough. You can choose how many target it hits and the type of the damages.

I'm working on the backpack idea at the moment, I will need to make a GUI extension for this. I'll post something as soon as possible.

See you,

HardLess.

I love the concept of Racial Bonuses. But remember that along with bonuses to skills, there come extra resistances, and there have to be some sort of penalties as well.
I was also thinking about differences between Genders? Would that be any harder to accomplish, would that be un-necessary?
So since you ask for more suggestions, HardLess, here's a general framework for a list of Racial traits I've come up with. Most of the bonuses/resistances are in 5 to 10% increments. This is because I'm keeping them subtle, but not necessarily fine-tuned, so of course they're susceptible to change for balancing, this is just a general framework, as I said. Bartering skills just relates to buying/selling prices.

--Human--
5% Bonus to the learning of all skills
5% Resistance to magic, except for death and fire. (Being that they are the most adaptable, but are still rather fragile in comparison.)
8% Resistance to fire. (Their hometown is Kalrathia, which is a desert, so I think it fitting that their resistance to heat is upped a bit.)
5-8% Weakness to death. (Again, fragile, second most mortal of the playable races.)
+2 Unspent Skill points. (I think this was a good choice to begin with)
5% General bartering skills.

--Elf--
8% Bonus to the learning of Archery and Combat Magic.
Scaling extra bonus to Damage with Archery and Combat Magic with character level.
10% Resistance to magic.
5% Bonus to Mana increase each level.
4% Better bartering skills in Eirulan. (Because if you read into the lore, specifically in the DS2 manual, Dryads have a minor fascination with Elves and would likely give them preferential treatment up until the events of Broken World.
8% Better Bartering in Aman'lu before/after Broken World.

--Dryad--
8% Bonus to the learning of Archery and Nature Magic.
10% Resistance to Nature Magic.
5% Weakness to Melee.
10% Weakness to Fire. (They're made of plants and plant-like substances. Obviously.)
8% Weakness to Death. (I think the Dryads should actually have a WEAKNESS to death, being the most short-lived of all the races, I'm pretty sure. Plus their connection to, and dependence on, life.)
8% Better bartering skills in Eirulan. And.. Maybe the Dryad Outpost in BW. (For more obvious reasons.)
Increasing bonuses to resistances and damage/power/duration/spells/etc. for every other Dryad in the party. (Now this is a unique one, and I figured it would fit if it could work because Dryads are very close to their sisters, the more of them there are, the higher their morale.)

--Half Giant--
10% Bonus to the learning of Melee skills. (Now this may be a little much, but it's very fitting.)
5% Bonus to Melee effectiveness.
8% Resistance to Melee.
5% Bonus to Health increase each level.
6% Bonus to Health Regen.
10% Penalty to Mana Regen.
15% Penalty to movement speed and 10% to attack rate, except with two-handed weapons.
5% Resistance to Death magic. (I believe the Half-Giants are the most long-lived and resilient of the species, aren't they?)

--Dwarf--
10% Penalty to learning of magic skills, except when using Fist of stone enchantments, if possible.
6% Bonus to Melee effectiveness.
8% Resistance to Melee and Nature Magic.
5% Penalty to movement speed. (Stubby legs.)
5% Bonus to Health gain each level.
8% Penalty to ranged resistance.

--General Hero Bonus--
As the Hero of the game, having different relationships with different people, there should be some sort of rewards/penalties for it all. Here's what I'm thinking.
20% Penalty to bartering skills in Eirulan until released from being a prisoner AND being cured of the plague. Race bonus as a Dryad/Elf still applies no matter what.
10% Penalty to bartering skills in Kalrathia until Morden are driven out, where there shall then be a 10% bonus to bartering skills after they're driven out.
20% Penalty to bartering skills in Dryad Outpost until Broken World is comepleted.
10% Bonus to bartering skills with Tomas the Merchant in Broken World upon completing his quest.
10% Bonus to bartering skills in Aman'lu once all quests/sidequests have been completed there in Broken World.
15% Bonus to bartering skills in Glorydeep cave upon arrival, and additional 5% upon completion of Broken World.
5% Bonus to Hero's effectiveness with all weapons/skills/spells/health/magic/regen/resistances for every party member in party who's side-quest has been completed. (IF POSSIBLE, have it lessen to 3% but still apply during Broken World. Or, if not possible, have it still apply so long as it's the same version of the party member straight from DS2.)

