Scattered Evil 2.0 released

Scattered Evil 2.0 is now available on SourceForge and ModDB.

Monster Models

  • Fully animated models for the Ettin and Chaos Serpent families, including damage skin variants and special overkill animations. Besides the move from 2D to 3D, many models feature additional visual changes compared to their previous sprite iterations (see the list below).
  • Ettin Slingers use slingshots and chuck stones.
  • Ettin Grenadiers brandish flechettes.
  • Ettin Commanders carry a hammer.
  • Ettin Warlords gave up their helmets and replaced most of their armor with pure gold pieces. As a warlord, you gotta show off your bling or how will your underlings know you da boss?
  • All Chaos Serpents now have a standard death animation (falling down) and an overkill animation (bloody bits flying everywhere).
  • Magma Serpents are now huge and their skin is infused with molten lava that only stops glowing upon death.
  • Frost Serpents are a new blue subspecies that like the cold and have displaced Wendigos in the icy reaches of Charybdea.
  • Flayed Serpents were first conceived in a sadistic wizard’s twisted mind, who wondered what would happen if you took some young Chaos Serpents and removed their skin. They live in constant pain that only abates at those moments when they bite into the flesh of some unsuspecting adventurer to drink their blood.

NPC Models

  • All animated NPC sprites have been replaced with animated models.
  • All female NPC sprites have been replaced with models.
  • Most non-unique male NPC sprites have been replaced with models. Some of them even learned how to sit on furniture.
  • Chickens, pigs and piglets now have unique animated models.

City Updates

  • The city of Ocadia has been rebuilt from scratch, leaving only some of the most iconic buildings more or less intact. Besides a more up-to-date look, it should also greatly improve frame rates.
  • Annoyed by all the construction noise, the market stalls from Ocadia moved to Sichabroner. The joke is on them though, as that cityscape underwent some changes over the summer, too.
  • All good things come in threes, so the city of Thystes got a facelift as well.

Gameplay Changes

  • Whether health artifacts (Quartz Flask, Mystic Urn) are used automatically is now controlled through a setting in the Options menu, independent of the difficulty setting.
  • While in the berserk state, now you can open the Journal (ends berserking) and the Map Scroll (suspends berserking, resumes after closing the scroll).
  • Items that can be picked up now always glow, items that can’t be picked up don’t glow. Most of them also rotate in addition to float bob.

Miscellaneous Changes

  • Built on the concurrently released Vavoom 1.34, the GNU/Linux binaries are now 64-bit (Windows 64-bit binaries will follow in a subsequent release).
  • Removed a number of unused textures and compressed all non-transparent textures to optimize memory usage.
  • Adopted the bugfixes present in KMOD 5.0 but not in Scattered Evil 1.9 (fighter levelup bug, load/save screens display issue).
  • You can now initiate a conversation with domesticated animals.
  • You can now punch most fences and furniture.
  • When looking into a mirror, the player now sees an idealized version of himself.

Korax Mod: MageSlayer Edition

Inspired by Hexen creator Raven Software’s top-down action game MageSlayer, today we are introducing Korax Mod: MageSlayer Edition.

The new top-down view. Notice how the 2D decorations are in a 3D space!
Zoom mode. Now you can see the monsters!
Shooting at a monster (and maybe even hitting it?)

Korax Mod is back!

Korax Mod 5.0 is available for download from SourceForge and ModDB.

Released in June 2001, Korax Mod 1.0 was the first ever Hexen gameplay mod. Throughout the next few months and years, it introduced a slew of new RPG features: experience and leveling, customizing your character during creation, new weapons and spells, monsters dropping silver and gold bars, buying and selling items at shops, special “damage skin” sprite sets to make it clearly visible a monster is badly hurt…

Today, the same team is raising the bar once more with the release of Korax Mod 5:

  • Introducing an RPG complexity setting that allows the player to mold the game to his personal playstyle, from a complex RPG system to a near-FPS setup that feels a lot more like Heretic’s fast-paced gameplay than the classic Hexen shuffle.
  • Shortcuts: breaking up the linear monotony and the frustration of the tedious search for the last hidden puzzle switch – now you need to solve less than half of a hub’s puzzles to be able to proceed to the next hub (but you might want to linger for the experience and loot).
  • “Pistol Starts”: built-in support for warping to the beginning of any hub and receiving weapons and armor automatically so you have an actual chance of beating the game from that point without using any cheats.
  • Vastly expanded bestiary: not only are there a few completely new enemies and many new types of existing monsters, even the “classic” ones might surprise you by dodging your attacks, running away when low on health, closing large distances with a single leap, and generally finding ways to move around the map and reappear behind your back.
  • Defeating Korax wasn’t a solo effort: embark upon this epic adventure with a supporting cast of merchants and craftsmen, as well as two sidekicks that will race you to kill the most monsters in the area they stake out.
  • A large arsenal of new weapons and spells; custom armor with resistance gems.
  • Designed to support custom maps and mods out of the box: create your own mini-RPG using a large number of new items, weapons and spells, as well as NPCs with pre-configured conversation scripts offering all basic services. Korax Mod is distributed with a Developer’s Reference Guide containing detailed instructions on how to create and distribute your maps and mods.

