DescentBB

Hey, someone seem to have a question about the replies I send out when you email the development@highoctanesoftware.com with a request to beta test.

The reply,

"Please feel free to send more people also, we are looking for quite a few
more and we need people who loved the game as much as we did.

Thank You.

Zachary Briggs, Executive Producer
HighOctane Software"

I actually paste in there by hand. I do read each email that I receive and if questions are asked or help offered I do add to them or send a second email. Please rest assured that I read every email from our supporters and enjoy them. We greatly appreciate the assistance and the support that you have been providing us.

Keep it up!

Sincerely,
Zachary Briggs, Executive Producer
HighOctane Software

CDN_Merlin wrote:D3D=Microsoft=:evil:

that was the shovel that began the grave for 3dfx

Well, when you can write for every 3D card under the sun instead of spending the same amount of time developing for just one brand of video card, why would you ever choose Glide over D3D or even OpenGL? It wasn't until D3D got respectable wrt/ framerates and features that developers started using it.

Who else thinks that this project will need its own forum? I wouldn't like to see a repeat of what happened in the Coders' Corner happen in here.

Its own forum might be a good idea since the topic has the potential to generate mega responses. Long live High Octane, oops sorry started to get a little carried away there!

The Forum> Yes, this does need it's own forum and we will have one in the community launching a couple of days. I will try to have the posts from this forurm moved to the new one or I will leave a link back to here.

Zach

Zach,

I would try to tap some of the great resources we have here on the DBB. Level design has become a high art form for some of our members. Look to them and their designs, these are what we love to play in. Some of our mods are pretty cool too, although I haven't played in over a year online, I still play occasionally in single player, and the mods are a lot of fun to mess around with.

With that in mind, I would also like to see a powerful level editing tool system in place. Our community loves to mod our game.

Nexus_One wrote:Zach,

I would try to tap some of the great resources we have here on the DBB. Level design has become a high art form for some of our members. Look to them and their designs, these are what we love to play in. Some of our mods are pretty cool too, although I haven't played in over a year online, I still play occasionally in single player, and the mods are a lot of fun to mess around with.

With that in mind, I would also like to see a powerful level editing tool system in place. Our community loves to mod our game.

/me hands Nexus a towel to get that brown off his nose.

zbriggs wrote:I do read each email that I receive and if questions are asked or help offered I do add to them or send a second email.

O_o, I guess you must think I'm the nerd who pretends that he is a 3D artist when he is really just a nerd who has no skill.

Or am I just "special"?

<- didn't get a second email either

I'm not so sure what was so great about tri-chording and Fusion myself... granted they added character and I liked them both, but there is also life beyond both.

Duper wrote:/me hands Nexus a towel to get that brown off his nose.

wasn't trying to suck up, just stating something I hadn't seen yet, biatch

Sirius wrote:I'm not so sure what was so great about tri-chording and Fusion myself... granted they added character and I liked them both, but there is also life beyond both.

There is no point in playing the game without some of the most skilled and fun aspects of it.

Mod-able > Yes, the game will be mod-able. As to everything that will be mod-able is still not set in stone yet. Maps atleast will be build-able and most likely several other things but again at this point that's all I can say for sure.

We are building this with you guys in mind and we knew that you would want the mod-ability to be there.

Again, anything else feel free to ask or state your suggestions... we are watching your comments and listening.

Rice
HighOctane Software

One thing I'd suggest is not include a ship like the pheenix. The skippyness on the internet is just horrible. Also, maybe have the game auto detect the NET speed so people can't change it and have an advantage on the net when playing games.

I'd go back to the basic and have only 1 ship.

Yeah, I still can't tell if the multiple ships enhances or detracts from the gameplay experience. People inevitably wind up declaring that one ship is cheap and chastise anyone who uses it, and if you're playing a team game and everything is equal except for the ship distribution one team has an advantage over the other.

Besides, you can't go wrong with the Pyro. It's nimble but powerful.

Krom wrote:

Sirius wrote:I'm not so sure what was so great about tri-chording and Fusion myself... granted they added character and I liked them both, but there is also life beyond both.

There is no point in playing the game without some of the most skilled and fun aspects of it.

Tricording is one of the things that made Descent (no matter what version it is) interesting. It is one of the things you have to master when you wanna play in the upper ligue
So this is a feature that keeps a newbie (not everybody in the world has played Descent so far ;-D ) wondering what else could be possible with his ship.

