wraggster
May 10th, 2012, 12:47
via http://www.aep-emu.de/
D2X-XL (http://www.descent2.de/) is an OpenGL-port of Descent II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_II).
Supported platforms are Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
Quote:
updates since last AEP reported release 1.15.270:
v1.16.3:
Fixed: Lightmap calculation didn´t always work right and could produce dark triangles where there should have been light
v1.16.2:
Fixed: Wireframe automap could show unnecessary lines when displaying segments with triangular faces
v1.16.1:
Fixed: Triangular segment sides in a level messed up the lightmaps
v1.16.0: Support for triangular segment sides introduced.
New: D2X-XL now supports segments with triangular sides (down to tetrahedrons)
v1.15.350:
Fixed: Removed white screen flashing during light data calculation
Fixed: Removed nasty bright flashes when mine brightness was pulsating during the reactor countdown sequence
v1.15.349:
Fixed: Explosion lightning effects weren´t always rendered
Fixed: Removed a bug causing occasional crashes in the transparency renderer
v1.15.348:
Improved: When another player becomes the game host during a multiplayer game, the original game host´s game settings will now persist
v1.15.347:
Fixed: Lightmap calculation occasionally created dark outlines around faces
v1.15.346:
Fixed: Light data calculation was still broken (in a different way though ...)
Fixed: Player shields and energy were reset when entering a new level even if they were above 100%
v1.15.345:
Fixed: Multi-threaded light data calculation was broken
Fixed: Sounds were audible when they shouldn´t
v1.15.344:
Fixed: With standard lighting levels tended to be too bright
Improved: Light data memory footprint is a bit smaller now
v1.15.343:
Fixed: The program could crash during mesh calculation
v1.15.342:
Fixed: Mesh improvement works more reliable for high mesh quality levels
Improved: D2X-XL needs less memory for huge levels
v1.15.341:
Fixed: More than 127 fuel centers made D2X-XL crash
Fixed: No transparency and effects were rendered in the textured automap view anymore
Fixed: The ´show reticle´ check box in the cockpit options menu didn´t work
Changed: Under MS Windows the 64 bit executable and DLLs will now reside in the subfolder ´x64´ of a standard D2X-XL installation
Improved: Light data will now consume less memory for large levels
v1.15.340:
Fixed: Removed a bug in the transparency renderer that could cause program crashes
Improved: Light data precalculation is parallelized better now, resulting increased calculation speed on multi-core systems
v1.15.339:
Changed: When a robot has an individual specification of what to drop when it dies, the robot´s type based drop specification will be disregarded for non D2X-XL levels
v1.15.338:
Fixed: D2X-XL stripped the player of all keys upon entering a secret Descent 2 level
Improved: D2X-XL now supports levels with up to 20,000 segments
v1.15.337:
Fixed: At the highest lightning quality setting, no explosion clouds and sparks of shots hitting obstacles were rendered
Fixed: The PSALM often created excess laser powerups in multiplayer games
Changed: Smart weapon switch will be turned off by default
v1.15.336:
Fixed: When rendering post process effects while anaglyphic stereoscopy was enabled, the image stood still and just flickered
Improved: At the highest lightning quality setting, real lightning effects replace the sprite based lightning effects for spawning players and robots and disappearing powerups
v1.15.335:
Fixed: The PSALM still didn´t work right (powerups were erroneously removed or added to the mine)
Improved: Lightmaps will be turned into gray scale images when colored lighting is turned off (in the render options menu)
v1.15.334:
Fixed: Player weapons were respawned by the PSALM (Powerup Spam And Loss Minimizer) instead of the exploding ship
Fixed: Reactors sometimes were rendered as small hulks
v1.15.333:
Fixed: Missiles didn´t always respawn in multiplayer games
Fixed: Exploding player ships didn´t drop the guns they had picked up
Fixed: D2X-XL sometimes failed to find the mission belonging to a savegame despite it being present
v1.15.332:
Fixed: When downloading a mission that was already present, but outdated, the program crashed (often after reporting an invalid HXM file)
v1.15.331:
Fixed: The program occasionally crashed when writing to the log file
Fixed: The program occasionally crashed when rebuilding its OpenGL (http://www.opengl.org/) context
Fixed: The program spammed missiles and keys in multiplayer matches
Fixed: Spreadfire shots were invisible when hires textures were disabled
Changed: Players that are unreachable for three minutes will be dropped from the game and will have to quit and rejoin
v1.15.330:
Fixed: Energy powerups that were placed in the mine by the level author and got picked up respawned endlessly in multiplayer games
