My Unofficial Hellfire 1.02 Mod

[Belix]

I agree with or don't have comments for most of what you said, so this'll be a short one.

TL2 is IMO very good with feedback on control

I am double-checking that this is on my 'play it sometime' list now.

Monk's model\animation is the 'Hive' of HF char design to me. It sticks out, in a not so good way.

That's a good analogy. My understanding was Blizzard made the Hellfire team restart all their artwork from scratch 3 times, and between deadlines and probably being sick of working on it is why we never got Bard or Barbarian graphics. I also think they didn't have the type of cutting edge tools to work with that Blizzard did, as evidenced by the overall lesser quality of Hellfire assets.

But despite Hellfire's flaws, I love it (moreso now thanks to stuff like HF:F, Marsh's mod and my own adjustments that help iron out Hellfire's rough edges), because it offers up more of an already great game. Hard to complain about that. Diablo lifts Hellfire up far more than Hellfire drags Diablo down.

I don't think the Monk itself looks too terrible as far as the colors go; he does have that Hellfire look, but it's the animations that I think push him into the awkward zone. You mentioned his funny legs when he walks, which is certainly outstanding, but there's several others. Have you seen how he looks with some of the other items in the game? He holds weapons and shields out away from his body like he's afraid they'll bite him, haha. On the other hand, his lightning cast animation looks quite nice.

But a huge fix like a complete redraw of the artwork\re-model, especially with the sprites\individual frames system. Is likely too tall and big, time consuming, difficult and expensive for modders.

That's basically what he needs. Since Hellfire was kind of obscure back in the day and didn't get that treatment by anyone in the community then, it seems improbable it could happen any time soon given its current status as all but forgotten. But nothing is impossible, and a resurgence of classic PC gaming combined with the many free tools available to people since 1996 to create art and models and such with... who knows. Of course, it'd be nice if the Bard and Barbarian had their own graphics too. I've learned enough I think I could implement new graphics for these characters in Hellfire... if only they existed.

Apologies for so much talk in your thread that isn't specifically about your mod, Marsh.

Here's a link to the thread where I will upload my character graphics fix pack, Marsh. Feel free to include it in your mod if you like. I'd be happy for it to reach as many Hellfire players as possible. Would certainly make the hours of work going into it feel more rewarding!
http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/thread-15743.html