Firstly.... First Post!!!! (and no BBG train, either....) Right, that's that out of the way, onto the serious stuff: Has anyone else tried to play custom hubs with the Korax Mod? If so, post feedback here, as the next version might be aimed at custom hubs as well. (following a conversation with RambOrc, who also suggested posting feedback here) I've got 3 custom episodes, each with 3 hubs in them - all modified to fit the episodes, and then modified again to run with KMod, including their own shops. (I don't know how KMod will run on single hubs, but I imagine it won't work too well) Currently, I'm part-way through hub 2 of episode 1 (Chuxen/Newhub4/Zowehex) with the cleric and have noticed the following issues so far: The strength of fighter/cleric/mage bosses (making one map containing 2 of each insurmountable) The limited lifespan of the wings (affects the first hub at the end) The Heart of D'Sparil giving an instant 3-level rise (affects one map that has 4 of them) I'll post more feedback as I get it.

I guess the solution might be something like a special option in KMOD for running custom hubs, with different HP values for boss monsters and/or requiring less EXP to advance to the next level.

I've finished the first episode and have just started episode 2 (Stonegate/Centromere/Caldera), and have noticed one more issue: (stngat11/cent092b/caldera.zip) It's nearly impossible to kill the Heresiarch before he summons another one. I've faced 4 so far (2 in original Hexen with fighter, 2 in episode 1 with cleric) and I've only been able to kill the last of those four without another one being summoned. (and that was only because I used Wrath of the Gods on him a few times)

Here's a hint on how to lessen the chance of another Heresiarch being summoned. If you're fairly close to him (if you're a fighter, you are almost always close to him), when he throws a green ball to the ground, try to get to the spot where the new enemy is about to form. If there is something solid on the spawning spot, nothing will appear (sometimes the Heresiarch himself will walk over that spot, but not that often). Also, I just noticed this recently. Since the Heresiarch is much bigger and wider than the Dark Bishops, they require more room to spawn. If the green ball happens to land right next to a wall or solid object like those tall torches, chances are that if it was a Heresiarch that was going to appear there, nothing will appear. Another way to lessen the chance is to play at a lower difficulty level.

Yep, I think on easy difficulty setting the chance is 2% or so for a Heresiarch being spawned in the place of a Bishop (Moose could give us the exact values from the code). BTW originally I and Camper wanted the Heresiarch to summon a Death Wyvern at those "lucky throws" but it got stuck so we gave up on it and hence the Heresiarch. <!-- s:oops: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_redface.gif" alt=":oops:" title="Embarassed" /><!-- s:oops: --> <!-- s:lol: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_lol.gif" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing" /><!-- s:lol: --> At any rate, this is another thing to be changed for KMOD 3.x so don't worry.

I think I may know how to fix that. Since spawned things don't have a tid of their own, and thus can't activate scripts, Death Wyverns will fly straight until hitting a wall (assuming that the game doesn't freeze). I've been thinking of the possibility of spawning Death Wyverns like random enemies every so often, so I created a new script code, called Thing_SpawnTID, but for some reason, it only works with Death Wyverns. It's just as well, I suppose. Anyway, it has an extra argument (the tid), so that when it spawns, it will immediately fly toward a mapspot with that same tid. Needless to say, you'll need to add a few new mapspots within the map for this to work. However, in fairly small maps, the Death Wyvern will just get stuck anyway.

Sounds like a good idea, in a custom designed map it could work fine (like a huge cathedral with a Heresiarch as High Priest). BTW our Death Wyvern spawn attempt didn't even get that far as you describe here... it was spawned and got stuck in place right there, never moving an inch, though producing sounds continously and flapping its wings.

[quote="RambOrc":3jcuraek](Moose could give us the exact values from the code). I could but I'm not going to, mainly because it doesn't look as simple as a percent. [quote="RambOrc":3jcuraek](At any rate, this is another thing to be changed for KMOD 3.x so don't worry. It is? Have I been told this? <!-- s:( --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_sad.gif" alt=":(" title="Sad" /><!-- s:( --> Tell more in the DevForum.

