D2X-XL Bug Reports - MS Windows

Kyouryuu · Post by **Kyouryuu** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 9:48 am

If my memory serves me correctly, I think briefing colors are actually defined by the palette used for the background image? Maybe I'm wrong. What would be more flexible would be to have the ability to define R,G,B values for text. For example, $C(255,255,255).

D3Hack · Post by **D3Hack** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 2:41 pm

Kyouryuu wrote:If my memory serves me correctly, I think briefing colors are actually defined by the palette used for the background image?

Yes, they are. D2 has certain preset color values, and it uses the nearest one in the palette when it encounters the tag.

Tankie2 · Post by **Tankie2** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 3:41 pm

Descent2 3dfx version 1.60b is the version I was using. I have been seeing a few incidents where shield orbs remain after a another player has been killed and the w32 host has picked up thier powerups. Spew count mounts quickly and I can see and hear w-32 players picking ou spew that is invisible to me. This is similar to what I've seen with D1X 1.30, other 1.30 users don't seem to notice if the host is 1.30 but everyone else in the game is affected and this can happen if D1X 1.30 joins any game no matter what the host is using and usually the 1.30 user assumes host position and the game info is no longer visible in sniffers like Kali and Descent Monitor.. this didn't happen in earlier version of D1X and this was fixed in D1X 1.4 and later versions. In the W-32 games game info to sniffers doesn't seem to be affected though I haven't checked a lot of games and not in Descent Monitor (demon). -and I really don't know howto check if w-32 is reseting game parameters set by 3dfx or D2X-ogl hosts though I suspect this may be whats happening. I think what we have here is a failure to communicate.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 5:32 pm

What exactly got fixed?

Garak · Post by **Garak** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 5:35 pm

Here's an odd one. Version 1.4.48 I have robots that see me through doors and start firing at me. It hasn't been opened yet or anything so they should be sitting still. Hadn't noticed this before.

Aus-RED-5 · Post by **Aus-RED-5** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 1:45 am

Diedel.
I was wondering when you get enough or a fair bit of the retextured walls and such.... Are we going to able to d/l them or whats the go there?

BTW : How is the retexturing going so far?

Cheers

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 5:28 am

Garak,

some bots can open doors, and if you're close enough they should notice you.

AUS-RED,

woah, nice Avatar! I feel flattered.

Hehe.

Novacron has sent me about 30 high-res textures, but some of them are "beta" (i.e. there is no seamless transition when tiling them side by side), and most animations are missing. Basically, he has remade all textures of D2:CS Level 1. Just the D2 wall textures amount to 910 though, with a total of over 2600 textures. Once there is a sufficient number of textures available and Novacron is willing to release them, we will provide a download. You can ask him yourself whether he'd send you what he has now ahead of that.

Aus-RED-5 · Post by **Aus-RED-5** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 6:01 am

Thanks Diedel.
I'll wait till you get what you feel is right for D2x-w32. I know that you'll make them work well with D2x-w32.

Garak · Post by **Garak** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 5:24 pm

Example then. First mission of the main d2 campaign. I'm sitting between the switch that opens a wall and the hidden door that leads to the ammo rack. All the bots on the other side are firing at that hidden door to try to hit me.

HeXetic · Post by **HeXetic** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:22 pm

I also have had bots going berserk behind secret doors, firing away even though they have 0% chance of hitting me (exception: missiles do blast damage through the door) and should have had 0% chance of seeing or hearing me.

Also, I noticed this in D2 L6:

Seems to be a room poking in to another. You can't see it from the other side, nor can the items actually be picked up.

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 8:56 pm

Probably just bad level architecture. The original engine didn't mind intersecting geometry so much, but the newer one seems to be more sensitive.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 3:14 am

Walls shining through

With D2X-W32, you will see rooms poking into other rooms if the level is built like that. And there are levels, even in D2:CS, that are built like that. The reason that you will see this is the different way OpenGL renders faces: OpenGL strictly determines each fragment's distance from the viewer (the so called Z coordinate - a fragment is a 3-dimensional pixel, a pixel is a fragment w/o the depth info), and if it's closer than all other pixels, it will be displayed.

