D2X-XL Q&A

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:36 pm

please understand that I know very VERY little about linux.
\"For sdl and sdl_mixer run './configure; make; make install'\" I need a where... like is this a terminal thing or is a point and klick.

The instructions aren't really that vague, it's that I'm still learning the basics.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 5:44 pm

'cd' means <change directory>. If you open a terminal (right click on desktop and chose 'terminal' - assuming you're using a graphical desktop shell) you're dropped in a window with a command prompt (similar to good ole DOS) in your personal folder. To move to other folders, type e.g. 'cd ./d2x-xl'. Note that Linux usually assumes that a file or folder is located at the file system root unless you prefix it with './' (meaning <here>).

If you download the rar files, use fileroller to extract them to folders of your choice. I have them in my personal folder (/home/<username>), e.g.

/usr/home/Diedel/SDL-1.2.11
/usr/home/Diedel/SDL_mixer-1.2.7
/usr/home/Diedel/d2x-xl

Regard that file and folder names are case sensitive in Linux.

Open a terminal, cd to each each in the sequence given above, and type the commands I posted previously. To change to superuser mode, enter 'su' (w/o quotes) and press return. You'll be asked for the root (admin) password then. Enter it, and you will find yourself at a command prompt again. Type 'make install' <return>. Once it's finished, type 'exit' <return>.

If executing the commands required to make d2x-xl fails due to some missing permissions/priviliges, the simplest thing is to execute them as superuser as well. A better way would be to set write access for all files and folders the scripts want to access but aren't allowed to in normal user mode. To do that, enter superuser mode and type e.g. 'chmod 0777 autogen.sh' <return>, 'chmod 0666 ./autom4te.cache' <return> and 'chmod 0666 ./autom4te.cache/requests').

To execute d2x-xl once you have successfully compiled everything, you can e.g. cd to your d2x-xl folder in a terminal and type './d2x-xl' <return> (note the './' prefix here again to tell Linux the file to be executed resides in the current folder).

Shadowfury333 · Post by **Shadowfury333** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 5:56 pm

Diedel wrote:Note that Linux usually assumes that a file or folder is located at the file system root unless you prefix it with './' (meaning <here>).

Interesting, in Mac OS X, if you type 'cd <directory>' it assumes ./<directory>. I'll have to keep that in mind if I ever use Linux.

Also Duper, by ..cd he meant 'cd ..' which brings you to the parent directory(the folder containing the folder that you were just browsing).

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 6:09 pm

The cd command does not require the ./ prefix, but cp (copy) or mv (move) e.g. do.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 6:24 pm

thanks guys!

Watching Drakona's vid (the one she posted in the E&C) right now. .. I'll give it another go. I'm in XP right now. Linux doesn't play a lot of the vids. yet. I still need to install wine (as I've been told) and some of the plug ins.
..but that's a different thread.

Shadowfury333 · Post by **Shadowfury333** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 6:26 pm

Diedel wrote:The cd command does not require the ./ prefix, but cp (copy) or mv (move) e.g. do.

thanks for the info.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Mon Sep 18, 2006 10:02 pm

oh yea .. DUH!!

geez. like changing directories in Dos or in any windows.

Sheesh.

...btw.. I found a compiler.

Great.. can't get 1.2.7 to go. It tells me I need 1.2.10 and I installed 1.2.11
GAH! why is always the high road for me???

/me bangs head on keyboard...

ok.. as it's going through it's check list.. there are a lot of \"no's\"

Also, make install didn't work. There was a slightly different string that was needed to use on 1.2. for 1.2.11 ./configure was needed as there is not \"install\" script.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:40 am

Did you use the SDL and SDL_mixer source from my Descen t site? I used it for installing everything on 64 bit Linux, and compiling it worked out of the box. You need to compile and install SDL before SDL_mixer though.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 9:36 am

No. I got them from the SDL site that was linked on the instruction page. and yea, I got the order right.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 11:14 pm

ok, I followed the link on your site. It went to the SDL site. Current version is 1.2.11 apparantly when they make the 1.2.7 patch they didn't take that into account.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 1:46 am

SDL_mixer 1.2.7 or what?

SDL_mixer just uses the installed SDL version. Just make sure to make and make install SDL before SDL_mixer.

Aus-RED-5 · Post by **Aus-RED-5** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 12:24 am

Ok this is the first time I have ever seen this happen before.

In D2X-XL v1.8.5, if you have 8 homing missile and you pick up a 4 pack of homing missiles.
It spits out 2 of the homing missiles to make room for the 4 pack you just picked up.

Is that ment to happen?

Does this happen in dos/win95 versions of D2 as well?

