DescentBB

here's what it looks like on my machine

Ferno,

try not to use Alt+Enter to toggle to fullscreen, but call the options menu (F2), go to the screen res menu and toggle full screen there. For some reason I cannot tell toggling full screen on and then off with Alt+Enter in-game subsequently leads to corrupted menu screens. To give some details: This happens when turning the front buffer on. I have no clue why menus continue to work when toggling full screen in the screen res menu.

In D3, after a number of screen mode switches, my secondary monitor turns into a duplicate of the first which looks somewhat like that. The secondary monitor returns to normal upon exiting, except for fubar gamma, which seems to plague all gamma-changing games. I wonder if it's a bug in ATI's OGL driver. Are any nVidia peeps having problems?

Diedel wrote:Ferno,

try not to use Alt+Enter to toggle to fullscreen, but call the options menu (F2), go to the screen res menu and toggle full screen there.

this is exactly what I did.

hey patches, a D3 problem has nothing to do with this thread.

I don't know what causes this. What happens for me is that if I switch to windowed mode in-game using Alt+Enter and then open a menu, the screen gets garbled (worse than yours).

Edit: This does not happen on NVidia hardware. D'oh.

If you didn't use Alt+Enter, try starting a windowed game and then going fullscreen with Alt+Enter.

I'll try that. gimme a bit to relay the results

FWIW, Im not seeing this at all.

However, Im never going out of fullscreen mode. I start in fullscreen and stay there.

Diedel wrote:Hack,

please make a screen shot of the whole screen and draw a red circle around the faulty area, or so.

OK. Here you go:

That rearview image is completely transparent, but it gets rendered as black below that point (that screenshot is 640x480, BTW).

Also, here's an image showing the texture outline problem:

ok this is on a fresh reset of my machine.

I extract d2x (current version) into a clean D2 directory, and I go to load it. Black screen. I know this is where I put in a new pilot, so I do that. I press enter. still a black screen. I hit return to start a new game, on whatever difficulty level it is ( can't see it) and I see a garbled briefing (it's running at 320x240). the 3D part starts, which works fine, albiet at 320x240. I quit the program. I then go and remove the -fullscreen switch from d2x.ini. D2xW32 now crashes on startup and all I see is a quick blip of the screen and i'm back at the desktop. So I put the switch back in. D2x crashes on startup again but with an error box.

now this is where it gets really wierd. As I'm writing this reply I go to fire up D2XW32 to re-read the error message it gives me. it now works properly. switches, resolutions, everything.

I've figured out that when i set everything to run at 800x600 windowed, and then toggle fullscreen, it works. but when i toggle 1024x768 and toggle fullscreen, it screws up.

Screenshot

I also noticed that your screenshot coding doesn't capture images anymore as well. Nothing but blank targas. Image captures to the clipboard just fine though.

I'd upload my profile, but making a new one made no difference at all.

Here's my ini settings:

-fullscreen
-grabmouse
-sound22k
-nocdrom
-gl_trilinear
-gl_alttexmerge
-playermessages
-noredundancy
;-player tnt
-nomovies
-gl_reticle 1
;-timeout 0
-shortpackets
-pps 10
-noredundancy

Not sure if this'll help but here's a few more screen caps of the difference between Show HUD toggled on and off. I tried to capture the same point in a demo playback with and without HUD. Notice that all the text is missing (chat messages, player names, scores, everything except demo playback notice, and that the cursor is not going away (I'm using joystick and keyboard).




Here's my d2x.ini when these were taken:
;-fullscreen
-grabmouse

; enables redbook audio
-sound11k
;-nocdrom

-gl_trilinear
-gl_alttexmerge
-playermessages
-noredundancy
;-player tnt
;-nomovies
-gl_reticle 1
;-timeout 0
-shortpackets
-pps 10
;-noredundancy except switches lol :)

Would providing hardware and or driver info help? EG I have 2 monitors, but the problem persists even when the second one is disabled.

PS You rock! This game is awesome and worthy of the work you folks are putting into it.

