Descent, ported to the web

[dale_glass]

For 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.

[lotharbot]

Specifically, Overload was made by Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog, who were the original Descent developers. There were also major contributions from people like Dan Wentz (who worked on Descent 3) and from people who spent a lot of time playing the original game, like me and my wife (our 3 sons are all named for friends we know from Descent.)

[krige]

That 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.

[marginalia_nu]

Now all that's missing is a spiritual successor to Terminal Velocity. Or at least I think so. There's like a 10% chance that game was one of those games that was seriously held up by how much its soundtrack slapped.

[willis936]

And it supports VR if you really need to separate yourself from your lunch.

[alias_neo]

One 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.

[drillsteps5]

I'm a simple man, I see Descent, I make sure to mention Overload. Amazing game, likely the first game ever I got to the end just to see how the story ends (yes there is a story and it's pretty good).

I think the Revival studio didn't quite work out, I'm hoping the team is working on something else, they sure do know how to make good games.

[alexchantavy]

To add, I also loved Fury 3 because it had outdoor environments - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmOtHKZHjxU - though Wikipedia tells me it's a rebrand of Terminal Velocity

[JPKab]

I haven't heard of it, but I loved Descent, and even bought Descent: Freespace back in the day.

I will have to check out Overload.

[testrun]

And, using Steam, it works on Linux too.

[michaelteter]

I 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]

I 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.

[cbdevidal]

I 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

[ralphc]

I 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...

[ranger_danger]

Since it's not linked anywhere that I could see, here's the source I found: https://github.com/mrdoob/three-descent

And Quake for web by the same author: https://mrdoob.github.io/three-quake/

[dash2]

Interesting: it was done with Claude, in about one day.

[pverheggen]

Mr. 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]

He also remade quake a couple weeks ago (on three.js as well I believe).

[midzer]

Need WebGL2.

WebGL1 WASM version based on https://github.com/dxx-rebirth/dxx-rebirth -> https://midzer.de/wasm/descent1/

[_dwt]

Descent 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]

i have no issues in brave on linux mint

[sheepdestroyer]

I 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 :(

[mdswanson]

Yeah. Same. Looked all over for an option to flip the controls!

[hu3]

You might be able to invert it on your OS.

[Apocryphon]

Grew up with an Acer running Windows 95 that came with this preinstalled… now that’s bloatware that ain’t bloat. Descent floatware.

[robinsonb5]

Very impressive - graphically it runs very smoothly on Firefox under Linux - but unfortunately the audio is extremely choppy.

[pjmlp]

Yeah, same experience here.

[rkaregaran]

I remember buying this at fry’s with my dad in the 90s!

[efnx]

I’ve been following Mr. Doob since the flash days. Cool to see they’re still doobing cool things.

[Dove]

Impressively faithful, right down to weapons functioning incorrectly at a high framerate!

[tombert]

I 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]

Yes, 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.

[millerm]

I 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.

[doublerabbit]

DOS Games, where every game was a completely different game engine.

The VGA era was something special.

[bossyTeacher]

Seeing 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]

Descent came out in 1995. Pokémon red came out in 1996.

Sorry to be the one to ruin your concept of time.

[netule]

Minecraft, very likely.

[internet2000]

Surprisingly faithful! Works great on Safari, latest Mac OS.

[MobileVet]

I 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.

[ekjhgkejhgk]

I wonder if anyone knows how to get Descent running on Linux (Debian), if someone doesn't want to run this on the browser.

[pjmlp]

This is the JavaScript port anyway, https://github.com/mrdoob/three-descent

[eptcyka]

Is there a way to play this without geting vertigo?

[paulryanrogers]

Try 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.

[xnx]

I need to replay this game with a dual stick controller. Previously played it on a serial joystick and keyboard.

[dnpls]

There's something wrong on Chrome + MacOS Tahoe, the bottom text in the intro is getting cut off.

[imglorp]

Same with FF on Tahoe.

Also the audio is clicking hard, had to mute it.

[rcarmo]

I used to play this game incessantly. Audio on Firefox on Linux is, sadly, very very garbled.

[empressplay]

works excellent on m2 max -- thanks! good times.

[swiftcoder]

Oooh. All this needs now is gamepad support

[MrTortoise]

this game was so next level at the time.

[BobbyTables2]

Now I gotta find a modern Gravis Gamepad!