D2X-XL Update Notification Thread

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 5:18 pm

I think the following new features should be brought to a broader attention.

Mouselook can now be allowed or prohibited by the game host. See the more multiplayer options menu.
If the game host doesn't use D2X-XL, mouselook gets disabled.
D2X-XL v1.5.122 now contains a ban feature. Press F8 and type ban:<player name> or ban:#<player number> to ban a player. Names of banned players are stored in the Descent 2 main or data folder in an ascii (text) file named 'banlist.txt'. You can edit it manually. The ban feature does not hinder people to change their name and rejoin, but it makes it somewhat more tedious and saves the game host some work.
You can now make D2X-XL blend colored weapon light with ambient light. That will look more natural, but the weapon light will be less visible in bright environments.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 11:30 am

D2X-XL has received a significant amount of Descent 1 related bug fixes; mostly in sound and music playback, but I have also fixed the mine exit having bogus textures bug, and the final briefing is now displayed, too.

Besides that I have added a neat new feature: In fullscreen mode you can now have D2X-XL display icons for all weapons.

A weapon has four attributes: primary/secondary, active/inactive, loaded/empty, available/unavailable. Depending on the attributes, a weapon slot has different colors.

If a weapon is active and loaded, the icon is yellow.
If a weapon is active and empty, the icon is red.
If a weapon is inactive and loaded, the icon is green.
If a weapon is inactive and empty, the icon is dark red.
If a weapon is unavailable, the icon is gray.

In multiplayer games, this feature is server controlled, and is not available at all if the game host doesn't use D2X-XL.

Here is a screenshot:

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:58 pm

I love you.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 3:03 pm

Prove it.

I have this donations page ...

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 3:13 pm

I'm donating by helping you test. It's the best I can do. I'm sorry, but I have no money.

If I get some money, the first thing I'll do is buy some furniture. Then I'll donate to you.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 3:17 pm

I wasn't too serious about it.

ToxicFrog · Post by **ToxicFrog** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 2:34 pm

Mouselook can now be allowed or prohibited by the game host. See the more multiplayer options menu.

Perhaps not the right thread for this, but...
Wouldn't a better solution be to clamp the Pyro's max turn speed, or let the game host set a maximum mouse sensitivity? This way the joystick users have no grounds to complain about mouse users being able to 180 in a tenth of a second, while people (such as myself) who have a mouse and keyboard but no joystick still have a hope in hell of hitting things (by using the mouse at minimum sensitivity to make fine aiming adjustments, something that's not possible playing keyboard-only).

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 3:47 pm

Turning speed is clamped with mouselook off. It is generally clamped for joystick and keyboard. You shouldn't be able to turn 360 deg in less than about 2.2 secs or so.

ToxicFrog · Post by **ToxicFrog** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 8:10 pm

Yes; I mean clamp it even if mouse controls are being used (or add a server-side option to do so). This neatly deals with both the 'stickers and 'boarders who complain that mousers are more manouverable, and with mousers (such as myself) who complain that they can't aim worth a damn using keyboard-only.
And if it's a server-side toggle rather than a hard setting, this also deals with people who want to play with mouselook and no turn speed constraints, and everyone's happy.

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 9:59 pm

You can still use the mouse when mouselook is disabled. You just can't use it in mouselook mode (ie. unlimited turn rate).

ToxicFrog · Post by **ToxicFrog** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 12:00 am

Oh!
In that case it's exactly what I was describing.

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 12:29 am

Yeah. Uncheck \"Mouselook\" in the \"Controls\" options to see how it feels.

ToxicFrog · Post by **ToxicFrog** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 9:20 am

Feels exactly as it always does, since I play with the mouse sensitivity on lowest anyways.
Cool. Thanks for pointing that out.

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 8:06 pm

wrong thread. (I posted in)

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 3:57 pm

I have started to pull all text messages out of D2X-XL, with the goal of placing them all in an ASCII file that is read at program launch. That way, you can easily port it to other languages. A German port is halfway done: I have translated all messages from descent.txb (the message file coming with Descent 2), and about 270 of those I have retrieved from the game code. That leaves about 310 more to be translated.

When I am done, there will be two default languages hard coded in D2X-XL (English, and German, who'd have thought of that

), so the game will work even if there are no message files around.

Peterix · Post by **Peterix** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 5:51 pm

Nice, i'll make a czech translation

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 4:15 pm

Particle Systems

I have added a particle system to D2X-XL that works pretty well from the mechanical side. You can enable smoke on player ships and robots, and the worse a ship/bot is damaged, the stronger it will smoke. It doesn't look perfect, but it's a start. I am having some issues with the alpha handling of the texture used for the particles, and I wonder whether there would be more elegant ways to do this using e.g. shader programs. If someone knows more about this: Hints and help are welcome.

TechPro · Post by **TechPro** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 9:21 pm

Great smokin' missles, Batman!

Very nice!

Can't wait for your improvements (P.S. .. perhaps more quantity of smoke from the bots.)

