DescentBB

Telling the thing to pan up moves the camera down, telling it to pan left moves the camera right, etc...
It's not a big problem, just a little inconveniant.

BTW, that was also a problem in DMB2.

Sirius wrote:Increasing render depth always seems to make the light carry for longer for me, but I suspect it's because of the way I design levels.

If you're using more, smaller segments (which will make lighting look better) that can well be.

D3hack,

think of moving the window, not the contents.

D3Hack, believe it or not but that was the intended behavior in DMB2. In 3D apps, you don't actually move the camera, you move the geometry relative to the camera position. The buttons were supposed to move the level, not the camera. Counterintuitive from a user standpoint, but slightly more logical from a programming standpoint.

Personally I'd vote for "fixing" it to behave as one would expect, but I dunno if there would be objections from people who live in DLE-XP. Maybe a configurable option?

DCrazy wrote:D3Hack, believe it or not but that was the intended behavior in DMB2. In 3D apps, you don't actually move the camera, you move the geometry relative to the camera position. The buttons were supposed to move the level, not the camera. Counterintuitive from a user standpoint, but slightly more logical from a programming standpoint.

Personally I'd vote for "fixing" it to behave as one would expect, but I dunno if there would be objections from people who live in DLE-XP. Maybe a configurable option?

DCrazy,

you are perfectly right, and I hate this scheme with a passion, as it is so counter-intuitive. As I never ever use the pan buttons, but move the mine view using the mouse + silent keys, I never cared about changing this. And until today, nobody ever complained.

Hey, this sounds as if I wasn't the only person on the planet using DLE-XP!

Moving the mine, not the camera... Why didn't I think of that!

Diedel wrote:Hey, this sounds as if I wasn't the only person on the planet using DLE-XP!

Nope, apparently you're not. I recently got back to level editing, and I decided to give DLE-XP another spin. As it turned out, I just about liked it. I think my problems with it earlier were actually with some (no longer existant) bugs, and I just thought it was the interface that I hated.

Something odd in the new version; portals between some cubes are rendered as black from certain angles...

thanks diedel.
it was understandable.
i had an idea how the program was lighting things. what i have trouble with is using the lighting tool, which seems to set the values in the entire mine, and modifying any shading that is inappropriate.
the lighting seems to be where i choke. setting up triggers and stuff, alignment, area thematics and gameplay i think i do well.
lighting adjustments = not so well. i've read the help file for dmb and the manuals and still don't understand what steps to take to set the light levels in a mine.
and yes you are not the only one using dle
once i can build a regular level, i will use the new stuff in dle. 1st got to get the basics down pat.

edit: i see that you have implemented teleports in dle. can parts of a mine be unconnected to each other? i love this, as you can make a side area that has it's own puzzles, bots and and entrance to find.
perhaps to retrieve a key.
i have made disconnected parts so that i could reconnect them in a different way than they were built. but i always thought the game would kick if a section was isolated from the rest of the mine. also will the player have inertia when exiting a teleport? if so how much. can weapons teleport? you could shoot a rocket into a teleport in doom and it would explode at the destination. hah!

When starting up DLE-XP with the lates version of both DLE-XP and D2X-W32 I get an alert which reads "Files contain curroupted data. Would you like to load anyway? Error code 0x01" Is this hazardous to any work I make, or can I just click OK? If I should click NO, would that cut out features? D:

Image,

the latest version is 1.4.39. I have no problems with that version. The one before could produce problems - don't use it.

Jakeee,

you can create completely disconnected level parts and join them with teleports.

If you want to auto illuminate only parts of a level, mark the desired segments.

okay.

didn't notice this before. if you move the mouse into the map and hover, any changes to the light values on the texture tool will take effect. great!

-a nit-
when typing in light values to the text boxes in the texture tool, you can input alpha chars.
and one of the labels for the boxes say "ight" instead "Light".

edit: hey see. typos when referring to typos. hah!
should say "the box's labels say "ight" instead of "Light" as the lower box label does.

-question-
can you just paste the light values from one side texture into another? if you copy and paste, the alignment will then be the same as the side you copied. maybe not what was wanted. exmpl. wanted to change the look of brightness for a set of walls of lights but didn't want to change the brightness it created in other cubes which would happen if i used the lighting tool. had to change the value in each side by hand. just a thought.

D3Hack wrote:Something odd in the new version; portals between some cubes are rendered as black from certain angles...

Alright, I got some screenshots here for that problem:

In the first image, I have created a level and inserted a single cube... nothing yet.
In the second image, I have added another cube off to the side. Lo and behold, a black portal.
In the final image, I have inserted another cube back in the direction of the original. Three black portals.

