Level Editing - Descent 1 & 2 - ADG Mod 5

[@GuardianOfRlyeh]

I created a level for Descent, too, back in the days with the DOS Editor. I invested hours just to get the lighting and the textures right. But to see your own creation in action as you wanted it to be was absolutely awesome :) Also it was possible to create corridors which go through other corridors, like some kind of interdimensional corridors.

[@pagb666]

I knew levels were made of cubes, but never attempted to build one back in the day. Thanks for showing this!

[@Grimsikk]

this is really cool. I grew up on Descent I and II, and never knew there was a level editor. I miss these late 90s 3D aesthetics.

[@GamingWolf_Plays]

It's a series of cubes!

[@SplotchTheCatThing]

Getting exit sequences to play in Descent 1 levels is... tricky. You need at least a .hog file with your level and another type of file (whose extension I'm blanking on right now) that matches the filename of the level, which sets things like the heightmap for the planet surface, the surface texture, and what's visible in the sky. And if I remember correctly the exit tunnel needs to be built to a particular set of specifications as well -- I could be misremembering, but I think there's a minimum number of segments, and that the last four or five need to be unaltered cubes in a specific orientation. I seem to remember the "quick and dirty" way to get it to work was to copy the exit tunnel from one of the stock campaign maps as a block, paste it into your level, and then find the exit file that went along with that level in Descent.hog and rename it to match your level file in your .hog. I was more into mapping for Descent 2 (and still have been known to come back to that occasionally) so this information is probably less than helpful-- but I see others have explained other parts of it anyway. Overload thankfully makes the exit sequence much easier to script.

[@pixelflow]

Some art museum in the future: Cubism section: Descent.

[@SZG65]

My missions are here: www.enspiar.com/dmdb/viewMember.php?id=314 More cubist art here: syzygy.eu5.org

[@andersdenkend]

Awesome, very interesting. Never even thought of editing for Descent. Would love to give it a go now.

[@nrg753]

Fun topic, I was a DOS kid myself, but if you've never played the Mac version go listen to the soundtrack :). Awesome information on the portal rendering system, I had assumed it was bsp myself.

[@Pixelmusement]

+Matt Bell The remixed music in the Mac version of Descent is freaking AWESOME. I also had permission from the devs to use that music in the Descent 3 levels I was making way back when. ;)

[@Treewyrm]

Heh, I still have my DMB (Descent Mission Builder) CD. I think it was originally a separate retail product, later became part of Descent II Infinite Abyss and Descent I & II Definitive Colllection, and I guess eventually became rewritten into DLE. Descent was very different to conventional sector-based 2.5D game engines of that time, i.e. Doom and Build engine, but neither free-form 3D like Quake. Cuboid nature of level structure lends to style which is certainly associated with Descent I & II. I'd love to see more ADG Mod episodes, there were many games back then which had editors but also had plenty unique engine features and quirks giving each game a distinctive look and feel.

[@axelschwei3907]

What Descent uses is called a Portal Based Engine (aka Portal Rendering), while Quake (and Doom in 2D) use BSP-Trees, which are compiled from CAD-Data. The fact that all segments in Descent are cubes was a design choice, but you could build a portal engine with arbitary (convex!) polyhedrons. A lot of newer games like Unreal Tournament or Descent 3 (the later combined with a terrain engine) use a variant of portal engines, where concave shapes are allowed, but a Z-Buffer is required for rendering. So far nobody has invented a portalizer for CAD-Data, so BSP-engines are easier to use, but require compilation, while Portal-engines are difficult to use, but allow changing the geometry on the fly, allow "4D" levels and are more efficient to render (less overdraw). Especially if you use software-rendering, Portal-engines are good, because reducing overdraw (less pixels to draw) is more important than reducing the polygon count (while hardware rendering is more limited on polygons than pixels).

[@MarquisDeSang]

People like you and Bisqwit (overly talented and intelligent) are never part of the "industry" for some reason. Only John Carmak made it. The most brilliant people in programming world are not working in the "industry" professionally. I program on all platform in boring programming language during the day at work (swift, kotlin, c#) and at night at home, I program in C and Assembly. I am glad you are on KZbin putting so much effort to inform and entertain us. Thank you.

