03-23-2015, 12:55 AM
v1.02.A5 is released and ready for download! Thanks all of you who have voiced your support and offered suggestions and bug reports, and thanks to all of you who are enjoying it privately and giving me silent encouragement. I know you're lurking out there, and I love you too. 
This update brings Hellfire much closer to being as bug free as Diablo v1.09. I still have a sizable to do list of problems to address, but we're getting there!
Important note: This version includes a new feature that is disabled by default - reduced processor usage (in game only, the main menu is not affected yet). I have played with it extensively and the game appears to play with zero differences despite a potentially massive reduction in how much it hammers your processor. This could be invaluable for people playing Hellfire on a laptop, where the unnecessary CPU usage is a massive drain on battery life and could generate a lot of heat. Laptop users should give it a try. The worst it should do is make Hellfire run choppy. It could help your laptop live a lot longer though. I may make it active by default in a future version once I am much more confident it doesn't cause problems for anyone. And I may find a way to implement it better in the meantime.
Before I get into the list of changes, I wish to take a moment to note that this is the first update that introduces some minor fixes and improvements that were originally brought to Hellfire the team behind The Hell mod. I recently started playing it with a friend several months ago and, as someone who generally does not like mods that significantly alter the game play, I must say I was quite impressed with it. I think they've created something that resembles what Diablo II could of been if it had remained true to the flavor of the original game. That is no small achievement and deserves an honorable mention, moreso now that I'm borrowing some of their fine work to help improve classic Hellfire. A big thanks to them!
However, this project remains dedicated to improving the core experience of Hellfire without radically altering it, so any changes derived from The Hell will be limited to bug fixes or features that improve the game experience.
Without any further talking, here is an exhaustive list of changes and improvements brought to you specifically in this version over the last one:
_____________________________
• Crypt Level 4 Crash Fixed: This was caused by the new monster boss Fleshdoom, who was added all the way back in Hellfire: Fixed MP (over a decade ago!) using the Skeleton King's AI which could cause crashes in single player if he attempted to raise skeletons, and he was included later in Marsh's Mod (which this project is based on), where Marsh modified the Skeleton King's AI to allow him to raise skeletons in multiplayer, further exposing the crash issue there. Fleshdoom's AI behavior has been changed to eliminate this crash entirely.
• Monster Double Deaths Fixed (MP): Monsters have been able to die more than once in MP games. This occured when more than one player was damaging the same monster at the same time, and resulted in the monster appearing to die briefly, then resume fighting. This 'bug' resulted in the monster being dead for some players and still alive for others (which itself could cause problems, including but not limited to frozen monsters 'standing' in place dead or alive, and even rare crashes), a second duplicate item dropped by the monster, and extra experience awarded for killing the monster more than once. I believe I have finally fixed this awful bug now, and I'm VERY happy to see it gone.
• Player Gear Switch Deadlock Fixed: It was possible for your character and the inventory to become totally unresponsive sometimes if you switched equipment during battle; the character would remain helpless until they blocked, got stunned, or died as a result of an attack.
• Town Portal Bug Fixed (MP): When entering the dungeon through another player's portal positioned directly above a wall, it should no longer possible to appear directly inside a solid wall (thanks to The Hell).
• Permanent Stone Curse Fixed: If you cast Stone Curse on a monster that was already under the effect of Stone Curse, then quickly left the floor before the original curse wore off, the monster would remain Stone Cursed forever.
• Unique Monsters: Many bosses added or modified by the predecessors to this mod have been rebalanced. Some of the bosses in the Crypt had an inordinate amount of hit points or damage. Many Triple Immunities were removed (far too frustrating for Sorcerers to encounter this on Normal difficulty). Sir Gorash is no longer immune to anything (as he was in the original game), but he does Resist everything. Na-Krul retains his Fire Immunity, but his Lightning and Magic immunities have been lowered to mere resistances.
Brother Jerec has also been disabled for now. I may give him a new job in the next version. This strong, teleporting melee foe was a bit unfair for unfortunate MP Warriors attempting to recover their gear from large open rooms, where enemies tend to warp around unexpectedly. The Boogeyman (unique Illusion Weaver) that was added to the caves has also been disabled. I may replace him with something else later. Sorry if you liked him, but I found a double hit point pack of Illusion Weavers far too frustrating.
