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Dungeon Siege Heaven Closing Down

Sharkull's picture
Submitted by Sharkull on Sun, 2007-07-15 19:03

Sad news for the DS community:

Quote:
Since about a year ago we have been looking for someone to take over leadership of this site. ...

Unfortunately we didn't find anyone. Therefor, we are now archiving the site. By archiving I don't mean we will delete all files from the Internet forever. No, much of the content here at DSH is still useful both for new and existing players, and we still get a fairly high amount of visitors despite our rare updates. What we are doing though, is to remove any interactive elements of the site so as to remove and needs of moderation or content creation.


Read the full annoucement on the main DSH news page, or in the DSH forums.

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Submitted by KillerGremal on Sun, 2007-07-15 20:13

Damn, loosing resp. paralyzing DSH is really a sad KO statement of DS2... Sad

Honestly i have lost a bit the trust in the administration of DSH rarly checking the site, eg. the download section - on one hand everybody was able to upload a mod (incl. rather 'green' people learning to use the RTC just 5 minutes ago) on the other hand it didn't seem any officials would ever test/play the transfered mods (as explained) and i really have feared seeing there soon malicious and totally stupid cheat mods making me leaving the site.
Well, now they evidentally have found quite a cruel 'solution' for this (partial) issue...

.

It's deplorable that 'DS2 kills community sites' resp. that GPG/Microsoft/2kGames wasn't able to provide a game spreading a longer lasting passion. Sad
If i remember the potential for this game title and all the expections 2-3 years ago... - all wasted!?
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Sharkull's picture
Submitted by Sharkull on Sun, 2007-07-15 23:37

CRC and (patch) 2.2

Without these things I'm sure the community would be much larger than it is (and finding an admin to take over DSH would be easier). Thinking about Siege-Mods reminds me of what could have otherwise been possible...
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Giovanna_del_Arco's picture
Submitted by Giovanna_del_Arco on Mon, 2007-07-16 09:32

Well, I'm still playing DS2 and BW, almost exclusively with Succubus modlet (but there aren't a lot of other options, after all, and using more than one mod at a time becomes problematic due to inherent limitations in the game, as well as in the Succubus modlet conflicting with others). I do like the games, but it really would have been preferable if we could have modded them as easily as we could mod DS1 and LoA.

I'm tempted to say I prefer DS1 and LoA, but I'm not sure that would really be true. The DS1/LoA games and the DS2/BW games each have their pros and cons. They are almost totally different from one another, and perhaps that is the main thing that has some of us annoyed with DS2/BW. There are certainly more options for players in DS1/LoA, not least because of the many mods, siegelets, additional maps, etc, and that is a plus that we don't have in DS2/BW, but there are other features of DS2/BW that we didn't have in DS1/LoA that are also nice (and the graphics are undeniably superior).

