Why is descent so unique?

[Blue]

Ok maybe this should be in the D3 section but my query is slightly broader.


6 degrees of freedom. We all know it, we all ★■◆●ing LOVE it. Why the hell haven't their been any new ones since.. well.. descent? I'm aware of deep6 (it looks so promising) and i've seen some of the other little projects pop out of the descent community but...... thats it?

I mean hell, if there was a japanese game, i would work on modding it into english or something. A ground pounder is NOT far off from descent. Technically in descent you just get to slide up and down...thats all that really changes.

I feel like people are burned into the horizon. There is a term for this, where people never look up or down in real life, only side to side, so in a game enviroment it confuses them as they are not used to such things. Could it really be that simple though?

I walk into the mall with my girlfriend and we walk through this huge hall and I look up and see they are doing some construction on the glass skylight. It looks awesome, wires everywhere, scaffolds like 50ft above us with the sun radiating off the pieces of glass sitting in the scaffolds. I'm dazzled for a moment by it, but my girlfriend is completely oblivious. I say \"Wow isn't that cool?\" and she has no idea what i'm talkin about, so i point up. She practically jumps in surprise. She gets slightly panicked for the guys working (sympathy fear) and says she would NEVER have seen them if not I pointed them out.

I look around, everyone else walks and no one, NO ONE, sees these men working. It is like they are invisible. As soon as i look up, someone notices me and looks up to and after a moment everyone does, but if not for seeing someone look up, no one would have naturally.


I feel as if it is that simple. The target demographic for 6dof games is so small because it is unnatural for people and frustrates them. Look at some of the most popular D3 levels like Viens, abend 2 or skybox. Aside from a few passages, these levels are essentially flat with steps up and down from landings. I can't remember the last D3 level where i was following a tunnel upwards on a slant into a room that is tilted. hell, even my own levels are flat!

Blah, it seems so sad because I WANT a new descent like game to pop up. Flying robots, people, submarines.. whatever! I want 6dof with an afterburner.


Yet nothing seems to hit the market. Just a lot of dreams and high hopes. Flight sims sadly arent the same as zero gravity.

I dunno, maybe this is a rant but i want a new 6dof game, not a mod or a garagegame... a REAL ONE.

[Aus-RED-5]

Have you been under a rock or something?

Core Decision is a real game. Not garbage.

It's the next 6dof out there (Descent like).

[Grendel]

There is a term for this, where people never look up or down in real life, only side to side, so in a game enviroment it confuses them as they are not used to such things. Could it really be that simple though?

Nope. Controlling 6 axis, 2 weapon systems, an afterburner and keeping track of what's going on requires some dedication to learn. Hard to come by in a world of short attention spans where negative feedback is frowned upon..

[Flabby Chick]

Nope. Controlling 6 axis, 2 weapon systems, an afterburner and keeping track of what's going on requires some dedication to learn.

Nope. Controlling 6 axis, 2 weapon systems, an afterburner, drinking a bottle of vodka and keeping track of what's going on requires some dedication to learn.

[Aus-RED-5]

Nope. Controlling 6 axis, 2 weapon systems, an afterburner and keeping track of what's going on requires some dedication to learn.

Nope. Controlling 6 axis, 2 weapon systems, an afterburner, drinking a bottle of vodka and keeping track of what's going on requires some dedication to learn.

hehe.... X2!

[CDN_Merlin]

There is no other game like Descent.

It's like being an Astronaut when everyone else is still stuck on earth. It's the best game to play. It challenges your mind, your reflexes and your ability to overcome the hardest game. It took me 3 months of playing D2 online back in 97 before I started to kick ass. I thought I was good in single player until I played humans. I got my @ss handed to me good. But the feeling afterwards of being able to kill those people is priceless.

[Sirius]

To be honest, what I find the \"essence\" of Descent is comes down to about three things. Surprisingly, 6DOF is not actually one of them.

1) Weapons are powerful with respect to the ships. It doesn't take much to die. Of course, most FPS games are like this, but it's nonetheless important.
2) Weapons are predominantly travel-time, and thus, dodgable. (Peer/peer hit detection exacerbates this a bit actually.) Combine this with fairly fast ships and you need to actually work to hit and kill someone. This is very very uncommon in games, and leads to tactics that I rarely see outside of Descent.
3) The environments provide significant levels of obstruction; this makes layout important, and also prevents you from knowing where your opponent is at all times. This adds depth to the game, as well as a mental/strategic component.

