DescentBB

Just realized: one level to the half-way point for main levels!
And that level is in progress!
(Yes, I am referring to the salt level.)
P.S. More facility-y areas should have a fair amount of water where ice would be. (See if you can figure out why )

I've started on the boss room for Frosted Minerals Abyss so I guess you can put me down for that one now.

Alter-Fox wrote:I've started on the boss room for Frosted Minerals Abyss so I guess you can put me down for that one now.

Okay

I might as well claim Quartzon 2 while I'm at it, since I've got some interesting ideas for how to combine an underground river and a lab.

Alter-Fox wrote:I might as well claim Quartzon 2 while I'm at it, since I've got some interesting ideas for how to combine an underground river and a lab.

Donezo! Just make sure you use plenty of those Lunar Scilab white textures and doodads, we all love that stuff

And you mean Quartzon 3, I take it?

Ah... yeah.
The ice level is over 500 segments already.

Alter-Fox wrote:Ah... yeah.
The ice level is over 500 segments already.

Holy cow, you're a fast worker. Guess that's inspiration for you

Actually don't have too much idea what I'm doing besides parts of the boss room. I'm just working hard.
EDIT: And it's nearly done -- just needs some secrets.

Alter-Fox wrote:Actually don't have too much idea what I'm doing besides parts of the boss room. I'm just working hard.
EDIT: And it's nearly done -- just needs some secrets.

Perfect. Just another lovely distraction from writing my master's thesis ;__;

There aren't very many secrets 'cuz I ran out of cubes.
I'll upload it tomorrow or saturday.

A low-secret level doesn't bother me. Just increases my odds of finding more than a few
Edit: Did you mean Quartzon 1? An Aqua Distillata Factory makes more sense than Planetary Life Research for a river and a lab.
Edit 2: Alternative theme suggestion: Doomsday to include red/black (as opposed to just grey/metal). I think this would look a little more... evil? A fitting theme for the final level. (Obviously not excluding grey/metal - the red/black are more for large details.)

LightWolf wrote:A low-secret level doesn't bother me. Just increases my odds of finding more than a few
Edit: Did you mean Quartzon 1? An Aqua Distillata Factory makes more sense than Planetary Life Research for a river and a lab.
Edit 2: Alternative theme suggestion: Doomsday to include red/black (as opposed to just grey/metal). I think this would look a little more... evil? A fitting theme for the final level. (Obviously not excluding grey/metal - the red/black are more for large details.)

That is not a bad suggestion at all. But the thing is, that would make the level too similar to Vertigo Research Station. I was thinking more along the lines of D1 L 26, which in my opinion had the crudest, vilest and most unfriendly, purely industrial appearance. So I'm thinking a lot of gray, a lot of X grates, a lot of pink metal "exit" floors and the mesh-over-metal "exit" texture. Also lots of the mesh on its own, the yellow tape, the gray door from D1L12/26/27 etc. Purple and red accents would probably be cool, but I dunno - overall I'm thinking about my Eris level, but without restrictions on the D2 stuff, obviously. There are ways to give even such a <drab>, to call it something, texture scheme its own unique twist.

Naphtha is probably going to be making this level because his geometry is absolutely top tier, so we'll see once we get to that. I predict going through some iterations, as I would really like that level to make an impact.

LightWolf wrote:Did you mean Quartzon 1? An Aqua Distillata Factory makes more sense than Planetary Life Research for a river and a lab.

Makes sense to me that a research station would have a lab in it!
I'm starting with most of the river system first and adding the lab later.

I meant that it makes more sense to distill a river than research planetary life in it. Plus it makes a more logical entrance for the river to the lab when distilling it IMO.

You mean to say you have no curiosity at all about life on other worlds? You'd rather sanitise a river on another planet than look to see if your gut bacteria aren't alone in the universe?
If it was a distillation facility I was building you'd expect to see some running water in the lab sections which... will not be the case.

Aaaaaaanyhoo, here are some screenies of my mines, in all their pixellated retro glory!

