DescentBB

Do you know any programs in which you can create and modify robots with no limits? The problem I have could neither be solved by HXMEDIT.EXE nor by RBOTEDIT.EXE (the first doesn't give options, the second doesn't acknowledge the category).

The problem is that I tried to restore the teleporting properties to the Descent 1 Bosses. In the Descent2.ham file they've lost them.

There is no entirely clean solution to this. Descent 2 robots have a \"boss type\" setting which has only a handful of settings; they control both whether it can teleport and what robots it spawns. I think both properties are off for the D1 boss types, so you'll have to reassign them to one of the D2 level 4/8/12/16 behaviours.

The only way to bring back teleporting and nothing else is, again, to edit the Descent 2 source code.

I believe the \"boss type\" also control which weapons can damage the boss... i.e. if you set it to \"Fire Boss\" or \"Ice Boss\", it will only be vunerable to matter weapons. So if you were going to do it this way, you'd probably want the boss type to be \"Red Fatty Boss\", or \"Water Boss\", as the D1 bosses were originally vulnerable to all weapons.

On a side note, even though you can't make matcens spawn vertigo robots, you can make a boss robot spawn certain types if you set its boss type to \"Vertigo Boss\" or \"Red Guard\" (Vertigo 1 Boss and Vertigo 2 Boss in RBot Edit).

It does, yes. I forgot that the fire/ice bosses also had immunities...

I heard that creating an additional .HAM file lets you actually add robots instead of replacing them. I'll see what I can do to bring the bosses back to their former glory.

I'm leaving for a few days tomorrow anyway, so I won't be able to be contacted, but I'll be back by Saturday. I'll take some action then.

There is something sometimes known as a \"vham\" file - for Vertigo HAM, as that expansion used one to add the new robots it had. It does work the way you say though.

Do you know if the player would need to have Vertigo installed to play a mission that uses a V-Ham?

Not sure, but I imagine, especially since the Vertigo Missions added the V-Ham feature.

Well, first of all, the only thing that makes the Vertigo mission different from the regular Descent 2 mission, is the inclusion of the said V-HAM - d2x.HAM inside the .HOG file. The robots in the Vertigo levels make use of this .HAM, and therefore will crash if played without it present. The file is easily extractible, and if it's not protected legally, we could as well include it in our new mission whole and unchanged.

Oh, and I fixed the D1 bosses. Check this out:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6dg674

Alter-Fox: Yes, the player does need to have Vertigo installed. It is possible that this isn't the case with Rebirth/XL though - not necessarily by intention, but if they were based on the Vertigo code. In that case, using a V-HAM might work anyway. I understand that D2X-XL will run Vertigo game modes as long as the required data files are present, for instance.

(Also, Xfing - yes, the data files are all copyrighted, though there's no reason you couldn't legally create a new one with custom data.)