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

[Exceed]

I just want to post my thanks to everyone who worked on this patch. Awesome job! Diablo + Hellfire is much more enjoyable to play again.

It would be nice to add a "No Drops at Death" feature where your character won't drop any items when killed. However, if someone can give me the hex code cheat for "No Drops at Death" in Hellfire to add to the .dat file, it would be much appreciated.

[hybridmoments]

I too would love a "No drops at death" feature. Or the hex code to add to the dat. whichever comes first

[Belix]

Thanks, everyone. Glad the bleary-eyed hours and lost sleep created something people are still finding and enjoying years later!

It would be nice to add a "No Drops at Death" feature

I too would love a "No drops at death" feature.

By popular request...

Code:

start HF1.02 "No Drops on Death"
45A249 85 81
end

Disclaimer: Should work, but not thoroughly tested. If it only works in certain dlvls or only for the host in an MP game, let me know.

Firstly am I the only one bothered by the Auric Amulet doing nothing?

I don't remember exactly, but I think I had some concerns regarding the Auric Amulet that made me opt not to modify it at the time. I think they were something along the lines of:

-Item is super easy to obtain in every game, so giving it anything beyond very slightly helpful bonuses could be unbalancing
-Lester doesn't drop it properly in MP games, so it goes poof if anyone but the host clicks on him to generate it and pick it up
-The name and graphic for the item don't make much sense for other potential uses I could think of, and if I recall correctly, changing the item would have then made Lester's dialogue not make much sense (in retrospect, however, with the item currently broken it doesn't make better sense than a different, working item would, either).
-I don't think I found an easy way to add an extra line of text to the item on mouseover, displaying some kind of tooltip to explain its new behavior, like:

Code:

----------Auric Amulet----------
Increases something Neat by 100%

... the absence of which would require players to rifle through the readme to figure out what the Amulet does, and again later when they forget what it does.

If I ever make extensive changes to this mod again, I'll revisit the Auric Amulet. In a pinch, the most important thing was to remove its function entirely since dropping gold piles greater than 5,000 and then trying to pick them up without the Auric Amulet equipped would make the excess gold go poof... not good!


Regarding suggestions for the Auric Amulet...

Maybe throw some charges of the Rogue's Disarm Trap skill on it since it looks like a treasure chest?

Interesting idea, but without modification Diablo completely ignores spell charges on any type of item other than Staves. I'm not sure how easy that is to change. Could be a simple value somewhere that makes the game skip checking non-staff type items when looking for charges, or it could be something hardwired to the weapon slot. Off the top of my head I don't remember ever seeing any mods for Diablo/Hellfire exe's yet that allowed charges from non-staves, but it's been so many years...

Or the Thaumaturgic shrine effect?

Another clever idea, but in theory nothing stops a Large Chest in Hell from dropping 3x plate armors, so that could be abused to farm tons of gold, particularly on a good floor with 2-4 chests adjacent to the stairs to town. Not that it is particularly hard to make lots of gold anyway, but I don't want to add an unreasonably easier method than the game already provided. This one would involve editing/creating new spell behavior, which is probably a can of worms I might not be able to handle. Also, making that synchronize properly in MP might be a second can alongside that.

Personally, I'd probably give it the effect of the Search spell in some way.

Another interesting idea, but the item would still be useless to Monks unless it had some other bonus. Maybe if it was combined with the Rogue's trap detection ability? So you can see both treasure and traps easier.

Maybe 100% magic find or something? or 100% to gold find? Like the D2s gloves of chance.

Another interesting idea. I did experiment with a way to increase monster drops, but I abandoned it because of how fiddly Diablo already is about items disappearing in tight spaces and the fairly low limit of how many items can be in one level at once. Given those problems, improved drops would make far more sense than increased drops.

Whew, that wraps up the Auric Amulet... on to other topics now.

Secondly, is it wrong of me to be using Gillian to make the oils I apply to my weapons carry over from each game?

Heheh, that's up to you really. Gillian can be used to cheese all sorts of ways. Farm gold with a high level char, then buy a ton of Elixirs and xfer them to a new character etc. In a normal SP game obviously there were a finite number of oils. Bard damage is already kind of broken (get a Jester's Sword of the Bat in one hand and you're unstoppable). If I ever got the oils 'saved' between sessions somehow, I had some tricky balancing decisions to make. You could buy Godly Rags of the Whale from Wirt, then oil them up to 120 base AC... +200% = 360 AC. That's neat in that it makes those lighter armors useful, but probably too powerful.

Thirdly, I've noticed that the Long War Bow is using a previously unused graphic to set it apart from the Long Battle Bow... is there any desire for other items that use the same artwork to be given new graphics? (Long Bow / Hunter's Bow, Sword / Short Sword, Plate Mail / Field Plate, etc)

I could make that an extra feature, but Diablo doesn't have a lot of unused item icons that would look fitting on base items, so it'd make the inventory start looking less classic and more moddish, if you know what I mean. Would have to start using graphics normally reserved for Unique items, or get new graphics (beyond the scope of this mod), and then there's the headache that the size of the graphic also determines how much space the item takes up in your inventory (HF:Fixed made some changes to stuff where items that only took up 1x3 slots became 2x3 etc. -- that annoyed me more than I cared about the graphic being distinct).


For anyone curious about potential future updates: Still no chunk of free time in sight sufficient enough to do anything significant with this project, but I still check in every couple months minimum. But until nobody plays Diablo any more or a nice open source engine comes out that will make all this work SO much easier, I expect this project will remain relevant and I'll continue to try to maintain it as best I can. Have fun!

