DescentBB

Hello Descent fans! After seeing some of the very impressive projects people are making in the level spotlight category I decided I would post this here instead since I have some DLE questions as well.

I've been hard at work on a level, and while it is finished, I did hit a couple of hurdles I wasn't sure how to get past. I've uploaded it to the Descent Mission Database:
http://www.enspiar.com/dmdb/viewMission.php?id=1730

I've been playing Descent for ~20 years and while I'm pretty proud of how it turned out, this is the first level I've made. Any feedback, positive or negative, is very welcome. Playtesting your own levels can be tough since you know where everything is. Is it too difficult? I like a solid challenge playing on Ace, but I have the advantage of knowing the layout. Feel free to send me a demo of your playthrough, it would be enlightening to see. Primary weapons are limited, but missiles are plentiful, so don't feel like you need to conserve your ammo. It uses Descent 2 stuff, but I left out anything Vertigo because I wasn't sure how many people would have access to it. Made in DLE with vanilla assets and tested in DXX-Rebirth with no issues. I'm sure I'll still tweak it here and there. The next step I suppose would be to try to add more secondary textures and play with the lighting. I have a couple other levels in the works, and I plan to eventually make a mission of 8 to 10, but doubt I'll have many ideas beyond that.

ANYWAY on to the actual issues I encountered. Possible level spoilers, but not really because these things weren't implemented, haha.

1. Why are the the hostages so small? Every other object loaded in the proper size just fine.
2. I can't seem to get object triggers to work. Not a huge problem, as I can workaround with standard and overlay triggers.
3. Is it possible to make one side of a wall blastable, but make the other side appear normal? I got it to work where the texture was removed, but the other side of the wall remained impassible.
4. Is it possible to make a blastable wall appear from a trigger? I tried to set it up, but the walls couldn't be destroyed despite being labeled blastable.
5. Can you reduce how much the robots roam? Not super problematic, but it can create bottlenecking which is a lot less fun than maneuvering a room.
6. The final room is large enough that the robots in the back don't notice the player. Is there a way to set their visual range? I messed with the FOV setting, but that didn't seem to effect it. The Vertigo missions have some much larger arenas and don't seem to encounter this issue that I've noticed.

If you can help me with any of these, it would be greatly appreciated! Feel free to send any messages about it. Thanks for your time.

Don't know all of them, but
2 is a D2X-XL only feature
The answers to 4, 5, and 6 are all no.

For 3, if you make one side locked it should have a close enough effect. Make sure it is a blastable and not a closed wall.

1: Those hostages are the normal size. You come into their room at a weird angle, so they look squashed a bit, and hostages are normally moved down to the bottom of their cubes so they touch the floor. DLE also doesn't display them quite right - their sprites aren't locked on the vertical axis the way they are ingame.

3: Descent generally doesn't like one-sided doors, or doors where the opposite side is anything other than a matching door. So probably no, and if yes, then it'll likely be buggy and terrible and inconsistent across the original Descent/Rebirth/D2X-XL. [EDIT] like Lightwolf said, a locked door might do what you want.

5: The "still" AI setting per-robot can do this. It prevents robots wandering around, but doesn't prevent them dodging shots, etc.

6: The "snipe" AI can help with this, and IIRC it makes them shoot faster, but in something as large as your reactor room, even that might not fix it entirely.

Thanks for all the advice! It has been super helpful.

All the door stuff is just the limitations of the engine I guess. Not a huge deal, most of them have workarounds with triggers or other stuff.

I tried flattening the hostage room, so it was even on the y axis and the hostages were still all small. Idk I'ma just move on, not a deal breaker for me.

The Still AI setting worked perfectly! They roam a little bit, but mostly stay in the right spot, which is exactly what I was looking for. Snipe didn't seem to do much, but I set the distant robots to charge and pursue and that worked. They move into attack range, but since they're so far away the fight is still staggered.

Now I just have to figure out how to get multiple levels on the same HOG file and change level music.

A couple other levels I'm working on are getting close to finished. I've got an 8 level campaign outlined, I'll post to the Level Highlight category when it's done. Cheers!

Is it possible to get this mission in a zip file? I can't do anything with the rar and this level sounds interesting.

If you can get WinRAR, they don't actually care if you pay. The warning about the expired trial period is only for companies who don't want to risk legal trouble later down the road should WinRAR decide to enforce the limited trial period.

https://www.7-zip.org can extract rar/zip/a dozen other formats and is 100% freeware. Also it isn't a bloated mess like winrar or winzip.

^^

I've sent an updated version to my google drive, feel free to just grab it from there!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Thx for the help

It's a good level. Especially for your first level.
I see that there is some experimenting with cubes. I really like the stalagmite room. (The one with the red door.)

ShivanHunter wrote: ↑Thu May 23, 2019 12:53 am 3: Descent generally doesn't like one-sided doors, or doors where the opposite side is anything other than a matching door.

There is that one blue door in ironstar where its the level 1 door on one side then the level 6 door on the other side.
If you open it from the side with the level 1 door, both sides will be that door when shut.
But then if you go to the other side with the level 6 door, it will appear as the level 1 door until you open it, where it will play the level 6 door opening and shutting clip.
The other side will also change into the level 6 door.

TRUEpiiiicness wrote: ↑Mon May 27, 2019 1:49 am It's a good level. Especially for your first level.
I see that there is some experimenting with cubes. I really like the stalagmite room. (The one with the red door.)

Thanks! It may have turned out alright, but you're only seeing the finished product. Lemme tell ya, it was huge mess getting there. I was just seeing what I could get away with in the red door room without breaking the engine. I actually hit my cube limit about 3/4 of the way through and had to get real creative with how to finish it. There was originally supposed to be a couple more small rooms throughout. Glad you enjoyed it though!