Descent Maximum Conversion

Moon · Post by **Moon** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 3:27 am

I guess I'm getting old. A week ago or so I read about someone who extracted the levels from Descent Maximum (Playstation) and converted them to use in D1. Can't remember the place where I read it and can't find it when using Google. Maybe some of you guys does? TIA!

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 3:30 am

Look on my D2 site, 3rd party levels.

Edit: I found there was no link to the file (though the file was on the server) -> link added.

Moon · Post by **Moon** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 6:49 am

D'oh, I confused the Descent 1 version for PSX with the Descent Maximum version which has D2 levels and thus is unplayable for me.

Whenever I do anything besides turning and banking in any level - like moving, firing and stuff - D2X-XL crashes back to the desktop with 'getting joystick calibration values ...' as the last entry in the log file which is kinda weird since I play keyboard only.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 8:06 am

Have you tried to create a completely new player profile and use that in D2X-XL? Maybe create a complete 2nd Descent 1/2 installation and put D2X-XL there? You can also try the '-use_shaders 0' command line switch in d2x.ini (make sure to set '-gl_alttexmerge 0', too).

Actually I am pretty sure the problem is either the OS (are you running Win9x/ME?) or outdated video hardware. See your thread in the tech area for a proposition of an affordable gfx card upgrade. For D2X-XL, even a Geforce 5200 FX would do (256 MByte version if you want to use the hires textures). They're usually passively cooled and really cheap.

Moon · Post by **Moon** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 9:43 am

Luckily for me a complete reinstall of D2 from my original disk + Vertigo + D2X-XL did the trick, great!

However, there are a few issues:

setting screen resolution to 800x600 starts the game as such even though the pilot selected in the d2x.ini has a screen resolution of 1280x1024 which should override this as described in the ini
moving the framecap slide to the left doesn't change the value of 150 FPS
render options > show movie subtitles does so only when starting the game. A movie started from the in-game menu does not have any subtitles.
I cannot get rid of the thruster flames, it always looks as if my ships but is smoking
sitting in front of the entrance of D2 Counterstrike level 1 I hear a loud buzzing noise almost similar to being close to a waterfall. This sound definitely is not there in the original game.
extracting D2X-XL to the D2 directory overwrites the original D2 readme.txt which has a lot of important info. Renaming it to D2X-readme.txt would make sense
is there a way to turn of the flames at the screen edges when firing a guided missile in full screen view
on demo playback the mouse cursor is in the middle of the screen; any way to get rid of this or the cursor at all respectively? I've set D2 to use no mouse at all.

Thanks for your time.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Wed Nov 15, 2006 10:10 am

Which program version do you use? Most recent is 1.8.53.

The noise bug had been present in an older version of d2x-xl.

Make sure to turn off smoke for the player ship (uncheck 'use master sliders', then uncheck 'smoking player ships').

The description in the ini is wrong. The ini setting should override the initial pilot file settings here to make sure you can override a screen resolution setting in the pilot profile that causes problems.

If you tried to use a pilot file from your previous Descent installation, delete it and create a new one - they are not compatible with D2X-XL.

Moon · Post by **Moon** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 3:19 am

Diedel wrote:Which program version do you use? Most recent is 1.8.53.

Gosh, you're cranking out versions like crazy! Great, I was on .32 when I had those problems and now on .55 almost anything seems to be fixed except:

when doing a screenshot I don't get a message about it
pressing a markers number in automap view does focus on it but not show the marker text
when picking up the energy to shield converter the message reads "press to use", the key denoted to this function, DEL in my case, is not listed
I'm not sure what the transperancy setting is used for. In D2 CS lvl 1 one can see through the lava waterfall under the red key and spot the switch to open the stash of powerups in the ceiling which is kinda wasting the whole idea of this secret.
when I start a multiplayer level on my own to check it out and kill myself in it the screen message reads "player should be dead" instead of "Moon" although I used "-player Moon" in the ini
not really a bug but: is it possible to switch
Setting "-menustyle 0" brings up a completely black screen when F2 > Controls > Customize keyboard is used during gameplay
are Guidebot message colours level dependent? In D2 CS lvl 1 the name/message are grey/white and in Descent Maximum gray/black so they are very difficult to read
extracting D2X-XL to the D2 directory still overwrites the original D2 readme.txt which has a lot of important info.
F1 during gameplay stills shows "Printscrn" as the key to save a screen shot instead of ALT-F9. Instead of fixing this text you might wanna go back to the original button "Printscrn"

Diedel wrote: If you tried to use a pilot file from your previous Descent installation, delete it and create a new one - they are not compatible with D2X-XL.

Is there a way to convert original players to new ones? I mean, I would like to keep my multiplayer kill/death ratio even though it's far from impressive. And what about old/current save games/demos. I would like to be able to use my old cause I've done a lot of em and I would also like to see the current ones to be working in later versions of D2X-XL. Thanks again.

P.S.

To get back on topic: do you know when the Descent Maximum conversion was done? Levels 4 and 5 look oddly familiar to me...

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 4:56 am

Moon,

please register on SourceForge.net if you haven't already and create one bug ticket per bug in the D2X-XL project there, alright?

Please pose questions that do not fit into the categories 'bug/support request/feature request' in the D2X-XL Q&A thread in the D2X-XL forum.

Guidebot msg colors currently have a palette related problem.

\"Player should be dead\" is a debug msg, will be removed.

Thanks

Diedel

Moon · Post by **Moon** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 8:44 am

Diedel wrote:Moon,

please register on SourceForge.net if you haven't already and create one bug ticket per bug in the D2X-XL project there, alright?

I did before posting here but I could not activate my account. I've contacted them to solve this problem but it may take a while...

I hope I'll get the distinction right, when posting to the D2X-XL Q&A.

So, back to my previous question: any idea when Descent Maximum Conversion was released?

akula65 · Post by **akula65** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 12:27 pm

Is this what you were looking for?:

http://descentbb.net/viewtopic.php?t=6557

Moon · Post by **Moon** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 9:13 am

Yep, that was it. Thanks.