The fusion: I love the idea that the one who overpowers his fusion (before releasing the fire knob) gets self damage. Is there any other game that features this?

the MassDriver: many think that it is an absolute overpowered weapon. So do I, too. But if (and you promised that) your game is "mod-friendly": there WILL be a mod that gives this weapon THAT power, I promise. (yes, I have seen this Arnie movie, where he used a rail gun - and it HAD almost the power of the descent's MD) So, it might be a good idea to have a rail gun - and maybe a three-shot-one-kill-weapon. - but don't let the one who was hit fly around like a fly with a broken wing.

Diti

Ok Me Next !

Hey, I remember playing an auto racing game called "HiOctane" ... any relation to this High Octane ? .. It was a cool game where the cars almost flew, but didn't shoot or blow anything up...

I would suggest that "proportional" sheild orbs might add some flavour when choosing different ships to fly and blow up: for eg. the hard shelled Magnum ( Tank) could spew sheild orbs that have 1.2 times the "value" as a Pyro type ship's sheilds, and the Phoenii type sheild orb is only worth 0.8 times the sheild power up of a "pyro". That way the extra effort it takes to blow up a tank offers a slightly bigger "prize" in the sheild orbs. ..

And Woo Hooo ! Look at the excitment this thread bears !

Long live Trichording and 6DOF !

Let me put it this way, I would be just as happy even if the game lacked a Fusion cannon or the like at first, but could be easily modded to a total descent conversion.

Oh yeah, and ANY Fusion cannon must posses the same properties as Descent Fusion, meaning it is chargeable, can go through more then one ship and have the same Fusion bug from Descent3 which I find adds a LOT of spice to the game.

Just to repeat what the Fusion bug is, when two or more ships have their collision spheres overlap on the server and they are hit by the Fusion cannon rather then the Fusion colliding with each ship just once, it collides with both ships multiple times depending on the frame rate of the server. If the server is in excess of 500 FPS you could easily be registering 20+ collisions per ship, which is why the Fusion bug always instantly kills the target.

It is little things like the Fusion bug that make games have depth and keep them interesting for a long time.

Something else I would ask for is robust controls, it is a must have that the game can handle keyboard/mouse/joystick/game pad controls, even all at the same time (which Descent 3 can do). Actually, Descent3 can handle multiple joysticks, in combination with game pads, mice and the keyboard all at the same time, practically to the point of â??if you can plug it in to your PC all at once, D3 can use it all at onceâ?

CDN_Merlin wrote:One thing I'd suggest is not include a ship like the pheenix. The skippyness on the internet is just horrible.

Is that because there's something wrong with the Phoenix, or because D3's netcode is just useless?

As far as music goes, I really loved (and im sure you have too!) the redbook audio for Descent 2. I love the industrial rock in how it conveyed a scary and mysterious atmosphere. And it was rockin'! Its just so cliched to have techno music for a fantasy-futuristic game, I hope you guys will come up with something similar to D2 audio. That was really unique and made it enjoyable.

DarkHorse wrote:

CDN_Merlin wrote:One thing I'd suggest is not include a ship like the pheenix. The skippyness on the internet is just horrible.

Is that because there's something wrong with the Phoenix, or because D3's netcode is just useless?

I'm sick of people ragging on D3's netcode. Descent 3 has THREE different network architectures and people choose to use only one. If you want Descent 3 to play like Quake then use Permissable client/server.

Sounds like a good program so far. Speeding up some of the weapons would be good to compete with the MD and the Fusion. If you can bring back the D1 Spreadfire, that would be great. Also, to make the size of the plasma blobs a tiny bit bigger because they were very small in d3 = (. Also about the multiple ships. It was good that d3 had a choice of 4 ships, but this time, we cant have a ship that skips around like the Phoenix heh. The choice of ships is good to suit someones style of flying too.

Multiple ships > We are striving to model the game similar to the concept with D2, therefore there will only be one ship. However there will be more ships available for download as mods at a later time. This can be controlled by the server on whether or not multiple ships are permitted.

At present these are our plans and intentions.

Rice
HighOctane Software

Anyone remember Descent Online? It was Descent 1 but it had 3 ships:
Aggressor Prime
Pyro-GX
Tigg-SB

That was on that ill-fated network... can't think of the name right now. IIRC there was no difference between the ships except graphics?

Permisseble CLient/Server SUCKS DONKEY BALLS. Click, wait, wait, wait some more, oh fire now. yeah, thats great network code there.

