Descent into Doom 3 mod: Starting up

[HeXetic]

I have to laugh at arguments about not wanting to split this fictional userbase we have. Let's ask the average man-in-the street what he thinks of the current system in Into Cerberon after playing it last night with friends! Oh wait, we can't, because there is no Into Cerberon yet.

We really should push this discussion off until there is actually a mod to play and more importantly until there are people actually playing it.

Counting chickens prior to hatching and all that.

Because I fully intend to play this mod on a LAN with my buddies who are probably not aware of what the strafe-running (Doom1/2) or bunny-hopping (Quake2) exploits are in their respective games and are even less likely to know about similar maneuvers in Descent, the switch option will not be disappearing anytime soon.

[Duper]

Ok, I know I'm harping here but I wanted to regergitate some history.

The two guy that founded Parallax, Mike Kulas who is at Volition these days as Pres, and Matt Toschlog who seems to still be at THQ, wanted to play a game that had FULL 360 degree movement and something with less gore that had made Doom so popular (other things I know made Doom popular).

In pursuing this, they decided on a ship with anti-grav and robots as they are machines and no real blood or body parts would be involved. They never offered any technical explanation. Only that they wanted to do it this way. No hidden thrusters, gryo-whatsits or anything. They implemented strafing .. something still new to games at that point.. as "sliding" on all 3 axis, all 6 directions. Trichording is manouvering in 3 directions at the same time. And quite frankly, the speed isn't enough to reliably out run a missle. In D1 and D2 given enough room, it can be done without AB. In D3, there is no chance. The missles are just too fast.

More than just running away, which is necessary when shields are low, tricording is a NATURAL part of dogfighting in THIS game. NONE other. ... I repeat.. N-O-N-E O-T-H-E-R. That's why it looks so foreign. well wait.. Forsaken tried but didn't quite get it right. Actually. If I remember, you couldn't tricord in Forsaken either. but I digress.

If you want to take certain elements from Descent and implent a mod for Doom3 or Quake4, knock yourself out. You guys have some great stuff going, REALLY, but don't expect the descent community dwindling as it is.. to jump up and down with excitement. If you offer someone a Ferrari, don't be surprised if you get a blank stare rather than a thank you when they see that it's nearly gutted of all interior. I'm sure your mod won't be that bad, this is just an anology.

Tricording, more than anything is a maneuviering technique. Even Iceheart stated that it doesn't give you that big of a "speed Advantage". it not really an "advantage" if everyone can do it. It certainly not like a aim script. (one reason I quit play Quake3)

I echo Lothar: ..."if it's a well-made mod, I'll play it either way. But it would be more true to Descent if it had the triple-chording behavior all three Descents had, and I think it would play better."


*edit* OMG!!! It's MotorMan! DUDE! Where you been hiding!

*edit x2*
LOL there was a lot of posting since I started typing.. lol

[HeXetic]

I'm sorry, but you really can 't tie tri-chording to the developers' intentions simply by mentioning both things in the same post. Come on, what's more likely for Descent 1 and 2? They deliberately did it that way, knowing about tri-chording giving a speed-boost, or they ignorantly left out the normalization step just as the Doom programmers did? Remember that in terms of the game programming, the tri-chording speed boost represents the *absence* of code rather than the presence of it.

[Lothar]

I have to laugh at arguments about not wanting to split this fictional userbase we have.

Considering you were just talking about respect a few posts ago, why do you have to go and disrespect me like that?

Look, man, it's not that hard.

If you make either "no option" or "default trichording", no matter who eventually makes up the mod's userbase, you won't have a split -- because, aside from 3 of the 5 on your dev team, there isn't anybody out there who's so strongly against trichording they'd go out of their way to remove it. Most people would just make the server using whatever the default is.

If you make "default no trichording" with an option, you're basically guaranteeing a split, because there are a few hundred of us who feel very strongly about trichording and will start servers with it on.

