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

[FireIceTalon]

========================

The max beneficial AC in PvM is 285 for a level 50 char, which is pretty easy to get as it is if you find a nice Awesome Full Plate of whatever.

I agree that in vanilla Diablo a Warrior can obtain high or maximum effective AC with reasonable ease already. But... this thread is about Hellfire, so I have to discuss this from that perspective.

As a matter of technical accuracy, the minimum effective Armor Class in Hellfire against non-boss enemies is actually 301 AC. This is due to Flesh Things, which (in Hell difficulty) are Level 58 with 270% chance to hit. While I forget the exact figure, the maximum useful AC here against bosses like Diablo (with his chance to hit bug fixed) and Na-krul was somewhere around 410 AC.

More importantly, most of Hellfire's new classes are encouraged to play without shields. That's a significant hit to the AC of the Hellfire classes (though less so for the Monk), and the loss of an item with a decent Hit Point or Resistance bonus as well.

And most importantly, Barbarians and Bards with no shield cannot block at all, making them entirely dependent on their Armor Class to avoid hits - the same AC which is naturally lower without said shield. This makes their melee careers quite painful at high difficulties; stun-lock and item durability (plus repair expenses) become serious concerns.

I'm not saying these characters can't achieve maximum useful AC, but even with a Level 50 character reaching 300+ Armor Class with no shield is not easy. I'm curious if a Barbarian could even break 300 AC at Level 50 at all without wearing Gotterdamerung and +Dex jewels instead of +All.

And that brings me to another point. I don't think discussing characters in terms of Level 50 makes sense here. Back when you could always find someone to play Hell/Hell with on Battle.net, playing characters over and over until eventually hitting Level 50 wasn't uncommon. But Hellfire never had Battle.net support, most of us probably don't have that kind of free time any more, and Marsh's Mod changed some things with the item table that would invalidate some or all of the equipment of any existing character, so I suspect anyone using a Level 50 character here would be an anomaly.

So, here's a more comprehensive list of useful Armor Class maximums against any normal monster found in Hell difficulty:

Level 30: 341 AC
Level 35: 331 AC
Level 40: 321 AC
Level 45: 311 AC
Level 50: 301 AC

With all of these factors considered, I don't think being able to find a magic plate with up to 225 AC (38 more than the previous 187 AC max) is unreasonable, especially since a 255 AC plate already exists in Hellfire. I have to admit, I almost forgot about the Armor of Gloom myself.

But even considering all of that, I still agree with you that it is unnecessary. If I were to actually implement higher qlvl affix drops, I would consider altering it to exclude items that couldn't legitimately be generated; so you could find the types of Holy Plates, Emerald Bows and Whale Helms etc. that Wirt could of sold before, but no Godly Plates of the Whale or other newcomers. Maybe. I'm not sure I'd ever even implement that at all, so the specifics of how it would work may be wasted thought.

Plus, not sure what the implications would be from a PvP perspective.

None. As you said, vanilla Diablo 1 PvP is fine. I've never heard of any serious PvP activity in Hellfire, and I suspect that's probably because it is broken for some reason. If not because of the various bugs it came with (such as Warriors blocking first and checking AC second), then probably the weird items (255 AC Plate, +60 Dex rings).

Hydra Rings of Wizardry

Just wanted to note that the Hydra's and Wyrm's affixes only appear on Staves, and reiterate my earlier comment about only intending to enable allowed affixes to be generated on items, not change which items affixes are allowed on.

My apologies. Framing your message in the context of Hellfire/this mod seems largely dismissive. You strike me as a long time Diablo player that is intimately familiar with the game; I respect and admire that. I share your love for the original game in its unaltered form and suspect, were I ever to make a project like this for it, I doubt I'd find sufficient reason to modify it outside of bug fixes. Hellfire was a mess though (and perhaps arguably still is somewhat, despite the efforts of community members over the years).

Ah, you were speaking in the context of HF only. For some reason I thought this was being applied to vanilla D1 as well. Well, this makes more sense now, thanks for clearing that up mate! BTW if you ever return to vanilla D1 there is still a few of us who play co-op games regularly on Battle.net, channel Diablo Deu-1 on Europe. Mostly high level vets, but some new players also. Best of luck with your mod^^

[Belix]

I'm glad the bow speed change seems so popular. I always thought it was just a subtle thing that bothered no one but me, but I guess that wasn't the case.