AFAIK, it only happens in the latest version. It's not too serious, but it's driving me nuts!

Crap...that smells!

Anyway, It is the latest version of DLE-XP which is giving me that "0x01" error code thingy...

I've also found that on occasion DLE-XP will simply crash when I try inserting a cube

Image,

I need the level file where DLE-XP gives you that error.

D3Hack,

what type of level - D1,D2,Vertigo,D2X-W32 (or regardless of type) - does this happen for?

Diedel wrote:what type of level - D1,D2,Vertigo,D2X-W32 (or regardless of type) - does this happen for?

Happens regardless of level type. If I save the level and load it again, then the portals will no longer be black, but ones between new cubes I insert will be. It doesn't happen with quite every portal (and typically only happens to 1 side of the portal), but most of them. When I turn shading off, the portals become grey.

Also, when I create a new level, depth perception seems to reset back to "Off" until I switch to the "Preferences" panel again.

That's been there a while. From memory it does it when you load a level as well (I think only on startup though).

Yeah, you're right. It's a huge inconvienience, too.
OK, some new things:
Robot list goes "0,1,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,2,20,21...". Shouldn't it go "0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12..."?
Also, when in line mode, pressing "L" does the same thing as pressing "Shift-L", while "L" should move to the next line and "Shift-L" to the previous.

Diedel, Awesome stuff (both DLE-XP and D2X-W32)!

I got 1.4.39 and I'm having a little trouble with it. Just like it does with Image, it seems to cash and exit sometimes. I can almost quarantee it will crash on me (within a couple cubes) while I have the texture tools showing, especially with animated textures. Seems to have a lot of hard drive activity during that.

I switched back to 1.4.37 and didn't have any trouble at all, no crashing, no excessive disk activity. Worked nicely.

Meanwhile, your work with these programs has motivated me to pick up level building again (it's been 3 to 4 years).

Please stick with 1.4.37 until I will post a new version. 1.4.38/39 have bugs due to incomplete implementation of increased max. wall #.

As I am currently in the middle of implementing bot triggers, it might take a few more days to the next update.

Please be patient.

Uh oh...
I'm busted. I can't get the older version.

Anyway, could some1 plz host the thing up for me, until the new version comes out?

That'll teach me to keep previous versions of the thing on my comp...

Confirmed wall issue, also have long term issue with DLE XP since the older versions:

- In certain situations (making a new mine using the New command is one) it will forget Depth Perception setting and shove it back to Off regardless of what the INI file in the windows directory says.

- PLEASE, I beg of you, I need back some equivalent of the old A and Z keys, where they moved the entire mine rather than zoomed...and I need the globe axis indicator for the center of rotation of the mine.

Without those two things my Descent editing workflow has been severely hampered, I took them for granted in DMB2 but DLE-XP has taken them away from the very beginning.

Gregster2k wrote:- In certain situations (making a new mine using the New command is one) it will forget Depth Perception setting and shove it back to Off regardless of what the INI file in the windows directory says.

Yes. Needs to be fixed.

Gregster2k wrote:- PLEASE, I beg of you, I need back some equivalent of the old A and Z keys, where they moved the entire mine rather than zoomed

That, or (preferably), fix the zoom so that you can zoom in or out indefinitely.

Gregster2k wrote:and I need the globe axis indicator for the center of rotation of the mine.

I completely disagree. I hated that darn thing, and I was glad to have it gone in DLE-XP. Of course, we could always have an option to have it...

NO, not zoom indefinitely...i mean panning the mine forward and backward like it used to (which changes the center of rotation for the entire mine) -- right now, you can change the center of rotation for the entire mine by panning left and right with the mouse but you cannot pan forward and backward along the Z-axis which was done using the A and Z keys in DMB2.

I relied on that functionality all the time in DMB2...without it DLE-XP is frustrating as hell.

Gregster2k wrote:NO, not zoom indefinitely...i mean panning the mine forward and backward like it used to (which changes the center of rotation for the entire mine) -- right now, you can change the center of rotation for the entire mine by panning left and right with the mouse but you cannot pan forward and backward along the Z-axis which was done using the A and Z keys in DMB2.

Oh, you're right! I didn't even think about that! Stupid me.
Anyway, yes, we do need that. Maybe DLE-XP could automatically move the mine and reset the zoom like such if you tried to go too far? Not sure how that would feel if you actually did it, but it might be worth a try...

Gregster,

I will look into the pan key issue and add an option to display the center globe. Fixing the depth perception bug can take a while though - it's neither a big problem, nor easy to reproduce.

