DescentBB

Dark Falcon wrote:To Diedel: try playing Entropy 2 with D2X-W32, there's seems to be a custom vertigo data bug while playing the campaign in d2x-w32.

I will try this and hopefully find out what a 'custom vertigo data bug' is.

Cool (imho) new feature

The next versions of D2X-W32 and DLE-XP will allow to attach triggers to robots. The triggers will be activated when the robot they're linked to is destroyed. This will open up some nice new game play options, I believe, like having to kill some robot before a door opens (not just find the key/switch), trigger matcens when a robot gets killed, etc.

Another thing I might implement is some kind of scripting. I'd like to have propositions for what should be scriptable, and maybe you split that in two parts: Simpler operations (easier to implement), and advanced stuff. That way you will have a chance to get at least a part of what you'd like to have implemented.

robot triggers, yes!

spawn robots in areas you have already been in and may return to. the quantity, spawn area and type depending on the trigger activated.

also nice to have settings on how many times a trigger can be activated.

as a thought though, can some kind of repeatable switch with appropriate texture be implemented? maybe only on-off animation.

flag for switch: breakable, not breakable
use flashing animation for on. no animation for off
setting for switch to start as on or off.

I had thought about permanent switches and will probably implement them, but you'd need to supply appropriate textures using custom textures (in a pog file).

can't just use original switch animation?
just use one image from animation list?
i ask as i don't know how the animations work and how many textures are involved. if poss. will do.

i don't mind too much what they look like as long as they work. the switch is of course the trigger. can any type of texture can go on top?

camera triggers. hah! love it.

the whole wall becomes the camera?
use a particular texture?

what about sprites? i know the images would have to be created. i'm thinking of an image of a camera so it would look as if the camera was the source of the view.

cameras in/on robots? the gb already does that. how about an enemy view only from a control area?

Jakee,

learn to use the 'edit' button.

Using the first anim frame for perma switches was something I had thought of already. I need to look into this switch stuff though: If switches have a 'destroyed' flag, all I'd need to do is to prevent it from being set when the switch is operated.

I had thought of adding camera objects. Shouldn't be too hard, and would give you way more control over the cam's field of view. No poly model available for that though - cams would be invisible and indestructible. Visible and destructible would however be great, but that would require a 'standard' custom model D2X-W32 would need to load, and the custom model hxm file mechanism should be bypassed for this. Complicated.

Use some techy looking background texture for monitors for the case cams aren't fullscreen (should actually be named 'full face') or turned off completely.

Diedel,
what about a camera view powerup.

i guess i can set up cubes to be robo gens and only spawn 1 specific robot but can the robo gen sound be suppressed?

What should that be good for?

But this makes me have an idea: I could use the marker poly object as camera object, and eventually replace it by some model looking like a camera.

How about a special type of camera trigger? When the player passed through it, they would be given a camera view in the left cockpit window.
The target side of the trigger would be where the player would watch from.
If the trigger had no target, the window would be reset to what it had been (camera view removed).

BTW those object triggers sound AWESOME! That's just what I would need! Anything destructable would have the trigger activated when it blew up, then the powerups and such would have the trigger activated when they were picked up.

Diedel wrote:What should that be good for?

ambushes.
that noise can be heard from a distance and you know what happened.

yes!the markers are already set to be cameras in multiplay aren't they?

I meant the camera view powerup.

special views only available thru powerup.
allow camera use for limited amount of time rather than a toggle. invisio is time limited but during that time you can do a lot of damage. invince ditto.
i'm not knocking having a camera view just brainstorming. (my eyes roll back in my head and i start to twitch, then ... ooh aah ohno ohno ohno. whew!) where was i, oh yeah camera powerup. or like the quad lasers, turbocharge, full map, headlight. the extra ammo thingy. see what i mean?

Diedel - I remember I posted a thread a while back containing basically far too many suggestions, some pertaining to the area of triggers/scripting, but if memory serves you said it was so complicated/grand in scale it'd probably never get done.

