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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'
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.
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
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.
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.