D3Hack,

You can find ver 1.4.37 here.

I still have my copy so I've temporarily hosted it.

Gregster, with my copy of DMB2, 'A' and 'Z' zoom the mine and do not pan it. In DLE-XP, you can zoom with the mouse wheel (your mouse has a wheel? - if not, tell me).

D3Hack,

I wonder why you're so desperate for a working version of DLE-XP, given there has never been any output from you in the form of a D1 or D2 level I know of. Or have you been toiling away secretly on something and we're up to something wonderful?

Diedel wrote:I wonder why you're so desperate for a working version of DLE-XP, given there has never been any output from you in the form of a D1 or D2 level I know of. Or have you been toiling away secretly on something and we're up to something wonderful?

I've never released any of my levels because they are incomplete or lousy. But I do like to work on them, and over time improve them until they're acceptable.

So anyway, hopefully you'll see something wonderful of mine (Pun detected!) coming out soon.

TechPro wrote:D3Hack,

You can find ver 1.4.37 here.

I still have my copy so I've temporarily hosted it.

Thanks, TP!

Oh, also, do you think we could have an option for the classic DMB2 colors for objects, cubes, etc?

Somehow I couldn't reproduce all DMB2 colors with DLE-XP, or I would have done so.

I will also not build the DMB2 UI (lots of separate dialogs) into DLE-XP - just in case somebody asks.

With these new skyboxes and whatnot there should be a way to toggle the displaying of each cube type -- e.g. if you want to look at the skybox you're editing and not the rest of the level then you can turn off the displaying of the rest of the level so you can only see the skybox.

Select a skybox cube and set the view distance to something unequal zero - as the skybox cubes are (should be) isolated from the regular cubes, that should make only the skybox display. This works the other way round, too.

2 things happened to me in dle ver 1.4.37 today.
had flashing lights then they went away. something i did? don't know. how can i get them back? i don't know what value to look for or change to get the flashing lights back. tried exiting and reloading the mine. no go.

edit : i didn't see that the flash timer was on the texture page my lights still don't flash.

edit: had reduced the percentage value in the light page for exploding and blinking lights. once i set this to a higher value the flash came back.

amen to TechPro's suggestion below. it's not too arduous to shift to the wall page then back but it takes time and hey this is a suggestions thread.

Something I wanted in DMB2 and now that I'm playing around with mission building and DLE-XP... I see I want the same thing with DLE-XP.

On the Texture tools tab... Can we have a "Other Side" button just like there is in the Walls tab?

Every time I'm working with the textures of walls, hidden passages, grills, forcefields, etc., or just plain working on textures from cube to cube, it would be handy to be able to quickly move from cube to cube with out having to "aim and click repeatedly" to get the next desired cube... or not have to switch to the walls tab just to jump to the "other side".

That's something I'd want.

I have in mind to try my hand at a level involving robots that start cloaked and inactive and change to visible and active via you flying through a cube trigger.

The point being that they appear without a visible source. ie no new open walls shown on automap or hidden areas that would show on full map.

At this point, just yes or no is sufficient and if yes, I'll do my best to figure it out before yelling for help.

Regards Weyrman
Australia

Weyrman, well i would say yes. i've asked if robots can be spawned, using a trigger, in a cube wo being created in a robo gen. i want to create ambushes. in areas the player has already checked out but has to return to. the robo gen makes noise and you can't (afaik) modify the robots attributes. i.e. make them cloaked, quicker, shoot faster, etc. also once the robo gen darkens no more bots. can't hurt to try.

Diedel,

sometimes when i save the level the light values go wacky or aren't saved.

try this, get some lights blinking, texture on, delta lightiing on. lights show blinking in mine view. save with the speed button or from menu.

twice when i did that the lights stopped flashing. first time i didn't notice and quit then reloaded and my blinking lights had stopped. also had some light values i had changed reappear as they were b4 i quit.

of course i could be doing something wrong somewhere. is there a limit to how much space is available for changed values?
can the space overflow? it seeems like the old value don't get changed and it seems to do this when i have made a lot of changes before saving. (bad habit that) could be just a ghost in the machine.

My version of DMB2 is 2.6 and its behavior with A and Z is it will move the center of rotation, the focal point, where that little wireframe green sphere is located in 3d space, forward and backward in the direction of the camera angle. This functionality is fundamentally different from that of "zooming," and has been present in earlier versions of DMB even before 2.6.

Get DMB2 2.6 and compare what happens when you push A and Z with what happens when you push + and -. There is a major, major difference. + and - bring the camera closer to the center of rotation (the sphere which is invisible in DLE-XP) --- A and Z MOVE the center of rotation forward and backward in the direction you're facing, thus moving the entire mine (well, not physically, but visually, you are doing so).

