Drupal Modules I've used so far

For the last 6 months or so I've been working in Drupal, which is one of the top open source content management systems out there. I was kinda thrown in the deep end with it - I had a customer who really wanted me to do their website, and was actually willing to pay me to learn Drupal. So I did. And I'm super impressed with it as a CMS.

It is quite a complicated system to learn from scratch, but not impossible. I silly mistake to make is to assume that you know Drupal if you already know PHP, HTML, JS, CSS and MySQL. Knowledge in those things help, yes, but it's a brand new system to get to know.

Anyway, one thing I really like is that chances are, there's a module for that - this is a very popular saying among Drupal developers - because it's such a popular CMS, there are thousands of developers doing the grunt work and help expand and develop the platform, and as I found with my first big Drupal site, 9 out of 10 times there actually is a module for that!

Here is a list of the modules I used with my first big Drupal site:

Views

This was one of the first modules I needed for my site. If you want to display any kind of data in any kind of way, this is the module to get. And the best part, it is fully theme-able :)

Some ways I used it was to show a random Youtube video on a specific page, or determine how a specific page's info gets rendered. I'll never build a Drupal site without this module.

Video Embed Field

As I just mentioned above, I needed a new content type field for video clips, and this one did the trick just fine. It allows you to add a field to your content type that specifically takes either a Youtube clip or a Vimeo clip. You can also specify things like the whether the video should auto play and things like that.

This also creates a new setting under admin for video styles (similar to image styles).

Webform

My client required various forms with many different fields and various emails that needs to be sent with each submission. Webform was the perfect solution for what I required. You can create as many fields for your form as you want, and then you can use those forms in several ways. For example, you can send a thank you message to the person who filled in their form, specify what the thank you page should be, limit how many times each person can submit a form, etc.

After the form gets submitted, you can create multiple emails that needs to get sent out, each with its own settings, like to and from addresses, subject lines and custom messages, etc.

So, if you need people to fill out a slightly more complex form, get this one, it's great!

Search Config

This module I used to limit which content types and things like that show up in search results. Very handy if you have multiple content types, but only want people to find a specific kind.

There are a few more, but these are the ones I'll always have loaded on my future Drupal sites...

Diablo 3, better loot on torment difficulty

In my previous post I was complaining a bit about the loot drops in Diablo 3 - my thoughts were that why should you play at torment levels when legendary drops still happen at Normal difficulty. Well, it appears that while legendaries do indeed drop at the pre-torment difficulties, there are certain items that can only drop when your difficulty is set to Torment 2 and above (I might be wrong about the 2 part, but yes).

After doing some research, I saw that there are some really cool gear items that you can find when you push the difficulty up to Torment 2 and above! For example, there are legendary potions, and class specific set items!

Here are some links that I found handy

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/10189299133

and

http://www.diablowiki.net/Torment-only

It appears that certain acts also have specific drops from the Horadric caches that you get for completing bounties, with the exception of Act 4, where any of the Act-specific items can drop from the cache.

Also, with my Level 70 Demon Hunter I have actually gotten a piece of the Natalya's Vengeance set already, didn't realise that it was because I was playing on Torment :)

So, if you want the good gear, go ahead and play at least on Torment 2 ;) I did a rift run last night with my Witch Doctor, and the boss dropped a very nice legendary ring. It did take a while to finish it though, a good hour or so!

Enjoy!

Diablo 3 Loot drops: Normal vs Torment difficulty

I've been playing Diablo 3 almost exclusively since Reaper of Souls came out a couple of weeks ago. I must say, Blizzard has really turned the game around, and it is now what it was supposed to be from the get go two years ago. Anyway, I'm very happy with the game as it is now, and I try to play every spare moment I can.

One thing kinda bugs me though.

Last night, my good buddy and I decided to do some gear farming, and played the game on Normal difficulty. Me with my recently leveled-up-to-70 Witch Doctor, and him with his nicely geared Crusader. It was an absolute breeze. Elite enemies we killed with two or three shots, and even bosses didn't last long. Needless to say, we killed a lot of enemies extremely quickly.

Now, to get to the reason for this post - the loot drops didn't feel any different. I got a two legendary weapons for my Witch Doctor, and even a few legendary plans and a set plan. My friend got a set item and a couple of legendaries as well.

After a while my thought was that it didn't feel much different in terms of loot drops than playing the game on any of the Torment settings. The loot that dropped still felt pretty much the same, and the legendaries still came along like it always does.

I'm now wondering why would you want to play the game at higher difficulty levels, especially when it comes to looking for new and better loot. At the normal difficulty you kill the mobs so much quicker and the amount of cool drops evens out.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that for now - I didn't read up on this elsewhere, so maybe your chances of getting specific torment level loot doesn't exist at lower difficulties or something like that, but last night it didn't seem that way at all...

To be continued...