That stuff may have been reproduced elsewhere individually, but I've yet to see them all at once. 6DOF, to be honest, is just icing on the cake - it makes the game harder to master, but not fundamentally any different.

I know this comment will not be popular, but I wouldn't count too much on CD actually making it out. The game is having what could at least be termed \"problems\" - while it'd work if it were released, it needs to get there first, and the road doesn't look easy.

[Firewheel]

I began playing Descent as a little kid and never found anything about the controls to be daunting at all. I don't understand why the supposedly more challenging 6DOF element kept more people from playing the game.

[dissent]

Hard to come by in a world of short attention spans where negative feedback is frowned upon..

LOL, that's right! There's nothing quite like having your butt handed to you on a silver plate. Quite humbling, and if anything, we need MORE of that in today's world.

[CDN_Merlin]

This is why most people don't play Descent. It's to hard to give the ass whooping and esier to uninsall the game and go for Q3 or UT.

[Strife]

I guess thats why it wouldn't be a bad Idea when CD comes out to make servers for the new comers... When you think about it... how long could you really have fun desimating kids that can barely fly... After the first 2 or 3 hours of OWNING a room I think you would loose interest

[Isaac]

lol i'd love to learn how to play online with d2 with out paying for gamespy. eh.... oh well.

[d3jake]

There is a term for this, where people never look up or down in real life, only side to side, so in a game enviroment it confuses them as they are not used to such things. Could it really be that simple though?

Nope. Controlling 6 axis, 2 weapon systems, an afterburner and keeping track of what's going on requires some dedication to learn. Hard to come by in a world of short attention spans where negative feedback is frowned upon..

Grendel: 1
Society: 0

[Lothar]

My brother told me the other day he was the master of the original 3D game. I suspect playing that when I was a kid helped me think in 3D when I picked up Descent.

[d3jake]

What helped me is that D2 was my first game I ever played. WHen I was growing up (still am...) I played D2, Nascar 2, Mechwarrior 2\\3, and Descent 3, so I've been thinking in 3d most of my life, (I've played Descent more than the others.)

[Canuck]

Long ago when I was a wee Lad, I envisioned a Dungeons and Dragons style game where you had first person perspective, and actually moved in a 3D sphere in the game.

You would map unknown hallways and trigger all sorts of traps and monsters, meet up with and interact with Computer AI, all the while with a 3D perspective set in a Medieval Theme.

Alas the best system at the time coming out was an Apple 1K, floppy drive was just out, and HD's weren't there yet but were priced in the astronomical range, sadly too slow a system to implement.

When I bought my first Gravis Joystick I got the first three levels of Descent, loaded it and saw the tunnels I envisioned, I was blown away.

Turned the first corner and SCrrrEEEEeaaaEEEECHHH my first bots... Holy crap! The \"The Monsters and AI!\", the traps, the triggers, the bots, almost the same type of game play I had envisioned.

To this day I still find surprises, triggers, and secrets that I have missed after re-playing Descent all these years. What other PC Video Game can you say can do that, has been around over 10 years, and still has players? It was a game before its time.

[Gekko71]

I know this comment will not be popular, but I wouldn't count too much on CD actually making it out. The game is having what could at least be termed "problems" - while it'd work if it were released, it needs to get there first, and the road doesn't look easy.

Don't write off CD just yet Sirius - the same stupid, stubbourn, indefinable, delightful dogma that keeps us all here ranting on about (and playing) a game that is so woefully old... is the same passion that drives the CD team to bring their game to market (as least that's how I see it.)

The guys at Uplink CAN'T be creating CD for profit first - if they were, surely they would have walked away ages ago. CD may have started out as an investment first - but now it's got to be a labour a love.

If I could code worth a damn, I'd throw my hat into the ring and volunteer some of my time. But I can't write code and they don't want to go that way - so I guess we'll all just have to wait...






...and wait...







...and wait ...






...and wait!

