D2X-XL


This Project Needs Funding!

Over the past four years, the D2X-XL project has been growing from humble beginnings to delivering a greatly enhanced, stable product with several thousand users. It has devoured thousands of work hours and a significant amount of money on my side.

The growing popularity has led to increasing demand on my web site, forcing me to move to a virtual server that costs me about twenty euros per month.

Although there is so many people enjoying the fruit of our work, only a few faithful supporters ever have donated to this project. Nobody is making any money from this project, but if you are enjoying playing Descent using D2X-XL, it should be worth something to you. The time has come to give back for what you have freely received.

If you cannot or don't want to use Paypal, drop me an e-mail, and I will give you a credit card or bank account where you can send some money. You don't have to send a lot, but a lot of you giving a little bit each will help to fund this project.
 
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Logo by MetalBeast

Current Version: 1.13.110

(Linux: 1.13.110, Mac OS X: 1.13.84)
     
    Breaking News

     
    SoftPedia Award

    Softpedia has tested the Mac OS X version of D2X-XL and found it 100% spy- and malware free. Well, as you can always download the source code and check it for yourself, I consider D2X-XL pretty safe, but having an 'official' statement by an independant third party is not a bad thing, so I thought I'd mention it here. Although not tested by Softpedia, the Linux and Win32 versions are just as safe - no wonder, it's the same source code. Click the image for detail info.

     
    Introduction

    D2X is a port of Descent 2 to OpenGL. It is an open source project and has received a lot of enhancements compared to Descent 2. My work on this project would not have been possible if hadn't been for the people who initially implemented the OpenGL and SDL code in D2X, so my thanks to them: It is for them that we can still play this great game on modern hardware. My thanks also to the many people who have provided input for this project, be it in the form of bug reports, great ideas, logos, encouragement, or other.

    Descent 2 is a pretty old game, and further development has slowed down; so there are a few issues - some still stemming from the original Descent 2 - that have never been adressed or solved in D2X.

    As I still like Descent 2 pretty much, I was always looking for a way to get rid of the things that plagued me most in Descent 2. Getting hold of the D2X source files and being able to create a MS Visual C++ 6 project for D2X finally enabled me to fix these annoyances.

     
    Backwards Compatibility

    Although D2X-XL contains a lot of enhancements and new features, it is still fully backwards compatible to every other Descent 2 version and particularly to D2_Win98 and d2_3dfx (which constitute the reference for every other D2 version). As many fixes simply restore features of the original Descent 2 that were missing in D2X (like availability of all cockpit views, or working mouse steering), it is even closer to them than D2X itself. Keeping full backwards compatibility is my concern, and where I break it, it happens accidentally and will be fixed as soon as I notice it, or get notified of it.

    In multiplayer games, all game-relevant features of D2X-XL (e.g. mouselook, dual missile launch, or the cockpit window 'radar') are completely turned off if the game host does not use D2X-XL. If the game host uses D2X-XL, he has full control over these features and can turn them on or off at his free disposal.

     
    Bug Fixes And Improvements

    D2X-XL fixes virtually all bugs found in D2X 0.2.6 and adds a plethora of new features. Here are some of the more prominent additions:

    • Mouse control working properly, improved and dual joystick support
    • Full support for playing Descent 1 missions
    • Fully implemented capture the flag game mode
    • New game modes (Entropy, Monsterball, Darkness)
    • Improved multiplayer support (UDP/IP communication and tracker support)
    • All cockpit styles available in all screen resolutions
    • Fully textured and lit automap
    • Improved rendering (colored lighting, smoke and weapon effects, real-time shadows, light coronas, sky boxes)
    • New mechanisms (cameras and monitors, in-level teleports, speed boosts (wind tunnels))
    • Speed and slow motion modes
    • Enhanced weapons overview, target, damage and missile lock indicators
    • Massively increased number of cubes, walls, triggers and objects
    • Improved singleplayer facilities (triggers can be attached to robots, support for multiple boss robots)
    • Integrated menu help explaining almost every aspect of the program and the game (invoke with F1)

    Find a pretty complete list here.

     
    Todo

    See the D2X-XL bug tracker on SourceForge.net.

     
    Known Issues
     

    • D2X-XL will eventually be minimized and not properly display menus and graphics if the graphical folding@home client v5.x is running - whether minimized or not.
    • D2X-XL will not display menus if Rivatuner is running in the background to fix refresh rates.

     
    Download links

       

      Source repository

      You can download the source code from the SVN repository of the D2X-XL project on SourceForge.net.

      The repository path is https://d2x-xl.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/d2x-xl. Read access is anonymous. If you want to store updates you made to source code in the SVN repository, you must become a member of the D2X-XL team on SourceForge.net and be granted write access to the repository.

      Windows users may want to use TortoiseSVN, which integrates with Windows Explorer and can be accessed using the file context menu.