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"Descent" Goes For a Crowdfunding Reboot (and a Linux Version)
New submitter boll writes A bunch of Star Citizen alumns have taken it upon themselves to resurrect the hit game franchise Descent, backed by a Kickstarter campaign. If you are a semi-oldtimer on the PC gaming scene, you may fondly remember how the original Descent was among the first to provide 6 genuine degrees of freedom during intense late night LAN gaming sessions."
Reader elfindreams adds: It will be released as a PC/Mac/Linux game and will include a single player campaign and multiplayer with up to 64 combatants on a map! They are working with a number of members of the current D1/D2 community to make sure the flight/gameplay feels "old school" and they are updating the technology and game to a new generation.
For maximum bazooka barfing!
There was no game more puke inducing than Descent 2 on the VR headsets of the day.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Just remembering that game gives me nausea.
I backed at $30 early bird slot early just because I could but I can't see why one should ever back any video game on Kickstarter because indie ones seem to be like $15 and then sell for .. $2 in sales or bundles or whatever and while $30 may be better than say $40 retail if that would happen soon enough it will be much less anyway.
Now if I could get "subscriber experience" for a fixed price then that would had been ok.
Like I guess if people had an option to pay say $100 for unlimited World of Warcraft that would had been something.
But I guess it wouldn't had been for Blizzard =P
The kick starter page clearly says it has a single player campaign as does the video.
the summary didn't but who reads the article anyway
64 people is a lot, sometimes too much, first you have the chaos for all the players, then if a couple of guys lag in an 8x8 game and its ok, but getting 64 people with a good internet connection in the same game is almost impossible some times.
...with my Spaceball Avenger?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"Peterson has big plans for Descent Underground, which will be both single- and multiplayer and will be set as a prequel, telling the story of how the games' Post-Terran Mining Corporation came to be. "
Even 64 player games are already "arm rocket launcher, fire blindly for maximum frags. Don't worry, you'll be dead before you're out of rockets" most of the time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Depends on your definition of "pure 64-bit"...
Many games offer a 64-bit client, but they generally either default to the 32-bit client and you have to manually launch in 64-bit mode *or* they have a launcher that decides which client to launch for you.
World of Warcraft, for example, has a 64-bit client.
>> If you are a semi-oldtimer on the PC gaming scene
Yeesh...I guess those of us who played Zork should be in a nursing home.
Three word commands, luxury.
When I was a kid we played in squashed dodecahedral maps, and we liked it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There was another version - Descent: Online - that was featured on one of the first online game services, ENGAGE Games Online, launched by Interplay in 1995. That was my second IT job. I think we supported up to 32 players in a single game, divided into two teams.
I was more into Rolemaster: Magestorm (a multiplayer FPS/RPG from Mythic Entertainment, same studio as Dark Age of Camelot),.
Edith Keeler Must Die
FreeSpace (and expecially FreeSpace 2) were the better games.
How the fuck can you be an "alumnus" of something THAT ISN'T EVEN RELEASED YET?
Seriously, the dizzying anticipatory (or desperately self-justifying, depending on how you view people pouring $70+ million into the kickstarter) hype has now apparently even crossed the bounds of 'pedestrian' chronology.
Any day now I'm expecting the nostalgic articles about how "great" Star Citizen was, along with triumphal marketing videos about how it redefined an entire genre and 'set the standard' for all the games that followed.
-Styopa
Well, the obvious reason to back a project is so that it gets made at all. Nothing's stopping you from pulling your pledge once it hits the winning amount (unless it would bring it back under like 24 hours before the end). If you want to buy a game cheap and you don't care about new stretch goals, then by all means skip the kickstarter experience and you'll be better off. Higher tiers are pretty much never worth it--as a purchase--unless you really want the exclusive T-shirt or an NPC named after you or whatever. Otherwise just treat it the same as public TV/radio funding drives.
Man, can you imagine how AWESOME a Zork reboot would be? Think of what you could do with it these days. User-selectable fonts, boldface *and* italics, and... dare I dream?... SUB-PIXEL RENDERING! How spooky would it be when your torch goes out to have your text dim turn by turn until you're finally eaten by that grue! To have subtle changes in typeface be a clue in the maze of twisty passages, all alike? To bask in the awe-inspiring majesty of Flood Control Dam #3 as represented by 72pt text?
Damn, where's the Kickstarter page? I wanna pledge NOW!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Humor someone who's been out of the loop even longer: What's the advantage of making a game natively 64-bit, aside from addressing ridiculous amounts of RAM? Actually these days, maybe that is enough reason...is that it?
I just used WoW as an example because it's one I know off the top of my head.
