The Phrozen Keep - Terms of Service

Forum Terms of Service

By registering as a member of the Phrozen Forums you hereby agree to abide by the following terms of service. Our rules apply to any communication here, whether forum post or private message. Incidents which violate these terms may result in corrective action depending on the circumstances. Please report any violations either to myself at phrozenheart@planetdiablo.com or to any other member of staff.

I) Considering the real-time nature of these forums, it is impossible for us to review messages or confirm the validity of information before it is posted. Please remember that while we do our best to filter out any inappropriate postings, we do not actively monitor the contents of and are not responsible for any messages posted. We do not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message, and are not responsible for the contents of any message. The messages express the views of the author of the message, not necessarily the views of the Phrozen Keep staff, the Rednas Group, GameSpy Industries or any other entity associated with these forums. Any user who feels that a posted message or picture is objectionable is encouraged to contact us immediately by email or private message. We have the ability to remove objectionable messages and we will make every effort to do so, within a reasonable time frame, if we determine that removal is necessary. This is a manual process, however, so please realize that we may not be able to remove or edit particular messages immediately.

II) Copyrighted material including avatar images should only be posted in these forums with the express permission of the owner(s) and with the appropriate copyright information either posted in full or linked to within your signature. In the case of material copyrighted by Blizzard Entertainment, we have the information displayed at the bottom of each forum page already so you may use this per Blizzard's copyright policy (which you can read by visiting http://www.blizzard.com/legalfaq.shtml)

III) Do not use these forums to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, offensive to a person's religion, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise in violation of any law. Do not use the forums to initiate or continue hostility expressed toward any staff or member; "flaming" and "flame wars" will not be tolerated. We at Phrozen Keep reserve the right to edit, modify or delete any post made in such an event. Messages sent through the board's Private Message function cannot be directly monitored, but the same provisions still apply. Should you receive a private message that is objectionable under this part of the Terms of Service, please do not delete the message, but forward a copy to one of the senior staff using the Quote button in the message reading screen. Harassment through private messages will result in suspension of private message privileges for the sender in addition to formal warnings.

IV) Although we do not and cannot review the messages posted and are not responsible for the content of any of these messages, we reserve the right to remove objectionable content or delete any message or picture for any or no reason whatsoever. You remain solely responsible for the content of your messages, and you agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Phrozen Keep, the Rednas Group, GameSpy Industries, phpBB Group (the makers of the bulletin board software), and their agents with respect to any claim based upon transmission of your message(s).

V) Do not post primarily in numbers or symbols commonly referred to as '1337 sp34k' (leet speak). While certain groups of people may appreciate this, the general forum populace does not.

VI) Do not post in all capitals or oversized text for no apparent reason. This is generally considered angry and yelling at someone, which is rude and not welcome here.

VII) As a thread progresses, please do not stray too far from the original subject. While we try to give as much leniency as possible on this matter, if a topic goes off on too much of a tangent then the original thread may be locked and you may be requested to start a new topic.

VIII) Note that advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, solicitations and anything else of that nature are inappropriate within these forums.

IX) Refrain from posting unnecessary one or two word responses to existing threads including but not limited to 'LOL', 'W00t' or any similar postings. If someone posts something amusing, EVERYONE in the forum does not need to respond with his or her approval. If you feel your message is necessary, please accompany your response with at least a sentence of reasonable length relating to the subject matter.

X) While only as a very last resort, we at the Phrozen Keep also reserve the right to reveal your identity (or whatever information we know about you) in the event of a serious complaint or legal action arising from any message or materials posted by you.

XI) Messages located within these forums may contain outside links to other web sites and files. We have no control over the content and cannot ensure it will not be offensive or objectionable. We will, however, remove links to material that we feel is inappropriate as we become aware of them. This especially includes links to sites recommending or enabling prohibited or illegal activities, such as "warez", "serialz" and "hacking" download sites. Advocating unlawful use of otherwise legitimate sites is also prohibited.

XII) Repeatedly posting the same message in a forum or across multiple forums is considered spamming. If you accidentally post your message more than once, please utilize the forum features available to you to delete your post. To do this, click on the EDIT button above your post, to the right of the quote button. Then at the next screen check "delete this post" and press submit.