Hack,

if you are using a cockpit view and use a transparent cockpit image, the part of the screen where the cockpit/status bar would appear will not be rendered, because the viewport for rendering the mine will be made smaller. Same goes for disabling HUD rendering: In status bar mode, the lower part of the screen will not be rendered.

Actually I am wondering whether you are trying to implement a custom HUD.

Which D2X-W32 version are you using? Current is v1.4.28, where the outline problem of see-through textures should be solved.

deleted movie which required FRAPS codec

kencl,

actually I still haven't really understood the problem.

Did you just play around with the show hud toggle?

Or does the hud disappear when switching levels?

Or do parts of the HUD disappear?

Your second shot simply looks like show hud was disabled.

Diedel wrote:Hack,

if you are using a cockpit view and use a transparent cockpit image, the part of the screen where the cockpit/status bar would appear will not be rendered, because the viewport for rendering the mine will be made smaller.

Wait... you mean that it's SUPPOSED to be like that? Oh. Well, it wasn't that way in the original D2, which, IMHO, means that it shouldn't be that way in D2X-W32, but ohwell. You get to decide that.

Texture outline promblem is fixed now.

Custom music still isn't reset when changing missions.

Hope you dont mind me bumping the music suggestion.

I just wanted to say if you are considering this for a future release, IMO you should really consider OGG. Its quality is compareable to MP3 if not better, and its compression is much better. Not only that, its compression is actually better that the custom compression that Descent 3 has for audio taunts. So if you used OGG, you might not only be able to use it for SP level music, but you might also be able to use it to implement audio taunts that are actually better then D3. Wouldnt that be ironic?

Just a (FWIW) suggestion if your thinking about it.

Listen Hack,

Please be so kind to give me a complete, logical and well structured description of the problem you believe exists here. Just assume I don't really know anything about HUDs and stuff in Descent 2. And just don't assume I know even 1/4 of your thought processes, observations and proceedings in this matter.

I'll try to help as far as I have understood this matter.

1. In screen views containing a HUD (cockpit or status bar), Descent does not render the lower part of the screen, and the view is changed a little (if comparing with full screen you will notice a wider view angle). That non-rendered part is covered by the HUD elements, i.e. panel or cockpit structure, gauges and aux. views.
2. If unchecking the toggle "render HUD", all HUD elements (panel, gauges, etc.) will not be rendered, i.e. the non-rendered parts of the HUD views will remain black.
3. If replacing any of the HUD panels (bitmaps) by custom bitmaps containing transparent areas, the black (unrendered) background will shine through. Pretty logical, huh?
4. Don't mistake the toggling HUD rendering to off with the full screen view - this is achieved by cycling through the available views with the F3 key, and the full screen view will render a view of the mine covering the entire screen (or window) and show status information (e.g. fuel, shields and armament) as text only.
5. Don't mistake the full screen view for the full screen mode - full screen mode means that D2X-W32 uses the entire monitor space to render its view.

(This is really gnawing away at my patience.)
______________________________

Nos,

I will not incorporate any other music stuff into D2. First of all, I don't really know how. Second, this stuff is done using SDL and some code in D2X. Third, I don't care about music in D2X-W32. I never listen to it while playing. It turns me off. It takes away the feeling of immersion and tension for me. If I am in a firefight with robots in a sub-planetary mine on a far away celestial body, there will not be a spherical orchestra around me playing my favorite songs for me. Ok, it's just a game. But I don't like music in games. I either play or listen to music. (Same goes for sports and what not else. The only activities I might perform when listening to music are to sing or dance). For me, music in games is absolutely unimportant. And it doesn't even have a low priority regarding D2X-W32. It has none. I don't need to have constant noise around me like apparently so many ppl today to stimulate me.
______________________________


kencl,

I have just downloaded your 32 MB avi only to find out that I neither play it with MS Media Player nor with the DivX player. I propose that instead of giving me a useless avi file, you simply explain what exactly goes wrong and what you do to make it go wrong. Shouldn't take more than 5 sentences of average length (my average ).

Number 4 is the answer to my problem. In all the years I've played D2 I've never used the F3 key. Sorry for the confusion on my part.

Maybe consider that when someone disables Show HUD, you automatically cycle the toggle cockpit to the view which uses the whole screen.

