Abandoned Projects Released

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Skyalmian
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Abandoned Projects Released

Post by Skyalmian »

Who knows if anyone is interested in Descent 3 materials at this point. Nevertheless, considering I am not going to finish either project, I decided to release everything for anyone who wishes to use anything or everything from it.

Included in it are:
- Lunar Outpost MN0019 v1.1
- Lunar Outpost MN0019 Special Edition (unfinished)
- A campaign I codenamed \"The Maze of Infinity\" (unfinished)

The script source code for all levels in all three projects are present, in addition to Another Starry Night's and The Toilet's.

Here are the Release Notes with the download link.

7-Zip or a utility that can decompress *.7z files is needed to open the archive, and OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice is needed to open the *.odt files contained within.
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Re: Abandoned Projects Released

Post by Skyalmian »

Google+ wrote:
I've been playing around in my ancient Descent II maps, which are virtually the only surviving files I have from 10+ years ago. The "last modified" time stamps for these are almost all December 2000 and January 2001. It was some kind of massive 20-level campaign that I don't remember any details about except that the robots were of a "Tycho Brahe Earth Robot Outpost" origin, therefore extremely hard / insane. I remember sheets of paper that were full of notes on the types and weapons of each robot, and on each level the varying robots would be anywhere from v1.0 to v12.0 in terms of upgrades.

I'll empty out the levels of all bots except materialization centers (since I can't remember what the spec sheets were) and turn them into architecture / exploration / puzzle maps, and release the results.

'Terralan' of Halo Custom Edition was like that; 'forbidden' zones were present in the map and people invariably spent more time 'exploiting' game glitches to get to places (I did detail work on) that they otherwise couldn't.

One thing I never agreed with in terms of map / level development was things like Valve's penchant for no-render textures; ★■◆● that, fill in as much as possible just for the sake of completion, because /noclip.
I am not sure what to call this, except that the last level will be 'Insanity' in a sense (named after another abandoned project of 20 Descent 1 levels), with this being an architecture / art showcase, for exploration, and puzzles. There are very few robots, less than in most other levels, though the briefings will amusingly over-hype them.

Estimated release date unknown. I'm currently revamping the first two levels and setting design guidelines. Unlike other levels, instead of just 'one' blue, gold, or red door for entry, that plus all further doors in those 'sectors' are keyed as well, making each 'area' of the map obvious. No doors have color-bar lights or markings, either.

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Sirius
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Re: Abandoned Projects Released

Post by Sirius »

Interesting. We've got a lot more people working on levels than I'd have expected at this point, which is nice to see.
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Re: Abandoned Projects Released

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The project was Descent 2: Vertigo and doesn't make use of D2X features, but if I...upscaled to that, would there be more in the way for puzzles? (The focus is less on combat and more on "Hey, neat." and/or "[confusion] 'wut'".)

Note: I use DXX-Rebirth to play these for the 'vanilla' mode/feel.

I am wondering if I can do away with the key system entirely in favor of other methods of restricted access, etc. Or maybe just the 'red' key for Reactor / Restricted Area...

(Ah, okay... 20,000 max cubes for D2X-XL, 900 for Descent 2: Vertigo. I liked making 'outdoor' maps ("PTMC City" (oh dear, with 20,000 it could be absolutely huge...) but was limited by Descent 2's cube limit...)
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Re: Abandoned Projects Released

Post by Sirius »

D2X-XL does give you more options for level design, yes - but you can't play those levels with Rebirth, so you'd basically have to choose one or the other.
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Re: Abandoned Projects Released

Post by Skyalmian »

D2x-Rebirth, I think.

I have halted the project, other things have taken my attention for the time being.

A weird bug has cropped up, too, that I cannot figure out. The maps are Descent 2: Vertigo and for some reason, in D2x-Rebirth, I get dropped to the desktop with a
Sorry, a critical error has occurred. wrote:Error: Failed to open HAM file "insanity01.ham"
This does not happen in D2x-XL though. I believe it began after I 'converted' the map to Descent 2: Vertigo in DLE 1.11.86, but I somehow messed with mission settings so it stopped happening. (Note: The map has custom robots and textures, and DLE seems to have trouble remembering to keep those two boxes checked in the 'Mission' tab under "custom data".)
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Re: Abandoned Projects Released

Post by Sirius »

The very first thing I'd check is whether the filename is too long. I recall someone else had problems with that in Rebirth as well, and it was pretty typical in DOS-era D1/2 for everything to have to be in 8.3 format.
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