XIII) Member signatures shall be limited to 256 screen characters (including spaces), on up to five lines (including blank lines). Additionally, BBCode characters may be used for links and formatting, for a total of 700 display and non-display characters. In the past, there have been issues with people who post relatively small amounts of meaningful text in contrast to a very large signature, which not only is irritating but also detracts from the message of your post.

XIV) Impersonation of either a member of the forum staff or a private individual is not permitted whatsoever. This includes but is not limited to: using another user's personalized avatar or signature, registering an account under an obviously similar username or blantantly claiming to be another user.

XV) Any and all discussion of closed and/or open Battle.net cheating/hacking is prohibited. This includes discussion of player-activated auxiliary software or software extensions that could be used on Battle.net for cheating or hacking, whether discussed in that context or not. Although mods themselves could be construed as potential Battle.net cheats or hácks, a mod cannot be supported in closed Battle.net and can be played on open Battle.net in dedicated games. But any mod (and discussion of such mod) that implements features (e.g. mapháck equivalents) which are considered Battle.net hácks by Blizzard and/or the Phrozen Keep staff shall also be prohibited. Posts violating this proscription will be deleted and/or locked and the responsible party issued a warning for first-time offenses. Second-time offenders will be permanently and immediately banned from using this bulletin board. You are permitted, however, to discuss editing any code necessary to accomplish the implementation of a feature into your mod including but not being limited to Horadric cube recipes, potion replenish rates, damage dealt by hired mercenaries and damage dealt from in-game boss uniques/superuniques. All topics related to editing code should be referred to as "editing" and not "hacking".

XVI) Discussion of software piracy, warez, serialz, bypassing of copyright protection, no-CD cracks, or other illegal activities is prohibited. This includes cases where software may be purchased but normal operation isn't possible (e.g. damaged CD), as the Keep staff have no method for verifying the status of such claim.

XVII) Displaying images within your signature is prohibited as they may cause excessive page loading times for members with dial-up internet connections. Please use your avatar slot to include a sensible user image.

XVIII) Please refrain from posting screenshot images in these forums due to excessive loading times for members with slower connections. This problem can be easily solved by linking to the images rather than actually displaying them which gives the member the choice if they wish to display them or not.

XIX) When linking to a remote avatar, it is not permitted to "hot link" directly to the image on a server which you do not have permission to do so. Please save the image to your computer and either upload it to a free server or send it to a member of the forum staff to be hosted on this server.

XX) Discussion of modding games in the Diablo series shall be limited to full, authorized releases in which legal entitlement to use is established by purchase and such proofs of license as determined by the copyright holders. No discussion of demo versions, shareware versions, or other promotional forms shall be allowed without the express consent of the copyright holders.

XXI) Each member shall respect the efforts of other members to provide material in the form of websites, mods, plugins, guides, tutorials, tools or any other contributions, whether hosted on the Keep or otherwise. Plugins are provided as building blocks for mods and are available to anybody for such use, so long as appropriate credit is given. All contributions that are not plugins shall not be copied and incorporated into a member's projects and websites without the expressed consent of the originator. If a project or website is found to include unauthorized material from other members, all links and content will be removed from the Keep and membership access may be denied.

XXII) Discussion about creating, operating, access, playing on or contributing to private realm servers or other Battle.net emulation is prohibited. Linking to server sites, publishing server IP addresses, or linking to sites acting as gateways to private realm servers is also prohibited.

XXIII) We at the Phrozen Keep reserve the right to change these terms of service at any time without prior warning. Updates however will be posted in the announcements forum.

Addendum

The following items described below are not violations of the Phrozen Keep's Terms of Service. But they represent inconsiderate or even rude behaviour in some cases, and duplication of efforts on others. It is unlikely you want other people to treat you inconsiderately, so try not to be inconsiderate to others. And people will often help you at the drop of a hat, but don't asume you are entitled to it.

Although these are not violations in and of themselves, repeated infringements (especially when directed towards one recipient) may be considered a form of harassment.

The following list is not inclusive, and will be expanded as appropriate.