Planetary Life Research:




Frosty's Lair:

Looking forward to it!
When you talked about linking the river to the lab, I thought you meant river in the lab, haha
Speaking of, there is officially a race for the (standard level) 1/2 way point: Salt Distillation vs. Planetary Life Distallata
Ready
Set
GO!



P.S. Did I get the level name wrong?

These do look sweet, both in terms of geometry and texturing. You're as full of surprises as always, Foxy

LightWolf wrote:Just realized: one level to the half-way point for main levels!
And that level is in progress!
(Yes, I am referring to the salt level.)
P.S. More facility-y areas should have a fair amount of water where ice would be. (See if you can figure out why )

Hey Light! I'll build the level how I see fit, but thanks!

Also, Xfing, I can't find it to quote it, but I just press the Printscreen button, and it saves a .TGA with just the DXX Rebirth logo.

EDIT: Anyone have a list of controls for DLE-XP's Curve Generator? The tooltip only says CTRL-8 or 9, but I know I remember more controls than that...

All I remember strictly for the curve was 'G' and the now-nonfunctional brackets...
You can still manipulate the base cubes, and the curve will adjust accordingly. Using 'P' to change the point will change the twist of a curve..
Was there a particular one you wanted?

Kaizerwolf wrote: Also, Xfing, I can't find it to quote it, but I just press the Printscreen button, and it saves a .TGA with just the DXX Rebirth logo.

I used to do that, but you can see the results above with my Makemake map - you can still see the HUD. I think Lightwolf has something going on with that HUD removal trick, though I haven't tried doing a printscreen after hiding it yet.

EDIT: Anyone have a list of controls for DLE-XP's Curve Generator? The tooltip only says CTRL-8 or 9, but I know I remember more controls than that...

Ctrl+ 8 or 9 lengthens one side of the tunnel along a straight axis. Space changes your working perspective between the two ends of the tunnel (marks green either of the walls where the tunnel is attached), Alt+8 or 9 reduces or increases the number of cubes the tunnel consists of. G lets you accept or discard your tunnel. P rotates the tunnel by changing the point of reference and O fixes up the texuring on the tunnel. I'm not sure there are any more. That part with Alt I learned the other day completely by chance. I've never seen a list of curve generator commands anywhere online.

Xfing wrote:

Kaizerwolf wrote: Also, Xfing, I can't find it to quote it, but I just press the Printscreen button, and it saves a .TGA with just the DXX Rebirth logo.

I used to do that, but you can see the results above with my Makemake map - you can still see the HUD. I think Lightwolf has something going on with that HUD removal trick, though I haven't tried doing a printscreen after hiding it yet.

EDIT: Anyone have a list of controls for DLE-XP's Curve Generator? The tooltip only says CTRL-8 or 9, but I know I remember more controls than that...

Ctrl+ 8 or 9 lengthens one side of the tunnel along a straight axis. Space changes your working perspective between the two ends of the tunnel (marks green either of the walls where the tunnel is attached), Alt+8 or 9 reduces or increases the number of cubes the tunnel consists of. G lets you accept or discard your tunnel. P rotates the tunnel by changing the point of reference and O fixes up the texuring on the tunnel. I'm not sure there are any more. That part with Alt I learned the other day completely by chance. I've never seen a list of curve generator commands anywhere online.

Alt+8 or 9 was what I was looking for, thank you sir!

EDIT: To save from double posting... was there ever a blue-pipes on white metal texture? I know D2's palette has an orange pipes on white metal, but I feel like I remember blue...

You remember metl061 correctly

Need some help. I don't like the brown metal on the RIGHT but I can't find anything else to use.. what do you guys think?

Edit: Right, not left. The left is how I wanted it.

That would actually be a good place for the blue pipe metal.
Edit: Still a good place for the blue pipe metal.