The original D2 simply renders all visible faces in a certain sequence (farthest first), so nearer faces will simply cover further away ones. Hence you won't notice that some levels are flawed architecture wise.

Bots firing through doors

I haven't changed bot AI. Make sure that problem doesn't appear with standard D2, and if it doesn't, pls tell me again.

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 4:10 am

With regard to the bots, it's verifiable with this level:
http://home.comcast.net/~jeff250/descen ... obobug.zip

On the player's side of the wall is a 100% transparent cloaked wall, but on the robot's side is a completely opaque closed wall. In older D2x's, the robot acted unaware to your presence, like it should. However, in the latest D2x, the robot attempts to attack you (in vain).

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 8:56 am

Maybe this is caused by some changes in wall handling rather than bot AI.

VPN-User · Post by **VPN-User** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:56 am

I have a request: Please add 1400x1050 (SXGA+) resolution. This is a very common resolution for notebooks and I am using one. Using lower resolutions with a TFT just sucks, the physical resolution should exactly match.

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:53 pm

Or you could just edit your d2x.ini with notepad and add:

-width x
-height x

Where x is the resolution you want. (1024x768 = -width 768 -height 1024)

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 5:02 pm

try to add -1400x1050 to d2x.ini.

Fighter17 · Post by **Fighter17** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 4:17 pm

I'm getting the same issues with 1.4.48, Robots in different rooms trying to attack me when I'm not in their rooms!!!

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 6:20 pm

I still am unable to edit Multiplayer taunt messages in d2x-w32 for F9-F12. anyone else have this issue///
Is there a new trick to this??? I checked your online info site to no avail

I always have 2 d2x-w32 versions the stable multiplayer version( d2x-w32-446.exe ) and the latest one for testing

Tested Stable Multiplayer build is still 1.4.46

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Jul 22, 2005 4:40 am

Current version is 1.4.50. Pls check the update notification thread before posting bug reports.

Bubba,

I will look into your issue.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 3:08 am

It seems I've just found out something decidedly strange.

It was never used in the actual game, because there were about no good applications at it for the time, but the model data for robots/player ships/etc as it stands actually has the capacity to do Descent 3-style engine glow, with translucent bitmaps. (This would require things like D2X-W32 that have translucency support, of course...)

It's just that this feature has not been built into any editors at all because I doubt anyone knew what it was at the stage such development was going on...

Fighter17 · Post by **Fighter17** » Sat Jul 23, 2005 3:33 pm

The robot problem has been fixed in 1.4.50. Thank god!!!

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 6:20 am

Thank me.

Aus-RED-5 · Post by **Aus-RED-5** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 6:36 am

Diedel wrote:Thank me.

THANKS DIEDEL!!

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 7:01 am

Hehe.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 7:47 am

Thank me.

Sapphire Wolf · Post by **Sapphire Wolf** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:09 pm

The door(any door) from the back wasn't aligned properly or fliped vertically.
Here's an example:

Note: I didn't mess around with the alignment

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 4:48 pm

I did.

VPN-User · Post by **VPN-User** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 5:36 pm

I am afraid but my d2x-w32 (1.4.49) ignores the "-1400x1050" setting in both ways, command line parameter and d2x.ini. It only cares for the setting in the ingame options menu.

Should 1400x1050 really work currently?

loobusk · Post by **loobusk** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 9:14 pm

Hi Ive used search already but nothing meaningful

D2x-w32 will not run on my config : p4 3ghz, radeon x800xl, audigy 2, (tried latest and few back drivers), winxp service pack 2, dx9 etc...

I copied the downloaded files into my descent 2 directory, but when i click on the icon, it SEEMS for a second to start working ie, it opens up a window, but, half a second later it kicks me back to the desktop. I tried every compatibility mode, format/reinstall windows etc. But the same thing happens. On my other computer though which is a few years older, also has winxp and similar setup but has a RADEON 9800pro, and it works fine on that. I was wondering if theres a solution to this problem of mine somewhere, I cant seem to Search em out on these boards yet. Id like to hear from any of you who would be interested in helping me out.

