KoolBear's Spotlight on the Descent Manager

Heiko Herrmann is the creator of a very unique program called the Descent Manager.
You can his homepage and read more about this Must Have program! Or if you want you can get it NOW!
Descent Manager V1.0 Beta 05d is out!

Here are the new features:

V1.0 Beta 05d (Released 05/04/97 BugFix and speed improvement release) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - Speed improvement: Dramatically faster deleting from HOGs. (Also improves
speed when writing the author informations!!)
- Another speed improvement in the extracting from HOGs routine.
- Mission Manager main menu initialisation improved: The mission list is now only created and sorted once per Descent Manager session. Only if a mission was deleted or new created, the list is recreated and resorted. This saves much time...
- Author informations: Comments, secret infos and copyright infos can now have empty lines and TAB chars.
- Thousands of bug fixes.
- Menu driven HOG-Manager is not available at the moment because of bugs. It will be completely new rewritten in the next versions (as well as the Mission Manager). Till then please use the Mission Manager or the command-line-driven-mode of the HOG-Manager (see "Documentation|Command-line switches")

V1.0 Beta 05c (Released 04/20/97 Quick BugFix release)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - Building events list now less often created (->saving time).
- Building events list made *DRAMATICALLY* faster.
- Fixed a bug causing to write incorrect frame numbers in the start/end point defining menues.
- Fixed another bug in the Descent search routine.

V1.0 Beta 04b (Released 03/16/97 BugFix and ReCode release)

- Added Mouse support! (Wow, this was *HARD* work!!)

- In Mission Manager Level List you can now press F3 to automatically extract the file to a temp directory, auto-configure DEVIL so that it automatically starts that level, launching DEVIL, and after editing in DEVIL giving the possibility to reimplement it into the mission.
This is a *VERY* cool feature as the DEVIL's Mission Manager is such bad to use and also would destroy Author (AUT+MNX), Robot (HXM) and Texture (POG) informations... After the complete procedure LScripts are recompiled to update the author informations and the new Level Database... This will only work with V2.2g and V2.2h ENGLISH VERSIONS in this Descent Manager version, perhaps also the forthcoming DEVIL versions (<-depends on if Achim changes the DEVIL config files). German versions and V2.1 versions will be added in the next beta!

- Many routines recoded and improved!

- HOG command-line lister improved (/l and /v switches): Now multiple HOGs listable using wildcards!

- New searching for files in HOGs (command-line only): DESCMAN /V D:\GAMES\DESCENT2\MISSIONS\*.HOG *.HM? lists all music pieces! - Menu driven HOG-Manager does not accept empty filenames when creating a new HOG anymore!

- Open a HOG-file directly for menu-driven mode by specifying the HOG at command-line now possible! Example: DESCMAN D:\GAMES\DESCENT2\DESCENT2.HOG will open the main Descent 2 HOG file and you can select which files shall be extracted, moved or deleted!

- SaveGame-Editor number and list fields now changeable using the left and right cursor keys (F3 and F4 were very unusual, weren't they? But they still work, too!) RETURN now edits them always and only SPACE is for enabling/disabling fields.

- Directory box made more user friendly! (preview on files stored in the current directory and an OK button instead of the F10 key, although F10 still works...)

- Player Rank "Demigod" is only reachable when the efficiency is more than 50%! This was not handled by Descent Manager! Fixed!

- Fixed bug causing the first author entered to be "forgotton".

- Author informations: Game Mode capabilities (=LScripts) now updateable.

- Mission Manager did not record changes to author informations in single-level-missions and displayed the wrong info. Fixed!

- Mission Manager "runtime error 017" fixed!

- Many more Author informations BugFixes!

- Multiple choice menues (file boxes) do not jump to other parts of the list when selecting or deselecting an item anymore!

- File boxes now can handle 2 million files per directory. (Beta 01a: 128 files! Beta 01b-Beta 04a: 1000 files!)

- Some bugs in menu-driven HOG-Manager fixed!

- Descent searching routine refixed! (Thanks to Jim Burns!) - Thousands of minor bugfixes...

Heiko Herrmann alias HH-Software Images from the Descent Network

Developer of the Descent Manager and writer of the Cool Tips/RL2 specs
Homepage: http://wwwcip.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/~inf21513
eMail: HHSoft@studbox.uni-stuttgart.de

FLASH --- The new Beta 03a of the Descent Manager is out! 
Saturday, February 01, 1997
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Here are some specs about the new version:

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THE DESCENT MANAGER V1.0 BETA 03A! SPEED PURE!

The Descent Manager was a powerful tool with a poor speed! Was? Was!
The speed of the new Beta 03a breaks records! Sorry to Micah J. Lieske,
but this one is now faster than yours! Here is a comparison for reading
the main DESCENT2.HOG:

Descent Manager V1.0 Beta 02c     about 5 seconds
Hoggle by Micah J. Lieske         about 2 seconds
Descent Manager V1.0 Beta 03a     about 1/10 seconds (!!!)

