Topic: Unfamiliar with this one...

[Foil]

If you want the best graphics (including those vapour/smoke trails, etc.), it's definitely D2X-XL.

[Crash]

Thanks for your advice.
Wish I could put it into practice right away but will wait for Friday when this contract law essay is submitted.

[Alieo]

I hate it when pesky 'ol school gets in the way of Descent! I just started back yesterday, and just yesterday got D2X-XL operating beautifully.

[Foil]

You guys are making me want to jump back in old-school Descent again.   

I think I will.

[SaladBadger]

Hey, it's entirely worth it!

As for ports, I'm a purist with many of my games, so the only thing you'll usually hear me recommending is DXX-Rebirth

[Alieo]

Is DXX-Rebirth more focused on the "vintage" aspect and compatibility with modern OS's than the OOHs and AHHs of D2X-XL?

[SaladBadger]

Pretty much. While there's a few new features here and there and a new OpenGL renderer it's still pretty much the descent you had back in 1995

[Scyphi]

It can also boil down to what your computer can handle. I love D2X-XL, but it is a bit of a resource hog at times, and it can't even begin to run on my laptop. So instead I use Rebirth instead. Which is great too, I've come to realize through this arrangement that some levels were just meant to be played the classic way.

[Alieo]

This is going against the direction of this topic as far as appreciating the vintage aspects of D1, which I MOST definitely do... but, do y'all know if anyone has converted the entire D1 hog to a D3 version?

[SaladBadger]

but, do y'all know if anyone has converted the entire D1 hog to a D3 version?

I don't think that's possible, the formats between the two games are just way too different. Sure, converting the HOG to HOG2 would be easy but Descent III probably wouldn't be able to do anything with the file.

Now, people have recreated bits of Descent 1/2 levels and the like, but they usually play different

[Alieo]

Yeah... it would probably have to be done manually to be done right. I've seen a D3 rendition someone did years back on Lunar Outpost... but I've been away from the online Descent community for about 8 years so I was wondering if someone had made something in that time. 

[TechPro]

The geometry methods are too foreign to permit migrating the D1 stuff to D3.  It's been discussed a few times.  D1 and D2 use cube geometry.  D3 does not and there is no means to convert the D1/D2 formats to D3.

[Pumo]

... And to make things worse, walls and doors are handled waaaay different on D1/2 compared to D3.

On D3, doors, grates and stuff are actually 3D objects (sometimes even carved on level's structure) while on D1/2 door and grates are no more than 2-sided flat planes with the corresponding textures on them.

[-<WillyP>-]

There is a converter to convert D1/ D2 levels to D3.  It works, but there is a lot of work to finish the level.  No doors, many faces flipped the wrong way, and it makes the whole level one big room.  Still, if you wanted to re-create d1 levels authentically in D3, it would save having to create all the rooms from scratch.  You would have to figure out what to do with doors, as in D3 a door is a room with volume, so you would have to create them from scratch, and remove some space from the room they attach to.

And as Pumi said, the grates in D1/ D2 are 2d textures.  I guess you could put a 2d texture with transparency in D3, but that would be pretty lame compared to actually constructing a grate in 3d faces.  Check out the grates in my IceFactor level.

[Scyphi]

Theoretically, it's possible, it's just that no one wants to take the effort to do it. Even with the converter, just building one level would be a lot of effort.

In fact, now that I think about it, the Lunar Outpost level Alieo is remembering I think was made with the converter, and it's dimensions were off (aka, the tunnels were all a bit too big). I've seen one of Ahaway Gate (D2 lvl 1) that was made into a D3 level the same way that had the same issue. Among other things.