New D2 Level Notification Thread

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 3:32 am

sammy wrote:o.k. . i have a descent2 level for 1-player, but no place on the internett to put it for sharing. (the level - 3192''vertices'' . 900 cubes . 254 walls . 225 objects. .big.) if anyone wants to play this level, tell me?-> maybe i can kibbe some space from someone i know . .

Send it to karx11erx at hotmail dot com. I'll take a look at it, and if it's good (imo), I'll host in in my Descent Site's 3rd player level area. If you like.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 3:34 am

DCRazy,

this is the forum for all "Old Skool" Descent, i.e. D1 + D2 stuff.

Posting such stuff in the other forums would drown it in all the D3 related contributions. Therefore this imo is the right place for all D1 + D2 stuff.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 6:07 am

TheGriffin wrote:I have a quick question. I tried taking snapshots of a few missions in dle-xp using alt-printscreen to give myself a visual reference of which are which, but the window frame gets pasted into the image as well. How are you getting these images without the window borders?

Crop. If you don't have any decent image editing application, take screenshot, paste in Paint, select the area you actually want to see, cut, create a new image and paste again.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 6:15 am

I paste the DLE-XP screenshots to PSP 9 and crop the areas I want to keep, as Sirius said.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 7:28 am

Ok, a bit of news there.

Level ... set, now, it has 3 old levels in it.
Level 1: Pyrite Station 100%
Level 2: Trident Smelting Colony
Structure 100%
Objects 5% at best (I haven't really started on it)
Level 3: Incineration (I think)
Structure 50-70% (depending how much else I feel like adding)
Objects 0%

Finished making all the final touches to Pyrite Station just tonight. Playtested it a few times to iron out bugs/things that didn't work as planned.

One comment. I hate my reactor room now. It's hellishly hard, at least on Hotshot. Once/if you get this set, just beware...

You CAN cheat the system if you see it coming, though. It'll take some time to clear out all the same, but it should be safe enough. Just a lot of work.

Oh, and it is all custom robots. I didn't replace the reactor since I don't have a reactor model lying around and I've heard bad things about replacing them anyway, but everything else is new.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Mon Jun 20, 2005 3:35 am

Another update.

Set name is Legacy of Chaos.
Level 2 (Trident Smelting Colony) complete. No further work on level 3 yet.

Edit: 'Cheating the system' makes things significantly easier. You still have to be a decent pilot not to get ripped up by the swarms of fire that come your way, but you don't have to be Superman just to live through it.

I think I completed the room the 'dumb' way without dying on Hotshot, once.

Level 2 is much easier. Still have to be careful because you're going to get mauled if you don't kill things reasonably safely.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Tue Jun 21, 2005 1:21 pm

Looking forward to your new creations.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Wed Jun 22, 2005 12:59 am

Been working on level 3 today. Added 70ish cubes... and now I've run into that deadlock between the beginning and the end of the level where I'm not sure what to do with it.

Nonetheless, I think it's a relatively small part. I'll get there soon enough.

The other problem with it is, it's not originally my level. So extending it in a way that stays at least reasonably true to the original style isn't too easy...

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 2:28 am

Okay, now I probably am at that 70-75% structure stage. Much better idea of what is left to go in the level now... as it turns out, only about three or four rooms.

Including the boss room, though.

Edit: Okay... time to take a break I think. 584 cubes so far, boss room complete, most of ... everything done. There will be a bit more structure to come though. I'd expect the cube count to register in the high 600s... so much for a small level.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 11:56 pm

Yeah right.

Structure, texturing and trigger setups done (okay, mostly on the triggers). Objects yet to come but I'll probably finish them tonight.

785 cubes. And I'm looking at running walls right up against the limit as well... at least within 10. But anyway... it is a final level I guess.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 9:19 am

Everything's done... it winds up as a 264 KB zip file. The accompanying document might be interesting to some of you as a bit of an inside look at a few of the things that happened at Ellusion Design and DNet over 99-01... I do go into considerable detail about the histories of everything I put into this set.

Edit: Oh, and before I forget soemthing obvious; since it's ridiculously late at the moment, I'll work on getting it uploaded somewhere tomorrow.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 6:09 pm

Done, and I managed to find somewhere to get my website back to upload it. (Rather amusingly, the original service came back, and I signed up again about two days ago - then come this morning to find it's shut down for good. Yay...)

Download (264 KB)

Sapphire Wolf · Post by **Sapphire Wolf** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 9:40 pm

Sirius, that 3 level mission is great! The robots are intresting.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:02 am

Thanks... glad you liked it.

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 8:17 pm

I'll see if I can get your level (and, for that matter, most of the other ones in the thread

) on PD this weekend.

Kyouryuu · Post by **Kyouryuu** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 2:35 pm

Hmm, I tried your mission pack. Maybe a bit too much lava for me.

You should experiment more with asymmetrical designs and lighting contrasts. Pyrite Station, in particular, felt very bright and symmetrical.

(Yes, I know I'm being a hypocrite, but in my later levels, I came to the conclusion that symmetry is quite boring to play in unless it's a multiplayer level. Even if a level is somewhat symmetrical by having a 90-degree bend in it somewhere, it's better than having it be all/nearly symmetrical. At the very least, it makes me want to explore side corridors, instead of presuming that it must invariably lead to a copy of the same robot configuration and architecture).