Also the Level-Reporter is now *MUCH* faster!

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THE DESCENT MANAGER V1.0 BETA 03A! FOR DEVELOPERS!

The new Beta 03a has a special never-released-anywhere-before feature:
It can help YOU to understand the complex RDL and RL2 formats! First
you have to get my new RL2 specs Rel. 2a from the
 page or my own homepage (see below!), then
look for a Descent 2 level, which you want to analyse manually! Anyone
can be used! Then use the Descent Manager Beta 03a in the following
way:

                -> DESCMAN /DEV C:\LEVELS\MYLEVEL.RL2

Of course you have to put your levels name and directory instead of the
C:\LEVELS\MYLEVEL.RL2! A so-called developer report will be created in
ASCII format with the name "MYLEVEL.DEV" (in this case) in the same
directory as the directory which contains a table which information
stands where! Every line has a "description word" which is also in the
RL2 specs! So you can see the parallel between theoretics (the RL2
specs) and praxis (the Developer Report). This will help you understand
the RL2 format to make you able to develop new tools for Descent...
Learning practically...

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THE DESCENT MANAGER V1.0 BETA 03A! FOR LEVEL SORTERS!

You are planning a big 8 player session next weekend? Okay, but you
have thousands of levels and you don't know, which one supports 8
player and capture-the-flag? You also want to make sure that every
level has at least 3 afterburners and not more than 2 earthshakers? And
you want an EXIT and a reactor?

The normal way would be greating a report using the Descent Manager for
all levels using this command::

                  -> DESCMAN /REP
C:\GAMES\DESCENT2\MISSIONS\*.HOG..*.RL2

Okay, but after that, you have to look at EVERY level for EVERY
information! Boring, eh? But theres another way now: Make a LSCRIPT! In
a LSCRIPT you specify, what requirements you want from your levels.
Then one command and the Descent Manager will tell you which level
supports those requirements and which not! Its just that easy!!!

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THE DESCENT MANAGER V1.0 BETA 03A! Other features:

Many other features and improvements are now implemented in the new
version! Just a few:

-Renaming in a HOG is now possible! Command-line-driven and
menu-driven!
-The C:\_SYSTEM\_STIF dir can now be moved to a dir you want!
-Command-line-driven Mission Manager
-Vertigo Series now fully supported (Missions and Level Reports!!!)
-Online documention with index!!
-Launching Descent from the Manager
-Exit and Secret Exit detection for Level Reports!
...and many more!!!

To get a full feature list, go to



But now go get the Descent Manager Beta 03a and the RL2 specs Rel. 2a
from my site!

PREPARE FOR the DESCENT manager!


P.S.: Sorry goes to Jason "Boothill" Loya for mispelling your nickname
(I wrote "Butthill") in the DDL! But you know what can happen, when you
are in a hurry...



Heiko Herrmann alias HH-Software Images from the Descent Network
Homepage: http://wwwcip.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/~inf21513
eMail: HHSoft@studbox.uni-stuttgart.de

Here are the specs of the previous version:

V1.0 Beta 02c (Released 01/03/97 Major BugFix release!)
 Fixes and improvements:
  - Improved and fixed Directory handling of Mission-Manager and
HOG-Manager.
    The files are now created in the right directory! Also you can specify
    a directory as standard level directory, from where you can easily add
    levels or extract levels to. This should be your Devil or DMB levels
    directory.
  - New "~" switch to state a directory to where extraction of files out of
    a HOG shall be made in command-line mode. Here is an example:
    DESCMAN E C:\DESCENT2\DESCENT2.HOG STATBACK.PCX JOHNHEAD.PCX
~D:\PICTURES
    will extract 2 files to the directory D:\PICTURES.
  - BugFix in the Mission Extractor didn't find any movies in an MVL.
  - Faster HOG file analysing (Section "associating file descriptions")
  - Faster menu handling in menues with multiple choice (Section "Collecting 
    informations")
  - Faster level reporting (Section "Sorting robots" now twice as fast!)
  - New HINSTALL installation program with improved Repair/Update options,
    so you don't need to reconfigure and research for Descent versions anymore
    after you updated the Descent Manager.
  - Descent I V1.4a from the Anniversary Edition now supported (thanks to
CriX)
  - Main Menu now shows version number.
  - Player-Editor now always shows active pilot (even when no multiplayer
    rankings are supported by the current version, e.x. Descent 1)
  - New switch "-stif!fast" for faster, no-zooming window display.
  - New switch "-stif!text" disabling the graphical characters. Good for
    a DOS-window in Windows or OS/2.
  - Character for remaining chars in input boxes changed.
  - Many minor bugfixes & speed improvements.