[Blue]

I hates ta wait

[Top Wop]

Descent 1 and 2 was really unique to me. I only stayed on to D3 for the multiplayer clan games, the singleplayer was just awful compared to D1 and D2. It was the whole dark atmosphere, level design, pace, and fun with the weapons that made D1/2 unique for me. Not to mention the awesome redbook soundtrack.

Too many people here put too much emphasis on multiplayer. Not alot of people played online back in the old days compared to today, and it was the singleplayer that made it popular. It doesn't take a degree in game design to figure out why these games were unique.

[Krom]

Descent 1 and 2 was really unique to me. I only stayed on to D3 for the multiplayer clan games, the singleplayer was just awful compared to D1 and D2. It was the whole dark atmosphere, level design, pace, and fun with the weapons that made D1/2 unique for me. Not to mention the awesome redbook soundtrack.

Too many people here put too much emphasis on multiplayer. Not alot of people played online back in the old days compared to today, and it was the singleplayer that made it popular. It doesn't take a degree in game design to figure out why these games were unique.

Word! Preach it! I didn't get into multiplayer till D3 came out, because frankly D3 singleplayer sucked. Sure the story/event driven system and a lot of other technical aspects were vastly superior to D1/D2, but the actual flying around bashing robots and watching the "purdy" explosions that made D1/D2 fun were missing. The crash and bash blast fest was replaced by tedious robots that were extremely well armored, entirely too nimble, and so small each shot was like threading a needle. I mean how many times do you have to fire a full set of quad laser shots only to have the Orbot fly between them before you figure out the robots are insanely too small for the gameplay to work, and even when you do hit them, they can absorb retarded amounts of damage (in the higher skill levels). In D1 the weakest robot in the game was still physically large enough that you could hit it with the entire spread from quad lasers easily.

[CDN_Merlin]

D2 multi is where I started and trust me, I had tons of fun in multi. Single was nice but multi was so much better. D3 single was ok, nothing great compared to D1/2 but D3 multi just rules.

[Blue]

For me D3 had the best multiplayer, while D2 had the best single player.


I'll even say i prefer D3 earth shaker over d2

[Lothar]

For me D3 had the best multiplayer, while D2 had the best single player.

IMO D1 had the best of both single player and anarchy, though D3 is best for CTF and other team modes.

D2 single had too many huge, confusing levels where you'd enter a room the fourth time and a new group of robots would come out from yet another trap door. The levels took way, way, way too long to finish, and "clearing" a level required a lot of doubling back and dealing with a room you'd already cleared multiple times.

D3 single was tedious for the reasons Krom mentioned.

[Sirius]

Descent Maximum plays unusually fast, if D2 was arduous for you... but personally I found the level designs/layouts made them at least a bit more interesting.

[d3jake]

Maximum in my opinion was waaaay to easy, unless of course I cranked up the difficulty (I never got past about level 5-6) I mean there was alot of \"Hmm..Blue key is here. Whaddy know? the Blue door is here too!\"

[grizz]

I started in D3, then bought copies of D1 & D2 on Ebay to try after I got hooked on D3.

I still like D3 best for single AND multiplayer.

'Course I've never played D1 & D2 online, only on LAN against my kids. Don't even know where to find them online.

[CDN_Merlin]

www.kali.net

d/l the demo, join the Descent server and ask for a game.

[Kiran]

Totally follow Merlin's advice! The two descent supported servers I go to frequently is Descent and Rangers. Be prepare for dramas tho

[Blue]

The smaller the community, the more personal and hence the more drama.

But, you can always like... not participate in drama.

[Sirius]

My answer too.

I don't see a lot of drama on the Rangers server while I'm there, although there have been a few episodes. But hey, I guess considering people can be married for decades and still see it, a few people that occasionally see each other on the internet for one decade can get it too...

[Diedel]

lol i'd love to learn how to play online with d2 with out paying for gamespy. eh.... oh well.

D2? Did you say D2? D2 and gamespy?

You need KALI to play D2 online. Or just inet access with D2X-XL and its tracker feature (or D2X-R and Hamachi).

[Sirius]

Wouldn't XL work over Hamachi if you had to as well?

Granted, I've never used it, but I don't know of anything R supports that XL doesn't yet.

[Diedel]

Sure, but why use Hamachi if you don't need it ...