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Descent 3 Source Code

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Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#101
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you have trouble with nausea?

Everyone has nausea initially when using VR. It will go away eventually. You need to train your brain to not feel G forces when you see movement.

> It will go away eventually.

No. It can actually get _worse_, as you get more sensitized to VR. The recommendation seems to be to _stop_ using VR if you get motion sick, rather than trying to power through it.

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#102

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.

Not that you asked, but there's exactly one (popular) game that utilizes the same control scheme in modern times, Outer Wilds. Although it's not a shooter, it's quite a nice adventure game. https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/ There is, however, an outright continuation of the subgenre, in Overload. https://store.steampowered.com/app/448850/Overload/

There also was a nice game called "Parkan" (and then Parkan 2), but it's not really well-known outside of Russian-speaking markets. It looks like it's available on Steam now.

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has nausea initially when using VR. It will go away eventually. You need to train your brain to not feel G forces when you see movement.

> It will go away eventually. No. It can actually get _worse_, as you get more sensitized to VR. The recommendation seems to be to _stop_ using VR if you get motion sick, rather than trying to power through it.

Not sure if the two of you are disagreeing or not, so genuinely asking:

Could it be that you are both right? As in, you should stop right away when you start getting motion sick, but with time it will get better?

Something like: play 15 minutes everyday, stop as soon as you are sick, and after a while you will be able to play 30min, etc.

I have no idea, just asking for a friend :-).

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#105
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has nausea initially when using VR. It will go away eventually. You need to train your brain to not feel G forces when you see movement.

Not everyone has it even initially; it really varies from person to person. I suspect that to some extent it is influenced by past exposure to fast-paced first-person games (e.g. FPS when played using the mouse).

I used to get nausea when playing Doom in the nineties, it never got better. But I never get nausea from fps games with slower movement. I suspect the problem with Doom is how quickly you can change direction while running. You can run quite fast and a 90 degree turn doesn't slow you down at all.

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#106
post #28

I played the original Descent over kali.net back in the day. Man, what great memories.

I've brought up Kali a few times on HN and never had anyone say they used it too. Glad to finally see another person! What an amazing piece of technology. I used it to play a modded version of Diablo's expansion Hellfire, which without Kali was single player only / LAN with a little hack. There was a great little community on that app.

Yes, the world (and the net) seemed much smaller back then. My first real taste of multiplayer like that (not counting LAN parties) was playing 4 player doom over modem... it required some expensive hardware and software back in the day. I even paid long distance to do it. The BBS running it had to have a special dongle and then the APCiDoom software. Man that was cool.

https://kangaroopunch.com/view/ShowSoftware?id=1

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#107
post #29
post #25

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.

We originally used Microsoft Source Safe, which added the comments for us. I think Source Safe made us lock a file to make changes, which was a PITA. I think we made a lot of the decisions on where to break out code on a file by file basis because of that. Later, we moved to Perforce, which is good for larger binary files.

I remember my wife working remotely and Source "Safe" corrupting the repo when the modem dropped while she was committing her work. Good old days.

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#108
post #76
post #34

Happen to have FreeSpace code? Or is that under lock and key still?

Freespace is open source. or at least fs2 is. I am not familiar with the.. um.. I guess you could call it the landscape of the freespace community but this was a top search result. https://www.hard-light.net/ and here is a github project that looks correct. https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com And now, for free, an opinion. I enjoyed descent, but did not like freespace, I am sure there is fun subtlety to…

Free space has the Knossos mod launcher which will let you play the FS1 campaign ported to FS2 amongst other mods.

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#109

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.

I often think about what you could learn from trying to run games back in the old days. It was a huge motivation to fix some problem to get a game running. Optimizing the memory in ms-dos because the game needed more etc. Most often getting a game was a journey on its own.

Today kids just have 1 gazillion games on their phone. There is no more connection to the system beneath. No work or effort needed. Just download and play the next best thing.

I think this generation is missing out.

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#110
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It will go away eventually. No. It can actually get _worse_, as you get more sensitized to VR. The recommendation seems to be to _stop_ using VR if you get motion sick, rather than trying to power through it.

Not sure if the two of you are disagreeing or not, so genuinely asking: Could it be that you are both right? As in, you should stop right away when you start getting motion sick, but with time it will get better? Something like: play 15 minutes everyday, stop as soon as you are sick, and after a while you will be able to play 30min, etc. I have no idea, just asking for a friend :-).

This is interesting for me to, but I'd be surprised to learn someone actually has an authoritative answer.
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