I dunno, metl140 maybe? That one works with a lot of things. Rock001 from Descent 1 is not such a bad texture to put in such a place either (too bad it only looks any good with the original palette, lol)

Anyway, the texture you were looking for with the two blue stripes on it, it was in Descent 1 only and its name is metl061. It should be available exported like the rest of them.

As for the texture choice, right now I'm thinking gray natural rock with mesh overlay maybe. Something like rock164, 182 or 201 with metl146 on top of it.

Or just make it clean and simple and go with the dark ceiling texture.

The brown metal with stripes is a nice way to liven up a hallway where the brown metal gets drab.

Wen upload?

rock164 and metl146 did the trick, thanks guys!

Upload will be today.
I was testing out some ideas with robot placement to see if I could make some rooms possibly "memorable"...
And also to test out some ideas Parallax only really got the most out of in Descent Maximum.

EDIT: from the upload speed or lack thereof, I may have forgotten to remove the ogg song I was testing from Frosted Minerals' HOG...
Oh, and if Planetary Life Research doesn't show up on your missions list it may be called "Tributary".

Alter-Fox wrote:Upload will be today.
I was testing out some ideas with robot placement to see if I could make some rooms possibly "memorable"...
And also to test out some ideas Parallax only really got the most out of in Descent Maximum.

EDIT: from the upload speed or lack thereof, I may have forgotten to remove the ogg song I was testing from Frosted Minerals' HOG...

As for the songs, will it be possible to make soundtracks switchable from within Rebirth? There are options such as midi music, redbook cd music etc. I was of course thinking about including an optional midi soundtrack comprised of the original 22 D1 level midis and 4 D2 level midis. Since the mission will be played in D2, we're also free to use the Descent 1 intro and credits midis, and Descent 2's briefing midi as level tracks (we'll obviously be using D1's briefing track for the briefings, duh!), which gives us 29 original, classic midi songs. And we'll definitely need to select carefully, since in my experience, the background song not only greatly influences the atmosphere of the level, but also becomes associated with it very closely in people's minds the more they play the level with the song in the background.

The Descent 2 menu theme would make a very good level track as well... I don't think it matters that it plays on the menu since all an average theoretical player is going to do is launch up the game and head straight into the mission -- they'll barely hear it.
Not sure about D2's briefing theme cuz it's so short it could get annoying pretty fast unless the level is also really short.
I would try to set up the new level themes for a similar experience, even with a bit more of the hard electro/metal flair that the redbook tracks were known for.

What I'm thinking is to set up both soundtracks as separate DXA's for Rebirth and have them download with the Rebirth version of the mission, in such a way that they can be swapped in and out.
The new soundtrack can be in the HOG for a D2X-XL version (which will need to be a separate version anyhow to incorporate the hi-res D1 textures into the POGs), and possibly incorporate the OPL versions of the midis into a third HOG version for dosbox.
Another thing that might be cool is to incorporate a couple small demo files with the mission to give it more of that flair that the original two games had. Recording the demos in Dosbox should allow them to work in all the versions of the mission. Having them set past the halfway point of the game could help encourage players on such a long trek through the mines as well.
When we're closer to completion I'm planning to talk to A Future Pilot about adapting his rebirth downloader/installer to make the actual download/install process simpler for all these different variables.

I also want to possibly get in touch with a few other people who wrote songs for Descent back in the day -- I've already found one of the guys who wrote three songs for Project Mandrill (he's still doing music), and I also want to see if I can get in touch with Lyris about using some of his old songs, needless to say something like "Mercury Core" would fit pretty well. Jeromie Esterline, the guy behind Geocore, does some pretty cool music as well. And there was one song from the original DCA, I think it was by Verran, that would work very nicely.

Ok, I've noticed that Planetary Life Research is up. Absolutely gorgeous level, in layout, geometry and texturing. Feels very retro (in a good way), yet still appropriately Quartzon. The inclusion of supplies and robots definitely made it more fun to play through, but I'm not sure if the difficulty and balance aren't too high for that portion of the game. Maybe they are, maybe not - it's clearly much too early to tell. We can draw a less steep difficulty curve in this mission than for the original games, sheerly because how long this mission will be. The Solar System levels will definitely be much easier than in D1.

