Greetings from an Old Friend
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| Submitted by LoneKnight on Mon, 2012-05-21 21:04 | ||
Hello, my old friends. It has been years since I was last here, though in that time I occasionally visited to see what those who are left were up to. I recently have begun playing Legends of Aranna again, though my OS didn't want to let me do that easily. Just playing made me want to get back into the swing of things, to get involved again back here. I have been compemplating working on a small project. Though, I cannot make up my mind - I have heard over the years following DS2's release that there were a lot of difficulties in creating maps and modding in general. I've heard that DSLOA is generally way more streamlined and stable, and I am more experienced in working with it. The downside is, DSLOA is getting old, and DS2 seems to have some better capabilities, though it may negate that with its supposed shortcomings. So, my question is - Which game would be best to mod in? DS1 or DS2? Thanks, and cheers mates. - Lone Knight forums: |
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Good to hear from you again, LoneKnight.
I can offer no insight as to which is easier to map, but DS2 has the better engine and graphics for my tastes.
It has been a very long time indeed, I can offer the following there are things in modding DS2 that are in fact better than when working with DS1 and the other is true as well there are things better in DS1 than in DS2 such as modding armor. Currently several people are working on porting several DS1 maps into the DS2 Environment and we can for sure use the help. Check out the following treads.
http://www.siegetheday.org/?q=node/1607
http://www.siegetheday.org/?q=node/1330
Happy to have you back home again.
Lili
From someone who has also been away a long time as well, welcome back.
I agree with PhoeniX that while I can't advise in what to work with, DS2 has better capabilities and engine than DS1. Some things are easier to do and others are harder.
Howdy Lone Knight.
:wavey:
It's more difficult, but you can do a lot more with your maps. The only problem is that it's more time consuming. I'm pretty sure that's the last update. The editor looks like the one we beta tested to be honest. I talked to one of the GPG LDs about the tuning editor. It seemed broken to me, but the person was using their in house editor. If anyone got that to work, let me know.
The tuning editor works but you have to manually set up a couple of files in the map first. These can be copied from the official DS2 map so it's no big issue. I followed the instructions on DS2 Siege University and it worked but I ended up abandoning the concept due to the ridiculous amount of time it takes (takes over a hour to generate the cubes for a single region) and finding out that the end results didn't make that much of an impact to justify the amount of time spent on it.
For small maps and regions, using the tuning system would probably be worthwhile. I know Darkelf has made some converted DS2 maps using the tuning system which you can download from Siegetheday under DS2 maps and siegelets.
I only was able to get it to work on accident. I had set up all the files for it. My problem was getting the blocks to generate in the right spots. It seems I had trouble with placement on the map. That was many years ago, hehe. I'll have to give it another whirl. I have it working on one of my old maps.
Edit: Did they get rid of the DS2 Siege University?
You would seem to be correct. The link I use doesn't work and all references on the GPG site to Dungeon Siege Modding or FAQs no longer work. I guess it's to be expected as they no longer have any stake in the series and thus no incentive to support modding for a product they no longer make money from.
It's a shame as I used it a lot and was only there about 2-3 weeks ago. I wonder if there's a compiliation download of DS2 siege university as there was for DS1. A lot of great resources lost.
If you need any help with the tuning system just let me know and I'll try to help as much as I can.
Oh no! I'll try to contact them if nobody has a compilation. I never found an RPG as moddable as the DS series. I'm surprised they did that to be honest. I think if DS II was more popular we would see extraordinary mods and total conversions. My main concern is with flick. I've forgotten a lot of info over the years!
Edit: I appreciate your offer for help. I might need it. I have a map and mod I've been thinking about for awhile.
Edit again: It's archived in the Wayback Machine
. http://web.archive.org/web/20080613131007/http://garage.gaspowered.com/?q=siegeu2
I was looking about and found a compilation of Siege University, then I thought the Wayback Machine and found siege university 2 and was rushing back here to post the link. Happy you found it also.
Just so we have it I uploaded the compilation for the DS1 Siege University, you can find it in the DS1 Tools Download Area.
I will see what I can do about hunting down a Compilation of DS2 Siege University, just in case the Wayback Machine goes way back like things tend to do on the Internet.
The only problem is missing images. I noticed my tutorial on Siege The Day has also lost its images. I had plans to compile the Siege University II into a help file, but I never got around to it
. I found a way allowing users to open the missing help file within the DS II editor itself, and I thought it would be cool. At least vital information is not lost 
.
Edit: I don't think there is a compiled DS2 University. I really wish I did it now, lol.
I will ask about on a few sites in Germany, Russia, Japan and Korea that I have recently found and see what I can find. Might have to translate it to English but that can be done as well.
That's possible. All we need are the images though. It can just be saved with the Wayback Machine. I think the image links to my tutorial were lost during a transition at Siege The Day.
I found the images for it in Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LAl0vxdmqs8J:www.siegetheday.org/%3Fq%3Dnode/122+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Edit: I must have had them at Imageshack to save on bandwidth. They are surprisingly still there.
Edit again: I seem to have put my other tutorial from Siege University II on Siegenetwork, lol. A few of the images are no longer hosted on Imageshack though
. I'll have to check my old PC. I relied heavily on images for instruction.
...I'm going to ask in GPG's forum what happened to the 'garage'.
Here's a quick tutorial for how to enable the DS2 tuning system in a map; http://www.siegetheday.org/~iryan/files/tuning.zip (5.3 mb).
Makes much more sense if you read the Siege University tutorial as well, thanks for finding that link.
The zip includes a doc and web version and a simple test map that was constructed using the steps in the tutorial. There's numerous parameters that can be used to fine tune the system that has little or no documentation unfortunately. I mainly threw it together so there's some pics to highlight each important step. Feel free to use them as a base for a proper tutorial.
Also another useful tool for randomizing the monster population in a map is KillerGremal's monster level adjust mod http://ds2fun.ds.funpic.de/getfile.php?redict=108&type=.ds2res. The latest version not only automatically adjusts the monster levels to your party's level but has a couple of other useful settings. One can adjust the monster respawn rate and the other can adjust the number of monsters generated on the map based on the number of party members you have, so you could have a completely different experience playing a map with a single chracter to playing it with 3 or 4 and a full party of six could be completely different again.
That's really cool. Thanks for the tutorial and KillerGremal's monster level adjust mod. That might give me inspiration for a mod I want to make. I can't remember, but do you recall if GPG utilized triggers to spawn monsters? I was thinking it would be interesting to place triggers that spawn monsters to surprise players. It would be even more interesting if you could randomize the monster that spawn from the triggers. That's something I want to work on after I get nodes laid down for a region. I'd look into right now, but I'm busy for a few days, hehe. It sounds easy to do
.
Triggers can be used to spawn monsters through generators and are used extensively in some of the regions of the Utraean Peninsula (castle region especially) and Yesterhaven (Lich Lord's dungeon). Kingdom of Ehb also uses them at certain points as well. DS2 also uses them sometimes for certain encounters like the leaping haku and boggrots.
Randomizing them should also be possible but isn't natively supported in GPG's triggers but Killergremal may have something in his content mod that could be used. There may also be flick commands that could do the same thing.
Since mentioned here, it seems the Siege University is coming back!
That is good news thanks for passing it on