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Descent, ported to the web
- efnx 8mo agoI’ve been following Mr. Doob since the flash days. Cool to see they’re still doobing cool things.
- ranger_danger 8mo agoSince it's not linked anywhere that I could see, here's the source I found: https://github.com/mrdoob/three-descent https://github.com/mrdoob/three-descent And Quake for web by the same author: https://mrdoob.github.io/three-quake/ https://mrdoob.github.io/three-quake/
- _dwt 8mo agoDescent was a huge part of my childhood (and surprisingly my little kids are now big fans as well)! Unfortunately this seems to stutter pretty badly with audio issues as well for me on Firefox on Linux. As a huge fan of three.js and other past work... I guess I'll blame Claude?
- cheschire 8mo agoi have no issues in brave on linux mint
- rcarmo 8mo agoI used to play this game incessantly. Audio on Firefox on Linux is, sadly, very very garbled.
- eptcyka 8mo agoIs there a way to play this without geting vertigo?
- paulryanrogers 8mo agoTry configuring WASD controls, mouse look, turning off auto roll / leveling. Use your choice of 'jump' and 'crouch' to slide up and down. Then it feels more like an ice-skating FPS than a flying game. Keeping the cockpit on screen may also help provide a frame of reference. I found that helped me enjoy the game more now that I'm older and less tolerant of 6DOF movement.
- pverheggen 8mo agoMr. Doob has been doing experiments like this for at least a decade, glad to see that he's still at it. He's the creator of three.js, and it looks like this uses that for rendering instead of being a straight port.
- westoncb 8mo agoHe also remade quake a couple weeks ago (on three.js as well I believe).
- andai 8mo agohttps://mrdoob.com/#/160/threejs_quake https://mrdoob.com/#/160/threejs_quake (It's also his homepage now, but I included the full link for posterity.) -- Edit: How do you actually play? I keep getting trapped in the Shareware Dimension!
- xnx 8mo agoI need to replay this game with a dual stick controller. Previously played it on a serial joystick and keyboard.
- dale_glass 8mo agoFor anyone who enjoyed Descent, please go buy Overload. It's a pretty much perfect spiritual sequel, with a great soundtrack. And I believe made by some of the people that formerly worked on Descent.
- krige 8mo agoThat is true, furthermore Overload has an usermade campaign called Overload: First Strike, which is a conversion and upgrade of the entire Descent 1 campaign to Overload. Additionally I recommend Desecrators, which is a Descent-like with procedurally generated maps. Think Sublevel Zero or Everspace, except good.
- mejutoco 8mo agoForsaken for n64 was pretty good too.
- nickpeterson 8mo agoWhoa, I just remembered playing forsaken multiplayer at sleepover when I was a kid. Thanks for reminding me!
- Lapsa 8mo agoSublevel Zero is good
- alias_neo 8mo agoOne of the first PC games I ever played, I was single-digit years old when this released. Fond memories. Will have to have a play of this web version and try out Overload, thanks.
- midzer 8mo agoNeed WebGL2. WebGL1 WASM version based on https://github.com/dxx-rebirth/dxx-rebirth https://github.com/dxx-rebirth/dxx-rebirth -> https://midzer.de/wasm/descent1/ https://midzer.de/wasm/descent1/
- Dove 8mo agoImpressively faithful, right down to weapons functioning incorrectly at a high framerate!
- rkaregaran 8mo agoI remember buying this at fry’s with my dad in the 90s!
- Apocryphon 8mo agoGrew up with an Acer running Windows 95 that came with this preinstalled… now that’s bloatware that ain’t bloat. Descent floatware.
- michaelteter 8mo agoI absolutely LOVED this game when it first came out. I played with a trackball + keyboard, and the 6 degrees of freedom, paired with an environment where there often was no natural sense of "up" or "down" (zero gravity, inside tunnels) really blew my mind. I experienced a sensation I had never before experienced, almost out-of-body. For example, you approach a "T" junction, and depending on your pitch angle, the branches may be up/down or left/right. But since there's no natural ground or sky, you can either maintain an orientation memory (I usually did automatically), or you can just let all that go and travel with no sense of true orientation. Occasionally you reach an area with some signs or printed panels, and then you realize what the regional up/down orientation was; but it didn't matter in zero gravity.
- sen 8mo agoI used to consider it a form of flow-state when you’ve played Descent/Overload long enough that up/down stops being a thing. It always took a while each session to get to that point, but once you were there it all just starting flowed so damn well, and manoeuvring the tunnels became so much faster/easier.
- michaelteter 8mo agoYes. Especially when deftly rolling 90 degrees before taking the next turn to arrive with the desired orientation.
