Descent Inspired Shooter Live-Stream tonight

[cydereal]

It seems like the indie game thing to do right now is run a Kickstarter campaign, so naturally that's what we're doing:

Why? Well, we went through our finances, and meeting our goal of releasing the editor at game launch was going to be very difficult without some additional funding. The choices are between raising money and releasing the game without the tools and then waiting for the game to earn some cash before we do polish and documentation on them for their own release.

As you might imagine, the momentum post-release is really important, and we're going to drop a lot of momentum if we wait on the tools. So, we are kickstarting to get them guaranteed for launch. If you back us at $30 or more, we'll get you in on the closed beta for the tools. We may still even do a preview build with the Descent communities that we're a part of that will be free and more of a community dialog thing for feedback from Descent players.

You guys have really helped us in planning our route for finishing the game. We now know that copying Descent isn't our goal. Our goal is to make our game, inspired by Descent, and then to get you boys the tools to tweak your own mod into the exact form you want. Thanks for supporting us early, and for giving us so much meaningful dialog!

[Alter-Fox]

Well... I just bought a prepaid credit card to buy a new synth from Image-Line, and it kind of turns out I had just over 60 dollars left on it...
I guess I know what I'm doing with that 60 .

[cydereal]

Well... I just bought a prepaid credit card to buy a new synth from Image-Line, and it kind of turns out I had just over 60 dollars left on it...
I guess I know what I'm doing with that 60 .

lol <3

The support means a lot coming from this community! We're gonna have some images of the manual, t-shirt and game box later tonight I think.

[SirWinner]

Very nice looking demo!

Miner Wars is on my list to look at very hard... Thanks for adding to my short list of cool looking new games!

[cydereal]

Yeah, Miner Wars looks sexy too The concept of building stations in space in a game that has more action than EVE strikes me as good all-around.

We're gonna be doing two streams this week in support of Kickstarter. I'll be back here to post about them once we decide on the time for the second stream!

[cydereal]

We're streaming tonight at 6:00pm Pacific US time, and again tomorrow at the same time! Starting in ~30 minutes.

own3d.tv/cadenzainteractive

Lots of news!

[cydereal]

Still looks like we're going to fail hard at Kickstarter. We're trying, but we really just need more people to see it.



We're going live on Own3d tonight in ~3 hours for a stream. Come check us out! www.own3d.tv/cadenzainteractive

[SirWinner]

Nice little demo... Sounded like you were flying using a lot of keystrokes!

I used to do that some in the OLD Descent 1 Demo days but it was hard to fly that way.

So I now play Games like your with my old reliable Microsoft Sidewinder Precision Pro 2 Joystick.

Excellent Demo... Looking forward to seeing the game first hand in a demo soon!

Thanks again!

[Valin Halcyon]

It looks...weird. Granted, 6DoF games always interest me, but it looks so weird in fact, that I don't think you're going to attract many buyers/players to your game. Nearly all of the Tron games, except the old Atari games, flopped pretty hard, Tron 2.0 barely managing to pull a profit. There's been other "inside-the-computer" games in the past, and they just don't do well. The environment is TOO alien. At least with Descent the idea of mining tunnels isn't too much of a leap of suspension.

I *AM* impressed with your Indie spirit and fortitude at getting as far as you have. Don't give up and keep at it.

[Alter-Fox]

Really? I have the new Tron game and I like the environment a lot for its surrealism -- though the platforming gameplay could use a bit of work. And so could the combat.

[cydereal]

We released an alpha demo because we think the game itself will convince more people than anything else to contribute to our Kickstarter.

Give it a whirl? http://www.gamefront.com/files/21916917 ... oSetup_exe

[Foil]

Awesome!!

Will check this out as soon as I get the chance...

[Valin Halcyon]

Not sure how I feel about installing something called "retrovirus" on my PC, but here goes...

