D2X-XL suggestions thread

flyhard · Post by **flyhard** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 1:17 pm

I've asked several players on kali if they have to uncheck \"dual missiles\" when starting a game, and they all said yes.

KoolBear · Post by **KoolBear** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 2:09 pm

Kirby wrote:any plans of creating some sort of dedicated server program???

the netplay list is dead all the time We need more netplayers

This is in the works, we are planing on the DBB hosting the master tracker. More soon first I or rather RC has to fix the no perl support issue

Also there's another opportunity in the works maybe well see more on this in the next week or two.

KB

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 2:51 pm

I would like to see separate configuration areas for singleplayer and multiplayer options. Sometimes it's hard for me to figure out which options apply only to multiplayer.

EDIT:

I would also like to see a separation between the multiplayer settings for your individual pilot and the multiplayer settings that globally affect all games you start.

I'd also like to have separate controls for mouse x-axis sensitivity and y-axis sensitivity.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 3:53 pm

Options that only apply to multiplayer are in the ... multiplayer options menu, hooray!

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 3:56 pm

Yes, but aren't there some options in the general menu that only apply to singleplayer? I don't need to worry about those for multiplayer.

EDIT:

It would be cool to have a rear view mirror that's actually a mirror.

Also, when I'm in the in-between cockpit mode, I have my radar (kick-ass btw) and my rear view both up at the same time. It'd be nice if there were a way to display my equiped weapons somewhere else on the screen.

It would also be neat to have some type of HUD graphic that shows which weapons I currently have on my ship. So, for example, there could be 5 colored squares for the primary weapons:

Lasers: Red/Purple/Blue/Green
Vulcan: White
Spreadfire: Blue
Plasma: Green
Fusion: Purple

Otherwise I might accidentally pick up a weapon without realizing I have it... and at any time during a fight I can glance at my HUD to see which weapons I have.

EDIT: I'd like to be able to use radar (the mini-map) in multiplayer.

Pumo · Post by **Pumo** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 4:13 am

Diedel, I have a lot of suggestions, i will list them from most important to least (Hope they aren't too much

)

Number 1 (Most important): I've said this before, about weapon colored light, coudn't it work like the dynamic colored lights in D3? I think the sytem D2X uses now is somewhat ugly (in my opinion, like the blue lasers that darken the rooms and the green ones that destroys the lava colors! yuck

). If this can't be affordable, what about an extra option or toggle of all weapons white colored, this way mines with colored light will not only be lightened up by the weapons, but also will change the color of the lights. Also it would be nice that the Headlight have colored white light to override the colored light of mines.

Number 2 (Not so important): What about an effect of fog in the segments? i've seen that lava and water segments uses some kind of fog. Maybe that same method can be used to add colored fog to the segments.

Number 3 (Less important): I think an option of a reverse afterburner key would be cool.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 4:49 am

Pumo,

I had a different implementation of colored weapon light, blending it together with ambient light. This made weapon light hardly visible any more though. I could add an option to allow users to enable this though.

Water and lava is simply a colored segment. True volumetric fog is an entirely different story. I might add shadows and particle systems somewhere in the future (if I have nothing better to do

, but probably not fog. I think I'd do that mainly for my own pleasure anyway. You can count the people actually using all the enhancements I have built into D2X-XL on one hand.

Reverse AB is not an option.

Suncho,

I had already tried to have small weapon icons in the fullscreen view, but I failed to scale the existing weapon images properly. Either it's impossible, or I am to dumb to figure how to set the required uv texture coordinates (prolly the latter

)

True rear mirror (l/r reversed) is too hard for me to do (I'd need to change something about the texture coordinates here as well, and maybe more).

Radar in multiplayer is a server side option. The game host needs to turn on 'see all players on map' or so to allow for it. It generally gets disabled in mp if the game host doesn't use D2X-XL.

Mouse axis desync'ing looks like a good idea to me.

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 6:38 am

Diedel wrote: I had already tried to have small weapon icons in the fullscreen view, but I failed to scale the existing weapon images properly. Either it's impossible, or I am to dumb to figure how to set the required uv texture coordinates (prolly the latter )

True rear mirror (l/r reversed) is too hard for me to do (I'd need to change something about the texture coordinates here as well, and maybe more).[/quote]

That's cool. I was hoping it'd be easy. =)

Diedel wrote: Radar in multiplayer is a server side option. The game host needs to turn on 'see all players on map' or so to allow for it. It generally gets disabled in mp if the game host doesn't use D2X-XL.

I want the radar so I can see where I'm going. I don't want to see other players on my automap. Is there a way to use radar in multiplayer without seeing the other players on it?

Diedel wrote: Mouse axis desync'ing looks like a good idea to me.