- cbdevidal 8mo agoI used a joystick with a four-way hat that allowed simple and intuitive strafing in all directions along with thrust in four directions from the joystick itself. I got devastating with that combo. Spent hours mastering it. Logitech Wingman Extreme Digital: https://ebay.us/m/Hxi8Wh https://ebay.us/m/Hxi8Wh
- ralphc 8mo agoI had a Spaceball Avenger which made it so intuitive to play. From my old reddit post about it, "The Spaceball Avenger is a gaming peripheral. It has the usual buttons, but the big ball is used for six degrees of freedom movement. With pressure sensors the ball is pushed up/down, left/right, and in/out for X, Y and Z axes. The ball can also be rotated for pitch, yaw and roll. Plugged into the computer's serial port it came with drivers for games such as Doom, for which it was a good controller, but the Spaceball really shined for the Descent family of games. Descent is a FPS with no gravity, where your ship moves in ALL directions, and controlling with with the Spaceball feels like you're holding the spaceship in your hand and you're just moving it to where you want it to go." You can see it here https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/gmusxs/exotic_peripherals_week_the_spaceball_avenger/ https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/gmusxs...
- internet2000 8mo agoSurprisingly faithful! Works great on Safari, latest Mac OS.
- robinsonb5 8mo agoVery impressive - graphically it runs very smoothly on Firefox under Linux - but unfortunately the audio is extremely choppy.
- pjmlp 8mo agoYeah, same experience here.
- bossyTeacher 8mo agoSeeing this kind of games so beloved by the HN greybeards, makes you wonder what will be the equivalent nostalgia games for the next generation. Pokemon red maybe? Perhaps Fortnite?
- NamTaf 8mo agoDescent came out in 1995. Pokémon red came out in 1996. Sorry to be the one to ruin your concept of time.
- bossyTeacher 8mo ago> Sorry to be the one to ruin your concept of time. Was this necessary?
- netule 8mo agoMinecraft, very likely.
- helpfulclippy 8mo agoMy money: Minecraft, Breath of the Wild and Undertale are going to feature prominently.
- Dove 8mo agoThat was my first thought, too. I and a couple of my kids have great affection for Minecraft. However, I don't think that affection really matches the absolute foaming-at-the-mouth excitement we felt for Descent. I don't think it's that video games have gotten worse (though perhaps they have). I think it's more that it's impossible to recreate the way they impacted us back then. It wasn't just about the games, but also about the times. DOOM today is a fine game and even a classic, but back then it was the first time anyone had ever seen anything like it and we were inventing online play and fps tactics and amateur map design in real time. Descent had that same blockbuster feel, but that for me that feeling faded from new releases over the next few years. (Though I won't deny Minecraft caught something of that old bombshell energy.) I suspect the way I feel about the video games I grew up with is a feeling my kids will never exactly have. Sure, they love their games, but the 90s were an incredible time for the art form. By analogy, I love the music I grew up with, but I don't feel about it the way my parents feel about the music from the 60's. Music is always special, but that was a particularly special time for music and if you weren't there, you weren't there. In time the absolute electricity of the British Invasion became "So what kind of music do you listen to?" So I think it will go with games.
- MobileVet 8mo agoI was lucky enough to have a flight stick with a hat switch. Absolutely unfair, but I tore up my peers in the dorm because of that. Fantastic memories.
- tombert 8mo agoI remember mostly playing the port of this to the PS1, which had a fully animated opening cut scene. When I got the PC port like fifteen years later at a Goodwill, I was disappointed to see that that was a Playstation exclusive. Descent is good, but I do think the series peaked with Descent II, if for no other reason than the rocking soundtrack. Very awesome, cool, industrial rock; I used to put the game CD in my car to listen to it since it was Red Book audio.
- invader 8mo agoYes, Descent II OST is on a totally different level compared to the MIDI-only Descent I soundtrack. And by famous musicians to boot - like Type O Negative and Ogre of Skinny Puppy, who created my favorite "Glut" and "Ratzez" tracks. It was the time when games became big enough to bring popular musicians aboard for the soundtrack, Quake with Trent Reznor being a perfect example. Also, the series was followed by Descent Freespace I/II, leaving a significant impact on the genre of space shooters. Though there are completely different games that have nothing to do with the original series.
- The_President 8mo agoThat Descent II map editor was a top level utility for making some super creative levels.
- empressplay 8mo agoworks excellent on m2 max -- thanks! good times.
- sheepdestroyer 8mo agoI play inverted mouse on every game because that was the default on Descent, my first 3D game. At least that's what I remember. However this version uses mouse up/down to do up/down, and that seems so wrong. Can't play it :(
- swiftcoder 8mo agoOooh. All this needs now is gamepad support
- dnpls 8mo agoThere's something wrong on Chrome + MacOS Tahoe, the bottom text in the intro is getting cut off.
- imglorp 8mo agoSame with FF on Tahoe. Also the audio is clicking hard, had to mute it.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- doublerabbit 8mo agoDOS Games, where every game was a completely different game engine. The VGA era was something special.
- MrTortoise 8mo agothis game was so next level at the time.
- ekjhgkejhgk 8mo agoI wonder if anyone knows how to get Descent running on Linux (Debian), if someone doesn't want to run this on the browser.
- pjmlp 8mo agoThis is the JavaScript port anyway, https://github.com/mrdoob/three-descent https://github.com/mrdoob/three-descent
- BobbyTables2 8mo agoNow I gotta find a modern Gravis Gamepad!
- millerm 8mo agoI was the king of Descent for a long time at a place I worked at. 4 of us would play at lunch just about every day. I was so f'n good at that game. That and Duke Nukem.