Runewords process: hardcoded ?

[Jarulf]

I know that runeword "recipes" are easily moddable, but how about the process itself (insert runes in the proper sequence in a non-magical socketted item with the right number of sockets) ?

Can that be modded ?
Could for instance runewords be made to work on a magical item ?
Or be the result of a cube recipe ?

Well, the easy answer is that if there is no easy table (that is a ***.txt file) or in some rare cases internal data tables in the dll files, although most usefull ones have lately been broken out into txt files for some reason for easy modding :), it is hard coded. The processing of rune words in indeed sort of hard coded (and I think in d2common.dll if I remember correctly), which is the code that loop the recipies pretty much as cube code loops the cube recipies, although the general layout of the code is quite different since it is two differen concepts. Changing so that rune words works on magical items would probably be easy since there is just some check to see the item is of correct quality. On the other hand, there might be problems in other parts of the code that handle effects on items that gets messed up on magical rune words. Chances are it works OK though if you can change the code. Making runewords being cube reciepies (I assume you mean having the cube spit out items with runes as runewords) is not trivial unless you do code changes since the cube code to my knowlegde (unless modified heavilly lately) can't create items with other items inserted into it. So again code changes would be needed. As allready said, check phrozen keep, they probably know much more about this.