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General discussion (archive)Descent D2X-XL mod spotlight(56 posts)(56 posts)
(56 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted July 22, 2011
After the 'Interplay Summer Stacation', we're pretty sure many of you re-discovered the awesome Descent series once again. And even the graphics have aged over the years (it's been 16 years since the release of the first part), the gameplay is still topnotch! But thanks to the creative community at Descent2.de, you can play this revolutionary classic in HD graphics with all those next-gen, laser-blazer, supa-dupa-fly effects. Interested? Read on the writeup about the D2X-XL project made by one of its creators.
Posted July 25, 2011
I never really tried descent as a kid (though i, ofcourse, have heard of them, and seen others play the game).. and i'm not a graphics whore in any way.. but, older games are often better, due to nostalgia, so i didn't really bother to buy this.. i have thought about buying it at some point

reading about this mod has made this a must buy.. i haven't tried the mod yet, but i like what i read ;)
Posted July 25, 2011
Karx11erx! Glad to see this spotlight posted man! I haven't been on the D2X-XL forums in awhile..
Posted July 25, 2011
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Facey: I never really tried descent as a kid (though i, ofcourse, have heard of them, and seen others play the game).. and i'm not a graphics whore in any way.. but, older games are often better, due to nostalgia, so i didn't really bother to buy this.. i have thought about buying it at some point

reading about this mod has made this a must buy.. i haven't tried the mod yet, but i like what i read ;)
It's unique. Very disorienting, but satisfying once it clicks, and super sneaky AI at higher difficulties. Wireframe automap was difficult to master on larger levels, so being able to see exactly what's in each room is a huge improvement. Works well with joystick + hat switch. Not a good game for pure keyboard, never tried it with mouse.
Posted July 26, 2011
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wvpr: It's unique. Very disorienting, but satisfying once it clicks, and super sneaky AI at higher difficulties. Wireframe automap was difficult to master on larger levels, so being able to see exactly what's in each room is a huge improvement. Works well with joystick + hat switch. Not a good game for pure keyboard, never tried it with mouse.
The only problem with the mouse is that the turning speed is capped, so if you move the mouse quickly you end up turning very little, compared to moving the mouse slower but for a longer duration. It's counter-intuitive after playing normal first person shooters. Also, up/down turning is much slower than left-right, making vertical circle strafing pretty hard to pull off (easier to just bank 90 decrees, and circle strafe horizontally.)

I understand that D2X-XL adds an option for quick turning, but some might consider that cheating :)
Posted July 26, 2011
There is such an option, but it is controlled by the game host (server) in multiplayer games and visible to all participants. So if the hosting player turns it on and people don't like that, they can avoid his game. I have never seen "fast mouse" being enabled in a D2X-XL multiplayer game though.
Post edited July 26, 2011 by karx11erx
Posted July 26, 2011
Mouse is slower sideways? I remember there was a speed difference with joystick, but my muscle memory is telling me it was faster to roll sideways and pull back than to push to the side. It's been a while, though, so maybe I'm wrong.

I liked that touch. Added a bit of sim to the arcade experience.
Posted July 26, 2011
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karx11erx: There is such an option, but it is controlled by the game host (server) in multiplayer games and visible to all participants. So if the hosting player turns it on and people don't like that, they can avoid his game. I have never seen "fast mouse" being enabled in a D2X-XL multiplayer game though.
I was mainly talking about single player since I'm not much of a multiplayer gamer aside from counter-strike :)

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wvpr: Mouse is slower sideways? I remember there was a speed difference with joystick, but my muscle memory is telling me it was faster to roll sideways and pull back than to push to the side.
In my experience it's the opposite - faster to roll and turn sideways than pulling up. Unless the Rebirth port changed something...

Just confirmed that with both the mouse and a joystick (360 controller) it takes about 2 seconds to complete a 360 degree sideways turn, and 4 seconds to complete a 360 degree vertical flip.
Post edited July 26, 2011 by kalirion
Posted July 26, 2011
kalirion,

that are the proper values, like in the original game. Pitch up/down is half as fast as turning in the other directions.
Post edited July 27, 2011 by karx11erx
Posted July 27, 2011
[removed]
Post edited July 27, 2011 by wvpr
Posted July 28, 2011
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karx11erx: I think he was talking about D2X-XL (using the Descent game data from GoG).
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TheCycoONE: I suppose I wasn't clear. I was using D2X-XL to run the GOG version of Decent 2 on Arch Linux. I was getting a segmentation fault on launch - which was quite likely my fault. I was using the latest SVN trunk at the time which I believe corresponded with one of the tags (maybe 1.15.215).

Knowing that other people have gotten it working with the game files I was using on the distribution I'm using is motivating to try again - maybe with debug information turned on and valgrind running if I get seg faults again.
There were some ... oddities a few months ago. I actually saw the other day that the AUR package needed updated, and I went ahead and put the things in my cart then. The CD I used was scratched and thus some things didn't work well, and I wanted a proper copy, and then got busy...

So yeah soon I will test this again, using Arch, etc. And I'll take karx11erx' advice and post to the bugtracker if there are issues. And prolly ping the aur maintainer if there's an issue as well (:
Posted July 29, 2011
During some testing I have performed yesterday I have noticed that a certain part of D2X-XL's renderer code tried to claim an insane amount of memory (~290 MB) from the operating system. When this failed, the program could subsequently crash when e.g. particle effects like smoke were created. Due to the huge amount of memory requested, the chance of failure was pretty high (particularly on machines with little memory or many other programs running in parallel). A new program version where this has been fixed is available now.
Post edited July 29, 2011 by karx11erx
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)Descent D2X-XL mod spotlight(56 posts)(56 posts)
(56 posts)