LOL most probably tomorrow I'll post a couple of new things concerning KMOD 3.x but since you get a new deadline, it shouldn't be that horrible. <!-- s;) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s;) -->

I'm into the 3rd hub now, and there is one problem which definitely is a bug (affects the original Hexen, too): Sometimes when you load a savegame, you lose all of your weapons. Reloading the same savegame has the same effect. This can cause serious wasted time, until I found out today that you can go through a portal and your weapons re-appear. That heresiarch thing is getting annoying, though - even if you stand in front of him with god mode, hitting him with weapon 4 at every chance and summoning the odd maulotaur every now and then, he still manages to summon another one. In fact I've been up against 3 of them at once today, and I actually ended up with 4 of them at one point (but luckily I'd just saved before then, so I reloaded and got 3 instead). It seems that the only way to avoid it is to use Wrath of the Gods a few times (or Horrible Pain, but I haven't gotten that yet).

Just remember, for each Heresiarch you kill, you get approximately 40,000 experience points. Here's another hint. With the new damaged frames, you can tell which one will be summoning the Bishops/Heresiarchs. If he spawns a new Heresiarch, ignore the new one and concentrate on the wounded one until he dies. Then go back to the new one. Of course, it might be a little easier with the fighter, which I used last time.

Hi.Hm...where did these Heresiarch tips spawn from......

There is no Heresiarch damage skin in 2.5, it'll be included in the next KMOD release. BTW UltimateDoomer, you're playing on hard skill, right?

Heresairch DS is in 2.5.

Are you sure? I thought it's in the last build I didn't incorporate into the public distribution. <!-- s:shock: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_eek.gif" alt=":shock:" title="Shocked" /><!-- s:shock: -->

[quote="RambOrc":cqzohbyr]There is no Heresiarch damage skin in 2.5, it'll be included in the next KMOD release. BTW UltimateDoomer, you're playing on hard skill, right? Yep, always hard skill. There are damage skins, and that's the saving grace, at least I can tell which is the original one. (as I can always hit him enough to make it appear before the clones are summoned) But trying to kill the others too takes forever (and of course they could spawn their own clones), not to mention the mana might not be available. My suggestion would be to increase the time before he starts to summon them (or decrease the chance of an unlucky throw), as I'd imagine a lot of people on hard skill wouldn't be able to kill him before then. (and we're all used to skill 4/5 from vanilla days. Of course, if it's meant to be that hard, then fair enough - even if you don't kill the extra ones, you still have to avoid them in combat) It's just the way you said it in the docs (if you fool around too long with him, unexpected reinforcements will arrive) gives the impression that you can't hang around forever (ie. playing with him rather than attacking, or constantly going off in search of helpful stuff), but not that you have to kill him in super-quick time (almost certainly using top-level spells, which you might not have) to avoid those reinforcements.

[quote="The Ultimate DooMer":2f416j7t]Yep, always hard skill. There are damage skins, and that's the saving grace, at least I can tell which is the original one. (as I can always hit him enough to make it appear before the clones are summoned) Thats because Damage skins become active at ? health as does the heresiarch spawning enemys. As for making it easier wait for what Ramborc says.

Actually, those immense HPs for boss monsters are a legacy "relic" from KMOD 1.x, coded solely by Camper. He claimed there is no easy way to modify the attack strength of monsters, so the only way we could increase toughness of any foes was to boost their HP. That's why minor boss monsters got a 10x HP boost and Korax a 20x one. Worst is AFAIK KMOD 2.0 in which to balance the new ultimate powers of the player classes (like Berserker and mana-less sword for the Fighter, Horrible Pain for the Mage), Korax's HP was increased to 500'000 HP - that's 100x of the original. In KMOD 2.1 and later, it's been decreased to a "mere" 200'000, that's "only" 40x of the original. But hey, it had to be something like that, I mean with a level 12 or so Mage you get by the end of Hexen at full mana you can let loose a Power 4 Horrible Pain spell, and that's 40'000 HP in one blast if I'm right. At any rate, Tzar Sectus in KMOD 2.0 already coded in modified attack strength for the Slaughtaur if I remember right, meaning the whole legacy thing could be overhauled, i.e. rather increasing attack strength of boss monsters and while increasing their HP too but not so much. While KMOD 2.x won't be changed gameplay wise, for KMOD 3.x this is a definite possibility.

I'm not complaining about the difficulty (it's fine as it is), I just don't agree with facing 2 or more heresiarches every time instead of 1.

What I tried to explain is that things like extremely high HP for boss monsters and a Heresiarch spawning a Heresiarch spawning a Heresiarch are things that came from limited possibilities. Currently we can do a lot more with the engine and so in KMOD 3.x difficulty for killing bosses will be increased in different ways.

