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

[Phoenix7786]

I see you make references to multiplayer, so I assume it works.

Yes, most of the time I spend developing and testing this occurs in multiplayer games over Hamachi.

I'd like to help, and I could suggest a number of things you might try (actually, I should probably create a guide for setting up MP games with both Diablo and Hellfire these days), but unfortunately I don't have time to type up anything helpful right now; I'm in the process of packing for a trip to visit some family. I need to go to sleep early and drive out of state first thing tomorrow.

I will try to get back to you Wednesday at the latest if you haven't sorted it out already; sorry to have to ask you to wait. Some of my friends have gotten MP games working as easily as just installing the game, patch & IPXWrapper and start playing right away with no problems on Win 7 64-bit, so it could just be one simple thing you've overlooked like a firewall exception (or turning the firewall off, if it isn't Windows Firewall - some of them seem ruthless in blocking old games like Diablo, even if you added proper exceptions).

Oh wow just you replying back so quickly is heartening enough. Have fun visiting family! We've got other games to run on Hamachi, so I assume it must be something about Hellfire not being configured properly. We're by no means tech-wizards but at the same time we're not "which one's the any key?" kind of people. Neither one of us is super familiar with Hamachi, but if you're willing to help us out it'd be greatly appreciated. Take your time by no means are 2 random fans your direct, primary responsibility.

EDIT: Eureka! He forgot to check the compatibility tabs for the Hellfire loader. Once he set it to XPSP2, and checked the various boxes we connected and played just fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmPhaG1ud38

[germinalCheesesteak]

A dialog bug I've noticed, using v1.02.A5, using a level 5 warrior from Hellfire 1.01. Mod options at default.

Gillian's Gossip option makes her speak dialogue from other characters. Seems to randomly choose the Gossip dialogue from the last townsperson you spoke to.

After much trouble with the site, I've managed to upload the savefile I'm using.

  strangedialogue.zip (Size: 517.77 KB / Downloads: 3)

[Belix]

Gillian's Gossip option makes her speak dialogue from other characters. Seems to randomly choose the Gossip dialogue from the last townsperson you spoke to.

Thanks. This bug is actually caused by PlugUlmo's Gillian Stash feature (which was included in Marsh's mod). I haven't looked into it yet, but it is on my to do list.

[germinalCheesesteak]

Ah, I see. Thought it was a new issue since it wasn't listed in the Known Remaining Issues section.

[Belix]

Thanks for mentioning that; I need to update that list soon. I'm fairly certain I have quite a few more things to add to it that I scribbled in my note file and forgot about.

If you run into any other issues that aren't on the list, feel free to mention them anyway. I'd rather hear about something I'm aware of than not hear about something I wasn't.

p.s. Has anyone tried the CPU usage reducing option yet? If so I'm interested in hearing if your experience with it was positive or negative.

[SmurfThat]

Hey everyone,
First of all thanks to Belix for his continuing work on this long dead game.
Is anyone playing multiplayer? I was so excited to see this earlier this month, I'll be hanging out in the Diablo: Hellfire channel on tunngle. Send me a message if we are playing in hamachi channels or something.

This is something I noticed when playing Hellfire: Fixed years ago and seems to be present in this version as well. It seems waaay easier to find high quality items like of the whale armor from wirt and awesome shields from griswold. Is this my imagination or has my luck just been amazing in hellfire?

[Belix]

Hello there, SmurfThat.

Is anyone playing multiplayer?

I think the most active multiplayer gathering for Diablo 1 right now is over at http://tristr.am/, but I'm uncertain if any of them would be willing to play Hellfire, or this.

It seems waaay easier to find high quality items like of the whale armor from wirt and awesome shields from griswold. Is this my imagination or has my luck just been amazing in hellfire?

Short answer: Not your imagination.

Long answer: There are two factors at work here over vanilla Diablo.

First is that the maximum price caps were adjusted by Hellfire itself. If I recall correctly, it was approximately 140,000 gold for Wirt, and 130,000 for Griswold. I think this was raised roughly 50,000 in Hellfire, allowing both merchants to sell better items that they previously couldn't.

Second are some changes (improvements, imo) that began with Hellfire: Fixed making Griswold more likely to sell types of items you actually could use.