Fixed: Flags that were pickup in CTF games respawned endlessly
Fixed: Keys placed in a mine were converted to a robot instead of a shield boost in non-coop multiplayer games
Fixed: A successful mission download looped back to the mission download forever
Fixed: Players couldn´t join multiplayer games using maps without a reactor or boss (´you are missing packets´)
Fixed: When destroying a destructible overlay texture, all visible faces of the affected segment were rendered with the destroyed overlay (and not just the one bearing it)
v1.15.329:
Fixed: Vulcan ammo disappeared in multiplayer games
Fixed: Missiles disappeared in multiplayer games
Fixed: You couldn´t allow mercury missiles in multiplayer games in the ´objects to allow´ multiplayer setup dialog
Improved: Mine powerups will only respawn in multiplayer games when mines previously dropped from them have exploded
Improved: Missiles will only respawn in multiplayer games after they have exploded
v1.15.328:
Fixed: Players could pick up regular lasers even when they had superlasers until they had reached the standard laser level 4
Fixed: The ´Died in mine´ message didn´t appear when the player died in the mine during the countdown sequence
v1.15.327:
New: D2X-XL now supports long level filenames in hog files
v1.15.326:
Fixed: The program crashed when toggling fullscreen mode twice while a menu was active
Fixed: When picking up a laser or super laser, the new laser level shown in the HUD message was one too low
Improved: When run in fullscreen mode, the game will switch to windowed output in order to avoid leaving the desktop at the game´s screen/window resolution
v1.15.325:
Fixed: Sound from explosion objects was only played once
Fixed: Proximity mines weren´t moved by nearby explosions
Fixed: 2D oroximity mine sprites were rendered transparent
Fixed: The game crashed in anaglyph rendering mode when displaying transparent stuff (like e.g. smoke particles)
Fixed: With standard collision handling you could fly straight through reactors
v1.15.324:
Fixed: D2X-XL now can drastically reduce the file sizes of precomputed level data (meshes, light data, lightmaps) by using compression. Enable with command line or d2x.ini switch ´-compress_data {0|1}´
v1.15.323:
Fixed: Players never dropped super lasers in multiplayer games
Fixed: The download manager locked itself when a download was cancelled
Fixed: Depending on aspect rate, the program could crash when a robot was hit by a missile and the missile view was displayed in a cockpit window
Changed: D2X-XL will now search for missions in its mission downloads folder first (to avoid overriding downloaded maps with different versions of the same map found in folders with lexically smaller names)
Improved: D2X-XL will now properly keep track about lasers and super lasers picked up (standard Descent assumes full standard laser loadout as soon as a player picks up super lasers)
v1.15.322:
Fixed: The stuff a destroyed player ship dropped in multiplayer only appeared on that player´s computer
New: The game host can now exclude any ship type from being used in multiplayer games (if all are excluded, only the standard Pyro is allowed)
v1.15.321:
Fixed: A player dropped a shield and an energy powerup in multiplayer games everytime he changed his ship (exploit for gaining shield and energy)
v1.15.320:
Fixed: Binary format savegames couldn´t be loaded anymore
Fixed: The endlevel score screen didn´t have a frame anymore
Fixed: Every multiplayer participant changing D2X-XL specific settings locally (like e.g. collision handling), replicated his entire D2X-XL settings to all other players, whether he was the game host or not
v1.15.319:
Fixed: The program crashed when loading a level if particle effects were enabled and the program had been launched with the -lowmem switch set to ´1´
Fixed: When killing the final boss in D2:Counterstrike and not reaching the exit in time, the final level was restarted
Fixed: The player name in the high scores screen was blinking too fast
Changed: Unless in nostalgia (http://www.shiny-technologies.com/) or multiplayer competition mode, distant Earth Shaker impacts will rock the mine less (depending on distance)
Improved: Joystick deadzone handling is a numerically more precise
New: Added the command line switches -movies (inverse to -nomovies) and -briefings (inverse to -noscreens)
New: Colored segment rendering can now be suppressed via the mission configuration (-colored_segments 0|1)
v1.15.318:
Improved: Speeded up transparency rendering by about 10% on multi core cpus
v1.15.317:
Fixed: When glow was enabled, 3D shield powerups looked pale (http://www.heraclion.co.uk/darkside.htm) or even bright white
v1.15.316:
Changed: Critical network data version will now be supervised. Players with different network data versions than the game host will not be able to join that D2X-XL game