Another small suggestion. On the Toggles panel, both Show HUD and Use Macro's use the letter U as the hotkey. I'd suggest the M key for Use Macros since it's not used. Hotkeys - nice feature :)

Well,

after reading your and Hack's posts over and over I started to figure you were mistaking full screen and HUD-less views. The latter are only for screenshots (and actually only make sense with the full screen and wide screen views).

Curious.

After reading all this HUD talk, I decided to have a look at things... only unusual feature I noticed was that D2X-W32 shrinks the view in rear-view mode as well. (Edit: Cockpit view on. It doesn't do that in the full-screen view.) Apparently Descent 2 1.2 doesn't... since I managed to find a set with a custom cockpit that shows pretty much the full vertical view there...

Forward view is probably right on; I noticed the wider view angle as well in 1.2, at least with the 'status bar' view. Cockpit view is probably similar.

Sirius wrote:After reading all this HUD talk, I decided to have a look at things... only unusual feature I noticed was that D2X-W32 shrinks the view in rear-view mode as well. Apparently Descent 2 1.2 doesn't... since I managed to find a set with a custom cockpit that shows pretty much the full vertical view there...

YES! That's what I'm trying to say about it here... except I didn't know about the viewport thing.
BTW, when you turn "Draw Hud" off, D2X-W32 should probably automatically switch to fullscreen or widescreen mode if you're in cockpit or status bar mode, so that you don't get that black bar.
BTOW, maybe you could take a look @ the original D2 Source code to help you with stuff like this? Maybe you could copy most of the cockpit code or something... You can download it here.
BTLW, I apologize if I'm starting to sound rude here. It's not really intentional.

You don't sound rude here, but you demand things w/o really knowing about this stuff. The views work exactly as in D2, as I have simply enabled the D2 code.

Alright, well... sry about that then. I try to research these things before reporting them, but lots of things seem to be escaping my notice... guess I should reaserch a little more before reporting things, eh?

OK New problem in 1.4.29

This is what I see in the first level in SP when I have lightmaps turned on.



With lightmaps turned off I can see everything.

EDIT: Just tried to back off to the previous version. Lightmaps are not working at all now.

If Lehm's new lightmapping doesn't fix all the problems constantly showing up with lightmapping (and the slow speed on my home machine), I will disable it.

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*slaps himself on the head for assuming that he knew everything about how the cockpit in D2 works, when he wasn't even very close *
Alright, I'm nearly positive (READ: I could be wrong) that I know how it works now: In the rearview, the veiwport is the same as it is in fullscreen mode, whether or not you can see it all. In the front view, it's a little different. Firstly, D2 determines the vertical position of the viewport based on the vertical position of the highest transparent pixel it can find in the cockpit image (which is USUALLY at the top of the screen, but it wouldn't HAVE to be). Then it determines the vertical size of the viewport based on the vertical position of the lowest transparent pixel it can find in the cockpit image. It does the same with horizontal position and size. It took me a while to figure this out, but I finally did. Then the vertical position of the reticle, lives, score, and countdown displays is always a certain distance down from the top of the viewport. All other displays have a fixed position.

OK, I just found a bug here, and it seems to be pretty consistantly reproduceable: If I play a mission with custom robots, then play another mission with custom robots, the robots in the second mission will have the textures that the robots in the first mission did, rather than the ones they should have. Not sure what exactly the cause is, but I think that it has to do with object bitmaps not being cleared. Here's a list of stuffs that you should make sure that D2X-W32 clears when starting a new mission (or whenever you clear the custom robots:

• Custom robots (definitely already cleared )
• Custom models (definitely already cleared)
• Custom object bitmaps (seemingly not already cleared)
• Custom robot joints (seemingly already cleared)
• Custom music (definitely not already cleared)

Lastly, I have a suggestion (not a bug report, YAY!): A "Use Advanced Water Physics" toggle. When enabled, the objects in 'water' cubes would behave slightly differently then normal: they would slowly float up, acceleration, decceleration, and movement speeds would be slower, damage caused by bots that claw you would be reduced, and afterburners would make blue explosions instead of orange. Just an idea.

