Following a proposition made in the forum I have decided to allow up to 16 players in D2X-XL multiplayer maps. Actually I had tried to do that a two or three years ago already, but the state of the code at that time made it so hard to stay compatible with the other Descent 2 versions around that I had turned away from the idea.

Having rebuilt D2X-XL into a C++ application allowed to increase the maximum player number for multiplayer games to 16 rather easily now by using classes for the version specific data types, and so D2X-XL will now support up 16 players in UDP/IP games while being still fully compatible to other Descent 2 versions in IPX (KALI) games. It wasn't possible to base the maximum player number on level type since the host only loads a level after launching the game. Since D2X-XL is only compatible to itself in UDP/IP mode, allowing up to 16 players in matches played using UDP/IP isn't a problem though due to a few more changes I made to ensure that D2X-XL doesn't accept more players to a game than the selected level can hold.

To achieve that, D2X-XL will now disconnect any players the host admitted to a game who are in excess of available player starts in the chosen map. Unfortunately this can only be decided after the game has been launched, since the map only gets loaded then, so the game host will get a message that there are too many players and the excess players will be told that the game is full. D2X-XL will also not admit players trying to join a game in progress if the game is full, i.e. has as many players as start locations already. I am not entirely sure of it, but from what I could see from the code, the original Descent 2 didn't make any such checks.

I didn't want to do any big things with D2X-XL anymore, but I consider this change being one. It's quite exciting to see how all the bits and pieces I had envisioned for D2X-XL at one time or another fall at their places when their time has come.

Here is a list of currently available 12+ player maps:

• Diedel's Playground (D3) - actually a bit cramped with more than 8 players
• Fire & Steel (XL) - spacious, very 3D map
• Forest (Yokelassence w/ modifications by me) - maybe a tad narrow
• Pyromaniac (me) - spacious map which should play well with 12 players
• Pyrotechnica (D3) - retextured and beefed up; will see how well it plays with more than 8 players
• Scorpion's Lair (Sirius) - large symmetrical map
• Speed (me, worked over the texturing - the map looks much better now)
• Styx (D3) (me) - perfect 16 player map with complex layout and very high connectivity
• Subspace (me, taken from Boiling Point) - very open map (maybe too open for weaker machines)
• TombZ Of D3zTruKtion (D3) (me) - another perfect 16 player map with high connectivity
• With Flying Colors (me) - CTF+ map for 16 players