[1.09b] Matriarch Metteyya (Sorc) [Level 72 | Lod | Retired]

@galaxyhaxz Feel free to post or discuss it in the Tamoe Highland section when ready. I've definitely been trying to avoid the forum becoming a mod development location and redirecting things over to PhrozenKeep but it seems the keep has been dead for a while and people if anything have been discussing more about D2R... So it may be possible that we can open up a more dedicated mod development sub forum within the Tamoe Highland where people can talk more about ASM editing and all of that for the original Diablo II. This isn't a D2R forum so nothing about that should be posted here since it's off topic.
 
@galaxyhaxz Yeah I saw the mana pots thing too and was like ooooof, lol. And definitely ~ please go ahead and start that thread when you're ready so we can discuss! I think it'd be fun to have the community weigh in on specific concepts/ideas on a potential custom d2 mod/server based on 1.09 ^^. Oh, and that's dope regarding your Diablo 1 mod! I remember talking to you about it on Discord, and the sneak peeks you showed me were sick. I can't wait to see it released here!
 
@fearedbliss Lol thanks for being chill ~ we kinda took over this thread and went a wee bit off-topic xD. FORGIVE US, Metteyya! 🙏

We need some gameplay updates soon, btw! How's she coming along? 😁
 
@Manny Lol np. She doing good. She finished 2 yesterday and I uploaded her video to my channel but I haven't gotten a chance to post her updates yet. But I'll be working on A3+ today. So let's see how far I get lol.

Re: private server, we should be really careful about that from a legal perspective. I know people around the world are just hosting private servers and Blizzard hasn't gone after them but I really don't want to get involved in that direction. I had private servers in the past and they were fun and for me I even use to maintain the pvpgn pkgbuild back when I used Arch Linux in like 2011, and I hosted my own servers before. I actually was an admin back in the mid to late 2000s for the D2Relived 1.09 server (my name used to be Cows back then). I do enjoy hosting them and it would be nice to have one for the forum but I am also avoiding this whole legal thing.
 
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@Manny Lol np. She doing good. She finished 2 yesterday and I uploaded her video to my channel but I haven't gotten a chance to post her updates yet. But I'll be working on A3+ today. So let's see how far I get lol.
Lol word. :cool:

Re: private server, we should be really careful about that from a legal perspective. I know people around the world are just hosting private servers and Blizzard hasn't gone after them but I really don't want to get involved in that direction. I had private servers in the past and they were fun and for me I even use to maintain the pvpgn pkgbuild back when I used Arch Linux in like 2011, and I hosted my own servers before. I actually was an admin back in the mid to late 2000s for the D2Relived 1.09 server (my name used to be Cows back then). I do enjoy hosting them and it would be nice to have one for the forum but I am also avoiding this whole legal thing.

For sure. I definitely understand your concern regarding the legalities. I wouldn't want to be involved in (or our forum to be involved in) anything illegal either. Perhaps I am overlooking something, but I feel it MIGHT be safe because:
  • It would not be monetized and thus free to play
  • In order to play the end user would need a legitimate copy of D2/LOD & legit CD keys
  • There would be no claims made regarding any affiliation with Blizzard Entertainment or the original Battle.net​
I did not know about D2relived, but that sounds dope! I was thoroughly invested in WoW during the mid to late 2000s, lol. Pretty sure I stopped playing D2 in 2003.
 
@Manny This is the whole court case document that happened back in 2004 specifically regarding "bnetd" which essentially is pvpgn or software that emulates the battle.net protocol. Blizzard won that case even though people are not following the law by hosting private servers (to keep it simple). Another thing regarding monetization, even if we did do it, I wouldn't even be comfortable accepting donations even if it was for "the costs of maintaining the servers". I've seen other D2 mod folks accepting donations for "server maintenance" costs. Honestly that's a slippery slope. There is no proof that the money generated is exactly going just to cover server costs. They would really need to keep itemized records to make sure that the money is indeed going only for server costs and nothing else, and furthermore that any money that is left over and not spent (thus saved) is also not going to anything else. I think if we ended up hosting a private server, I would most likely distance myself from the forum. I really do think the best (and most legal) thing we can do is just use the built in LAN functionality. As I said earlier, we can MP in any version starting from 1.00 (which pvpgn/D2GS doesn't support), and nobody needs to worry about server costs or maintenance.
 
