D2X-XL Bug Fixes And Enhancements

Fixed And Improved Controls Mouse sensitivity no longer depends on frame rate. Joystick setup not crashing any more. Joystick fully working in D2X. Added deadzone configuration. Added full dual joystick support. smoothed periodic frame rate break-ins when running D2X-XL on Win2K (by removing unnecessary calls to SDL input device polling). Improved automap control. Enabled auto repeat function for keyboard scrolling in all menus. Made silent keys (caps lock, num lock) useable for ship control. Generally fixed turn speed Limited single axis rotation speed to approx. 2 seconds for 360 degrees (cheat-safe). Added keyboard ramping. Can be enabled separately for forward/backward, rotation and slide keys. Added mouselook and fast pitch (controlled by the game host in multiplayer games). Added mouse wheel support. Added joystick emulation by mouse. Fixed Program Crashes Removed a lot of possible causes for CTDs by removing all output to stderr. Triggers targetting single sided walls do not crash the game any more. Fixed a bug where D2X would hang in very complex levels with lots of interconnections. Fixed program crash when not being able to load a level. Fixed program crash caused by briefings, esp. if the briefing file had the same name as the level file. Rendering Fixes And Enhancements Enabled OpenGL depth buffer, thus eliminating disappearing walls. Fixed full screen toggle not working. Fixed cloaked wall display (were always rendered black). Added colored water and lava segments. Fixed invisible menu texts. Added many desktop and notebook screen resolutions plus a custom resolution option. Completely reworked cockpit rendering. Made menus and automap use the game screen resolution, thus eliminating switching between screen modes. Added menu hotkey highlighting. Menu hotkeys will now immediately execute the selected option. Fixed disappearing menus and garbled mission briefings. Added external ship view (reticle intentionally missing). Toggle with Alt+F12. Support for high resolution and true color (TGA) textures (up to 1024x1024x32). Added colored lights and vertex lighting! You can create levels containing colored lights with DLE-XP. Full cockpit and letterbox view enabled. Cockpit view and status bar view enabled for all resolutions. Transparent explosions like in the 3dfx version. Completely overhauled color and palette handling. Improved texture management. Lightmap support. Chase camera and free camera modes. Added new menu style, allowing a match to continue in the background while the menu is displayed. D2X-XL supports custom menu background images that can additionally be adjusted to the user's wishes. Particle system for smoke effects (damaged ships and robots, thruster and missile smoke trails). Nice thruster flames for player ships. 3D shield spheres surrounding player ships, changing color when hit and intensity depending on shield strength. Dynamically computed colored per vertex or per pixel lighting. Full lightmap support Real time shadowing for all objects. Coronas for bright lights Fully textured and lit automap In CTF games, the flag can now be towed behind the ships. Gameplay Enhancements Fixed guided/homing missile turn rate depending on frame rate. Added repair center support (can be added to a level with DLE-XP). Added friendly fire toggle. Added a switch forcing powerups to respawn in the segments where the level author had placed them in. If there are several segments containing the same type of powerup, one of these segments not currently containing such a powerup will be randomly chosen to respawn a powerup. Re-established "classic" CTF: The game host can now chose whether to offer a classic or enhanced CTF game in "game options", "more options". Clients can set the CTF mode in the Toggles menu. As there is currently no way to tell every participant in a match whether the game host is offering a classic or enhanced CTF game, every client needs to set the proper mode before joining a netgame. Added a cockpit window automap view as kind of a RADAR. Can be turned off by the game host in multiplayer (uncheck "Show All Players On Automap" in "more game options"). Can be toggled between top down and heads up view with the cockpit window toggle keys (Shift+F1/F2). Robots can now hit other robots (that doesn't mean they attack each other; it simply means that if a shot or missile fired by a robot hits another robot, it will damage that robot). Can be toggled in the Toggles menu. There are two different types of zooming available for sniper weapons (Vulcan, Gauss). Set in cockpit options menu. Control is freely customizeable. (Only available in single player.) Add in-level teleport trigger instantanteously transporting the player to some other location in the level. It is possible to specify several target locations; in that case a target location will be chosen randomly every time a player triggers a teleport. Added an weapon auto-select toggle so you can decide yourself whether