Oops, he did it again! This time MetalBeast presents us an even more gorgeous remake of Eagle's gorgeous Pyro, ironing out all the flaws in his ship model. And if that wasn't enough, his new model was the incentive for me to finally add support for the widespread ASE scene and model format of 3D Studio Max.

That is truly a big leap in D2X-XL modding, because it opens a world of powerful and flexible model editing tools for the D2X-XL modders, and brings fully animated high resolution 3D models for D2X-XL within reach. It also means bye bye to the gruesome OOF format that until now was the only choice for having high resolution models in D2X-XL. Together with the high resolution texture and sound projects this even finally makes a fully free game data set for D2X-XL thinkable and feasible.

MetalBeast and I have worked out a few modeling conventions that make it easy to compute gun muzzle, missile ports and thruster positions in-game. You simply need to put 2 face, 4 vertex submodels with the following names at the desired positions in the model:

• $gunpnt-0, $gunpnt-1: Inner wing mounted gun muzzles (dual laser)
• $gunpnt-2, $gunpnt-3: Outer wing mounted gun muzzles (quad laser)
• $gunpnt-4, $gunpnt-5: Winglet missile mounts
• $gunpnt-6: Fuselage mounted gun muzzles (e.g. Gauss, Helix, Omega)
• $gunpnt-7: Fuselage missile mount (e.g. Mega)
• thrusterL, thrusterR: Engine thrusters

Another extension allows the addition of custom missile models.

• $bomb-X: Custom model for fuselage mounted missile X
X = 0: Smart, 1: Mega, 2: Earth Shaker missile
• $missileX-Y: Custom model for winglet mounted missile type X at position Y
X = 0: Concussion, 1: Homing, 2: Flash, 3: Guided, 4: Mercury
Y = 0: Upper left, 1: upper right, 2: lower left, 3: lower right winglet position

The third extension allows the addition of custom gun models and rotating barrels.

• $gunX-Y: Gun X at position Y
• $barrelX-Y: Gun barrel X at position Y
• X = 0: Laser, 1: Vulcan, 2: Spreadfire, 3: Plasma, 4: Fusion
• X = 5: Superlaser, 6: Gauss, 7: Helix, 8: Phoenix, 9: Omega
• Y = 1,2: inner left, right position or Fusion center position
• Y = 3,4: outer left, right position

Define a bullet casing ejection point with a submodel named $bullets submodel (2 faces, 4 vertices like the gunpoints, the faces' normals must point towards the ejection direction of bullet casings). Put it slightly inside the gun model ejecting bullet casings.