DLE-XP had always been the stepchild of D2X-XL development. After the initial rewrite of its user interface I was pretty comfortable with how it worked, and I usually only spent work on it to add stuff that was needed for improving D2X-XL. The first move of DLE-XP away from this state was when I began to port it to C#, and to make that easier and to have a working reference rebuilt the entire program in C++ from ground up, replacing as good as all old code from the times of DMB2. The biggest chunk of code that remained mainly untouched was the software texture renderer, and I even optimized and enhanced it to render transparency, (halfway) properly handle depth information and to work much faster than before.

Another step out of DLE-XP's state of neglection was the addition of the floating tool layout mode. This was something I had considered to do long time ago for those who were used to DMB2's cluttered multi-dialog interface, but had pretty quickly decided not to touch because emulating the DMB2 interface was not worth the huge amount of work required to implement it. More improvements had preceded the interface upgrade: Cleaning up crammed dialogs by putting tabbed elements into them and adding spin controls, making using the program easier and more comfortable.

Adding an OpenGL based renderer to support addition of triangular segment sides to D2X-XL was the final step of DLE-XP's out of its dusty little corner. The OpenGL renderer really opened the door to a whole new level of visual quality and versatility of DLE-XP and allowed for easily adding a first person editing view for those who are more comfortable with building their levels that way. Support for custom models and an improved lighting algorithm quickly followed. Next was support for textures from D2X-XL mods. The final improvement DLE-XP needed was support for ASE format custom models from D2X-XL mods. As icing on the cake DLE-XP will now display symbols for effect objects showing the type of effect they create.

DLE-XP has finally become something I can be satisfied with.