Hexen II for Linux: Hammer of Thyrion 1.2.4a
============================================

The primary focus of this new release may be considered as sound
and music changes: Two new sound drivers, SDL and ALSA, were added.
People who used to have issues with sound should now play the game
with sound. Volume adjustment issues for music are also addressed.
A more detailed list of changes is below.

Summary of Changes (since HoT-1.2.4):
-------------------------------------
Merged tiny fixes from the HEAD branch & bumped to 1.2.4a:
- updated the documentation
- small sbar resizing fix in software mode
- fixed an oversight in reinit_music which resulted in a
  needless restart of midi music upon pressing Esc twice
- added back console video mode reporting

Summary of Changes (since HoT-1.2.3):
-------------------------------------
- SDL and ALSA sound drivers are added. These should help people
  having sound problems with the OSS driver.
  * Sound drivers can be chosen either by using the game launcher
    or by command line switches,
  * ALSA sound requires 1.0.X versions of alsa kernel modules and
    alsa-libraries,
  * For SDL sound, we recommend SDL-1.2.7 or newer versions.
- Fixed cd music stopping upon changing volume.
- Added working volume control for cdrom and midi music.
- Midi music now works for HexenWorld.
- Further small fixes to the core sound code and to OSS driver.
- Fixed bug where demos played without models when the -nosound
  command-line switch was in effect.
- Added support for mouse buttons 4 and 5 (thanks Julien Langer)
- Fixed statusbar being displayed with an ugly brown-colored band
- Added sky alpha (transparency for lower sky layer)
- Added transparency for console background (from hexenworld).
- Fixed hexenworld bug causing mouse not being activated after
  connecting to a server.
- Fixed "flush_textures" decision which used to be always true.
  Loading the same map should now be faster on old systems.
- Ported many features/fixes from Hexen2 to HexenWorld. There
  should be less difference between the two now.
- The game launcher now scans for known hexenworld game-types
  and hexen2 botmatch mods, and provides a list menu.
- The launcher interface now has two modes, basic and detailed.
- Many internal changes to the source code (see the CHANGES file
  for such details.)
- HexenWorld Gamecode changes/fixes:
  * server no longer crashes on maps rider1a, rider2c, romeric6,
    meso9 and eidolon
  * added server map cycling for HexenWorld
- Hexen2 Gameplay changes/fixes (merged from Pa3PyX' sources):
  * fps independent crossbow, setstaff and flameorb fire rates 
  * no more 20 tornadoes per second from meteor staff at 200 fps
  * fix for ravenstaff bug where splitting missiles would collide
    with each other.   * assasin cloak ability re-write.
  * necromancer soul steal adjustments to make it really useful.
  * fixes to demoness abilities according to the manual
  * crusader's full-mana ability starts at level3, assasin's
    backstab and crusader's holy strength start at level6.

Known Problems:
---------------
- Midi music doesn't work with SDL sound driver. This is due to
  conflicts between SDL and SDL_mixer calls and will be addressed
  in future versions.

Acknowledgement:
----------------
Many thanks to Levent Yavas for his remarkable patience in testing
of this release.