Previously, both Griswold and Wirt were weighted to be more likely to sell types of items you did NOT have. So if you were a Rogue carrying 3 different bows, your chances of seeing bows for sale were significantly reduced. Needless to say, this behavior from Diablo and Hellfire made it harder to shop for the type of gear your character was currently equipped with, since anything you were wearing or holding in your inventory was less likely to be for sale.

Some players, understandably frustrated by this, would actually get a bunch of item types they didn't want from stores (like axes) to try to weight the inventory in their favor.

In the current version of this project, by default neither Griswold nor Wirt do this any more. All item types are equally likely to appear. Between this and Hellfire's increased price cap, you are definitely more likely to see better equipment for sale as you start leveling up past 30.

So, some magical items that were already possible, but difficult find or buy are now less rare.


Have fun!

[SmurfThat]

Thanks for the quick response! Sorry about posting so much but this is really cool.

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.

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!

[Belix]

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.

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.

[Hammerskjold]

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.

IMO 99% chance of a combination of what you just wrote, or all of the above.

[Dwyloc]

Hi I just registered to download your patch/fix for Hellfire and say thanks to everyone involved in fixing the remaining bugs and making it payable on modern versions of windows.

Even if I did have to resort to using a Windows 8 tablet and usb hub and dvd drive to run the Hellfire installer the zipping up the install and copying it over to my main PC.

For some reason the installer for the version of Hellfire I have is a 16-bit application like the official patch even though my original Diablo CD with is even older uses a 32-bit installer :-)

I also needed the 3rd part ddraw.dll for Diablo to get anything other than a black screen out of either Diablo or Hellfire on my budget tablet but my desktop PC also running Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit with a real graphics card did not suffer from that problem.

So if anyone else is having display issues with Diablo or Hellfire under windows 7 or 8 I would recommend trying this patch http://www.strangebytes.com/index.php/pr...a-patch=60 if the reg files don't help.

It may be hard to believe Bug playing Witcher 1 enhanced edition (probably the most fun I have had playing rpg's since Diablo1 and Baldur's Gate) purchased cheaply off gog.com has got me back into enjoying RPGs and made me want to see if Diablo and Hellfire were still as much fun as I remembered.

I guess the answer to that is yes as I have just spent 12 hours playing Hellfire rather than installing and Playing Witcher 2 as I had planned today.

Now I just need to workout a way to get our old lan gaming crew together for a gaming session, but that maybe more of a mission than patching Diablo1 and hellfire now that 3 out of the 4 of use that played Diablo 1 for hole weekend are married and were are not students anymore with all the free time in the world ;-)

[nightstrike]

Thanks for this. I'm a big fan of your minimalist style. I play Morrowind a lot, too, and I do the same thing -- stay true to the original, but fix the annoying bugs.

That said, I noticed a few issues that have probably been reported but that I didn't see listed anywhere:

1) HF always crashes on exit
2) Entering the hive for the first time results in no audible dialog

Anything I can do to help fix those two issues?


Also, do you have the source to Ulmo's dll?

[nightstrike]

Whereas my previous post was pointing out issues with your patch, this one contains a new request:

Can you extend the Search spell to include all interactive objects (sans doors if possible)? I find that once you get into the caves and below (as well as all of the HF areas), too many containers are hidden behind walls such that the only want to find them is to mouse hunt over a lot of pixels. At least if the Search spell revealed them, they'd be blue boxes on the automap.

[Belix]

Thanks for this. I'm a big fan of your minimalist style. I play Morrowind a lot, too, and I do the same thing -- stay true to the original, but fix the annoying bugs.

Thank you, and that's awesome - same here. Morrowind is one of my favorite single player games. I spent many hundreds of hours there with various characters/classes, doing all the quests I could find. Lots of fun, good memories. Well, except for getting killed the first time I played by the first Kwama Forager you encounter coming over the hill on the road out of Seyda Neen... turned out using a weapon you only have 10 skill points in at the start of the game was a really bad idea.

1) HF always crashes on exit
2) Entering the hive for the first time results in no audible dialog

Anything I can do to help fix those two issues?

The 2nd is intended. After hearing the disembodied Defiler speeches so many times, I turned it off by default. In hindsight perhaps I should leave things that aren't strictly fixes or enhancements off by default unless enabled specifically by the user. You can turn these back on by searching and erasing or commenting out "No Defiler speeches before encountering Defiler" in the dat file.