A trivial one which I liked was Lemming "fixing" that wimpy monk voice to be that of the sorceror.

That's funny! While I never got around to playing a Monk in HF:Fixed and was unaware of that, I considered making the same change, along with changing the entire graphic for the Monk back to the Sorcerer. He's missing a block animation for his staff, but I think one could be cobbled together well enough borrowing a couple frames from his staff hit recovery and staff attack animations. I may have to make that an optional mod here for anyone who would prefer the Sorcerer.

It's not that the Monk is terrible, I just think whoever worked on him wasn't given enough time to polish him up right, so he's rather outshined by the sheer awesomeness of the other three characters.

Short version of it, I'm quite interested in trying out changing the Warrior's and Barbarian base attack speed with melee weapons. For Warrior, all one handed weapons (sword&club) will be set to of Speed\Haste level. Two handed weapons will not be changed. For Barbarian, all Axes and Clubs one handed and two handed, base attack speed will be changed to of Speed.

Alright, I looked at the attack speed code again and the memory locations I have. The table I was thinking of just tells Diablo how many frames of an animation to play before looping it or reverting to the default standing animation. So, making that number smaller would just make the Warrior resume standing faster, not actually make him swing faster.

Without modifying the attack speed routine to check for Wars/Barbs and certain weapons, then copying the attack speed code and modifying it just for those cases, I'm not sure there's a way to achieve this while preserving its original behavior. There might be a way to speed them up that would be close, like making them able to start a new swing faster during the animation, but it wouldn't be quite the same.

If Lenny has some memory locations that would help me write some code you can pop into your mod file to do this, I'll take a look at it, but otherwise I'd probably need to dedicate a solid block of about two and a half hours; might be awhile until I try it. But I may need to look at the attack speed again soon anyway, as someone told me that Speed on melee weapons now seems to them to behave like Swiftness which, if true, is unintentional and thus something I must of goofed up and should probably fix.

And just to make sure, did you mean:

A) Warrior & Barbarian always have Speed/Haste with these weapons, or
B) Warrior & Barbarian have the base speed of Speed/Haste weapons, and become even faster still when using them now?

From a gear dependency standpoint, A makes a lot more sense. I've grown somewhat tired of shopping gear for high level melee characters these days. The stash feature has helped with that some, as I can place items other characters don't need in there for use by other characters that reach Hell difficulty later. I'd rather not think about the number of times I've heard "Well, what can I do for ya?" over the years.

Secondary interest would be sweep damage mechanic, but this one I'm not sure if it's even possible... I was thinking more of sweep damage% = clvl x2.

That kind of modification is probably easier than the attack speeds. Though your formula might need a little work. 2-24% sweep damage for the first 12 clvls is probably even less effective than it is now. I forget the current formula Marsh set up, but I think I know where he did that, so I could take a look at it in the code sometime. I feel like the current formula all but nullifies sweep attack early in the game. Perhaps I can find a nice middle ground between what Marsh did and its original craziness.

AFAIK with that older post link, and last time I tested it's HF:F only. The slight speed change\quirk with the bard does not exist in vanilla HF, and JG's info still holds true for the unmodified version of HF.

Okay, thanks for clearing that up. I don't remember reading anything about Bard attack speed changes in the HF:Fixed change log. I'm curious what caused that, because my current understanding of the game's innards makes me think that would be a very intricate, complicated thing to do by accident. So either there are more variables that control attack speed I don't know about, or HF:Fixed went a bit out of its way to make Bards faster with maces.

Emphasis is on fairly fast character growth, eg: enabling for multi, HF SP style level 1 char able to choose Nightmare or Hell difficulty right away.

I think removing that restriction so MP chars can switch difficulties freely may be easier than the attack speed changes. Unfortunately a quick attempt to find and break this restriction didn't turn up anything. So far I've had very little luck modifying any of Diablo's menu behaviors despite combing through them for hours. Fixing the Enter key not working in all menus, adding information to the character selection screen (such as class name since hero picture and stats don't always make that clear, and current gold carried), trying to reduce menu CPU usage, and now this haven't gone anywhere despite my best efforts. The code that runs the game menu seems very arcane. But, hopefully I'll figure it out in time.

