Descent Timeline

ccb056 · Post by **ccb056** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 7:07 pm

I am working on creating a Descent timeline over here:

http://www.descent4.org/timeline

If anyone could mention some more stuff to add, or correct dates that would be great.

Does anyone know when Heat and PXO went offline? That's something I want to add to the timeline.

Thanks!

Capm · Post by **Capm** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 7:59 pm

Midnight Squadron Design Studios started work on D4 several months before Valin betrayed MS and started ODS which was comprised entirely of MSDS members. Little did Valin know D4 was doomed the moment he left MS because many years ago I had aquired permission (for which he so desperately sought) for MS to use the descent material provided we didn't make money off it. Theoreticly if MS still had a dev team, we could pick up where we left off.. (oh, did I forget to mention that? oh well.)

ccb056 · Post by **ccb056** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 8:11 pm

Interesting, could you give an approximate month/year MS started work and the month when Valin hijacked the project?

Did MS continue any work after Valin hijacked the project?

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.descent4.net
^That shows descent4.net existing back in 1999, who had control of the domain then, and was that when MS started D4?

Capm · Post by **Capm** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 9:29 pm

We started shortly after D4 was canceled, within the month I think. It was a long time ago...

Once D4 failed, MS was able to reassemble a partial team and work started on Project Vertigo(jan/feb 2004)which wasn't Descent, but was to contain gameplay elements of D1, D3, Battlefield and Freespace (it was going to be a seperate storyline that bridged Descent and Freespace but wouldn't come right out and say so, it was to be implied)....

But due to a shortage of manpower and certain members, well, just not doing anything, Project Vertigo was eventually canceled. (late 2004, early 2005)

Descent4.net wasn't the development website until Valin left MS, because he moved the dev site there from MS's site. It was supposed to be for public promotion of the project until that point.

ccb056 · Post by **ccb056** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:13 pm

OK, that helped alot, I think the timeline is much more accurate now.

One thing I've noticed, Red Faction was released 8 months after development started/descent 4 cancelled; yet in an interview with Kulas he said no code was used from the D4 project in the Red Faction project.

Also in another interview he brings up the point it takes 18-24 months to write a game.....

Wings · Post by **Wings** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:44 pm

If Descent 4 actually does come back with 'modern' graphics, its cancellation and postponing for 10 years might actually do the title alot of good.

roid · Post by **roid** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 10:55 pm

it would have just been D5 releasing now instead of D4

d0ggY · Post by **d0ggY** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 11:07 pm

This made me giggle:

\"Dec [94]: Parallax released the shareware version of Descent. It immediately soared to the top of the Top 100 Internet Game charts.\"

I think the only other games I remember seeing online at that time were Doom, Warcraft, and Heretic, which was released at the same time. I mean, Duke Nukem, Subspace, and C&C weren't even out yet!

Might wanna revise that - come to think of it, I can't even think of 10 games that ALLOWED online play prior to '95 ...even including modem-modem.

Foil · Post by **Foil** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 8:39 am

Yep, the original Descent was built with modem-to-modem support, but no support for internet play. It wasn't until Kali came on the scene that people could play it online.

BUBBALOU · Post by **BUBBALOU** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 9:12 am

Foil wrote:Yep, the original Descent was built with modem-to-modem support, but no support for internet play. It wasn't until Kali came on the scene that people could play it online.

It was setup for IPX NETWORK PLAY - internet at that time was a secondary thought because of it's infancy

ccb056 · Post by **ccb056** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 9:35 am

hey Bub, other than the pyro below, did you render any other Descent art?

Flatlander · Post by **Flatlander** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 5:24 pm

Hmm, this has prompted me to take a bit of a stroll down memory lane, and motivated me to dust off my OGN archives and upload a modified subset of the old website here. If you do a bit of digging, ccb056, especially in the history section, I'm sure you'll find some useful and interesting information.

Nergen-Ak1-Defender · Post by **Nergen-Ak1-Defender** » Fri Apr 11, 2008 6:35 pm

I loved the D4 logo. It looked so kick-ass

Descent Timeline

Descent Timeline

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