• Skeleton King: Marsh made him able to raise skeletons in multiplayer; this has now been disabled. The ability was not synchronized properly in multiplayer games, and caused weird things to happen.
• Blood Fountain/Purifying Spring: To fix a rare crash issue drinking from fountains that only seemed to occur on certain computers (or processors?), the code I wrote to restore Health/Mana faster from these fountains has been completely re-written from scratch with a new formula: This new code restores 12.5% of your current Vitality or Magic as life or mana, respectively. This intentionally refills you a bit slower than before; previously it restored you much too fast, which allowed you to be practically invincible if you drank from it while fighting.
• Loading Screens: Most computers should now load into town or dungeons up to 3x faster
• Service Menus: The item lists shown when getting services from Cain, Griswold and Adria no longer display Unique items in Blue text, but now show their proper Gold text color
• Item Outlines: On the dungeon floor, using Search or mousing over an item will now draw colored outlines that correspond to the item type: White for normal, Blue for magical, and Gold for unique. This change does not effect the map, town, or inventory. I did want to make it consistent in all of these places, but it is too advanced yet for me to accomplish.
• See Armor Class of other players: In addition to their resistances, you can now see the Armor Class of your friends when you hold the mouse over them. This value will normally be identical to the one they see in their own character screen, but some Shrines and Oils could potentially cause their actual current AC to be higher than what is displayed here.
• Defiler Speeches: The Defiler's disembodied speeches as you navigate the Hive have been disabled. Playing Diablo III made me realize how annoying and juvenile this was to me. You will now only hear the Defiler speak when you actually encounter it - just to tell you what a tasty morsel you are and how hungry it is, as it should be.
• Blocked Door: No longer highlighted for interaction by the mouse - there is nothing you can do with a blocked door, after all (thanks to The Hell)
• Level Up Meter: Diablo II style bar at the bottom of the screen shows your progress towards your next level up (thanks to The Hell)
• Footstep Sounds: Disabled ever since Hellfire's original release, the subtle sounds of your feet crossing the floor can now be heard again (thanks to The Hell)
• Adria Restores Mana: By popular demand, when you speak to Adria she will now recharge your magical energy if you were not full (thanks to The Hell)
• Warlord of Blood: Now appears only 33% of the time in multiplayer, instead of 50%. 50% felt too frequent for multiplayer where the game is typically restarted much more often than single player. Formerly Triple Immune, he is now only Resistant to Lightning, like his subordinates.
• Skullwing: This Hellfire foe looked visually identical to its stronger variant, the Bone Demon. All other monsters in the game look at least slightly different from their other variations. To make Skullwings consistent, they have been granted their own distinct color.
• Devil Kin Brute: They were missing an animation for walking straight right; best I could do to fix it was to flip its animation for walking left. It looks a lot better now than the awkward sliding they were doing.
• Monster Regeneration: Increased by Marsh, monster regeneration has now been returned to its default rate. This change made killing foes that had a regeneration ability (such as scavengers, gargoyles or grave diggers) unreasonably difficult.
• Negative Chance to Hit overflow: I missed an overflow case when fixing these problems in an earlier version; items with negative To Hit values could still become extremely high (~65535%) in Multiplayer games. This has now been fixed and should be the last of these negative value bugs on item enchantments.
• Character Selection Screen: The Bard's character portrait (formerly identical to the Rogue) no longer shows her holding a bow. This is the beginning of changes I hope to make to give the Bard and Barbarian their own unique portraits so that they're easier to tell apart on the main screen, but unfortunately giving the Barbarian his own different portrait requires editing one of the game's .dll library files, which I'm not ready to do yet.
• Oils: Many Oil effects are strengthened to make them more useful (generally doubled or tripled) - this is still a work in progress, some oils remain unchanged yet, but hopefully most Oils are not such awful junk now. Most of their text descriptions have also been improved, giving more precise information about their effects and if the effect is temporary or not (as most oil effects wear off when you start a new game).