[hybridmoments]

Belix, your continued work on this project is so awesome. Thanks again for the hard work and thanks for the no drops at death code! Now that I think about it, it has been years already that I've been enjoying your mod. It's the ultimate version of any Diablo game for me, and keeps my love and nostalgia for D1 alive.

[Exceed]

Thank you Belix!

I've actually obtained a different code for "No Drops at Death" with a hex editor (and using the original Diablo's code as a reference) just recently, and I got this:

Code:

start HF1.01 "No Drops At Death"
45A2A5 7C eb
45A2C4 0F85 90e9
end

So far, I've tested this code with a new game file in multiplayer, and have played up to Hell dungeons in Nightmare mode and it has worked guaranteed. The only thing I have not tried is with other people online.

[Kunibert]

Hi there,

first I'd like to thank you for your work. After reading about it, I started playing Hellfire again (for weeks - I didn't play the game for many years). As I am actually addicted to it, I made seven runs so far (three on Normal, four on Nightmare).

On
http://lurkerlounge.com/belix/HellfirePr...p&Info.htm
you wrote

I hold my work to high standards and try my best not to break anything in the game.
If you encounter a serious issue, please report it!
If it is the fault of my work, I will make every effort to issue a fix or updated version ASAP!

Well, I encountered an issue, so here is my report:

I played the game seven times now, using your version from the very start. In this time i collected some unique items. Some of them are changed through the default configuration (My bad I didn't out-# the options I would have liked to suspense earlier...) which I wanted to change back now to the original state as ment by Diablo/Hellfire. So I did out-# the corresponding code to find out that it did not work or did not work completely/properly - the items are (partially?) messed up/not reverted:

Again quoted from the link above:

Acolytes Amulet: +50 Mana, +10% Resist All, Faster Hit Recovery (was: 50% of Base Mana to Life*)

the one i have says (Mouseover info): "50% MANA MOVED TO HEALTH"
but it does (tested): +50 Mana, +10% Resist All (Faster Hit Recovery?)

Amulet of Warding: +40% Resist All, +4 Armor, -3 Damage, +20 Armor vs Undead (was: +40% Res All, -100 Life)

it says:
"RESIST ALL: +40%
HITPOINTS: +0"
it does what it says and increases armor class by 4

Blackoak Shield: -10 Vitality >>> Fast Hit Recovery

it says:
"+10 TO DEXTERITY
+0 TO VITALITY
ARMOR CLASS: 18
-10% LIGHT RADIUS
HIGH DURABILITY"
it does what it says; couldn't check Fast Hit Recovery

Flamedart: No longer states its Fire Damage twice

That is okay. Also it doesn't steal mana any more :-)

Harlequin Crest: +2 All Attributes >>> +4 All Attributes, +7 Life & Mana >>> +15 Life & Mana (AC penalty might be worth it now)

it says:
"ARMOR CLASS: -3
-1 DAMAGE FROM ENEMIES
+4 TO ALL ATTRIBUTES
HIT POINTS: +15
MANA: +15"
...and does so.

So, it seems the "altered uniques codes" does partially work when the unique items are created by the game, then the altered uniques with some of its new features are saved within the save file?
How to restore the unique items to the desired (non optimized) state?

I also collected a huge stack of oils. I also disabled its "improved usability code". Do the oils now still work the improved usability way or do these work as in the original hellfire?

BTW on my first three runs on Nightmare level I did not get the "Warlord of Blood"-quest, so I moved the state files out of the game directory and copied these back to the game directory (the original files kept in another folder) to start a new game, saved it, assaulted D13 to have a look if the quest is now available. It was so, so I reloaded the game an started me seventh run. But it seems that using a copy of the state files corrupted/reset my kill count for each type of enemy which then started by zero again, refusing info about enemies when pointing at them with the cursor.
Then I moved out the actual state files (run 7) of the directory and moved again the original state files (End of run 6) into the directory, started a new game and the kill count still/again started at zero.

It is possible that playing with a copy of the state files instead of the original files resets the kill count?
Well, I think it should not be, but it occurred right after replacing the originals by copies.
What else could/did cause to reset the kill counter?

2. the item behind the door issue: it is an issue of vanilla diablo which made it into the mod too i suppose. this happened to me twice: first time in church. second time in catacombs.

Happened more often in vanilla: If an item is dropped behind a door it is likely that the dead monster is blocking the door. Blocked doors are ignored by Belix's Hellfire's cursor, so you usually can pick up these items. It happened anyway once to me (I reloaded the save state before killing that monster then...) But once it happened that a mana potion was behind an "activating book" (you have to click it to activate Halls of the Blind, Valor or The Chamber of Bones). It was impossible to pick it up.

Could you implement the possibility to highlight chests, sarcophagi, barrels and pods on the map? Especially in the Hive, pods are easily overseen or even unseen (if hidden behind a wall), but may contain some nice item.


kind regards

K

[Belix]

Hello Kunibert! I appreciate taking the time to share your experience/thoughts/issues.

So, it seems the "altered uniques codes" does partially work when the unique items are created by the game, then the altered uniques with some of its new features are saved within the save file?

That's correct!

In Diablo, single player saves actually save current stats on all items in the session. So if you have obtained unique items with modifications to them on, then turn them off and reload your save, the stats effective when you first found the item with will persist while the type of attributes the item offers listed in its tool-tip will change (which results in some bonuses displaying as 0).