New: Game speed can now be scaled to up to three times the standard speed (in increments of 0.5)
v1.15.315:
Fixed: The program could crash in multiplayer games when a player joined the game or respawned after having died
v1.15.314:
Fixed: A forgotten debug switch caused all kinds of problems
v1.15.313:
Fixed: The program could crash when loading addon bitmaps from locations with a long folder name
v1.15.312:
Fixed: Player files were reported as being damaged after having been killed and/or having scored kills in a multiplayer game
v1.15.311:
Fixed: With advanced collision handling, flying through powerups briefly accelerated the player ship
Changed: No multithreading will be available in the standard D2X-XL application (d2x-xl.exe)
Improved: Made the networking code more robust
v1.15.310:
Fixed: You couldn´t pass through powerups you couldn´t collect
Fixed: When disabling 3D powerup rendering in-game and hires textures were enabled, no powerup sprites were rendered for those powerups hires sprites were available for
Fixed: When not in a game, changing the player ship type in the gameplay menu had no effect
v1.15.309:
Fixed: Robots didn´t fire and could hardly be hit anymore
Fixed: Players could pick up powerups behind impassable walls (e.g. gratings) if the powerups were sticking out of the segment a bit
v1.15.308:
Fixed: A player could collect powerups he shouldn´t be able to reach (like the full map powerup in Descent 2, level 2)
v1.15.307:
Fixed: Secret level entries in mission files with multiple references to regular levels weren´t properly processed, causing such a mission to be rejected by d2x-xl
v1.15.306:
Fixed: Bosses occasionally teleported to areas they shouldn´t be able to access
v1.15.305:
Fixed: The program could crash when processing explosion sound effects
v1.15.304:
Fixed: The particle renderer could occasionally crash the program
Fixed: The program could crash when loading levels containing effect objects
Improved: Sound will decay more smoothly
v1.15.303:
Fixed: Now the program crashed when starting it in full XL mode ...
v1.15.302:
Fixed: The program crashed when loading a level in pureD2 or nostalgia (http://www.shiny-technologies.com/) mode
Fixed: Processing lightning effects with invalid parameters (more branches than nodes specified) could crash the program
v1.15.301:
Fixed: Sounds located in the same segment as the player often weren´t audible
v1.15.300:
Fixed: Sounds from behind closed doors were audible
Fixed: Marker weren´t rendered with their number in the automap
Fixed: Instead of moving the existing one to the current drop position, dropping a spawn marker when a spawn marker wasn´t already present in the level created another spawn marker
Fixed: When the player ship was changed inside the mission, the player spawned in the previously chosen ship when respawning after having been destroyed
Improved: Players cannot pick up energy boosts used for marking a path
Improved: Path finding used for sound handling is much, much faster now (this had shown to be a major performance hog before)
Improved: Sound from a segment with more than one sound source will not be overly loud anymore
Improved: The range of the Guidebot has been increased from 200 to 1000 segments from its current position, making it more likely that it will find stuff for you in huge missions like e.g. Anthology
New: Players can have a path to an arbitrary path marked with the new ´minotaur´ cheat
v1.15.299:
Changed: During lightmap calculation lights will also contribute to faces hidden behind walls that may disappear or become transparent when playing the level
v1.15.298:
Fixed: OOF based hires models weren´t always rendered properly
Fixed: Message triggers with non-existant messages could crash the program
v1.15.297:
Fixed: D2X-XL will not crash anymore when a robot drops non-existant robot types (caused by errors in the level) when dying
v1.15.296:
Fixed: The program will not terminate itself after encountering invalid powerups that are dropped from exploding robots anymore
v1.15.295:
Fixed: Cloaked walls weren´t always rendered properly
Fixed: With basic lighting, colored walls and segments weren´t rendered
Fixed: The program crashed when trying to launch a multiplayer game with the German localization enabled
Improved: Added a German localization for the updater
v1.15.294:
Fixed: Robots that died with a death roll kept rolling (instead of exploding) as long as they were hit
Fixed: When particle effects were turned off, the amount of debris couldn´t be changed anymore because the corresponding effects menu entry got hidden
Fixed: Even if effects were disabled, extra debris was created during explosions
Improved: Explosions from destroyed robots will now move towards the player while they are visible, giving a more realistic explosion effect
v1.15.293:
Fixed: The program crashed when invoking certain menus (e.g. the keyboard configuration) when using localized messages (hint: Install the latest d2x-xl data package)
v1.15.292:
Improved: Loading screens shuffling is now more random
v1.15.291:
Fixed: Colored segments still weren´t always rendered right
Improved: Descent 2 custom background images will now be shuffled for missions that have no custom background images
v1.15.290:
Fixed: D2X-XL crashed when a destroyed robot dropped items not available in D2X-XL (due to errors in the mission)
v1.15.289:
Fixed: Rendering colored segments (water, lava) didn´t work right anymore
Fixed: Re-enabled some code to unstick objects, so player ships (hopefully) won´t get stuck in robots anymore when colliding with them
v1.15.288:
Fixed: When enabling custom weapons and playing a level that has some, then leaving the level, disabling custom weapons, and playing the same level again, custom weapons were still enabled
Changed: The option that makes gatling guns start to fire with a delay has been moved from the sound to the gameplay options menu. When this option is enabled, gatling gun fire will be delayed even if the gatling rotation sound is turned off or not available; in that case you will just not have an audio feedback for that like you have when the spinning sound is there.
New: The new game menu now also has an option to disable custom weapons
v1.15.287:
Fixed: Some areas in rendered movies were rendered black instead of white
v1.15.286:
Fixed: The credit screen´s background image wasn´t rendered properly
Fixed: You couldn´t enable mods in the new game menu anymore
Fixed: The last custom background used while playing a mission was kept for the main menu after playing
v1.15.285:
Fixed: When particle collision handling was enabled, the program could hang or crash
v1.15.284:
New: You can now disable custom weapon mods via the gameplay options and more multiplayer options menus
v1.15.283:
Fixed: Players frequently couldn´t fire shots and/or couldn´t be hit in multiplayer games (usually this went away when closing the multiplayer session and starting a new one without terminating the program)
Changed: D2X-XL will not override custom weapon info (from custom HAM files) for multiplayer games by resetting weapon info to the Descent 1/2 default values anymore
v1.15.282:
Fixed: With lightmap based lighting levels were completely bright
v1.15.281:
Fixed: Levels containing pre-computed colored light (from DLE-XP) were rendered pitch black when the lighting method was set to ´basic´
v1.15.280:
Fixed: When shadows were enabled, firing flares or transparent shots (lasers etc.) led to all kinds of rendering flaws
v1.15.279:
Fixed: When moving diagonally into a wall, the ship often briefly hung or stopped instead of smoothly sliding along the wall
v1.15.278:
Fixed: When firing Gatling shots into a skybox while effects were enabled (and thus light tracers were rendered), the mine walls disappeared due to being overlapped by the skybox and (semi-) transparent faces (e.g. gratings)
v1.15.277:
Fixed: Sometimes objects were rendered that weren´t visible to the viewer
Fixed: ´repair center´ segments from standard levels will be converted to regular (non-functional) segments when reading them. This fixes a flaw in standard level format where segments could be marked as ´repair center´ although repair centers weren´t supported by standard Descent and prevents this flaw from being exploited by using D2X-XL in multiplayer games where some participants are using other Descent versions
v1.15.276:
Fixed: When taking a lot of screenshots, the program encountered a severe error due to a memory leak, throwing the player back to the main menu
v1.15.275:
Changed: At highest render quality, glow will be applied to the textured automap, too
Improved: When the HUD is turned off, automap screen shots will not show keyboard control information
v1.15.274:
Changed: Screenshots will now show the D2X-XL label and Descent web site URL in their lower right corner
v1.15.273:
Fixed: The rear view stayed black when shadows were enabled
v1.15.272:
Fixed: When finishing the Descent 1 campaign, the start instead of the end briefing was displayed
Fixed: The program could crash when the level was changed after the player had died
Fixed: When dieing in a Descent 1 secret level after having destroyed the reactor, the program tried to put the player in a wrong level or even crashed
v1.15.271:
Fixed: The game could crash when loading a level with mesh improvement quality set to high
Fixed: The pathfinding wasn´t properly reconfigured when entering or leaving secret levels, which could cause program crashes
For the complete changelog, please visit the official site (http://www.descent2.de/d2x-history.html)
D2X-XL (http://www.descent2.de/) is an OpenGL-port of Descent II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_II).