That's all I can think of right now. I think they're some pretty good ideas, what do you folk'll think?

I think all of this is really nice, seems balanced and legit. We could have a try to see how it fits in the game. We must look at the trading skill how to implement it especially.

I was thinking to have something close to the player like a tree or something because if it's only written in the creation menu it could forgotten. Like having a point that you can spend to make a little decision. I like decisions in game. I really dislike the shops and drop of dungeon siege 2 because playing around with different party I finish by having the same equipment on the character same type. I would some to have the same difficulty that there were in dungeon siege 1 and the excitement when finding a new item.

I need to chime in to say that I don't like the idea of the choice of race (or gender) making any difference. One of the big differentiating features of DS was that it broke from the D&D convention of pre-rolled classes, and race differences just take you back to that. All characters should start equal, and make their own choices for development during game play.

The rest of the suggestions are well-balanced, but that one is too fundamental.

1: I don't know about the experience bonuses: As a mechanic, it has always reduced the amount of viable choices for playing RPGs, dating back to OD&D, although that game had the decency to at least try to stop you from screwing up with the race, but had the same effect with "primary statistics". And unlike D&D, DS2 has no DM to dampen these quirks in the rules. I'd drop this idea.

2: Bartering skills a'la elder scrolls. Now, humans get some of the worst deals: Dryads get better trade in Eirulan (where money matters the most) and Dryad Outpost, and Elves in Aman'Lu (before & after), leaving humans with Kalrathia and the least bonus of them all in their hometown.

3: Resists: Elves get the best deal: 10% Fire, Ice, Lightning, Death and Non-elemental (bosses love this type) with no downsides. that's a 50% resistance bonuses (when added together) equivalent. Humans get 15-18%(5+5+5+8-[5..8]), then Dwarfs get a 16% everything included, Half-giants are the next with 13% (although this is amongst physical damage types), and dryads are hit the worst with a 3% penalty.

4: the other:

*Humans and their unspent skill points: If this means nobody else gets pre-allocated skills, humans might be good enough to be worth choosing, otherwise they'll be too average to be worth taking.

*Dryads and their supposed cumulative bonuses. Ugh. If it's too much, dryad parties become overpowered. If too little, dryad characters become too weak to be taken as an addition to the party, only a token choice when doing an "as many dryads as possible" playthrough.

I won't go into the rest because frankly, this is bad enough without them, but I'd like to point that the movement speed penalties are bad for melee characters.

Now for the rankings of the races based on these traits:

#1: Elves: The best resistances in the game, bonus to ranged and combat magic learning and damage, and no drawbacks.

#2: Humans: Even though they have no bonuses to any skill, putting their starting skill points to the right places can get them reach various breakpoints and powers faster than other races.

#3: Half-giants: Though you'll be waiting for them to catch your party, they will be, level for level, the strongest 2-handed fighters in the game with their damage and experience bonuses, (and receive the dubious honor of spamming war cry at bosses.) and they actually start with physical resistances

#4: Dwarfs: The other race to get physical resistance, but unlike the half-giants, they get a penalty to ranged resistance. They also make terrible mages, are slow, and don't get any experience bonus to make up for it. Skip them.

#5: Dryads: Easily the worst race in the game, most of their resists start in the negative, they are weak to melee, but get bonuses to archery and nature magic experience gain. Unlike elves, they don't get a damage bonus with it.

I wrote that post pretty quickly as a framework to start from, of course these things aren't set in stone.

