I fixed the issue that players could get stuck after defeating Somos and dropping down into one of the drained pools by simply adding a func_door that goes up. :D
Instead of tackling another "simple" issue, I decided to just dive right into coding. I've set up my Visual Studio environment to compile the dll files and I've looked at several tutorials on how to add new weapons to HL.
I'm not sure I really need different weapons (I could just use the ones from HQA), but an actual "Sword of Sadism" with damage values set in stone (hardcoded) and actually giving the player unlimited health sounds way too exciting, so I wanted to at least give it a try.
And here's good news: After fixing an error with "ambiguous calls to abs()" (which were suggested by The Internet to simply replace with fabs()) - both client.dll and spirit.dll compiled successfully and the maps I ran through played just fine (including the known bugs, i.e. missing text in camera, etc.). That's awesome. Now I can fix a bunch of things programmatically (game text, player model, monster models and sounds, button/door sounds per mod, etc.).
And so, the first thing I want to try with my newly found powers is making the Sword of Sadism an actual weapon (which should basically be a copy of the crowbar with different model, sounds and numbers).
To be continued. (<
P.S.: Let me know if these log entries are too short. If you want, I can reduce these posts to weekly summaries instead.