[@Pixelmusement]

+MarquisDeSang For every success story like Carmack's there's dozens of people who tried to make their mark and failed and dozens more who made a small mark but have long since been forgotten. Ultimately, so long as you enjoy what you're doing and are able to pay your bills and get through life the way you want to, the quantity of success you attain doesn't really matter. :B

[@Ehal256]

"The most brilliant people in programming world are not working in the "industry" professionally" There are plenty of extremely smart people working in the industry as well, they tend to just be too busy working to make youtube videos.

[@MarquisDeSang]

@@Ehal256 Of course there are, just not on the level of Bisquit, Terry A. Davis and Stallman

[@NightpireVideos]

really cool, I'm digging this series

[@princessruri4018]

Something you didn't touch on is how being a portal engine allows for impossible geometry. You can have multiple segments occupy the same space like Duke 3D or Dark Forces.

[@Pixelmusement]

+PrincessRuri I know, but I don't like making levels in that manner and thus don't know enough about the intricacies and hiccups you can encounter doing stuff like that, thus I wasn't able to really comment on it. :P

[@mattfromeurope]

Ha! I was right!!! 😁 Back in the day I actually dipped my toes into the waters of Descent level editing myself. That‘s how I know the levels were made out of cubes. I used Devil back then, but never completed anything.

[@axelschwei3907]

To get Exit cutscenes you need a TXB or TEX file in your HOG file, with the same name of your level. TXB are encrypted text scripts configuring angle of exit, background (PCX) and textures (BBM=Amiga IFF Bitmap) to use for the cutscene. You can also simply take the TXB files from the DESCENT.HOG, and try and error the angle (it is possible that the sidenumber (1-6) of the exit matters for the angle too (or only matters ?)). TXB Files are also used for briefings, same encryption, but different script.

[@Pixelmusement]

+Axel Schweiß OK. I thought it was more automated than that. Still probably a good thing to have a proper exit tunnel anyways. ;)

[@JaapioNL]

Pretty cool to see someone making levels for descent. I sadly lost my custom levels.

[@pulgasari857]

If you ever need fuel for your channel you should grab the 1/2tb geocities dump by archive.org, holy shit I tried to go through what was in it some years ago and it would probably take a lifetime. Keep up the good work, always interesting to see what you find.

[@RoboticMagus]

I've been playing hundreds of level building contest levels for both Descent 1 and 2. Might as well give your level a try!

[@demogorgonzola]

Segments instead of cubes because as soon as we transform them they technically aren't strictly cubes anymore.

[@anonamatron]

Cuboids?

[@demogorgonzola]

@@anonamatron More like hexahedron (plural: hexahedra) - polyhedron with six faces - as they can be set to any angle not just 90 degrees.

[@Onihikage]

The original devs call them "deformed cubes"

[@axelschwei3907]

I looked it up, but there seems to be no word for it. A Cube is regular, a cuboid is rectangular and a hexahedron can also be something like a pentagonal pyramid, that doesn't have four corners per side. Maybe we should call it Frinkahedron. (Simpsons fans get the joke)

[@krux02]

You didn't mention that you can have rooms touch each othear or go through each other without being connected. This allows to make levels in non euclidean geometry that wouldn't be possible in more traditional 3D level editors.

[@Pixelmusement]

+krux02 Only because I don't make levels in that manner and thus don't know what the limitations and consequences of doing that might be and thus wasn't able to comment on that accurately. :P

[@krux02]

@@Pixelmusement For some unknown reasons I am currently playing through Descent 2. I realized that two rooms were clipping on the minimap, probably happed by accident when the levels were created. During normal play you wouldn't notice that the rooms are clipping each other, but on the minimap it was clearly visible I was in two rooms at the same time. Since I know this I am curious if this attribute could be exploited. For example a big room that has a portal in the middle that leads to another room. I also don't know if you can collide with objects that are at the same location but in a different room.

[@okona1up]

@@krux02 your example does work, I made such a level back then just to test this. Not so sure about collision, but I think the engine does correctly handle this. I remember there was a level called Chinese box which exploits this. But beware, it makes a knot in your brain.