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 7:40 pm

Yeah, I kinda got over that a couple years later.

(The root of Pyrite Station's symmetricality came from 99... before a number of the levels of Obsidian were finished, I think. Trident Smelting Colony probably takes the cake for evil amounts of symmetry though.

Only difference is the secret doors.)

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 10:18 am

Glass House reloaded
I have re-textured my tech demo level Glass House using D3 textures and showing off the new custom animation tech by adding scrolling text screens, and more stuff. Here's an appetizer:

and another one:

spud · Post by **spud** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 7:21 pm

Wow, that looks great Diedel, any chance us testers could play around in that level?

spud

Aus-RED-5 · Post by **Aus-RED-5** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 4:36 am

spud wrote:Wow, that looks great Diedel, any chance us testers could play around in that level?

spud

Here is the direct link. But you can get any of his levels from his website.
http://www.brockart.de/descent/

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 4:39 am

spud,

if you guys want to play a fun level, try Speed!, too. I have built it especially with fast&furious multiplayer in mind. Glass House is pretty big and rather suited for 8 players (I guess it could even hold 16, if D2 allowed for so many).

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 5:23 pm

Diedel wrote:(I guess it could even hold 16, if D2 allowed for so many).

I assume this would be possible - but how difficult would it be to increase the cap? Naturally you wouldn't be able to play in these games without W32, though...

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 5:32 pm

The current multiplayer data structures cannot be easily changed to support more players; I have already tried to do that. I would either need to implement a complete new network data processing path, or render D2X-W32 incompatible with all other D2 versions.

Before ppl really start to play new levels with new game features (Entropy, enhanced CTF) though, I see no reason to support more players. Nobody would make use of that anyway, I assume.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 5:48 pm

The idea did occur to me... often we have enough trouble filling an 8-player game, except of course at Revivals.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 4:52 am

Styx Revised

I have revised Styx, an old multiplayer level of mine, and have enhanced it considerably. Get it and take a look.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 5:40 am

Ummm ... no comments on Styx?

Aus-RED-5 · Post by **Aus-RED-5** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 5:47 am

heh... sorry haven't had the time to even look at it.
Just from the pic on here. Looks cool.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 6:12 am

I had edited it a little last night - just a few touch-ups. It looks even cooler now.

DarkHorse · Post by **DarkHorse** » Sat Oct 08, 2005 11:18 pm

Texture misalignments look pretty evil on high-resolution texture maps.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sun Oct 09, 2005 2:16 am

That's all you have to say about the level? Oh thanks.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 5:23 pm

I have worked a little over the first level of my singleplayer campaign "Warp Shockwave", and I am pretty satisfied with the result - the level is more polished now.

I will touch up the others too in the coming weeks.

DarkFlameWolf · Post by **DarkFlameWolf** » Fri Oct 14, 2005 7:47 pm

man! I'm feeling kinda crappy with my level set. I'd be too afraid to even release my set amongst these awesome contributors!

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 6:31 am

Wolf,

I've been working over and over and over and over my levels to reach their current state, looking at other level designer's levels and at other games to be inspired and get a better idea of how to produce good looking levels with a realistic feel or just some impressive appearance. So just keep on trying ... and if you want to see truly great D2 level building, take a look at Kruel's works, esp. the single player missions (Kryllidian Krusade, Konflikt At Karon, Ice Kave I+II, Koolkave I++II).

DarkFlameWolf · Post by **DarkFlameWolf** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 9:31 am

already have. I looked at his works long before I even started on my first mission campaign: Bahagad Outbreak. I even request him to do the last boss room for that mission (and he did!) because I was inexperienced at that time. Lost Levels, the 25 level set I made after Bahagad Outbreak was an even better level making accomplishment with some great level designs towards the end of the set. But now, with all this skill behind me, I have to try and be better than ever with this new set. Its very pressuring.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 12:57 pm

It's a pity you don't make it a D2X-W32 level set, with all the extra features that would make accessible for you.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 4:57 pm

Well, yeah, but I guess there's not a lot she can do when she can't test or play her own levels...

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 5:50 pm

Errr ...

"she"?

Doesn't have a computer?

That can run D2X-W32 or what?

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 9:05 pm

Yes, she.

I just remember from the announcement thread that D2X-W32 wouldn't work or something...

DarkFlameWolf · Post by **DarkFlameWolf** » Sun Oct 16, 2005 7:23 am

with regards to my level set or basically any work I do, my sex is irrelevant. Just enjoy the levels. As for D2x-W32, I've tried all sorts of ways to get that dang thing to work, and none have succeeded. So after hours of making it work, I've given it up and decided to use plain ol' Descent 2 to create my new level set. At least this way, both those who have D2x-W32 can play it and those that don't can play it. More audience.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sun Oct 16, 2005 8:02 am

Do you have problems with your sex?

Obviously you suppose I do, which I don't. I was just surprised, because females in the world of Descent are rare.

Mind telling me your hardware specs once more (video, audio, cpu, ram, OS)?