This can be super confusing, but is part of the game's original behavior/code. Mordor figured out how to force items to update properly when loading a saved game or when pulled from Gillian's stash, but so far this achievement has eluded me.

How to restore the unique items to the desired (non optimized) state?

In single player, there are two ways you can trigger your Unique items to update according to your current settings:
1) Take your character into a New Game.
2) If you don't want to start a New Game, and you're using Gillian's Stash, try transferring the messed up items to Gillian, then create a new character temporarily, withdraw the broken items from Gillian (still broken) with this temporary character, then start a New Game with the temporary character. This should fix the items, and now you can deposit them back with Gillian, and withdraw them (now fixed) in your original character's current game without restarting.

In multiplayer, this update occurs for all items in your inventory every time you create/join a new game, so it's a non-issue -- unless you gave items to Gillian during a previous MP game and have since altered their stats; items withdrawn from Gillian's stash will preserve the stats they were given in until they're kept in your MP character's inventory into a new game.

I also collected a huge stack of oils. I also disabled its "improved usability code". Do the oils now still work the improved usability way or do these work as in the original hellfire?

If I recall correctly, the effects of Oils were controlled by game code, not properties on the actual Oil items, so that change would take full effect immediately in your current game and they should now work as they originally did.

BTW on my first three runs on Nightmare level I did not get the "Warlord of Blood"-quest, so I moved the state files out of the game directory and copied these back to the game directory (the original files kept in another folder) to start a new game, saved it, assaulted D13 to have a look if the quest is now available. It was so, so I reloaded the game an started me seventh run. But it seems that using a copy of the state files corrupted/reset my kill count for each type of enemy which then started by zero again, refusing info about enemies when pointing at them with the cursor.
Then I moved out the actual state files (run 7) of the directory and moved again the original state files (End of run 6) into the directory, started a new game and the kill count still/again started at zero.

It is possible that playing with a copy of the state files instead of the original files resets the kill count?
Well, I think it should not be, but it occurred right after replacing the originals by copies.
What else could/did cause to reset the kill counter?

I don't think I've ever seen this happen before. As best I can recall I didn't change any code related to the kill count. This might be a quirk unique to Hellfire (older version of the Diablo 1 engine). The only two theories I can think of is either mixing and matching different versions of the main character file and SP saves could cause this, or changing one or either of those files while Diablo is still running on the system (even if just in the main menu). I might have to experiment with that some day to find out.

To be honest, I can't even remember if the kill count persists in Single Player after you create a New Game. If it does, I need to check into that, because it means the character's kill count in SP is persisting either in game memory and being forwarded to the new session, OR is being saved in the character file; if it's the latter, that means it might be very easy to preserve kill count for multiplayer characters, too.

But once it happened that a mana potion was behind an "activating book" (you have to click it to activate Halls of the Blind, Valor or The Chamber of Bones). It was impossible to pick it up.

Some other games handled this perspective issue by constraining mouse context to the base/feet of creatures and objects. At times I wish Diablo had done this as well, or perhaps only if an object was found behind that would otherwise be obscured. But then, I've seen some players get confused clicking 'thru' tall creatures and objects in such games and making an unintended action or movement, so I guess there's always a downside.

Could you implement the possibility to highlight chests, sarcophagi, barrels and pods on the map? Especially in the Hive, pods are easily overseen or even unseen (if hidden behind a wall), but may contain some nice item.

I agree, and would like that feature as well, unfortunately my attempts to modify the map code have mostly met with failure. I tried several times to make the map draw colored outlines around items when Search is active to reflect the same outline behavior (white boxes for normal items, gold for uniques) with no success. I did eventually manage to change the colors of player arrows based on class, but I did that in D1's code rather than Hellfire's, so it would be difficult to port over here without all but rewriting it.

On the bright side, with the Devilution project, changes that currently range from painfully complex to nearly impossible may soon be quite easy. If that project progresses enough to support Hellfire, I may well port my mod there and expand upon it.

first I'd like to thank you for your work.

You're very welcome, I'm doubly happy if it enticed you back to a game you used to enjoy. Have fun!

[Kunibert]

Thank you very much for helping me out :-)

How to restore the unique items to the desired (non optimized) state?

In single player, there are two ways you can trigger your Unique items to update according to your current settings:
1) Take your character into a New Game.

Okay, I will try this as I am still at the end of my 7th run and creating a table with my unique items (comparing default stats to actual shrined/oiled stats). Too bad this will ruin one of my Fool's Crests that I shrined up to +1AC. Maybe some savegame editor may help. Does there one exist that you would recommend?

I also collected a huge stack of oils. I also disabled its "improved usability code". Do the oils now still work the improved usability way or do these work as in the original hellfire?

If I recall correctly, the effects of Oils were controlled by game code, not properties on the actual Oil items, so that change would take full effect immediately in your current game and they should now work as they originally did.

This is correct. Meanwhile I used some oils I collected when improved usability code was enabled. As the code is disabled now I experienced the oils work as intended.


kind regards

Kunibert


[EDIT:]
P.S.:

I never used Elixirs of Dexterity or of Magic but stashed it all, so my stash is messed up with stuff I neither want to use right now nor selling it (- I must own far more than 1,000,000 Gold now -) but sparing it for future charakters.
Because the number of items that can be placed in town is limited I cannot get all my stuff out of the stash and sort it after starting a new game, so if I want to take all my oils out (or all my potions in case of an Eldritch Shrine), I have to go to Gillian and navigate through
TAKE ITEM > MISC > OTHER
, keep Enter pressed until she says my Inventory is full or (sadly) I already "own this item". Then I have drop the desired items somewhere, return to Gillian, deposit the items I am actually not looking for and take the next set of "OTHER" items.
To make sure I get all of the desired items, I have to repeat this procedure until I took and deposited either my spectral elixirs or my auric amulets twice. (The good thing is: Items deposited at first are taken back at first.)
Also I placed many Scrolls of Town Portal in the first place and some Scrolls of Healing in the last place, the again after that some Town Portal scrolls. Each Time I want to take a healing scroll, I have to navigate through the whole list to take a single scroll. For the next scroll it is the same thing again.
Even worse: sometime your desired scroll is neither at the top, nor at the end of the list, so keeping the "page down" button hit is not the best choice.

