Topic: Looking for a lost map. One of my maps.

[CrazyEnzo03]

This is a map I have sent around a bit on Kali when it was new, around the 2005-2006 years.

Specifically, it would be Nocturne.  The first one.  You can find the third one on Diedel's site and it's cool and all, but I had distributed Nocturne to several people, and even had it played a bit for one of the last - if not the last Descent Revival.

I'm not too interested in the second one since it wasn't very good.  But the first one was my favorite of the levels I had made and I long to see it once more and perhaps even make some vastly overdue improvements on it.  I remember posting screenshots of the level on the old PD.

I don't remember if I gave this level a briefing or not.  If I did, it will likely say that I made it.

Player 1's spawn (or rather the spawn you wind up at when you start the level in single player) puts you in a tunnel and you're just in front of the exit door.  The tunnel runs to the left and right of you.  To the right you follow the tunnel and you are led to the main dogfight room, which is a cavern with a tiled metal floor, a large pool of lava in the center, and a broken raised bridge which (used to) connect two upper-level entrances/exits to the room.  In the corner opposite the one you just entered you enter a room with a metal structure inside with windows (I used cloaked walls for windows).  I believe one of the ways out of this room leads back into the lava room while the other leads into a curved tunnel which eventually connects to the raised bridge.  Following the raised bridge you enter another room which appears to have facilities under construction if I remember correctly.  This room also connects to the tunnel in which you started.

I think it may have been one of my better-thought-out levels as opposed to, say, Nocturne 3, where both energy centers were actually added in hastily (well the one under the bridge definitely was, the other not so much) because I originally didn't realize I had forgotten the energy centers until I played a match with someone on it.

Come to think of it, Nocturne 1 may have only had 1 energy center which is in one of the tunnels.  Anyway, if anyone happens to have it, I'd really enjoy being able to have this mission once again.

[CrazyEnzo03]

Flip had the level, and he was gracious enough to provide it to me!

Many thanks to Flip, everyone!

...now I wish I hadn't put in all those robots which were harder on trainee than the normal ones were on insane.

I'm gonna have to load it up in DLE-XP and make all (read: most) of the bots have default values because... sheesh.

[karx-elf-erx]

Would you send me the map please?

[CrazyEnzo03]

I have some modifications to make since while a lot of things look great there's quite a few things which look absolutely ugly (and serve no purpose).

I had to remove over half the smart missiles due to horrible overabundance.

I'm going to be moving some homing missiles into places that aren't such a pain for weapon grabbing as well.

[karx-elf-erx]

Did you read in my forum that you only need to remove the HXM file from the mission to return all robot settings to standard?

[CrazyEnzo03]

Yeah, yeah, but removing the hxm doesn't modify level geometry nor does it improve weapon distribution and balance in the level

Those are some of the kinds of modifications I was talking about.

Feels kinda awkward having this conversation in two different forums.

[karx-elf-erx]

I was only trying to help with the robot - not withstanding any other changes you may wish to apply.

[CrazyEnzo03]

I see.  Sorry.

What I ended up doing regarding the robots was remove the .hxm and then make some edits to them afterward.  The only changes to the robots are sounds because I wasn't fond of the miniboss's sound or the fact that medium lifters made me freak out and stop and think "wait, did I put a thief in here??" as I got pummeled with missiles from a nearby red hulk.

Current list of level changes:
-Removed some ugly scenery such as some random oversized grate-walls in one of the rooms, replaced with better scenery such as subtle rock formations.
-Removed over half the smart missiles because of horrific overabundance.
-Moved several powerups because they were previously in awful places - for example, want homing missiles?  Now you won't have to go in between each of the little supports in a cramped tunnel just to grab them.  Etc.
-Put the reactor in a less hazardous position - through a door and around two corners.
-Removed some lights to make the level darker - it is called Nocturne, after all.

I am highly considering throwing in a custom texture, specifically one for glass, because cloaked walls do not do the job as well as needed - just makes one dark room look like... well, a dark room, when viewed from... well, another dark room.  I do not want to use any of D3's glass textures, I need something that would look convincing in any given version of D2.  An example of something I'm aiming for are textures similar to these - http://descent2.de/images/aquarium_5.jpg
Shouldn't be too hard to make.

I am also considering more geometry changes.  There's a lot of work I may end up doing to this level.

The good news is I playtested it as it is now and so far everyone I've played it with likes it.  if I do what I plan with the glass, they'll probably like it more since it was one of the bigger complaints.