Last Updated: 11/01/97

Well, after Jon Hylands created the RDL specs for Descent I, I decided to write the RL2 specs! As I wrote the Descent Manager, I had to find out these informations stated here for the Level-Reporter. Please write comments and errors to me via eMail!

Since Rel. 2a this specs have a very special feature, and I’m proud that such a feature was never released before in any games specs! It’s named "Developer Report". Look below for it!

Author: Heiko Herrmann alias HH-Software Images of the Descent Network

• Rel. 1a (Released 12/30/96): initial release
• Rel. 1b (Released 01/03/97): added internal level name
• Rel. 2a (Released 01/27/97): added switches information, introducing "Developer Report", added Vertigo Series Robots and Type 08 levels, some minor corrections
• Rel. 2b (Never released): minor fixes and additions
• Rel. 2c (Released 06/24/97): new design, now online viewable here at Descent Network - expect updates for the missing parts soon!
• Rel. 2d (Released 07/08/97): revised it again

RL2 is the short form of "Registered Descent Level 2". You can use those only on the Descent 2 Registered Versions. The Shareware Version, the OEM Version (called Destination Quartzon) and Descent 1 will just ignore those levels! The RL2 is normally in a Descent archive file with the extension .HOG!

2-byte and 4-byte Integers are saved in normal PC style, so that the minor byte comes first (so 12 80 23 33 will mean hex $33238012!)

This is a very special feature. Well, I thought to understand the complex RL2 format it would be best to make you able to look at some practical guide on some of your levels. How is this released?
Well, first of all you need the Descent Manager in the current version. As of releasing this document, V1.0 Beta 03a is the actual version. Download it here...
Now, search for a level, which you want to analyse. Any working RL2 level is okay. Then start the Descent Manager like this:

After pressing RETURN a special Developer report will be created. It is stored in the same directory and has the same name as the Level, but uses the extension ".DEV"! It is a simple ASCII file, which you can look at with any text editor like EDIT, NOTEPAD, Norton Commander or even Word.

Now for the contents of this file: It contains lines like

The first column is the description of this file. The second column (here "#MINEDATA") is the connecting piece to this spec!

Okay, now when you read this spec you will come to an point with [#MINEDATA] for example. Now you want to know, where this point is in your specific level. Then you will make the Developer report like above (if you didn’t already do it...) and look in the second column for #MINEDATA. You will find it and then you see in the third column, where this thing is (or starts if the caption is more than one byte!) in decimal and hexadecimal numbers! The fourth column does contain some information as an addition, in this case it displays, where this pointer actually is pointing to (short: the evaluated contents of this data). Isn’t that a) easy and b) a great thing?

Now to some syntax to the names I took!

• If a name starts with "#" (like #MINEDATA), it indicates NOT the point, where the MINEDATA is actually, but where the pointer to this data is (short: where you can get the exact file offset to the data you want!)
• All things, cubes and walls are listed seperatly. In this spec there only stands a (e.x.) [#CUBE_xx], where xx stands for the number.
• All those names are in brackets and in bold style in this spec!

Note: You should use Beta 03b or higher of the Descent Manager, because 03a has some bugs here and some informations were even missing!

The first 20 bytes are the header. Here is the explanation:

from start of the file:

The bytes 4-7 [VERSION] indicate the version number. The following versions are out till now:

We will only discuss version 6-8 here. Version 1 Commercial are here.

The bytes 8-11 indicate the mine data offset. That is the start of the data for the mine structures (cubes and verticies) in the mine. The following numbers are offsets from that adress!

from minedata-offset [MINEDATA]:

First of all there are two 2-byte integers with the number of verticies and the number of cubes. Following that the verticies information with 12 bytes each: Each vertex is stored as three 16:16 coordinates (x, y and z). So you can get the exact x-coordinate with the following: byte0+256*byte1+(byte2+256*byte3)/65536. Same with bytes 4-7 for the y-coordinate and 8-11 for the z-coordinate.

Now comes the most complex data in the level file: the cube data. It follows directly after the verticies data. You can skip the vertex infos and get directly to the cube data with: minedataoffset+number of verticies*12 bytes+4!

Okay, every cube package starts with the neighbor bitmask. This is one byte containing the information where the cube is connected with another cube and where the cube is a outer wall.

For each bit 0-5 is set to one, there will be a following 2-byte integer with the number of the cube connected to that side. Lets say, the actual cube has on the left and on the back side neighbor cubes. Then the neighbor mask will be set to 17 (16+1) and this means there will be 2*2 bytes=4 bytes following with the number of the neighbor cube on the left side and on the back side (respectively). But here are also some exclusions: If the neighbor cube is 65534, then that side is the special "end wall", placed at the end of the exit tunnel, which was only used in Descent I levels for the escape tunnel flight. And the second exclusion is that Parallax itself usually sets ALL bits in the neighbor bitmask and then where not really a neighbor cube is the number is set to 65535. This is important if you want to support both DEVIL levels and the original DESCENT levels. This was also forgotten in the RDL specs by Jon Hylands, although in Descent I this is the same, so it took me some time to figure out why DEVIL levels were already working with the Descent Manager but the Parallax didn’t...