I think if we ended up hosting a private server, I would most likely distance myself from the forum.
crying.gif
 
lmaoooo ~ dang dood, you really know how to throw a cruel colossus blade into things. 😅 😅

Lol, It's all good. I definitely agree we should not accept or solicit donations. I had that in mind too. I mean I host this forum for free to the community, and my thoughts were that a private server would be an extension of that and thus also free. Also, I skimmed that first article, and wow, they had some big cojones to be doing that in 04' lol. My POV though is that Blizzard gives very few f's these days about Diablo II (especially the OG) -- they already succeeded in milking the modern fanbase with D2R, and now it seems to me they are well checked out again after the abomination that was/is D4. For example, Project Diablo 2 has almost 100K members in their Discord, 20K+ active players currently logged in, have been steady refining it and creating new ladder seasons, and all without any friction (at least that I'm aware of anyway). They also stream a lot of content over YouTube and Twitch, so it's not like Blizzard is not well aware of that project by now... 🤷‍♂️

At any rate, while nothing beats the stability, speed, and convenience of a dedicated server, the TCP/IP element is indeed the safest bet moving forward for us.

P.S. I'd still love to theorycraft on a new 1.09 mod/patch @galaxyhaxz 😄😁
 
Haha, that D2 Relived project was being called "D2R" 😅

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Check out those wild specs! 2 GB RAM! 🏎️🏎️
 
The entire Project D2 project's Multiplayer scene is hanging on by a thread. If Blizzard ever decides to move forward with a DMCA request, they would have to shut down the whole project (IANAL).. or at least they would need to re-prioritize the mod from being a Multiplayer mod to being a Single Player one (unless they are gonna also move in a LAN direction for multiplayer). I don't like building projects on slippery slopes. Even all of my work with Cactus in a way has to be done in a very fine line and with fair use in mind. That's why I never charged for anything and I only recently started accepting donations as more of a thank you for me bundling and working on Cactus (the version switcher) and the project overall. The DLLs I modified through reverse engineering efforts (Singling) are obviously freely available, and all of the DLLs and other required executables included for every isolated version of Diablo II are also 100% pristine extractions from the already available standalone patch installers (which we are also archiving and making available in case we ever get a request from Blizzard to remove all of the extracted versions from Cactus). Doing so would mean I would need to remove all of the platforms that the Cactus archive provides, but we can most likely write some automation tool that can automatically extract those sames files from every standalone patch installer, and create the Platforms from scratch. This would be an inconvenience but wouldn't prevent us from switching versions at the end of the day. The only difference the Platforms have is that I've included @galaxyhaxz's extracted Game.exe which the only thing that does is remove the CD protection, because modern machines don't have cd drives anymore and the old versions had a CD check... plus Blizzard removed the CD protection in Patch 1.12, so essentially it's a backport of 1.12 all the way back down to 1.00 (essentially it seems Blizzard unpacked the executables to remove the SecuROM protection, and @galaxyhaxz basically did the same unpacking of the executables as well).

I'm pretty sure I played in D2Relived and possibly was also an admin of it, but looking at the history there are people or names that I remember, but I don't remember us being that big, so it's very possible that I played in D2Relived, but when I started hosting the 1.09d private server, it was a fork of D2Relived (or inspired by it possibly, at least in that it was also 1.09d) called "D2Evolved", but I'm not sure, it's very fuzzy atm and I can't find my old forum signature. I do remember the individual that I started it with but we've lost contact for over 10 years. Back in the day I was called "Cows" for a brief period of time lol. "fearedbliss" has been the name I've used since at least 2013.
 
Word. I think when Blizzard starts really caring is when people start profiting off their work, which is understandable...

Regarding Cactus, I wonder how the original developers would respond or if they know about it. AFAIK they've all moved onto other companies & careers, but I'd like to believe they'd appreciate your work and those preservation efforts, and also the ability to play their creation on modern machines without much fuss. The only thing is, I still remember what Diablo II looked like on my old Dell CRT (a rebadged Sony Trinitron), and nothing compares to what the movement looked like/felt like on that thing. Even the colors looked "deeper" to me. My best LCD still doesn't compare. Nevermind that that thing was a small space heater, it was the bees knees and I still remember putting it out to pasture (my front yard) to get picked up. 😞 😥

Actually I wish I could say it was just the CRT, but I believe it was also the way the game was rendered in general. CNC-DDRAW does a fabulous job though and I'm really not complaining.