[@SplotchTheCatThing]

Double comment, but this didn't really fit into the other one -- if anybody wants to just *see* some more naturalistic cube-based designs, Nick Herres (who went by Kruel) made some absolutely stunning maps for these games back in the day. It's not a type of design that I think anyone should seriously attempt in this system, but since he did anyway, his levels are well worth hunting down. And especially so if you have some understanding of how the engine works.

[@brianbergmusic5288]

I remember that name. I was deep into Descent and level editing back in the day. I especially liked it when some designers created fake 'outdoor' sections (usually using star-like textures on a faraway unreachable wall). One of my favorite maps was a space station with plenty of windows; complete with a hanger with an alien spacecraft that the player could enter and destroy ITS reactor and exit the mission via the hanger door. Ever encounter that one? I miss those days. I liked how the imagination was prompted to make cubical worlds transform into the ultimate sci-fi pew-pew dodgeball. Nostalgia bomb!

[@programaths]

Yes, look like a decent level editor!

[@Leeki85]

Descent engine is quite heavy on DOS PCs and level details don't do much. I wonder why game don't allow to disable all textures and go with simple flat polygon (I know it's cubes in Descent) look. There were games like Robocop 3 which have much higher geometry detail than Descent and being unlit flat shaded polygons allowed them run well on old 386 or even 286 machines. This make me wonder. Maybe programmers build engine in a way to work best with texture mapping and lightning? Or maybe they didn't care at all and just targeted fast 486 and Pentium CPUs. The latter is quite possible since Descent DOS release runs way to fast on +1 GHz CPUs, while Wolfenstein 3D, Doom etc. run at correct speed. I think that with some trade-offs Descent 3D gameplay could be achieved on a 286 with 25 MHz clock. No lightning, no textures, just flat polygons. Achieving similar look to Star Fox from SNES.

[@AmyraCarter]

Ah, yes, 3D level editing... Makes me wish there were more level editors like this one that used similar logic. Most 3D level editors use pre-defined pieces, and that's fine, for most...

[@Haltedboy]

morrowind? thats the main game that comes to mind when i think of questionable spells

[@DeadYorick]

Please make more of these videos

[@Pixelmusement]

+DeadYorick ...more Descent level editing videos? ...more videos regarding level editing in general? ...both? ;)

[@DeadYorick]

@@Pixelmusement Well I'd definitely like to see a Descent 3 video. More videos on these obscure modding capabilities for older titles would be nice. Like using TED to make Commander Keen levels.

[@Alien426]

Couldn't you just put 2 cubes at the extremes outside of what you already built? I bet that DLE just takes the maximum and minimum values for X, Y and Z coordinates to center the map. Reminds me of AutoSketch 2, where you could copy objects into memory, but upon pasting the objects, they were attached to your cursor on their minimum X and Y points. To solve it, you would draw a rectangle on the grid around the object(s), then copy everything including the rectangle, paste and erase the rectangle. (It didn't need to be a rectangle, of course, a line to a point on the grid but at minimal X, Y values would suffice.)

[@Pixelmusement]

+AlienFourTwoSix That's not a bad idea... If I ever do more Descent editing in the future I'll have to keep that in mind! ;)

[@adrikriptok7225]

Great video!! The cube-with-portals approach is very interesting although I would try to make it work with prisms. That way you wouldn't have to worry about "deformed squares".

[@Pixelmusement]

+Kriptok Games ...I presume you meant "pyramids" as a "prism" is simply any 2D shape extruded outwards. Even a cube is a kind of prism. Though, using nothing but pyrmaids would be a very interesting challenge... Straight corridors would be particularly difficult to construct. Not impossible, just... difficult. :P

[@adrikriptok7225]

@@Pixelmusement Yeah, I meant prisms as a three sided shape, with triangles at the bottom and at the top. But a tetrahedron would be agreat building block too. It would be nearly IMPOSSIBLE to visualize and work with it and designing levels in that format, but easy on engine! I'm gonna try it some day.