As for the level: there are very few problems with it, but sometimes there are obvious seams between textures, especially on the river itself, and sometimes on the walls too (though that's excusable, since Parallax did that too). But the river should be fixed. Also, I think you can make the "loop" energy center a bit shorter, i.e. less cubes with the recharging effect and the texture. Likewise, with the other energy center, you can remove the fuel center effect from the middle cube and just leave three separate energy center cubes for the alcoves. Finally, the rectangular light in the hostage cell is slightly misaligned and part of the other twin light can be seen, you can fix that. I also think there's one Spider monitor in the mine - you used the default D2 version, and it looks ugly when it pops. If you were working with the POG template, there should be that other Spider monitor inside. If not, just swap it out for a different monitor. Other than that the level looks brilliant and really gives some of those forgotten D1 textures room to shine. I feel that rock001 is perhaps a bit too risque for Quartzon's palette, but I guess you made it work anyway. Congratulations!

With this, we're officially at 50% of the level lineup (not counting the secret levels)! Thank you everyone for your hard work, and with the tempo we've been working at, I'm sure we can wrap up the layouts before the end of 2018 (maybe )

ΕDIT: Only just noticed that Frosted Minerals Abyss was added too. Funny how things work out, haha

Very beautiful level with a super memorable arena and boss fight, that one's definitely bound to leave a mark. The blue patchy texture from D1 was used in such a way that it fits perfectly, much like the various purples. I think you're probably the best at using D1 textures in D2 levels and making them fit. This kind of texturing is precisely what was lies at the heart of this mission pack's idea. Fantastic work.

I like the gameplay idea of being able to beat this level after having the blue key already, but at the cost of an inevitable death, since you clearly need to go all the way to the red door to deactivate the forcefield. That greatly adds to the tension of this level, so great work, obviously.

This time I don't think there's anything that needs to be changed, but perhaps the hatch doors could be replaced with secret doors, since they break the "1 regular door type per level" convention. There conveniently happens to be a secret door type melding perfectly with either of the walls where these doors are set.

And yeah, the background song was cool, though I felt it took too much of my attention to focus on the robots for some reason

Kaizerwolf wrote:don't you just hate it when you're working, you've made something look really cool, only to find out the dimensions don't match from left to right, so you have to scrap it and start again? Apparently I can't tell the different between 40 units extended on one side, and 60 on the other.

What I usually do to avoid this is set the move rate in DLE to 2 units instead of one (so that extending a normal side 10 times doubles it, because my metric mind -- if I need something ridiculously precise I change it back) and I turn on some rhythmic sorts of music which makes counting the length of the sides as I extend them easier. It's not just Descent's editor where that part helps either.

Xfing wrote:...the river should be fixed.

I agree, and I did try . I think I may need the help of a more talented texturer such as Naptha to get the rivers right. This is... not my forte. As for the loop energy center, again if it's shortened I may need somebody's help to align the secondary "border" texture that makes it not-obvious that the energy center texture is impossible to align to the walls where it ends. I couldn't figure out which of the custom POG's was which -- all their textures seemed to be messed up on water.pig no matter which one I used -- so I used the default spider monitor in the meantime. There are many more secondary textures in that level I'd like to change to the D1 monitors and signs once I figure it out.

I fixed the light in the hostage cell and uploaded again.

Xfing wrote: This time I don't think there's anything that needs to be changed, but perhaps the hatch doors could be replaced with secret doors, since they break the "1 regular door type per level" convention. There conveniently happens to be a secret door type melding perfectly with either of the walls where these doors are set.