I don't play a large variety of games, and two of the three games I play don't support 64-bit at all >_>
If you're running 32-bit software on a 64-bit processor, you're actually running an emulator -- WOW64.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I paid $50 for Albion Online, got to play about a month of the Winter Alpha, will get to play a month of the Summer Alpha, the betas, and when it launches it will be free-to-play.
I loved Descent, I look forward to the return of 3D controllers again.
However, one item concerns me about this Kickstarter - under the platforms they support, they point out all the platforms Unreal 4 supports.
Well that doesn't really say what platforms they WILL FOR SURE support if the project is backed. Also it does not say what platforms the betas will be available in. You can guess just Windows, but who knows?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just HOW MANY & which games ARE pure 64-bit nowadays?
There is a reason why most games are still 32-bit apps.
The big advantage of 64-bit instructions is that they can handle large amounts of RAM. If you aren't using a ton of RAM, there's little benefit to switching instruction sets. Until recently, most high-budget games were targeted at consoles with tiny amounts of RAM.
Even today, brand new computers are shipping with 4GB ram. I'm not just talking about Surface Pros and Macbook airs... Alienware is selling a dedicated gaming PC with only 4GB.
PC game developers know that requiring more than 4GB would sacrifice a chunk of their audience. So why bother porting to 64-bit? They can't really take advantage until all those 4GB machines go away.
Things are starting to turn around, though. Sony and MS have finally released consoles with 8GB ram, so we should expect to see 64-bit games appearing in the form of console ports.
I'm not particularly a fan of what they're doing with this new Descent game. Tech trees? Mining? Monetization? I know they're trying to bring it to the "Modern Age," but if they're going to change so much, I'm not so sure it will be a Descent game to me.
Sol Contingency, meanwhile, looks great and seems to be a lot closer to a proper Descent game, being made by fans who really know what they're doing. Sadly, although Interplay showed initial interest in them early last year, it seems they weren't enough of a "AAA" developer. So Interplay sent them a Cease and Desist. Fortunately, Sol Contingency is still being worked on, albeit with changes in the assets so that it doesn't infringe on the Descent IP. I'm a lot more eager to see what comes out of that game.
to make sure the flight/gameplay feels "old school"
I don't want it to feel old school. I want it to feel modern, innovative, up-to-date. And yes, I played Descent 1 and 2 and loved them. But times a'changin' and technology allows for sky-limit innovation.that's what i want, an old game reinvented, not "let's make the same thing but in HD".
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
On 64bit hardware 64bit a code base runs faster/smoother and/or consumes less power, as the 32 bit code is usually 'emulated' (well, that is not strictly correct) and needs to be 'translated' into 64bit equivalents (not strictly correct either :) but close enough for a layman)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
From: PTMC Headquarters
To: MD1032 [Inactive]
Sbj: Further Career Opportunities at PTMC!
Material Defender!
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I think the fun part is it isn't just a 32x32 maximum, you can subdivide it and have 4 or 8 teams so 8 teams of 8 could be fun as hell.
They are working with a number of members of the current D1/D2 community to make sure the flight/gameplay feels "old school" and they are updating the technology and game to a new generation.
Which I hoped Firaxis would do with the X-COM series. Imagine, after the initial joy of seeing my shiny HD troop transport land, seeing that my guys can't pass, drop, throw or pick up an item, or do whatever the hell they want within their time. Which reminds me, I should check up on UFO:AI.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
DICE is the company that makes the Battlefield series of games. Slashdot's Dice is different.
That was one of the reasons why Descent 1 was such a breakthrough; Even Doom 2 still required synchronized clients so if you had one of your 4 maximum players on a slow machine, the whole game would slow down. Descent allowed 16 players and they communicated in an non-synchronized fashion. A player on a bad connection did nothing to other players' performance.
I played the game for hundreds of hours, I never experienced motion sickness. Only one data point, sure, but people I have encountered that have this problem have it with all 3d shooters.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Then it doesn't matter whether you play 64, 128 or 256 people. Making the playing field large enough that the population density becomes one per cube mile where I'll be essentially duelling the one guy I can find means that the number of players doesn't matter anymore.
The point here is that at a certain cutoff it doesn't get better or more interesting anymore by adding more people and compensate it by stretching the maps. As soon as you can't sensibly put everyone into "viewing distance" anymore without making my scenario a viable one, you've reached the sensible limit of players. And I think 64 is pretty much where this is.
Of course it CAN be done sensibly if you start adding logistics, strategic positioning and such where you are essentially starting to play a MilSim game. But that's a totally different ballpark. Think Quake vs. ArmA.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't really care for making it happen at all.
