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You are correct. It’s an awesome game though.
I tried it and literally couldn’t figure it out. I got like 15 minutes into and had no idea what to do. What makes it so good?
Figuring it out! Going from all loose ends to a decent picture of what's going on can be really satisfying.
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.
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?
Makes it super easy to get a feel for it and super easy to search for comments on changes or jump to the part of the code you need to work on.
Yes the drawbacks are sometimes a huge list of comments before the source code even begins, but you can quickly jump with a search for " */"
It makes the files larger, and you should be able to pull the same from whatever versioning system you use, but that involves context change and a separate program (though if you an IDE it may be integrated).
Would be fun to have a git tool that mimics this. Best of both worlds.
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This is interesting for me to, but I'd be surprised to learn someone actually has an authoritative answer.
Data points would be interesting too. Someone saying "I used to get sick after 15min, and now I can play for 60min without a problem. I always stop playing right when I start getting sick". You know, just to see that it has happened to someone :-)
Well here I am: I initially got queasy as soon as I moved, then I'd immediately stop and take a break, longer breaks in the beginning. Initially I got a strong sense of de-realization / depersonalization after getting out of the digital world (i.e. looking at your hands and your brain being confused if they're real) But that also went away very quickly. The nausea, and 'am I still in the matrix' feeling got better within days, and went away within weeks. Now I can stomach any crazy topsy-turvy locomotion in any game. But I still feel the sweat and excitement, when swinging off 1000 feet high cliffs in Jet Island, or diving hundreds of meters deep in Subnautica.
It's just amazing how immersive it can be. I think you can only get there by having it at home and really giving yourself the time to get into it.
It's also re-ignited my love for single player games, especially modded triple A titles like Dragon Quest XI, or Resident Evil 2 (Remake) for example.
And btw, I run all of this on (arch) linux, on a Valve Index kit, using both SteamVR and OpenXR through Envision (Monado). It's been a bit of tinkering but that's only made it more satisfying for me. Plus, there are great communities like the Linux VR Adventure group: https://lvra.gitlab.io/
FWIW, FFMPEG seems to support these formats.
I know I will be in a small minority, but I miss the way changes were documented and explained at the top of the source code. Makes it super easy to get a feel for it and super easy to search for comments on changes or jump to the part of the code you need to work on. Yes the drawbacks are sometimes a huge list of comments before the source code even begins, but you can quickly jump with a search for " */" It makes t…
If you'd put some text markers in the file's headers, e.g., ``, you could create a script that gets the git log for each file that contains the markers and puts the log between those markers. Keep the markers to be able to rerun the script. Also need a script to purge the log when commiting.
Could be automated with git hooks I guess.
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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/
Super cheap on GOG right now... https://www.gog.com/en/game/overload
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Overload is awesome! However I wonder if some remnants of 90s game design like tight time limits and repeating enemy ambushes that make the game such a familiar and intense experience for the old school in reality disadvantage the game and the genre from reaching wider audiences. There was also another classic Descent contender, Forsaken, that got remastared in 2018 to run on Linux and macOS in addition to modern Win…
Making it a 6DOF shooter at all probably severely hampered any chance of achieving mass appeal. If it had been 40-80 hour open world, character-based, third-person action adventure game, their chances would likely have been much higher.
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…
Freelancer very much on top of my list <3