I) Basic questions get asked all the time. Many of the basic questions are answered in tutorials and file guides available from the Phrozen Keep's main pages. You may be just starting out and have no idea where to start. The Keep's resource center is the best place to begin, especially the Idiot's Guide to Mod Making.

II) Look, Listen and Learn. Before you ask a question, scan the forum and see if an existing thread covers your topic. You might even find your question has already been answered! I have seen threads two lines apart, where the earlier post had the answer to the question in the second post. Also use the Forum Search option in the left-side navbar. Keep your search text general and sift through the threads. At the very least, do not start new threads that cover the same ground as existing threads. Nobody gets awards for the number of topics started.

III) Don't put things in your message like "I am leaving in a few minutes, can you answer this question before I get back so I can get on with business?" or "I am lazy, and don't want to read all that stuff." That is plain rude, you are saying your time is more valuable than ours, and you would just as soon we all drop what we are doing and solve your problem for you. Even if you do feel that way, just ask your question without expressing the sentiment. We really don't want to know.

IV) If you have an idea, try it out! Don't just ask somebody else to burn up their time solving your problems. Modding is an interactive and iterative process: you make a change, test it, correct it if necessary. You may find to your surprise the idea works from day one. If not, you will find that correcting errors teaches you a lot about modding. If you can't figure it out, then you will at least know what you need to ask a specific question.

V) If your question is really targeted towards one person, send a Private Message. The PM button below each person's posts will set you up to launch a private message to the person. (Be aware that a copy of each private message is saved in your Sentbox, so clean that out regularly if you send private messages often.)

VI) Use the subject field to summarize your post. Topics with non-specific phrases like "Help Me" may express how you feel, but won't necessarily attract the attention of the people who might know the answer you are seeking. Moderators reserve the right to edit your subject line for the benefit of the other forum users.

VII) You may want to think twice about responding to a thread where the previous post is over a few weeks old. Chances are very good the other participants have moved on to other concerns, or solved whatever problem they might have had at the time. The best reason for resurrecting a dead topic is to post situational updates if no current thread addresses the root issue. But most people start new topics even for updates, on the idea that a period of inactivity derails that thread's train of thought. Occasionally a thread will be *bumped* to jog people's memory about an outstanding issue, but this should be done very rarely and only for topics inactive longer than a week or two.

VIII) Did you just crash? Before you ask anybody how to fix it, be sure you collect the facts. Debugging errors is another form of detective work. Make note of recent changes you made, and what you were doing in the game right before the crash. There are two types of crashes in Diablo II: assertions and unhandled exceptions. Assertions are when the game code makes some test of data and a potentially invalid condition is discovered. A popup with an assertion message appears (easiest to see in windowed mode), and debug information is posted to your debug file (the one in your install directory named D2yymmdd.txt). An unhandled exception occurs when an invalid condition has already occurred, and Windows (not the game) chokes on the results. Here you must look to the debug file for more information. None of us are mind readers, so the more information you provide, the more likely we are able to answer your question.

IX) Members announcing updates to their sites or projects should use the same threads previous announcements were posted to. Creating new threads over and over to announce updates causes unnecessary clutter in the forum, and loses continuity in the subject. It also degrades the search feature.

X) Got an urgent question? Remember that forums are not chat channels. It will take time for somebody who knows the answer to find and respond to your question. Many of our members are in different time zones. Allow a day to get a response as a minimum.

XI) Members are strongly encouraged to edit previous messages to add additional content, if no response has been posted yet. A large EDIT button is provided for this purpose at the upper right corner of each post. Occasionally separate messages are appropriate, if significant time has passed or the new material is sufficiently different from the preceding material.

XII) People often ask, “is there a way to convert bin files to txt files?” The answer is no, and there are no known tools that do so. But think about what a bin-to-txt converter would be used for: stealing information from other people’s mods. There is no need for bin conversion for Blizzard’s data, it is already fully available in the unmodded txt files. Stealing from mods is against our Terms of Service, and discussing a tool that would be unnecessary except for that purpose will not be allowed.

Phrozen Heart
Site Admin
phrozenheart@planetdiablo.com

"I love mankind; it's people I can't stand. - Linus Van Pelt of Peanuts"

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