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Descent 3 Source Code

• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• shermantanktop 3y ago
  I loved loved loved this game. Never understood why this concept didn’t become a whole genre. No actual up, 360 degree freedom, enemies that were smart and could snipe you. Wasted many hours back then and very eager to try this out.
  • jaegrqualm 3y ago
    Not that you asked, but there's exactly one (popular) game that utilizes the same control scheme in modern times, Outer Wilds. Although it's not a shooter, it's quite a nice adventure game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/ There is, however, an outright continuation of the subgenre, in Overload. https://store.steampowered.com/app/448850/Overload/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/448850/Overload/
    • kevin42 3y ago
      Overload was mostly the same people who built Descent (I helped a tiny bit). Those guys are really good.
      • tmikaeld 3y ago
        One of the most polished "flight" games in VR too, extremely immersive and perfect controls.
        • nier 3y ago
          Did you have trouble with nausea?
          • dncornholio 3y ago
            Everyone has nausea initially when using VR. It will go away eventually. You need to train your brain to not feel G forces when you see movement.
            • int_19h 3y ago
              Not everyone has it even initially; it really varies from person to person. I suspect that to some extent it is influenced by past exposure to fast-paced first-person games (e.g. FPS when played using the mouse).
              • ftrobro 3y ago
                I used to get nausea when playing Doom in the nineties, it never got better. But I never get nausea from fps games with slower movement. I suspect the problem with Doom is how quickly you can change direction while running. You can run quite fast and a 90 degree turn doesn't slow you down at all.
                • Cthulhu_ 2y ago
                  Doom does some weird stuff with FOV and how it renders the environment though; newer FPS games have "real" 3D graphics, Doom used some interesting tricks to make things look 3D. The Quake engine was iirc the first "real" 3D engine.
                  • rzzzt 2y ago
                    Doom also has a camera bob effect that makes your brain think you are mowing down those monsters on a sailboat.
                  • 2y ago
    • mvdtnz 3y ago
      Other than the control scheme Outer Wilds really could not be more different to Descent.
      • two_handfuls 3y ago
        You are correct. It’s an awesome game though.
        • Osiris 3y ago
          I tried it and literally couldn’t figure it out. I got like 15 minutes into and had no idea what to do. What makes it so good?
          • vincentpants 3y ago
            The way Outer Wilds rewards curiosity is incredibly novel. More subjectively, I’m quite partial to how the narrative reveals itself. Wish I could relive that experience all over again.
          • InvOfSmallC 3y ago
            For me it's how you discover one by one elements of the history of the "aliens" and how you use the physics to solve some puzzles. I also love the story. IMHO is one of the best videogames ever made together with Obra Dinn
          • dudus 3y ago
            The fact the game has no items, no power ups, no levels, no enemies. Just one question: what is going on? And your job is to figure it out. Knowledge is your only way forward. Unfortunately that means the game can only be played once and any spoiler will ruin it for you.
            • Cthulhu_ 3y ago
              I disagree with "ruining", I've resorted to looking up some hints; mind you, in hindsight I would've figured it out myself if I spent a bit more time on it.
    • OrwellianChild 3y ago
      Super cheap on GOG right now... https://www.gog.com/en/game/overload https://www.gog.com/en/game/overload
      • nier 3y ago
        There’s this review that stands out: «I am the CEO of Orbital Design Studios, and am the designer behind the canceled "Descent IV" project in 2002. This game is a thing I thought I'd never see, aside from prototypes in my company's archives. A very warm welcome back to Matt & Mike and all of the old crew of Parallax and Outrage Entertainment who have returned to create this long dreamed of and hoped for creation. Thank you for putting my regrets that D4 couldn't get made, to rest. Overload will stand for all time in its place.»
      • jdshaffer 2y ago
        Thanks for the head's up! I grabbed a copy. Not a big gamer, but it looks like a lot of fun. Thanks!
      • CodeCompost 2y ago
        I'm confused. This is another game?
        • lotharbot 2y ago
          "Overload" was a game made in Descent style, by the original creators of Descent (Mike and Matt), with a great deal of input from the Descent community. My wife and I spent a week at the studio (while ~6 months pregnant with a child we named for a Descent friend) working on Overload's flight model and tweaking some in-game stuff. The game is now largely maintained by fans, with significant multiplayer mod support and even a full remake of the D1 campaign!
    • meekins 3y ago
      Overload is awesome! However I wonder if some remnants of 90s game design like tight time limits and repeating enemy ambushes that make the game such a familiar and intense experience for the old school in reality disadvantage the game and the genre from reaching wider audiences. There was also another classic Descent contender, Forsaken, that got remastared in 2018 to run on Linux and macOS in addition to modern Windows platforms. The original game was actually used as a graphics benchmark for early 3d accelerators due to its lighting effects. That said, looking forward to playing Descent 3 on a modern platform!
      • pixelpoet 3y ago
        The Forsaken soundtrack was so good!
      • boomlinde 3y ago
        Making it a 6DOF shooter at all probably severely hampered any chance of achieving mass appeal. If it had been 40-80 hour open world, character-based, third-person action adventure game, their chances would likely have been much higher.
        • Havoc 2y ago
          The target audience was always going to be people trying to relive descent so the narrowness I suspect was just accepted
          • boomlinde 2y ago
            Yes, I was just rather facetiously making a point that the game is all the more interesting to its intended audience for not trying too hard to appeal to anyone else.
    • h0l0cube 3y ago
      I'm probably in the minority, but I wish Overload kept the Mass Driver from Descent 3. Particularly handy in Monsterball. Glad D3 is in open source now, because the Steam version has broken multiplayer. I'd be glad to have a multiplayer session again one day.
    • cyberax 3y ago
      There also was a nice game called "Parkan" (and then Parkan 2), but it's not really well-known outside of Russian-speaking markets. It looks like it's available on Steam now.
    • ironSkillet 3y ago
      I know what my next steam purchase is...thanks for sharing, never heard of it and I loved the Descent games when I was a kid.
    • zibada 2y ago
      Was surprised to find out today that in 2023 Overload modding community remade the complete Descent 1 campaign, definitely worth checking out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyMduxHsXko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyMduxHsXko https://steamcommunity.com/app/448850/discussions/0/3809535864677154491/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/448850/discussions/0/38095358...
    • marcellus23 2y ago
      If we're including Outer Wilds, wouldn't almost every other space sim/pilot game also qualify? Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, etc. They all have 6 DoF for both rotation and strafing.
      • entropicdrifter 2y ago
        Yeah, really. Heck, even No Man's Sky and Star Wars Squadrons qualify and they're way more mainstream
        • Matticus_Rex 2y ago
          Neither of those are 6DOF (unless NMS patched it in at some point).
    • always2slow 2y ago
      Can't believe Sublevel Zero Redux isn't on your list! https://store.steampowered.com/app/327880/Sublevel_Zero_Redux/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/327880/Sublevel_Zero_Redu... This game is such an underappreciated hidden gem.
