So let's start with D1, enter UUD1TP.
Luckily in D1 there actually wasn't a lot to fix, so the patch isn't particularly exciting - think of it as something like Doom's "Minor Sprite Fixing Project" - getting rid of the minor but jarring imperfections that some textures have.
To give you a bit of history: at first I thought it would be enough to just do a permanent swap of the affected textures via DTX. And sure enough - it worked, but with the caveat that the size of descent.pig would always get bigger by approximately 24kb. Not a big deal apparently - Descent played via DosBOX just fine and DLE also opened it with no issues with the changes applying. But it turns out it was Rebirth incompatible, since Rebirth requires DESCENT.PIG to be the exact same size as the original 1995 file, otherwise it just exits after the title credits. Descent 2 Workshop provided no solution to this, but luckily there was Arne, who coded up a tool that could replace the files without affecting the file size, and so we're here! On to the changelog:
- The "Venus" monitor, misc069 - the main texture (regular display) was misaligned compared to the popping animation and broken texture by one pixel down and one to the right - meaning it appeared to move a bit diagonally to the upper left when being popped. It's the only monitor from D1 that had a problem like this, while D2 was completely rife with these issues (as you'll see when I make the D2 thread with the changelog).
- Three rock textures: rock064, 065 and 066 had rather jarring artifacts on them which appeared highly unintentional, I've removed them and repainted these rock textures, so maybe they'll see more love now. Illustration below:
And that's actually it! But you know what's cool? A lot of things, actually:
- It's literally just a patch, so you could just replace your v1.4 descent.pig with it forever and forget, no consequences whatsoever (also that's how you need to apply it to play the DOS version anyway, which it works with)
- but it also works as a DXA! And that's how the package is delivered. Just put it in your D1 Rebirth folder and enjoy. DOESN'T WORK AS A DXA ACTUALLY - it's a ZIP, just unpack the contents into your main game folder
Here's the download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Tee3Gc ... sp=sharingAnd the DXA thing has reminded me of the other "half" of the project, which I would dub UUD1TP-X, where "X" stands for "eXtended". It doesn't exist yet, but I think it'd be a nice thing to do with the community's input. In case of D1 once again there is not much room for extension (expect MUCH more in D2, and those are ironically much more obvious), since the PIG size needs to remain the same for Rebirth compatibility and the texture table is hardcoded anyhow.
But there's one thing - the texture rock004 is identical to rock019, so one of them could be replaced with another texture without losing anything at all. And that's where the poll comes in - if you could have ONE, a mere single texture from Descent 2 backported into Descent 1, which one would you choose? Unfortunately it's not that simple a choice, since D1 doesn't allow POGs like D2 does in the first place, so we're much less flexible here and this choice will have to be be permanent.
Pretty much any single-frame texture goes, but since there's room for only one bitmap, multi-frames are obviously off the table, so no monitors and no flickering door lights. My personal choice would be metl146, "the grate" - simply due to how universal and functional it is, so it would actually improve the functionality of D1 levels in allowing to create tunnels with those thin shoot-through openings or an universal decoration. In an analogous fashion, one of the other metal textures could be implemented. If we forego functionality in favor of aesthetics, there is a literal ocean of textures that could be chosen - but then again, those can be used in D2 levels making use of the D1 palette anyway, so functionality would probably be more preferable. I'll put some more obvious choices in the poll.
I won't proceed with changing rock019 to the new texture until we establish some sort of consensus on what it should optimally be, and on top of that rock019 is used in place of rock004 in levels 3 and 17 of First Strike, so unless the levels themselves are adjusted to account for that (which would optimally require a descent.hog patcher), the new texture might spoil the visuals in these levels. But guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Vote away and discuss. Enjoy the basic patch, news on the D2 version soon!