• Fire Arrow Traps: Potential damage from fire arrow traps has been significantly reduced. They're still strong enough to kill players that are low on health, but should no longer one-shot high level characters at full health. These traps are bugged due to an issue with elemental arrow hit effects attempting to hit multiple times (this remains a bug even in Diablo v1.09). I could attempt to fix the bug, but the big damage range of elemental bows is considered by many Rogue players to be a feature rather than a problem. Adjusting the Fire Arrow Trap damage allows Rogues to retain their nice elemental bows. These traps were even further bugged in Hellfire, where they do even more damage in the Hive and Crypt than they could do in Hell. Their new damage formula is as follows:
............Normal: 2-4 Physical, 0-36 Fire Damage
............Nightmare: 5-8 Physical, 0-72 Fire Damage
............Hell: 8-12 Physical, 0-108 Fire Damage
• Some issues with an unused animation fixed: I would elaborate more, but it might spoil a little surprise I'm planning for the next version.
_____________________________
Notable issues yet to be resolved (with this project or Hellfire itself):
-Diablo may be extra hard to kill on Hell difficulty (his bugged Chance To Hit got fixed).
-A player reported a bug that prevented them from casting spells rapidly; not yet reproduced.
-(MP) Hive levels often partially out of sync; same layout but wrong monster/container positions. Best you can do for now is make sure your partner sees Pods/Chests in the same places you do when you first enter the Hive, and if they don't, start a new game and try again. If you get messed up levels several times in a row, try starting a new game and have everyone enter one of the original Diablo dungeons first, like Hell, Catacombs etc. before ever stepping foot in the Hive. It -might- help synchronize the random seeds used to populate levels with objects.
-There still seem to be rare random crashes when entering any floor of the Crypt; unfortunately I haven't yet found a way to reproduce this crash consistently, so I can't do much about it. The crash appears to originate from code that the game calls only when changing dungeon floors - code I have never modified, and I don't think Marsh ever changed - so it may be a bug native to Hellfire. If anyone finds a way to reproduce the crash consistently - especially if you have a Saved Game with a character that crashes every time you try to enter the next floor of the Crypt - please let me know, as it may be invaluable to diagnosing this problem.
This update brings Hellfire much closer to being as bug free as Diablo v1.09. I still have a sizable to do list of problems to address, but we're getting there!
Important note: This version includes a new feature that is disabled by default - reduced processor usage (in game only, the main menu is not affected yet). I have played with it extensively and the game appears to play with zero differences despite a potentially massive reduction in how much it hammers your processor. This could be invaluable for people playing Hellfire on a laptop, where the unnecessary CPU usage is a massive drain on battery life and could generate a lot of heat. Laptop users should give it a try. The worst it should do is make Hellfire run choppy. It could help your laptop live a lot longer though. I may make it active by default in a future version once I am much more confident it doesn't cause problems for anyone. And I may find a way to implement it better in the meantime.
Before I get into the list of changes, I wish to take a moment to note that this is the first update that introduces some minor fixes and improvements that were originally brought to Hellfire the team behind The Hell mod. I recently started playing it with a friend several months ago and, as someone who generally does not like mods that significantly alter the game play, I must say I was quite impressed with it. I think they've created something that resembles what Diablo II could of been if it had remained true to the flavor of the original game. That is no small achievement and deserves an honorable mention, moreso now that I'm borrowing some of their fine work to help improve classic Hellfire. A big thanks to them!
However, this project remains dedicated to improving the core experience of Hellfire without radically altering it, so any changes derived from The Hell will be limited to bug fixes or features that improve the game experience.
Without any further talking, here is an exhaustive list of changes and improvements brought to you specifically in this version over the last one:
_____________________________
• Crypt Level 4 Crash Fixed: This was caused by the new monster boss Fleshdoom, who was added all the way back in Hellfire: Fixed MP (over a decade ago!) using the Skeleton King's AI which could cause crashes in single player if he attempted to raise skeletons, and he was included later in Marsh's Mod (which this project is based on), where Marsh modified the Skeleton King's AI to allow him to raise skeletons in multiplayer, further exposing the crash issue there. Fleshdoom's AI behavior has been changed to eliminate this crash entirely.