DCrazy · Post by **DCrazy** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 9:25 pm

One solution to the cube-poking-into-another-cube problem might be to always draw the current cube last? Or maybe, when rendering the level, pop the indexes of the required faces onto a stack, then pop them off when rendering. Since D2 lacks any sort of visibility info , this could also lead to optimization in the renderer.

For example, when rendering a frame, the game would push all the face indexes of the current cube onto the stack. Then it would do the same for any adjacent cubes that are not connected to the current cube by an opaque wall or closed door. When it has figured out all the faces it needs to render, it would start popping off cube/face pairs and rendering the faces. Thusly, the faces would render in reverse order.

You know something? This would only need to be done when the player's current cube number changes or a door/wall opens.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 10:36 pm

That sounds rather like the traditional (sans Z-buffer) method D2 used...?

It isn't a bad system per se, but when you have loops in levels as you likely know it can lead to clipping errors. Unless you're actually thinking of something else.

Or have an idea for an algorithm to avoid that.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 4:29 am

DCrazy,

that still wouldn't work with OpenGL's Z-buffering. The Z-Buffer is simply a 2-dimensional array with an entry for each screen pixel holding that pixel's distance from the viewer. During rendering, each pixel's distance from the viewer is computed. If there has no other pixel been drawn at that pixel's x/y coordinate, it's distance (Z-value, as the Z-axis of a three dimensional coordinate system denotes distance or "depth"), is entered into that coordinate's Z-buffer entry. If there is another pixel already, both pixels' Z-values are compared and the pixel with the smaller Z-value takes that place (or smaller or equal, or even larger, etc., depending on OpenGL settings).

So even if you'd draw the nearest cube last, any other cubes' faces that are closer than some face of that cube would still be visible due to their pixels' Z-values being smaller.

Actually that Z-buffer is a great thing. In D2X-W32, it helped to get rid of that pesky disappearing walls caused by D2's hidden surface removal code.

So rather fix your levels. You can even fix the original D2 levels with DLE-XP. Ok, maybe you wouldn't want to do that.

Ioobusk,

you can try to install D2 into another folder (you can keep your first D2 installation), extract the complete contents of d2x-w32.zip into that new D2 folder and run it from there.

VPN-User,

looks like only predefined resolutions can be set from d2x.ini and I will have to add your resolution to that set (sigh ).

Bubbalou,

go to the toggles menu and turn on macro usage. D2X-W32 may however crash when pressing the F12 key (Shift+F12 not a problem), and I cannot fix that.

DCrazy · Post by **DCrazy** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 8:20 am

Diedel: harumph. Forgot about Z-buffering. In fact, the only reason I suggested a way to fix it is because it occurs in the official D2 campaign. But still, when rendering, it would be advantageous to only render the necessary faces, right? It would probably save a lot of time, and as I said the computations would only have to be done relatively occasionally.

loobusk · Post by **loobusk** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 12:08 pm

That doesnt seem to work either,is there anything else that can be done ?

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:07 pm

Ioobusk,

no simple one, I am afraid.

loobusk · Post by **loobusk** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 4:00 pm

Ah alright, well, I really hope soon one of the future versions will allow me to play i really do

Pumo · Post by **Pumo** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 4:51 pm

What version of D2X-w32 do you have Ioobusk?

Check it's the last as Diedel sayed before.
You can download the last version from Diedel's Site.

I have those problems in older versions because the original D2 pilot files where not compatible with D2X ones and i have to delete all of my older pilots, but in newer version of D2X-W32, i think it's fixed (at least now works for me even with older pilots).

Nosferatu · Post by **Nosferatu** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:04 pm

Version 1.4.51

OK now the bots looking through doors thing seems to be fixed but now the doors being rendered as walls when closed thing is back.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:27 pm

Nosferatu wrote:Version 1.4.51

OK now the bots looking through doors thing seems to be fixed but now the doors being rendered as walls when closed thing is back.

Pls be more precise - was it the problem in D1 levels? It may happen that sometimes I get old bugs back into D2X-W32 because I am using two different computers.