DescentBB

My brother and I have been trying to make levels for D2 using dle-xp. Most of the time, when we try open them in dosbox, it gives us an \"error in mission file\", or it just crashes the game. What are we doing wrong? The only exception seems to be levels made entirely of unwarped cubes.

Maybe you're storing your files as D2X-XL type.
Check your .mn2 file, and check if it says 'name= mission name' or 'd2x-name = mision name'. If that's the case, change 'd2x-name' to 'name'... also when you make new levels make sure that you select 'Descent 2' at new level dialog (Not vertigo or D2X-Xl level)

To be honest, I'd recommend D2X-XL over D2 in DOSBox any day of the week. If you can't stand it, D2X-Rebirth is still a better option than emulation IMHO...

I've tried to use D2X-XL, but D2 won't let me upgrade to version 1.2.

If you want to upgrade your D2, do the following process.

Fisrt of all, made a clean install of D2 from your CD.
Immediately after that, update your game with the 1.2 version.

And then AFTER you have updated, install D2X-XL and you'll have no problems

The question here is, What CD version of D2 you have?
Original, The Infinite Abyss, or The Definitive Collection?
Only the original CD version you'll need to upgrade D2.
The others are already patched.

I have the original version. When I try to upgrade, it gives me \"error, old file not found. However, a file of the same name was found. No upgrade done since file contents do not match.\" I also can't get the sound effects to work, although the music is fine. I also have no idea where the CD is, although I can run the game without it.

Sounds like a no-cd crack on your exe file, everything else should be updated to 1.2, just the descent2.exe file will still be the old version. DXX/D2X-XL should both work if only the exe file isn't updated (they both only need the data files, not the original executable). Unless it is throwing the error on some other file.

Krom wrote:Sounds like a no-cd crack on your exe file

Agreed.
BTW, if you update from your original EXE (no cracked) first, you'll have double benefits from DXX/D2X-XL, as both of them doesn't need the CD to run, so it will work as a no-cd crack anyway...

Aus-RED-5 wrote:The question here is, What CD version of D2 you have?
Original, The Infinite Abyss, or The Definitive Collection?
Only the original CD version you'll need to upgrade D2.
The others are already patched.

ROFLMAOWBBQSAUCE

NO THEY ARE NOT - Not in any way are The Infinite Abyss, or The Definitive Collection already Patched to 1.2!

D2IA run Vertigo Add-ON Located on CD2
D2DC run Vertigo Add-ON Located on CD3 (since its really an unaltered D2IA on CD2 and CD3... anyway)

/me OMG ....That is funny

Bubba,
The funny is on you.
Maybe you should reinstall D2 TIA or TDC again and NOT install the vertigo series.

You will see for your self that the D2win95.exe file is v1.2 already updated/patched.



So how is that

BUBBALOU wrote:NO THEY ARE NOT - Not in any way are The Infinite Abyss, or The Definitive Collection already Patched to 1.2!

Did you accidentally hit the alarm switch RED-5? They're awfully loud...

BUBBALOU wrote:/me OMG ....That is funny

Why is that funny?
Even if Aus-RED-5 is wrong (although i think he's not) i don't see the funny aspect of it, sorry... >_>

Anyway, as far as i know Aus-RED is right, the D2 Win95 EXE file is v1.2 (at least that's what i saw on Interplay's website some years ago)... So you always install version 1.2 unless you have the first old original D2 (without enhancements)...

Oh well, back to topic... Alter-Fox, if you want to upgrade, you MUST find your CD first of all, so you can install the original 1.0 exe from your CD directly to upgrade immediately after install (without the no-cd crack)

To be honest, I don't really care that much about D2X-XL - I can build far cooler levels for D3. However, do you have any tips for getting the sound effects working? The setup program doesn't work without the CD; I can get the music working with the D2Demo setup, but is there any way to get sound effects working without the CD? I don't think I'll be finding it any time soon.

Yes. You can try to hand-edit descent.cfg, which should be in the main Descent 2 directory. The process of figuring out what will work may be a bit longer, though. DOSBox from memory may emulate a SB-compatible card; it should have settings somewhere that say what DMA address and IRQ are used. You'll need to set the corresponding values in descent.cfg to this.

P.S. These are the contents of one of my descent.cfg files; yours will differ in some points, and it occurs to me might be missing some lines. You can probably add them if necessary though. The tricky thing is the device IDs, which are basically entries into a table and are difficult to interpret by themselves. Apparently, though, 0xe016 on the 8-bit setting and 0xe018 on 16-bit both correspond to the Sound Blaster 16, which will probably work with DOSBox. 0xa001 on MIDI is General MIDI, which I believe works pretty much anywhere, possibly even without DOSBox.

P.S. I still recommend using something like D2X-Rebirth in your case, though... it shouldn't really be that different from legacy D2 and will probably save you a lot of trouble messing around with these settings. But if you really *have* to run legacy D2, then I hope the above helps.

Don't bother fooling with the sound settings; there's an easier way if you're running Windows.

Go to http://www.descent2.com/patches/d2/ and download the Windows Version. This patch generates a second executable for Descent 2 that uses the Windows sound system and isn't dependent on IRQ/Port/DMA settings.

[quote="www.descent2.com/patches/d2/"][/quote]

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Link works fine here...

Krom wrote:Link works fine here...

x2

Thanks Sirius, it works now, and I figured out what causes the error.

Who said anything about installing D2Win95....no one does .... now go away

Monumental necrobump of epic proportions!

I decided to go full retro today and did another installation of Descent 2 - this time in DosBox. First I installed the original game (it was version 1.1), then I patched it to 1.2, then added on Vertigo. After that I created a DosBox autoexec. To my amazement not only does the game run perfectly, but it also accepted the replaced Descent2.HAM, S11 and S22 files as part of my sound patch. Also, it opens levels making use of Pumo's Descent 1 palette once the palette file and the .256 file are put into the folder.

I tried opening a few random levels, including my Sol System levels and funny thing - it opened most of them right, but the Lunar Titanium mine hog file returns an "error in mission file" message and the level won't open. I wonder why that could be - the level opens with no hitches in Rebirth. Could it be that it contains too many custom textures? Is there a cap to how many custom textures vanilla D2 can open?

EDIT: I changed the filenames for the hog and the mn2 to match the rl2 level name inside the hog - now the game doesn't give me the error message, but instead the "prepare for descent" screen stays indefinitely and the level doesn't load

EDIT 2: Figured it out - shortening the automap name did the trick. The level opens fine, just like the others. The only problem remaining is that the game seems to display Pumo's palette in a rather weird way - the light grays seem somewhat distorted, even though the palette is properly loaded and used. Could there be any conflict between the old executable and the .256 file or something?

EDIT 3: Nah, everything's fine. I ran Descent 1 and everything looked the same. It's just the way the old executable displays it. So yeah - basically to get any mission compatible with vanilla D2 you have to make sure the hog name and the mn2 name match the mission name assigned in the level editor. And the automap name can't be too long.