Hellfire doesn't crash for me on exit, but I've seen plenty of old games that start doing that. It might be an issue with the game trying to save user preferences on exit (volume, gamma etc.). You can try experimenting running it with admin permission or compatibility modes, but beyond that I have no idea unless the game is writing an .err file so I can try to figure out what's going on in the code being run when it crashes.

Out of curiosity, are you running Windows 7 or Windows 8 or something else?

Also, do you have the source to Ulmo's dll?

No, but I wish I did. It would probably make fixing Gillian's dialogue a lot easier, and then I could add more sorting options and other features.

Can you extend the Search spell to include all interactive objects (sans doors if possible)?

That should be possible, but whether I can figure it out or not is another thing. I haven't had much luck yet modifying any Search spell behavior related to the map. I'll add it to the list of stuff to experiment with for the next version.

[RadTang]

Compatibility problems for Your patch (A5 version).
I'm on Windows 8.1 and the game was throwing back some sort of standard.snp related problem + requiring diablo CD when it was already inserted (though I've even put the real CD in the drive + ISO file in virtual drive). I've deleted all the fixes (+ removed the colorfix from register) and reinstalled Hellfire. No patches were added. Installed Marsh's 1.02 then 1.02.A5. I've also copied diabdat.mpq from CD and set loader.exe to load it as admin. No problems - no crashes, no menu quirkiness and I can even play now (previously I had some problems - can't run the game, some kind of crash when I created the char).

Anything more could I add to help?

Edit: Enter doesn't work in menu. Created a char and bought something from Griswold and in game it works ok. Also, it works in esc-menu.

[Belix]

I've had a lot of difficulty getting Diablo or Hellfire to run much on Windows 8 at all. Glad you sorted it out.

The CD issue is usually caused by an unfortunate default setting in Marsh's mod itself that I have considered overwriting with an updated file. But there's no win-win solution to it because I have no way of knowing whether players prefer to run the game from their hard drive by default (better performance than using the real CD) or use the CD/virtual disc. No matter what setting is default in that file, it is going to inconvenience somebody.

And the Enter keystroke not working through all the menus seems to originate from a modified .dll Marsh included from The Hell distribution which, without, Hellfire doesn't seem to want to run much at all on newer operating systems. Unfortunately, The Hell team doesn't oft share information about their work, so it is unlikely I'll ever see the source code for the .dll file - and I'm uncertain if I'll ever learn enough to fix the problem without it.

It is completely possible there will be a list of problems I can never really fix working with the original game. I'll do as much as I can for it as time goes by, but what we really need is a proper open source/free implementation of the Diablo engine that recreates the original game as closely as humanly possible. I know someone out there is interested in doing this, but it will be even more time consuming than my mod. And it seems people who have made any effort to make a custom Diablo engine are more interested in using it to fundamentally alter Diablo to their own taste, instead of making a proper vanilla basis from which anyone could modify the original game to their liking if they so wished.

Heck, I'd make it myself if I had the free time. I envy whoever finally does it because it seems like it would be an awesomely fun project. But I can barely find enough time to make semi-regular updates for this.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it. Let me know if you have any other problems. I always make an effort to swiftly fix any serious issues I've caused.

Anything more could I add to help?

Actually, yes. I am still very interested in hearing from anyone who has tried the optional CPU usage reduction feature. Has anyone who has tried it noticed -any- negative impact on the game's performance or experienced it causing any problems? So far it has worked flawlessly for myself and my small test group of friends, so I am considering porting it over to the original Diablo. But I have no feedback on it yet from anyone here. Inviting anyone else to chime in, but if you'd care to try it out and report back, I'd appreciate it.

[RadTang]

Anything more could I add to help?

Actually, yes. I am still very interested in hearing from anyone who has tried the optional CPU usage reduction feature. Has anyone who has tried it noticed -any- negative impact on the game's performance or experienced it causing any problems? So far it has worked flawlessly for myself and my small test group of friends, so I am considering porting it over to the original Diablo. But I have no feedback on it yet from anyone here. Inviting anyone else to chime in, but if you'd care to try it out and report back, I'd appreciate it.

I can help with testing. Without anything extra my current CPU usage is about 27% ! And I have 3+ GHz i5-4440. Would be nice if anyone putting same raport add their CPU model. I think it will be even more helpful. I'm playing on desktop (regular PC) but in the next month I'm going to the sea so I might check it on my old laptop (Vista, dunno about specs but CPU-Z should help).