    • octobus2021 2y ago
      Adding my vote for Overload. I'm not sure if it is the same team that built Descent(s) but some of them were involved in level design of the originals. I believe music composers were the same. I really enjoyed the story too, that was probably the first game I played through to the end, just to find out how the story ends. I believe the team has long disbanded which is a shame, it is a very _decent_ product (ha!)
      • spmurrayzzz 2y ago
        > I'm not sure if it is the same team that built Descent(s) but some of them were involved in level design of the originals Not the same exact team head-for-head but pretty close. Matt Toschlog and Mike Kula were both game directors on the original (and founded Parallax Software). They were the game directors of Overload as well and they're the founders of Revival, the studio that made the game.
        • octobus2021 2y ago
          Great to know! The game is very well made, and as far as I know they delivered everything they promised to their backers (it was on Kickstarter). I bought the game (on PC AND on XBox) and left positive review on Steam. Hopefully they're working on something else that's just as awesome!
      • Shorel 2y ago
        > I believe music composers were the same. The midi Descent music (from 1 and 2) was to me the best game soundtrack in many years. Only when Portal appeared, it was removed from my top 1. It is the only set of game related songs I enjoy using as ringtones =)
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • Analemma_ 3y ago
    There's a weird effect where sometimes one game in a genre will become so iconic that nobody wants to try and make another one, possibly out of fear of seeming like they're ripping it off? It happened to Descent, and I feel like it happened to e.g. Myst as well - everyone was expecting the huge success of Myst to launch a whole genre, and then it just... didn't.
    • theodric 3y ago
      Forsaken. Similar enough that I'd call it a ripoff. I got the boxed version with the girly calendar.
    • bostik 3y ago
      Myst may not have launched a genre, but it did establish its own kind of game style. 3D world. Adventure game mechanics, with problems and puzzles - but where progress opens up more puzzles, and where instead of developing the character skills, you develop the story. Slow paced. There have been plenty of games to tap into that style, but not enough or frequently enough to warrant calling them part of a genre. Black Dahlia. The Witness. Talos Principle. In a way, even a visual story like All That Remains of Edith Finch can trace its root to Myst.
      • cubefox 3y ago
        I think Myst's innovation was mainly using a first-person perspective with (pre-rendered) scenes of a continuous 3D world. Otherwise it was a point-and-click adventure that arguably didn't reach the heights of some earlier Lucas Arts games. Unfortunately these games went out of fashion because most people want some amount of real-time action in their games. But they still get made occasionally by smaller developers on Steam or Android/iOS.
        • Cthulhu_ 2y ago
          There's Telltale games, but IIRC they are more visual/interactive novels, and I believe there were new Sam and Max games, classic adventure / point and click games. And a new Monkey Island.
  • Joel_Mckay 3y ago
    It certainly helped develop 3D spacial memory, and most people adapted to the game play in a few hours. Probably needed to develop a less-repetitive story-line to keep people engaged... The traps were so cheesy sometimes. =)
  • Daz1 3y ago
    Hellbender on PC was a good one too
    • Skywalker13 3y ago
      Terminal Velocity and Fury3 before it...
  • sbierwagen 3y ago
    There was Shattered Horizon from 2009, a zero g multiplayer shooter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWsHxTFPxSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWsHxTFPxSE One fun feature was you could shut off your suit power to go into a stealth mode. This turned off all the HUD elements, and, amusingly enough, turned off most gameplay noises (the explosions and bullets whizzing by) because, in-universe, all those noises are generated by the suit computer, because space is silent!
    • Gareth321 2y ago
      That takes me back. I remember Shattered Horizon being a flagship DirectX 11 title, and looking at the graphics, it still holds up today.
  • dclowd9901 3y ago
    Freespace was the (un?)official successor. Freespace 2 was incredible and I’d be willing to bet it holds up to this day. Nowadays we have the modern version of Elite Dangerous, but its flight mechanics are too close to aeronautic flight mechanics to compare to Descent.
    • telman17 3y ago
      With mods, Freespace and Freespace 2 are still especially awesome.
    • massifist 3y ago
      I thought I had gotten this (Descent 3) for free with a graphics card I purchased, but Freespace was what I was thinking of, though it might have been Freespace 2. The graphics card was the Diamond Viper V770, if I recall correctly. Good times!
    • mark_undoio 3y ago
      When I bought Free space it was actually titled Descent: Freespace - The Great War. I wish the series had carried on, I really wanted to find out where the confusing plot threads of Freespace 2 went!
      • rimunroe 2y ago
        > When I bought Free space it was actually titled Descent: Freespace - The Great War. I loved the series too, though the name was only prefixed with “Descent” to avoid a trademark conflict with an existing bit of software already called FreeSpace. It’s completely unrelated to Descent story-wise (and I’d argue is almost completely unrelated gameplay wise too)
        • mark_undoio 2y ago
          Agreed. Very different gameplay, setting, everything really. Just two good games, weirdly sharing a name!
    • Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  • jimbob45 3y ago
    Aquanox fell mostly into the same genre.
  • jbm 3y ago
    This entire thread led me down a long, long rabbit hole; I remembered the name "Descent", but I couldn't recognize anything about it in the online videos I saw on Youtube. After hours of searching google, I realize that I was actually thinking about Terminal Velocity. Great soundtrack, fun game (although I never finished it).
    • not_your_mentat 2y ago
      I only ever played the shareware version of Terminal Velocity. +1 to fond memories of the soundtrack. Time to find a playthrough on YouTube.
      • jbm 2y ago
        I looked it up, and as I expected, it was a .mod format. My favourite soundtracks of that era almost always had .mod soundtracks (I despised midis back then, although I guess Monkey Island was an outlier). The composer of the soundtrack left a message here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6QkJtxu608 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6QkJtxu608 > @kylerichards4410 7 years ago Nu music, I wrote the music to this game almost 25 years ago. You just made my night. :) Cheers. > @kylerichards4410 7 years ago Ha...it's really me. :) Yeah, those mod formats were pretty brutal on sound quality. 8bit and around 5khz samples, if memory serves. It's a little difficult to listen to the originals, so hearing your remix was fantastic. Again, great work. Really enjoyed it. :)
  • gsich 3y ago
    I think it's called 6dof games.
  • matheusmoreira 3y ago
    Elite Dangerous delivers 6 DOF piloting goodness. https://youtu.be/T2-IHgNYaKA https://youtu.be/T2-IHgNYaKA https://old.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/16xi20a/dual_stick_hosas_cam_viper_time/ https://old.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/16xi20a/dua... https://youtu.be/9U0KNVQmlcM https://youtu.be/9U0KNVQmlcM I miss this game... > Never understood why this concept didn’t become a whole genre. Spaceflight simulators have always been niche, unfortunately. Even more niche than flight simulators.
    • mikepurvis 2y ago
      Having had a bit of this experience with Gravity Rush, I think a weakness for me is that 6dof games can end up feeling a bit like just pointing at some target and hitting the forward button. Basically, without the constraints of “regular” flight mechanics like having to maintain velocity, avoid stall, etc, the whole thing devolves into endless pointing and 3D circle-strafing.