[@Pixelmusement]

+Kriptok Games I have a 2D action game idea with a grid of triangles instead of squares used for solid objects and triggers and such. I might still pursue it someday but it is kind of a weird one with some very abstract things going on. :P

[@adrikriptok7225]

@@Pixelmusement It surely sounds weird. I can't wrap my head around the idea... You should at least code a proof of concept and show it!!

[@GadWissberg]

Great job on the video! Is this the level editor made by Brainware? I'd be happy if you could make also for the Build engine level editor :)

[@Pixelmusement]

+Gad Wissberg That was technically the first ADG Mod video I ever made this year! Granted it was doing Duke Nukem 3D level editing, though that's definitely the simplest way to get into Build Engine stuff! kzbin.info/www/bejne/omiYoaFtfq19rZY

[@LorenzoPace3Dartist]

Hey, do you know where can I find the download of the first level?

[@Tigrou7777]

Is there any FPS of that era that used a similar "cube based renderer" approach ? I am wondering what are the limitations (expect the fact that building a level is much harder). Would it be possible to build a level with geometry similar to Q1/H1 ? (given enough time and effort)

[@Pixelmusement]

Actually, a lot of old DOS games have more grid-like level designs than you would expect, such as Tomb Raider and System Shock, though Descent's approach with cubes of any shape/size is unique to the Descent games as well as "Descent to Undermountain" which was... an odd engine choice for that game. One of the biggest difficulties with the engine is that it's extremely difficult to have inner-geometry; things like pillars, scaffolds, protruding surfaces like spikes, etc. It really is designed primarily for corridors and wide-open areas. :P

[@JaapioNL]

Did you add a tex file for your level? I think that is needed for the exit 'animation' to work.

[@Pixelmusement]

I did not, so yeah, that could be part of it. :B

[@vikkbiff6029]

Some questions here. I'm interested in the robot and object values and I was wondering some things with that. Can I change the player ship values such as the maximum allowed shields. I would like to max out at 300 shield instead of 200. Or what about making a tougher battleship that is slightly bigger and slower but has a default starting shield value of 200 but can go all the way to like 700. Also are shields and robot health the same thing?. And what is the maximum health value I can give to a robot or myself?. Like could I make a boss that had over 70000 or more shields which would take forever to kill it. Or another idea would be if I made it so that there was a single special missile in the entire level that was the only missle with enough damage to kill it. Or make a robot that has enormously damaging weapons but only 1 hp. Something I must especially ask is if it's possible to make AI enemy ships so that I could dogfight in single player like I would in multiplayer?. I would really like to make a level with fast moving AI enemy ships that dodge my weapons and fire theirs with truly devastating speed.

[@Pixelmusement]

The Descent games definitely have some strong modding potentials; I think you can do a few of those things you're suggesting though I wouldn't know how off-hand. However, some things likely aren't possible without hacking the executable data, such as going over 200 shields with the player. :P

[@vikkbiff6029]

I might ask if you have also found it possible to play as any of the robots including any bosses? And if you can get their strengths and weapons?. Since the player is an object as well I wondered if it was possible to change the object to a robot.

[@Pixelmusement]

@@vikkbiff6029 Not sure... Even if you could though, there's no interior graphics as such, so you'd only really know you were flying such a thing when you see the death animation. :P

[@vikkbiff6029]

How would I change the ship interior?. Would I have to hack the executable data for that too? And the other question is if shields are the same as the other object health?. And if the weapon damage values are the same for player weapons as they are for the robots?.

[@Pixelmusement]

@@vikkbiff6029 This is all stuff I don't know the specifics for as I'm not heavily into modding the Descent games, though in terms of changing the ship interior, so long as all of the HUD and MFD elements are left in the same positions, you could just modify the graphics using appropriate tools, but to change the positions of those active elements you would need to modify the executable itself.