Ah, you were speaking in the context of HF only. For some reason I thought this was being applied to vanilla D1 as well. Well, this makes more sense now, thanks for clearing that up mate!

No problem! Vanilla D1 still has some bugs to fix as well, but I don't want to go making an unofficial v1.10 until Battle.net finally shuts down. Otherwise, I might inadvertently create division among the remaining players about which version to use.

there is still a few of us who play co-op games regularly on Battle.net, channel Diablo Deu-1 on Europe.

I haven't played public games of Diablo in many years now, since shortly after the release of Diablo II. There were too many people cheating and/or crashing games all the time. I suspect most of those people are gone now, but I've become a bit of a recluse since then and don't play any PC games publicly any more; I only play arranged sessions with some friends on and off.

However, I'm sure there may be others who would be interested. In fact, you may want to repost that information over in this other thread where it's much more likely to be spotted by people looking for others to play with:

The D1 Meet'n'Greet

I'm afraid the information will just get buried here in what is quickly becoming a very large and verbose thread. Also, to that random person in the future who discovered this thread and just read all 9 pages of this: Why aren't you playing this great game instead?

[Hammerskjold]

And just to make sure, did you mean:

A) Warrior & Barbarian always have Speed/Haste with these weapons, or

Woops, definitely A). Sorry I worded it unclearly, I was looking at the JG info for Barbarian axe and club "of Swiftness" rate and probably got a wire crossed somewhere.

Anyhow the important thing is definitely A), that's basically the idea\goal I'm interested in. If I can somehow tweak the base speed to be:

-Warrior with all one handed club\sword at natural base speed of 0.35.

-Barbarian with all club\axe at natural base speed of .30, barbarian with all swords 0.35. If that is far too difficult to do with hex editing alone (at my skill level at least), I'll try it as Barbarian with all club\swords\axe at speed\haste 0.35.

From a gear dependency standpoint, A makes a lot more sense. I've grown somewhat tired of shopping gear for high level melee characters these days. The stash feature has helped with that some, as I can place items other characters don't need in there for use by other characters that reach Hell difficulty later. I'd rather not think about the number of times I've heard "Well, what can I do for ya?" over the years.

Exactly. For this "arcade mode" idea I'm more interested in reducing the tedium of grinding for gear, especially for the Warrior and Barbarian since gear dependence is more apparent with them IMO.

That kind of modification is probably easier than the attack speeds. Though your formula might need a little work. 2-24% sweep damage for the first 12 clvls is probably even less effective than it is now. I forget the current formula Marsh set up, but I think I know where he did that, so I could take a look at it in the code sometime. I feel like the current formula all but nullifies sweep attack early in the game. Perhaps I can find a nice middle ground between what Marsh did and its original craziness.

The formula I threw is first draft brainstorming at most, I'm not married to it so critique and improve away. If you can find a good middle ground, all the better. Hmmm, is it practical or even doable to make it a tapering\diminishing formula in the game code? Enough of an "oomph" for early clvls, and tapers off (but not fall into the D2-LoD "balance at all cost, even at the cost of fun") by the time the character reach a practical high clvl like 40+?

Okay, thanks for clearing that up. I don't remember reading anything about Bard attack speed changes in the HF:Fixed change log. I'm curious what caused that, because my current understanding of the game's innards makes me think that would be a very intricate, complicated thing to do by accident. So either there are more variables that control attack speed I don't know about, or HF:Fixed went a bit out of its way to make Bards faster with maces.

From the posting of that older thread, at least the way I read it the change might have been inadvertent. But in a roundabout way it was also what sparked my interest in what else could be tweaked, if changing the bard speed with a mace was possible.

http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/thread-8955.html

I think removing that restriction so MP chars can switch difficulties freely may be easier than the attack speed changes. Unfortunately a quick attempt to find and break this restriction didn't turn up anything. So far I've had very little luck modifying any of Diablo's menu behaviors despite combing through them for hours. Fixing the Enter key not working in all menus, adding information to the character selection screen (such as class name since hero picture and stats don't always make that clear, and current gold carried), trying to reduce menu CPU usage, and now this haven't gone anywhere despite my best efforts. The code that runs the game menu seems very arcane. But, hopefully I'll figure it out in time.

No worry, this is just my thinking out loud for the most part. I'd rather it not mess up your order of priorities if it's a huge hassle.

