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ingame ranges and distances

visible area

Due to isometric design distance in 'up' and 'down' directions is slightly different to 'left' and 'right' directions. This doesn't just apply to the common yard measurement but will also affect some tiny details.
Two rules of thumb are very common:

Independently from perspective view switched on or off in Options Menu the game always shows a rectangle composed of little rhombs. The game engine jolts all effects to match this view, so a circle-shaped spell will be shown as elliptical-shaped. Click to enlarge following illustrations:

Static
thumbnail Static
56kB
Holy Freeze
thumbnail Holy Freeze
48kB
courtesy by Sulimo

Let's have a look at another example, a simple bow shot. Arrow's range is 25.6 yard, this is a little bit more than double distance of player to left or right screen border.
In a little crude, but easily to copy testing scenario an Amazon summons Decoy to the middle of left visible border. Another character moves to see that Decoy at the middle of his right visible border. The Amazon shoots an arrow in Decoy's direction. It will fly to the other character and vanish shortly behind (left from) him.
Repeat this with the Decoy summoned at the middle of Amazon's upper visible border and the other character seeing it at the middle of his lower visible border. The arrow will fly just up to the other character.
As a very astonishing detail this works perfectly with bows and arrows, but fails with crossbows and bolts. A bolt should fly according to Missiles.txt much further than an arrow, but there seems to be an oddity in the mechanism of projectile weapons. A modded scenario with throwing weapons showed same behaviour like arrows.

This screenshot is an evergreen.
It is quoted and copied so often I don't know the author, so I can't give credit here.

Yards
thumbnail yards
65kB

Commentary is a bit hard to decipher, it reads:

Diablo II Radius Illustration
Each ring represents a circle with radius in yards, of the number shown.
It assumes that a Barbarian, excluding his winged helm, is about two yards, or six feet tall.

Of course this is only a rough approximation, but regarding its age it is quite good. But the circles should be way more ellipsoidical.
This picture caused lots of confusion back in the days when Necromancers noticed a way lower radius of their Corpse Explosion than the picture suggested. Later on it was revealed that Blizzard's coding people might have had a slight problem with differentation between radius and diameter when they set up spells and descriptions. So a Corpse Explosion covers just a fourth of the area expected, since description says 'radius' but means 'diameter'. All Necromancer spells including the curses seem to be affected by this. I'm not aware of any of other classes' spells being subject to that oddity.

A more recent illustration by virusette covers ingame behaviour a bit more exactly. The Sorceress' Nova spell has a fixed range of nine yards. Each recoloured ring resembles two yards distance, the circle with the Sorceress herself in the middle resembles one yard radius.

Yards again
thumbnail yards by virusette
88kB
courtesy by virusette

Each map is divided into Tile Units. Those Tiles are composed of 5x5 Subtiles. These are the least unit in measurement, since similar to a chess board you occupy a Subtile or you don't, there's nothing in between. Some units may occupy just one Subtile, most others including player characters will occupy 2x2 Subtiles, and really large monsters will need even more of it.
Because units are subject to the raster, all unit affecting missiles will also be. Graphically a spell may cover a perfect ellipsoid, and an arrow may fly straight to a point, but any units' positions will granulate the effect.
One yard equals roughly 0.6 Subtiles.
You recognize the raster easily when dropping little amounts of gold, gems, runes, potions and other tinsels around. If my description is too complicated, try a look at Nefarius' screenshots over at the Phrozen Keep.


missile ranges

Spells are composed of missiles, so anything written so far also applies to missiles in players' recognition, like arrows, bolts and throwing potions. Those are restricted in terms of possible directions, but no subject to raster or Subtiles. Similar to spells a common missile may or may not hit a unit on a Subtile, so despite its straight traveling its targetting is in fact restricted to the raster, too.

All missiles' ranges are controlled in, guess, Missiles.txt as combination of Vel(ocity) and Range.
Vel = amount of travelled pixels per (time-)Frame
and
Range = count of (time-)Frames until missile expires.
Differently to literal missiles (arrows and stuff) spells are composed of a variety of submissiles, and not all of them will do damage.


melee and weapon range

Basing on Subtiles there's a little illustration done by Karon (aka Rivo) dedicated to weapon range of a unit in one direction. Note that this picture represents just another approximation, you're not forced to use a pixel counting tool next time you play the game.

Melee Range

A weapon range of 2 or 4 advantage compared to the next less range is hardly noticeable. But 3 or 5 will cover much more area than 2 or 4, respectively. 6 and 7 are not enabled in the game and just show further progressions. A weapon range of 10 results with a Shift-zealing Paladin and high monster density in following screenshot:

Zeal
Zeal mit Range 10
46kB
courtesy by Sulimo

The Act2 hireling has a fixed weapon range of 3, regardless of his actual weapon, he ignores even a very high value in a modded scenario.
In this FAQtoids' appendix you find melee ranges greater than 1 of all non-player units, Weapon ranges are defined in Weapons.txt's Melee Rng column, the value there must be raised by 1, which is standard range. Monster's range is defined in MonStats.txt, similarly the value must be raised by 1.

Zealing with a ... War Pike, a Basin thread, recently gave new insight to Melee Range of players and monsters; researched by onderduiker. The Basin Wiki's illustrations by onderduiker are the most accurate ones to my knowledge.


light radius

There's a lot of interfering statements about light radius, done by far better-knowing people than me. The item property is not that important in unmodified game, so most players are just annoyed that no better affix spawned on an item. The Arreat Summit claims 13 to be the standard light radius of an unequipped character, highest possible value would be 18. Same figures are listed by Atair on d2wissen. A hard limit makes sense, since light radius also uncovers the automatic minimap; with high values indeed far more than the visible part of the map itself. Without a limit very high values of light radius would work like acheating tool.

The unit for measuring light radius is very foggy. Concurring statements indicate there's again some confusion between radius and diameter. My own observations would be matched best with 'light radius is in diameters for the enlightening effect aroud the player character, and it is a true radius for uncovering the minimap'. However, this is just an opinion. But it would also explain why other values than those on Arreat Summit are roughly half of its figures.
At least regarding Patch 1.11 13 as base value and 18 as maximum value are verified in between by Nefarius at the Phrozen Keep Code Editing Forum.

Light radius is by the way one of the few properties in unmodified game which can spawn with negative values. As always you may find a german listing at Atair's d2wissen.

Awareness of non-player units is not restricted by light radius, neither by player's own nor by any unit'S configurable one. Thus hirelings will ignore positive and negative values for light radius. However, their light radius will uncover more of the minimap to the player, this effect is enhanceable with hireling's equipment.


see also:

Credits


Appendix

monsters' melee range
monsterrangenote
all monsters of that class, not just the subspecies listed
units not listed here have range=1.
see also adamantine's posting in Lurker Lounge
Bosses
Mephisto4  
Diablo4  
Baal4  
the Ancients4all three
Duriel3  
Izual2  
     
Monsters
Tentacle Beast7the Nessies in Act3
Frozen Horror5  
Blood Lord5the Frenzytaurs in Act5
Tentacles5those thingies
Baal summons
Minion of Destruction4Lister's pack
Corrupt Rogue Lancer3  
Flying Scimitar3sometimes spawned
by traps in Act2
Doom Knight3all three kinds
Balrog (Megademon)3  
Hellcow3mooh
Zealot2  
Vile Mother2  
Regurgitator2  
Trapped Soul2those chained to
posts in Act4
Aligned (most of the time ...)
Act2 Hireling3  
Grizzly3  
Poison Creeper3  
Wolves2all
Carrion Vine2  
Solar Creeper2  

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