Cont:

Ok, played the Alpha. I'm impressed, you've got a good tech demo here. However, as a Descent player. my gripes:

1. No horizontal sliding?
2. Unconfigurable controls? I don't want to play with a mouse. DON'T FORCE ME TO. (BTW, mouselook = BAD)
3. Environment is distracting. I want it to look nice and compliment the gameplay. I don't want to feel like a tourist, I want to see like a badass killing bots.
4. What purpose does scan serve? Seemed to do nothing at all.
5. Email-style story information is something Tron 2.0 did. Guess what most of us did? Yep, we ignored them.
6. Powerups are not immediately obvious. I think this is more due to the busy environment and not so much the powerups themselves.
7. AI...feels like an Alpha AI. It aims, it shoots, it doesn't evade.

Solutions:
Look at what D1/2 did for control config and control options. Shamelessly duplicate. Also, Joystick.
Trim off the excess environment. You don't need a billion sparking wires or grids or...stuff. See Tron for a great example of clean inside-the-computer feel.
Find a new way to present the story. Diablo III has a good method where it has a small popup you can activate to HEAR the story blurb, and there is an option to write the spoken blurb to the chat window. You can also go back later in the UI and listen/read them again later if you want.
AI is probably just not finished or really iterated over much yet, I'll leave the jury out on that.

Good luck!

[cydereal]

Valin: I want to get some specifics from you.

What do you mean by "no horizontal sliding?" The slide vector can be adjusted using WASD Space + Shift depending on how you want to feather it around.

Configurable controls are coming. This is alpha, so we're still working on stuff like that! Joystick will also be a thing. It should be great especially once our tools are out to the public and you guys can just make Descent in the exact way you please.

The environment is a bit busy right now, I agree. We need more enemies in the demo encounter, frankly, and we need them to stand out a bit better.

Scanning highlights enemies through walls, it interacts with your shots (detonates, targets, etc), it interacts with objects in the world (pickups, emails, narrative panels). Scanning is going to do more generally as we get closer to release, with objects in the world that are only there to provide flavor if you scan them. That's a time thing.

The Email story can be totally ignored! It's not there for you, it's there for the people who want to get into that sort of thing. We've tried to include it for people who dig on that kind of thing. Think of it as the "Metroid Prime" kind of angle to the game. If you do run into the emails in the final game, you can snag some additional memory to spend on upgrades, but it won't by any means be mandatory. As for the audio, would you prefer that we include an option for "do not play voiceovers" or something?

The powerups are all stand-in graphics. We're using pills right now, but they're going to change! The red pills should also have more going on with them once we're a bit more developed.

As for the AI, it doesn't try to evade enough, I agree. That's something we'll have to work on. We've been aware of that for a long time, but we're doing waves of updates on everything

[SirWinner]

Thank you for opening up an Alpha Demo... I am downloading that now!

I think he means as in "trichording" like we were able to do in Descent 1, Descent 2, and Descent 3 when using a Joystick. For Instance, You can use the Left, Right, Forward, Backward for the X axis and Y axis on the Joystick... The twist for rotational controls such as doing corkscrew maneouvers... and the Hat Switch to let you slide in place for Up, Up Right, Right, Right Down, Down, Down Left, Left, Up Left. The add these in various combinations to let you fly with a nose attitude of your ship flying forward or backward. I am quite sure that we could find some good video examples of Descent in YouTube that would help in that regard.

See the Open Source code for Descent 1 and Descent 2 for some really good joystick controls and great Joystick configuration... The D1x and D2x, etc modifications to the original Descent 1 and Descent 2 code have done some excellent stuff to improve both games.

WASD keys are great in 2 dimensional games for the X axis and Y axis but to fly better you need to control the Z axis at the same time.

As for me, I HAVE to use Joystick Controls to properly fly in a Game like Descent or Retrovirus.

Hope that helps.

Bill G.
"SirWinner"

[cydereal]

If we're talking about Trichording, our game still doesn't support it. We're going to make sure the editor is capable of it, so a Descent total conversion with that kind of accuracy is possible for you guys

[roid]

imho tricording was an exploitable bug in the physics of Descent. It's kinda like rocket-jumping in Doom (etc) or skiing in Tribes. I'm not convinced it should (as a rule) be an integral part of every 6DOF game.