[Belix]

From the posting of that older thread, at least the way I read it the change might have been inadvertent. But in a roundabout way it was also what sparked my interest in what else could be tweaked, if changing the bard speed with a mace was possible.

Looked at Lemming's post specifically this time, and checked my suspicion of which values he might of altered - yep, checking code between HF:Fixed and vanilla Hellfire shows a few differences in the animation lengths given to the game, but only for the Monk (2 anims 2 frames shorter) and Bard (2 anims 2 frames shorter, 2 anims 1 frame shorter). I don't have each value associated yet with the actual animation they effect, but of the ones I do, it looks like the Monk's spellcasting and Bard's attack and spellcast animations were shortened. As he said in his post, for weapons that just returns to the stand animation faster. But, for some of these, like blocking or hit recovery, it would probably have the desired effect, since there isn't an action that happens on a specific frame but the player is in a helpless state until the animation finishes.

By the way, it's quite likely the way the Bard was changed in HF:Fixed that the Mace animation isn't the only one that ends faster. I suspect she snaps back to her standing animation a little faster with other weapons too. But it certainly might give the illusion of striking faster.

[Hammerskjold]

From the posting of that older thread, at least the way I read it the change might have been inadvertent. But in a roundabout way it was also what sparked my interest in what else could be tweaked, if changing the bard speed with a mace was possible.

Looked at Lemming's post specifically this time, and checked my suspicion of which values he might of altered - yep, checking code between HF:Fixed and vanilla Hellfire shows a few differences in the animation lengths given to the game, but only for the Monk (2 anims 2 frames shorter) and Bard (2 anims 2 frames shorter, 2 anims 1 frame shorter). I don't have each value associated yet with the actual animation they effect, but of the ones I do, it looks like the Monk's spellcasting and Bard's attack and spellcast animations were shortened. As he said in his post, for weapons that just returns to the stand animation faster. But, for some of these, like blocking or hit recovery, it would probably have the desired effect, since there isn't an action that happens on a specific frame but the player is in a helpless state until the animation finishes.

By the way, it's quite likely the way the Bard was changed in HF:Fixed that the Mace animation isn't the only one that ends faster. I suspect she snaps back to her standing animation a little faster with other weapons too. But it certainly might give the illusion of striking faster.

Ok, forgive my nubularity when it comes to code reading. I'm still just taking baby steps here. I downloaded a collection of mod tools from khanduras.net, ver 1.05 since 1.06 download link doesn't seem to be working for me.

I'm still trying to figure out which exact program to use, and I'm still guessing here that it's the .exe file of Hellfire that I want to modify for the changes I'm seeking?

And scouring from the older posts and googling, this seems similar to what you are describing. I could be mistaken on that though, due to my inexpertise in code reading.

http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/thread-8121.html
http://www.thedark5.com/

Character Data

Diablo

The starting stats are located at offset 9FE50 (9EDDF) and are 4 bytes long each.
Warrior Rogue Sorcerer
Strength...... 1E00 0000 1400 0000 0F00 0000 0000 0000
Magic......... 0A00 0000 0F00 0000 2300 0000 0000 0000
Dexterity..... 1400 0000 1E00 0000 0F00 0000 0000 0000
Vitality...... 1900 0000 1400 0000 1400 0000 0000 0000

The max stats are located at offset 9FEB0 (9EE24) and is 4 bytes long each as well.
Strength Magic Dexterity Vitality
Warrior...... FA00 0000 3200 0000 3C00 0000 6400 0000
Rogue........ 3700 0000 4600 0000 FA00 0000 5000 0000
Sorcerer..... 2D00 0000 FA00 0000 5500 0000 5000 0000

The blocking bonuses are at offset 9FE90 (9EE0F) and are 4 bytes long each. The values are in percentages. Referring to Diablo, the Warrior has a 30% blocking bonus.
Warrior Rogue Sorcerer
1E00 0000 1400 0000 0A00 0000 0000 0000

The rest of the bonus and framesets are located at offset 9FDF0 (9ED88) and are one byte each for each bonus. Each character has 11 bonuses and framesets.
Byte Effect
0 Idle frameset in the dungeon
1 Attacking frameset
2 Walking frameset in dungeon
3 Blocking speed
4 Death frameset
5 Frameset for magic casting
6 Hit recovery speed
7 Idle frameset in town
8 Walking frameset in town
9 Single handed weapon attacking speed
10 Spell casting speed

Note about the speeds.....
To get the actual "time" of the speeds, multiply the value by 0.05. The number you get is the speed in seconds. AND...if you set the framesets lower than the speed value, that action will not work. For example, you set byte 5, which is the frameset for magic casting, to 0A...and the spell casting speed to 09, the character will not perform the spell. Same goes for attacking.