I do wish that Chris Taylor and GPG would bring out a DS3 that is improved based in part on what they learned from the lesser interest in DS2, and comments from longtime players and modders on sites like this. That would breathe new life into the Dungeon Siege franchise.

~~~
Giovanna
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Balderstrom's picture
Submitted by Balderstrom on Thu, 2007-07-19 10:15

I wish they had of made DS1 maps compatible w/ the DS2 binaries...out of the box. I really don't see how that would of been that difficult.

It would have vastly increased the value of the overall series.

Instead of - as you've mentioned - they are like completely separate games: done by different development teams / production values et al.

I too think I prefer DS1, I can't quite put my finger on the specifics, but perhaps DS2 has a "console" platformer feel to it - that is definitely not present in the DS1 games.
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Submitted by KillerGremal on Fri, 2007-07-20 01:29

Balderstrom wrote:
I wish they had of made DS1 maps compatible w/ the DS2 binaries...out of the box. I really don't see how that would of been that difficult.
...

Really could help to maintain people at DS2 and surly would cause more online discussions resp. forum traffic, however making a DS1 map playble for DS2 must be be harder than it seems.
==> http://garage.gaspowered.com/?q=node/2680

 
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volkan's picture
Submitted by volkan on Fri, 2007-07-20 08:18

Here is the short explanation by Elys:

Elys wrote:
Topic related to DS1 to DS2 map conversion

http://garage.gaspowered.com/?q=node/2680

Extract from it, an old post I made about my conversion of Utraean Peninsula for DS2

Quote:

The "Cannot find mesh" crash bug is due that DS2 does not use the same method and gas files to store node mesh indexes.

In DS1 these infos are stored globally in the Terrain.dsres while in DS2 they are stored locally in the DS2MAP inside each region index\node_mesh_index.gas.

The syntax is not the same either.

This means lot of manual tedious work to check every nodes.gas in DS1 region and create the appropriate line in node_mesh_index for each mesh id who need it, by find the corresponding info in DS Terrain.dsres.

Hopefully, when I figured that out, I made a little program to automatically do that job for me

You can download it here: http://karamail.nerim.net/elys/download/DS1toDS2nc_v2.rar

Once launched it will autogenerate all the required node_mesh_index.gas

However keep in mind, this is a simple basic tool with no nice GUI or fancy interface. I'm just release it if that can eventually help someone. I will not support it. I included basic instructions in the RAR readme of how to use it.

For the rest of the conversion, just compare a DS1 with a DS2 map, you will see what new files are present in DS2 or not, and also by comparing inside the files, what has changed or not.

You need to import all the terrain meshes from DS1 (not the textures since they are already included in DS2 resources)

Until now it's easy and fast (once you have solved the mesh crash bug above) and will allow you to load already the map in DS2 map editor.

Then you will have also to import all the objects/templates/skrits/etc from DS1 not present in DS2 resources. Many resources are already present, that's why you will get the DUPLICATE error messages if you import all the DS1 stuff.

- That's about almost as far as I got with my own conversion. I could load the UP in DS2 and play it, as well as loading it the DS2 editor.

Once you've reach that state. You will need to convert conversation data from DS1 syntax to DS2 syntax (not hard).

You will to have to some AI job, because if you play, you will notice the monsters will not attack you. Some skrit not compatible with DS2 will have to be rewritten.

The most work will come from converting all the SIEGEFX to FLICKFX since DS2 does not support SIEGEFX anymore. And that is really the big work, since SIEGEFX is used by monsters, by spells, by map generators (only few for this one), skrits etc...

Another approach if you don't want to convert all the monster SIEGEFX, is to replace DS1 monsters with DS2 monsters.

I have not mentionated all because I have no notes of what I have done, have stopped working on that, and I'm too lazy to enter into whole details now

Anyway have fun, and good luck.

If you have clear questions, fire them out, I will try to answer at least until February when I will be away for a while after.

And that's only the big part, I did not give out details but they can be figured out by comparing DS1 and DS2 maps.

She took the "lost island" from UP and made that into the "Pineapples Island" for DS2/BW Succubus.
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Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 2007-07-20 10:18

Yes, difficult for US after the fact, but if the binary had been made compatible out of the box - it could have easily run new or old style maps.

All the maps are - are Nodes that indicate what should happen when players get "near"
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Submitted by KillerGremal on Fri, 2007-07-20 10:21

Sadly Elys never has released a 'loadable nodes-only' version of her map import tests.
Of course i won't complain about her contribution for DS2 - i mean what would the 'modding scene' do without All*Saves!? Wink

However even any imperfect UP map for DS2 would cause a lot of attention, many young modders/mappers seem to have a lot of time (but maybe not much patience...) and would like to play with it to get it working or just to re-populate it with DS2 objects in their own style - perhaps only by very little progresses but it would surly animate people to discuss more in forums.
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Sharkull's picture
Submitted by Sharkull on Mon, 2007-07-23 15:16

Lock down complete. The DSH forums are read-only now and their download section closed. Sad
http://ds.heavengames.com/

Quote:
So Long, and Thanks for the Mule

Posted by David @ 6:29 PM

The archival process is now complete. All our information is, as promised, still there if you need help with any part of the game. Our forums are now read-only however, and our downloads section is closed.

If you still wish to continue discussing the game with others, you have a few options. You can visit one of the Dungeon Siege sites that are still open, you can start a topic in HeavenGames' forum for general Gaming Discussion, or, if you are a long-time visitor of our site, our community forum is still alive in this thread over at Supreme Commander Heaven.

I want to thank everyone else who has worked on this site, and made it to what it became. Farmgirl, Zen, Aetius, Dire_Wolf, Sunshine, shelper, and MentalMaze. Thank you.

Also a big thank you to all our visitors throughout the years. Staff members are important, but visitors are even more so. Thank you for all your support, which let this site be a part of the Dungeon Siege community for so long.

*packs mule*
I'm off!

-David
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