    • Cthulhu_ 2y ago
      Most of the free roaming part of the game doesn't seem to make much use of this though; all the solar systems are effectively flat, space stations don't have a distinct up or down, granted, but you don't need to fly through tunnels etc. The pvp mode (Arena?) does offer loads of use for that aspect of it though. But, I could never get on with the combat style, it feels like you spend a lot of time turning your nose to try and get aligned with your target. That may be me failing at it though, but trying to maneuver away to turn around means the enemies are on my tail.
      • redman25 2y ago
        I think a lot of the more experienced combat pilots will turn off flight assist so that the ship's nose doesn't have to be oriented with your momentum.
  • tankenmate 3y ago
    I know why it didn't make it as a concept for me; the rendering in the game wasn't quite correct, so I used to get sea sick playing this for more than 30 minutes. And I hardly get sea sick on boats. So I stopped playing it after about a month.
  • Buttons840 3y ago
    > enemies that were smart and could snipe you I had Descent 1 on PS1, and I remember the box claiming the enemies adapted to your play style. Now that I'm older and have studied machine learning and some other AI techniques, I've always wondered exactly what that meant. I'm sure my PS1 wasn't doing gradient descent (heh). What tricks were behind the claim that the enemies learned and adapted to the player?
    • gattilorenz 2y ago
      Well, it's of course a marketing term, so I don't think it really needs to mean much. In videogames sometimes the AI skill is adaptive in very simple terms, e.g. reaction times or see/aiming range or chance of hit are increased or lowered to keep the game engaging.
    • jojobas 2y ago
      AIMain.cpp is 7kloc. Searching for relevant words yields nothing, but it's not impossible to code something along the lines of "if the players flies around like crazy, do one thing, if he sits in the corner, do another".
      • blincoln 2y ago
        I don't know how much Descent 3 shares with the original in terms of AI code, but Descent 3 seems to give NPCs a dynamic list of goals that's initialized based on their class ("stalker", "evader", etc.).[1] Each goal has a priority/weight, and criteria that will cause the goal to be enabled or not. Some of the goal enablers are straightforward, but others look more like state machine "emotion" states - fear, curiousity, etc.[2] Seems complex enough to meet the description on the box for the original Descent. [1] https://github.com/kevinbentley/Descent3/blob/86141b82295e712ae57ba6fad1cca987a3d22f7f/Descent3/AIGoal.cpp#L103 https://github.com/kevinbentley/Descent3/blob/86141b82295e71... [2] https://github.com/kevinbentley/Descent3/blob/86141b82295e712ae57ba6fad1cca987a3d22f7f/Descent3/AIGoal.cpp#L1457 https://github.com/kevinbentley/Descent3/blob/86141b82295e71...
    • Maken 2y ago
      Given this was release at a time when in most games enemies simply roamed the levels and attacked the player when he crossed their line of sight, a simple automata based AI that actively pursued the player and tried to use cover when shot could be described as "adapting" to your play style.
  • themoonisachees 2y ago
    If that's your cup of tea then elite dangerous might scratch that itch.
  • roydivision 2y ago
    Yup, that's bugged me for years. I didn't even spend that much time with the game, but I've never seen anything like it since.
  • nebalee 2y ago
    There's also https://www.gog.com/game/sublevel_zero https://www.gog.com/game/sublevel_zero / https://store.steampowered.com/app/327880/Sublevel_Zero_Redux https://store.steampowered.com/app/327880/Sublevel_Zero_Redu... which initially was a game jam entry I believe. Very much an homage to Descent, but with rogue-like elements and randomized levels.
  • karmakaze 2y ago
    The Descent series was my favorite of all time. Got the hotas setup for myself and others in the office did too. We had the best LAN parties. Being semi-lost and trying to get out in time before everything blew up was such a rush. Arcade-style 6DoF games are so rare. And we have all the hardware now, just not the market to justify the effort. This D3 opensource could kick off a whole new round of games! Level-editing in VR seems like it would be so much fun too.
  • honkycat 2y ago
    The reason is because 6dof games tend to have really difficult skill expression around movement and positioning. With any 3d game it becomes a bit of a circle-strafe fight. With space and 6dof games, it becomes a flight simulator fight, which is an intense genre. Additionally it removes some verticality from levels. IF EVERYTHING is accessible, it removes choices around taking the high ground / sneaking through the low ground. I agree they are cool games, but they have some quirks that are not everyone's cup of tea.
  • Dove 2y ago
    > Never understood why this concept didn’t become a whole genre. The subgenre is called 6DOF, and it does have games. But I agree it's not as big as it could be, and that the magic hasn't really been recaptured. Game developers seem to frequently have this same thought. Descent was good! This should be more popular! Someone tries every couple years or so, but the result generally disappoints. It is my opinion that 6DOF games are difficult to make good, especially to the standards and expectations of modern gamers. The combat and level design are much more technical (or perhaps just differently technical) than someone from a flat FPS perspective expects, and as a result, the game design seems to have a lot of opportunities for technical mistakes to be made. I think more generic FPS developers, who remembered liking Descent back when our standards were lower, don't realize how much we've learned since then and how very much there is TO learn about the genre. I find that aggravating. Every few years, the Descent community gets excited about a big 6DOF attempt, and every few years we get disappointed by the result. Even more aggravating, they generally make design mistakes that I think show ignorance of the genre. How does this keep happening? You wouldn't think of making an RTS, or a MOBA, or even a flight combat sim, or really any other very technical genre of game, without the expertise of the veterans and elite players of the genre. And yet 6DOF developers seem to me to do just that. I can only conclude that the problem looks from the outside to he easier than it really is. I don't mean to sound arrogant! What I mean is that, I think the answer to your question "Why isn't this more of a thing?" is that it's a much harder thing than it appears to be. I think Descent's success can be attributed to a lot of things: to lower standards 30 years ago, to lucky or prescient design decisions, to a brilliant team enjoying the unique freedom of the wild world of 90s software passion projects, and to a lot of community involvement over time. And I'm not sure that's the whole list. I do think it should be a bigger thing now - there is a delicious flavor here and no reason this generation shouldn't love it too. But it's also apparent that Descent caught lightning in a bottle, and even I couldn't tell you everything that went into making it happen once but not twice. I can point to reasons that I think attempts to repeat it have been less successful, reasons that make sense to me as an expert player in the genre, problems I think I or a couple dozen pilots like me could help anyone avoid. But I'm not sure that explains all of the difficulty. Every now and again, some veteran pilot will take the problem into their own hands and try to make the next big 6DOF, and those projects are rarely finished and rarely good. It doesn't seem that hard, from a software point of view, and they know the game! Or think they do. And yet they fail. So genre expertise can't be the only ingredient, even if I think it's a necessary and usually missing one. The problem is clearly harder than it looks. I think I know what to do, or at least one piece of the puzzle, but better warriors have been slain on that battlefield, and I haven't actually made the attempt, so I don't actually know. But I can definitely say this much: Developer beware! Here there be dragons! Overload's good though. :)
  • hombre_fatal 2y ago
    I wonder if zero-g 360deg spaceship games never hit the popularity of FPS because of how samey they are. You can always go anywhere, hit any angle, move in any direction. All things equal even Quake has more dimension to its moment to moment gameplay because you can't just fly around the map. (well, you actually can, but it's a tad different) Awful comment to write in a Descent 3 nostalgia thread tho, I admit. I just remember growing up on Descent and Forsaken and immediately discarded them once I discovered FPS in the early 2000s.