I can't remember.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 1:05 am

Don't you think that is a cool feature? Before, if you picked up too many 4packs, some missiles were lost. That is particularly annoying in multiplayer games.

Aus-RED-5 · Post by **Aus-RED-5** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 1:09 am

Yeah looks good, though I haven't seen how this plays in MP yet.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 2:13 am

Actually I don't think it has much of an impact on MP games, as the 4packs get split when players use them anyway, and there will hardly a player be able to gather so many 4packs of one kind at the start of a match. I noticed that the missiles you couldn't hold were lost though when doing some networking testing, and I decided that this was no good.

Shadowfury333 · Post by **Shadowfury333** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:38 pm

This was posted over in the announcements thread, but in the interest of order I've decided to repost it here:

Shadowfury333 wrote:
Chaos Death Saurer wrote:How do you get those third person viwes of the Pyro? Another Pyro acting as camera, or a secret cheat?
judging by the crosshair on the screen, I'm placing my money on "another pyro".

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 1:34 am

For the regular external view I am just changing the 'eye point' to a position behind and slightly above the pyro. To make the chase cam 'lag' a little behind the ship, I record the last 20 ship positions with a scanning frequency of 40 fps and always use the least recent position.

The reticle is not really tied to a ship, but drawn 2D on the final rendered scene, hence it may be visible with certain cockpit types.

For screen shots like the one with the towed flag, I am using another ship in a multiplayer game though, as I have no way to change chase cam pos in external view.

Shadowfury333 · Post by **Shadowfury333** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 5:31 pm

Diedel wrote:'Darkness' expanded

Darkness games can now be played with standard lighting enabled.

wouldn't that defeat the purpose?

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 2:23 am

You misunderstood. On purpose?

Shadowfury333 · Post by **Shadowfury333** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 6:35 am

Diedel wrote:You misunderstood. On purpose?

What?

I didn't misunderstand, it's just that Darkness with lights seems somewhat self-contradictory.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 7:16 am

Ofc I was talking about the lighting method that was enabled. The first darkness version only worked with the new lighting method.

Note: Even to have no light, you need to apply a lighting algorithm.

Weyrman · Post by **Weyrman** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 12:56 am

Can someone point me to a freeware text editor that will edit d2x.ini without corrupting it please.

Ta

Aus-RED-5 · Post by **Aus-RED-5** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 6:12 am

Wouldn't this question be best in the Tech forum where more people can answer this?

Moving on.........
What?
Windows XP NotePad doesn't do what you want it to do?

Anyways.
There is TextPad - kinda freeware. No 30 day trail period. Though it has a nagging splash screen, but thats about it.
Though I don't know about the updated versions of it now.

Weyrman · Post by **Weyrman** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 6:40 am

Oh, didn't think about putting it in the tech forum,
anyways......
the new format of the ini file gets screwed up when I open it with notepad and descent doesn't read it.

Diedel, suggested Ultra Edit, which I got, but after the trial time runs out I don't want to buy it if I can use a freeware file to do something I need to do only every now and then.

So thanks for the reference, I will have a look

Aus-RED-5 · Post by **Aus-RED-5** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 6:54 am

hummm... whats with this new format for the d2x.ini file?
Why should we use it?

I've never used it.
I use my old d2x.ini format, and I don't have any probs with it.

Weyrman · Post by **Weyrman** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 7:35 am

Ask the master

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 5:47 pm

Uh-oh, you don't have a text editor that can handle newline-only line breaks?

Weyrman · Post by **Weyrman** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 5:59 pm

Obviously no

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 6:00 pm

You can manually insert line breaks with Textpad.

Aus-RED-5 · Post by **Aus-RED-5** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 2:12 am

Descent2.de site wrote:v1.8.27

New: Monsterball is a true 3D sphere now

Ok, does this mean its a model and not an image?

If its a model, where is the download for it?

The site only has the textures for download.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 3:00 am

The model is created in-game (like the shield spheres for the player ships). All you need to do is get the monsterball texture archive once again and unpack it to the textures folder. I have chosen a D3 texture for the monsterball, but actually you can give it any texture you like: Just place it in the textures folder and name it 'monsterball.tga' (it has to be a TGA image, obviously

).

Aus-RED-5 · Post by **Aus-RED-5** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 6:53 am

descent2.de wrote:News
10/19/06
# Added new hires textures

Ummmm where?
The d/l section doesn't say which ones are the new textures.

Do I need to re-download all the textures again just to get the new textures?

Oh and I take it these new textures are the ones that TB sent ya?

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 7:27 am

Yes, it's TB's textures. You need to re-download the rock, door and signs texture packs to get them. Sorry, no deltas yet.

Weyrman · Post by **Weyrman** » Sat Nov 11, 2006 9:20 pm

Hey Diedel,

What are these SSE instructions that are causing the grief on win32 machines. What difference does using them make?

