DescentBB

Hello,
The handle is Berzerk. Been going into the mines since Descent was released in 95. I did a lot of level design and competitions/matches up to 2000. Did support for Descent Online on the Interplay forums. Dropped out of the scene during university and travel, hopped back in briefly to make an Win32 installer for D2X-XL and putzed around a bit. Jumped out for a while to get married, have kids. Jumped in again with Descent Underground, and well...we know how things with DU went. Jumped out for politics, and now I'm back to kind of see how I can help keep the lights in the mines on.

You can find some of my levels in the "Descent Files." "Molten Rock" is mine, and it won a couple awards from the community back when thumbweb.com was a thing. I say that just so you know my street cred.
I believe I'm one of the few people with a mirror archive of the DMDB. I'm not sure though, as I didn't actually save what my source for the levels was. Anyway, I have dozens of missions that are not in the "Descent Mission Archive" nor the "Descent Files" I have a bunch of editors and tools that I can not find on the web anymore (maybe they are there, but google isn't very useful these days,) and I have a complete copy of "Descent Online", which I've read many think has been lost. There is a partial copy with a corrupted installer on archive.org. Mine has more levels than that one, and the installer is totally different.

I'd like to share what I've got, and wondering what the best way to do that is.

I'd like to comment on the sectorgames forums, but I need a referral code to setup that account. I'm hoping my credit from the past will guilt someone into giving me one.

I also run my own hosting company, and my decades of web experience might be enough to persuade some people to join a project to unify the Descent community again after . . . it's a . . . fracturing.

You can checkout some of my github repos for Descent here: https://github.com/Mr-Berzerk

While you are mentioning rare files, I have a more or less complete scrape of the old descent-network download server. ( The URL was germany1.download.descent-network.com ). About a 1.8 GB 7z archive, it contains most of the old DOS/windows16/windows32 descent manager tools for editing assets in D1/D2. I would be willing to contribute it towards anyone's collection of random descent files/utilities from the internet if they are interested.

The biggest thing needed nowadays is just people who want to jump in a game and have fun. There seem to be new server ops showing up regularly, and new levels also. What's missing is people just enjoying being in game. There must 30 servers up on the trackers, and most of the time the only players are the BOZ bots. If it weren't for Checky keeping that server up, D3 would have faded away completely.

@krom that is exactly the kind of collaboration I'm hoping for. If I could find the sour e code for those tools, I could modernize them as well.
I have the domain postterranmining.co, and Im hoping to set up a parady/mimic site like it is the actual corp, where all this stuff could be available in a professionally designed way.


@grizz if we could get those 30 sites to collaborate in a big way. We could rekindle some fires in dark souls of the material defenders of old.

Great, hit me up on how you want to handle the file transfer.

Berzerk wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 1:07 pm I'd like to comment on the sectorgames forums, but I need a referral code to setup that account. I'm hoping my credit from the past will guilt someone into giving me one.

This thread lists some referral codes for Sectorgame. If those don't work, let me know and I can try bugging Hunter. I think I'm theoretically still a mod there.

Krom wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 6:48 pm Great, hit me up on how you want to handle the file transfer.

Ill pm you some ssh details by tomorrow. My connection is 2gbit, so the transfer will only be as slow as your upload.

Top Gun wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 6:49 pm
This thread lists some referral codes for Sectorgame. If those don't work, let me know and I can try bugging Hunter. I think I'm theoretically still a mod there.

Great, thank you. I'll give that a try.

Berzerk wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 7:07 pm

Krom wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 6:48 pm Great, hit me up on how you want to handle the file transfer.

Ill pm you some ssh details by tomorrow. My connection is 2gbit, so the transfer will only be as slow as your upload.

I'm on a more pedestrian symmetrical 1gbit fiber, so it'll take about...18 seconds at full speed. (Although if we are using SSH I highly doubt it will reach line speeds, I rarely do even on simpler TLS FTP.)

Krom wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 7:35 pm

Berzerk wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 7:07 pm

Krom wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 6:48 pm Great, hit me up on how you want to handle the file transfer.

Ill pm you some ssh details by tomorrow. My connection is 2gbit, so the transfer will only be as slow as your upload.

I'm on a more pedestrian symmetrical 1gbit fiber, so it'll take about...18 seconds at full speed. (Although if we are using SSH I highly doubt it will reach line speeds, I rarely do even on simpler TLS FTP.)

You are probably right. It will also depend on what my clients are doing. I bet it will not break 200mbit, but even then, not that bad. A few minutes at worst.

Done. Yeah it took about 4 minutes.

Fantastic!!!
I'll start sorting through it.


Oh, and I did get started on the sector games forums. Just waiting for that final activation step from the mods.

Krom wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 5:12 am Done. Yeah it took about 4 minutes.

Goodness Gracious Guidebot KROM!!!
The source code for almost all the old tools is in this archive.
This is astoundingly great news!

Not many levels to add, but the other stuff is amazing.

We have to keep this stuff. Since Overload didn't make much money, I highly doubt any other 6DOF games will ever be made. Sadly , I don't have much time to play anymore so I concentrate my time in 1-2 games and Descent/Overload isn't in it anymore. I spent 15 years playing this from 94-2010 ish and my wrists can't handle the load anymore.

But thanks for this.

CDN_Merlin wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 8:58 am We have to keep this stuff. Since Overload didn't make much money, I highly doubt any other 6DOF games will ever be made. Sadly , I don't have much time to play anymore so I concentrate my time in 1-2 games and Descent/Overload isn't in it anymore. I spent 15 years playing this from 94-2010 ish and my wrists can't handle the load anymore.

But thanks for this.

Hey Merlin! Are you the same Merlin in my GOG galaxy friend list?
You have the same Avatar.

most likely yes. Same avatar then it would be me

Berzerk wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 8:43 am

Krom wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 5:12 am Done. Yeah it took about 4 minutes.

Goodness Gracious Guidebot KROM!!!
The source code for almost all the old tools is in this archive.
This is astoundingly great news!

Not many levels to add, but the other stuff is amazing.

I wasn't 100% confident the source code was in there, but I was pretty close. I remember most everything on Descent-Network being open source, but a few utilities from other parties on there may not be.

Anytime someone is putting together a descent files collection I try to get that into it, I don't want its continued existence to depend entirely on me.

I started a GitHub project to update the SDK/dev tools to x64.
Got the first one. Mind you it was probably the simplist.

https://github.com/users/Mr-Berzerk/projects/1/views/1
https://github.com/Mr-Berzerk/Briefing

Berzerk, do you have the Descent 3 level Resination in your collection?

Sorry Neo, don't have that one. I only have about 30 for D3.

grizz wrote: ↑Wed Oct 18, 2023 4:36 pm The biggest thing needed nowadays is just people who want to jump in a game and have fun. There seem to be new server ops showing up regularly, and new levels also. What's missing is people just enjoying being in game. There must 30 servers up on the trackers, and most of the time the only players are the BOZ bots. If it weren't for Checky keeping that server up, D3 would have faded away completely.

What trackers are these? Is anyone hosting levels that aren't Abend?

Don't go down, rise up and blast all the players to smithereens and then they can't bully you.