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Descent 3 Source Code

1255 points| kevin42 | 1 year ago |github.com

Someone recently asked if the source code from Descent 3 will be released. I reached out to my old boss (Matt Toschlog) at Outrage Entertainment and he gave me the go ahead. I'm going to work on getting this running again and I'm looking for some co-maintainers.

324 comments

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[+] shermantanktop|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] sbierwagen|1 year ago|reply
There was Shattered Horizon from 2009, a zero g multiplayer shooter: 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!

[+] dclowd9901|1 year ago|reply
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.

[+] Buttons840|1 year ago|reply
> 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?

[+] Analemma_|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] tankenmate|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] jbm|1 year ago|reply
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).

[+] hombre_fatal|1 year ago|reply
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.

[+] honkycat|1 year ago|reply
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.

[+] karmakaze|1 year ago|reply
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.

[+] Joel_Mckay|1 year ago|reply
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. =)

[+] gsich|1 year ago|reply
I think it's called 6dof games.
[+] roydivision|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] Dove|1 year ago|reply
> 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. :)

[+] Daz1|1 year ago|reply
Hellbender on PC was a good one too
[+] doorhammer|1 year ago|reply
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

[+] Akronymus|1 year ago|reply
Wouldn't elite or star citizen fit that definition?

Or am I fundamentally misunderstanding what descent is about?

[+] themoonisachees|1 year ago|reply
If that's your cup of tea then elite dangerous might scratch that itch.
[+] jimbob45|1 year ago|reply
Aquanox fell mostly into the same genre.
[+] lotharbot|1 year ago|reply
My wife and I met on a Descent forum, our 3 sons are named for Descent friends (KoolBear, Jediluke, and Mark392), and we've attended weddings (and sadly one funeral, RIP JinX) for Descent friends. Even though I considered D3 the weakest of the Descent games, this news makes me happy. Thank you, Kevin!
[+] dcanelhas|1 year ago|reply
As a 12 yo I learned about IRC from reading the Descent FAQ and tried setting up IHHD to play over a 14,4k modem. I made levels in DEVIL. Today I'm an engineer and game developer. Thanks for putting Descent out into the world. It had a huge impact on me personally.
[+] rux|1 year ago|reply
Descent's control system is for me what cemented the "invert Y axis" on the mouse for controlling first person gaming forevermore. My brain absolutely clicked with the 6DoF mindset, but it has meant that all FPS games from that point on had to conform to it, even if the game wasn't in any way flying-based.
[+] jasonjamerson|1 year ago|reply
A mouse for Descent? We used to play with both hands on the keyboard- look, slide, and spin on the number pad, move, fire, etc. on the far left side. We're we alone?
[+] Xiol32|1 year ago|reply
Inverted Y players unite!

Descent also contributed to my ruined brain, along with Flight Simulator 95. Cannot play without inverted Y.

[+] otterpro|1 year ago|reply
I got so used to the inverted-y that it's the first thing I change in the game setting as I just can't play on normal settings on any FPS. I wish that inverted-y was the default for all games. I don't know when I got used to the inverted y, perhaps while playing X-wing or maybe Quake.
[+] deepsun|1 year ago|reply
Old games all had what is now called "Inverted Y-axis".

I assume they took it from aircraft controls, that are pull = pitch up (both stick, joystick and yoke-controlled). Counter-Strike ruined it :)

[+] orthoxerox|1 year ago|reply
I wonder if I am the only one who wanted to invert both axes when playing a third-person game on a gamepad.

Ultimately, I found both control schemes equally unintuitive in practice, I'll have to wait until someone manages to make modern Zeldas work with a mouse.

[+] sunnybeetroot|1 year ago|reply
Same for me, did make it annoying when playing halo and switching controllers every time someone died in campaign.
[+] grzeshru|1 year ago|reply
> "invert Y axis"

Sidewinder Pro reporting in. Is there any other way?

[+] dehrmann|1 year ago|reply
Trackpad scroll direction is the new inverted y axis.
[+] cloudmike|1 year ago|reply
Some friends of mine played Descent competitively, and I was amazed to learn about so-called trichording: to maximize your speed, you need to press multiple keys at the same time to travel along all 3 axes at once, e.g. forward/right/up. The best players zip around the map diagonally.