I realize I made the Dryads seem too frail and forgot to mention the bonus to Archery and Nature magic. The Dwarves I suppose I didn't put as much thought into as I should have, because I've never played a Dwarf in any game that allows you too, because I don't enjoy playing as short races.
I guess that one was a little subconsciously biased, haha.
I also forgot to mention the skill point bonuses for the other races as well. I did have those ideas, but looking back, they too seemed a little... unfair.

Even before I read these posts, I was thinking of revisions to the list the whole time. Making Dryads more resistant to most types of magic damage, except Fire and Death, seemed like a good way to supplement their shortcomings and vulnerability to Melee. But then I was also thinking- looking at the Siege on Greilyn Beach and Eirulan and The Dryad Outpost, the Dryads actually have a lot of melee soldiers. Which means that by lore standards, not game-balance standards, they are more physically capable than I gave them credit for. I love Dryads, I actually love the way they're portrayed in DS2 the most of all, so one would figure I'd have a better grasp on it, huh?

One specific point was the Racial Bias. I notice some general distaste for that, and I understand it. Personally I embrace Racial Bias in a videogame because it adds diversity not just to the choice of player character, but the NPC's which don't have terribly large amounts of character in-game. Their dialogue is good, but there's just too little of it. I prefer Gritty Realism in my games, and that usually means there are real-world issues like that. It also sort of adds a problem, a challenge to overcome or embrace. Shop prices are the only way I can think to implement them in DS2 because, so far, there aren't too many other methods of doing so.
That said, I still think the buffs/penalties that are specific to the HERO character (and his buddies) would probably override the racial bias. Because even if you're a Dryad, if you're a traitor (Which by Lore standards is supposedly genetically impossible, or something, I forget), then people are bound to like you just as little as if you were an Elf. So maybe the Racial Bias should be taken out, but I think it'd be a nice optional plugin nonetheless. I know I, personally, would like it in my game.
The Hero Bonus/Penalties with the world around him (Pretty much just bartering) would apply to the whole party, too, whatever the race.
If the Hero was a Dryad, she could still get the bonus for having Loyal Party Members in the group. Which may sound familiar, if you've played Mass Effect, that's where that came from. If you do a side-mission in ME2 for your party member, they become loyal and give them a better chance at surviving in the preceding missions. So I figure if you make your party member 'loyal' in DS2, they could get passive bonuses.

Humans having the weakest of the Trading Bonus is because of their general adaptive skill, which I suppose now that I say it out loud, sounds pretty restrictive.
"You can train in any skill you want. But it'll cost you."
Yeah, I see what you mean now, Boro. Lmao.
I think most of the changes I made like that, if they weren't balanced, were still Lore-Friendly. Which is what I was more focused on.
Here I'll re-write the list, with both Lore and Balance better taken into account. There will still be some influence based on what that race is generally best at doing, but not enough for it to be punishing. At least for more than the beginning of the game. So any Skill EXP Gain buffs between the races will be dramatically lessened in this list, so that they still matter, but not by that much. I want them to be significantly different from one another, but have each one be more viable. Which means having particular improvements to Dryads and Dwarves.
I will still include the Racial Bias, for those of you who were on board with that idea.
I'll also include HardLess' idea of having a new skill Tree for general choices in play. It will be at the bottom of the list. All Racial Bias and Hero Bonuses/Penalties stack. Racial Bias will always be at the bottom of the sub-list for each race, separated.
Equal but separate.
Get it? Hurr hurr.

--Human--
3% Bonus to the learning of all skills.

5% Physical resistance buff.
5% Resistance to fire.
(Again, from Kalrathia.)
2% Health Regen.
(Looking into the lore of MANY interpretations of humans, they're quite often Hardy and resilient.
2% Magic Regen.
(Not particularly fluent in magic, humans, but certainly capable of it, right?)
+2 Unspent Skill Points.

4% Price Penalty in Eirulan. 10% Price Bonus in Kalrathia.