Supported platforms are Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
Quote:
updates since last AEP reported release 1.15.270:
v1.16.3:
Fixed: Lightmap calculation didn´t always work right and could produce dark triangles where there should have been light
v1.16.2:
Fixed: Wireframe automap could show unnecessary lines when displaying segments with triangular faces
v1.16.1:
Fixed: Triangular segment sides in a level messed up the lightmaps
v1.16.0: Support for triangular segment sides introduced.
New: D2X-XL now supports segments with triangular sides (down to tetrahedrons)
v1.15.350:
Fixed: Removed white screen flashing during light data calculation
Fixed: Removed nasty bright flashes when mine brightness was pulsating during the reactor countdown sequence
v1.15.349:
Fixed: Explosion lightning effects weren´t always rendered
Fixed: Removed a bug causing occasional crashes in the transparency renderer
v1.15.348:
Improved: When another player becomes the game host during a multiplayer game, the original game host´s game settings will now persist
v1.15.347:
Fixed: Lightmap calculation occasionally created dark outlines around faces
v1.15.346:
Fixed: Light data calculation was still broken (in a different way though ...)
Fixed: Player shields and energy were reset when entering a new level even if they were above 100%
v1.15.345:
Fixed: Multi-threaded light data calculation was broken
Fixed: Sounds were audible when they shouldn´t
v1.15.344:
Fixed: With standard lighting levels tended to be too bright
Improved: Light data memory footprint is a bit smaller now
v1.15.343:
Fixed: The program could crash during mesh calculation
v1.15.342:
Fixed: Mesh improvement works more reliable for high mesh quality levels
Improved: D2X-XL needs less memory for huge levels
v1.15.341:
Fixed: More than 127 fuel centers made D2X-XL crash
Fixed: No transparency and effects were rendered in the textured automap view anymore
Fixed: The ´show reticle´ check box in the cockpit options menu didn´t work
Changed: Under MS Windows the 64 bit executable and DLLs will now reside in the subfolder ´x64´ of a standard D2X-XL installation
Improved: Light data will now consume less memory for large levels
v1.15.340:
Fixed: Removed a bug in the transparency renderer that could cause program crashes
Improved: Light data precalculation is parallelized better now, resulting increased calculation speed on multi-core systems
v1.15.339:
Changed: When a robot has an individual specification of what to drop when it dies, the robot´s type based drop specification will be disregarded for non D2X-XL levels
v1.15.338:
Fixed: D2X-XL stripped the player of all keys upon entering a secret Descent 2 level
Improved: D2X-XL now supports levels with up to 20,000 segments
v1.15.337:
Fixed: At the highest lightning quality setting, no explosion clouds and sparks of shots hitting obstacles were rendered
Fixed: The PSALM often created excess laser powerups in multiplayer games
Changed: Smart weapon switch will be turned off by default
v1.15.336:
Fixed: When rendering post process effects while anaglyphic stereoscopy was enabled, the image stood still and just flickered
Improved: At the highest lightning quality setting, real lightning effects replace the sprite based lightning effects for spawning players and robots and disappearing powerups
v1.15.335:
Fixed: The PSALM still didn´t work right (powerups were erroneously removed or added to the mine)
Improved: Lightmaps will be turned into gray scale images when colored lighting is turned off (in the render options menu)
v1.15.334:
Fixed: Player weapons were respawned by the PSALM (Powerup Spam And Loss Minimizer) instead of the exploding ship
Fixed: Reactors sometimes were rendered as small hulks
v1.15.333:
Fixed: Missiles didn´t always respawn in multiplayer games
Fixed: Exploding player ships didn´t drop the guns they had picked up
Fixed: D2X-XL sometimes failed to find the mission belonging to a savegame despite it being present
v1.15.332:
Fixed: When downloading a mission that was already present, but outdated, the program crashed (often after reporting an invalid HXM file)
v1.15.331:
Fixed: The program occasionally crashed when writing to the log file
Fixed: The program occasionally crashed when rebuilding its OpenGL (http://www.opengl.org/) context
Fixed: The program spammed missiles and keys in multiplayer matches
Fixed: Spreadfire shots were invisible when hires textures were disabled
Changed: Players that are unreachable for three minutes will be dropped from the game and will have to quit and rejoin
v1.15.330:
Fixed: Energy powerups that were placed in the mine by the level author and got picked up respawned endlessly in multiplayer games
Fixed: Flags that were pickup in CTF games respawned endlessly
Fixed: Keys placed in a mine were converted to a robot instead of a shield boost in non-coop multiplayer games
Fixed: A successful mission download looped back to the mission download forever
Fixed: Players couldn´t join multiplayer games using maps without a reactor or boss (´you are missing packets´)
Fixed: When destroying a destructible overlay texture, all visible faces of the affected segment were rendered with the destroyed overlay (and not just the one bearing it)
