Author Archives: zico

Hello everybody!

Zico here with a long overdue update. It’s been a while since I had a chance to actively support this project for various reasons (private and work-related), but that doesn’t change the fact that Descent and DXX-Rebirth are still very dear to me. So I decided to jump back into it and while I won’t be able to contribute a whole lot, there are quite a few things I can do.

First and foremost, I resurrected the Weekly Builds to get you updated versions of DXX-Rebirth based on the current code base. kp – who I cannot thank enough – has been pushing updates and fixes for all this time since the last update and the game is in pretty good shape. I highly encourage you to give it a go! If you encounter any issues, check out the README file on how to report them to GitHub.

Since the previous update of the Weekly Builds has been over a year ago, I purged the archive. However, unless there are no significant changes to the code, I will update these builds (hopefully) steadily. Due to the lack of a Mac, I currently cannot provide Mac OS builds, but I hope we can figure something out. I’m sorry.

While slowly sinking back my teeth into this project, I intend to contribute more to the code itself, adding fixes where needed, working on the SDL2 support and (hopefully) more, I also updated the page slightly. This is still a work in progress and more changes (including a potential DXX-Rebirth Discord server) are yet to come. As stated, I am slowly transitioning back into this, so if I forgot something (which I probably have), I am sorry.

Have fun!

Hello folks, Zico here with a small update!

I know it’s been a long time since the last BETA update and I am incredibly sorry for that. Heck, it’s been even longer since the last stable version and that doesn’t make things better. And as a matter of fact, I will not be able to contribute a whole lot until approximately this time next year due to my commitment to Mothergunship, Cold Hearts and a few other projects I am working on. The good news is that at this point I should be able to work on the project on a regular basis again – several hours per day. However life changes quickly so I hesitate to set it in stone. But I do look forward to get back to Rebirth as I miss Descent a lot. 🙂

But if you kept up with updates of the BETA, in the forums and on GitHub, you know that DXX-Rebirth has been alive and evolved quite drastically. Especially kp invested countless hours and Kreator, A Future Pilot and others are heavily involved in the development, too. Feature-wise the engine looks really good but it also needs a lot of testing – a shakedown period if you will. The maintenance of a stable branch is out of the question right now – at least from my end – but we have another option: Nightly Builds. 

A Future Pilot has been providing builds of development versions of DXX-Rebirth in the forums. So we came up with the idea to put them straight on the website – the source code as well as Windows binaries (for now) on a semi-regular basis (depending on time and development of course). Those builds will be snapshots of our GitHub repository, compiled and maintained by A Future Pilot. 

These builds should not be considered stable but with your feedback, chances are they will turn out to be just that eventually. DXX-Rebirth has always been a community effort and I sincerely hope you will give the builds a go. You can find them in the Downloads section.

Hey folks! It’s been three years since the last release and today I would like to present you DXX-Rebirth v0.60 BETA 1 – formally labelled v0.59.100! Now you may wonder: ‘Why a BETA?’. Within the past three years, a lot changed. The source codes of both games were merged (there are still two binaries, one for each game) and much of the code was refactored. While we’ve been putting a lot of effort into testing, there is only so much ground we can cover. And that’s why we decided to go with a public BETA for you guys to try out.

What’s new in this version:

• Merged code bases and massive code refactorization. [Massive thanks to kp]
• Homing projectiles now behave like in the original game running at 30 FPS! [Thanks to Drakona, Lothar, roncli, A Future Pilot, Ryusei117 and more]
• Fixed FPS fluctuations with VSync. [Thanks to derhass]
• Flashing effects properly scale to ingame brightness setting.
• In addition to quicksave, there is now a quickload key!
• Original base input sensitivity for all devices and mouse overrun option for mouse. [Thanks to the Retro team]
• Improved collision detection, fixing player damage being way too low in some occasions. [Thanks to Drakona]
• Reworked OPTIONS menu.
• New texture filtering options! [Thanks to beware]
• Optional timers displaying countdowns for cloak and invulnerability.
• New tracker for Multiplayer games. Including UDP hold-punching ability so hosts don’t need to have their ports open [Massive thanks to A Future Pilot]
• Drastically improved positional accuracy and less latency in Multiplayer games.
• Revamped powerup management in Multiplayer which properly handles and prevents loss and excess of powerups.
• Important packets in Mulitplayer are handled in proper order, fixing a multitude of packet-loss related issues.
• A plethora of new Multiplayer options. [Thanks to the Retro team, A Future Pilot and many more]
• Proper chaff effect for bombs in D2X-Rebirth Multiplayer as intended in the original game but never implemented correctly.
• Headlights on player ships will now properly render according to headlight state of the player.
• “Bright Players” Multiplayer option will now only affect players instead of all polygon models.
• Improved thief bot to (hopefully) work more accurate in Multiplayer.
• New Multiplayer GAME INFO screen that can be toggled ingame, too.
• Fixed some Multiplayer scoring oddities.
• … and many, many more bugfixes and improvements.

You can get this new version (source and Windows binary) from the Download page!

If you happen to find any bugs or glitches, please let us know. The best way to report your findings is by submitting them to our Bugtracker on GitHub or the forums. Your feedback is very, very important so we can get everything fixed and nicely polished before the proper v0.60 release.

Known issues to be addressed before release:

• At very high FPS (> 150), some robots with movable joints may twist those erratically after a player hit and consecutively take a few moments longer to recover. This bug was already present in the original engine.
• Robots coming out of Materialization Centers show minor visual corruptions on their animated visors. Very old D1X/D2X bug.
• New bugs will be added to the Bugtracker

I wish you guys a lot of fun in the mines!