[@lsb2623]

A.D.G. A Descent Guide

[@Christopher-N]

(2:52) Incapable of horizontal movement in Doom? Define "horizontal" in the context of Doom level rendering, please. (13:06) Interesting. I'm assuming you tried loading a pre-existing Descent level in which a robot drops a red key, and seeing how the game accounted for this. (15:03) Wow - that screen looks rough, though that could be due to differences in emulation, i.e. DOSBox vs D1X-Rebirth. (15:57) You mean switches, like when the player passes through a certain point and a nearby door/s opens (typically behind, or to both sides of the player) revealing robots poised to attack? Or do you mean switches other than the hidden door triggers I've described from Descent 1? (16:22) An interesting theory. You could test it by duplicating your existing level and setting the missing to play both levels - in theory, it should render the tunnel escape sequence in the first level, and fade out in the second. One final question, does the escape tunnel have to be a specific length for the escape sequence to be rendered (obviously, it would look pretty odd if the tunnel is too short)? Will the level editor's diagnostic mode correct it if it needs to be longer/shorter?

[@Pixelmusement]

+Christopher Noel I think when I said "horizontal" I more-so meant "lateral", as in, any direction except up or down, as Doom's environment is built out of a 2D map and the BSP tree accounts for that layout to not change, thus vertical changes are still possible. Descent II has switches you can shoot to trigger changes like force fields dropping or secret walls opening up. And as for the escape tunnel, it can TECHNICALLY be any length, but it's important not to be able to see the other end of it from the exit door and it has to have at least enough length for the view to transition from first person to third person. Beyond that, any length works. :B

[@Christopher-N]

An addendum to the first part: Back in the day the only Doom level editor we had available was WADED, sadly. I had a lot of trouble getting it to cooperate with me, and it often did not like the sectors I was trying to draw (it seemed like it wanted my sectors divided up by diagonal lines, whether it made sense or not), and some sectors always forgetting their textures. I've never been happy about how Doom handles the vertical axis, such as demons being able to damage you from any distance below you, and I could never get platforms to behave properly. As I said, WADED was the only level editor I could get my hands on back in the day, which is why I eventually gave up trying to create my own levels.

[@Pixelmusement]

+Christopher Noel I got a huge book detailing Doom level editing and it came with a CD PACKED with stuff, including multiple editors. The editor I ended up using primarily was DCK as it was the most user friendly, even if not the most stable. :P

[@Christopher-N]

@@Pixelmusement: I don't have any plans to do level editing in the near future, but it would still be very interesting to read. What is the book [title/author]?

[@Pixelmusement]

+Christopher Noel "Tricks of the Doom Programming Gurus"

[@sd2go]

source code for editor doesn't work. all zero bytes

[@Pixelmusement]

Which one? If you mean DLE, it's done with 7Zip archives as opposed to ZIP files so you'll need a program which can open those, plus 7Zip, like RAR, is one of those formats which occasionally gets more features so if you have such software you may need to update it.

[@sd2go]

@@Pixelmusement WinRar complains and won't unpack them an 7Zip when downloaded doesn't work (Windows 11)

[@sd2go]

@@Pixelmusement And the new version 1.12.32 has problems unpacking in WinRar

[@sd2go]

@@Pixelmusement Previous version also complains about 'descent.pig' when opening up the original levels

[@Pixelmusement]

This is going beyond my ability to help with. For problems with 7-Zip, there is an active support forum linked on the official website. As for DLE, I'm not sure what to suggest as the forums for its official website are offline at the moment. :/

[@warlock415]

Spell effects game... Master of Magic?

[@MarquisDeSang]

I want Decent VR

[@Pixelmusement]

+MarquisDeSang Go play Overload and thank me later. ;)

[@MarquisDeSang]

@@Pixelmusement Thank you, It is now on my wish list and is the next game I will buy. Can't wait to get VR sick again. I miss StarBlood Arena VR.

[@MarquisDeSang]

@@Pixelmusement I tried the game in VR and asked for a refund. Nothing wrong with the game, it is amazing, but the world scale (distance between 2 cameras) is way too small. Making everything look like 4x bigger than reality. The seat and the controls in the cockpit are huge and I feel so tiny. It makes me feel uncomfortable. The dev don't care about this (it has been mentioned to them on many forum post). There is not way to turn off bloom in VR and that is really annoying, you feel like the HMD is dirty.

[@Pixelmusement]

+MarquisDeSang Interesting. I've only played it non-VR and have had a good bit of fun with it, especially considering it was made by the original Parallax Software guys, thus why it essentially feels like the Descent 4 we never got, though it was built for non-VR first and VR second so I'm not surprised by this either. :P