D2: Custom Textures

[SnyTek]

Hi developers

It has been a long time since I've created my last D2 level. Now I have a new one in the pipeline

Question 1: I would like to use custom textures for this new level. Is there probably a collection of textures for D2 somewhere a level builder could use?

Question 2: What tool do I need to create a POG file? I've done that once, but that was years ago...

Question 3: D2x-xl supports high-res textures. Is there a page where the specs are listed? I should know things like size, color depth, probably alpha channel info.

Many thanks for your help!
SnyTek

[Sirius]

1 - there won't be much of a collection of textures for D2 specifically, because not that many were made. A number of people have been known to take them from other games though; Quake 1 and 2 were fairly popular for that.

High-resolution textures are likely only available from the newer titles, but there is probably some way to extract them.

2 - DTX2 did it, but I have no idea whether or not it handles D2X-XL, and have my doubts. DLE-XP supports what it doesn't, though, I would have to guess.

3 - I think it supports a wide variety, but I don't know the limits or exact details with respect to transparency. Best bet is to check descent2.de.

[Kyouryuu]

The Blender Foundation recently released to the public their free texture disk. You can download it (it's a bit over 200 MB).

http://tellim.com/texture_cd/

[SnyTek]

Thank you two!

@Sirius
DTX2 - yes, that tool should be on my D2 Tools Disk. I'll check that later.

I already tried to get some information about the textures on descent2.de but couldn't find anything. So I'll stick with the old format; isn't really a problem.

@Kyouryuu
Will download the package. Textures are always useful

Cheers
SnyTek

[Diedel]

Hires textures

a) Names

D2X-XL identifies hires replacement textures by their file names, which simply have to be the same as those of their low res counterparts, just with extension '.tga'. Animations have to have the suffix '#' in the file name (e.g. 'water01#0.tga'). Check the texture names on a Windows PC with DLE-XP or DTX2 (see PD files section for the latter or come back for a link).

b) Format

The general format is 512x512 RGB or RGBA TGA (the latter for textures containing transparency). Animations stack every animation frame vertically, so a 16 frame animation would be a TGA image width 512 and height 512 x 16, with the first frame at the top (y = 0), the last frame at the bottom (y = 15 * 512). Animations can have more frames than the original to make them look smoother; D2X-XL will still play them at the proper speed.

c) Transparency

D2 has a special type of transparency that is propagated to the bottom texture if two textures are overlayed (e.g. wall and grate). This transparency is indicated by using the RGB color (120,88,128) (sort of purple). That means that the parts of e.g. a grating that should be transparent through the base texture need to have this color. Examine one of Novacron's or DizzyRox' hires textures to see this.