Offline Diablo 2 Information Document

[Smips]

No problem jamesixgun, challenging ideas promotes progress

[ioupainmax]

This sounds really interesting, I was considering doing this myself for my own use but it was just so daunting a prospect that I quickly abandoned the idea.

I may be able to help with Excel/Word/PDFing/Graphics - if I can find the time and depending on whether or not my skills are at the level of others here (I am going to guess they aren't but I can try)!

[colony]

Sounds like a useful project, the problem may have is deciding where to stop, e.g. will you include detailed build guides?

The item generation tutorial and charms guide still look accurate, but the essences are obviously missing from the item guide. The charm guide could definitely do with being put into a table. I also checked the CtH and Damage Reduction guides, which are also still accurate. The Strategy Compendium is where I took most of the game mechanics information for the PvP Guide from and, as far as I'm aware, is still correct.

I noticed you don't have a a detailed ES guide, if you want one then try this (check the comments too, some useful information there): http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Energy_Shield

[Smips]

@ioupainmax: I currently feel that I lack some of the skills needed for this, but no reason not to learn as I go!

@Colony:
I don't plan on including build guides, at least not in this document. A good idea might be to have a separate document with build guides just to keep everything from getting too bloated. A few brief ones might make it in, like the ones in Nightfish's MF Oddballs guide just because they're included in the original FAQ and I don't plan on changing any of the original content(unless it's wrong of course). Where to stop would be a tough one... I guess as long as there is someone willing to work on it and more information to go in it, it will never stop :P

Great, thanks a lot for looking over those old guides. I had a hunch that not much would change after looking over the patch notes. I'll make a note along side the ones you checked shortly.

No reason not to throw that in, I'll add it to the list

Edit:
I guess just a small update too. I plan on starting things up next week. I think my process will be to put everything in Word documents, format it to look nice, put any tables into excel charts and paste them in, check for errors and maybe spelling and such. Once that's done, I'll be saving each FAQ/guide in Word form, then compiling everything into an indexed PDF. I'm not sure how to do the indexing on PDFs yet, but I'm sure I'll get it.

[colony]

@ioupainmax: I currently feel that I lack some of the skills needed for this, but no reason not to learn as I go!

@Colony:
I don't plan on including build guides, at least not in this document. A good idea might be to have a separate document with build guides just to keep everything from getting too bloated. A few brief ones might make it in, like the ones in Nightfish's MF Oddballs guide just because they're included in the original FAQ and I don't plan on changing any of the original content(unless it's wrong of course). Where to stop would be a tough one... I guess as long as there is someone willing to work on it and more information to go in it, it will never stop :P

If it's structured well then it doesn't have to be particularly bloated. Text adds very little to the total file size, you can get hundreds of pages in a relatively small file, the key is making it easy to find useful information. Due to this a single PDF probably won't be the best solution, you'll most likely need multiple files, ideally with one contents file that provides easy linking to relevant areas, so a database may work better. As I recall the 1.09 Encyclopedia was created with Access. I'm sure someone on here who knows something about databases would be able to help you if necessary.

Edit:
I guess just a small update too. I plan on starting things up next week. I think my process will be to put everything in Word documents, format it to look nice, put any tables into excel charts and paste them in, check for errors and maybe spelling and such. Once that's done, I'll be saving each FAQ/guide in Word form, then compiling everything into an indexed PDF. I'm not sure how to do the indexing on PDFs yet, but I'm sure I'll get it.

Not too sure on how well PDF indexing copes with files being put in different directories and how well it knows where to look for them, but I assume there's a way to sort it out.

The other option would be to create an index worbook index in Excel, possibly using the first sheet as a general index linking to other (more detailed) index sheets, which would probably need 3 levels of detail. Guides and files could then be directly embedded into the workbook, so that no linking is required and you don't have to worry about people moving files around.

[pharphis]

I had an idea, if it isn't already a standard thing I'm unaware of in the stickies or something.
So that when people are using ctrl + F for their searches, and want to have the correct acronyms, you could have a big dictionary of terms, such as LF = lightning fury.

[Smips]

@Colony:
Yup, you're right, the 1.09 Encyclopedia was done with Access. Unfortunately for me, Access is one of the Office tools I don't know. I agree that some type of database system could work very well, provided someone was on board that knew how to do it. My main concern with the PDF is, as you brought up, file size. It's really a difficult balance now that I think about it. My thoughts would be that at bare minimum, each guide is in Word format(or similar). This way you keep small file sizes for text only documents and you can still include images and the like if required. As someone suggested earlier, calculators can be saved using your web browser, put into a directory, and linked, so a massive Excel spreadsheet (hopefully) isn't necessary. So, the real issue in my mind is bringing everything together. A PDF brings everything into one file and a table of contents can be added for super easy navigation. However, the file size with be huge. Using something else(like Excel) to index all the content will probably lead to a smaller overall file size and quicker loading, but slower navigation and a more complex file structure. More thought definitely needs to go in to how to link everything together, but I see the first step as being the same: formatting everything into nice, easy to follow Word documents. So with that, thoughts, advice, suggestions as welcome on this aspect.