Well, would it be possible to remove the limit of items placeable in town or to revise Gillians' menu? (Or even either?)
So it would be awesome for potions, scrolls, oils if these would only be listed once with the number of amount you deposited from each.

The tables demonstrate what I mean:

Actual (Belix' Hellfire v1.02.A5) situation:

Code:

[u]Position:_Item:[/u]
1____________Scroll of Town Portal
...
78___________Scroll of Town Portal
82___________something I want now
83___________something I want now
84___________Scroll of Town Portal
...
145__________something I also want now
...

(while the position is not listed but remembered by Gillian)

How it may be:

Code:

Position:_Item:____________________#stashed_#in Inventory[/u]
1_________Scroll of Town Portal____82_______1
2_________Scroll of Identification_12_______1
3_________Scroll of Search_________23_______1
4_________Scroll of Infravision____15_______1
5_________Scroll of Healing________30_______0

Then, when highlighting an item hitting the right cursor key moves one item from the stash to inventory while the left cursor key does contrary.

The same applied for "OTHER" items of course.


Err, I do not intend to seem greedy (while I am about to realize I am...), but another thing is:
While Armors in Gillian's Stash are well subclassified, Weapons are not.

There are just "Bows" and "Melee" Weapons, where from the latter again you can select either one handed or two handed weapons (which is a good thing). I own a nice collection of Life or Mana stealing/King's/speed/haste/penetrating weapons (and some even combining...) I do not want to sell, so if I want to take a specific Weapon out of the stash the navigation fun starts here too.
It would be awesome for collectors of magical weapons if the melee weapons could be grouped also as Axes, Maces, Staves and Swords.
[/EDIT]

[Belix]

Too bad this will ruin one of my Fool's Crests that I shrined up to +1AC. Maybe some savegame editor may help. Does there one exist that you would recommend?

I never had much luck finding a reliable program to interface with Hellfire for purposes of backing up/restoring items, but in this case, if you can find an oil that increases armor class, you could cheese Gillian's stash by placing the +AC oil into the stash, then save/exit and make a backup copy of your current Hellfire_SP.Hst stash file in the directory. I forget if you have to restart the game or just return to the main menu after this, but you could repeatedly withdraw the Oil from the stash, then overwrite the current stash file with the backup, until you've raised the AC back to the desired amount. But, then you'd have to wait until you found such an oil, of course.

Well, would it be possible to remove the limit of items placeable in town or to revise Gillians' menu? (Or even either?)

In theory it might be possible to increase the maximum number of items allowed on the ground in each level (incl town), but sadly I suspect this limit is not due to a simple number somewhere in the code that needs to be changed to let more items drop, but rather a very specific amount of memory was allotted for items on the ground, and increasing the limit would cause a crash once the expected array size was exceeded. Consequently, changing that would probably be quite complex and time consuming. But if I find an abundance of time to work on Hellfire again, I might give it a shot.

As for Gillian's stash, PlugUlmo is the gentleman who created it. While included in Marsh's Hellfire mod and my own mod as a feature, neither of us had anything to do with its creation or design decisions. The stash mod exists outside of Hellfire's code in an external .DLL file, and is quite beyond my limited expertise.

It is an amazing piece of work, but I agree the functionality scales quite poorly when many items are added. Probably the simplest improvement PlugUlmo could have added is an ability to search by name and filter out item names that don't match, e.g. type in "Scroll of Heal" and see only Scroll of Healing in the list. It's a shame he doesn't seem to be around/active any more in the D1 community. I doubt there's much I could do with the stash even if I knew how, beyond writing my own new stash mod from scratch.

If there's one thing I learned quickly using the Gillian stash mod, which I suspect you are now learning, it's to be very selective about what I put in there. For instance, Adria sells an unlimited amount of TP scrolls (at least in MP), so for 1 slot in Gillian's stash, it makes far more sense to stash 5000+ gold (worth 25 scrolls of Town Portal) than actually stash 25 scrolls of town portal and take up far more room. Likewise with Health and Mana potions. Repair Oils are also a poor choice to stash imo, since if you're already in town you can just use Griswold, and if you want to take Repairs with you into a dungeon, a single Town Portal scroll is much more space-effective since that single slot taken allows you to go repair ALL of your equipment to 100%.

In multiplayer it's also very easy to get Pepin to generate more Rejuvenation potions by simply stepping into and out of the Hell entrance behind his house, but I don't think that trick works in SP.


The good news again though, is if the Devilution project stays on course, it will be wonderfully easy to add/improve these kinds of features. Like the fellow leading that project, I'd like to maintain a more 'classic' version of Hellfire, and have a separate one with silly stuff like mana-stealing bows.

[Kunibert]

I have got some unused oils that could do the job. I guess I will dupe one of these twice so I can keep my collected oils and raise the Harlequin Crest's AC back to +1. Hopefully the dupe bug/exploit didn't happen to get fixed yet in this version. Shame on me i did not think of this possibility at first.

