Hellfire Patch v1.02.A5: Classic HF with less bugs and more polish!

[Belix]

Thank you both, gentlemen, and you're welcome. Apologies for the delayed response.

Warning: Long post ahead! ######################

I'd suggest just one thing: how about get a mana recharge from Adria?

I don't see why this couldn't be added as an option. I will put it on the list for the next version. It might take awhile, but anyone still playing Diablo after this long is probably patient enough for my slow updates. Haha.

Out of curiosity, are the qlvls and base items of the unique items changed in the same way they are in Hellfire: Fixed? or simply the qlvls spread out more evenly?

Probably the former. In most cases where Marsh implemented something from Hellfire: Fixed, its often (mostly) identical. I can't tell you for sure without examining both versions more closely.

Also, I felt like there was a significant increase in magic and unique item drops. Is that true or was I just lucky?

Perhaps a bit of both. Since there are more unique enemies (some that existed but were broken and never spawned, and other new ones, such as in the Hive and Crypt), you're almost guaranteed to find more magic items on a given play through. With unique qlvls fixed, more uniques can be successfully generated that previously would of been impossible.

As far as I'm aware, however, the actual formula that controls how frequently magic or unique items occur has not been altered in any way. It is difficult to be certain though; when I run into a problem or something that seems different from Diablo v1.09, I have to determine if its Hellfire's fault, Lemming's fault (Hellfire: Fixed), Marsh's fault, or my own fault. Four possibilities, since Marsh borrowed some changes directly from Lemming's work. Lots of fun!

[*]Spells cast in quick succession (before the previously cast spell is completely executed) will result in several cast animations, but only the last spell is executed.

Agreed, that is definitely an issue with this mod. I accidentally caused it once before and fixed it, apparently something I did down in Hell (probably related to making the Warlord Quest random instead of constant in MP games) reintroduced it. I'll put this at the top of my list to look into and aim for a minor release containing a fix for it.

when loader.exe is run as administrator, the game does not see singleplayer characters that were created before installing the mod

This seems likely an issue with Windows Security behavior rather than PlugUlmo's loader or anything the mod might cause. If a game (such as Diablo) is installed in directories Windows is sensitive about, like Program Files, it can be denied access to write files to its own directory. This results in Windows writing and reading the save files out to some weird temporary location, for example:

C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Diablo

If this is happening to you, when you run the game with Administrative permission, it is able to properly see its own directory and will load/save characters there. The example directory structure above may vary depending on where you installed Hellfire, but if you feel comfortable exploring folders, you should investigate this to see if you can find Hellfire saves located in such a temporary place. They will be the ones your game sees when it isn't run as an admin, and can be moved to the game directory and renamed appropriately so you see all your characters.

You may also consider moving/reinstalling Diablo and Hellfire into another location as well, I put all of my games in C:\Games on modern Windows so I know that Program Files isn't denying them permissions - some of them will crash if blocked this way, or fail to save progress at all.

I can't think of any other explanation for that issue at this time, so hopefully that's what you're dealing with.

[*]Mana Shield bug

That's still an issue here? I thought Marsh fixed that. I'll add it to the list and check into it.

[*]No Healing animation when used in town.

Interesting. I've been used to that for so many years it never even occurred to me. This game behavior might be related to how the game uses special character animations in town (standing, walking), but I can take a look some time. It might be beyond my ability to work with though.

[*]No mana cost for disabling your Golem with an additional cast of the Golem spell.

Good suggestion, this is in line with some other spell-related issues I need to address where things are cast/cost mana when they shouldn't, such as redundant Mana Shields.

[*]Finally, my Armor of Gloom that I found in plain Hellfire still morphs to a Demon Plate Armor upon creation of a new game.

This is a symptom of changes Marsh made to the item table in his mod. Diablo only saves items in saved game files; when you start a new game, only a lookup code to find/recreate that item is saved in your character.

Thus, a lot of changes that could be made to items risk altering the contents of the item table (something I've managed to very carefully avoid so far as not to invalidate any items from Marsh's mod). Marsh made many such changes by changing which affixes can appear on items, like Staves, so the lookup code for your Armor of Gloom now points to a different item since the item table changed.

That was a mouthful, but I think you get the idea. This problem is why I have not addressed some item problems yet, like fixing the Sharp prefix bug (considered cursed when it is beneficial). It would potentially morph all existing items for people using Marsh's mod. I want to fix it but people's equipment turning into random stuff is too high a cost.

Unfortunately, there isn't anything I can do about morphs between vanilla HF and Marsh's mod short of disabling most all of Marsh's item changes. The only thing I could do is if I had both an SP character file containing an Armor of Gloom found *in* Marsh's mod, and your SP character file with the morphed one. I could use the first file to get the item's new location in the table, then update your morphed item to point at that location correctly so it returns to being an Armor of Gloom.

That addresses bugs/issues, lets look at feature suggestions you made now.

[*]More hotkeys. Don't know if this is easily implemented, but if F2-F12 could all be used that would enhance the gaming experience so much!!

Agreed, 4 never feels like enough. I haven't explored this yet but I will try to look at it.

[*]Mana Shield / Reflect stays on when changing dungeon levels. Maybe even when returning to town.