Nonetheless - I could pull a few concepts from there that would be more simply implementable. I probably came up with some things that didn't require a full-blown event/action scripting system.

Bug?

I just installed D2X-W32 ver 1.4.86 and when attempting to load a previously saved game (saved under ver 1.4.83) it showed a dark grey/black wall on every side of the cube I was in except for the walls that were supposed to be there (they looked normal)... and I could not move out of the cube.

Map showed exactly like it had before saving the position.

Replaced with the 1.4.83 version and when loading the saved position, the dark grey/black walls were gone (allowing normal game play).

TechPro

same happened to me. believe it's because the saved game is from older version? when started a new game and deleted the old game then saved a new one with new version, then quit and restarted with saved game. all ok.

something about the data recorded in the savegame file may differ from version to version and of course if the old data was incorrect for the new version to read then !

i think it's great it didn't crash the game! use the newer version but give up your old savegames. what a choice.

This will be fixed asap.

diedel got automap name changed. thanks

?
ver 1.4.86
at main menu. have new mission in missions folder.
click on New Game. list show counterstrike, vertigo and new mission. click on mission and go.
at main menu. have new mission in missions folder
click on Single player game. list shows counterstrike and vertigo. no new mission.
mission file set for single player. ? no biggie. can still play my mission. just wondered if i have something else in the mission file that i'm not setting or whatever. any tests or info needed, let me know.

New single player game only shows built-in SP missions and missions in <d2 folder>/missions/single.

Diedel, now i have a subfolder "single" showing when i choose New Game. when i click on that nothing shows except [..] and if click on that i start a new game in counterstrike.
in start new single player game, my sngl ply lvl shows up ok.
if it was multi, coop and single it would show in "New Game"? I can see how this is good if you've got a lot of missions. i just want to know what the rules are and how to name/fill my folders.

Generally, you can have as many subfolders, sub-subfolders and so on as you like in D2X-W32, and if chosing "New game" you should be able to browse through all these and start every mission shown there.

If your 'single' folder is empty and clicking '[..]' will start D2:CS, then that's a bug. You should be shown the missions of the mission folder then (the parent folder of your 'single' folder).

just double checked that i clicked everything i was supposed to:
Main menu; click New Game, lists counterstrike, vertigo and [single]
click on [single] list box shows [..] (nothing else in list box)
click [..] (doesn't go back to parent folder)
i get the box that says "you may begin in any level up to (in my case 3)" shows 1 in a text input box. hit enter.
starts level 1 counterstrike.

I found out that this only happens when using the mouse to click through the folders, and this is because D2X-W32 did not clear the mouse input buffer after reading it, so once you had clicked, the click was read again and again and again, as if you were clicking all the time.

yep. god i can't believe i've sunk so low. i've become so addicted to my wireless wheel mouse i don't even think of using the kybd. eek!

thanks Diedel.

Great!! Robot triggers!!
And what about object(powerups, hostages) triggers?

In 1.4.86 I am seeing broken textures. Doors are not textured as they should be, as are walls. Seems to mainly effect cube walls that have a second texture overlay on it, everything from lights to doors. In some cases the textures are improperly colored, like they were turned into static pixels.

Checked; yes, it only affects walls that have two textures instead of one.

jakee308 wrote:yep. god i can't believe i've sunk so low. i've become so addicted to my wireless wheel mouse i don't even think of using the kybd. eek!

thanks Diedel.

Heh! Anyway, this should work - and it will.

Skya,

any examples? A certain spot in a certain level? Or will I see it in D2:CS L1?

A note to D2 level designers: D2X-W32 now supports more than one boss robot per level, where you will have to kill all of them to end the level. Previously, the level was ended if you killed just one of them. I think that's a nice enhancement especially for coop geared missions. Toggle it in the gameplay options menu.