Descent 2 did occasionally have more than one door type in a level, and that was done most obvious in Limefrost Spiral (level 15, I think, used both the doors from 13 and 14 plus the ones from level 3 in the yellow area). I thought it would fit, and make it more obvious how you're meant to get to the exit from the boss arena by making all the doors that lead from one to the other look different. Plus, the hatch door was used in a Limefrost Spiral level by Parallax in Descent Maximum.
I had considered making all the doors that type but I thought the "limefrost" door needed to be used as the main door for at least one level and Kaizerwolf's uses a different one.

Xfing wrote: And yeah, the background song was cool, though I felt it took too much of my attention to focus on the robots for some reason

Well that's why there's two soundtracks. I find the same thing with the redbook music sometimes and I have to turn down the volume. Unless I'm playing Dosbox in which case I can't.

There are a few structures in both levels that glow in particular colours if you play them with D2X-XL -- I'd appreciate if you made sure to keep the clr files intact so that keeps working in the final mission.

I know E-Bandits won't be used on Quartzon, he just felt like the best way to round out the Neptune Storage Depot level of difficulty I was going for in the meantime -- curious do you think level 36 is too early for SPIKE? I think his occasional popping up fits into that map very well.
I think we might even start to see things speeding up now once designers see how far along we are and think "hey maybe we can actually do this".

Αs for template POGs - D1GR2.POG is the one to go with Quartzon. Nothing should be screwed up in that POG if you load it straight into a WATER.PIG-based level.

On my end, I did fix the issues with Makemake you told me about, (and one you didn't tell me about) and I took a second look at Eris, adding some cubes here and there, to make things a little bit less basic, fixing some misaligned textures and even adding some more textures of the "rarely used gray" variety. The level is still well short of its maximum cube quota, so there is still room for some "beauty cubes". If anyone feels like doing some secondary mapping, you're very welcome to. In fact, you're welcome to do secondary mapping on all the levels if there's something you see that could be improved. Just notify us in this thread to prevent two people working on a level independently at the same time.

I'll need to convert Lightwolf's Varuna level to D2 and retexture it, so that's what I'll do next. I really should be writing my master's thesis but oh well

Also, important note for all designers here, since I've noticed occasional problems with this: use the grate door as a secondary texture with a primary one, like you would with any other door.. If you use the grate door on its own, it'll have a black background and only start being transparent after you open it the first time. The texture you use doesn't matter, since the door covers it completely anyway and it doesn't shine through. I've confirmed that this is the way it's done in original Descent 2 too.

As for difficulty I wonder if the ramp up should be that much slower than the first game, for one thing that would make the first bunch of levels pretty boring and for two you could end up giving the players so many extra lives basically for free that when the difficulty does ramp up it won't matter.
Something to think about, anyway.

Alter-Fox wrote:As for difficulty I wonder if the ramp up should be that much slower than the first game, for one thing that would make the first bunch of levels pretty boring and for two you could end up giving the players so many extra lives basically for free that when the difficulty does ramp up it won't matter.
Something to think about, anyway.

Descent 2 has robots leading shots and overall much better able to slowly wear any player down. Even introducing Medium Hulks is bound to screw people up good. Also, we're not gonna put in Ice Spindles anytime soon, as they drop Helix, which is very powerful - keep in mind that a lot of the difficulty will come from restricting available weapons. I think there's nothing wrong in making the levels until the first boss "baby" difficulty, they can serve as a tutorial of sorts. Then we can bring on the difficulty spike, like Level 6 and then Level 8 did in Descent. But overall, the Solar System portion should be way less difficult than it is in Descent. A more organic difficulty curve would be nice.

Restricting equipment is a good idea too -- afterburner in particular makes a lot of difficult situations less difficult.
While we're talking about introductions, I had this idea it might be good to leave off introducing any D2 bots until level 5 (where you have to put PEST and diamond claw cuz they'll be there anyway) and to save the vertigo bots until near the end of the solar system. Y'know, the sort of thing that would keep players interested.

Alter-Fox wrote:Restricting equipment is a good idea too -- afterburner in particular makes a lot of difficult situations less difficult.
While we're talking about introductions, I had this idea it might be good to leave off introducing any D2 bots until level 5 (where you have to put PEST and diamond claw cuz they'll be there anyway) and to save the vertigo bots until near the end of the solar system. Y'know, the sort of thing that would keep players interested.