[Edit:]
Yes, it worked. These oils are pretty rare: In all of my seven runs I only got two of each Oils of Hardening (adds 1-2 AC (if AC < 60)) and Imperviousness (adds 3-5 AC (if AC < 120)). I duped one of the Hardening Oils twice and used the dupes successfully on the Harlequin Crest, which now has its old AC +1 again :-). Although it should be possible to use any item in inventory (

Duping
...merely requires a player to click on an item on the ground. The character will walk towards it, and if the player clicks on another item in their inventory or belt (such as a potion) at exactly the instant they pick up the item from the ground, a duplicate of the item on the ground will be created from the inventory item clicked on.

) to dupe items, I found it more simply to use twelve-gold-worth-Scroll-of-Searches from my belt.
[/Edit]

You don't have to decide between Gold and Scrolls when deposing stuff anyway, since Gillian offers a dedicated category for each. (I almost never buy scrolls, I just deposit some types of my collected scrolls there in case I may need them later.)

[DeusExCeteri]

Wish I'd checked here sooner, heh. Still coming back to D1 from time to time, it's as good a time-waster as it ever was.

Thirdly, I've noticed that the Long War Bow is using a previously unused graphic to set it apart from the Long Battle Bow... is there any desire for other items that use the same artwork to be given new graphics? (Long Bow / Hunter's Bow, Sword / Short Sword, Plate Mail / Field Plate, etc)

I could make that an extra feature, but Diablo doesn't have a lot of unused item icons that would look fitting on base items, so it'd make the inventory start looking less classic and more moddish, if you know what I mean. Would have to start using graphics normally reserved for Unique items, or get new graphics (beyond the scope of this mod), and then there's the headache that the size of the graphic also determines how much space the item takes up in your inventory (HF:Fixed made some changes to stuff where items that only took up 1x3 slots became 2x3 etc. -- that annoyed me more than I cared about the graphic being distinct).

I don't personally consider the addition of a new graphic any more moddish than the use of an unused graphic -PROVIDED- that whatever new graphics are added do not stand out with an inconsistent art style. This is honestly a major reason that I've never been able to enjoy many D1 and D2 mods that add new items, enemies, objects, etc... very often what's added will have a strong visual dissonance because the modder simply picked something they found that looked cool to them.

I'd be willing to try my hand at a few new item graphics that maintain the original D1 style... provided you're okay with the idea and find the time for another big update. It's up to you though and I do understand the concerns you have about it.

-

Onto another topic, I was playing recently and noticed that when I save & reload while in the dungeon the game doesn't retain the Reflect spell if I have it active on my character. It's mostly just an annoyance than any sort of hindrance but I do find it a handy spell to have active for classes with lower max mana and it's screwed me over a few times that it doesn't stay active between loads - unlike Mana Shield.

Is this a known bug? Better yet, is it an easy fix?

[Kunibert]

when I save & reload while in the dungeon the game doesn't retain the Reflect spell if I have it active on my character.

The search spell is also affected. However, in a game loaded that was safed with an active search spell, you will hear when the search spell duration ends. So it seems to be partially active, but it is not working.

[Belix]

I don't personally consider the addition of a new graphic any more moddish than the use of an unused graphic -PROVIDED- that whatever new graphics are added do not stand out with an inconsistent art style. This is honestly a major reason that I've never been able to enjoy many D1 and D2 mods that add new items, enemies, objects, etc... very often what's added will have a strong visual dissonance because the modder simply picked something they found that looked cool to them.

I hear that. Within reason I accept that mods are going to look "different" but a lot of times stuff is borrowed from OTHER games, and as someone who has played a lot of games, seeing stuff I recognize from other games is often rather jarring, even if it fits in well aesthetically or was recolored etc. This stuff distracts me so much I often can't really give a mod a fair chance.

I'd be willing to try my hand at a few new item graphics that maintain the original D1 style... provided you're okay with the idea and find the time for another big update. It's up to you though and I do understand the concerns you have about it.

Even if I don't update this 'patch mod' again, I imagine this sort of thing may be of interest to future modders as well. So on that note, I actually did try to make a unique graphic for Plate Mail (assuming Plate Mail means mix of plate and chain, to differentiate it from a Field Plate) that should look 'official'... here's what I came up with. It uses pixels from the original Field Plate, Full Plate Mail, and Hellfire's Armor of Gloom, plus some hand-placed pixels. If you look at how the Sorcerer looks with plate on, this icon closely resembles that (although he seems to have Gothic pointy plate shoulders for some reason).

New plate:




Comparison:


Somewhat frustratingly, the Armor Class mix up makes this look funny since the plate with more protection (now both visually and in terms of stats) requires less strength than the Field Plate. Plate Mail 42-50 AC, req 60 STR, vs Field Plate 40-45 AC and req 65 STR.

Here's the .bmp file that should be properly indexed and ready for conversion into a .cel file to be implemented as an icon, if anyone wishes to use it.
http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/attac...hp?aid=321

Onto another topic, I was playing recently and noticed that when I save & reload while in the dungeon the game doesn't retain the Reflect spell if I have it active on my character. It's mostly just an annoyance than any sort of hindrance but I do find it a handy spell to have active for classes with lower max mana and it's screwed me over a few times that it doesn't stay active between loads - unlike Mana Shield.

Is this a known bug? Better yet, is it an easy fix?

The search spell is also affected. However, in a game loaded that was safed with an active search spell, you will hear when the search spell duration ends. So it seems to be partially active, but it is not working.

