231–240 of 347 posts
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.
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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 :-)
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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?
You weren't alone, but we just used more hands. I usually did navigation, and my grade school aged son did the shooting while sitting on my lap. Now he's 33 and I'm 64, we'll have to switch places.
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.
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?
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.
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.
It was clearly a labor of love - way ahead of its time and would def hold up to this day in virtually every aspect
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…
They're just different games. I love them both for what they are. It's a shame that Interplay tried to use the Descent name to sell more copies, because even if there was some minor inspirations in development, Freespace definitely stands solidly on its own two feet without the tie.
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.
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).
Neat. Linux port incoming! Thank you for this, kevin42. So many great games around the 2000s. If Tim Sweeney could open UE1, a lot of games could benefit from it like Quake being open sourced did.
The code on github worked well in Linux several years ago. It shouldn't be too hard (other than the MVE codecs we need to straighten out).
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…