Sorry for the brick of text! Hope I didn't ramble too much... Turned into a bit of stream of stream of consciousness writing :P

[Grisu]

Great idea! I myself started compiling some useful tidbits, but forgot it every so often. I have some documents on breaking immunities, CtC items etc. with things I asked, forgot, asked again, forgot again etc. so that I wouldn't have to ask so often xD

I can send it along if you like!

EDIT: btw, welcome back Smips! Was thinking about your avatar just recently and couldn't remember the exact wording...meaning you've been away far too long :wnik:

[jamesixgun]

Per the comment I made in the Random Tourney thread, maybe a guide or table about gambling: when items become available, etc.

And I've spent some time looking over the two guides on Mercs... They're both fairly detailed, and some of the info is a wee bit redundant. I'll start compiling a single copy, but wonder how detailed we want to get with this. It might be a good idea to create a tl;dr section at the beginning of each section or something.

Edit: and some information on the Next Delay thing might be of help...

[Pyrotechnician]

Cool, thanks crawlingdeadman. I found a number of PDFs for most of the info that's on the Arreat Summit(items, uniques, sets, runewords, ect), but I need to see if I can find a way to edit them to include treasure class and qlvl. You can send me anything you have at orchardr2(at)gmail(dot)com. I'll be posting this evening covering what FAQs and such I've dug up that seem worthy of going in the document as well as information that I would like to include, but haven't yet found and posting links to everything, so stay tuned .

Speaking of e-mails...

@TheNix: Not sure if you ever sent the 1.09 guide, but I never found it in my inbox or spam. If you could try sending it again, that'd be great .

@Kitriara:
I know just going through the stickies last night, I encountered a plethora of dead links...so the Internet is not "always and forever."

If you have pdfs that are in a standard table format I have a pdf to excel converter software that will let you transfer them into a excel and then it will be simple to add the information you want. Just send me a pm if your interested in doing this and I can convert any files you think you will need.

I don't know if they're included in the list of stuff in the OP, but a collection of breakpoint tables might be helpful. I saw the FRW bit, but FHR, Block Rate, FCR, etc. might be of benefit.

In fact, thinking about that book that comes in the battle chest, some sort of appendix with various tables of all sorts might be worthwhile. Not necessarily listing what all the prefixes and suffixes mean (that can be plainly seen from the game, for the most part), but maybe something similar.

Also, and this just hit me, some information about the LCS and how it lies, and what it lies about, and how to arrive at something approaching the true __________ might be of benefit.


Edit: I'm also wondering about breadth and document size... if we're not careful, this thing could become HUGE, and even with contemporary search functions, navigation could become quite difficult.

If your going to go looking for all of the breakpoint information the best place to look first is the separate strategy forums as I remember most of them having the tables already set up for each of the classes. May be worth looking into before doing work that has already been covered by a previous forum member.

If it's structured well then it doesn't have to be particularly bloated. Text adds very little to the total file size, you can get hundreds of pages in a relatively small file, the key is making it easy to find useful information. Due to this a single PDF probably won't be the best solution, you'll most likely need multiple files, ideally with one contents file that provides easy linking to relevant areas, so a database may work better. As I recall the 1.09 Encyclopedia was created with Access. I'm sure someone on here who knows something about databases would be able to help you if necessary.


Not too sure on how well PDF indexing copes with files being put in different directories and how well it knows where to look for them, but I assume there's a way to sort it out.

The other option would be to create an index worbook index in Excel, possibly using the first sheet as a general index linking to other (more detailed) index sheets, which would probably need 3 levels of detail. Guides and files could then be directly embedded into the workbook, so that no linking is required and you don't have to worry about people moving files around.

Personally I like excels much more then pdfs because I find pdfs unworkable, but that is just me. I have quite a bit of experience using excel to create hyperlinked indexes which make things pretty organized and some background in excel vba if you need any help with coding along the way. Also, I remember reading something in this thread about an old version of data being in access? I can take a look at that if you think there is anything useful in it and can whip up some databases with working relationships, and even export that data to excel once we are finished pulling out the good stuff. Access anymore though is only truely helpful for data over a substansial number of rows or for large data comparisons since excel has been expanded past the 65k line limit.