--Elf--
3% Bonus to the learning of Archery and Combat Magic.
Scaling bonus in Archery/Combat Magic damage with character level.
3% Resistance to Fire and Shock Damage.
(Not ALL combat magic. There is no specific reason for this parameter to exist, merely because they should have SOME resistance to combat magic.)
6% Penalty to Melee Resistance.
(Elves are good Melee Fighters too, but they need some shortcomings and I'm not sure what fits for them. Help?)
4% Magic Regen.
2%Bonus to Mana each level.
Slight increase to cast speed.
+1 skill point in Devastation and Critical Shot.

I totally agree with you, but in my mind the idea was to add a bit more lore to the creation. In Elder Scrolls I usually choose my character just to be happy with his look, and I do care a bit to whatever bonus he has but a bit. But I think it adds a lot to the game. Dungeon Siege have a nice lore but it's really hard to be interested in due to the way it's spread. There are little conversation with people to know more about a place and it's story. This idea wasn't to create a link between race and classes.

Adding a bit more of it to the game won't hurt. This is really personal.

Hi guys,

I'm currently working in the backpack idea, and I'm having trouble as expect :).My main issue is to make a link between a Gridbox to an Inventory. I have created a quick ui support for the backpack with a gridbox. Then I have added the backpack from Dungeon Siege 1, and created a new component for it. I'm trying to recreate the link which is hard-coded between the backpack's inventory and the UI's Gridbox.

I post with this my res, all the code has been written for tests purpose. For the moment the backpack can be used but of course only during a single game session but there are some buggy things with the gridbox which doesn't update itself proprely.

If anyone have the courage to look at it and to try something I'll be glad. I hope I'm missing something big but I'm pretty sure that we will have to create something a bit barbarous to make it work a bit like it was in the original game. Please be careful with this res, it's in prealpha and I really recommand any user "do not save your character". The backpack can be bought at the armorer in Kalrathia only.

Thanks in advance, I'm a bit out of ideas tonight

HardLess.

Here is the link : http://www.mediafire.com/download/or77bn7p1orcb9o/BackPack_PreAlpha0a.ds2res

Hi Hardless,
I downloaded the BackPack Mod and noticed a few things.
I could find the backpack in Kalrathia playing a standard game of DS2 and discovered several things of interest.
1. When the inventory is open the character with the backpack can do nothing else until the inventory screen is closed. In a regular game without the backpack mod a character can move about, attack and other normal things with inventory screen open.
2. When you put something in the backpack, I used a helm, then remove it to put it on the character a shadow copy remains in the backpack, which you can put in regular inventory, in essence getting a second copy, now because of what I noted in comment 1 you can not pass that item to another character or sell it.
3. I see that there is no button yet to close the backpack, I think if that where implemented the problems with comments 1 and 2 would go away.
4. Since I was using a throw away character (broken world premade) I did a save just to see if the backpack would return and you are correct, you do loose the backpack and whatever was in its inventory, plus if you did what I did in comment 2 you also loose the equipped item, in this case a helm.
5. It does not work in Adepts, but I would expect that, because Adepts has a much higher priority than the backpack mod. Once the bugs with the backpack are worked out, I will just add it to Adepts, so no worry about doing a special mod for adepts.
6. OF SPECIAL NOTE - If the player drops the backpack and moves a distance away from the backpack (in Kalrathia from the Armorer to the Magic Vendor) the character still has the backpack screen displayed in their inventory even when the backpack does not show in their main inventory screen.

Now in DS1 the backpacks where sold by the magic vendor and not the armor salesperson. I would think just to maintain continuity I would have the magic vendors sell the backpack, but that is just my thought.
You know that even if you can not make the mod work you could always do an armor ornament like the quiver, and have a backpack that characters could wear. Not sure if it could be added to this mod so that when someone purchased a backpack they would be wearing it.

I will have to look at your mod now and see if I can spot anything obvious, I most likely will see nothing since I mostly work with armor and not things like this.

I looked for missing punctuation and could not find any missing or to many { } ; etc. and could find nothing out of place. I am just wondering if some of the issues might be related to one of the following.
1. The item does not fit any of the Pcontent categories. Might it need a special lookup table like the ones for armor and weapons imported from DS1?
2. could there be some additional that is required. This mod is similar to your Ancient Gifts Mod, which is adding screens in a similar fashion.