I'm uncertain if this is possible. When you cast either of these spells, a 'spell effect' is created and maintained on the current floor until the spell wears off, much like each flame that makes up a Fire Wall. The list of active spells is wiped whenever you changed floors. It might be possible to make Reflect behave this way, since it saves a value with the strength of the Reflect spell - I could prevent the game from wiping that value, then test it on the new floor, but Mana Shield may not have such luck. In later versions of Diablo, they changed how Mana Shield is handled in memory, associating a true/false flag with each player object, rather than making it part of the spell list. This allowed you see if players had Mana Shield on or not properly at all times, even if you entered a floor after that had cast it. I'm not sure if Hellfire can be easily updated to behave the same way without the source code, but if it could, then MS could probably be preserved between floors easily.

[*]Second weapon slot. Maybe this is in violation of the true Hellfire feel, but personally I think it would be great to have a second weapon slot.

This is possible, very recently the Hellfire mod "The Hell" achieved this. I suspect the implementation may be very complicated though. Possibly above my head. Although I'm practiced at whipping open my inventory to switch gear with my Warriors and Rogues, I would much rather have an extra slot, if for no other reason than not having to worry about accidentally selling my other weapon.

[*]In singleplayer, unique items that the player has equipped at game creation won't drop again.

If possible, which I'm quite unsure of, it would sadly be very complex to implement. To us there may be just 1 of a unique, but the game actually generates many copies of unique items in the item table. Editing compiled code to compare for the same item id would be difficult enough, but I wouldn't even know where to begin to make it test against the many identical copies of the item that exist at different ids. If that doesn't make sense, to give you a rough idea, assume that there are actually 30 different Cranium Bashers, even though they all have identical stats. This is so if you find more than one, the new one probably isn't reported as a dupe (and consequently destroyed). There are hundreds of different values for potions and gold, but once in awhile the random numbers match up and a pile or potion vanishes as a dupe.

Sorry, that was probably more than you care to know. Its way too much work without the source code. Editing the compiled code makes even simple changes very difficult sometimes, something like this would be crazy. From the perspective of a collector and/or someone just hoping to find an item that's useful instead of redundant, I totally understand where the suggestion came from.

[*]I would love it if the Flash of monster mages would do more damage, similar to player's Flashes with this mod. Also, I think it would be awesome if there was a small probability that mages do a Teleflash from time to time... Unfortunately I wasn't able to find Brother Jerec on dlvl 15 despite getting magistrates to see how he does it.

Their Flash spells do seem rather weak, but if I made any changes to these guys the first would be to remove their immunity once they finish becoming invisible. This should give them enough time to slip away from an attacker, but still be slain quickly once pinned in corners. After you slay a few thousand of these guys in corners as a Warrior cleaving the air repeatedly waiting for them to phase back in and take the hit, their time-wasting temporary damage immunity gets really old.

Jerec is set to use some other AI, I forget which, but it causes him to move (teleport in his case) to melee range and begin attacking repeatedly. It behaves as a melee attack, I don't think he ever invokes Flash.

The idea of having really bad luck and getting Teleflashed by 3-4 of them simultaneously is funny, especially if their Flash damage was increased, but again this sounds like a case of too much difficulty code wise for too little reward. (Once again, if there's any Blizzard people reading this... Diablo is an amazing game and I'm not the only person that would love to do awesome things with its source code, which you should totally release! Look at us poor souls slaving away over x86 Assembly Language just to make little tweaks to it still!)

[*]I may be alone in this, but I always felt like it's a bug that the difficulty only affects the qlvl of base items and not the qlvl for affixes of magical items.

Yup. I have thought about this quite a bit myself. It really does look like this was part of the intended design that was overlooked, but it seems to have been accepted by the community as a feature of the game and not a failing. In particular, Ironman games would have benefited immensely from better affix drops on high difficulties (I reached Hell difficulty once as a Warrior with a Rogue teammate, and that didn't last long because some of our gear broke battling Nightmare Diablo, and there is no way to replace good items in early Hell difficulty since none drop). Its probably possible to fix this, but all debate about whether it was supposed to be this way or not, most players would probably consider it a very controversial change.

This seems like another case where I need different branches/options for the player to choose from to customize their game experience. Altering the monster levels of bosses would be problematic though, since monster levels are used in combat calculations as well.

[*]Is it possible to have Diablo drop several magical items similar to Na-Krul to make it worth killing him? Or at least a random magical item rather than the undead crown in singleplayer?

This is planned in the next update. Marsh made this change for the very reason of making Diablo worth killing, except, his focus was on multiplayer. By making Diablo drop a specific unique item in SP, existing multiplayer code forces him to always drop in multiplayer like he is a Unique monster (so guaranteed magic item, book, or better). But this consequently made him not worth killing at all in single player. I want undo Marsh's forced drop and try to set it up so he is treated as a Unique at all times, always dropping 1 'good' item in both SP and MP. There are some bugs with Na-Krul's forced drops in multiplayer, so I don't think I'd make him do that. Its been awhile but I believe I found the change Marsh made that altered his drop behavior, so I'm already halfway there.


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Thanks for your notes and suggestions, I hope I can deliver at least some of them soon. Particularly a fix for that spell issue.

Edit: 1 typo fixed.