I replaced all weapon_crowbars with weapon_swordofsadisms and tested each individual section.
One problem I found was the section in "violence" where you're jumping away from falling hammers. Those hammers actually do 999 damage because previously, the sword gave you nearly unlimited health and power, which means, a huge amount of damage at once could still kill you and that was necessary in this moment (and the moment where you're fighting the marine who wrote the diaries and another moment in one of the twenty doors of death).
I added an exception to the "taking damage" function, all damage above 100 kills you instantly, which is basically the same way it behaved before.
And that concludes the curious case of the Sword of Sadism.
The marine is still not fixed yet; I gave him 10000 HP (just like in HQA), but his kick doesn't do 500 damage yet, which means the marine can't actually kill you. I think that I'll either make a new monster or use an assassin instead. I kind of like the idea of an assassin, but I'll wait a bit before doing that.
While fixing the sword in the ambience parts, I also tried fixing the drawdistance along the way. In ambience it was very apparent that the drawdistance was set too short and despite my several attempts to fix this in the past and today (map properties and even maxdistance setting in hlvis), the draw distance still cuts off at the horizon. I'll have to investigate further why that is. Several people kept pointing this out to me in the past decade, and I always had to respond with "yeah I know" because people know it's an easy fix, but I'm telling you, something is messed up, because it just doesn't work. :D
Anyway, I'll hopefully be able to find a solution to this because it is driving me crazy. xD
Next, Auri and I copied monster_headcrab and turned it into monster_dragon! It was pretty easy, thanks to this tutorial. :D Look at them, aren't they cute? :D
I still have to replace monster_headcrabs in the relevant HQA maps, but that'll be over quick.
Not sure what I want to tackle next, either the color of all explosions or something sound related; both is intriguing!
By the way, thanks to Dmitriy and Djigallag who have been posting these log entries over on vk.com/halfquake and translating them into Russian. :D
To be continued. (<