I never had to add or modify any of these things when I create a weapon or armor so I am just guessing.

Hope my comments are of some use.

nice work, A for effort! now a few questions, the original loa version uses a "Component" called backpack, it uses a skrit called job_get... now with that said, this ds2 version has category_name = "backpack"; where is this category in the game at? also it uses is_pack_only = true; according to Components - [is_pack_only] { type = bool; default = false; doc = "Set to true if this object cannot equip anything"; and then the original had [is_backpack] { type = bool; default = false; doc = "Is this a backpack?"; }

anyways that's all the questions I have for now, nice work with the ui!

1. This bug is because of me. I can correct this but it's a little problem. It's due to the window I added which is to big and blocking the cursor. I just need to resize the window.
2. This one is due to the lack of update of the gridbox. I don't really know how to update it.
3. A close button is quick to do I'll work on this.
4. This problem is the major one.
6. I did it for test purpose. Don't worry.

Thanks, is_pack_only is set to true because the backpack does not have a body.
Is_backpack does not exist in dungeon siege 2.
I will check the job_get..

Update:
If I well understand the job_get.skrit, it has been redone in loa in order to place an object in the backpack if there is no place in the inventory. But it can helps thanks

Thanks guys :).

HardLess.

@HardLess: Some backpack related things seems to be hard-coded in DS1. Not sure if it's possible to provide a similar support with the means we have in DS2...

bare_elf also pointed on the saving problems across sessions. A strong focus on this matter wouldn't be a bad idea!?

I have been able to save the content of the backpack. I just have to add it back to the backpack. A little thing occurring a problem

But now the real problem is linking the content of the backpack to the gridbox.

I really have to figure this out it's creating a lot of buggy things.

If anyone knows about the GridItem class in the game that would be great.

When ever you get an update PM a link to me so that I can continue to test it,play with it. I will see what I can find about the gridbox issue.

Hi guys,

So I have worked a lot on the backpack. The skrit which save the content of the backpack works nicely. So the problem now is how to render the content of the backpack in the gridbox. I'll still look at this but the lack of functions make it really hard. I don't really know if it could be done like I wanted.

I'll try to make it in another way, I'm pretty sure this way will work but it's can create some issues. I'll take a look at this as soon as possible.

If anyone want to have the backpack save skrit I'll clean it and post it. Any help will be welcome, especially about this GridItem class in the game which seems completely empty.

I have also tried to work around the stash of the game but to open the stash of the party the backpack needs to be a container. But a container can't be really used as a backpack because it's impossible to get it from the ground. If someone as an idea about how to counter this the stash can be used (perhaps).

I'll also try (if possible) to inject the DS1:LOA backpack functions into DS2 but I think that this couldn't work.

Anyway there are more idea posted in these thread so it could be cool to add something that add been listed.
The specials spellbooks of LOA can be added easily into DS2 it will be a hard work though.

See you,

HardLess.

_ Inventory mod (a button or a shop where you can enlarge your inventory)
Personally I always thought the inventory system was overly large in DS2 with the stash and such. Part of the enjoyment of the game for me is selecting the proper equipment for a character whatever their skill and keeping that until something better is found. I rarely use the character inventory for more than health and mana potions and necessary quest items. Once a quest item like the heirloom sword and the Hak'u Dagger has served its purpose I dump it or sell it. If I find a really good weapon or armor I will take it to the stash if it is still to powerful for my party to use.
There is already a mod called Uberstash by Omicrom Which allows the stash to hold 255 items.

_Racial skill mod (a little skill tree by race)
Again I think the minimal skill differences between the races given at the start of the game are enough. I like to be able to make whatever race whatever I want and not be limited for example by a skill a specific race can not acquire.