Scattered Evil 1.9 released

Scattered Evil 1.9 is now available on SourceForge and ModDB.

New Armor System

  • Armor now comes in three basic classes. The stronger the armor, the higher percentage of damage it absorbs but there is also more weight to carry.
  • Armor now has resistance slots for Fire, Frost and Poison. Any class of armor can have any combination of these resistances, which absorb up to 99% of the incoming damage without losing any armor durability.
  • Armor can be restored to pristine state by a master blacksmith in a town. You can also purchase or loot an Armorer’s Hammer, which allows you to repair your armor (to what degree depends on the RPG complexity setting).
  • You need to keep an eye on your armor’s degradation as once a piece is completely depleted, not even the best blacksmith can restore it.
  • The old Hexen style armor has been discontinued. You might still find some battered pieces in the wilderness, but besides the metal itself being worth a few coins, there is no use for them any more.
  • There are rumors about an armor worn by ancient kings that is supposed to be better than anything today’s blacksmiths can craft.

New Feature: Carried Weight

  • Inventory items (including money) now have a specific weight and depending on your character’s stats, sooner or later you’ll become Overburdened, a state in which you move slower, tire faster and get hungry sooner.
  • Playing on Old School RPG complexity, with even more weight you become Extremely Overburdened, a state in which these negative effects become crippling. On the flip side, if you keep your carried weight beyond a certain threshold, you gain Lightfooted, a state in which you move faster and take longer to get tired or hungry.

New Feature: Banking and Finances

  • You can now open a bank account at Ocadia’s Counting House and deposit some of your cash in it, both lightening the load in your backpack and earning interest with time.
  • The Journal now includes a financial overview page that lists not only your cash and your current bank account balance, but also your real estate holdings (if any) and the estimated sale value of your more valuable inventory items.

New and modified Class Abilities

  • Cleric: Levitator is a new prayer that allows you to lift all nearby enemies high into the air, then splat!
  • Fighter: Phalanx is a new martial skill that blocks all incoming damage for a short time, but the fighter cannot move during its duration (he can still attack).
  • Mage: once advanced sufficiently in his studies, the mage can now summon monsters to do his bidding (there is a small chance this can backfire).
  • The mage’s Arcane Shield (defensive spell) now only reflects missiles and offers no protection against melee attacks.
  • The cleric’s Healing prayer now costs significantly more and heals somewhat less in the beginning, but scales much better with the player’s Charisma score in later stages.
  • The red haze during the fighter’s Berserker rage now obstructs the view to a lesser degree. A few other class abilities (Phalanx, Arcane Shield) now also have a faint coloring of your view during their effect.

New Dungeons

  • Rebuilt from scratch, The Rift is open once again, connecting The Canyon to the Dark Conclave.
  • Hytesthani Ravine is now the target of Senior Wizard Robert’s quest for the ultimate weapon.

Miscellaneous

  • You can now punch trees.
  • In Thystes Fortress, soldiers can now be pushed out of the way.
  • The Journal now includes a new chapter on Old School RPG complexity, Tasks (the first entry appears as soon as you talk to your order’s representative in the first town).
  • Cost of ability booster potions reduced to a quarter of their previous value.
  • The text-based setup utility now allows you to set the screen ratio along with the resolution and it writes these parameters in a separate text file, making it easier to add your own command line arguments to ScatteredEvil.bat/ScatteredEvil.sh.
  • Added status marks for more conditions (still disabled by default, you can enable them in the Gameplay Options menu).
  • New visuals for the Mage’s Fireball spell cast.

Bugfixes

  • Fixed: gold bars dropped by monsters flying off into the blue wild yonder.
  • Tears of the Gods damage massively increased, bringing it to the level it was meant to have.
  • Fixed Jodisec Mine keys disappearing from inventory.
  • Fixed incorrect player name being shown if multiple characters have been set up.
  • The Fighter’s Journal on Old School RPG complexity now shows the Spellbook chapter as soon as he obtains any of the combat spells.
  • Potential fix for enemies trying to cast a spell on a dead player, crashing the game.
  • Corrected the map scroll coordinates for The Canyon.