The thing about splitting the user base is, having twice the players makes it about 4 times more likely to find a game (this is based on experience, not any actual calculations.) Splitting the user base, even if it's like 90-10 and you're in the 90 part, is still quite a bit worse than keeping it together in terms of being able to find games. I'd much rather have no trichording option at all than have it, but only be able to play the same people I already play.

We really should push this discussion off until there is actually a mod to play and more importantly until there are people actually playing it.

Perhaps -- but it's good to get it out in the open right away. We have strong feelings on the matter because we know the game and we know it's important for gameplay. But we'll see how it turns out when you get around to testing.

Because I fully intend to play this mod on a LAN with my buddies who are probably not aware of what the strafe-running (Doom1/2) or bunny-hopping (Quake2) exploits are in their respective games and are even less likely to know about similar maneuvers in Descent, the switch option will not be disappearing anytime soon.

*shrug* OK. But don't be surprised if, when it comes to testing, you have a really tough time getting the weapons balance right... and don't be surprised if none of us ever end up playing on the servers you play on.

[Lothar]

what's more likely for Descent 1 and 2?

Irrelevant. They kept it in Descent 3.

Remember that in terms of the game programming, the tri-chording speed boost represents the *absence* of code rather than the presence of it.

It's not exactly difficult to code up... if |v|>vmax, v = v*vmax/|v|. The fact that this code was still absent in D3 should tell you something.

But the Descent programmers aren't making this game, you are. And, ultimately, it's up to you. I think the game would play better and allow for more users if you kept trichording in, but if you want to go through the headache of trying to get the game to play sensibly using both options (scaling weapon velocities appropriately) that's up to you.

[Jeff250]

Descent3 wasn't exactly a success story. That's why we're posting here instead of playing there.

[HeXetic]

I think we're making progress here. People, when I say "tri-chording will be toggleable", I mean, "you can always move in all three directions at once, but with the default setting doing so doesn't give you a speed boost":

[23:28] <kuruption> i have one important question for you though about trichording
[23:28] <kuruption> if you "disable it"
[23:28] <kuruption> does that mean we *cannot* move in more than 1 direction at once
[23:28] <kuruption> *or*
[23:28] <HeXetic[PCNC]> no!!!
[23:28] <kuruption> that when we do it does not increase our speed?
[23:28] <HeXetic[PCNC]> You CAN STILL MOVE IN MORE THAN ONE DIRECTION AT ONCE!
[23:28] <HeXetic[PCNC]> You just don't go any faster than normal
[23:28] <kuruption> well then i dont really see much of a problem with it
...
[23:30] <[8]WarAdvocat> I'll go with Kurupt's opinion
[23:30] <[8]WarAdvocat> for now
...
[23:31] <[8]WarAdvocat> still should be on by default
...
[23:31] <kuruption> i'd prefer to be able to get the same increase
[23:31] <kuruption> but i'd settle for just the movement
[23:31] <kuruption> it'd be way too much work for me to unlearn the way i fly

[Motorman!]

*edit* OMG!!! It's MotorMan! DUDE! Where you been hiding!

Er, been busy... But there's been a lot of reminiscing amongst old friends of late, so I decided to poke my head back in and see wut the dilly is. And lo, I discovered this promising mod.

HeXetic: You reiterate the probable, but not outright, truth that trichording was an oversight on the developers' end, and that this is a valid support of your team's controversial choice on the matter. However, more conclusive evidence has been repeatedly presented to the contrary; that although it almost (but not completely) certainly was a mistake in the first game, the developers most certainly noticed it by the 2nd game, and the feature absolutely was intentional in the creation of the 3rd, whose engine was created from scratch and the existence of which "mistake" must have been a consciously coded effort. Whatsmore is the apparent endorsement offered by the tactic's description in official published D3 literature - also as aforementioned.

Are the developers' tactics for D3 irrelevant to your mod? Even if what they did was made to make it play more like its predecessors?