  • Akronymus 2y ago
    Wouldn't elite or star citizen fit that definition? Or am I fundamentally misunderstanding what descent is about?
  • doorhammer 2y ago
    I still really vividly remember a Descent map finally clicking in my head and thinking “oh… this game is _actually_ 3d” probably some nostalgia there but great memories
• ryanmentor 3y ago
  Amazing!!!!!!! Thank you so much for making this happen!
• evan_conway 3y ago
  This is awesome. I played the shareware demo version to death as a kid. Really looking forward to seeing where this goes.
• codewiz 3y ago
  Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDGbsbdDC5o&list=PLiEu3n9ms7iTuCU23sjg0vkEDaZZjy0bw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDGbsbdDC5o&list=PLiEu3n9ms7...
• throwup238 3y ago
  If this was Interplay, any chance someone might have Hardwar's [1] source code? Total long shot, but I thought I'd ask. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardwar_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardwar_(video_game)
  • kevin42 3y ago
    We didn't have any interaction with that team. Interplay was just the publisher, the developer was outrage Entertainment in Ann Arbor Michigan. This is back when 10 programmers seemed like a pretty big team for a game.
  • tanepiper 3y ago
    I'd love to see this - Hardwar was such a fun game and amazing sound track.
• theboogieman 3y ago
  Thank you for releasing this! Many good memories of playing this as a kid.
• vsnf 3y ago
  Now lets see if someone can dredge up the Tribes 2 source code and we'll have a perfect recreation of my summers in the computer labs.
  • kevin42 3y ago
    I loved Tribes! I'd play that after coming home from working on Descent 3. We did some multiplayer at lunch at the office as well.
    • r2_pilot 2y ago
      Just FYI there's a new Tribes that just released and I've been enjoying it.
  • zaptrem 3y ago
    Tribes 2 would make an awesome modern game for players used to big 32v32 base-centered combat FPSes.
  • mschuster91 3y ago
    That's EarthSiege universe, eh? I've been working on and off to decompile EarthSiege 2. Might take another stab at it this summer... maybe there are code similarities, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
    • seattle_spring 3y ago
      > EarthSiege Oh my God, so many memories.
    • mark_undoio 3y ago
      EarthSiege 2 was amazing - many hours spent there. I used to multiplayer with a friend: one of us would steer the HERC's legs and one the turret.
  • TeaDude 3y ago
    IIRC Torque3D is based on Tribes 2 but a lot has been replaced over the years.
• XorNot 3y ago
  Ooh, time to take another crack at a level scripting language - AFAIK the original was ripped out right before release due to being too limited and replaced with just compiled C libraries.
  • kevin42 3y ago
    Yes. The original language was custom and turning into a nightmare. We talked about it over lunch one day and came up with the idea of building a c++ code generator so the level designers could do most of the work with the GUI we made, but the code could be edited by hand as well. Fun fact, the editor was called DALLAS, which from what I remember stood for "Don't ask Luke for Levels And Scripts". Luke was the only designer who could make things work with the original language. Personally, I'd love to rewrite it to use wasm.
    • msk-lywenn 3y ago
      The source includes AngelScript. Is it actually used by the game?
      • kevin42 2y ago
        We (Jeff Slutter and I) wanted to use it, but we were just in the 'exploration' phase. It's not connected to anything at the moment. Keep in mind this was 15 years ago, there are probably better options now.
  • DonHopkins 2y ago
    I'm so glad you mentioned that important topic! See what I wrote about using JavaScript as a scripting language for games compiled to WebAssembly with emscripten and exposed to JavaScript with embind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40051289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40051289 Here's what I'm doing for Micropolis (open source SimCity), where the rubber hits the road. There are a bunch of comments in the code describing the approach and constraints. (Obviously analyzed and written with the help of ChatGPT!) https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/blob/main/MicropolisEngine/src/emscripten.cpp https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/blob/main/Microp... Implementing a JavaScript scripting SDK is the first step towards integrating browser-based visual programming languages like Snap! and Blockly, which make it easy to program extensions, like Sandspiel Studio! Snap!: https://snap.berkeley.edu/ https://snap.berkeley.edu/ Blockly: https://developers.google.com/blockly https://developers.google.com/blockly Sandspiel Studio: https://studio.sandspiel.club/ https://studio.sandspiel.club/ I've written lots more about Sandspiel Studio on Twitter and Hacker News: https://twitter.com/xardox/status/1777401152260247673 https://twitter.com/xardox/status/1777401152260247673 >I bet you could make Sandspiel Studio compile those Blockley-based visual programs into WebAssembly or GPU shader code! But actually it might be too fast since the fun is watching the flowers grow. I taught your flower blooming code to grow potatoes too! https://studio.sandspiel.club/post/7718 https://studio.sandspiel.club/post/7718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34561910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34561910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36003900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36003900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38044329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38044329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38044498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38044498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39601709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39601709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38016554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38016554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33700318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33700318
• readyplayernull 3y ago
  I heard many people loved Descent and it looked great to me, it even seemed like a mix between X-Wing and Quake... but I couldn't play it for more than a few minutes, probably the first game in my long career as player that I dropped that quickly. There is something unnerving about it, it's like playing with magnets while wearing boxing gloves. Even watching gameplay videos I get the same sensation.
• winrid 3y ago
  Nice! I sent this to the guy that helped me convert NetPanzer (20+yo code base) from SCons to Meson and he also took the time to setup GH actions etc. Hopefully you get some help!
• johnnylambada 3y ago
  Great! Brings back memories of descent 1 & 2. I played d1 for hours over the early internet. My favorite level was Minerva and my arch enemy was named “upinya”. Amazing what the brain remembers from so long ago.
  • amatecha 3y ago
    I know what you mean about remembering weird stuff from many years ago. I still remember the IP address of the server of my first website in 1995 (because it had no domain name, I had to know the IP address to show people the website). Occasionally I'll think of the name from a random IRC/AIM/etc. user I talked with 20+ years ago. :)
    • rrr_oh_man 2y ago
      I remember my old icq#, but not my partner’s phone number
• orthecreedence 3y ago
  Oh man, used to play this sooo much. Single player and multi...what a wonderful game. This was back when Softice ruled the world so I'd have infinite health/ammo in SP mode =]. I'd love to get this building. If I wasn't crap at c++ I'd try to help.
• mvkel 3y ago
  I love the "version control" being comments at the top of the file with a timestamp. Simpler times! What a ton of work building a game is.
  • kevin42 3y ago
    We originally used Microsoft Source Safe, which added the comments for us. I think Source Safe made us lock a file to make changes, which was a PITA. I think we made a lot of the decisions on where to break out code on a file by file basis because of that. Later, we moved to Perforce, which is good for larger binary files.