Whoa, awesome. Back when I was making levels 6 years ago I had made tons of levels that had as many as 20 boss robots scattered around. I used to focus on the weakest boss and try to avoid the others. Can't do that now. Eesh.

Yes, the texture glitching is universal. I checked default missions, too.

All issues are hopefully fixed with v1.4.87 available now.

Ah, not quite, yet. 1.4.87.

Here's a picture.
[image]

Please do not quote the image.

Command Lines wrote:-automap1600x1200
-cockpit 3
-fps
-fullscreen
-gl_16bittextures
-gl_alttexmerge
-gl_reticle 0
-gl_stdtexmerge
-hud 0
-ini d2x.ini
-maxfps 60.0
-missiondir missions
-pingstats
-playermessages
-pps 20
-msgcolorlevel 3
-nomusic
-nojoystick
-notitles
-nocdrom
-nofades
-nomovies
-noredundancy
-shortpackets
-sound22k
-subtitles
-tmap fp

DirectX 9.0c
GeForce FX 5900XT 128MB
Forceware 81.85

None of the toggles in any of the menus had any effect in fixing it.

Diedel,

amazing to get updates done so quickly!

the mouse is fixed. i didn't see any of the texture stuff after 1.4.86. i had similar seeming problem as you know in 1.4.85

Does anybody else have Skya's problems? I cannot reproduce them.

Edit:

Skya,

remove the '-gl_stdtexmerge' switch. It causes the problems. Your cmd line switch collection is pretty weird anyway.

You should use the d2x.ini coming with d2x-w32.zip as a reference and not add any extra cmd line switches to the program call.

Ah, that fixed it. Thanks.

I prefer to not use defaults, though. I like D2X pixelated, not blurred, and such similar things. Keeps the original Descent 2 feel.

Eventually I'll glance at the .exe in Notepad to see how many command lines there actually are.

I already wondered about your pixelated screen shot, heh!

The cmd line switch list on my D2 site should be pretty complete.

Anyway, using -gl_alttexmerge and -gl_stdtexmerge together doesn't make much sense.

Take the d2x.ini from d2x-w32.zip and add only those cmd line options that make the game appear the way you like it. If you find a switch not to do something noticeable and desired, leave it out. That's the safest approach to customizing the cmd line switches.

Diedel,

Skyla's texture thing might be like this:

Descent 1, Level 3, Near spawn point (D2X-W32 ver 1.4.86, set for Descent 1 Levels)

Descent 2, Level 4, just about to enter Boss room. (D2X-W33 ver 1.4.86, set for Descent 2 Levels)

Note the "gaps" around the grills. I see this only when grills (or similar textures) are used. Happens a lot in Descent 1 levels, only seems to be sometimes with Descent 2 levels.

techpro,

• Current version is v1.4.87. I cannot observe the bug there. If problem persists, please post your cmd line switches and d2x.ini file contents here.

Skya,

• a hint on multiple bosses. They tend to teleport to any segment in a mine big enough to hold them, which can lead to a boss to disappear from the area it's intended to be and get to another boss' area. To prevent this, make the level a D2X-W32 level, mark all segments a certain boss is supposed to stay in, and give them a unique group id. That boss will then only move/teleport between these segments.

My bosses do teleport, but not in the traditional boss sense, and they have free reign to go anywhere in the mine despite their size. Setting them to "Sniper" will cause them to follow you around the entire level. Relentlessly.

Nothing like being silently stalked by multiple modified Alien 2 Bosses across an entire map.

Skya,

my hint was only to keep the bosses from behaving in an undesired way. If following you everywhere is the way you want your bosses to behave, fine.

Hm. Sniper. Nice hint.

Automap problem:

When I zoom out too far I can no longer strafe around the map...

And something that's actually annoying:

D2X Minimizes on startup!! ...annoying...

Minimizing: Well, not for me. Check d2x.ini if '-fullscreen' is enabled (it is disabled if it is preceeded by a semicolon).

Automap panning bug fixed (had noticed it myself already).