Hack,

you're so enthusiastic - why don't you get the source code and start working on it yourself?

The whole D2(X) code is a big pile of crap, and I am sick and tired of trying to find and fix all these small bugs.

I am mostly interested in good D2 multiplayer, hence all the new stuff I have put into D2X-W32. Sadly enough, nobody exploits it and plays enhanced CTF or D2-Entropy, or tries my newest levels. That's the things I really care about in D2X-W32 - not whether the custom models work (you should see the related code: You'd love it - cough!) or whether custom music is reset.

If I had the time and resources, I'd actually create a new Descent program, but hopefully the Into Cerberon guys will manage to actually finish their project.

And then there is the Deep World project - maybe it's author will actually finish it one day instead of constantly playing around with the newest gfx, scripting and networking features he gets into.

Diedel wrote:Hack,

you're so enthusiastic - why don't you get the source code and start working on it yourself?

Hehe... well, I would love to, but I can only program any decent level of stuff in BlitzBasic, not C++. I'm trying to learn some C++, though, and maybe I COULD figure something out by looking; lemme see...

Tell me why the heck rear view dimensions should be exactly as in D2 (if you're right, that is). It's good enough the way it is, or are you trying to play through D2:CS on insane, using the rear view only, because every other way would be too boring?

I am definitely not going to fix any such completely irrelevant details.

Custom bot textures - maybe, but not something as negligible as that.

I will also not add water physics or so. It's way too complicated.

Diedel wrote:Tell me why the heck rear view dimensions should be exactly as in D2 (if you're right, that is). It's good enough the way it is, or are you trying to play through D2:CS on insane, using the rear view only, because every other way would be too boring?

No, I'm not crazy, the reason why is that it interferes with playing certain custom missions, and because I like it to be more old-skool style. That's why. If you don't want to change it, you don't have to, and that's fine, but IMHO, you should.

Diedel wrote:I will also not add water physics or so. It's way too complicated.

Well, that's OK. It was a pretty crazy idea anyhow.

Diedel wrote:I am mostly interested in good D2 multiplayer, hence all the new stuff I have put into D2X-W32. Sadly enough, nobody exploits it and plays enhanced CTF or D2-Entropy, or tries my newest levels. That's the things I really care about in D2X-W32 - not whether the custom models work (you should see the related code: You'd love it - cough!) or whether custom music is reset.

Well, see... good singleplayer is what I want D2 for; I use D3 for multiplayer. That's why all of my bug reports, as you may have noticed, only happen (or at least are noticeable) in SP.

Each to his own... (I am saying that far too often now)

Diedel, if you want a 'reason' to change rear view dimensions, it sounds like the custom missions Encounter at Farpoint 2 and Obsidian both have bugs when using it... but they are still usable, and they are also a couple of the only missions ever made that DO have custom cockpits anyway.

Sirius wrote:Diedel, if you want a 'reason' to change rear view dimensions, it sounds like the custom missions Encounter at Farpoint 2 and Obsidian both have bugs when using it... but they are still usable, and they are also a couple of the only missions ever made that DO have custom cockpits anyway.

I'd consider it more of a 'problem' than a 'bug'. It also happens in a custom mission that I'm developing, which I would really like to make be D2X-W32 only.

Well, for missions in development, you have the option of swapping to a top-half-of-the-screen only cockpit. That's what I would do.

Would save some effort if you didn't have to and already have the cockpit done, I suppose.

On the Lightmapping note, I'm getting rather abysmal performance with it enabled as well (but no visual bugs).
1024x768 on an Athlon XP2000, 512MB DDR266 and a Radeon 9600Pro = ~20fps without any major action going on. Another thing about the lighting I noticed is that the weapon light is flickering like crazy (and has been for a while, even before the introduction of the lightmapping stuff). I'll try taking a short movie of it in the next couple of days.

Other than that, you folks should know that I'm still crunching away at textures, although it's going very slowly right now - I have exams coming up in three to four weeks, which are more important than texture work.

Wow, hello flames.

I haven't even played lately and it seems these new patches are opening all sorts of new problems.

Just report the problems, don't try and play hero, guys.

It's a PAIN to read through bug reports with all the side chatter.

