4 Dimensional D1 Level Released: Pentacircle

Perhaps this isn't specifically modded for D2X-XL but it is still a very interesting level that I feel people should take a look at.

Please visit the DBB Zappafan Level Spotlight Post I created for it here.

If you have any comments, you may reply here, or there. I will be reading everything.
There is a poll there where you can also vote the level up or down depending on your opinion of it.
That post also has some pics, including a map of the four dimensional connections.

Do these kinds of levels even work properly in XL? It's been a while since I checked...

Lobber,

I have downloaded the level, and it looks Good. There is a problem with this level though. Apparently you haven't placed light sources in it to illuminate it, but have set the lighting manually. This will result in D2X-XL rendering it mostly pitch black with any but basic lighting.

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Hmm... I don't know, could you look at it in D2X-XL and take a screenshot of it and post that? If it's not too much trouble that is.

The lava should provide light, as it is a texture designated to be a light source... also, the metal structure in four of the five phases all have a lighting texture along the middle edge. So if that is the lighting texture you seek, it is there, and it is the source of light for the level when I rendered it using the light rendering button in DLE. I did not illuminate it manually.

	Sirius wrote:
	Do these kinds of levels even work properly in XL? It's been a while since I checked...

Only one way to find out....

Eek - I have been looking at another level (Pentanarchy).

Edit: Pentacircle has good lighting for D2X-XL - and it's way cool! Thumbs Up

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So, what you are saying is, that D2X-XL re-renders the lighting in any level based upon whether or not wall textures have lights in them? Sounds to me like a problem with the coding Razz

Anyways, I did use light textures to create the lighting in Pentanarchy, then removed the light textures afte the lighting was rendered in DLE-XP. I was unaware that D2X-XL has a fit when the lights that were used to generate the lighting are removed after the lighting is rendered. That would make the majority of my levels pitch black dark.

Lobber,

I find your above mockery quite inappropriate and uneducated. This is not dbb.net.

D2X-XL has four lighting methods. The "basic" one uses the light values as set in DLE-XP, DMB2 or DEVIL. This one looks worst.

All others involve D2X-XL dynamically recalculating a level's illumination based on actual light sources present in level (actually every texture can be a light source - just assign a brightness and color to that texture in DLE-XP). These lighting modes - particularly the lightmap based ones - produce significantly better looking lighting than the static method used by the level editors mentioned.

Apart from that does it make more sense to place light sources in levels to produce the illumination than to arbitrarily put some "ghost" light in the level. You can however create some kind of diffuse ambient light by giving textures that frequently appear in your levels light values with DLE-XP (that method is fully compatible to all Descent versions, which will properly display levels statically lit that way).

There are tons of Descent levels out there that look good with all of D2X-XL lighting methods because their authors have been so reasonable to use light sources to light their levels - as one would expect.

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	karx11erx wrote:
	Lobber, I find your above mockery quite inappropriate and uneducated. This is not dbb.net.

I am truly sorry. I did not mean to offend you. I meant no offense, and only intended my joke to be a light hearted jab at you, hence the tongue in cheek emote: Razz

karx11erx wrote:

D2X-XL has four lighting methods. The "basic" one uses the light values as set in DLE-XP, DMB2 or DEVIL. This one looks worst.

All others involve D2X-XL dynamically recalculating a level's illumination based on actual light sources present in level (actually every texture can be a light source - just assign a brightness and color to that texture in DLE-XP). These lighting modes - particularly the lightmap based ones - produce significantly better looking lighting than the static method used by the level editors mentioned.

By assigning a brightness and color, do you mean to manually assign light brightness? I am probably not familiar with this function in DLE-XP, since I use the automated lighting button.

karx11erx wrote:

Apart from that does it make more sense to place light sources in levels to produce the illumination than to arbitrarily put some "ghost" light in the level. You can however create some kind of diffuse ambient light by giving textures that frequently appear in your levels light values with DLE-XP (that method is fully compatible to all Descent versions, which will properly display levels statically lit that way).

Is that function on the Lights Tab of DLE-XP?

	karx11erx wrote:
	There are tons of Descent levels out there that look good with all of D2X-XL lighting methods because their authors have been so reasonable to use light sources to light their levels - as one would expect.

You should know that the majority of my levels were created before D2X-XL came out, and the lighting was never an issue with OEM Descent, or even DXX Descent. The reason some of my levels have lighting without lights is for aesthetic reasons. The lighting textures may have been left out or removed after the lighting was calculated because leaving them in might make the level look gaudy, out of balance, or lose some artistic value. Since the version of descent that I usually play doesn't have an issue with this, I found it perfectly reasonable for my own levels to be made in this way. I would have to redo alot of my older levels just to bring them into playable lighting state for D2X-XL, and that is not a likely scenario because for the most part, I doubt very many players would even look at the old levels in the first place.

However, to be reasonable, as you put it, I will make sure that all of my new levels will have some light textures that remain after lights are calculated so they can be played in D2X-XL as well.

Again, please accept my apologies, I meant no disrespect.

Ok, ok.

You can assign a brightness (using the brightness slider) and color to a texture in the textures tab of DLE-XP (you need to click in the mine window after setting a brightness to make the color table appear and chose a color other than the first one). Make sure to check "use texture colors" in the preferences tab first. The two check boxes "use 1st" and "use 2nd" tell DLE-XP on which texture to operate (if both are checked, the base texture takes precedence over the overlay texture). That means you can basically make every texture a light emitting texture as you see fit (you could e.g. overload some rock texture with a light texture and subsequently make that light texture emit light). DLE-XP will put these values into extra tables in the hog file. Other Descent versions simply ignore these, but DLE-XP (by using the lighting function) and D2X-XL use them for light calculations. If you use them with DLE-XP for the static light calculation, the level will look as intended with other Descent versions, too. Only light emitting overlay (2ndary) textures will have coronas in D2X-XL (that means you can make the wall textures emit some "ambient" light - e.g. 7% - w/o them having coronas, which would look awkward).

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Pentacircle 2.0 for D2 is released!

Hmm..
Whenever I wanted lights on a surface without using a light texture I always just set the secondary texture to be "empty - light"
Not sure whether or not that makes a huge, square-sized corona or not.

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No it doesn't - but only because D2X-XL explicity suppresses coronas for that case because it has been so widely used since you couldn't set the brightness of arbitrary textures. DLE-XP's approach is much more flexible and allows different brightness values for different textures, and not just a single uniform one as the empty-light texture method does.

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