Ney, I just played Kmod2.2 and I must say the shop map looks very good! The merchant looks good too, and the architecture is perfect. I hope we will get buildings like that in SE! [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] Good work. And of course, it's totally bug free now (at least as far as I can see).

Don't worry, I'm already preparing the bug list of 2.2, the good news is they're all very small things. I plan to release a 2.2 patch (there's only a full version to download yet), that could include these little things and at that point I could quietly replace the current 2.2 download with the slightly updated one, too. [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

What bugs are you talking about, I haven't seen one. By the way, I managed to finish DK today, and I didn't find any bug, not even the gameplay bugs are there (like travelling to another HUB and keep the strenght, speed and health given by berserch, or the Wings that were lost between hubs, etc). I still think that the Defense spell is too powerful, and should be shorter or be replaced by repulsion spell, which is much more useful for a beginner mage, and much less "cheating". C'mon, what is the fun about entering a room full of monster, armed with the last mage's weapon (forgot the name), and waste everybody while they can't harm you in any way? It's a skill for the most advanced mages only, in my opinion... Although it may be late to change.

A couple of these really small bugs:

- up/down looking angle is much more than in Hexen, either the default setting in korax.cfg or the text in the manual should be corrected
- hundredfold messages (if you go in the first DK level to the waterfall, you can count in the console afterwards how many times it said that the waterfall is blocked [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] )
- the shop entranceway texture offset Ichor suggested hasn't been corrected, I remembered it first thing last Friday evening and I didn't want to mess around with the wadfile this deep in the last minute
- since Hexen and Deathkings can have different help screens, the shopping index screen I made is a real stupid one, I shall make 2 better-looking ones for Hexen and DK (the last column will contain only a number, not that long stuff)
- the MIDI song you hear when shopping is from a Win3.1 RPG called Mordor and I forgot to credit them in the manual

As for the Mage's 1st spell, it was discussed already back in last December, but I still feel uncomfortable about changing it, IMO it'd make a lot of other changes necessary, as w/o that spell the mage won't be able to survive the first hub at all, unless other factors changed (like giving him way more HP). If it's of any consolation, the mage in SE won't get the invulnerability spell until late in the game.

As to the history of this whole thing and a little insight, practically all spells of KMOD 1.0 are existing Hexen weapons or artifacts. I still remember those old times when I had a new idea, told it to Camper, and he told me, completely unmotivated, that it'd be a lot of work and he's too lazy to do it (or, in some cases, he admitted his knowledge doesn't reach the level where he'd be capable of doing it). I'm really glad we could bring KMOD 1.0 online in any form at all, this made us find new, motivated team members. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Well, awright, if you don't want to change the spell, don't do it, but I must say that as a matter of fact I never use the Defense spell, not even with Korax. I just use it when I'm too lazy to take down lots of monsters in packs or against the 3 Kings, since the Mage can fire those tracking missiles. I didn't need it in the beginning, only in the end of the game (I must admit I used it a lot in that HUB before the Kings, where you begin in front of two gates, that was hard [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] ).
It's really funny you talk about this (Camper), because now, with Janis, it's completely the oposite. When I wrotte that big topic about new ideas and features, I was fearing that he would say something similar, like it or that couldn't be done by a man, but instead, he said: "No problem" or "Sure" or "I will do it". [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] The man seems Master Yoda! [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] You don't know the time he saved for me when he explained how to change frames in a wad for outside pictures. I was having troubles with Idraw, because it's the program I used to add the mod pics into the wad (yes, I used to do it the hard way, using some functions in the prog), but it kept changing the new pics' colors by those used in the Hexen's palette (which made the pics look way worse than they are). I was thinking about copying and paste ALL those frames with Paint Shop, but then, in a few lines, he said how I should do. Really funny. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

I lived for 3-4 years in the belief I'm an expert Hexen player, just becuz I played the game on skill 5 easily all the time, but I'm starting to get the feeling most people around here are better than me... once Korax Arena 0.1 is out, we'll see how god everyone is... welcome me as the weakest guy with the less frags in Korax Arena, LOL [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

There is a basic difference... people like Janis, Remi or Rob started tweaking Hexen code from own motivation. Camper is a programmer by profession and his hobby is also programming, but that includes all kind of coding. As far back as 1996 we created a multimedia CD-ROM together, he did the coding and I the content (no, I'm not showing it to anyone, I don't even have any copy of it myself any more, [img]images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] ). We also started on an interactive language learning system but never finished it. Later on we started on a 3D game, around '97/'98 where he wrote a 3D engine that delivered some 20-30 fps on his Diamond Viper 330 (nVidia Riva128) but less than 1 fps on my Orchid Righteous (3Dfx Voodoo). If anyone's interested, I still have that stuff somewhere, of course with today's graphics cards it should run just fine, all troubles back then came from the missing of proper OpenGL drivers. In Fall '98 he started his apprenticeship with an IT company and started regular work with them in 2000. Since then, programming is not a hobby for him but a way to earn his living and AFAIK he doesn't do much coding of any kind any more. Doing a quick coding session that produced visible results was OK with him, but working longer on something was out of question. Korax Alpha and KMOD 1.0 both were created in many little hops, with long unmotivated breaks in between. The KMOD 2.1 patch which we couldn't do first becuz Remi disappeared was done by him in 2 sessions, the first a couple of hours, the 2nd maybe half an hour. Afterward, I just had to use what he made, when I came to him with more requests for bugfixes, he told me to forget it.

That the project not only still goes on but expands and gets better all the time is thanks to those motivated people who started to appear shortly after the release of KMOD 1.0 and either stuck with us for some time or are still here. [img]images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] And there are always some people around who're undestructible and you can count on them to help you out all the time. That's what makes a team or a community go on and remain alive. [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

BTW another bug was reported this morning in the KMOD forum... I'm already compiling a bug list.

I saw it and I think I know how to fix it.