    • opello 3y ago
      I worked with VSS for a while and remember the workflow you're describing (lock, edit, check in) and there being a culture of not bundling related changes into commits but instead tossing files in as you realized they were out of date. It's cool that this was done, thanks!
    • robertlagrant 3y ago
      > I think Source Safe made us lock a file to make changes That's right. Good times!
    • dep_b 3y ago
      I would still like Git to have some kind of memory of a file being edited in some kind of branch. It would make it easier to communicate work done on the same file because you can discover what is being done to it.
      • teppix 2y ago
        I'm surely missing your point here, but isn't that exactly what git does? `git log <file>` gives you the entire history of commits that touches that particular file. edit: i suppose you mean the ability to keep track of what is being done in other unmerged branches perhaps?
• stevage 3y ago
  I could never get into Descent. I liked the flying around in 3D bit, but the fact that the levels were truly 3D (ie, didn't have a ground and up/down) meant I was always getting disoriented and lost. I just didn't enjoy that feeling.
  • shrubble 3y ago
    Just remember, "The enemy is always down" ...
    • Vecr 3y ago
      I know what you're referencing, but I always held the bottom of my screen as down and most enemies forwards.
    • jcrites 3y ago
      Is this an Ender's Game reference? If so, I believe the quote is "the enemy's gate is down". https://www.quora.com/What-does-the-enemys-gate-is-down-really-mean https://www.quora.com/What-does-the-enemys-gate-is-down-real...
• johng 3y ago
  I played the original Descent over kali.net back in the day. Man, what great memories.
  • seattle_spring 3y ago
    I've brought up Kali a few times on HN and never had anyone say they used it too. Glad to finally see another person! What an amazing piece of technology. I used it to play a modded version of Diablo's expansion Hellfire, which without Kali was single player only / LAN with a little hack. There was a great little community on that app.
    • johng 3y ago
      Yes, the world (and the net) seemed much smaller back then. My first real taste of multiplayer like that (not counting LAN parties) was playing 4 player doom over modem... it required some expensive hardware and software back in the day. I even paid long distance to do it. The BBS running it had to have a special dongle and then the APCiDoom software. Man that was cool. https://kangaroopunch.com/view/ShowSoftware?id=1 https://kangaroopunch.com/view/ShowSoftware?id=1
    • epalm 2y ago
      I used Kali too, for Descent and other games. The chat rooms were true communities, probably one of the first times as a kid that I connected with other like-minded people (aka nerds).
    • riddley 2y ago
      I used to work with Jay. He had a consulting gig at my job "for the insurance." Intense dude.
    • deckard1 2y ago
      There was also Kahn, which was a similar competitor. I remember playing Duke3d over the internet. I was completely giddy as me and my friends all flew around with jetpacks on trying to kill each other with pipebombs. The downside was that those games were obviously not optimized for internet latency and there wasn't much you could do about it. But I definitely had a blast.
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• dvaun 3y ago
  Happen to have FreeSpace code? Or is that under lock and key still?
  • kevin42 3y ago
    I don't. That was developed by Volition. Parallax was split into Outrage and Volition. I never had access to that code, and I think Mike Kulas would need to be the one to release it.
    • dvaun 3y ago
      Was worth a shot asking :) thanks for the info! Fingers crossed it may happen someday.
    • zo1 3y ago
      Perhaps if you have some way of shooting a message his way to let him know about the many good folks here that are nostalgic about it? Thanks again for doing this btw!
  • somat 3y ago
    Freespace is open source. or at least fs2 is. I am not familiar with the.. um.. I guess you could call it the landscape of the freespace community but this was a top search result. https://www.hard-light.net/ https://www.hard-light.net/ and here is a github project that looks correct. https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com And now, for free, an opinion. I enjoyed descent, but did not like freespace, I am sure there is fun subtlety to the game, but I bounced off it hard, combat in open space ended up being just these really boring circle battles. Much funner combat when you have tight claustrophobic corridors to deal with.
    • XorNot 3y ago
      Free space has the Knossos mod launcher which will let you play the FS1 campaign ported to FS2 amongst other mods.
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• renewiltord 3y ago
  Haha wow! Freespace got me into real programming because I had to start with compiling the OpenChrome drivers and then had to edit the code to let it load textures (which were too big) onto the device. Never looked back. Awesome.
• dcanelhas 3y ago
  As a 12 yo I learned about IRC from reading the Descent FAQ and tried setting up IHHD to play over a 14,4k modem. I made levels in DEVIL. Today I'm an engineer and game developer. Thanks for putting Descent out into the world. It had a huge impact on me personally.
  • fileeditview 3y ago
    I often think about what you could learn from trying to run games back in the old days. It was a huge motivation to fix some problem to get a game running. Optimizing the memory in ms-dos because the game needed more etc. Most often getting a game was a journey on its own. Today kids just have 1 gazillion games on their phone. There is no more connection to the system beneath. No work or effort needed. Just download and play the next best thing. I think this generation is missing out.
    • phrotoma 2y ago
      I think about this often. How many youngins with the curiosity / aptitude to get into systems engineering will never know they have the knack?
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    • jmorenoamor 2y ago
      Tinkering with Autoexec.bat and Config.sys to squeeze some more Kbs was a challenge, and you learnt a lot about the SO doing that. I still wonder how we managed to do that just by reading books or manuals and sharing info with friends.
      • balls187 2y ago
        The biggest culprit was the cd-rom drivers and the mouse driver. Our PC “only” had 4mb of RAM which was the minimum for Doom, but exiting Windows into DOS after boot left a lot of cruft in memory. The first time I tried starting the computer and bypassing autoexec.bat (which I learned from reading on a BBS) I was scared it was going to be permanent. Luckily it wasn’t.
• taspeotis 3y ago
  As for other old games I'd love to have the source code for: Fire Fight, made by Chaos Works.
• lloeki 3y ago
  kevin42, you just made my day. Back then I played the trailer over and over and over, waiting for the release... That line is carved deep and immediately pops up every time I think of Descent 3: > Now, after years of waiting, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Just as fitting today as it was back then :D EDIT: ha, an internets uploaded it. What a trailer that was... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IHFazkfmBE4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IHFazkfmBE4
• Lammy 3y ago
  > Someone recently asked if the source code from Descent 3 will be released. For reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40009248 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40009248 Very cool — thank you!
• arlattimore 3y ago
  What an amazing game, I absolutely loved Descent!
• KingOfCoders 3y ago
  Fond memories of Descent. I bought a flightstick to play it. Also Descent was the first game in the 1990s I've played with a VR headset.
  • ansible 2y ago
    I also used a flight stick with Descent and Descent 2. I configured the hat switch for strafe up / down and strafe left / right. Later, I also bought a [Logitech Cyberman 2](https://wiki.preterhuman.net/Logitech_CyberMan_2 https://wiki.preterhuman.net/Logitech_CyberMan_2) 6-DoF controller for playing Descent, but it wasn't as satisfying as I had hoped. Part of the issue was moving / turning along multiple axes which limited the range of input from the controller to the game. So if you only pushed forward, you got 100%, but pushing forward and sideways, you only got ~70% of each (trigonometry). But with a keyboard or buttons, you could get 100% of each. I also ended up mapping forward / back to buttons because it was less annoying to hold down a button constantly for movement.