Awesome. =)

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 7:24 am

Suncho,

honestly, I believe that most, if not all D1/D2 multiplayer levels are so simple that you do not need an automap. Really really.

Kirby · Post by **Kirby** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 9:17 am

To keep the D1 experience as authenic as possible...\"missle view\" should be always disabled in D1 missions

Took me a few months to friggin notice that

also: we really need to open up the custom background image discussion again....it is definitely not Descent 2 anymore

spud · Post by **spud** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 12:57 pm

Would it be possible to get d2x-xl d1 compatability working to such a degree that you could play D1 multiplayer games against opponents who are using D1X?

spud

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 2:25 pm

Kirby,

give me a nice custom background.

spud,

I am afraid that would require bigger hacking of the D2(X(-XL)) source code.

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 4:31 pm

Diedel wrote:Suncho,

honestly, I believe that most, if not all D1/D2 multiplayer levels are so simple that you do not need an automap. Really really.

That's true. But I'm trying to learn all the levels as fast as possible and having an automap on my HUD would really help. =)

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 4:35 pm

Kirby wrote:To keep the D1 experience as authenic as possible..."missle view" should be always disabled in D1 missions

Took me a few months to friggin notice that

I don't care about this. If you leave it in, I won't cry. If you take it out I won't cry. It's more of an extra feature than something that changes the way the original game worked.

What I do care about is the ability to disable ship bobbing. This changes the way your ship moves and I don't think you should be able to disable it in multiplayer (or at all). This is especially true in D2 where you might be playing against other clients who don't have the option to disable the ship bobbing.

EDIT: Sorry. This should have been part of my previous post.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 4:42 pm

Suncho,

the ship doesn't wiggle anyway when moving. Actually I only put it in to be able to make better screenshots.

During multiplayer, you can only turn it off if the game host uses D2X-XL and has turned it off himself.

Why not cruise new MP levels in singleplayer first to learn them? Go figure what would happen if I added such a feature to D2X-XL and non-D2X-XL players find out about it. They'll kill me.

Escorter · Post by **Escorter** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 6:07 pm

Diedel, can you make reflective water surface? It would be a cool effect!

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 6:20 pm

Diedel wrote:Suncho,

the ship doesn't wiggle anyway when moving. Actually I only put it in to be able to make better screenshots.

During multiplayer, you can only turn it off if the game host uses D2X-XL and has turned it off himself.[/quote]

Cool. That's fine then.

Diedel wrote:Why not cruise new MP levels in singleplayer first to learn them?

I'd like to have the game be multiplayer so people can join and we can start playing... but if they don't I'll be happy to learn the level and practice by myself.

Diedel wrote:Go figure what would happen if I added such a feature to D2X-XL and non-D2X-XL players find out about it. They'll kill me.

You already did. If radar turns on when "show players on automap" is enabled by the host, then only the D2X-XL clients have the radar and the other players will have to actually activate their automap to see the other ships.

Regardless, D1 using D2X-XL isn't compatible with other D1 clients, so there shouldn't be a problem if you just enable it for D1 multiplayer. =)

In my opinion, I don't think D2X-XL should be backwards compatible at all, but that seems to be something you care about.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 7:04 pm

Suncho,

there's more D2X-XL exclusive stuff that gets accessible when the game host uses D2X-XL and allows it. Then its up to the game host to provide 100% compatibility. If he doesn't, don't blame the game. It's not guns that kill people, ya know ...

Kirby · Post by **Kirby** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 8:42 pm

Diedel wrote:Kirby,

give me a nice custom background.

what resolution should I create it in?

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Fri Feb 17, 2006 11:30 pm

TechPro wrote:
Diedel wrote:I have found the code doing turn banking, and have removed this behaviour from D2X-XL for D1 missions.
Very nice and very authentic. However, I like the feel of banking. Can you make it so that can be toggled for D1 missions? Should I put that in the suggestions?

Just make sure it's always disabled in multiplayer. All I care about is multiplayer.

Aus-RED-5 · Post by **Aus-RED-5** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 12:22 am

Diedel wrote:Kirby,

give me a nice custom background.

Oh! Oh!
Me First! Me First! heh

Just something I whiped up.

I could make the D2X-XL logo animated like on your website!

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 3:47 am

Aus-RED,

send this to me as a high-res, 32 bit TGA in good resolution (1600x1200), and I'll make D2X-XL use it w/o compromising the image quality.

Same goes for the wallpaper you've sent me. Would be a nice background, too.

Kirby · Post by **Kirby** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 9:57 am

Aus-RED-5 wrote:Oh! Oh!
Me First! Me First! heh

**** you

Just a suggestion would be to blur that orb and probably dull the orb colors so the menu options could be read easier

Aus-RED-5 · Post by **Aus-RED-5** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 10:52 am

Won't have to if he changes the font colours.