BTW. Just found Acolyte's Amulet - thx for fixing it ! Now, with +50 mana and +10% res all it's very useful for my new sorcerer. Will be swapped with +Mag stuff much later but I owe you sth for few extra firebolts.

BTW2: Before I've managed to run Diablo / Hellfire on Win 8, I was using virtual machine with W98 - it was ok though it wasn't the most comfortable setup to play. Maybe some Linux (its free.. in 99,999% of times ) would help.

[Belix]

I can help with testing. Without anything extra my current CPU usage is about 27% !

Unless you have other programs running, it sounds like the game is still running in its normal state. i5 has 4 cores and Diablo will try to utilize 100% of one, which should keep you up at 25% CPU usage minimum so long as the game is open.

If you haven't already, in the mod file (cowqueston.dat - Marsh named it, I still haven't changed it, haha) there is an option disabled by default. Search for 'Reduced CPU usage' and erase the # symbols from in front of each of the four seperate lines that section is comprised of. Save the file, then restart the game. If you did this correctly, once you are through the menus and into the actual game where your character is standing on screen, your computer should report far less CPU usage by Diablo - but the game should run just as well as before.

BTW. Just found Acolyte's Amulet - thx for fixing it ! Now, with +50 mana and +10% res all it's very useful for my new sorcerer.

I tried to make some previously shoddy uniques useful, but not too useful. Hope those stats seem fair. And you're welcome!

BTW2: Before I've managed to run Diablo / Hellfire on Win 8, I was using virtual machine with W98

Windows 98? That's some dedication. Either that or you did't have access to Windows XP. I think Diablo ran about as well there.

Speaking of Linux, another forum member here was talking about offering instructions for setting up a virtual Linux system that can run Diablo perfectly smooth. I'm gonna be keeping an eye out for that. Haven't used Linux much, and practical examples are always helpful for learning.

Have fun!

[RadTang]

I can help with testing. Without anything extra my current CPU usage is about 27% !

Unless you have other programs running, it sounds like the game is still running in its normal state. i5 has 4 cores and Diablo will try to utilize 100% of one, which should keep you up at 25% CPU usage minimum so long as the game is open.

If you haven't already, in the mod file (cowqueston.dat - Marsh named it, I still haven't changed it, haha) there is an option disabled by default. Search for 'Reduced CPU usage' and erase the # symbols from in front of each of the four seperate lines that section is comprised of. Save the file, then restart the game. If you did this correctly, once you are through the menus and into the actual game where your character is standing on screen, your computer should report far less CPU usage by Diablo - but the game should run just as well as before.

BTW. Just found Acolyte's Amulet - thx for fixing it ! Now, with +50 mana and +10% res all it's very useful for my new sorcerer.

I tried to make some previously shoddy uniques useful, but not too useful. Hope those stats seem fair. And you're welcome!

BTW2: Before I've managed to run Diablo / Hellfire on Win 8, I was using virtual machine with W98

Windows 98? That's some dedication. Either that or you did't have access to Windows XP. I think Diablo ran about as well there.

Speaking of Linux, another forum member here was talking about offering instructions for setting up a virtual Linux system that can run Diablo perfectly smooth. I'm gonna be keeping an eye out for that. Haven't used Linux much, and practical examples are always helpful for learning.

Have fun!

Thanks! I will check the reduced CPU usage anyway. I only run Firefox + some chat program. Windows 98 needs a bit of work to be put. I don't know why not XP, lol. It's easier and not that much heavier for the real PC (except some really serious testing or you need the DOS mode badly but then you can use DosBox - much better thing for running DOS stuff).

My previous PC was running XP - Pro and later some modded versions too. Diablo ran OK on every one.

Edit:

checked the CPU usage of regular Hellfire (1.02) - nothing changed (still ~27% for me). By the way, your fixes to that amulet ARE STILL APPLIED even though the game uses the original description (intended?)
CPU usage of Hellfire 1.02.A5 after applying that fix: orbiting about 0-1%. I will check it from time to time and edit this post for any changes.

Ooops. Returned to the game and it crashed. I haven't even unpaused. Hellfire stayed in the manager so I had to kill it.
2nd try. Reloaded my save and alt-tabbed. Same result. This time Hellfire is not on the list.
3rd try. This time I've seen a picture for a sec and then it crashed.