Finally, I can only agree with Lothar re: what most players will expect. Although I conceded in my first post here that there is a chance that you're representing an unseen and unheard majority, the absolute fact remains that in Descent's most active community, trichording was accepted and used by all, newbies and vets alike. No n00b jumped into a game, saw somebody trichord, and then say, "Oh no...That's just wrong." The unanimous truth, at least within the boundaries of Descent's most active community, is that people new to the game who saw the tactic either didn't give a damn about it, as Lothar said, and played anyway, or tried to learn it themselves. Nobody vocalized any opposition.

So if the worry is that including trichording at default would alienate potential new players, then history doesn't seem to testify to your favor.

You can do what you will with the mod, and I'm sure I'll love it all the same, but I still can't help but be suspicious of the claim that your and your two colleagues' opinion on the matter is the popular one.

[Motorman!]

I think we're making progress here. People, when I say "tri-chording will be toggleable", I mean, "you can always move in all three directions at once, but with the default setting doing so doesn't give you a speed boost"

Yes, I think that was generally how people understood it here... It certainly was how I understood it. Not being able to move in 3 dimensions at once is far and beyond the boundaries of common sense for a Descent-like mod!

[HeXetic]

But as you can see, clearly there was some confusion about the issue; I believe WarAddict was definitely thinking it was the other thing.

I really want to point out that as much as the weapons and general idea is similar, there are going to be differences in gameplay style and mapping that may eliminate even the need for the tri-chord boost, and that's what I'm really driving at here. Descent (and to a lesser extent, Descent³) didn't have masses of pipes and other map entities behind which to hide or clouds of steam and fog in which to get lost. None of them had the kind of absolute darkness and the sheer terror of illumination that we'd like to put into the mod. I think with the way we're going to change the gameplay thematically, people here will simply not care about the tri-chord speed boost anymore. I will make it unnecessary to use.

People have said they need tri-chording to evade missiles. I can see that in Descent, but I don't see it in our mod. I picture a deep mining shaft brimming with equipment, steel girders, pipes and conduits, all of them close at hand to serve as things behind which to dodge homing missiles. I see players zooming nimbly through masses of pipes with only inches to spare on all sides, darting up and down like in the Death Star scene in Return of the Jedi. I see pursuits in open tunnels, with the pursued player rounding a corner, firing a missile the same way he was heading before blasting up to the ceiling, while the player in pursuit rounds the corner and mistakenly follows after the smoke trail of the missile just long enough for the roles to be reversed. I see a dogfight in an open room and stray shots hitting a stockpile of explosive barrels that rocket off into space, turning the area into a dead zone as debris, smoke, and flame fills the room. I see a hesitant player poke the nose of their Pyro out of a dark tunnel and half-into the light of a room where a weapon or powerup waits, and them deciding to risk it all by flooring the afterburner straight for it, heedless of any other watchers in the darkness...

If you have a look at the "requirements" doc, you'll see that Descent is far from the only source of inspiration. We want to bring in some of the best elements of Doom³, Aliens Vs. Predator, and Night Hunters (a Q2 mod), and what we plan to do with those sources of inspiration will represent a far more drastic change than the (optional) removal of tri-chord speedboosting.

[psionik]

When you pick up a game like descent and say "im gonna make a mod of it for doom 3" you have to realize that you're going to have to deal with its user base. its not imaginary. theres a very real user base out there that you're toying with right now. it IS time to discuss things of ALL natures because you are quite obviously in the focus of a very real community this very moment, so i suggest you realize that right now. that said, you can combine all the creative things you want into a mod and make it exactly what you want but IF you want to call it a descent-related mod, it should have trichording because that is a serendipitous feature that made the game as addictive as it was. its one of the small gourmet details that helps make a legendary game what it is. anything else is just a 360 shooter. and forsaken had trichording, i was there when the devs brought it to the stony point NYDP lan and all the pilots got to input ideas, the two most suggested were joystick support and trichording. trichording is much more than an error. you also need to realize that. not everything has to be symmetrical and a little chaos factor makes things far more interesting.

