10 ms·

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 cou

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_ 3y 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 3y ago
        Doom also has a camera bob effect that makes your brain think you are mowing down those monsters on a sailboat.
        entropicdrifter 3y ago
        Quake was the first widely popular "real" 3D engine, but ironically the first game in the series being discussed in this thread, Descent, pre-dated it by around a year with fully 3D graphics in 1995.
        weebull 3y ago
        > The Quake engine was iirc the first "real" 3D engine. There were many 3D engines before Quake. You had a bunch of Micropose combat flight sims, a ton of 3d driving games, even Elite on the BBC micro. Hell, I'd written some 3D graphics on the Atari ST before Quake. Quake was the first 3D texture mapped, dynamically lit, first person shooter...maybe...depending on your definition. It was certainly one of the first to have that ran at frame rates around 30fps. As others have said, Descent was also around the same time too.
      - willis936 3y ago
        I wouldn't get nauseas when I played Overload in VR, but I definitely developed a cold sweat fast. 30 minute sessions were a push and I'd need to recover after. The developers did all the best practices, but there's something inherently mentally stressful about a 6DoF game in VR while you sit still in a chair.
        rzzzt 3y ago
        I got these symptoms from Wolf3D when playing on an empty stomach...
        tmikaeld 3y ago
        Actually, it's exactly like that! Most games with movement as a physical body, either with or without breast/hip make me car-sick, but this game is mostly taxing mentally because of all of the input. The only game that doesn't affect me, at all and which I can play for many hours is Contractors Showdown.
      - rho4 3y ago
        Not even VR, I had to stop normal Descent 3 after about 1 hour of gameplay because I started getting sick. Infuriating
      - cmpalmer52 3y ago
        I’m about to try it in VR. I’ve gotten over most of my VR nausea, but I will say, the original Decent series games gave made me nauseated/gave me vertigo and headaches if I played them too much. Therefore, I am a little worried. So much fun, though!
- 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 3y 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 3y ago
    I'm confused. This is another game?
    - lotharbot 3y 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 3y ago
      The target audience was always going to be people trying to relive descent so the narrowness I suspect was just accepted
      - boomlinde 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
    Yeah, really. Heck, even No Man's Sky and Star Wars Squadrons qualify and they're way more mainstream
    - Matticus_Rex 3y ago
      Neither of those are 6DOF (unless NMS patched it in at some point).
- always2slow 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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_ 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
      Agreed. Very different gameplay, setting, everything really. Just two good games, weirdly sharing a name!
- Cthulhu_ 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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_ 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
If that's your cup of tea then elite dangerous might scratch that itch.
roydivision 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
Wouldn't elite or star citizen fit that definition? Or am I fundamentally misunderstanding what descent is about?
doorhammer 3y 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

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_ 3y 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 3y ago
        Doom also has a camera bob effect that makes your brain think you are mowing down those monsters on a sailboat.
        entropicdrifter 3y ago
        Quake was the first widely popular "real" 3D engine, but ironically the first game in the series being discussed in this thread, Descent, pre-dated it by around a year with fully 3D graphics in 1995.
        weebull 3y ago
        > The Quake engine was iirc the first "real" 3D engine. There were many 3D engines before Quake. You had a bunch of Micropose combat flight sims, a ton of 3d driving games, even Elite on the BBC micro. Hell, I'd written some 3D graphics on the Atari ST before Quake. Quake was the first 3D texture mapped, dynamically lit, first person shooter...maybe...depending on your definition. It was certainly one of the first to have that ran at frame rates around 30fps. As others have said, Descent was also around the same time too.
    - willis936 3y ago
      I wouldn't get nauseas when I played Overload in VR, but I definitely developed a cold sweat fast. 30 minute sessions were a push and I'd need to recover after. The developers did all the best practices, but there's something inherently mentally stressful about a 6DoF game in VR while you sit still in a chair.
      - rzzzt 3y ago
        I got these symptoms from Wolf3D when playing on an empty stomach...
      - tmikaeld 3y ago
        Actually, it's exactly like that! Most games with movement as a physical body, either with or without breast/hip make me car-sick, but this game is mostly taxing mentally because of all of the input. The only game that doesn't affect me, at all and which I can play for many hours is Contractors Showdown.
    - rho4 3y ago
      Not even VR, I had to stop normal Descent 3 after about 1 hour of gameplay because I started getting sick. Infuriating
    - cmpalmer52 3y ago
      I’m about to try it in VR. I’ve gotten over most of my VR nausea, but I will say, the original Decent series games gave made me nauseated/gave me vertigo and headaches if I played them too much. Therefore, I am a little worried. So much fun, though!
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 3y 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 3y ago
  I'm confused. This is another game?
  - lotharbot 3y 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 3y ago
    The target audience was always going to be people trying to relive descent so the narrowness I suspect was just accepted
    - boomlinde 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
  Yeah, really. Heck, even No Man's Sky and Star Wars Squadrons qualify and they're way more mainstream
  - Matticus_Rex 3y ago
    Neither of those are 6DOF (unless NMS patched it in at some point).
always2slow 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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_ 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago
    Agreed. Very different gameplay, setting, everything really. Just two good games, weirdly sharing a name!
Cthulhu_ 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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_ 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago

If that's your cup of tea then elite dangerous might scratch that itch.

roydivision 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y 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 3y ago

Wouldn't elite or star citizen fit that definition? Or am I fundamentally misunderstanding what descent is about?

doorhammer 3y 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