v1.15.329:
Fixed: Vulcan ammo disappeared in multiplayer games
Fixed: Missiles disappeared in multiplayer games
Fixed: You couldn´t allow mercury missiles in multiplayer games in the ´objects to allow´ multiplayer setup dialog
Improved: Mine powerups will only respawn in multiplayer games when mines previously dropped from them have exploded
Improved: Missiles will only respawn in multiplayer games after they have exploded
v1.15.328:
Fixed: Players could pick up regular lasers even when they had superlasers until they had reached the standard laser level 4
Fixed: The ´Died in mine´ message didn´t appear when the player died in the mine during the countdown sequence
v1.15.327:
New: D2X-XL now supports long level filenames in hog files
v1.15.326:
Fixed: The program crashed when toggling fullscreen mode twice while a menu was active
Fixed: When picking up a laser or super laser, the new laser level shown in the HUD message was one too low
Improved: When run in fullscreen mode, the game will switch to windowed output in order to avoid leaving the desktop at the game´s screen/window resolution
v1.15.325:
Fixed: Sound from explosion objects was only played once
Fixed: Proximity mines weren´t moved by nearby explosions
Fixed: 2D oroximity mine sprites were rendered transparent
Fixed: The game crashed in anaglyph rendering mode when displaying transparent stuff (like e.g. smoke particles)
Fixed: With standard collision handling you could fly straight through reactors
v1.15.324:
Fixed: D2X-XL now can drastically reduce the file sizes of precomputed level data (meshes, light data, lightmaps) by using compression. Enable with command line or d2x.ini switch ´-compress_data {0|1}´
v1.15.323:
Fixed: Players never dropped super lasers in multiplayer games
Fixed: The download manager locked itself when a download was cancelled
Fixed: Depending on aspect rate, the program could crash when a robot was hit by a missile and the missile view was displayed in a cockpit window
Changed: D2X-XL will now search for missions in its mission downloads folder first (to avoid overriding downloaded maps with different versions of the same map found in folders with lexically smaller names)
Improved: D2X-XL will now properly keep track about lasers and super lasers picked up (standard Descent assumes full standard laser loadout as soon as a player picks up super lasers)
v1.15.322:
Fixed: The stuff a destroyed player ship dropped in multiplayer only appeared on that player´s computer
New: The game host can now exclude any ship type from being used in multiplayer games (if all are excluded, only the standard Pyro is allowed)
v1.15.321:
Fixed: A player dropped a shield and an energy powerup in multiplayer games everytime he changed his ship (exploit for gaining shield and energy)
v1.15.320:
Fixed: Binary format savegames couldn´t be loaded anymore
Fixed: The endlevel score screen didn´t have a frame anymore
Fixed: Every multiplayer participant changing D2X-XL specific settings locally (like e.g. collision handling), replicated his entire D2X-XL settings to all other players, whether he was the game host or not
v1.15.319:
Fixed: The program crashed when loading a level if particle effects were enabled and the program had been launched with the -lowmem switch set to ´1´
Fixed: When killing the final boss in D2:Counterstrike and not reaching the exit in time, the final level was restarted
Fixed: The player name in the high scores screen was blinking too fast
Changed: Unless in nostalgia (http://www.shiny-technologies.com/) or multiplayer competition mode, distant Earth Shaker impacts will rock the mine less (depending on distance)
Improved: Joystick deadzone handling is a numerically more precise
New: Added the command line switches -movies (inverse to -nomovies) and -briefings (inverse to -noscreens)
New: Colored segment rendering can now be suppressed via the mission configuration (-colored_segments 0|1)
v1.15.318:
Improved: Speeded up transparency rendering by about 10% on multi core cpus
v1.15.317:
Fixed: When glow was enabled, 3D shield powerups looked pale (http://www.heraclion.co.uk/darkside.htm) or even bright white
v1.15.316:
Changed: Critical network data version will now be supervised. Players with different network data versions than the game host will not be able to join that D2X-XL game
New: Game speed can now be scaled to up to three times the standard speed (in increments of 0.5)
v1.15.315:
Fixed: The program could crash in multiplayer games when a player joined the game or respawned after having died
v1.15.314:
Fixed: A forgotten debug switch caused all kinds of problems
v1.15.313:
Fixed: The program could crash when loading addon bitmaps from locations with a long folder name
v1.15.312:
Fixed: Player files were reported as being damaged after having been killed and/or having scored kills in a multiplayer game
v1.15.311:
Fixed: With advanced collision handling, flying through powerups briefly accelerated the player ship
Changed: No multithreading will be available in the standard D2X-XL application (d2x-xl.exe)
Improved: Made the networking code more robust
v1.15.310:
Fixed: You couldn´t pass through powerups you couldn´t collect