I wasn't aware of Reflect or Search being omitted in SP saves, but to be fair I usually play multiplayer (even solo). When you cast Search a spell effect is created upon cast with a timer (if it doesn't already exist). In multiplayer it causes all other players to be able to see item outlines when cast, iirc. However, both Reflect and Search (and Mana Shield in this older version of Diablo) don't update when other players enter the floor. Other players ONLY see these active if you cast it while they're present. So, Reflect and Search clearly had some oversights in the code.

I couldn't even guess if that's a simple fix or not. Assuming I could find the save behavior and expand on it, then I'd have to worry about what happens when Hellfire starts trying to load saves that -did not- contain Reflect/Search status (possible crash). I'll make a note about it though.

I did wish I could fix the Mana Shield (and Reflect) not showing up when other players enter the floor, but after some tinkering it looked like one of Blizzard's later patches restructured part of the player information table/network behavior to add some unique handling to Mana Shield, and was likely far too complex for me to try to imitate through something as slow and awkward as ASM edits.

[aleeque]

This HAS to be a bug, I've bought all these from Griswold within the last 48 hours. Mathematically impossible? Playing unmodified 1.02.A5, multi player, lvl31 Sorceror.

Also, neither Griswold nor Wirt offer me ANY Full Plate Mails. Not even a single one, no matter how shitty. This is also impossible, they should sell them.
update: false alarm, apparently you can get Full Plate Mails from Wirt and Griswold at character lvl 25 or so, it's only at higher clvls they stop selling those.

[aleeque]

By the way, people playing this great mod might not know that qlvl's of many uniques have been changed and this is not documented ANYWHERE. This has huge consequences for players:

- Helm of Sprits (previously qlvl4) is now qlvl 8 and the next highest qlvl unique Helm (Fool's Crest) is qlvl 12. So if you're looking for HoS in NM dlvl2 like everyone is used to from vanilla D1 and Hellfire, you will never find it because no monster there can drop HoS. These bosses can drop HoS in 1.02.A5 (difficulty listed is where the boss is able to drop the item):
El Chupacabras (NM+, dlvl 3, Plague Eater)
Goretongue (NM+, dlvl 3, Rotting Carcass)
Brokenhead Bangshield (NM+, dlvl 3, Corpse Captain)
Warpskull (NM+, dlvl 3, Hidden)
Bongo (NM+, dlvl 3, Devil Kin w/ spear)
Skullfire (NM+, dlvl 3, Corpse Bow)
Madeye the Dead (Normal+, dlvl 4, Burning Dead)
Blackash the Burning (Normal+, dlvl 4, Burning Dead Archer)
Pulsecrawler (Normal+, dlvl 4, Shadow Beast)
Moonbender (Normal+, dlvl 4, Blink)
Wrathraven (Normal+, dlvl 5, Blink)
Shadowcrow (Normal+, dlvl 5, Dark One w/ sword)
So the best strategy would be: kill every boss on NM dlvl 3 and 4 (only bosses can drop it on these dungeon levels, ignore everything else), then go to dlvl 5 and quickly check if Blinks and Dark Ones w/ sword are there. If they are, find Wrathraven and/or Shadowcrow and kill them.

- Bloodslayer is now qlvl 8, and the next closest unique Broad Axe (Stonecleaver) is qlvl 14. The farming strategy is the exact same as HoS, except four more bosses are added to the list: Leoric (dlvl 3), Spineeater (dlvl 4, Bone Gasher), Foulwing (dlvl 5, Gloom) and Bloodskin Darkbow (dlvl 5, Flesh Clan Archer) so check these base mob types as well.

- Deadly Hunter, since the +200% dmg to demons modifier has been fixed, does three times more dps than the previous best bow in the game, finally making the Rogue NM and Hell viable, so if you play her, you absolutely want this unique bow. Unfortunately, its qlvl is 12 and the next unique Composite Bow (Flambeau) is qlvl 14. Yeah... This means only four bosses in the entire game can drop it:
Leoric (Normal+, dlvl 3)
Spineeater (Normal+, dlvl 4, Bone Gasher)
Foulwing (Normal+, dlvl 5, Gloom)
Bloodskin Darkbow (Normal+, dlvl 5, Flesh Clan Archer)
So start a Normal difficulty game because this limits the amount of base items they can drop, skip everything to Leoric, kill him, go to dlvl 4, if there are any Bone Gashers - look for Spineeater, then go to dlvl 5, if there's any Glooms or Flesh Clan Archers - look for Foulwing and Bloodskin Darkbow.

- Civerb's Cudgel: now qlvl 2 and Crackrust (next highest unique Mace) is qlvl 8. Kill all bosses on dlvl 2 (ideally on Normal diff) and go no further, most bosses on dlvl 3 and deeper drop Crackrust instead of CC.

- Farming HoS, DH, CC and Bloodslayer at the same time: use the strategy for getting Bloodslayer, except also kill Butcher and any other dlvl 2 bosses if you run into them while trying to find the stairs down to dlvl 3.