For short: Save the bitmask of the actual cube in an boolean array! When the neighbor bit is 1, set the corresponding array element to TRUE, if not to FALSE. Then look at the neighbor cube info for each array element=TRUE and when this is equal or higher than 65534, then reset the element to FALSE. You will need this below!

Note to Descent I-RDL: Bit 6 of the neighbormask tagged a special cube in Descent I! This is not neccessary in the new file format anymore, so ignore bit 6!

After that the vertex info [CUBE_xx_VERTEX] comes. Each cube is defined by its eight verticies! The information now following are the numbers of the corresponding vertex number in the verticies data explained above:

from the point after the neighbor cube information:

Note to Descent 1-RDL: In Descent 1’s RDL format there would now be the special data for the cube when Bit 6=1 in the neighbor bitmask and the cube’s static light value (2 bytes). In RL2 this information does NOT stand here, but at the end of the cube information! Note that difference if you write a tool which supports both Descent I and II level files!!!

Next comes the wall bitmask [CUBE_xx_WBITMASK]. Bits 0-5 are once again if the corresponding side is a wall (doors, walls, switch to shoot, illusion walls, ...). For each bit set there will be one byte with the ID of the switch. So if the number is set to 34, then two Bits are set (Bit 5 and Bit 1), which means there will be 2*1 byte=2 bytes following the switch bitmask containing the IDs of the switch. The switch type and action itself is saved extra in the game data field, which is explained later. If the ID is 255, then it would be like the corresponding bit is set to 0, meaning no switch on that side!

So, now for every side, that doesn’t have a neighbor (the corresponding bit in the neighbor bitmask is set to 0 or the neighbor cube is equal or greater than 65534) or does have a switch (the corresponding bit in the switch bitmask is 1 and the switch ID is not 255) there follows the texture information for that side. This consists of the primary texture (2 bytes), optionally the secondary texture (2 bytes) and the UVL-Data (24 bytes):

If bit 15 is set to one in the primary texture, there will 2 bytes follow after that with the secondary texture. The UVL structure defines, for each vertex on the side, the offset of the texture, and the light value of that vertex on the side. UV is the texture offset at that corner, and L is the light value for that corner. The texture offset is a pair of short fixed point values, which define how the texture is stretched.

Now the whole information you see above within the "cube datas" subscription is repeated for every cube.

After the cube information follows the information on the cube properties [CUBESPEC_xx]. This data is exact: number of cubes*8 bytes long!

The first byte contains the cube type:

The other bytes descripe the the cube’s static light value and some other things, which I don’t know till now...

The game data [GAMEDATA] starts at the offset which is stated in the header (look at the beginning). The game data itself is divided into some pieces. I did not get all structures till now, so there will be more to come in the next versions of this spec!

The first is the game data header (119 bytes), which is structured in the following way:

from gamedata offset:

(*1) all offsets are stated as offsets from the game data offset on, so you must add them to get the real position within the file!

Directly after these 119 bytes (the game data header) there is the name of the level, terminated with either the byte 0 or the byte 10 (hex A).

The following captions now descripe each of the known sections.

The THINGS section [THINGS] contains full information on each of the things in the mine. Things are not only items like weapons, but also robots, reactors and starting places. The number of things are can be read of the game data header [NUM_THINGS].

We start with the first byte of a thing [THING_xx]. This first byte indicates the type of the thing and the size of the package following which descripes the thing in detail. 7 thing types are known. The following table will show you the number of the types and how big a package of each type is (including the first thing-type-indicator!):

I know very little of the information from every thing type till now. Here is the information I know of each thing type and which was neccessary for the Level-Reporter of the Descent Manager. I will add the missing information as soon as I find out (if ya have further information send them to me, please!):

(*2) Every item has a texture. But you needn’t use the right texture for that item. So it is possible to let a Mega Missile look like a concussion and make it a surprise for the one who collects the "pseudo"-concussion! Just use the texture number of the Concussion instead of the Mega! I personally don’t like those surprise games, so the Descent Manager will soon have a repair option which resets those texture informations to the corresponding ones. This texture number was also the reason for the Devil bug in version V2.1a and V2.1b: Achim has set the wrong texture numbers to the flags which resulted in two funny flags: one looked like a reactor shot and one like a fusion explosion... The Repair Function of the Descent Manager will fix this one, too... The right texture numbers are also stated in Appendix B - Items

After the package of one thing comes the next, also with the first byte containing the thing-type [THING_xx]...

A wall [WALL_xx] is more easy defined than things, because it is not important which wall-type it is: each wall contains exact 24 bytes, so the WALLS section [WALLS] is: number of WALLS*24 bytes big!

Here is the information of each wall:

There are 6 known wall types in Descent 2:

A switch [SWITCH_xx] is also defined within a fixed number of bytes. Every switch takes 52 bytes (Descent I-RDL needed 54 bytes!). So the SWITCHES section [SWITCHES] is exact number of SWITCHES*52 bytes big!

Here is the information of each switch:

There are 6 known switch types in Descent 2:

Wait for informations on the other sections (LINKS and PRODUCERS)!

You are allowed to give this spec away as long as you do not alter anything!