Enhancements

• SDL2 and floating point math throughout 2.0
• Much faster: the entire mine is one mesh, all robots of one type go out in a single draw 2.0
• Everything that can be computed ahead is computed once per level and cached
• Multithreading: robot AI, particles, visibility, lights and tessellation run in parallel
• Nothing depends on the frame rate: everything timed runs on a fixed time step and is the same for every player
• Descent 1 and Descent 2 in a single program

Worklog: Code Cleanup Optimizations Caches and Crash Reports

• Lightmaps baked on the graphics card: soft shadows, bounced and ambient light, even detail all over a level 2.0
• Hardware raytracing 2.0
• Light portals: light falls through opening doors and vanishing walls 2.0
• Volumetric halos around lamps 2.0
• Shadows of ships and robots that end at the first wall
• Lamps can flicker, be shot out and be switched by triggers

Worklog: Lighting and Color

• Displacement mapping 2.0
• Hardware tessellation for rock, water and lava 2.0
• Cartoon style significantly improved 2.0
• Joints for the robots' limbs 2.0
• Skies with clouds and changing weather 2.0
• High resolution 3D models for ships, weapons and powerups

Worklog: Textures Hardware Tessellation Cartoon Style Robot Joints Skybox and Weather

• Explosions with shock waves, heat waves and shrapnel
• Smoke: damaged ships and robots, missile trails shaded as one body
• Lightning, glow and energy shields that show when hit
• Ships spawn inside a ball of plasma 2.0
• Thruster flames
• Snow, rain and air bubbles

Worklog: Effects

• Health bar above the target and a lock ring for the target a missile is tracking 2.0
• Weapon and equipment icons that show their state
• Zoom modes for sniper weapons, with a sniper reticle
• Radar
• Cockpit windows in several sizes, positions and zoom levels
• Cockpit, status bar and letterbox view at every resolution
• Compact HUD
• External view, chase camera and free camera

Worklog: Target Indicators and HUD Icons Target And Damage Indicators Equipment HUD Icons RADAR Revisited

• New difficulty level: Insane++ 2.0
• Homing missiles go for the target closest to your crosshair that you can see 2.0
• More aggressive Mega Missiles; smart missiles spread over several targets
• Collisions with proper physics; advanced damage model with hitboxes and module damage
• Slow motion and bullet time
• Patrolling robots
• Triple fusion, dual missile launch, smoke grenades

Worklog: Robot AI Homing Missile Targeting Mega Missiles Collisions Slow Motion And Speed

• Entropy
• Monsterball, similar to the one found in Descent 3
• Darkness: all lamps of a level are turned off, and the players have to rely on headlights, flares and weapon light
• Competition mode, which disables or limits D2X-XL specific extensions
• Up to 16 players per match
• Team games: automatic team balancing, joining matches in progress

Worklog: Flag Towing Monsterball Game Mode In D2X-XL

• New trigger types: master triggers, cascading triggers, robot triggers, teleports, messages
• Hub levels that keep their state 2.0
• New object types: cameras with monitors, sound and effect objects
• Wedge and pyramid shaped segments
• Speed boost areas, repair centers, several bosses in a level
• Custom spawn points, per mission configuration

Worklog: Triggers, Doors and Hub Levels New Trigger Types Message Triggers New Camera Object Sound Effect Objects Triangular Segment Sides

• Segment splitter 2.0
• Software tessellation: round structures, increase surface detail 2.0
• Ambient light per segment 2.0
• Diagnosis that repairs defective segments; export for Overload 2.0
• Tunnel generator

Worklog: DLE DLE: Improved Tunnel Generator More: DLE pages