Since GameSpot premiered Activision and Raven Software's Heretic II demo Thursday night, there's been a great deal of talk about an editor's note on the demo's download page. Here's a quick update on the general health of the demo - and what changes gamers can expect from Raven in the very near future.

　　Here's what we know: Yes the demo will run. GameSpot editors been playing the game all morning so we know that's true. There is a date delimiter on the demo that will activate on November 1 which will cause the game to expire (translation: you won't be able to play it after that date). This is nothing new to PC gamers, however, in this case the date delimiter wasn't supposed to be there. Raven is reportedly working on a quick fix - and we're still more than a week away from the November 1 deadline.

　　Rick Johnson, Raven's lead programmer on the title, posted a plan file earlier on Friday stating, "Before everyone explodes into thinking that they'll have to re-download the entire demo because of the expiration problem, the fix for that particular problem will only be a replacement file for your quake2.dll which will be very small."

　　We've heard that there would be a fix in some form or another that would alleviate the problem - and a few other problems that gamers have found since the demo was released to the world.

　　Activision hasn't decided if it's is just going to release a patch to fix the time problem or if it will release another complete demo. As gamers, we know exactly what would be the better choice...the patch (preferably a small one).

　　Reportedly, there are a few other problems with the title and a patch will also focus on fixing those bugs as well. Jake Simpson, another Raven programmer, updated his plan file Friday as well - with some more hints on the upcoming patch:

　　The Heretic II demo is out. Well sort of. The latest word is that we are *NOT* gold on the demo as it stands right now. There are some issues that we will be addressing in a new release of the demo, hopefully fixing them.

　　1) There is an intermittent crash when pushing buttons and switching weapons.2) The skins swapping when changing weapons, this is annoying the hell out of us.3) Hopefully we'll fix the load/save options and include them this time. - be aware though, that almost certainly you won't be able to use you saves from the demo in the real game.4) The shrine effects tend to go away after prolonged network play - something else we want to address.5) The time limit that was left in by mistake. This was there for the E3 demo and we just plain forgot to remove it. Mucho apologies on that one.6) Other stuff. I don't have the comprehensive list in front of me right now.

　　Now, this patch won't be that big, since the levels themselves, and all the textures and sounds everyone already has, it'll just be the .DLL's and the .EXE.

　　So when can gamers expect the Heretic II patch? Our best guess is that we may have something as early as today or early next week. In the meantime, the demo is safe to play and as with other games out there - a patch is on the way.

　　So the sky isn't falling, chicken little - be quiet or we'll use a morph ovum spell on you.