DCrazy wrote:That was on that ill-fated network... can't think of the name right now. IIRC there was no difference between the ships except graphics?

Nope. They were analagous to Tank, Pyro, Pheeni.

CDN_Merlin wrote:Permisseble CLient/Server SUCKS DONKEY BALLS. Click, wait, wait, wait some more, oh fire now. yeah, thats great network code there.

What you see is what happened on the server. No more "but I shot you!!!" complaining. Plus it's not like you have to play the game any differently; you still have to compensate for lag the same way.

If anything, nonpermissible C/S for game critical things like weapon shots is poor network code.

All other games out there use permissable client/server and when Outrage created D3 they expected permissable client/server to be the most popular network model.

Why did we choose C/S? I don't know. Why are we whining about if if it's what we chose? I'm even less clear on the answer to that.

When I play UT, UT 2003 or UT 2004, I don't have to click, wait, then see my shot go off. It's gone the instant I click.

In D3, I click, wait, wait then it shoots. That's what i was meaning. At least in C/S it shoots right away.

Games like UT and Q3A are client server but they make it appear smoother by playing the animations and moving the character before receiving the acknowledgment from the server. Ever been playing Q3A over an extremely bad connection and notice how your character keeps moving even when the "Connection Problem" indicator shows up, then snaps back to where it should be?

CDN_Merlin wrote:When I play UT, UT 2003 or UT 2004, I don't have to click, wait, then see my shot go off. It's gone the instant I click.

In D3, I click, wait, wait then it shoots. That's what i was meaning. At least in C/S it shoots right away.

No it doesn't. It just looks like it does.

DCrazy wrote:Games like UT and Q3A are client server but they make it appear smoother by playing the animations and moving the character before receiving the acknowledgment from the server. Ever been playing Q3A over an extremely bad connection and notice how your character keeps moving even when the "Connection Problem" indicator shows up, then snaps back to where it should be?

Although, it's rather evident on a lossy Unreal Tournament 2003 server, character movement is somewhat tied to lag. You can skip ahead ten feet and back eight without ever changing your walking pace.

One thing I really hope...is that the ships are to scale with the level.

Will they be?

If it's supposed to take off D1/D2, I would guess so.

Permissible C/S and standard C/S, or even P2P, say nothing about the quality of a game's netcode. They are different systems, not good or bad; they just are suited to different situations.
Good netcode will reduce latency and lossiness, or at least reduce the results of it, while bad netcode will not and may even exacerbate the problem.

I too would put D3 nearer the 'bad' end of the spectrum. Say what you like, but I've seen games that handle high-ish ping times and slower connections much better. It's the main reason why I don't play Descent 3 on-line, basically.

Likewise to the PS/CS/PP flavours of network architecture, I don't think a game is better or worse for the presence or absence of trichording or fusion (within reason; if it knocked out the game balance that'd be a different story). Just different. There are always other tricks to use; being able to hold down three keys simultaneously is not the be-all-and-end-all of manoeuvring. Homing projectile dodging, ducking fire, and perhaps other odd features like sideways afterburners are all other interesting facets of such a game to explore.

If there was a good physical explanation to include trichording, though, I wouldn't consider removing it.

FYI, that Descent 1 online with 3 ships was engage games online. It's where MS started while we were all beta testing it.

Also, I don't necessarily think we need to intentionally put in bugs from earlier games as features in this one. These guys need to make the game with their vision and some of our basic input. Maybe we will get some new "feature bugs" that people end up liking. You never know. As long as it doesn't completely suck I would definitely buy it.

"feature bugs" eh? Like trichording for instance?

Here's a good idea: Leave High Octane alone and let them develop their own game how they want to. As long as the game's moddable, the Descent community can tweak it later on to include tricording, the Fusion bug, and all of our own ships and weapons. Remember, this game is not DeeFor; it's a brand-new game that uses a similar playing style to the Descent games.

To High Octane: Good luck for your game, and thanks for trying to get the six-degrees style of gaming back in the public view .

Zach Briggs,

You said its been in development for a year and a half. So,what is your projected completion date?

It's a selfish question as I only play Descent and that is getting harder to do with the lack of peeps online. So much so I went back to playing single player.

I was also wondering if Kuman is still on the DBB and if he had contacted High Octane about your project? His artwork has always been outstanding. If I could figure out how to paste his Pyro here I would have.

I must be the only one here that didn't like Kuman's pyros...they were too...weak looking.