Fixed: When disabling 3D powerup rendering in-game and hires textures were enabled, no powerup sprites were rendered for those powerups hires sprites were available for
Fixed: When not in a game, changing the player ship type in the gameplay menu had no effect
v1.15.309:
Fixed: Robots didn´t fire and could hardly be hit anymore
Fixed: Players could pick up powerups behind impassable walls (e.g. gratings) if the powerups were sticking out of the segment a bit
v1.15.308:
Fixed: A player could collect powerups he shouldn´t be able to reach (like the full map powerup in Descent 2, level 2)
v1.15.307:
Fixed: Secret level entries in mission files with multiple references to regular levels weren´t properly processed, causing such a mission to be rejected by d2x-xl
v1.15.306:
Fixed: Bosses occasionally teleported to areas they shouldn´t be able to access
v1.15.305:
Fixed: The program could crash when processing explosion sound effects
v1.15.304:
Fixed: The particle renderer could occasionally crash the program
Fixed: The program could crash when loading levels containing effect objects
Improved: Sound will decay more smoothly
v1.15.303:
Fixed: Now the program crashed when starting it in full XL mode ...
v1.15.302:
Fixed: The program crashed when loading a level in pureD2 or nostalgia (http://www.shiny-technologies.com/) mode
Fixed: Processing lightning effects with invalid parameters (more branches than nodes specified) could crash the program
v1.15.301:
Fixed: Sounds located in the same segment as the player often weren´t audible
v1.15.300:
Fixed: Sounds from behind closed doors were audible
Fixed: Marker weren´t rendered with their number in the automap
Fixed: Instead of moving the existing one to the current drop position, dropping a spawn marker when a spawn marker wasn´t already present in the level created another spawn marker
Fixed: When the player ship was changed inside the mission, the player spawned in the previously chosen ship when respawning after having been destroyed
Improved: Players cannot pick up energy boosts used for marking a path
Improved: Path finding used for sound handling is much, much faster now (this had shown to be a major performance hog before)
Improved: Sound from a segment with more than one sound source will not be overly loud anymore
Improved: The range of the Guidebot has been increased from 200 to 1000 segments from its current position, making it more likely that it will find stuff for you in huge missions like e.g. Anthology
New: Players can have a path to an arbitrary path marked with the new ´minotaur´ cheat
v1.15.299:
Changed: During lightmap calculation lights will also contribute to faces hidden behind walls that may disappear or become transparent when playing the level
v1.15.298:
Fixed: OOF based hires models weren´t always rendered properly
Fixed: Message triggers with non-existant messages could crash the program
v1.15.297:
Fixed: D2X-XL will not crash anymore when a robot drops non-existant robot types (caused by errors in the level) when dying
v1.15.296:
Fixed: The program will not terminate itself after encountering invalid powerups that are dropped from exploding robots anymore
v1.15.295:
Fixed: Cloaked walls weren´t always rendered properly
Fixed: With basic lighting, colored walls and segments weren´t rendered
Fixed: The program crashed when trying to launch a multiplayer game with the German localization enabled
Improved: Added a German localization for the updater
v1.15.294:
Fixed: Robots that died with a death roll kept rolling (instead of exploding) as long as they were hit
Fixed: When particle effects were turned off, the amount of debris couldn´t be changed anymore because the corresponding effects menu entry got hidden
Fixed: Even if effects were disabled, extra debris was created during explosions
Improved: Explosions from destroyed robots will now move towards the player while they are visible, giving a more realistic explosion effect
v1.15.293:
Fixed: The program crashed when invoking certain menus (e.g. the keyboard configuration) when using localized messages (hint: Install the latest d2x-xl data package)
v1.15.292:
Improved: Loading screens shuffling is now more random
v1.15.291:
Fixed: Colored segments still weren´t always rendered right
Improved: Descent 2 custom background images will now be shuffled for missions that have no custom background images
v1.15.290:
Fixed: D2X-XL crashed when a destroyed robot dropped items not available in D2X-XL (due to errors in the mission)
v1.15.289:
Fixed: Rendering colored segments (water, lava) didn´t work right anymore
Fixed: Re-enabled some code to unstick objects, so player ships (hopefully) won´t get stuck in robots anymore when colliding with them
v1.15.288:
Fixed: When enabling custom weapons and playing a level that has some, then leaving the level, disabling custom weapons, and playing the same level again, custom weapons were still enabled
Changed: The option that makes gatling guns start to fire with a delay has been moved from the sound to the gameplay options menu. When this option is enabled, gatling gun fire will be delayed even if the gatling rotation sound is turned off or not available; in that case you will just not have an audio feedback for that like you have when the spinning sound is there.