    • KingOfCoders 2y ago
      It's strange how strangers you meet on the internet had the same experiences 30 years ago.
• disillusioned 3y ago
  This is fantastic. I was obsessed with Descent and played with my friend over our... 14.4 Kbps modems (along with Warcraft II). When Descent II came out, I would go to Best Buy to play it on a demo machine. I remember how amazed I was at the missilecam. That absolutely blew my mind. I don't think I ever really played 3, watching the trailer. But I _did_ make the jump to Volition's Descent: Freespace. THAT game was the first one where I made the concerted effort to save up, as a 9th grader, for an NVidia Riva TNT after seeing my friend's, and how awesome the particle rendering was in it. If only I just, you know, dumped a few hundred bucks into $NVDA at the time instead. But man, these games were so great.
• ChickeNES 3y ago
  Any chance that the source code for Rubu Tribe still exists?
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• hd4 3y ago
  What did it take behind the scenes to get this approved? Can you go into some of the decision-making? This is nice but a far too rare event these days.
  • kevin42 2y ago
    I've had the code all this time, and about 15 years ago(!!!) we were working on a fix for some bugs that had been around a while. At the time, there was talk about releasing the code, but we wanted to get a patch out and find a replacement for the MVE decoder first. I sent an email to the owner a few days ago (after a comment on a different post here) asking if we can just go ahead and strip the code we can't release, and he said "go for it".
• MaximilianEmel 3y ago
  Found this gem on the Wikipedia page[0]: > A study published in 2002 used Descent 3 to study hawkmoth flight activities. Using the game's editing module, the researchers created a virtual environment consisting of a flat plane with rectangular pillars, across which the animal successfully navigated. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_3#Other_uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_3#Other_uses
  • h0l0cube 3y ago
    Some crazy stuff… they Clockwork Oranged a moth to a VR machine with pheromone misters and electrodes > In this paper we describe a novel insect flight simulator design that combines realistic, interactive visual environments with mechanosensory and olfactory stimuli in conjunction with state of the art multichannel neurophysiological recording techniques. This system takes advantage of currently available computer technology and MEMs fabrication techniques and we use it to examine activity from many CNS neurons in parallel during realistic closed-loop flight of the hawkmoth, Manduca sexta. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165027002002236?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01650...
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• erikbye 3y ago
  Loved Descent, it was very enjoyable multiplayer.
• ThinkBeat 3y ago
  I know I will be in a small minority, but I miss the way changes were documented and explained at the top of the source code. Makes it super easy to get a feel for it and super easy to search for comments on changes or jump to the part of the code you need to work on. Yes the drawbacks are sometimes a huge list of comments before the source code even begins, but you can quickly jump with a search for " */" It makes the files larger, and you should be able to pull the same from whatever versioning system you use, but that involves context change and a separate program (though if you an IDE it may be integrated). Would be fun to have a git tool that mimics this. Best of both worlds.
  • okl 3y ago
    You can give a path to git log, e.g., `git log --follow -- file.txt` If you'd put some text markers in the file's headers, e.g., `<history></history>`, you could create a script that gets the git log for each file that contains the markers and puts the log between those markers. Keep the markers to be able to rerun the script. Also need a script to purge the log when commiting. Could be automated with git hooks I guess.
    • karmakaze 2y ago
      We used to commit messages with "uv:" if the change was user visible and simply filter git messages with them for version release notes.
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  • OnionBlender 2y ago
    At my first job, there used to sometimes be conversations in the source code between 2 people. Reading it made me feel like an archeologist.
• account42 3y ago
  > Some proprietary sound and video libraries from Interplay have been stripped out (the ACM and MVE format). I have that code if someone wants to help make a converter so the old cutscenes work. It'll take some effort to stub out that code so it compiles. FWIW, FFMPEG seems to support these formats.
• LunicLynx 2y ago
  This is an awesome move, this should happen for many more old games. Freelancer very much on top of my list <3
• DonHopkins 2y ago
  I'm working on making an open source version of Yoot Tower (aka Sim Tower, The Tower II) that runs in the browser! https://github.com/YootTowerManagement/YootTower https://github.com/YootTowerManagement/YootTower What led to this being possible: There was recently a discussion about elevators on Hacker News, and somebody mentioned SimTower and asked about the algorithms it used, so I gave Yoot a call to ask him, and he mentioned he wanted to open source it. I enthusiastically agreed to help him, and contribute my efforts porting the code and navigating the licensing and trademark issues, benefiting from my experience developing the open source version of SimCity for the OLPC: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39087437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39087437 >I know Yoot Saito (creator of SimTower) from my time at Maxis, so I just gave him a cold call out of the blue and asked. ;) I caught him drinking Jack Daniels in a Japanese bar, but he had some time to chat. >He said he once did a big interview with BBC about SimTower (which would be worth looking up and watching if you can find it), and had a friend who worked in the elevator industry, who told him generally about how elevators worked, but much of it was secret and proprietary, so he had to come up with how they worked in the game himself, based on the general ideas he learned and his own experience and imagination. >He also said he's interested in releasing the original source code of SimTower as free open source software, like I did with the original SimCity Classic source code, so I volunteered to help him and find other people who could help. Anybody interested? ;) Yoot recently sent me a huge code drop of the Windows sources as well as the Gameboy SP and DS versions and production documents, and I'm sorting it out and cleaning it up to make a version that compiles with emscripten and runs in the web browser. We've decided it release it under the MIT license, and develop a version that runs in the web browser using emscripten and SvelteKit. I'd appreciate hearing from people who are interested in helping out, especially people who know Japanese, since there is a lot of great content in The Tower II that was only released in Japan that needs translating to English and other languages. I've also started the process of porting the Micropolis (open source SimCity) code to run in the web browser in the same way as Yoot Tower, since they are both from the same era (and from Maxis) and share a lot of technologies and requirements, so they will both be able to share much of the code and infrastructure (WebAssembly, emscripten, embind, SvelteKit, canvas, html, css, user interface code, github actions, etc), with the eventual goal of being able to embed multiple Yoot Towers in your Micropolis city! https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore >Open Source Micropolis, based on the original SimCity Classic from Maxis, by Will Wright. >MicropolisCore C++ Core >This is the source code for Micropolis (based on SimCity), released under GPL-3. Micropolis is based on the original SimCity from Electronic Arts / Maxis, designed and written by Will Wright, and ported to Unix by Don Hopkins. >The origin of this repo is the "MicropolisCore" directory of the full micropolis repo, https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis , but it's been stripped down and simplified. >I am now in the process of converting it to build for WebAssembly with emscripten and bind to JavaScript with embind, and implementing a SvelteKit front-end. Since I know the SimCity code well already and have ported it to many different platforms, and put years of effort into cleaning up the old code to be well organized C++ code with clean interfaces and doxygen documentation, it's a great way to learn the new technologies, work out the approach, and prepare for porting SimTower the same way. ChatGPT has been a huge help, especially analyzing the code and writing documentation and translating the Japanese comments, and now I'm using Aider for them both: Aider: AI pair programming in your terminal (github.com/paul-gauthier): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39995725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39995725 Here's a code map for each source file that I made with ChatGPT that focuses on helping me get a high level view of the code, its dependencies, purposes of each file, and porting issues: https://github.com/YootTowerManagement/YootTower/blob/main/YootTowerCodeMap.md https://github.com/YootTowerManagement/YootTower/blob/main/Y... The Nintendo Gameboy SP and DS versions of Tower have a whole lot of proprietary Nintendo SDK code and also their precious proprietary content and characters like Mario, which we are certainly not able to release ourselves under the MIT license, so I'm working with the more generic Windows version instead. Yoot owns the rights to the source code to his own games, but we can't just release stuff with Nintendo's crowned jewels like Mario and their SDKs in it as open source. We are being extremely careful not to infringe on anyone’s copyrights or trademarks, of course! Maxis got into a lot of trouble with Godzilla just because they had a big monster on the box but didn’t mention Godzilla by name (but a review in a magazine did, which was too much), and Maxis (now EA) own the SimTower trademark, so we’re calling it Yoot Tower. The Nintendo Gameboy and DS console ports of SimTower have a lot Nintendo content (like Mario), so we definitely don’t want to make Nintendo or EA mad by infringing on their trademarks or copyrights. Jeff Braun (CEO of Maxis) told me the story of what happened decades ago with Maxis and Godzilla, so I want to be careful to avoid stomping on anybody’s property: >Maxis was sued by Toho. We never referred to the name Godzilla, our monster on the box cover was a T-Rex looking character, but... a few magazine reviews called the monster, Godzilla. That was all it took. Toho called it "confusion in the marketplace". We paid $50k for Godzilla to go away. In all honesty, Toho liked Maxis, they said $50k was the minimum they take for Godzilla infringement. I doubt you will need to worry about Toho, as long as there are no magazine reviews that call the monster Godzilla. I guess the lesson is to always make sure to give your monsters a unique name, and don’t leave that up to the user’s imagination.