I've done with episode 2 and no major trouble to report, although I did get corrupted savegames in the 3rd hub a few times (usually when there's a lot happening at once, like the Korax fight at the end). It's probably my system (it hates OpenGL and still crashes Direct3D sometimes) but I thought it might be worth mentioning anyway. I shall start the 3rd episode (Dreadnaught/Knockabout/Temple2) tomorrow and see if everything's ok. (k_d11.zip/temple2.zip)

Corrupted savegames is a Doomsday "feature".

I have found a bug - it crashes any map that has player starts with a number over 50 - giving this message: P_SpawnMapThing: mthing->arg1 is really weird! (50) Sounds strange I know, but the first hub in episode 3 has some starts like this. I had to renumber the starts and change the portals accordingly to fix it. (the maps work fine, now) I don't know if it's a KMod or a Doomsday issue, but vanilla Hexen and ZDoom run the maps fine.

It must be a Doomsday issue - possible one present even in latest releases, you might want to try that.

I've played through the 3rd episode and Deathkings, and there's no more trouble that hasn't already been mentioned. It's been really great though, despite the troubles I had in some of the custom hubs (and I can fix some of those myself). It's a shame I can't distribute these episodes, as I would really recommend them. Anyway, I hope this thread has been of use in working out ways of supporting custom hubs better in the next version. My suggestion would be to include some kind of option system (either a new in-game options menu or a launcher) to allow you to turn various Korax-only features on and off (the new death wyvern patterns, the 3-level rise, the high HP's of bosses, heresiarch clones etc.) and possibly allow you to set the XP/level system depending on how many hubs you're playing. Although having said that, I got to level 13 (including 1 heart of D'Sparil), each time on the 3-hub episodes as well as the original, despite the 2 hub difference.

Thanks for all the input. <!-- s:) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s:) --> Since EXP depends on the number and type of monsters, it can get higher in a small hub than in 5 large ones under extreme conditions (for a single Heresiarch e.g. you get more EXP than in the first 2 hubs of Hexen together). As for distributing the episodes, if you still have the original TXT files for those maps, they say most of the time whether maps can be altered and redistributed. If yes, they can be slightly modified to accomodate KMOD better and then released to the public. That's actually what I plan to do for KMOD 3, once it's out such projects can be started by people like you. <!-- s;) --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s;) -->

I checked the text files a while ago and 7 of the 9 hubs don't allow modifications (so I can only keep these modified hubs to myself). I haven't contacted the authors, but I could if you want (as I'm not using them to build new maps, I'm just adapting them for 3-hub episode and KMod play - and one was a beta that needed a proper ending).

I've got a couple of hubs which allow any modificiations and redistribution, three I can recall from memory: chuxen, zoweseandek and necros.

I've got Chuxen and Zowehex (both in the first episode, too) and I've not heard of Necros. (and Chuxen was the one with the most KMod trouble)

Do you think you guys can code the Dark Bishop's *dashing* move? You know, the move where he glides across sidewyas, forward or whereever with a speed boost and shadows come behind him. Normally, you couldn't do that, you could only float slowly...bah.. Also, would it be a good idea to make the Heresiarch learn a teleporting spell to transport randomly at certain spots to make it harder? He's my favourite boss <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D -->

On skill 4, I was up to 7 Heresiarchs at once at the end of DeathKing's hub 2: The Constable's Gate! Three of those seven came after I killed the original one. Then I killed another to get back down to only six. It was pretty funny playing as the mage. Most of the time I use arc of death but when I have plenty of MP, I activate the protection spell, then go in the middle of them and fire away with bloodscourge. The bloodscourge shots keep bouncing back and forth between me and whatever Heresiarchs has their protection up until they explode on a vulnerable Heresiarch. BTW, is there a way to tell when Heresiarch has his protection up so I know when I can safely shoot the bloodscourge without using protection myself? Anyway, if it's possible, it might be a good idea to lower the amount of HPs a Heresiarch has to be down to before summoning others and make it so the summoned ones can't summon anymore.

You always see a special animation on the Heresiarch when he has the invulnerability spell up (this was so already in the original DOS Hexen). It's a kind of "purple swirling" around his body.

Ah Ok, I've seen that but thought it had something to do with one of his attacks.

It seems that KMod works okay when playing the Caldera add-on. I've done it. The only issue is one that can't be helped. Caldera was meant to be played using normal Hexen. The enemies quickly get too strong for how you start out in KMod, and you end up dying a lot if you don't use any cheats. That ends though once you get D'Sparil's heart. The 3-level boost then evens things out nicely.