Feels like I'm seeing a foggy horizon, but at least it's a horizon.

[Belix]

Thanks! I had been able to discern some of the information you quoted on my own, but I can use the rest to fill in the blanks.

I did not realize that the values dictating on which frame an action occurs were weaved through these same values defining animation lengths. No wonder trying to determine what some of them did by trial and error was so difficult.

So, first I will tell you that the information you quoted appears to be for Diablo, and not Hellfire. But also possibly a version of Diablo older than v1.09. The locations/offsets/addresses (whatever you'd like to call them really) vary greatly between Diablo and Hellfire, but also slightly between different versions of the game.

Also, these locations are for data inside the executable file. If you've never done anything like this before, I would recommend modifying the program's memory. This saves you the hassle of having to keep multiple copies of the .exe file you're editing, helps avoid saving mistakes permanently, and you don't have to keep detailed notes about where and what you changed, what the original values were, etc.

You don't require any special tools to do this (although you could get a memory editing program if you want to work with it in real-time), since PlugUlmo's loader.exe can apply changes to the game memory when launching either Diablo or Hellfire (and is how my own mod is written at the moment). So once you have the memory addresses, you can simply add them into my mod file, or use your own mod file.

Basically, I prefer working/testing stuff by altering memory first, because it is a temporary canvas that gets wiped every time you restart the program - if you goofed something up, something crashes etc. the results will typically be temporary, unless you were messing with something that controls how the game wrote out something permanent, say, your Warrior's character file data, as an example here.

Anyway, I'll type you up a quick example of how to do that, but first let's get you the right addresses for what you want to play with.

Code:

Hellfire memory addresses
4B5CA1 09 - Warrior's 'hit' frame/speed
4B5CD8 09 - Barbarian's 'hit' frame/speed

So, if you wanted to modify these you can simply open cowqueston.dat in my mod, go to the bottom and create a new area thusly:

Code:

start HF1.01 "Warrior and Barbarian attack 2 frames faster"
4B5CA1 09 07
4B5CD8 09 07
end

These modification codes are just instructions to the memory patcher in loader.exe. I'll explain how this works:

start - This line indicates the start of a new memory change. All of the text after it is simply for informational purposes. HF1.01 has no functional purpose, it merely indicates the version of the .exe it is meant to work with, and could be typed out fully as Hellfire1.01 - doesn't matter. Despite Marsh's mod displaying the version number v1.02, the underlying core is still v1.01, so none of the address locations are different for data tables such as attack speeds etc. Only things Marsh and I have changed will differ from v1.01.

After the start line, each separate line is a simple 3 piece instruction:
4B5CA1 09 07 is: address/offset | expected value | new value

If the value in memory address 4B5CA1 is 09, it will be changed to 07. Otherwise the change will not be applied.

end just signifies the end of an individual memory change. Make sure you open and close any changes you write into the file this way, or the program won't understand. Check the bottom of PlugUlmo.log to look for error messages if your changes don't seem to be getting applied. If you put your own codes at the top of my mod file instead, you'll have to scroll to the top of each new log section to find yours. You may want to delete this file so it can start a new log if it has too much information in it. I've noticed lately it has been growing pretty fast with all the changes it records loading from my mod every time you open Hellfire now. I may have to turn it off as it could grow to a fairly ridiculous size with a few months of regular play...

You can use the code I gave you above and pop it right into the file and it will work. Note, however, that playing with these values will not yield quite the effect you wanted - attack speed bonuses on items will still make the character's attacks faster. This is because the attack speed code skips 1 or 2 frames before the attack frame is normally reached. Because of this, speeding up attacks this way will look funny - you'll be making it occur earlier in the animation, so depending on the speed you put in, your character may look like they keep raising their weapon to strike but never actually connect a swing, yet the monster will die anyway. Also, in theory, your attack may stop working entirely if you had the misfortune to specify a frame for the hit to take place that is one of the two frames skipped when attack speed bonuses are applied. I believe these are frames 3 and 5.