Riot wrote:Just report the problems, don't try and play hero, guys.

X5!

Btw, afaik all problems are solved, and - I said it already - lightmapping is in beta stage and Lehm is working on an improved version. Performance is very bad though on my machine as well (Athlon 64 XP 3500+ s939 + Radeon X800 XT PE). Personally, I do not use this feature. It's just not working good enough yet.

I have a suggestion that really has nothing to do with programming, Its more about distribution and packaging. It's this... How about a manual with some (recommended) example game setups to demonstrate the new capabilities and what effect the more esoteric toggles and switches in D2x-W32 have on the game play? I think that's an idea who's time has come for sure. A special demonstration mission or two in the distribution package that highlights these marvelous benefits would be great too.
A simple technical documentation sheet with the version notes like in the 'D2X-W32 Update Notification Thread' just doesn't cut it for explaining what "it does", but still, if you could copy that thread to a Notes.txt people like myself could at least keep track which version I have in my archives and in my Descent2 folder even though I don't have a clue what half that stuff in the notification thread means.

What I need to know about D2X-W32.exe is what it does and how to use it in plain english.
Come on, I've been playing for years since before Descent full 1.0 came out. I'm lost here. what ARE these things. I have no idea what most of these discussions in this thread are about but I really want to know. My first thought when I access the options menus is "too much stuff, what is all this?"...Frankly I'm lost. I play it, but only with the defaults, I don't know what the extra features do, what if any effect these settings have on other players not using D2X-W32 in anarchy or coop, what settings only affect my POV and what settings affect the whole game in multi, or what ones are only good for single play or what ever. I don't like being clueless. It makes me feel like a stereo type. It's a bit over whelming for me.

Look, I want to get more people into Descent2. -maybe package D2X-W32 in an installer with the whole game preset for click and play to people that have never played the game. Something similar the one I made and give out on Kali for Descent full installer with d1x1.40 & AL set-up on Kali.
So please, someone write a "D2X-W32 for Dummies" manual, and someone make up a demonstration mission - or two - to be included in the distribution package?

-and Diedle, you're awesome to do all this work. I love you for your dedication to this game and it's development. Finally I can play Descent2 without a lot of setup fuss in XP and it looks good enough that giving up my Voodoo4 video card and moving on to XP has become a viable option for me on all my computers.. If I were a year or two younger I'd offer to bear your children.
Love yas.

Tankie2

Tankie,

There is an online manual on my Descent Site (see profile for a link). Go to the D2X-W32 page and see the side menu for a link to the manual. There is also a page describing what needs to be done to play D1 levels with D2X-W32.

All you need to do to install D2X-W32 is to download the zip file and unpack all of its contents to your D2 folder.

Diedel

I somewhat follow you Thankie. Some settings might be quite confusing to the 'novice' user of d2x. The original version had pretty straight forward options while Diedel's version is a lot more optimized and tweaked.

The default settings should do, though. They should give you the experience most similar to the original, that is, original gameplay options, no lightmapping, that kind of stuff.

The thing is, most applications/games ported to windows/other platforms have this problem.

They tend to be a lot more advanced, thus vague and undocumented. The situation could be improved if someone was willing to write documentation but it probably is d2x and most other gameports (doomsday for the doom engine for example) nature to be more advanced/harder to understand.

Plus the documentation should be kept up to date, which is not an easy task as well.

It would be nice that the custom features explain themselves on hover or something, and a better structured menu would be nice, but i can live without it.

No Offense, Diedel, but the "Manual" on your site is a bit cryptic.. Not to fault you but everyone knows that programmers shouldn't write the manual, just the documentation. The manual, well, that's a user thing. It is helpful but I haven't been able to download it to my Descent archives for off-line access and make it work right.

It would be nice if one of the advanced users here could brush it up, fluff it up and annotate it then create a hyperlinked document in PDF or something for download.

Also, in your (ahem) 'manual', you say: "...players can switch teams by pressing Alt+Strg+T,..". I have checked very carfully serveral times and none of my keyboards seem to have a 'Strg' key. I'm gussinng maybe it's the control 'Ctrl' key, or is it the 'Shift' key?