At any rate, I'm very happy to still be able to play the game after 25 years (the anniversary is coming up!), and while we can never turn back time (nor should we want to), it's nice to reminisce.

and lol @ Cows 🐮🤠
 
Yea I believe the original Blizzard North developers would be really happy what what I've made for sure. I actually spoke briefly to David Brevik privately back when I had a Discord account, and when I was hanging out in his It Lurks Below discord during the ILB beta period.

From an interview I saw with Brevik, I believe there was a section where they asked him how he felt about Diablo 1 being reversed engineer (@galaxyhaxz's Devilution project), and he was happy about it and thought it was cool.

As for the CRT, I believe that's why when you play some games in an emulator, you can use CRT type shaders, so you can get that old school monitor effect. cnc-ddraw doesn't support the more advanced shaders, but you could try experimenting with a CRT type shaders and switch the jinc2-sharper file to another one and see how you feel. On one of my handheld gaming devices (which runs Linux and some emulators for GB/GBC/GBA), I like using a dot filter or a zcalc filter I think it's called. It almost adds this subtle "grid dot like" filter on top of the game. Looks really nice. Although yesterday I reconsolidated my GB/GBC/GBA/DS gaming collection back into my NDS Lite. So I can play all four generations on one device. I need to use GameYob to emulate GB/GBC since the DS Lite only can natively run GBA games (Slot 2) and DS games (Slot 1). The GBA games run natively through my Slot 2 flash card, and the DS games run natively through slot 1. Due note all of these games I legally dumped since I own and possess all of the cartridges. I currently have 209 physical games in my collection, all digitally dumped with my ROM dumper.
 
My biggest fear isn't blizzard, it's finding enough people to play to make it worth the hassle :D
 
You only need 8 and it's 3 of us if anything... 5 slots left. We almost there!
 
I made steady progress over the past few days and finished A2 and A3. I also was able to get the HF hammer for future twinking. I'll need to take a quick detour and grind Meph p8-p64 with static field and prolly grind till 30+ honestly lol. I've done this grind before with my Barb and it wasn't that bad, and it should be way easier with my sorc due to static. It will also give me a nice opportunity to start farming meph drops and improving gear in the meantime. After that I'll go to CS. I tried to push CS yesterday and see if I could finish it but my char is way too squishy right now and my merc is the main killer, which he kills pretty quickly but he also dies pretty quickly as well. All good though, the future is bright for Metteyya.
 

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I finally am starting to pick up mfing speed killing since I finally reached lvl 24 and got blizzard. I'm able to use that as my finishing move at p1 after I static him. I was also able to stop using my merc for now and still kill meph since he is too squishy. I found 2 manald heals, some sigons pieces, and some other goodies.
 

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I was able to reach lvl 31 in Meph running p64! It's crazy, SF for lyfe lol... if this was Classic, OH MAN. I'm thinking Classic 1.09b Cows with a sorc must be insane... if people do cows till 99, imagine doing cows till 99 in Classic with a Sorc where SF actually does bring you down to 1 hp lol. I don't believe there is a difference in experience between Classic and LOD but I'm not 100% sure. Either way, after I got to level 30/31, I placed some points in Frozen Orb, and 1 in Cold Mastery. Then I went back to A4 and finished CS very quickly at that point, and I also was able to finish A5 easily as well. I probably killed Ancients (at level 32) in less than 25 seconds lol, they gave me 2 levels :D. Baal went down fast as well. Now that I'm back, I can power level myself in WSK Level 2 till level 50. I love WSK Level 2 because it's just Melee monsters, no casters, and I believe they all have low cold res, they are more fire based monsters. The only thing you always need to watch out for are the monsters that love to blow up. We all know that 1.09b fire enchanted monsters are deadly, and those A5 WSK exploders can easily kill you in 1 hit. Even with max fire res, they still hurt... on another related note, I can also power level myself with eldritch/shenk, they are pretty good with exp as well, very easy to get to, tight area so ez to SF them, and also they usually drop mana potions, so it's convenient for casters. The fun is just beginning.
 

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