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Descent 3 Source Code

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Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#301

Post by palata »

Moru wrote: post #184
palata wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-).

Maybe it differs on why you get motion sickness? Is it because the screens lag behind your movement with x millisecons or is it becase the eyes detect movement but the balance does not? Or a combination? I'm guessing it's easier to get used to the motion/display lag than the balance sence issues.

> I'm guessing it's easier to get used to the motion/display lag than the balance sence issues.

Maybe, but people who work on boats surely get used to it. So it seems like it is possible for some people to some extent :-).

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#302

Post by entropicdrifter »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #193
ftrobro wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doom does some weird stuff with FOV and how it renders the environment though; newer FPS games have "real" 3D graphics, Doom used some interesting tricks to make things look 3D. The Quake engine was iirc the first "real" 3D engine.

Quake was the first widely popular "real" 3D engine, but ironically the first game in the series being discussed in this thread, Descent, pre-dated it by around a year with fully 3D graphics in 1995.

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#304

Post by entropicdrifter »

marcellus23 wrote: post #210
jaegrqualm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

If we're including Outer Wilds, wouldn't almost every other space sim/pilot game also qualify? Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, etc. They all have 6 DoF for both rotation and strafing.

Yeah, really. Heck, even No Man's Sky and Star Wars Squadrons qualify and they're way more mainstream

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#305

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #86
dudus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact the game has no items, no power ups, no levels, no enemies. Just one question: what is going on? And your job is to figure it out. Knowledge is your only way forward. Unfortunately that means the game can only be played once and any spoiler will ruin it for you.

I disagree with "ruining", I've resorted to looking up some hints; mind you, in hindsight I would've figured it out myself if I spent a bit more time on it.

Eh, I think that game definitely needed a bit more play-testing polishing. More than once I got stuck and had to look up a hint. Only to discover that I actually had attempted the correct solution, but the mechanics were so clunky I was mislead into believing I was doing something stupid.

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#306

Post by enneff »

Analemma_ wrote: post #20
shermantanktop wrote: post #3

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.

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.

My view is that both Myst and Descent were compelling at release because they showcased new technologies.

For Myst it was a high res 3d modelled world you could traverse, interspersed with video clips, all made possible by the new CD-ROM tech. It wasn’t actually that great a game. I loved it at the time but in retrospect there’s just not that much there. The most recent incarnation of a game like this is The Witness which is better in every way I can think of.

For Descent it was true 3D - was it the first? It predates quake. Maybe some people were captivated by the gameplay but for me it was “holy shit it’s 3d”. There’s a reason we have tons of FPSes and only a few Descent clones; the latter just aren’t that fun for most people.

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#307

Post by lotharbot »

Dove wrote: post #290
shermantanktop wrote: post #3

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.

> 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 6D…

Expanding on this:

when you add the extra degrees of freedom in Descent-like games, relative to Quake-like games (or flight/space sims but in different ways), there are some emergent behaviors that change how the game fundamentally feels. What frequently happens when random devs take on a 6dof project because they enjoyed Descent back in the day is they'll make a game that feels like a shooter with vertical flight, and is missing some of the key things that make Descent feel good. I've heard some 6dof games described as "it feels like I'm flying a camera, not a ship" (lack of turning momentum), or "it feels sluggish when I try to move in multiple directions" (lack of vector independence / trichording), or "it's just spray-and-pray combat" (undersized ship hitboxes relative to projectile speed/size and level size.) There are a lot of things we've learned over 30 years of playing Descent and Descent-like games that don't always get taken seriously by devs of other 6dof projects. And even when they do take everything seriously, there are things none of us have figured out how to articulate but that can make a 6dof game feel bad.

I think it'd be possible to build a great game in the genre, but you'd need a bunch of key things to come together, and then you'd also need great marketing to get the thing in front of millions of eyeballs to make enough sales to keep the community going.

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#308

Post by Matticus_Rex »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #304
marcellus23 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're including Outer Wilds, wouldn't almost every other space sim/pilot game also qualify? Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, etc. They all have 6 DoF for both rotation and strafing.

Yeah, really. Heck, even No Man's Sky and Star Wars Squadrons qualify and they're way more mainstream

Neither of those are 6DOF (unless NMS patched it in at some point).

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#309

Post by int_19h »

ftrobro wrote: post #105
int_19h wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In pretty much any FPS that allows using the mouse to turn (which was already the case even in Wolf3D), you can turn as fast as you can move the mouse. When playing competitively, and with experienced players in general, it is common to set mouse sensitivity rather high, allowing one to perform very fast - but still highly precise! - turns, either to follow the target, or to switch rapidly from one target to another, or to scan the area etc. Really good players can do what's known as a "180 quickscope" like that, which is exactly what it says on the tin - a very rapid 180 degree turn & aim to shoot someone you know is behind you. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEC4AE6KbxY

If you don't have experience doing this yourself, watching such a player over the shoulder can be very nausea-inducing. I think to some extent this is innate, but I suspect for those who don't have a strongly pronounced response to begin with, playing such games (and doing those rapid turns yourself) desensitizes you over time. And I think that also transfers to VR to some extent; I've been playing first-person shooters with WASD+mouse for ~30 years now, and I had no nausea whatsoever the first time I tried VR.

Re: Descent 3 Source Code

#310

Post by balfirevic »

alisonatwork wrote: post #243
Osiris wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I didn't get it either, and I play tons of walking sims and narrative adventure games. It feels more like a roguelike or a survival game to me with it's anti-features like falling damage and time limited resources and inescapable holes to get trapped in. And then you die and have to start all over again from the beginning. The epitome of not respecting the player's time. It's the only game I have ever refunded on Ste…

> because it's "like" all the other games that I play even though it clearly is not

That part is at least true - there are no other games like Outer Wilds.

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