New D2 singleplayer level - a work log

[Diedel]

Errrm ... errr ... 1,2 ... can you hear me?

D2 is still the game I like most of the franchise, and as being the D2X-W32 and DLE-XP gives me a little freedom when it comes to engine limits, I have decided to build a new D2 single player level and pull off everything I know as a level builder (and use everything I have seen by other great level builders, like Kruel, Darkhorse, or Grant Hallman, to name my favorite ones).

This project will take months, as I will not pick it up on a regular base, but rather on when I want to and have the time.

To keep your mouths watered, I plan to post pictures and kind of a work log of my progress here.

I am curious whether there will really be an audience. To get some feedback, I have therefore turned this thread into a poll.

[Diedel]

Ok, here we go.

I plan to make a huge level with various parts of vastly different style, but some logical transition between them. Depending on what I manage to pull off, I will put everything into a single level, or create a mission consisting of several levels and a Half-Life style transition (i.e. the start of a new level will look identically to the exit area of the previous one, only that you will not be able to go back).

The part I am currently working on is a canyon with some caves and man made tunnels. The idea is not completely fleshed out yet, but there will be some control center somewhere to trigger the transition to the next area, and as this part probably will not be the start of the mission, there must be a "somewhere" you've come from.

Naturally, a canyon lends itself to cave entries located in its walls, and these in turn open endless opportunities to build complete areas of the mission.

So another part of the mission will be a cave system with stalaktites, water, and pretty certainly some lava deeper down (I hope I will come at least close to what Darkhorse has created with 'Magnacore' here ... )

But here some pictures of an early state of the canyon. The start area has pretty much taken shape, and the process of carving the whole thing out of ... errm ... the segments is clear, but there's a lot of details still to be built, and ofc this is not just about looks - I want it to play well, too.

Here's an overview from the level editor:



This is the start location:



A view of a tunnel entrance to be:



Somewhat deeper into the canyon, some water coming from a side canyon that will serve as an entrance to another part of the level:

[DCrazy]

Just a question: does your renderer do any optimization? I remember those gigantic areas in the original D2 would slow the thing to a crawl, and despite the fact that D2X-W32 uses OpenGL, if your renderer doesn't skip over cubes connected by portals that are blocked then I can see this level slowing to an absolute grind once you start adding robots, high-res textures, etc.

[CDN_Merlin]

I always liked playing Descent in single player mode. I found D1/D2 to be the best for that. Kept me busy for yrs.

[Diedel]

Crazy,

why should that happen? It always depends on how many polys are on screen, and D2 doesn't push that many polys, no matter what you do ... ofc you seem to crawl through a huge area, but that's because the area is huge, not because frame rate drops.

[Sirius]

Sky textures in D2 always looked a bit corny, but even despite that (and you can probably do quite a bit better with W32) I suspect this is going to be kind of cool. Looking forward to it.

[Top Gun]

Woah...that looks amazing

[Diedel]

The first canyon is pretty much done now. It may need some work in the details, but that's it. It will continue as a lava filled canyon, but that will be another work step. I will probably not show any pictures of that section, because you want to have a few surprises left when actually playing the mission, do you?

So here are some images.

First, an overview from the editor: You see there's way more colors and thus details ...



There's some grass around the waterhole:





and the tunnel entry actually has a tunnel now:



Blue sky (from D3) and ... yellow sand:



Some lava already:



A boulder:



The start of the lava part:

[Sapphire Wolf]

*drools*

[Diedel]

hehe

[Sirius]

Hey, just a suggestion - if you want a little bit of perspective on the sky, you could perhaps emulate what D3 does with a 'sky dome' - i.e. extend the sky above the canyon, and make the actual wall there really distant (say at least 200, preferably 500 or so, units); and finally just put a cloaked wall at the top of the canyon.

Downside is this would waste probably about 100-200 cubes just on that alone, and may slow the level down quite a bit.

Might. We do, thankfully, have more powerful machines now.

[Diedel]

Actually, the canyon does not have that many segments in the top layer, and as it's a D2X-W32 level, I could put another layer on top, extend it very far and make the segments 'blocked' (a D2X-W32 segment type). That would fulfill the purpose and save a lot of walls. But that's for the next step.

Edit: Stacking an extra layer on top of the level didn't look nice. But hey, I added skyboxes to DLE-XP and D2X-W32, and that works as it should.

[Diedel]

A few pics with a sky box in place.

A larger view of the canyon:



A peek into a side canyon:



And - uh! oh! - something completely new:

[Pumo]

Woah!!
That's even more cool than what i've seen on PD.
I thinked this level would be great!

But now i see it really would be awesome!!
And the skybox addition, it's something that i always wanted in D2 (or well, maybe a skysphere would be even better ) but hey, it's already great right now!.

[Diedel]

Actually, the sky box is composed of regular cubes that have a special type you can set in DLE-XP. So in fact you can build whatever environment you want - a dome, a mountain range, you name it. The sky box of the lava lake actually consists of 16 cubes:



Btw, I have changed the lava lake's sky box to be a dome and exchanged the pic above.

[Sirius]

Interesting. How do you set which cubes have no roof then? End of exit tunnel?

[Diedel]

The see-thru faces simply get an "empty-light" texture ... ... this will also take care of light being cast from the sky.

The same goes for parts of a level that stick through a sky box (e.g. because the open terrain is part of a bigger level that also has a sub-terranean part): Add a 'transit' segment to the face of the sky box segment the level is sticking through, expand/align one face of that transit segment so that the part of the level that goes through it fits in it, and give that sky box face the 'empty - light' texture so that the face doesn't get rendered into the level:



The marked segments are a tunnel extending from the level. It sticks through the skybox at the green face, which has an empty light texture.

If the skybox face the level is sticking through is completely invisible from the level, you don't have to add an extra transit segment - I did this only to keep the illusion of a large, rocky area outside. You can then simply make that face transparent with an 'empty - light' texture.

Btw, all faces of the skybox have a light texture somehow: Either as primary texture (making the clouds float), or as secondary texture, or it would be too dark.

[Diedel]

Since I have mainly been improving/bug fixing D2X-W32 and DLE-XP, not much has happened on my level building front, but here's a new image of an improved sky dome (I've put two screen shots together; the white seam at the top is from the image editor):

[Image]

[Aus-RED-5]

very nice!!

[Diedel]

A little progress: I have managed to find some time to join the two parts of the level shown so far and give them a decent looking environment box. Here's a shot from the editor:

[anubis]

Holy cr@p, that IS da bomb! You should try making a space level after this.

[Vampyre_Six]

yet another impressive creation from Diedel

i gotta try experimenting with sky boxes now