Besides. That was just a quick version of it.

Look at it now.

This how it should look.

Edit: I haven't changed the text colours or anything.
I'm using the D2x-xl menu fonts as is.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 1:10 pm

I have only one word for it: Geil!

(This is a German term that doesn't have the original meaning anymore, so looking it up in a dictionary won't help you. It's the ultimate way of saying something is exceptionally good, cool, desirable, etc.)

Kirby · Post by **Kirby** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 6:39 pm

Diedel wrote:I have only one word for it: Geil!

(This is a German term that doesn't have the original meaning anymore, so looking it up in a dictionary won't help you. It's the ultimate way of saying something is exceptionally good, cool, desirable, etc.)

I concur

(English word meaning "I agree")

Pumo · Post by **Pumo** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 11:06 pm

The option to blend ambient light with weapon light is very good for me!

However.... I have another little idea

(Sorry)
What if these colored weapon lights saturates over the background? . I mean, even now that the light works much nicer, when i fire a custom 255 BLUE laser i have, some red textures darkens. If the light saturates over the texture, then it would be bright blue even if the texture is red. I think that now the light overrides the RGB values of textures, since the blue kills red colors. Don't know if it's easy to do the saturate thing, but it can be even more nicer

That's the way many games works with the lights and also your transparent explosions seem to saturate over background.

And about the fog, please don't make it only for yourself if you ever make it, i use a lot the features you add to D2X-XL in my own levels, like the colored lights, water segments, transparent walls, etc... Take for sure i will use the fog if you implement it. Pleaaasseeee?

EDIT: Almost forgot! Why Spreadfire,Helix and even i think Phoenix doesn't cast colored light?
And what about the Headlight that not only increases light luminance in levels, but also casts real colored white light?

Hope i'm not a PITA for you with so many suggestions

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 4:54 am

Light blending should saturate, i.e. blue + red -> bright pink (or whatever), not only blue.

Phoenix, Spread, Helix problem: Shouldn't be so. Will check.

Headlight: It casts white light to illuminate the level. I mean, illumination w/o light doesn't work, or does it?

Pumo · Post by **Pumo** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 12:37 pm

So saturate light is possible? Cool

Ah, and what i mean about Headlight is this:

Example: If i'm in a somewhat darker room with some little orange colored lights, when i turn on the Headlight, the room will become full lighted but always orange. What i say is that the Headlight must override the orange light color with White color, and not only lighten the room with the original orange color. At least that's what happens to me in levels with colored lights.

I will see if i can put some screenshots of that.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sun Feb 19, 2006 2:12 pm

Pumo,

if color mixing is turned, light saturation should occur.

Headlights should work the way you describe it.

Kirby · Post by **Kirby** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 3:45 pm

love the new weapon icons on the HUD now

Some things that can improve it:
1) find a suitable size/arrangement so it can be used in cockpit view also
2) Maybe add some for the headlight, ammo rack, full map, quad laser, and afterburner pickups
3) maybe show how many missles are left right inside each secondary weapon icon (and how much ammo is left in the guass, vulcan cannon)
4) icons can probably be made a little smaller....in D2, the bottom text seems to overlap one icon or the other

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 5:10 pm

You will only have them in full screen view. I thought about printing numbers, but the icons are already too small. I also thought about adding inventory stuff and ammo icons, but the problem is that afaik there are no hud images for them.

Edit:

Like this?

You need to put inventory.bmp, which is now included in the Win32 exe zip package, into your data or D2 main folder to have inventory icons.

Escorter · Post by **Escorter** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 8:05 am

Two afterburner icons?

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 8:09 am

Dang.

Edit: image (inventory.bmp) fixed and re-uploaded (in exe package).

Kirby · Post by **Kirby** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 9:19 am

forgot the ammo rack

I was able to do a font 6-8 in the icons, but you might have to use a custom font :/

also...you could put the numbers just outside of the box....maybe being able to use a size 10-12 font doing it that way

also....maybe having some sort of color code system....for example: have the icon turn red when there is only 1 missle left, 500 vulcan rounds, ect.

I'm thinking about how to do some sort of weapon avaliability system in cockpit mode, but my guess will be that it will not use icons, just numbers :/

Dynamite · Post by **Dynamite** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 7:43 pm

That looks really good, but I still like the original cockpit better.

Anyways, now for my suggestions...

1. Allow DLLs to work in D2 HOG files, meaning that you can put DLLs in a HOG file, and it would just work for that mission.

2. If possible, WAV/MP3/WMA support.

3. Possible new trigger types:
- Allow the robot triggers to work for any type of object, not just the 'bots.
- Message triggers

- \"Destroy 'bot\" triggers (triggers that instantly destroy objects when touched)
- Eliminate some of the Polymodel limitations

Is this possible? I don't know...

