Hellfire Patch v1.02.A5: Classic HF with less bugs and more polish!
(05-16-2015, 11:40 PM)SmurfThat Wrote: I was reading the thread and noticed something about the stash. Since you can keep armor of gloom from morphing by leaving it with Gillian I realized something. If you use a potion that temporarily modifies an item, you can store it and the next game the effect carries over. Unfortunately this can be exploited to keep the changes indefinitely unless the effect has some kind of timer I'm not aware of.
That's true, and is an issue with the stash feature. But shuffling the item to and from the stash each time you play is a bit inconvenient to exploit. Most of the oils have limits on their maximum range of effect that prevent the problem from being too serious, and all the work to buff an item to its max with oils is easy to lose if you lost power, forgot to stash it again etc. Not to mention it takes quite some time to collect enough oils (especially the good ones) to create a significant effect.

Mind you, just because I think it a minor issue doesn't mean I don't want to fix it, but the workings of PlugUlmo's stash mods are far above my head yet. I have very little experience reading any information out of .dll files, and none editing them.

(05-16-2015, 11:40 PM)SmurfThat Wrote: On a different subject I know this is crazy, but have any of these communities approached Blizzard about releasing the source code for classic games like Diablo? The mod community have had to endure hex editing and other such horrors to update these games. Its been 20 years I don't think they are planning on assigning anyone to these games. Especially since newer versions of windows are becoming less and less compatible (IPX support, color errors), in order to ensure digital preservation we need higher access than hotfixing the exe every time it is executed!
I'm with you on that. I'd be delighted to see Blizzard release the source code for their older games so that they can be updated to run smoothly on modern operating systems, bugs fixed etc. But, every indication I've seen from them suggests more than disinterest in their older titles, but outright aversion. Off the top of my head:

===Diablo 1 was silently removed from the Diablo Battle Chest years ago, and is no longer officially sold anywhere, even in Blizzard's own online store.

===Public lists of bugs remaining in the latest official version of Diablo have floated around online for years, but the game has remained unpatched a long time, even though their very next product (StarCraft) that came out just 2 years later received patches for roughly a decade longer.

===Blizzard appears to have become aware of an exploit that allowed the theft of StarCraft CD-keys through Battle.net, but took no action to fix the problem. I did not witness this, but reportedly they choose to hide the issue instead, and proceeded to delete accounts and posts that mentioned the issue. It is assumed that the people who make decisions at Blizzard, having just released StarCraft II recently, felt that victims of CD-key theft unable to play online any more were just more customers who would go buy the sequel. I would estimate that at least 3,000 CD-keys were stolen, but the real number is probably far higher; I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was above 30,000.

===A couple years ago, hackers found a method to execute arbitrary code through StarCraft maps. This was not the first time this issue had come up. Previously Blizzard had made an effort to patch these exploits, but as with the CD-key theft issue, now that StarCraft II was out this problem was met with total silence. While the methodology to basically put viruses into StarCraft maps is quite complicated, nonetheless a few select individuals have both the information and ability to do this, and at least one of them already abused it to force players' computers to perform tasks like opening obnoxious webpages and renaming files.

I mention StarCraft because it was a very important game to Blizzard for many years; it enjoyed an eSports spotlight for quite some time and even became a nationally televised sport in Korea. So long as they don't about StarCraft, Diablo 1 may as well no longer exist (and by ceasing any sales of Diablo 1, they have erased it almost as much as possible).

Nonetheless, I do hope that they'll release the source code for their old games some day. I suspect they may only consider it once they finally shut down Battle.net, for security reasons. But, so many who worked at their company back then no longer work there now. Does Blizzard even have the rights to release the source? If they don't, can they even get permission from whoever does? Does the source code even exist any more, or has it been lost or destroyed?

I suspect a few of the people who worked on it would empathize with our position, but are in no place to do anything about it. I had the pleasure of interacting with Max Schaefer once during the alpha test of a game, and he was a really awesome guy; I think I can safely say if the decision were his, he'd let us have it.

But sadly, the decision appears to currently rest with a company that has money coming out of its ears. I doubt they would hear us if we shout at the top of our lungs, or care if they did. If they prove me wrong, I will be delighted, but these days I've been conditioned to expect nothing but disappointment from large companies.
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A5 progress update - by Belix - 02-02-2015, 09:28 AM
RE: Hellfire Patch v1.02.A5: Classic HF with less bugs and more polish! - by Belix - 05-17-2015, 12:35 AM

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