Contents of Hellfire.err (last modified by 3rd attempt to recreate this behavior):

Exception code: C0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION
Fault address: 61B70E81 01:0000FE81 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\atiumdva.dll

Registers:
EAX:EFEFEFEF
EBX:00000000
ECX:00925270
EDX:61B70E50
ESI:0818B4B8
EDI:0093B5C0
CS:EIP:0023:61B70E81
SS:ESP:002B:0018EF10 EBP:0018EF18
DS:002B ES:002B FS:0053 GS:002B
Flags:00010282

Call stack:
Address Frame Logical addr Module
61B70E81 0018EF18 0001:0000FE81 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\atiumdva.dll
62987677 0018EF48 0001:00046677 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\atiumdag.dll
62967954 0018EFF0 0001:00026954 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\atiumdag.dll
6294DA47 0018F008 0001:0000CA47 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\atiumdag.dll
642D433B 0018F020 0001:0000333B C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\atiu9pag.dll
64338553 0018F040 0001:00047553 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ddraw.dll
64311484 0018F0BC 0001:00020484 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ddraw.dll
74F9EEC6 0018F100 0001:0001DEC6 C:\Windows\system32\apphelp.dll
004181DD 0018F19C 0001:000171DD G:\Sierra\Hellfire\Hellfire.exe
0047EEE7 0018FF80 0001:0007DEE7 G:\Sierra\Hellfire\Hellfire.exe
75B57C04 0018FF94 0001:00007C04 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\KERNEL32.DLL
778EAD1F 0018FFDC 0001:00059D1F C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
778EACEA 0018FFEC 0001:00059CEA C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll

Seems that alt-tabbing is strictly prohibited with reduced CPU usage turned on.

Alt-tabbed to check the CPU usage. The game crashed.
Gotta check it without reduced CPU usage - but it wasn't crashing as far as I remember.
Yes, no problems. Seems that this crash is related to reduced CPU usage.

4th attempt with alt-tab - crashed.
Here's error from Hellfire.err

Exception code: C0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION
Fault address: 61B70E81 01:0000FE81 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\atiumdva.dll

Registers:
EAX:EFEFEFEF
EBX:00000000
ECX:00875200
EDX:61B70E50
ESI:055CB4B8
EDI:0088B5C0
CS:EIP:0023:61B70E81
SS:ESP:002B:0018EF10 EBP:0018EF18
DS:002B ES:002B FS:0053 GS:002B
Flags:00010282

Call stack:
Address Frame Logical addr Module
61B70E81 0018EF18 0001:0000FE81 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\atiumdva.dll
62987677 0018EF48 0001:00046677 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\atiumdag.dll
62967954 0018EFF0 0001:00026954 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\atiumdag.dll
6294DA47 0018F008 0001:0000CA47 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\atiumdag.dll
642D433B 0018F020 0001:0000333B C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\atiu9pag.dll
64338553 0018F040 0001:00047553 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ddraw.dll
64311484 0018F0BC 0001:00020484 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ddraw.dll
74F9EEC6 0018F100 0001:0001DEC6 C:\Windows\system32\apphelp.dll
004181DD 0018F19C 0001:000171DD G:\Sierra\Hellfire\Hellfire.exe
0047EEE7 0018FF80 0001:0007DEE7 G:\Sierra\Hellfire\Hellfire.exe
75B57C04 0018FF94 0001:00007C04 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\KERNEL32.DLL
778EAD1F 0018FFDC 0001:00059D1F C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
778EACEA 0018FFEC 0001:00059CEA C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll

I've compared both logs.
Here's a list of differences:
3rd try: ECX:00925270
4th try: ECX:00875200

3rd try: ESI:0818B4B8
4th try: ESI:055CB4B8

3rd try: EDI:0093B5C0
4th try: EDI:0088B5C0

Other are unchanged.
Maybe they are result of different game state. I don't know. I'm posting it in hope it would help.

Sorry for the long post and a streak of edits.

[Belix]

By the way, your fixes to that amulet ARE STILL APPLIED even though the game uses the original description (intended?)

That might be due to loading a saved game in plain 1.02. Until the amulet was re-equipped, the item's effect on your character would remain loaded from the save.

Seems that alt-tabbing is strictly prohibited with reduced CPU usage turned on.

That is unfortunate. I haven't had any issues tabbing in and out, but then, I don't believe I've tested this yet on Windows 8. I'm using Windows 7 here. It's possible the issue is unique to Win 8. I'll have to look into that. Thank you.