• shatnersbassoon 2y ago
  `TELETUBBIES = TeletubbiesCheat` Intriguing... what does this do?
  • tim333 2y ago
    Google says Teletubbies - Put's a baby face on the sun (like Teletubbies)
    • birracerveza 2y ago
      Should be a standard cheat on all videogames, like immortality or big head
    • rrr_oh_man 2y ago
      I remember trying —and failing— to use this in the demo
• rux 2y ago
  Descent's control system is for me what cemented the "invert Y axis" on the mouse for controlling first person gaming forevermore. My brain absolutely clicked with the 6DoF mindset, but it has meant that all FPS games from that point on had to conform to it, even if the game wasn't in any way flying-based.
  • Xiol32 2y ago
    Inverted Y players unite! Descent also contributed to my ruined brain, along with Flight Simulator 95. Cannot play without inverted Y.
    • jojobas 2y ago
      "Inverted Y" is what Wright brothers had on the Flyer.
      • sparrowInHand 2y ago
        The left hand writers serve the wicked one. The inverted ones are the devils! Burn them at the joystickstake!
    • turrini 2y ago
      Me too! The first game I played with mouse support in the 90s, I believe, was Flight Simulator 3.0, and I think by default (?) it was set up for inverted mouse (or was MS-DOS Star Wars: TIE Fighter, can't remember). Since then, when I started playing other FPS games with mouse support (like Quake and similar), this mode prevailed. However, the biggest challenge came years later with FPS games for smartphones - retraining my mind to play with non-inverted orientation. Quite an adventure!
    • __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      I got made fun of for being a Y-inverted person, but I had my revenge when none of my non inverted friends could reliably control the bucket on a front-loader I had rented. Neener neener.
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• jjuliano 2y ago
  I was thinking about Microsoft’s Terminal Velocity, and I miss that you can play the sountrack CD. Descend and TV are exactly the same, do they share the same codebase?
  • jjuliano 2y ago
    Oh, was it Fury 3.
• jakearmitage 2y ago
  Neat. Linux port incoming! Thank you for this, kevin42. So many great games around the 2000s. If Tim Sweeney could open UE1, a lot of games could benefit from it like Quake being open sourced did.
  • kevin42 2y ago
    The code on github worked well in Linux several years ago. It shouldn't be too hard (other than the MVE codecs we need to straighten out).
    • jslutter 2y ago
      I think fs2 source may have mve player code
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• deaddodo 2y ago
  This was one of my favorite games as a child. I'd love to hop on as a co-maintainer.
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• cpuguy83 2y ago
  Descent 3 had so many bugs on my graphics card... which I want to say was an ATI Rage. Consequently I played D2 more until we got our hands on a Voodoo3. gabbagabbahey!
• flykespice 2y ago
  Interesting the source code hints it uses C++, yet as far as I can tell, there is no use of classes anywhere. I guess the team couldn't spell "C" with "classes" /j
• pathartl 2y ago
  I've had a dream of buying the IP to some older, obscure PC games from this era and then releasing the source code. I hate how many games are getting lost to time.
• TheAmazingRace 2y ago
  This game certainly brings back memories. I think I prefer the more “internal” style levels from Descent 1 and 2 over the more open levels found in Descent 3. To that end, I sense a huge opportunity. We could potentially port the D1 and D2 maps to run in Descent 3, as well as utilizing the newer graphics APIs the game supported. Could be a great opportunity for an all-in-one style remaster.
  • Moru 2y ago
    I think this is supposed to be D1 campaign [0] for the spiritual successor Overload [1]. [0] https://steamcommunity.com/app/448850/discussions/0/3809535864677154491/ https://steamcommunity.com/app/448850/discussions/0/38095358... [1] https://www.gog.com/en/game/overload https://www.gog.com/en/game/overload
• jslutter 2y ago
  I think I have more changes beyond what you have. It's been a long time though. If you want to email me I can get them to you to dig through. Funny to see this :)
• Solvency 2y ago
  wow, I can't imagine having to scroll through 500+ lines of "logs" in every single file of that source code as a developer every time I need to find/edit code.
• lotharbot 2y ago
  My wife and I met on a Descent forum, our 3 sons are named for Descent friends (KoolBear, Jediluke, and Mark392), and we've attended weddings (and sadly one funeral, RIP JinX) for Descent friends. Even though I considered D3 the weakest of the Descent games, this news makes me happy. Thank you, Kevin!
  • khalladay 2y ago
    Im loving the idea that one of your kids is literally named "koolbear"
    • ant6n 2y ago
      Actually, “KoolBear”.
  • UberFly 2y ago
    KoolBear, Jediluke, and Mark392. Those are their first names?
    • fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
      I guess Jediluke -> Luke and Mark392 -> Mark. Not sure about KoolBear. Maybe a middle name or a different language like Bjorn.
    • lotharbot 2y ago
      I thought about putting their actual names -- Michael, David, and Mark (even though Mark392 isn't really named Mark) -- but I thought it'd be funnier to just put their pilot names at first.