Just curious.

Weyrman

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 2:54 am

They allow to execute up to 4 floating point operations (add, subtract, multiply, divide, square root) simultaneously. Perfect for 3D vector operations. Actually, SSE is a processor extension Intel introduced a long time ago. As I compile D2X-XL on a 64 bit machine, I am wondering whether the compiler made something here that causes crashes on 32 bit machines. All crashes so far have occurred on 32 bit hardware. My brother has a 64 bit machine, and has no trouble. Same for me (works well on 64 bit Linux, too). As my Windows machine at home is broken, I cannot fix this before monday. Use 1.8.47 if you still have it.

Moon · Post by **Moon** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 2:59 am

I hope this is the right thread to use.

OK, I've taken a look at the descent.tex.ger and found a few typos. Where should I upload the corrected file to and when can we set game to use german language? Or is there a switch I've overlooked?

As well, I would like to translate the movie subtitles to german, can anyone extract the english ones for me so I can start working on them?

Edit (by Diedel):

I was wondering about your work priorities. I'm impressed with the speed you both add features and fix bugs but do you imagine a time when the game is to be considered complete?

Also are you interested in adding a switch (like -original or -nostalgia, also to be set by the game host in multiplayer) that would restrict D2 to it's original features (no radar, marker cams in single player, hud icons...) so die hard fans could experience the true D2 feeling on current hardware?

I mean I'm really glad that my old D2 demos can be run on D2X-XL and I'm afraid it might not be possible in the future with too many changes? On the other hand being able to view my D1 demos on D2X-XL would be a blast.

Considering bug fixing: how about adding a switch that would also write all settings from the game (not just the ini) to a file so you might have a better chance of reproducing bugs? Thanks.

Edit 2 (by Diedel):

I've downloaded all Hi-Res textures and put them into the \\d2x-xl\\models and the game wouldn't recognize them. Only when I put them into the main folder they are loaded but as expected 64 MB on my graphics board leads to swapping. What hardware would be needed to run hires graphics on a decent speed?

I mean, if I buy a card with 512 MB RAM would that be enough for larger levels than D2 Counterstrike level 1 with it's 480 MB as mentioned in the FAQ?

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:29 am

The game host can remove all D2X-XL features (at least those affecting multiplayer game play).

I don't have enough information about the D1 demo format. Maybe somewhere in the future (though I am somewhat tired of working on D2X-XL ... so much work, so little feedback. I wonder whether people are really using it, apart from a small core of die-hard fans ...)

All I need to reproduce D2X-XL settings is the player file and the d2x.ini of a particular D2X-XL user. There can still be differences caused by different hardware and drivers though, which is something I cannot emulate. I also have some variety in hardware (32 bit and 64 bit CPUs, really ancient, low-end and high-end gfx hardware) and OS's (Win2K, XP, XP pro, Linux 32 bit and 64 bit) available, and often I get bugs on Linux I cannot reproduce when using Windows.

Real time shadows was the last big thing I wanted to have in D2X-XL. I have been working on this for months (with a frustration induced break), so it was already there, somehow. I will mostly do bug fixing now to really make sure D2X-XL works flawlessly, and as many ppl want it, will add OGG and mp3 support plus playlists somewhere in the future (mp3 only if either SDL supports it or I find some free lib that does).

I recommend setting texture quality to 'high' (not 'highest'), which will downsize hires textures to 256x256, still yielding good visual quality while cutting memory requirements by 75%. You should be fine with a 256 MB card then. Ofc, if you are planning to play some of the upcoming 3D games, going for 512 MB wouldn't be a mistake either ... how about a GF 8800 (drool!)?

Sapphire Wolf · Post by **Sapphire Wolf** » Sun Dec 03, 2006 4:32 pm

Will there be any support for custom sounds without using the DTX Patch? You know, name the .dtx file after the .rl2 file.

Diedel · Post by **Diedel** » Mon Dec 04, 2006 2:52 am

If I get good custom sounds, I could add an easy plugin mimic to D2X-XL for them.

Neumaennl · Post by **Neumaennl** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 2:01 pm

Could it be that you changed something in the movie playback since 1.8.9? I didn't find anything regarding this in the version history though...

I'm just asking coz on my Desktop PC (P4@2.7GHZ, 768MB RAM, GF4 Ti4200) using v1.8.9 the movies look ok, but they play slow as hell and on my Laptop (Centrino Duo 2x1.8GHz, 1GB RAM, GF7600 Go) using v1.9.13 the movies play at a good speed but they look butt-ugly (few colors, very grainy)

I chose \"High Quality\" movie playback on both machines...

D2X-XL Q&A

language question