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 3:49 am

I will crank that up a little, but the smoke causes quite a hit on rendering performance. You can increase smoke density in the render options menu, but you may want to check out how much your system can handle. If you're having a dual CPU in an PCI express mobo and twin GF 6800s plus superfast DDR2 memory you shouldn't have any problems though ...

Btw, the smoke particles have different sizes and (elliptical) shapes, shrink and get more transparent during their life cycle, they move around a little erratically while keeping their general movement direction, and they bounce off walls. A minor thing I hadn't time to add is to make it go through open walls (grates) or doors, but not through closed ones. Currently, it just permeates such dynamic walls.

For me only taking two days to implement it with only knowing the basic concept, the system has come out pretty nice, hasn't it?

(clapping my own shoulder here ...

)

Seppel · Post by **Seppel** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 6:21 am

Really looks very nice

...have to try to increase the density...

BTW - thanx for the two bugfixes (1360x768 & automap)!

Keep the great work up!
Seppel

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 6:41 am

I have increased smoke on robots, and have added a lightgray smoke trail to intact player ships. Above that, ship smoke trails are now coming out of both thrusters. Yay!

Weyrman · Post by **Weyrman** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 8:15 pm

This smoke concept sounds great! If only I could see it!

Ok, yes, I do have it turned on in the options, but I think my graphics card is not set right.

I have a geForce FX 5200 chipset running the nvidia forceware 78.01 driver set. All the fancy options are set to \"Application driven\". If this is wrong, what settings do I need to make it work?

System is celeron 1.3g 512mg ram 160G hard drive.

Regards

Weyrman

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:14 am

I have a GF FX 5200 available too, and everything works fine there. Get v1.5.168 if you haven't already, the others had some bugs here.

Weyrman · Post by **Weyrman** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:41 pm

Diedel,

I have v.168 with smoke switched on, but still no smoke. What things need to be turned on on the video card?

antialiasing and stuff? or should it just be set to \"Application Controlled\"?

Also, With the new .hog file, what files does it replace? where should it go? what files should be removed? does the smoke have anything to do with the .hog?

Regards

Weyrman

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 4:41 pm

d2x-xl.hog replaces all *.256 files, cambot.hog and inventry.bmp.

I guess you checked all smoke options, didn't you? Afaik you don't need special driver settings. Particle smoke actually is extremely simple rendering wise - it's just a lot of small, more or less transparent images.

For me, smoke works on a X800 XT, a GF FX 5200 and a GF MX 400. I have no clue why it doesn't work on your system. Specs?

D3Phoenix · Post by **D3Phoenix** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 5:22 pm

Intel 630J (3.0GHz, EM64T, 800MHz FSB, 2MB L2)
ASUS P5-LD2 Motherboard
ASUS PCIx GeForce 6600GT 256MB
OCZ 1GB Dual Channel Kit, DDR2-667

Yes, I run Intel. AMD made me mad once

I REALLY doubt that It's a driver or hardware issue with me, diedel.

<Offtopic>I still cant get D2X-XL to run on the 8MB ATi Mobility P on my older laptop... but D2X-W32 or D2X 2.6 run perfectly fine... It's gonna drive me insane. None of the render option command lines seem affect the problem either... It just flashes a black screen and CTDs...

+

</Offtopic>

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:05 pm

Did you try to turn of shader usage by command line?

D3Phoenix · Post by **D3Phoenix** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 10:50 pm

Diedel wrote:Did you try to turn of shader usage by command line?

I have now, and No, it didn't help.

Weyrman · Post by **Weyrman** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 9:59 pm

Diedel,

v .172 and new ini switches ..... I have SMOKE!! and decent game play as well.

It is SO GOOD to see that thief bot SMOKE and BURN!!

Man, that is just so SATISFYING!!

Thanks so much for this addition, I consider it worthy of a number advancement to v1.6.0

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 3:35 am

Weyrman wrote:DIt is SO GOOD to see that thief bot SMOKE and BURN!!

Gives a whole new meaning to "burn baby, BURN!" in D2, heh!

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 8:29 pm

Do you like this?

(actual in-game screenshot)

RoBoT · Post by **RoBoT** » Fri Mar 24, 2006 9:48 pm

That thing is HHHHHOOOOTTT!!!!

It was even hotter when I downloaded it 15 minutes ago.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sat Mar 25, 2006 5:38 pm

I think it's even hotter now, as the texturing is alright now ...

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 2:13 pm

And do you like this?

[image of shadow casting pyro removed]

(actual in-game screenshot)

RoBoT · Post by **RoBoT** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 2:27 pm

*drools profusely*

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 3:11 pm

Don't drown.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 3:15 pm

Dynamic shadows? Awesome. Keep it up.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 3:22 pm

I need a good POF documentation. The lores rendering code is straight from hell.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 3:50 pm

Er ... the whole model format is.

I know a reasonable amount about the data structure, but not the rendering side of it.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 6:43 pm

Well ... it looks like I posted that image prematurely. I probably will not be able to implement real time shadows. For some reason it doesn't work.
This is what I get, and neither do I know why, nor how to fix it:

[image removed]

D2X-XL Update Notification Thread

language support

Particle Systems

Re:

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