D3Phoenix · Post by **D3Phoenix** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 4:49 pm

I second the motion that we get additional audio support. Mainly, music.

Here is a copy of a post I made a LONG time ago (but mysteriously fail to find by searching....) -- Luckily I had it saved in notepad:

Quote follows:
===============================
Once some of the more pressing issues are fixed, I had an idea for EVENT-DRIVEN, MP3 music for custom D2X-W32 levels. Imagine... You enter a room, and the music kicks up a bit -- you know you are getting close to red key -- a little farther on, a force field kicks on behind you with the classic hum... and then you see a purple flash from the ceiling while the music cranks up ANOTHER notch... You see the first diamond claw materialze. *shivers*

Event-driven music like that could be done with a new trigger type and a simple ASCII file -- probably a .MUS extension or something like that -- that would be included in the level HOG.

Sample format:
------------------------------------
[levelfilename]
ID#=FileName,<TrackBehavior>

00=FileName,L,L,1 <-- means loop twice, then play track 01
01=FileName,02 <-- this track plays once, then automatically advances to track 2 when it is done
02=FileName,02 <-- this track will loop indefinitely until a trigger changes the track

[levelfilename2]
and so on...
------------------------------------

Example file
------------------------------------
;MyHogName.MUS
[FirstLevel.rl2]
00=StartClip.MP3,01 <-- Play automatically starts at track 00. this can be taken advantage of for a very SIMPLE, per-level music looping effect. (see below)
01=MainCalm.MP3,01
02=MatcenTheme.MP3,01
03=MainBattle.MP3,01
04=BossFightPartA.MP3,05
05=BossFightPartB.MP3,L,04
06=EscapeTheme.MP3,06

[SecondLevel.rl2]
more...
------------------------------------

Simple per-level loop file (place this in the main D2X directory as a .MUS and replace the in-game music with some D1 tracks recorded off an AWE32...)
------------------------------------
[d2leva-1.rl2]
00=D1_AWE32_Level01.MP3,00
[d2leva-2.rl2]
00=D1_AWE32_Level02.MP3,00
[d2leva-3.rl2]
00=D1_AWE32_Level03.MP3,00
[d2leva-4.rl2]
00=D1_AWE32_Level08.MP3,00
and so on...
------------------------------------

More on functionality:

In the level, there are music triggers. The triggers have two parameters: What track ID# to set the music to, and a boolean flag of whether to cut off the currently playing track and immediately switch, or to let the current clip finish before changing to the next ID.

Heck, with these files you could even mix-and-match MP3, MID, HMP, and HMQ Audio. DLE-XP could even have a dialog that would allow you to add the appropriate MP3's to your HOG and create the music file all at once. Of course, to maintain compatibility, D2X would revert to your standard MIDI or redbook preference if it found no MUS file with the same name as the HOG. (Do I see a change in the sound settings dialog? Maybe we could set it up like weapon select preferences -- move Redbook, MIDI, and MUS-file scripted up and down on a list. if MUS is at the top, it checks for a MUS file to use, if none is found it moves on to the next type (say, redbook) and if it finds no CD, then it plays MIDI)
=================================
END OF QUOTE

OR... diedel could make it much simpler on himself and just give us a MUSIC folder along the same lines as the textures folder, where we can override the existing MIDs with MP3s... But make sure that it will allow for MORE than 4 files to be put there and still have them assigned to the levels properly just by incrementing the last two characters of the filename properly.

Suncho · Post by **Suncho** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 4:55 pm

I'd like to be able to tell the difference between D1 missions and D2 missions, both in the new game list and when viewing the list of multiplayer games.

Event-driven music in games often sucks because it loses the pacing of the original track. Look at D3.

EDIT: I'd like to see individual key bindings for the individual weapons. For example, it would be neat if I could make the 5 key always select Fusion and the T key always select Omega.

Kirby · Post by **Kirby** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 6:58 pm

could HUD messages appear above the inventory icons? I don't think it's critical to always have the inventory icons fully visible all the time

D3Phoenix · Post by **D3Phoenix** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 7:30 pm

That's what a lot of people think. And it's simpler. It *could* be done relatively easily either way.

IMHO, the best solution would be a playlist of sorts, (a simple text file would suffice) that pointed to the varying MP3s in order... just a list of filenames. D2X-XL could parse it out and map them to the levels... If you had 7 tracks, you would have the music files repeat every 7 levels. Simple, efficient, and it would let me apply D1 music to D2

-- D1 music that was rendered on my old AWE32; It sounds so much better on the original hardware.

D2X-XL suggestions thread

dual missiles multiplayer

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Cool...