[karx11erx]

Hey guys,

do me a favor, go to http://www.youtube.com/karx11erx and rate my videos up. There's a few asshats rating them down, and I'd like to see them fail.

Diedel/karx11erx

[jr2]

When I get back from work...

[Dark Hunter]

 

Ok, how do I get my game looking like it does in those videos? With the version of D2X-XL I have it looks better than the original... but not that much better.

[jr2]

Hi-res texture pack?  I have that, but I think there's prolly a newer version out.  Diedel should know.

[karx11erx]

One important thing is that you always need to install the latest d2x-xl.hog file coming with the windows distro of D2X-XL.

In d2x-xl.ini set -hires_textures 1, -cache_textures 1, -hires_models 1, -model_quality 2.

Install all hires textures (put them in subfolder "textures" of your D2X-XL installation) and models (put them in subfolder "models"). Find them in http://www.descent2.de/downloads.html. Be aware that the textures are stored in quite a few separate rar files, each containing all textures with a certain theme (doors, rock, metal, etc).

Turn colored lighting on. You may want to try OpenGL lighting, but turn it off for polymodels because you need a beast of a machine to run that (config -> render options -> lighting).

Set render quality to very high and texture quality to high (config -> render options). When using hires textures with another than hightest texture quality, D2X-XL will resize them the first time it uses them, so level load time may be increased. This is a however one time effect.

Turn on coronas, explosion blasts, energy trails, tracers and thruster flames (config -> render options -> effects).

Turn on smoke (config -> render -> smoke).

Turn on 3D powerups (config -> render -> powerups).

[jr2]

OK, I firewalled your ratings.    But, IMHO, you have the smoke trails on the missiles too dense.  Just my opinion... I suppose you like them that way.  But, anyways, how about uploading the Hi - Q versions of those vids to VUZE?

EDIT: www.descent2.de/downloads doesn't work, displays Error 403 - Forbidden:

ZUGRIFF NICHT ERLAUBT

Die angeforderte Seite darf nicht angezeigt werden.

However, going to www.descent2.de and then clicking downloads does work, but doesn't have /downloads in the address bar.

[karx11erx]

Oops - make that downloads.html.

Hires videos are available there or can be viewed directly in my worklog on http://www.descent2.de.

On which video do you believe the smoke is too dense?

I turned it up intentionally in the missile smoke trails clip because it is taken in bullet time mode to avoid it looking to sparse. The smoke also looks worse when the video gets converted from avi to wmv (-> lossy compression and reduced size) and from wmv to mpeg2 (by youtube, more lossy compression and size reduced again).

It definitely looks better in-game.

I tried to preprocess the vids with virtualdub, but it ruined the sound that had been recorded together with the vids - it got totally distorted and stuttering when cutting the vids.  Since I had deleted the raw avis before checking the cut versions I had to re-record all my gameplay (about 1h uncut). -> Deleted virtualdub from my system. So if you know a better free tool for making videos than windows movie maker, I'd be glad to hear about it.

[jr2]

Was that the latest VirtualDub beta?  Ya, the smoke seemed to dense in all vids, but I can check back later and give screenies if you want...

[Dark Hunter]

One more question (then I'll let this thread get back to multiplayer games, I promise): my father is an avid Descent player as I am... though he prefers Descent 1 to 2. I tried transferring his saved games to D2X-XL (the older computer they were on used the original Descent), but now it gives an error if he tries loading his pilot file: some kind of version compatibility issue. Any ideas?

[karx11erx]

Please post support requests and bug reports in http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/d2x-xl.

[Nuke]

ive tried many programs for video capture, and i think the best way is to use a vcr. most video cards have an svideo port or a composite video port. hook the vcr's video up to that connection, and get you an rca->minijack adaptor for the sound. clone your display to the svid port play and record. then you need a video capture device, a card or a usb device. of course this is only usefull if you have the hardware, i wouldnt buy the setup myself, id just settle with fraps.

[karx11erx]

Recording is not the problem, editing the raw video is.

[Nuke]

when i was in highschool i single handedly set up the video editing lab. there were 2 mac stations and one pc station, all of which had their own video capture cards and adobe premier. there were also a few analog stations as well with the full console setup. it was pretty cool. i didnt really edit any video in there, but all the radio/tv students were happy with the setup. of course i did this for extra credit in my electronics class. that was back in '99 i think. anyway if you got all the codecs, adobe premire is the way to go.

[karx11erx]

I said free.

Is Adobe Premiere free?

[Nuke]

it can be

but im sure if you look on source forge you can find an open source video editor you can use. i saw a few of em, but they were all in beta or alpha. sence i dont have much real intrest in doing video, i have no need to check them out.

[AusRED5]

it can be

Pirating is not an option for Diedel.
I know him enough to know that he won't do that.

but I'm sure if you look on source forge you can find an open source video editor you can use. i saw a few of em, but they were all in beta or alpha. since i don't have much real intrest in doing video, i have no need to check them out.

This is true, but it's hard to sort through them all.   

[karx11erx]

Pirating software ("stealing" would be the proper word, but "pirating" sounds "nobler", doesn't it? ) is indeed not an option for me.

On another note: Is there a pixel shader guru among the local crowd who'd lend me a hand?

Hunter,

your father needs to setup a new player for D2X-XL. The old files aren't compatible.

[karx11erx]

You missed out on a few cool D2X-XL videos. Find them better organized in my Youtube channel.

[CP5670]

You might want to try Windows Media Encoder. It's a free Microsoft utility that seems to work well and has a lot of features. I've been recently using it to encode video clips of some games.

[karx11erx]

Can you edit videos with it? Cut them, rearrange them, add text and music?