Die by the Sword - Xtended v1.6.0

[Hazard]

I've just uploaded a small bugfix update for Xtended. My initial intent was to wait for some more changes to accumulate, but i had to address those bugs finally.

DOWNLOAD for DbtS Xtended v1.5.1

Changes in Xtended v1.5.1:
- Fixed healthbars and the compass not being rendered correctly.
- Fixed a crash that could occur during the tutorial.
- Minor bugfixes and optimizations

I also recommend to get the updated version of my ModPack, because the Battlefield arena might crash otherwise.

Also alot of the underlying code was changed. Thus i'm not yet quite sure about the stability. It would be nice if you could give some feedback on whether or not things run as expected.

[Hazard]

I love this mod, and i love that it works! (at least so far).
And ive noticed you know how to do stuff so i might as well ask.
Since im very keen on making new textures for the models in game, like an HD pack of some sort.
But the thing is that i have no idea how to unpack the files and compile, so im pretty much stuck, How do i do it? where can i read about it?

You can use my ATD Packer to unpack the data files. The tool also supports packing them again but don't do that! Instead, for the game to load your modified files start the Xtended Launcher and go to Options. There you can set the Filesystem to "Prefer unpacked files on disk". Now the game will try to load the unpacked files first, which allows you to mod files without making any changes to the original ATDs themselves.
Once your mod is done you can turn it into a .dmod package to be used with the ModManager. This allows easy de-/installation and is a good way to distribute the mod to other people. I'll detail that as soon as you are this far.

[Blackbeard]

Tried the ATD but didnt get it to work, guess you have to put it somewhere, but no matter,
i used the trial version of Watto's Game Extractor to extract the files i needed.

Right now im working on the hero skin and it works, sometimes, cause once in a while the game cant find "stencils.atd" and i have to reinstall the game.

ofc, since the latest update that error hasnt occured, oh and btw, music doesnt work since last update.

[Vesalius]

I don't want to spam up the boards, but I had to say this: Holy Bejeezus, Hazard! Thank you so much. I bought DBTS after I rented it at my local video store. Yes, rented, when modern computer gaming was so relatively new that video stores tried to treat it as console gaming of the time. Anyways, I bought LFL the day I saw it in stores and played it for years afterwards. I would load it up every now and then to play with it, but just found this community tonight and put the Xtended mod on it. Beautiful. Its got some crash issues, but I've barely messed with your mod patch so hopefully that won't be an issue. Long story short, I'm extremely thankful for all the work you've put into this, and hope you continue to work, hope that doesn't sound too selfish? Let me know if there's anyway I can help out! Thanks again, I would've never expected to see the game look so beautiful.

[Hazard]

Yet again a small update. It's not really important to update to it, but it fixes some things and runs very stable for me.

DOWNLOAD for DbtS Xtended v1.5.3

Changes in Xtended v1.5.2:
- Hopefully fixed the stencils.atd error that occured for some people.

Changes in Xtended v1.5.3:
- Fixed a bug in the "More Creature Variations" mod that prevented playing as an Ogre with two clubs.
- Fixed Antialiasing not working correctly.
- Options like the Resolution are now stored seperately for Window- and Fullscreen-mode for easy switching.
- Pressing Alt+Enter ingame toggles between Window- and Fullscreen-mode now.

@Vesalius: Thanks, i'm glad you're having fun with it.

[VanBurenPhilips]

Only my second post here. Hazard, I can't tell you how welcome Xtended is, really appreciate the work. I recently updated to v1.5.3 and I love it. It's great to have new life in this old favourite - I'm playing it in stereo 3D now, it looks cool

One thing I've noticed: there are no shadows visible any more. I previously had version 1.02 in which shadows appeared normally, as in the unmodified game. I went straight to 1.5.3 and shadows no longer appear whether the new shading effect is enabled or not. Running plain old windie with software rendering, shadows are back. I notice that your screenshots have no shadows either. Is this something you're aware of? I searched the whole forum for 'shadow' and 'shadows' and got no results, so hopefully this topic hasn't already been discussed.

(oh btw, I'm fairly sure it's nothing to do with stereo 3d drivers - I get the same results from two different 3D drivers, and with both disabled)

Some other things I'd like to ask you about, but I'll leave it at that for now. Once again, thanks for a brilliant mod.

my current system: Win7 32bit, Core2duo E6600, 2x GTX560, 2GB RAM. Nvidia drivers: 280.26

[Hazard]

Indeed, the shadow texture is missing. I never really noticed it, but you are right. I'll note it as a bug to be fixed in a future version. Things like that are always really annoying to debug because i don't really have control over the rendering order. I got to take whatever rendering calls the game throws at me so that i never know what is rendered when. But yeah, i'll try to fix it.

[VanBurenPhilips]

Cool, good luck! Are all the previous versions of xtended available for download? I was thinking I could try out each release and see when the shadows disappeared. All I know now is they were there in 1.02 and are gone in 1.5.3 (the only versions I've used), and it looks like they were gone in 1.5.0 too. I'd be happy to try them out if it'll help.

Still related to shadows, this is something the original game does: in software rendering every character has fully formed shadows (maybe needs detail set to All, I forget now) but in hardware modes only the player model has a full shadow and the AIs' shadows are reduced to simple ellipses. I wonder if this is something you could address, to give all models their proper shadows back?


I guess you have a lot on your plate but I'm gonna throw in another couple of suggestions for you to take or leave
I'm playing in stereo 3D, the game works well with iZ3D and Nvidia 3D Vision (better for DBTS IMO), in fact Xtended 1.5.3 in 3D Vision is almost flawless - there aren't many modern games that work this well. It looks amazing btw, I'll post some screenshots if anyone wants to see. The only things that look odd are blood/water splashes & the magic sparkly effect - they appear to always be rendered at screen depth, rather than at the depth they occur in the game world. Conversely, smoke & flames appear at the 'correct' depth. Is it possible to change this? I know some people don't like or care about S3D and this would likely be a low priority, but it would be nice to nail this one last thing and make the game 100% perfect in 3D Vision (there are '3D Vision-ready' titles that don't achieve this!)

Hopefully a minor thing: it'd be nice to have options to redefine the quicksave & shader keys.

[Hazard]

Thanks for your suggestions. I've added them to my TODO list. You are right about the particles. They are currently being drawn in screen space, thus not appearing correctly on 3D glasses. I'll fix that in the next update.

[VanBurenPhilips]

Great! I should add that health bars have the same problem as the particles. The compass looks good as it is. Can't think of anything else.

[darkempro]

I have a problem when i start any quest and tournament i get this error message
Couldnt open /data/stencils.atd
And i already downloaded the latest pack 1.5.3 i dont know what to do
plz help

[snyky1]

I need help on this whenever i try to put on a mod it says something about moddeta not working please help

[D.D. Crazy]

Any news about further version? Btw good job, good old games need such "life potion" like this one

[djstylong]

PLz help I dont can run Xtended mod, just simple lim for limb :S.If I dont load none xtended work but I dont can play battlefield or another new maps and new characters and very slow in menu.Plz help I dont know why dont can play with deathknight and dont can play in battlefield map. Plz help,my email: lipovan17@yahoo.com or djstylong@hotmail.com

[Mawq]

I finally registered just to say this: THANK YOU for bringing life back into this little gem
I wish there was an easy way of making maps, but I understand that a proper map editor would be a huge project and is probably not going to happen.