The KS name kinda suggest that's the purpose but for so many projects it's more pre-order.
Also I don't see why I rather than the developer / creator should risk their money.
I totally know how KS work though.
Though two days ago the page was broken for a short while and my manager got locked up in some between state so even if I tried to manage the pledge later I couldn't because KS said it was processing the old one so that sucked. (Especially since that project ended within that time (about 3+ hours after the site was up again otherwise.)
The makers of this game are working with the competitive Descent community to make sure the important elements are in the new game. This set of developers has a really good track record of involving the community in design decisions.
I loved playing LAN games with the Gravis, even though most mouse/keyboard players were superior.
Interplay approached the lead (Wingman) because he was working on a "Descent-inspired" game. Nobody's entirely sure why, other than possibly Wingman's past track record of making AAA games and reputation for community-involvement. They worked out some kind of licensing agreement and the game became an official Descent title.
The leads (Wingman and Rob) mentioned this in one of their discussions with the community. Basically, modern multiplayer games are less costly than modern single-player games. The plan was always to build a large single-player campaign, but they had to keep the cost low for Kickstarter and that required a scope-of-work that meant they could only include a short single-player campaign for the cost of the KS. The hope is to expand the SP component as they sell more. From the FAQ on the KS page: "Yes, single-player is a part of our roadmap."
You don't even get 4 GB of addressable memory. Windows will give you 2 GB, or 3 if the user enables the "3GB switch". And that's straight process addressable memory, you're not actually going to be able to utilize the entire thing. You can do the sorts of heavy-handed memory management that game engines do on consoles to avoid fragmenting it too much, but your addressable space is being chopped up in variable amounts by third party shared libraries (Nvidia's driver takes a bit of memory over here, Steamworks takes a bit over there...), so you can't count on reliably allocating large pools out of it.
This game is a new AAA development built in Unreal Engine 4. The goal was not to port the originals, but to build a truly new game in the Descent universe that has core gameplay like the originals with many new features that gamers expect.
The new software and artwork will probably belong to these guys. I don't think it will change the ownership of the original assets, since all of the assets in the new game will be totally new.
You also get access to *far* more registers in 64-bit mode.
This has a large potential to greatly improve performance.
Unless someone resurrects the "Space Orb" controller, I can't see any version of Descent as being much fun. It was my old Space Orb that made the game at all *playable*.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Back in the mid 90s, I worked at a company that built protocol analyzers. During lunch break we would sometimes play Descent (2?). One day, a couple of us took a protocol analyzer and figured out which packet to push into the network to cause more mega missiles to appear (normally, there was only one or two in existence at a time).
When we played at lunch that day, we had a hilarious time when the biggest super weapon in the game became the primary weapon. Once the other players figured it out it became a grab/shoot/die fest.
One of the guys we pulled this on afterwords: "I picked up one mega missile and was like 'cool' then I got another, and another and another then I thought 'Holy Crap! These things are like water!"
Good times. Now, get back to work.
No matter where you go, there you are.
sure it matters. you can start having new gameplay modes like turf war.
but the real important question would be to ask do they have the license for descent or is this just a descent like game? there were couple of clones of descent back in the day.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I agree from 1st hand experience (albeit for procedure/function calls w/ "register" passing) in my APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-2 32/64-bit here http://start64.com/index.php?o...
* E.G./I.E.-> The 32-bit version can ONLY pass functions or procedures up to a LIMIT of 8 of them that way (& they're FASTER that way) vs. the 64-bit version being able to pass them that way up to a LIMIT of 16 of them thus...
(Yes - it is a BIG difference if you have heavy processing being done in them (looping ones especially)).
IIRC, from "C/C++ speak"? Object-Pascal's "register" calling convention corresponds to "fastcall" in those languages (could be wrong/off though - been years since I kept "details" of THAT nature, between languages, "readily handy & accurate" here...)
APK
P.S.=> Even though the code is the EXACT SAME, line-for-line, there IS that single difference in them between 32 & 64-bit versions (how many functions &/or procs I can pass using "register" calling conventions, which are quicker)... apk
this is the best post ive seen in years. thank you.
Kali was one of the first online gaming platforms (It was an IPX emulator letting you play LAN based games over the internet). Before battle.net, before steam, Kali was there.
I spent *a lot* of time on Kali playing Warcraft 2 in the late 90's. You know what game on Kali had the most players back then? And is *still*, in 2015 being played there? It's not Warcraft 2.
If not for the multi-player element, the user base for Descent would not be anything now. Hell people still play Doom & Doom2 (multiplayer) and share WAD's -- it survived usenet. But certainly not due to the single player game.