- Armor of Gloom: very valuable due to the fact that Griswold and Wirt no longer sell FPMs in this mod, so AoG is your best bet when it comes to high AC. It's now qlvl 27 and the next highest qlvl unique Full Plate Mail is Demonspike Coat. So if you do Laz runs, you'll always get it instead of AoG. There are some bosses that drop AoG and can't yet drop Demonspike Coat though:
Viletouch (NM+, dlvl 12, Death Wing)
Windspawn (NM+, dlvl 12, Vortex Lord)
Viperflame (NM+, dlvl 12, Fire Drake)
Witchfire the Unholy (NM+, dlvl 12, Succubus)
Lionskull the Bent (NM+, dlvl 12, Black Knight)
Doomcloud (Normal+, dlvl 13, Maelstrom)
Gorefeast (Normal+, dlvl 13, Vortex Lord)
Fangskin (Normal+, dlvl 14, Gold Viper)
Farming strategy is the usual: start a game on NM difficulty, go to dlvl 13, look for stairs up to dlvl 12, check base mob types, if they correspond with any of the listed bosses, find and kill them, then repeat this process on dlvl 13 and 14.

P.S. programs used to extract qlvl data were: LICK by LennyLen and EZ ModMaker 2000 (note: do NOT use ModMaker to edit ANY kind of stats for items! They will morph with no possibility to revert this. If you do edit anything anyway, BACK UP your Hellfire.exe and all stash + character save files).

P.P.S. just got my Deadly Hunter off Leoric after only several days of farming, pretty lucky and I gotta say, killing these low level bosses does get boring very fast. And yes, I tested it and the +200% dmg to demons definitely works! Demons dropping left and right.

[Stein]

I initiated playing this last year when I started craving my favorite game and it has been a great experience.

Looking for a classic and workable D1:HD experience I was thinking of installing LemmingOfGlory's Hellfire:Fixed but opted for this instead once I saw it existed.

I am playing alone in Multiplayer mode. The stash feature makes playing solo very viable.

The above post on the new qlvls for CC, Bloodslayer and HoS was a great find! Now my dlvl 2 runs will become dlvl 2-4 runs. I need two HoS for my Barb and Warrior. However, I've successfully purchased several Awesome FPMs from Griswold and even managed to acquire a Godly Plate from Wirt.

In the future, I might tinker with some small adjustments in the code.

[m1chelsen]

I have just spend the last couple of dyas playing this 1.02.A5 version / mod over LAN with my friend. Overall it is a great version, but i have a couple of comments.

In the "1.21 fixed" version, i could se the HP of the mobs. Has this feature been removed, or?

A couple of times my friend and i experiences problems, where there was a drop, but we could not pick up the item. After a couple of seconds the item desapars. This also happend once with the bomb from the farmer in town. I could se the bomb on the ground, but i could not pick it up. After 5-6 seconds it vanished.

I experienced once, that after i died, and pressed restart in town, i had al of my gear on. All the other times i died, i dropped all my gear where i died. I dont know why this happened?

[Kunibert]

Every then and when (maybe twice or three times per game - only SP so far) it happens that a monster drops an item twice (original and duplicate). The first item can be picked up as usual, the second one seems to be unpickable at first, but can be picked up after a while (some seconds) too. Even Na-Krul happened once to drop his stuff twice - each of the four items.


The reason for my posting however is that i have some questions about shrines.

Code:

start HF1.01 "Glowing Shrine - Won't appear below Level 3"
49023B 18 03                            # Glowing Shrine    # exe: 8F23B
end

start HF1.01 "Mendicant's Shrine - SP Only"
490264 00 01                            # Mendicant's Shrine    # exe: 8F264
end

start HF1.01 "Tainted Shrine & Murphy's Shrine - No longer appear"
490211 01 18                            # Tainted Shrine    # exe: 8F211
490219 01 18                            # Murphy's Shrine    # exe: 8F219
end

• Could you, Belix, please explain which digits do what?
  
• What are the addresses/codes for other Shrines?
  
• When does the game create the maps/shrines? When starting a new game or when entering a new level?
  
• "Tainted Shrine & Murphy's Shrine - No longer appear" - So if one of these would appear, does the game create a different shrine instead or does is just leave the place for the shrine empty?
  
• If someone starts a new game where all shrines may appear (or better yet, stands in front of let's say a Murphy's), then saves the game, activates "No Tainted & Murphy's" code in cowqueston.dat and reloads the game state, what would happen to these the shrines?
  
  
  regards
  
  Kunibert

[Belix]

Apologies for the long silence. I moved across country on 2 weeks short notice at the end of last year.

By the way, people playing this great mod might not know that qlvl's of many uniques have been changed and this is not documented ANYWHERE.

Oops! These changes are part of Marsh's Mod. When I originally released this one, I linked directly to his thread where all of his changes (including qlvl changes) were detailed. Later when I wrote more detailed documentation as the changes/features applied here increased, I forgot to include details on the qlvl adjustments.

I did not realize Marsh had altered the qlvls of items that were already dropping. Thanks for pointing this out. If I had implemented this myself, I would have attempted to preserve the original drop locations of items by only changing the qlvls of items that would never drop.

Thanks for posting such detailed information about the changes. I should include this along with the changes he made to qlvls in the next version of the documentation. Unfortunately, as with some other changes I would like to make to items, changing these would cause existing items to morph since items are basically only stored in character files as seeds (except in Single Player saves that are resumed) where the item is re-generated on entering a new session.

I've considered re-writing the item code to prevent morphing entirely, so that items can be modified in future versions without this issue, but that's a big project I won't have time for any time soon.

I initiated playing this last year when I started craving my favorite game and it has been a great experience.

Awesome!

In the "1.21 fixed" version, i could se the HP of the mobs. Has this feature been removed, or?

Hello! I don't think that was ever implemented here. I could consider adding it in a future version, but personally I feel that's almost the same as adding on screen monster hit point bars somewhere, which I've always felt detracted from the immersion of games (since players often spend more time watching the health bars than the actual game). Hence why it never occurred to me.