I mean it's not like 2D FPS games give you a vectored speedboost if you strafe while running forwards, i don't see why it's absolutely necessary. I honestly think it's inelegant to design a craft with that capability, while not also designing in a way to negate it by simply also vectoring the pilot's perspective to compensate (thereby having the best of all worlds, and making the skill redundant).

I always got the impression from the Descent universe that tricording was like this absolutely new trend that pilots had discovered only AFTER they had designed and built all of the ships. Coz it was so inelegant, and it would be easy to design a ship to take better advantage of it and remove any skill required. But as i understand it, Paralax software left it in simply for gameplay reasons (coz it seemed everyone liked it, a kindof emergant gameplay perhaps), without ever giving a satisfactory story-line explanation for it.

[Valin Halcyon]

No, I mean there is no way currently to slide left and right. I can slide up with space and down with shift, but there is no left/right. It's like flying with an arm missing...

As for the story, if it's an optional element, do you REALLY need it? Descent: mercenary that shoots robots and sterilizes mines. Retrovirus could be as simple as: Hunting viruses inside of a computer. Action games generally don't need a story except to explain why you're there to begin with. If you like narrative, make an RPG.

Scanning might be interesting, but after your description, it feels like a gimmick.

I didn't mean the graphics for the powerups were bad, I meant I couldn't see them when they're backdropped by the environment. Simplify the environment, and emphasize the things we need to see.

[Alter-Fox]

You don't need to simplify the environment to make the player see something. It's more about making the environment draw the eye to certain places. Even D1 knew how to do that without simplifying what environment it had (which was very complex for its time).

[Top Gun]

As for the story, if it's an optional element, do you REALLY need it? Descent: mercenary that shoots robots and sterilizes mines. Retrovirus could be as simple as: Hunting viruses inside of a computer. Action games generally don't need a story except to explain why you're there to begin with. If you like narrative, make an RPG.

I beg to differ. Even the most mass-market action titles out there (e.g. Call of Duty) have some sort of storyline, no matter how simplistic, to drive the singleplayer component along. This isn't 1994 anymore...if a gamer is going to be shooting AI enemies for hours on end, they want to have some greater reason for doing so. I honestly still have trouble plugging all the way through the first two Descents, simply because there's only so many things you can blow up without having some general reason to.

I think one thing people have to keep in mind here is that Retrovirus is a Descent-inspired game, not a complete Descent clone. It's going to be fundamentally distinct from Descent, both in mechanics and presentation, and that's a good thing. I'm far more interested in someone doing a new twist on the old gameplay formula we love than someone dragging Descent from 1995 to 2012 with only a fresh coat of paint.

Best of luck to you, cydereal; I know you're still a long way from your target, but I really really hope you can pull it off.

[Top Gun]

So, double-posting for great justice here, but I got a chance to run through the alpha last night, and I figured I'd share a few of my thoughts too.

For starters, my gameplay experience was somewhat tempered by the fact that I was getting some pretty horrendous framerate the whole way through, dipping down as low as a few FPS at times. I understand that this is an alpha version, so there's probably quite a bit of under-the-hood optimization still to come, plus it doesn't yet have the usual detail settings that can help mitigate that. Besides that, my machine's swiftly approaching antique-level, so I'd assume most of the problem was on my end.

Right off the bat, I got a nice chuckle out of those rolling green hills on the "desktop." I'm really digging the overall art style; it's a fun mix of electronics, organics, and more cave-type structures. The gameplay as a whole felt solid, though I'm not the best at controlling these sorts of games with a mouse. The weapons had a nice oomph to them; the rifle-type weapon brought back fond memories of the Vulcan. I was a bit unclear on how a few of the power-ups worked (I don't think I figured out what the memory expanders did), and the recharge rate was a bit mystifying, but I know that's the sort of thing that can be expanded on later. I'm not normally the biggest fan of auto-regen health systems, but considering I died a few times during my play-through, it didn't seem to be too much in the way of easy mode. The environments started out kind of linear, but as the game went on, I definitely started feeling that old Descent tunnel-crawling vibe. The few enemies we saw were varied enough, and I can see there being a lot of room for all sorts of fun types.