I was thinking more along the lines of one huge robot pool all together, without separating it into "games". that would still leave us with enough robots to be able to introduce several every few levels all the way up to the very last levels of the game. Though when I think about it, Descent introduced its final robot in level 23 out of 27, so since our mission is exactly twice as long, we could do the same in level 46. And that is just perfect, since I was hoping for N'Tala Shadowy Corridors to be a very Fusion Hulk-heavy level (probably the most in the entire game). Yeah, the Fusion Hulk has to be the last one, both because of its threat rating and because it drops the Fusion Cannon on death.

Having this many robots at our disposal really gives us a lot of liberty in assembling the levels' lineups. Role overlap is unavoidable of course, so in the cases where it occurs, redundant robot types will fulfill a flavor role instead. So we shouldn't really worry about minimizing situations where Small Hulks work together with PIGs or there are both Class 1 Drones and PESTs attacking or laying mines. We can maybe tease the players a little bit at first by using them separately, but then use them all together in a level to dispel any doubts about us doing so.

Speaking of minelayers, I expect to see all the kinds we've seen in the three missions. We could group them into threat tiers, with subsequent ones starting to appear later in the game and gradually replacing the lower ones:
Tier 1: Class 1 Drone / PEST with camouflage textures
Tier 2: Minelayer Smelter (D2L2) with camouoflage textures
Tier 3: Gopher / Omega Guppy
Tier 4: Omega Guppy (Smart Mines)

Were there any others?

I think that's all of them.

Yeah I'd just thought that holding off on Descent 2 robots for the first 3 or 4 levels would make the beginning feel more like starting D1 over again -- I even toyed with the idea of making the level 1 song a remix of the original level 1 song before deciding that would be a bit too much. And it would be interesting if your first taste of Descent 2 in the mission was a boss.

I think maybe introducing fusion hulk in level 45 with him in places where he's a low threat could be a better idea as well, since that would give you ten levels to really explore the diabolical possibilities of pairing him up with other robots like E-Bandit, Sidearm Modula or MAX that would increase his threat, which is something D1 never really was able to do -- or to give the player a breather from him for a map. Cuz since the secret levels will be in the D2 style, introducing him early with them would be a bad idea.

Energy converter is another piece of equipment that would be good to hold off on until later in the extrasolar sections.
Another thing I thought that might be a little more iffy, is to rejigger the solar system so that a few more of the levels are on the actual planets and moons -- maybe up to level 12 instead of level 9.

Alter-Fox wrote:I think that's all of them.

Yeah I'd just thought that using the enemy types that way would make it feel a little more like you were going through the solar system, then zeta aquilae and beta ceti instead of having them all mashed up together.
It would be weird to introduce fusion hulk with a level full of him. Maybe putting a few of them in the level before in places where they aren't particularly big threats, for a sort of taste, and then in N'tala put him in bad places and pair him with deadly guys like MAX.

Energy converter is another piece of equipment that would be good to hold off on until later in the extrasolar sections.

Yeah, but N'tala is 47, and so I was thinking of introducing the fusion hulks in 46 anyway, so we're thinking the same thought Though you can't say the Class 1 Driller got introduced in a sparing manner, level 6 had a shitton of them! And to be quite fair, Secret Level 1 also unloaded those mofos on the player mercilessly. But there were only a few in level 23, when they were properly introduced. So yeah, we'll definitely teach Descent 2 players to fear those mofos again! (that was hardly possible with neither their D1 sound nor their D1 fusion power...)

I was thinking about how to make robot briefings for this mission. In a 2013 thread you said you could actually make normal briefing movies with rotating robots using BriefEd. I wonder if you really meant it! If having rotating robots is not possible, I was thinking of using static images, probably 4 of them displayed in a square - front, back, side and above view of each robot.