I always assumed this was a bug-turned-feature, like skiing in Tribes. When I saw the repo just now, I looked for clues, but didn't spot any related comments around the line of code where this ultimately happens:

https://github.com/kevinbentley/Descent3/blob/142052a67d4318...

[+] account42|1 year ago|reply
> Some proprietary sound and video libraries from Interplay have been stripped out (the ACM and MVE format). I have that code if someone wants to help make a converter so the old cutscenes work. It'll take some effort to stub out that code so it compiles.

FWIW, FFMPEG seems to support these formats.

[+] hd4|1 year ago|reply
What did it take behind the scenes to get this approved? Can you go into some of the decision-making? This is nice but a far too rare event these days.
[+] MaximilianEmel|1 year ago|reply
Found this gem on the Wikipedia page[0]:

> A study published in 2002 used Descent 3 to study hawkmoth flight activities. Using the game's editing module, the researchers created a virtual environment consisting of a flat plane with rectangular pillars, across which the animal successfully navigated.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_3#Other_uses

[+] readyplayernull|1 year ago|reply
I heard many people loved Descent and it looked great to me, it even seemed like a mix between X-Wing and Quake... but I couldn't play it for more than a few minutes, probably the first game in my long career as player that I dropped that quickly. There is something unnerving about it, it's like playing with magnets while wearing boxing gloves. Even watching gameplay videos I get the same sensation.
[+] winrid|1 year ago|reply
Nice! I sent this to the guy that helped me convert NetPanzer (20+yo code base) from SCons to Meson and he also took the time to setup GH actions etc. Hopefully you get some help!
[+] mvkel|1 year ago|reply
I love the "version control" being comments at the top of the file with a timestamp.

Simpler times!

What a ton of work building a game is.

[+] oflannabhra|1 year ago|reply
The Descent series was my gateway to the Internet, and really paralleled my coming of age.

I played D1 dialing up my friends when I was 10, which was amazing. I swapped numbers with some folks on the local BBS and played 1-on-1 deathmatches. My brother installed DEVIL, and I learned how to launch things from DOS, interact with a CLI and filesystem, and of course make my own levels.

We got Internet service and then D2 multiplayer, facilitated by Kali/Kahn for match-making completely blew my mind. I think I was 12 or 13, and discovering things like IRC and webpages describing advanced techniques like chording were hugely eye-opening for how big the world was. Making friends on ICQ, and discovering warez was like living in a sci-if novel. I also got into building and upgrading PCs to be able to play at higher resolutions and frame rates.

Descent 3 was a huge step forward graphically, and brought about sniping with the mass driver. It had worldwide rankings, and making the top 100 leaderboard as a 16 year old still ranks as one of my most mind-blowing moments. It was the first time I had high speed internet, and really ushered in the modern era of gaming for me.

Thank you for this. I’ve since moved on in my life (obviously), but it is amazing to have spent some moments today reflecting on all this. I doubt I would be a child of the internet or a software engineer today without Descent.

[+] stevage|1 year ago|reply
I could never get into Descent. I liked the flying around in 3D bit, but the fact that the levels were truly 3D (ie, didn't have a ground and up/down) meant I was always getting disoriented and lost. I just didn't enjoy that feeling.
[+] pathartl|1 year ago|reply
I've had a dream of buying the IP to some older, obscure PC games from this era and then releasing the source code. I hate how many games are getting lost to time.
[+] jslutter|1 year ago|reply
I think I have more changes beyond what you have. It's been a long time though. If you want to email me I can get them to you to dig through. Funny to see this :)
[+] lloeki|1 year ago|reply
kevin42, you just made my day.

Back then I played the trailer over and over and over, waiting for the release... That line is carved deep and immediately pops up every time I think of Descent 3:

> Now, after years of waiting, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Just as fitting today as it was back then :D

EDIT: ha, an internets uploaded it. What a trailer that was...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IHFazkfmBE4

[+] sshumaker|1 year ago|reply
I had the pleasure of working closely with Jeff Slutter early in my career. Was the first really fantastic engineer I worked with - he’s at Santa Monica Studios (God of War) these days. I think Matt Toschlog is there too now. Glad to see these folks working on an awesome AAA franchise.