      • Dove 2y ago
        To add some missing context (though perhaps also to spoil my husband's joke) - Koolbear, whose real first name is Mike, founded and was instrumental in the life of the forum where the two of us met and has been a hero and inspiration to both of us. Jediluke, whose real first name is David, is the most vigorous and prolific competitor the game has ever seen, recognized by pilots of practically every era and environment as elite and dominant. He is also a close personal friend and the three of us ran the definitive ladder for the modern community together. And we are both big fans of him as a competitor. Mark392 (whose real name doesn't matter for this purpose) is widely recognized by the modern community as the GOAT and is also a close personal friend for both of us.
• sshumaker 2y ago
  I had the pleasure of working closely with Jeff Slutter early in my career. Was the first really fantastic engineer I worked with - he’s at Santa Monica Studios (God of War) these days. I think Matt Toschlog is there too now. Glad to see these folks working on an awesome AAA franchise.
• geocrasher 2y ago
  gabbagabahey ... <cheater!>
  • geocrasher 2y ago
    To whoever downvoted me... you clearly never played Descent or looked up the cheat codes. I dusted off D1-D3 a few years ago and played them in DOS Box and man, what a trip! Going from playing it in my teens to playing it in my 40's was something else. It was a lot harder than I remembered, but also a lot BETTER than I remembered. I'd kill to see a modern reboot in 4k. Keep the gameplay largely the same, but get the graphics and physics up to snuff. Back in the day, I played for hours and hours on my 486DX2-66 on Windows 95, with something like 64MB memory, and a 120MB and 40MB drive compressed with DriveSpace. Those were the days. I played mostly with keyboard. I tried switching to mouse, but it didn't feel as good as the keyboard. I thought I was good at the game, and fast, until I joined an Internet game one day and kept getting pwned by some dude with a pile driver who was camped out at spawn. I realized I'd never be that fast, and never played the online version again :D
• cloudmike 2y ago
  Some friends of mine played Descent competitively, and I was amazed to learn about so-called trichording: to maximize your speed, you need to press multiple keys at the same time to travel along all 3 axes at once, e.g. forward/right/up. The best players zip around the map diagonally. I always assumed this was a bug-turned-feature, like skiing in Tribes. When I saw the repo just now, I looked for clues, but didn't spot any related comments around the line of code where this ultimately happens: https://github.com/kevinbentley/Descent3/blob/142052a67d4318c09a135ad3e1c7d94d95eff680/Descent3/object.cpp#L2583 https://github.com/kevinbentley/Descent3/blob/142052a67d4318...
  • Too 2y ago
    In 2D, the diagonal across a 1x1 rectangle is longer than just its sides. A naive implementation of just adding the x and y vectors together will become their sum, totaling up to the diagonal length, 1.41x faster. In 3d even more. This is a very common bug (feature) in many old games. Quake famously did consider this bug while walking but not while jumping, leading to a more complicated trick to speed up called strafe-jumping.
  • kaibee 2y ago
    Yeah looks like the calculation doesn't renormalize the final thrust vector after adding together the component inputs. A simplified example for a 2d game would be like this: var playerX_input = Input.GetHorizontal(); // float in range -1 to 1 var playerY_input = Input.GetVertical(); // float in range -1 to 1 var playerVelocity = new Vector2(playerX_input, playerY_input); // The player can now move 1 unit/frame in X and 1 unit/frame in Y, which means that if they're moving diagonally, the length of their velocity vector is the length of the vector (1,1) which is sqrt(2) (~1.41) // This can be corrected by doing something like if(playerVelocity.length > 1) { playerVelocity = playerVelocity.normalized(); }
  • Delk 2y ago
    AFAIK a similar thing worked in in lots of shooters: running diagonally by strafing and going forward gave you sqrt(x^2 + y^2) speed probably because of a design oversight (and because running in each direction was equally fast). In Descent you just added up/down for another axis, which gave you a speed of about 1.7x compared to forward only. In Descent 2 and 3 you also had the "afterburner" which gave a speed boost forward, but it had limited (albeit quickly recharging) energy, and the speed boost it gave you was greatest at 100% energy and effectiveness dropped as remaining energy dropped towards 0%. So people learned to pulsate it multiple times per second so that it would recharge between the fraction-of-a-second uses and keep at ~95% all the time instead of quickly dropping to low figures. So if you wanted to go really fast you'd both run diagonally in three dimensions and keep pulsating the afterburner multiple times per second.
• popf1 2y ago
  Descent was such a great game... are there any modern versions of it? CSGO almost feel 2D when compared to this relic.
  • pseudobry 2y ago
    Yes, from the original creators of Descent: https://store.steampowered.com/app/448850/Overload/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/448850/Overload/
• pseudobry 2y ago
  Descent holds a special place for me, as it was the first game I ever saw played on a PC (I watched my dad play when I was five, ~30 years ago). I recently was able to reminisce by playing the modern successor, Overload: https://store.steampowered.com/app/448850/Overload/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/448850/Overload/
• oflannabhra 2y ago
  The Descent series was my gateway to the Internet, and really paralleled my coming of age. I played D1 dialing up my friends when I was 10, which was amazing. I swapped numbers with some folks on the local BBS and played 1-on-1 deathmatches. My brother installed DEVIL, and I learned how to launch things from DOS, interact with a CLI and filesystem, and of course make my own levels. We got Internet service and then D2 multiplayer, facilitated by Kali/Kahn for match-making completely blew my mind. I think I was 12 or 13, and discovering things like IRC and webpages describing advanced techniques like chording were hugely eye-opening for how big the world was. Making friends on ICQ, and discovering warez was like living in a sci-if novel. I also got into building and upgrading PCs to be able to play at higher resolutions and frame rates. Descent 3 was a huge step forward graphically, and brought about sniping with the mass driver. It had worldwide rankings, and making the top 100 leaderboard as a 16 year old still ranks as one of my most mind-blowing moments. It was the first time I had high speed internet, and really ushered in the modern era of gaming for me. Thank you for this. I’ve since moved on in my life (obviously), but it is amazing to have spent some moments today reflecting on all this. I doubt I would be a child of the internet or a software engineer today without Descent.
• MrIrrelevant 2y ago
  holy shit yes
• opan 2y ago
  https://github.com/kevinbentley/Descent3/issues/32 https://github.com/kevinbentley/Descent3/issues/32 >It seems that commits prior to 6a7a141 were covered under the MIT license. It's unclear why it was deleted (the commit message is only "Delete"). Not currently free software / open source for some reason, no LICENSE file at the moment. For those who were also wondering.
  • kevin42 2y ago
    Try not to read too much into that, the MIT license was in the original blank repo I started with. There are a few questions I need to get answered, so the lack of that file doesn't necessarily mean anything about the license. The previous Descent 1&2 releases were under the license seen here, I would expect that at minimum (minimum permissibility-wise): https://github.com/OpenSourcedGames/Descent-2 https://github.com/OpenSourcedGames/Descent-2 I'm hoping the owners will be able to agree to MIT, but we're doing due diligence right now.
• emmaagro 2y ago
  [dead]