D2 will change your weapon in the middle of a firefight, leaving you unarmed for precious seconds, or not. Custom robot settings will be reset after each level. Improved team game handling: In team games a team indicator (arrow) is now shown in front of the player's team name. You can now join team games in progress. D2X-XL supports team auto-balancing. New players will be put on the smaller, and if teams are equally sized, the weaker team. If team auto-balancing is enabled, teams will only be changed if the smaller team is also the weaker team (doesn't make much sense to take away players from the losing team, does it? If the game host has disabled automatic team balancing, players can switch teams by pressing Alt+Strg+T. If a player switches teams, his ship will be destroyed and he will respawn as his new team's member. Custom model data will now be loaded properly. Flashing text 'TYPING...' is displayed over a player's ship if the player is typing. Dual missile launch option. Speed boost areas like in Descent 3. The speed boost can be controlled in the gameplay options menu. Cameras allowing to place monitors in a level showing what's going on elsewhere. Support for several bosses in a level. Level will end only if the last boss robot is killed. Support for bot triggers. These are triggered by destruction of the bots they are assigned to. A bot can have multiple triggers. Support for up to 5000 segments, 2046 walls, 254 standard and bot triggers each, 700 bots and 3500 objects total. Improved mission handling by allowing sub directories in the mission folder. Improved data organization by supporting the following subdirectories of the game folder: data: put all game data here (*.pig, *.hog, *.256, etc.) config: put all config files here (*.cfg, *.ini) models: put all hires models here (*.oof) movies: put all movie files here (*.mvl) profiles: put all player profiles here (*.plr) savegames: put all save games here (*.sg?) textures: put all hires textures here (*.tga) Use of these folders is optional; if d2x-xl finds one of them, it will however only look there for the related data. Robot triggers (activated on destruction of robot, except with camera triggers). New camera object type with freely editable polygon model. To create a camera model, create a custom robot with the desired shape and texturing, save it in a file named 'cambot.hxm' and place that file in the Descent 2 main or data folder. A nice camera model built by jakee308 from the DescentBB is provided in the d2x-xl download. Missile lock, target and damage indicators. Improved collision handling using hit boxes instead of spheres and proper reflection angles. Slow motion and speed (bullet time) modes Enhanced CTF Mode Flags will always spawn in their home base after scoring A team can only score when their flag is in their home base A team can return their flag to its home base by touching it Spawn points can be made team-specific by placing them in segments that are flag goals belonging to that team (i.e. spawn points placed in red flag goals will only be used for red team's players). D2X will mark such segments when loading the level and convert them to normal segments to avoid having unwanted flag goals. Enhanced CTF can be enabled by the game host in the "More Game Options" menu. Improved Cockpit Windows You can increase cockpit window size with Shift+F3 (4 sizes available). You can assign various positions to cockpit windows with Ctrl+F3 (top/bottom, in the corners, between corners and middle, in the middle). You can increase cockpit window zoom with Shift+Ctrl+F3 (4 zoom stages available). Fixed the partially missing blue cockpit window frame. HUD icons You can display all weapons as icons and see what you have and what is armed at a glance. Additionally, you can display equipment icons in the HUD. Sort weapon icons by weapon power or selection priorities. Multimedia Fixes Enabled sound Enabled movie playback and fixed hires movie lib usage Midi music playback added (depending on midi device, volume control may not work though). Support for user supplied menu and level songs in MP3 and OGG/Vorbis formats added. Networking Enhancements Fixed networking code, re-enabling KALI support. Fixed several bugs in the network code inhibiting or delaying joining multiplayer matches in progress. Allowed joining multiplayer team games in progress. Improved powerup handling in multiplayer games. Enabled direct internet connections via UDP/IP. Added level auto download function. To enable auto downloads, both the game host and the client must have this option checked in the toggles menu. The game host will then download its current mission to the clients who do not have that mission, or who have an outdated version of it. Added Entropy game mode. Added Monsterball game mode. Added tracker support. Supports Descent 1. Supports full localization. (German translation already available.) Use the nostalgia mode to make D2X-XL look & feel almost exactly like the Descent 2 of 1996.