_ Weapon's rune mod (a bit like enchanting but you can get rid of the rune to put it on another weapon)
A weapon rune mod (enchantments that can be moved from weapon to weapon might be very useful) Maybe you can add a dis-enchanter to the game like the people who can remove a specific skill Take the weapon or Armor to the local Dis-enchanter and tell them please remove the runes from this weapon so I can use it elsewhere. I would think the dis-enchantment should cost more than the enchantment as it would for sure require more powerful magic.

_ Better effects mod (just an idea to create more realistic effects)
Better effects for weapons and spells would always be nice

_ HD textures (enhancing the textures of the game to add some realism)
Enhancing the textures of the game would be nice. However the amount of work required to create the textures might take longer than anyone would be willing to expend. I enhanced some of the armor textures by making them larger and that caused several things that did not look right. So I started from scratch and totally redrew the armor using all the skill I have. It took about a week to redo the textures just for the female characters. The improvement in the game was not really worth the effort so I never did the male versions.

_ Terrain rework (like adding grass on the terrain to a better look)
A terrain rework, good luck with that not only would it take a great amount of time most likely longer than the game has been on the market. It would also massively increase the size of the game. At least double if not triple the current size.

_ Backpack mod (like it was in DS1:LOA)
Great Idea if you can make it work.

_ Enchanted spellbooks (like it was in DS1:LOA)
Sure why not I liked those

_ Total shop rework (making much more harder to find anything (spells, armor weapons) like in DS1:LOA)
You could but I never really saw much diference between the 4 versions of the game. Maybe because I am hunting some of my own weapons and armor

_ New race (skeleton, gargoyle [import it from DS1:LOA ??])
There are several races that where from DSLoA that where recreated for DS2. iryan made the utraeans playable others are there and should be able to be made playable also.

_ Piercing damage, move speed, range modifiers
There exists PartyRunSpeed by Volkan
Piercing damage and range mods are also out there but not on this site.

Hi guys,

I made a first version of the DS1 spellbooks mod. It works exaclty has it was working in LOA I just added the death spells to the list of modifiers.

If anybody have any issues with the mod please report it.

This version is for DS2 only it won't work with Broken World. I'll post a broken world version later when I'v got some feed back on the mod.

Of course you can make any subjection about adding some new features to the original LOA spellbooks.

Here is the link to the V1.0 for DS2 only: http://www.mediafire.com/download/duc8bumobv3oicc/DS1_Spellbooks_v1.0.ds2res

As the list shows it, I have made subjection about Skill Table Overhaul and a Terrain rework.

This is pretty much what those could look like:

Skill Table Overhaul:

Terrain rework:

These are just ideas I don't know if it's possible to do it.

See you,

HardLess.

Maybe you could make the regular grass models "fatter" and then retexture the bitmaps to get the effect? Or just resize the existing templates, a tactic GPG commonly uses for the trees to get a more varied look.

Importing models into the game is possible but you need GMax to do it so you can export them in the DS1 format. Static objects are a lot easier than equip-able items and actors.

Skill table looks good, grass is a little too tall for some of the small monsters but the art is better quality 100%

The grass is very tall in DS2, there's just not very much of it.

I've retextured the taller grasses as compared to the originals which only come in faded dry grass textures. You can see they already come up to the character's waist. I only tried these larger grass models as the smaller models are very tedious placing in a region.

This helps to place grass within seconds, nonetheless to create a dense and good looking grass cover across an entire map with this procedure may really turn out as tedious indeed.

Since i didn't trust may own grass planting abilities, I have created a little grass generator, just to get a visual idea how larger amounts of different grass would look like:

Actually the 3 images above show the same amount of planted grass. So a lot of grass seems to look quite impressive for a shorter camera distance, zoomed out however many grass objects won't be visual/rendered anymore with plain sight on the ground again.
And perfromance impact is quite remarkable, it may be though that the loss would be smaller with grass directly placed in SE2.

But basically I don't think generator-spawned grass is a the best appoach, it's probably just some more flexible to try out things, how the different grass types look like, how much grass objects are needed, which scale is needed, etc..
For those still interested, there's a corresponding grass mod (15kb) for the Diabloish Map for Beta 2 e(!).