I also should mention that this change will not influence all types of weapons. I don't know if some values are hardcoded or there is another table of speeds somewhere, but based on the odd results I've seen experimenting with these numbers, you can expect that your change will only affect the animations with the same base attack speed for that character (and maybe not even all of them). e.g. for Warrior, everything with a base speed of 0.45. For Sorcerer, everything with a base speed of 0.60. I'm uncertain what speed group the Barbarian might effect, as I don't have one handy to test with, but it may not be the weapons you'd expect. The Bard for instance had no change on her swords (0.50), but shields and kicks (0.50) did change.

This has certainly piqued my curiosity in what the world is going on in there with the attack speeds. Maybe I'll dissect it some day, and maybe what I find will to finally make some sense out of how the Sorcerer ended up with Shields as his fastest weapon type. There might even be an explanation for the Bard seeming to attack faster in HF:Fixed if it wasn't just a shorter animation.

Let me know if you want any more information.

[LennyLen]

So, first I will tell you that the information you quoted appears to be for Diablo, and not Hellfire. But also possibly a version of Diablo older than v1.09. The locations/offsets/addresses (whatever you'd like to call them really) vary greatly between Diablo and Hellfire, but also slightly between different versions of the game.

The first offset is for Diablo 1.07, and the one on parentheses is for 1.09. The document that Hammerskjold quoted from does list the Hellfire (1.01 iirc) offsets as well, further down the page. The offsets are for the .exe, but it's pretty easy to convert them to memory offsets.

Maybe I'll dissect it some day, and maybe what I find will to finally make some sense out of how the Sorcerer ended up with Shields as his fastest weapon type. There might even be an explanation for the Bard seeming to attack faster in HF:Fixed if it wasn't just a shorter animation.

I did spend some time playing around with various timing values. As you noted, even when the changes work, the results just don't look right. I gave up on it in the end as the extra speed you can add doesn't make up for looking at weird animations non stop.

[Predator]

Hello. As I see, the A5 version is released (thanks a lot for your great work). Is it possible to update from my current 1.02.A4 version to the new A5 without lose files? I don't know if for the update is required to reinstall the game or if I can just apply it; my cousing and I have characters with lot of game process that we want to keep and update to A5.

Greetings and thanks again.

[sedrosken]

I can't seem to find the original Unofficial Hellfire 1.02 mod that this requires. I found the thread but the download links are dead. If anyone could mirror them that would be fantastic.

[Faedru]

I am also interested in this mod very much but I need Marsh's mod first. As the above Lurker pointed out, Marsh's mirrors on his thread are broken atm. I will edit this post if I find a good mirror to it!

EDIT: Found it! Go here (http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/thread-15844.html) and scroll down to Belix's post.

UPDATE: Thank you so much for this wonderful mod, Belix! I am having so much fun! Also, if anyone was having the weird issue I was having, which was after installing the game and running it the first time -- it ran just fine, but every other time after that the flash of what appeared to be a command prompt window on the screen and then nothing, just desktop, no error messages or anything -- the issue was that the hellfire.exe process was still running. So after I ended it in the Task Manager, everything else worked beautifully. Along the way, I downloaded one of the wrappers Belix suggested for newer operating systems (I'm running Windows 10) in this thread, so keep that in mind as well.

[Belix]

Sorry for the delayed replies, it seems I haven't been getting e-mail notifications again.

Is it possible to update from my current 1.02.A4 version to the new A5 without lose files?

Worry not! No items or progress should be lost between when updating this mod to any new version. I try very carefully to avoid making any changes that would invalidate current equipment.

It is unfortunate that gear does break when switching to this mod from vanilla Hellfire, but that is due to Marsh's mod changing some of the item generation rules so that all the unique items could drop (previously many didn't).

I can't seem to find the original Unofficial Hellfire 1.02 mod that this requires. I found the thread but the download links are dead. If anyone could mirror them that would be fantastic.

Oops! I actually had mirrors for Marsh's mod in the main post, but I seem to have erased them accidentally when transferring the bulk of that post into the new Documentation file. The mirrors are also listed there. I'll be restoring any working mirrors and download links to the main post, but here it is again just in case (still working as of 3/19/16):

Marsh's Unofficial Hellfire 1.02 Mod
http://thehellmod.ucoz.ru/Downloads/Mods...00-102.zip

Greetings and thanks again.