Kali is still alive even though outdated. Very fun!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
It's too bad they seem to be building it as a 3rd person perspective.
This would be such a great game to play 1st person in 3D-stereo on the Oculus Rift, with maybe a force-feedback controller of some kind.
That really should be mentioned in the Kickstarter page. I looked long and hard to find any information about them acquiring the rights to the Descent brand.
Actually, compiling for pentium 4 or better already gets you most of these. Which is hardware that everyone has these days. But 64bit (system/OS) has only about a 70% market right now (for my application that is, which is a general desktop application)
4GB is a ton! I've seen music videos less than 4k.
The artists are in charge, not the designers or the programmers, or the mappers, or the character designers, or the writers. THE STUPID ARTISTS.
I don't feel like running in 800x640 to have competitive level framerates.
Crysis level graphics came out a while ago and were good enough.
There's no evidence that photorealistic textures are being taken from, well photographs which would cut game production costs considerably.
We need to get Carmak to attend to this. Everything is based off his work. Still.
64 bit on x86 isn't all about the adressable memory. It's all about the additional registers available compared to 32bit code - compared to only 8 (ish) general purpose registers, 16 registers are really good news for compilers. The larger pointers required for 64 bit addresses are detrimental, since moving them around eats memory bandwith.
The big problem for me when I try to play Descent is that analog joysticks without "dead zones" are seemingly no longer manufactured.
ControlMK allows you to edit dead zones
I accept free beer
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The big advantage of 64-bit instructions is that they can handle large amounts of RAM. If you aren't using a ton of RAM, there's little benefit to switching instruction sets.
Bollocks. You see a 10-15% performance improvement on typical code when simply recompiling to 64 bit. I don't call that "little benefit". That's actually quite massive. Meanwhile, RAM is cheap. If you're running out, buy more.
PC game developers know that requiring more than 4GB would sacrifice a chunk of their audience.
A truly minuscule percentage. People who play a lot of PC games are going to tend to build a pretty butch PC. Pretty much nobody who would have bought a title which requires more than 4GB won't already have more than 4GB.
So why bother porting to 64-bit? They can't really take advantage until all those 4GB machines go away.
Uh, what? Show me the 64 bit game that requires more than 2GB RAM, let alone 4GB. Skyrim with HD textures, maybe. It uses about 3. There are maybe two games on the market that actually require 4GB.
Things are starting to turn around, though. Sony and MS have finally released consoles with 8GB ram
Uh yeah, quite some time ago now.
8GB is just not a lot of RAM any more. Any gamer who can afford to buy games can be expected to have that much.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And can your HOSTS files block the torrent of spam you unleash upon Slashdot? No, they can not. I don't know why you keep advertising in a manner so annoying, yet which can not be blocked by the product you're attempting to publicise.
Please seek help. You really need it. Trolling Slashdot like some crazed stalker is not healthy.
Its in the FAQ on the Kickstarter isn't it?
Nope.
I assume by 6 degrees they mean the 3 ways of sliding/strafing (forward-backward, up/down, and left-right), + the 3 ways of rotating (pitch, yaw, roll).
It just sounds funny to hear "6 degrees" - it makes me think of 1/60th of a circle - not exactly freedom.
(Loved using the University's networks to play with a few friends late at night.)
8GB is just not a lot of RAM any more. Any gamer who can afford to buy games can be expected to have that much.
Actually, take a look at the Steam Hardware Survey.
Last month, 47% of steam users had 4GB or less.
That's not a survey of general PC owners. Those are people on steam last month.
It may be true that people with more ram buy more games... but what developer is going to ignore half the potential audience?
Bollocks. You see a 10-15% performance improvement on typical code when simply recompiling to 64 bit.
Games aren't typical code. Performance tends to be GPU-bound, not CPU-bound.
Which means you incur the cost of re-testing everything, plus the cost of replacing the one fiddly library that won't play nicely with 64-bit (there's always one). And your payoff is... quite possibly nothing, because your bottleneck was in the GPU.
Things are starting to turn around, though. Sony and MS have finally released consoles with 8GB ram
Uh yeah, quite some time ago now.
Only about a year ago. That's not very long.
At this point, cross-platform games are still releasing for the Xbox 360, which means they need to squeeze into half a gig.
The situation will change as the new consoles displace the old ones. But right now, games like Far Cry 4 and Battlefield:whatever are still worrying about the Xbox 360's tiny memory footprint.
You can't fix hardware problems in software.
You can configure out dead zones on saitek and logi joysticks, at minimum
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/...
WINGMAN is doing an AMA http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
I feel the need ... the need to tweet "Drop the bird!"
Plugh!
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"