• Monster Double Deaths Fixed (MP): Monsters have been able to die more than once in MP games. This occured when more than one player was damaging the same monster at the same time, and resulted in the monster appearing to die briefly, then resume fighting. This 'bug' resulted in the monster being dead for some players and still alive for others (which itself could cause problems, including but not limited to frozen monsters 'standing' in place dead or alive, and even rare crashes), a second duplicate item dropped by the monster, and extra experience awarded for killing the monster more than once. I believe I have finally fixed this awful bug now, and I'm VERY happy to see it gone.
• Player Gear Switch Deadlock Fixed: It was possible for your character and the inventory to become totally unresponsive sometimes if you switched equipment during battle; the character would remain helpless until they blocked, got stunned, or died as a result of an attack.
• Town Portal Bug Fixed (MP): When entering the dungeon through another player's portal positioned directly above a wall, it should no longer possible to appear directly inside a solid wall (thanks to The Hell).
• Permanent Stone Curse Fixed: If you cast Stone Curse on a monster that was already under the effect of Stone Curse, then quickly left the floor before the original curse wore off, the monster would remain Stone Cursed forever.
• Unique Monsters: Many bosses added or modified by the predecessors to this mod have been rebalanced. Some of the bosses in the Crypt had an inordinate amount of hit points or damage. Many Triple Immunities were removed (far too frustrating for Sorcerers to encounter this on Normal difficulty). Sir Gorash is no longer immune to anything (as he was in the original game), but he does Resist everything. Na-Krul retains his Fire Immunity, but his Lightning and Magic immunities have been lowered to mere resistances.
Brother Jerec has also been disabled for now. I may give him a new job in the next version. This strong, teleporting melee foe was a bit unfair for unfortunate MP Warriors attempting to recover their gear from large open rooms, where enemies tend to warp around unexpectedly. The Boogeyman (unique Illusion Weaver) that was added to the caves has also been disabled. I may replace him with something else later. Sorry if you liked him, but I found a double hit point pack of Illusion Weavers far too frustrating.
• Skeleton King: Marsh made him able to raise skeletons in multiplayer; this has now been disabled. The ability was not synchronized properly in multiplayer games, and caused weird things to happen.
• Blood Fountain/Purifying Spring: To fix a rare crash issue drinking from fountains that only seemed to occur on certain computers (or processors?), the code I wrote to restore Health/Mana faster from these fountains has been completely re-written from scratch with a new formula: This new code restores 12.5% of your current Vitality or Magic as life or mana, respectively. This intentionally refills you a bit slower than before; previously it restored you much too fast, which allowed you to be practically invincible if you drank from it while fighting.
• Loading Screens: Most computers should now load into town or dungeons up to 3x faster
• Service Menus: The item lists shown when getting services from Cain, Griswold and Adria no longer display Unique items in Blue text, but now show their proper Gold text color
• Item Outlines: On the dungeon floor, using Search or mousing over an item will now draw colored outlines that correspond to the item type: White for normal, Blue for magical, and Gold for unique. This change does not effect the map, town, or inventory. I did want to make it consistent in all of these places, but it is too advanced yet for me to accomplish.
• See Armor Class of other players: In addition to their resistances, you can now see the Armor Class of your friends when you hold the mouse over them. This value will normally be identical to the one they see in their own character screen, but some Shrines and Oils could potentially cause their actual current AC to be higher than what is displayed here.
• Defiler Speeches: The Defiler's disembodied speeches as you navigate the Hive have been disabled. Playing Diablo III made me realize how annoying and juvenile this was to me. You will now only hear the Defiler speak when you actually encounter it - just to tell you what a tasty morsel you are and how hungry it is, as it should be.