A couple of times my friend and i experiences problems, where there was a drop, but we could not pick up the item. After a couple of seconds the item desapars. This also happend once with the bomb from the farmer in town. I could se the bomb on the ground, but i could not pick it up. After 5-6 seconds it vanished.

This is normal (buggy) behavior for Hellfire related areas and Hellfire's quest related item drops. Diablo's networking code does not properly synchronize quest items that are forcefully dropped by NPCs and monsters, which is why my attempt to enable the single player quests in multiplayer failed miserably (as almost all of these rely on forcing specific items to drop either as part of the quest or a reward).

Also, for some reason I haven't isolated yet, sometimes the Hive will not synchronize correctly, and while the level layout and monster types will look identical, the position of monsters, containers, and items dropped will all diverge, causing the same issue there. Sometimes creating a new game and both entering a vanilla dungeon like the Catacombs first before entering the Hive seems to help. I really wish I could find and fix that bug! I don't remember it ever happening in the Crypt, so that dungeon might be unaffected.

I experienced once, that after i died, and pressed restart in town, i had al of my gear on. All the other times i died, i dropped all my gear where i died. I dont know why this happened?

There should be only two cases where you don't drop your gear when you die, and both are default game behaviors from the original game:

a) If damage from another player is responsible for your death rather than the environment or monsters,

b) If you're on Diablo's floor. This case is to prevent a case where Diablo could be slain while you're trying to get your gear back, which in the original game would have froze and exited the game and left your gear behind on the floor, potentially lost forever.

Every then and when (maybe twice or three times per game - only SP so far) it happens that a monster drops an item twice (original and duplicate). The first item can be picked up as usual, the second one seems to be unpickable at first, but can be picked up after a while (some seconds) too. Even Na-Krul happened once to drop his stuff twice - each of the four items.

Hi again Kunibert! How odd. Not sure why this would happen in single player. But I'd certainly like to fix that! Can you note which character class(es) you're using when this occurs, and what was it you used to kill the offending monster with (melee, ranged, spells)? Could be relevant.

The reason for my posting however is that i have some questions about shrines.

Fun questions!

[*]Could you, Belix, please explain which digits do what?

Using the Glowing Shrine as an example:

49023B 18 03

As you seem to have guessed, the first value in this set is a memory address. The second value is the original value at the address, in this case one hexadecimal value of 18 (24 in decimal). This value is for the Glowing Shrine's maximum allowed dungeon level. The second value is the desired replacement value, which changes the lowest floor the Glowing Shrine can appear on from 24 (18h) to 3 (03h).

The Loader.exe used by PlugUlmo, and many Diablo memory editing programs, parse changes through simple text files this way; you specify an address, the original bytes, and the new bytes. If the original bytes don't match with what is found, the change will not be applied.

[*]What are the addresses/codes for other Shrines?

This is a tricky question to answer because the values for Shrines are not grouped by Shrine, but rather by the type of value. For instance, all the maximum dungeon level values are grouped together.

Here are all the data ranges and associated shrines... hopefully enough information you can figure out any changes you wish to make:

Shrine minimum Dlvls

Code:

004901F8 01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101

Shrine maximum Dlvls

Code:

00490220 18181818181818181818181818181818181818181818181818181818181818181818

Shrine appearance (00 = any mode, 01 = SP only, 02 = MP only)

Code:

00490248 00000000000000000000000000000000000002000000000000020000000000000000

The order of each shrine in those sequences, per byte, is as follows:

Mysterious, Hidden, Gloomy, Weird, Magical, Stone, Religious, Enchanted, Thaumaturgic, Fascinating, Cryptic, Magical, Eldritch, Eerie, Divine, Holy, Sacred, Spiritual, Spooky, Abandoned, Creepy, Quiet, Secluded, Ornate, Glimmering, Tainted, Oily, Glowing, Mendicant's, Sparkling, Town, Shimmering, Solar, Murphy's

So to change properties of the Mysterious shrine, you'd modify the first number in any of those 3 ranges as desired. Good luck!

[*]When does the game create the maps/shrines? When starting a new game or when entering a new level?

I'm fairly certain the game generates all levels when a new session is started.

[*]"Tainted Shrine & Murphy's Shrine - No longer appear" - So if one of these would appear, does the game create a different shrine instead or does is just leave the place for the shrine empty?

I think the game logic first establishes one or more locations on the level as shrine rooms, and then randomly selects from available shrines. So where a disabled shrine would have appeared, you should get another shrine rather than miss out on one altogether.

[*]If someone starts a new game where all shrines may appear (or better yet, stands in front of let's say a Murphy's), then saves the game, activates "No Tainted & Murphy's" code in cowqueston.dat and reloads the game state, what would happen to these the shrines?

Those shrines should remain unchanged. I believe saved games contain a copy of the level structure and contents that were already generated at session start, so a single player save would still contain whatever shrines were initially generated.


I'll try to keep better tabs on this thread now. I'm currently booked with RL projects and won't have time to mess with Hellfire for awhile. Thanks everyone and have fun! =)

[Phoenix7786]

Sorry to derail this thread, but the other one's last reply was from over 4 months ago.

I have had zero luck getting your excellent mod to run on Windows 10. I tried downloading the new .dll's. I've set Plugulmo's Loader to run as admin. I've got the color fixes ran through. I've got the "run by 640 x 480" option ticked. Nothing is ticked under the "Change high DPI settings" tab either. Any other idea what I am missing?