[HeXetic]

Okay, my apologies to psionik and doomkid3000 both, but I thought I'd post this whole conversation from #IntoCerberon au naturel because it makes for a better effect. Obviously, emphasis added later.

[00:37] <iceheart> reply
[00:38] <iceheart> wow trichording apparently is a "serendipitous feature that made the game as addictive as it was"
[00:38] <HeXetic[PCNC]> it's one big runonparagraph
[00:38] <HeXetic[PCNC]> I don't think the person has ever heard of "sentences"
[00:39] <iceheart> at least he's better than "doomkid3000" or whatever he is called on d3w
[00:39] <HeXetic[PCNC]> Perhaps what people fail to realise is that we will almost certainly be introducing our own "serendipitous" features as well
[00:39] <HeXetic[PCNC]> And that we'd rather take ours than ones we don't like...
[00:39] <iceheart> who has never heard of punctuation, grammar, spelling, or even thinking straigt
[00:40] <HeXetic[PCNC]> You know, really thinking about it...
[00:40] <iceheart> I hope you are not going to say something stupid
[00:40] <HeXetic[PCNC]> What I'd really like to do is make a mod that doesn't need tri-chord boosting at all, and in fact one where doing that doesn't help the player much at all
[00:41] <HeXetic[PCNC]> Then we could leave it on by default
[00:41] <HeXetic[PCNC]> The "elites" would be happy even though they'd have no advantage
[00:41] <iceheart> That's what I was saying all along
[00:41] <HeXetic[PCNC]> I'd be happy because they'd have no advantage
[00:42] <iceheart> well there'd be nothing stopping them from flying at an angle either way
[00:42] <HeXetic[PCNC]> Except being able to *shoot*
[00:42] <iceheart> Now I am going to sleep
[00:42] <iceheart> it's 7am
[00:43] <HeXetic[PCNC]> How can you fire your A55 if you're facing the wrong way
[00:43] <HeXetic[PCNC]> ooh
[00:43] <HeXetic[PCNC]> nice job
[00:43] <HeXetic[PCNC]> lates
[00:43] <iceheart> that's an issue
[00:43] <iceheart> If you trichord you can't A55 blast people
[00:43] <HeXetic[PCNC]> The fools won't know what they're missing
[00:44] <iceheart> It will be "serendipitous" I think
[00:44] <HeXetic[PCNC]> rofl
[00:44] <iceheart> We have the A55 all to ourselves
[00:44] <iceheart> "X bit Y's shiny metal A55"
[00:45] <HeXetic[PCNC]> I think the Futurama guys will sue us if we do that
[00:45] <iceheart>
[00:45] <iceheart> for what, lost profit?

Or, in other words, I'm open to leaving tri-chording on if we can manage to make a mod that eliminates its usefulness in >99.9999% of all situations...

Oh, and if you don't know what the A55 is, read the requirements doc. I think it'll be a "serendipitous" experience.

And remember, kids, if you join #IntoCerberon you can be in on these crucial mod discussion as well.

But not tonight. We're tired and it's 0700h where iceheart is.

[Duper]

oh brother.

remember..you came HERE.

[Sirius]

I got that idea.

It seems a lot of people have become so confused over what other people have told them that they don't actually know what tri-chording MEANS any more. It's explicitly used to refer to moving in three directions at once and angling your ship so the velocity vector lines up in approximately the direction you want to go.

Hence, it's a bug exploit. Just used to get extra speed when you really shouldn't be able to.

Removing that bug will not affect game mechanics that much; most people will not even have to alter their playing style! In fact, Descent 3 screwed up the game mechanics quite a lot more than this, without even having to touch the tri-chording bug - they left it in intentionally.