• Blocked Door: No longer highlighted for interaction by the mouse - there is nothing you can do with a blocked door, after all (thanks to The Hell)
• Level Up Meter: Diablo II style bar at the bottom of the screen shows your progress towards your next level up (thanks to The Hell)
• Footstep Sounds: Disabled ever since Hellfire's original release, the subtle sounds of your feet crossing the floor can now be heard again (thanks to The Hell)
• Adria Restores Mana: By popular demand, when you speak to Adria she will now recharge your magical energy if you were not full (thanks to The Hell)
• Warlord of Blood: Now appears only 33% of the time in multiplayer, instead of 50%. 50% felt too frequent for multiplayer where the game is typically restarted much more often than single player. Formerly Triple Immune, he is now only Resistant to Lightning, like his subordinates.
• Skullwing: This Hellfire foe looked visually identical to its stronger variant, the Bone Demon. All other monsters in the game look at least slightly different from their other variations. To make Skullwings consistent, they have been granted their own distinct color.
• Devil Kin Brute: They were missing an animation for walking straight right; best I could do to fix it was to flip its animation for walking left. It looks a lot better now than the awkward sliding they were doing.
• Monster Regeneration: Increased by Marsh, monster regeneration has now been returned to its default rate. This change made killing foes that had a regeneration ability (such as scavengers, gargoyles or grave diggers) unreasonably difficult.
• Negative Chance to Hit overflow: I missed an overflow case when fixing these problems in an earlier version; items with negative To Hit values could still become extremely high (~65535%) in Multiplayer games. This has now been fixed and should be the last of these negative value bugs on item enchantments.
• Character Selection Screen: The Bard's character portrait (formerly identical to the Rogue) no longer shows her holding a bow. This is the beginning of changes I hope to make to give the Bard and Barbarian their own unique portraits so that they're easier to tell apart on the main screen, but unfortunately giving the Barbarian his own different portrait requires editing one of the game's .dll library files, which I'm not ready to do yet.
• Oils: Many Oil effects are strengthened to make them more useful (generally doubled or tripled) - this is still a work in progress, some oils remain unchanged yet, but hopefully most Oils are not such awful junk now. Most of their text descriptions have also been improved, giving more precise information about their effects and if the effect is temporary or not (as most oil effects wear off when you start a new game).
• Fire Arrow Traps: Potential damage from fire arrow traps has been significantly reduced. They're still strong enough to kill players that are low on health, but should no longer one-shot high level characters at full health. These traps are bugged due to an issue with elemental arrow hit effects attempting to hit multiple times (this remains a bug even in Diablo v1.09). I could attempt to fix the bug, but the big damage range of elemental bows is considered by many Rogue players to be a feature rather than a problem. Adjusting the Fire Arrow Trap damage allows Rogues to retain their nice elemental bows. These traps were even further bugged in Hellfire, where they do even more damage in the Hive and Crypt than they could do in Hell. Their new damage formula is as follows:
............Normal: 2-4 Physical, 0-36 Fire Damage
............Nightmare: 5-8 Physical, 0-72 Fire Damage
............Hell: 8-12 Physical, 0-108 Fire Damage
• Some issues with an unused animation fixed: I would elaborate more, but it might spoil a little surprise I'm planning for the next version.
_____________________________
Notable issues yet to be resolved (with this project or Hellfire itself):
-Diablo may be extra hard to kill on Hell difficulty (his bugged Chance To Hit got fixed).
-A player reported a bug that prevented them from casting spells rapidly; not yet reproduced.
-(MP) Hive levels often partially out of sync; same layout but wrong monster/container positions. Best you can do for now is make sure your partner sees Pods/Chests in the same places you do when you first enter the Hive, and if they don't, start a new game and try again. If you get messed up levels several times in a row, try starting a new game and have everyone enter one of the original Diablo dungeons first, like Hell, Catacombs etc. before ever stepping foot in the Hive. It -might- help synchronize the random seeds used to populate levels with objects.
-There still seem to be rare random crashes when entering any floor of the Crypt; unfortunately I haven't yet found a way to reproduce this crash consistently, so I can't do much about it. The crash appears to originate from code that the game calls only when changing dungeon floors - code I have never modified, and I don't think Marsh ever changed - so it may be a bug native to Hellfire. If anyone finds a way to reproduce the crash consistently - especially if you have a Saved Game with a character that crashes every time you try to enter the next floor of the Crypt - please let me know, as it may be invaluable to diagnosing this problem.