New 2D artist
Our team got another talented 2D artist in the person of Nightwolf. Samples of his work will be available to view in the near future.
Korax Mod 2.6
The latest release of KMOD is out for the die-hard fans. Beside a couple of bugfixes, it includes new damage skins (Heresiarch and Mage Boss) and an important new feature: the ability to sell unneeded items in the shop. Depending on whether the item is stocked at the time by the shop, you'll get a higher or lower price for it (for more info, see the manual).
You can download KMOD 2.6 here.
More on the Korax' Heritage roadmap
Following the announcement about KMOD roadmap changes two weeks ago, we have a new announcement to make regarding the Korax' Heritage roadmap as such.
We'll change the engine driving Scattered Evil. The current Scattered Evil engine will be released in Korax Mod 3.0 (and later 3.x releases), featuring many new enhancements over Korax Mod 2, as described in the announcement from June 24, 2003. Over the features listed in that announcement, there will be some more enhancements included, most important among them enhanced cooperative mode, better support for custom maps and hubs (KMOD 2 works well only with the original Hexen maps and with the official mission pack, Deathkings), and some kind of SDK to allow anyone to create new episodes using the KMOD 3 engine.
As to Scattered Evil, the engine behind it will be switched from Doomsday to Vavoom, which will allow us to create more realistic 3D environments (3D floors, slopes, swimmable water, advanced skybox technology etc.). While this will delay the release of Scattered Evil even further, in the end you'll not only get a much more enjoyable game, but also in the meantime you will be able to profit from frequent KMOD releases. Switching SE's base engine to Vavoom will also enable us to start much sooner with our all-new multiplayer project, which will be announced later this month.
To demonstrate the 3D capabilities of Vavoom over Doomsday, check out the screenshots below.
Korax' Heritage roadmap
After some in-team discussions, the official Korax' Heritage roadmap has been greatly modified. While previously Korax Mod was a closed and abandoned project at version 2.2 and our focus was on bringing out Scattered Evil, the latest team decision was for continuing the development of Korax Mod - the first result the new version 2.5, released 10 days ago.
What's more, we decided not only for the continued development of Korax Mod, but also for developing two different branches simultaneously.
The first branch is the old codebase of 2.x, with latest release 2.5 (and 2.6 being planned as next release). This version is the result of a slow evolution of the KMOD codebase and contains basically the same feature set from 2.0 through 2.5. This codebase won't be modified in any major way any more, being an established product. This means future releases will continue only smaller bugfixes (if needed) and only non-critical new features, foremost among them a complete set of damage skins (they'll be added in 2.6 and later versions as they are made by our artists).
With initial release 3.0 targeted for July, the second branch is based on the Scattered Evil code. While the Scattered Evil codebase evolved from the Korax Mod codebase, it is in some ways greatly different. Parts of the code have been completely rewritten and it includes support for new features the Korax Mod codebase doesn't have. Planned new features for the 3.0 release will be the ability to sell items in the shops (not just buy them), the ability to converse with the shopkeeper (in a movie-style conversation system as shown in the Scattered Evil trailer), high resolution help screens, and more. Additional features like more damage skins, NPCs and quests are planned for future KMOD 3.x releases. 3.x releases (probably already 3.0) will also include significant gameplay changes, like a new attribute system (with 5 instead of 3 attributes), rearrangement of spells (some of them you'll now get at way higher or way lower levels), new weapons and more.
The main reason for this roadmap change was that while some parts of Scattered Evil have been finished months ago, other parts lag behind, thus making the release date of Scattered Evil difficult to determine (and certainly not sooner than several months yet). Through this rearrangement of our roadmap, you will now be able to take advantage of some of Scattered Evil's technology within weeks from this announcement, thus shortening the wait until Scattered Evil finally comes out.
Korax Mod 2 years old - KMOD 2.5 released
Today is the second birthday of Korax Mod (version 1.0 was released June 14, 2001). To celebrate this anniversary and also to make up for the delayed release of Scattered Evil, we decided to incorporate some of the upcoming SE technology into Korax Mod and release it. The most important new feature is the Damage Skins, which will activate once a monster has lost half its HP. The following screenshots show some Damage Skins in action:
Damage Skin for following foes is included in KMOD 2.5: Ettin, Centaur, Slaughtaur, Green Chaos Serpent, Brown Chaos Serpent, Death Wyvern, Traductus (Cleric Boss). More Damage Skins will follow in future releases.
Besides this all-new feature, Korax Mod 2.5 also includes a number of bugfixes and smaller enhancements (like updated shopping help screens and a new music for the shop map).
You can download KMOD 2.5 here.
SE background info
To shorten the wait, here some background info on Scattered Evil:
Korax' Heritage IRC channel
Just got this message from Zeus:
"I have set up the unofficial channel for Korax Heritage. You can find it on irc.enterthegame.com #Korax.
If you are unfamiliar with IRC, do the following: go to www.mirc.com and download mIRC. Install it, open it up, and go into the Status bar in the upper left corner of the window. In the status bar window, type /server irc.enterthegame.com and hit enter. This will connect you into enterthegame (the primary IRC server for gaming/gamers). Once it has gone through it's whole process of connecting which will take any where form 30 - 60 seconds, you will want to type the following in the status bar: /join #Korax.
You will see my name on the far right listed as eK-Zeus (eK is my Q3:A clan's tag). Feel free to join up, it'd be nice to get some real-time conversation with the Devteam/Korax groupies. :D"
News on the RPG system
The final implementation of RPG base attributes for Scattered Evil has been decided upon. It'll greatly differ from that of Korax Mod and is much more similar to the classic D&D system.
Strength - Strength adjusts the amount of damage dealt with each physical attack. It also determines how much the player can carry (line of rows in the inventory).
Agility - This statistic determines how quickly your character runs and also how quickly he or she attacks. It could also help you with traps and jump'n'run dungeons.
Vitality - Vitality augments the amount of hit points gained each level, and increases your armor class. The higher the ability score your character has, the more hit points gains per level. (maybe it should be called constitution?)
Intelligence - This ability changes how much damage magical attacks deal. The higher the ability score, the more damage that is dealt. For many spells and magical weapons/artifacts a certain level of Intelligence is needed.
Wisdom - Wisdom determines how much each spell costs. The higher the wisdom, the less each spell costs.
Monster update.
Hi, small update on the monster side of the project:
-Death Wyvern Damage Skin in done and in game.
Latest news
Hi people! Some news on the art side:
-The Hurt/Damage skins are almost finished. With the help of Firebrand, the major monsters are already done, and we need only some more to add even more depth to this part of the mod.
-I've been drawing lots of concept art and sketches to be used as inspiration/guides to the art area, and hopefully they will help, by making things clearer and faster for all artists. And maybe you even get to see some of them, in a future release... Who knows? ;)
-The NPCs are also being done, and we plan to add as much of them as we can, untill the release. At the worst, you will still have a decent number of persons to interact with!
-If everything goes well, you can expect some good surprises on the graphics side. We are planning lots of great features, let us just hope we'll have time to finish them.
I think that's it for now. See you later.