Thanks for your detailed feedback, Soul Monster. I had announced in 2020 that I had already fixed most of the crippling bugs and that I was going to release an updated version
at some point. I had always wanted to release the update to this particular mod either on Valentine's Day or on Halloween. This year, with FITF out the door, I finally had enough time and motivation to apply the finishing touches to the updated version and release it. After re-reading the story, releasing it the day before Valentine's Day would have been more appropriate, but I completely forgot about that and I was still working on the update anyway.
About the "added challenge in the boss fight": That's actually the way the boss fight was originally supposed to work. The old version just used the wrong register in the code responsible for that, which prevented the explosions from putting out the fire and instead caused some memory corruption.
Also, I didn't change the hit detection for the broken glass, just for some of the spears and spikes. But I did modify a section of Carpe Jugulum so that you can collect the goodies above the broken glass in the room with the fireplace. I did
not modify the placement of the broken glass in the room with the 1UP and the golden goblets in the top left corner of the map, since using the pogo instead of jumping seemed to be the intended solution there, but I did place a second red key in that room (even though you don't actually need to open the second red-key-door).
So yeah, not all of the changes I made are actually listed in the changelog. Oops. Things I forgot to mention:
- Map 3 (Pumpkin Patch): Placed some blocking tiles in a secret to prevent Keen from climbing into a hole in the wall and getting stuck.
- Map 4 (Tomb Hall): Placed some blocking tiles in a secret to avoid egde grab bugs. Changed some tile attributes to prevent Keen from jumping through the ceiling into the room above.
- Map 5 (Swamp): Replaced some non-blocking tiles with blocking ones. Now that I look at it, it seems that I accidently created another place when Keen can climb into a wall and get stuck at the buried skeleton in the top left corner of the map. So that's at least one thing that still needs to be fixed.
- Map 6 (Dead Forest): Placed some blocking tiles and moved decorations around to avoid edge grab bugs. A tree branch has been moved and extented to make it easier to get to the exit. A misplaced foreground tile has been removed from the exit sign.
- Map 8 (Boneyard): Replaced a 45 degree ceiling tile with a 23 degree ceiling tile.
- Map 9 (Bonepile Crypt): Placed a blocking tile to prevent Keen from climbing into a wall and getting stuck in the wall.
- Map 11 (Broom Ride): I moved Keen's spawn point and added the missing tips for the spikes (or whatever they're supposed to be) at the bottom of the first tree. I originally wanted to place an easy level exit on the left (where Keen starts), but the level must be finished via the triggers on the far right (they basically work like the foot in Keen 4) to make Keen fly to the castle bridge, otherwise you can't get to the final levels. I also needlessly closed the exit behind the locked door to prevent the player from exiting the level normally. But you can't even get close to the exit without touching the (almost) invisible foot sprites.
- Map 14 (Chuck's Lair): The moving platforms in the switch puzzle section have been moved to put the switches in the middle of the platforms instead of their far left edge. This also means moving the block icons and adjusting the link coordinates placed on the switches. The bone platform that replaced parts of a spiked ball at the bottom of the boss section has been replaced with a proper spiked ball.
- Map 15 (Castle Ramenstein): The key-sensing doors aren't completely invisible anymore when they're open. You can still see a piece of wood on the ceiling and a mark on the floor. I also placed red arrows in the passage below the pit of spears, hoping that they will lead first-time players to the exit instead of going through the door I added in that passage. The door leads back to the castle entrace and should only be taken if the other path is blocked (because the player didn't bring a key).
I don't know what's going on with the music on your end. I don't hear any static and I can't notice any other differences between the original release and my new version (I started them both and pressed F1 during the Terminator intro to get to the help menu). I can't imagine why you seem to get a different sound since haven't modified the audio files at all. And the modified music loading code should not change the actual music data either (the EGADICT file that the original version uses to "decompress" the audio data is a perfect dummy dictionary).
I am open to suggestions on how to improve this mod even further, so feel free to post them in this thread. This is a discussion forum after all, and your comments on what works and what doesn't might even help others improve their designs in future mods or level packs.
I would of course prefer it if a member of the mod's original developers came back to fix the remaining problems (or help me fix them), so that you could get to play what the mod was meant to be, not my interpretation of it. In the past, I usually contacted the mod's authors before I released the bug-fixed versions, but I didn't do that here. Because I wanted to release it on Valentine's Day and I didn't really think I would get a reply anyway, given that I haven't seen Levellass post anything since the Halloween release of "Prelude".