New: The new game menu now also has an option to disable custom weapons
v1.15.287:
Fixed: Some areas in rendered movies were rendered black instead of white
v1.15.286:
Fixed: The credit screen´s background image wasn´t rendered properly
Fixed: You couldn´t enable mods in the new game menu anymore
Fixed: The last custom background used while playing a mission was kept for the main menu after playing
v1.15.285:
Fixed: When particle collision handling was enabled, the program could hang or crash
v1.15.284:
New: You can now disable custom weapon mods via the gameplay options and more multiplayer options menus
v1.15.283:
Fixed: Players frequently couldn´t fire shots and/or couldn´t be hit in multiplayer games (usually this went away when closing the multiplayer session and starting a new one without terminating the program)
Changed: D2X-XL will not override custom weapon info (from custom HAM files) for multiplayer games by resetting weapon info to the Descent 1/2 default values anymore
v1.15.282:
Fixed: With lightmap based lighting levels were completely bright
v1.15.281:
Fixed: Levels containing pre-computed colored light (from DLE-XP) were rendered pitch black when the lighting method was set to ´basic´
v1.15.280:
Fixed: When shadows were enabled, firing flares or transparent shots (lasers etc.) led to all kinds of rendering flaws
v1.15.279:
Fixed: When moving diagonally into a wall, the ship often briefly hung or stopped instead of smoothly sliding along the wall
v1.15.278:
Fixed: When firing Gatling shots into a skybox while effects were enabled (and thus light tracers were rendered), the mine walls disappeared due to being overlapped by the skybox and (semi-) transparent faces (e.g. gratings)
v1.15.277:
Fixed: Sometimes objects were rendered that weren´t visible to the viewer
Fixed: ´repair center´ segments from standard levels will be converted to regular (non-functional) segments when reading them. This fixes a flaw in standard level format where segments could be marked as ´repair center´ although repair centers weren´t supported by standard Descent and prevents this flaw from being exploited by using D2X-XL in multiplayer games where some participants are using other Descent versions
v1.15.276:
Fixed: When taking a lot of screenshots, the program encountered a severe error due to a memory leak, throwing the player back to the main menu
v1.15.275:
Changed: At highest render quality, glow will be applied to the textured automap, too
Improved: When the HUD is turned off, automap screen shots will not show keyboard control information
v1.15.274:
Changed: Screenshots will now show the D2X-XL label and Descent web site URL in their lower right corner
v1.15.273:
Fixed: The rear view stayed black when shadows were enabled
v1.15.272:
Fixed: When finishing the Descent 1 campaign, the start instead of the end briefing was displayed
Fixed: The program could crash when the level was changed after the player had died
Fixed: When dieing in a Descent 1 secret level after having destroyed the reactor, the program tried to put the player in a wrong level or even crashed
v1.15.271:
Fixed: The game could crash when loading a level with mesh improvement quality set to high
Fixed: The pathfinding wasn´t properly reconfigured when entering or leaving secret levels, which could cause program crashes
For the complete changelog, please visit the official site (http://www.descent2.de/d2x-history.html)