Overall, I was definitely impressed by this. I know it's still an early version, but you guys have a solid overall design at work here, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it develop.

Oh, and as a random aside, just after I finished my run-through, I jumped into a game of Left 4 Dead 2 with some friends. For probably the first 10 or 15 minutes in there, I was a total mess, as my brain struggled to switch from the inverted pitch I was using for Retrovirus to the usual FPS scheme.

[Gekko71]

I haven't wanted to play Descent of any variety in ages cydereal , but 30 seconds of your Alpha footage fixed that quick smart. In my book that;s a good sign.

I'm downloading the alpha now, I'll give you my thoughts (and system specs) later on.

Many of the points already raised by Krom, Foil, Alter Fox et. al. I agree with whole-heartedly:

1. Close up fighting is a must. I arrived late to the D1-3 multi-player scene, but I wore out many many keyboards and joysticks on single player (I've logged well over 1,000 hours on the 3 Descent games combined I reckon - all in single player.... a combination of addictive games and lousy piloting skills ) I've tried to engage with the Miner Wars demo and it bores me stupid. Fighting outside of the mines is god-awful, and destructible environments make it a disaster. The game isn't even finished yet and already I want my money back.


2. D3 also failed IMO because it wasn't stable at release - as I recall it ended up with more patches than my grandmother's quilts in the early days. This put more than a few of my friends off the game altogether.

3. Krom is dead right about the skill differences between Descent veterans and everyone else - ignore this at your peril. I loved Descent (still do) but I don't play multi-player, because I'm just not that interested any more in spending my (increasingly) precious spare time having my arse handed to me. Dedicated Descent servers, ranking systems, heavy-set bouncers at the door...do whatever it takes to protect new players from the inevitable caning.

4. Joystick Support. Hat-switch support. Fully mappable controls. Tri-chording & auto-level toggles. No mouselook. These are all mandatory for 6DOF (There are many thousands of combined flight hours in 6DOF combat environments in this chat-room alone - with many thousands more lying latent in the minds of ex-players.)

Enough with the talking - I'm going to try your Alpha. More feedback to come later....

[SirWinner]

Upgraded my Video from the Motherboard's nVidia GeForce 8200 (128 Megabytes of RAM) by using a PCI Express 16 card from XFX using the ATI Radeon HD 6570 with 1 Gigabytes of RAM.

Video runs much smoother now.

So off to try RetroVirus Demo!!!

Next step is to replace the whole PC with an AMD Quad Core Processor with proper gaming specs as soon as possible.

This current PC is an AMD Dual Core Processor which was a major upgrade from my OLD PC.

* Happy 4th of July to you all from America! *

[Sergeant Thorne]

I tinkered with the demo a bit on my laptop, here (Dell Studio XPS 17"). This thing will run most high-end games on mid-level settings, and I've got really bad frame-rates in this demo. I hope this is not indicative of the depth of graphics settings that will be found in the full game (doubt it). Gonna grab a good mouse or a stick and play further.

[SirWinner]

Very nice demo!

Would be nice to be able to view an "Automap" of where you have been similar to Descent 1 and Descent 2.

The ship "autoleveling' was annoying to me.

Overall a very nice demo of the game.

Thank you!

Sadly I do not have a PayPal or any credit cards at the moment.

I'll check the RetroVirus Forums again soon!

[cydereal]

So we're actually out to the public for preorder. Preordering comes with alpha. It's via Gamestop... but before you flinch, don't worry! They're being really great about it. You download their client, download the game, and then it's up to you whether you want to keep Gamestop's client installed. They're genuinely not bad, but if you don't want to keep it, the game runs on its own for every feature. Plus, if you buy it on Gamestop, you'll get keys for "other PC platforms". Or not, if you prefer! We can't do sales on our own site yet, Gamestop is doing some publicity and in-store stuff for us in exchange for exclusivity for a while during the Alpha, but this is a pretty good option for now!

http://www.gamestop.com/pc/games/retrovirus/104511

We've got online multiplayer in, as well as some single player campaign and challenge mode content. You can also play the campaign slice we included in co-op.

Let me know what you guys think!