UPDATE: Thank you so much for this wonderful mod, Belix! I am having so much fun!

You are both welcome, and thanks to everyone who has commented, left feedback, and reported bugs. I spent a several months worth of free time on all of this and am glad I decided to share it in case anyone else might enjoy it.

I don't think anyone has reported any issues with the current version of the mod itself. I will continue to check in here periodically, but unless I'm struck by a whim to alter anything else, A5 may potentially be the final version of the mod. Looking back there are some things I would change or do a little differently, but modifying the game's compiled code is terribly time consuming. If only Blizzard would release the source code for us!

Let's hope Diablo and Hellfire can keep working for another 20 years!

[Jezebel]

Registered just to say that I truly appreciate the work you and Marsh have done to keep D1 & HF alive. Thank you so much!

[asfkasdjf]

Indeed. Great work!

[Belix]

Thank you both.

[berymuch]

Been lurking this forums for years, and I thought I'd break my silence to give a shout out to Belix for creating this mod.

I started playing Diablo/Hellfire way back in 1997, and after 17+ years I've finally found Xorine's and Karik's ring (amongst other "unfindable" uniques). Beyond that, I've also been able to enjoy the game relatively bug free and experience parts of it that were inadvertently made inaccessible....all thanks to this mod!

Great work man! I can't believe I'm still playing this game after so long, but I suppose my playtime is testament to a nicely designed game and a fantastic community. Good luck on whatever you decide to work on next- and thanks a ton!

[Belix]

From another user who generally opts to lurk rather than participate, you're very welcome! It's strangely gratifying to think that a great many more months may have been spent by everyone playing this mod combined now than I originally spent working on it.

I agree on the game's good core design. It remains a compelling experience 2 decades after its release. I'll be playing it on and off until the day I quit being a PC gamer.

I don't currently envision any more projects related to Diablo. Perhaps in time things I'm still not happy about with D1/HF or this mod will compel me to do more, but by then someone else's efforts to improve the game may have obsoleted mine. Time will tell.

[rlsprite]

Hey, Belix. One question..
Is there anyway to use your mod without the loader.exe?
Thing is I have been playing vanilla Diablo using DxWnd (this will force the game to run on a Window) and will it work using Hellfire it would not do the trick while starting the game via loader.. Diablo looks kinda crappy while in fullscreen (the 640x480 doesn't help... like AT ALL) and it would be nice to play using your mod in windowed mode.

[Belix]

Since my mod is designed as a memory patch (as is PlugUlmo's Gillian Stash), some program has to modify the game's memory with the desired changes, and you'd still have the same problem, since DxWnd is essentially doing the same thing as loader (launching Diablo, applying changes) and the two would conflict.

Fortunately, you should be able to use strangebyte's DirectDraw wrapper which includes windowed functionality. I've used it with D1, HF, The Hell and my mod with no problems on Windows 7 and Windows 10, although it can be a bit quirky until you navigate through the main menu into gameplay, it works great in game.

You can read about and download strangebyte's patch here: http://www.strangebytes.com/index.php/pr...a-patch=60

Since this relies on a simple .dll replacement, it works perfectly alongside PlugUlmo's loader. Let me know if you have any problems getting these to work and I'll try to help.

[Davias]

First, I have to thank Belix for this awesome Diablo mod. It has become my favourite mod to play Diablo Hellfire, because it fixes most of the bugs, but left the rest of the game nearly untouched.
I have one question:
When I read the info of the mod I found a section, where you could turn on the "Living of the Land mode" on ( erase the people in town for a sort of iron man challenge ), but when I look in the cowquest.dat, there was no such option at the end of the document. I remembered playing an older version with this, but now it isn't there anymore. Why?

[Belix]

Thanks, Davias!

Regarding the missing Live off the Land mode, at some point changes to my mod broke part of it. I doubted anyone was using it (or would miss it) so I opted to remove it to try to reduce clutter in the mod file.

If you're interested, I could go over it and update it again to work with the current version of the mod, then post the code here for you to add to your file. If I remember right, the part of it that forced the Lazarus portal to be open from the start of the game stopped working, which would have made it impossible to complete the game in single player mode. Just let me know.