Have you ever been looking at the automap, desperately trying to figure your way through the mess of lines displayed to you in a complex level, wishing it would be just a little more informative and intelligible? I did often enough. The textured Descent 3 automap was a step in the right direction, but its gruesome texturing scheme did its best to confuse the player seeking help in it.

So I recently started to ponder on adding a fully textured automap in D2X-XL, and found out it was really easy to implement. Now you can view the level you are exploring in fully colored and lit three dimensional splendor:

To ease finding one's way through it, you can have D2X-XL render it fully bright:

You can also view all powerups if you have turned that feature on:

And even the robots are presented to you if desired:

Neat, huh?