Face it, if you want to go faster, there's always the afterburner...

But it DOESN'T mean you can't slide, and it doesn't mean you can't move in multiple directions simultaneously. I agree, that would virtually turn the game into Freespace, which is not a desirable thing for those that don't want that. But you're still going to be able to make the same moves as you previously could, and not much will be different.

HeXetic: About trichording being necessary for dodging missiles... take it from another veteran Descent player, it isn't. You don't really need that much speed to break a lock, especially with an afterburner; just applying thrusters in multiple directions will do it.

In short. I think these changes are actually a good idea.

(Edit: I must say though, now I know what people meant about tri-chording being the key to dogfighting. I used to just look oddly at what they'd written and ask myself what they were smoking, but now I at least realise they were referring to something else - the freedom of movement Descent allows you... which is not really the key to dogfighting either, but it does have to be used.)

[Grendel]

And remember, kids, if you join #IntoCerberon you can be in on these crucial mod discussion as well.

I think I'll skip on that, TYVM. Don't like the attitude.

[Kyouryuu]

Politics killed the radio star...

[psionik]

Hi.
I am here to introduce you to a concept.
The concept is Humility. You want punctuation? Here it is. I do not believe how insolent you and your so far halfway well controlled ego have been to come here and ask for input you shun. It's ok, hypocrisy is normal for people with no inherent ability to think on their own, but you should certainly be able to realize that you are walking on your own clown shoes here trying to talk ★■◆● to real descent players. Take your Mod-Turned-Flame-War and go elsewhere, you will have noone's support with an attitude like yours. Attack my punctuation all you want and sidestep all my real points - I will laugh my ass off because I left it out JUST to see if you would attack it and not what I said. You lose.

[pATCheS]

DEAR ★■◆●ing LORD! STOP IT YOU FREAKS!!!

I am very against the idea of making trichording default off as well, but JESUS!!! This is getting way out of proportion! Like Hexetic has said, we don't even have a playable mod yet! Additionally, by talking to him and his dev team like this, we're ALL less likely to get what we want. Stop it already!

[psionik]

Oh and just to be clear about it, I would punch you right in the face and run over your ass on my harley over descent. So take your non-descent ideas and stuff em up your ★■◆●ing grandma's ****. And don't call it a "descent" mod. How's that for Grammar and English?

[Top Gun]

Hexetic, you keep referring to the whole trichording issue as an "elite" tactic. As we've said before, it's not. Even the newest player to the game can easily notice that you can fly faster when moving in two or three directions at once and angling your ship than when flying straight. When one of us helps a new player learn the ropes of a game, that's probably the first thing that we teach them; I'm sure the good folks at Team [NuB] can attest to that. If trichording was an "elite" feature, why would those of us who have played this game for almost ten years consider it so important that it's a vital concept for new players to learn? Also, since trichording is fundamentally tied into the concept of moving in three directions at once, there's absolutely no possible way you could remove the "advantage" it gives without removing the entire six-degrees-of-freedom setup.

The one thing I'll never understand is why your team is so obsessed at only including it as an option if it was an intended feature of the developers? As I mentioned in chat, what does it matter if the feature was originally intended or not? It was in all three Descent games; it's something that any Descent player associates with the series. You mentioned earlier about John Romero removing some sort of similar feature from Quake because it was a "bug;" to me, that concept is idiotic. If it's part of the gameplay that people are used to and associate with the Quake series, suddenly removing it from the series has to make at least some fans upset. I don't understand the motivation for doing so, other than as a form of asserting some sort of developer's prerogative. Bottom line: when you came to us asking for input/feedback, you had to understand that our community is one that loves the Descent series deeply and passionately. I know that this is your mod, and that the decisions ultimately come down to you, but the fact that so many people have gone up in arms about this should at least give you the suspicion that you may be making a mistake here.

[Pun]

Alright, this is totally out of hand. Thread closed.