EXAMPLE:
Load up some level. Something nicely sized so you can see the effects of what you're about to do.

Push A and Z in DMB2 2.6 and then hold CTRL to spin the camera around the focal point sphere. Notice that the sphere is now off center from the mine?

Now push + and - in DMB2 2.6 and hold CTRL to spin the camera around the focal point sphere. The sphere's location in 3D space (and thus, your camera's center of rotation for the mine) does not change no matter how far in or out you zoom.

Now zoom in very close with the + (Plus) key so that the green sphere is significantly larger, then push A. Use CTRL-mouse to turn your view and push A to go forward. You are now "flying" around the level. You can't do this with DLE-XP. This became second nature when I was fooling around with level creation on Kali years ago.

Now do you see what DLE-XP lost when it remapped the A and Z keys?

hey Gregster2k

yeah i miss the A-Z zoom in/out too. i find my left hand going for them now and then. however i have a wheel mouse and that also zooms and if you shift+ctrl+left mouse the movement of the mouse forward and back will zoom too. i assume that you know about the number pad / and * work as zoom also.
apparently Diedel put these there in place of a-z as he is mousing with his left hand. personally i miss them and wish it was a preference setting. have you read about what can be done with dle? See Diedel's Descent 2 Website. teleports, speed tubes (wind tunnel like areas i believe), sky areas, places that
will raise your shields (like a energy center does energy)and a bunch of other addons. all the while still letting you make a plain vanilla d2 level.
also diedel has made it possible to play d2 again on an xp. i haven't played for a year (my dos machine finally became too much to support). all in all if diedel wants the zoom keys elsewhere, i'll just deal with it, as he's contributing so much otherwise.

Gregster,

• thx for your detailled explanation. I will look at this again, and if you're right, I will add it to DLE-XP. DLE-XP should in no regard be a step back from what DMB2 offered.
  
  Btw, you should frequently check my D2 site for D2X-W32 and DLE-XP updates. I have already added the mine center indicator (globe or crosshairs).

jakee,

• I am always open for new ideas, constructive criticism, or plain and simple bug reports. So thanks to all my (involuntary ) beta testers out there.

Techpro,

• I might add such a button (if I find the space for it in the dialog), but for the time being move the mouse into the mine view pane and hit the 'Tab' key to switch to the current side's opposite side.

Weyrman,

• if at all, I will not add a bot hibernation/wakeup trigger in the near future, because there is no mechanism already built into D2(X(-W32)) that would allow to easily implement this. I'd have to add new bot behaviour. I might rather add a different kind of matcen working w/o sound and flash and building finished bots (not morphing them into the final thing) - like a bot teleport, so to speak. That should fulfill the same purpose as what you proposed.

Diedel wrote:I will also not build the DMB2 UI (lots of separate dialogs) into DLE-XP - just in case somebody asks.

My sympathies. Dealing with UIs, on levels such as that, is generally horrible. Less you can do, the better.

Redundant interfaces for the same controls can be made less painful, I -think-, but only if you intended it or don't mind re-writing large chunks of the code...

Since most people have resolutions higher than mine these days - and I manage - IMO reduced screen "real-estate" is preferable to the great dialog card-shuffle anyway. Having to repeatedly move stuff around because it moves in and out of being in the way is rather annoying.

If I just haven't found the fast way yet, please be gentle as I'm just starting out. The editor allows you to set the absolute xyz position of each of the four points of the current side. Is there a way to move the current side by entering a value? I know about the keypad controls but it is rather clunky, one increment at a time. Also, would there be a way to move all the same sides of a marked group?

Maybe I am going about it wrong, but I have created a round area using the curve generator and then filled it in. Now I want to copy the area, attach it underneath and then stretch the entire block down. At the moment all I can do is select and stretch each cube, corner by corner. Is there a faster way or could a way be created?

Regards

Weyrman
Australia

Sirius,

actually I had already created all the separate dialogs for this, but I found out that I'd need to duplicate the dialog code as well to make this work, and add stuff to it as I'd have to rip things apart that are together with the tabbed UI - and doing all this because two ppl complained who haven't built a D2 level during the last one or two years? Oh no.

I built the new UI exactly because I hated the mess I had on the screen with DMB2. I know you have to click around a little at times to make certain things, yet imo it's still a great improvement over the DMB2 UI. But however much thought and diligence you spend on something, you will always find someone to complain about it.

Speaking of complaining, I am going to whine about some small thing now:

When I load a level, DLE-XP makes it all zoomed out!!

..see?