Comments ..

[Sup]

ive been out of the loop here for a while, just stopped by on a whim

a few comments:

1 - wow

2 - this looks like the closest thing to a possible D4 i've seen in ... ever

3 - that pyro is the best ive ever seen anywhere

4 - really hoping this doesnt go vapor on us

5 - see #4

questions: (if you can answer at this stage)


- how much fine tuning control can you get over the flight mechanics with the mod system in Doom3?

if the pyro doesnt fly right, it will kill the mod (koolbear will concur with me on this no doubt .. sup MIKE!!

- are you working double hard for the joystick support? with the third twist axis support?

good cause lack of that will serverly hamper this. if you cant do it ask us and we will chip in the money to hire you somebody that can (im serious)

- do you have any true oldschool people helping you balance this thing and give you advice as it comes along? because we can find you some

good luck with this guys, you just got me excited about descent again!

Sup
DBB Co-founder
Hall of Famer

[Duper]

Hey sup!

Welcome back. There might be stick support, but it will be one of the last things delt with as the Dm3 engine doesn't really support sticks. .. the code is \"kinda there\" per Hex, but it's not full blown and functional. We mouse it for now. 0.0.3 is getting closer to release.

Even now it plays pretty good.

[Narfig_Agar]

ive been out of the loop here for a while, just stopped by on a whim

a few comments:

1 - wow
2 - this looks like the closest thing to a possible D4 i've seen in ... ever
3 - that pyro is the best ive ever seen anywhere
4 - really hoping this doesnt go vapor on us

Aw shucks..you're too kind. That "D4" word still gives me the heebie jeebies though.

- how much fine tuning control can you get over the flight mechanics with the mod system in Doom3?

if the pyro doesnt fly right, it will kill the mod

We're always working on it. We've made quite a few things (like bobbing and trichording) server side cvars so if you don't like the way we've defaulted it, you can change it yourself.

- are you working double hard for the joystick support? with the third twist axis support?

good cause lack of that will serverly hamper this. if you cant do it ask us and we will chip in the money to hire you somebody that can (im serious)

Sadly there's no exposed joystick code in the Doom 3 engine. It's not that we need to hire someone, we'd likely need a license for the Doom 3 engine to make it work. That's ~$100,000, so if you want to pass the hat, we'll promise you a free copy of the game. That being said, we know it's important to some folks so we have some ideas to try to hack it in later, but there are many other things that need to come first.

- do you have any true oldschool people helping you balance this thing and give you advice as it comes along? because we can find you some

We'll, I'm on the team, and I'm pretty oldschool (I was Garthok on Kali). Or wait, maybe I'm just old... what were we talking about again?

We try to make the mod as open and public as possible and we are always interested in feedback (even from Mobius!! ), so by all means spend the $20 on Doom3, install the latest version of IC and join us on our site. You can even watch and comment on most of the internal stuff that goes on. Really the only things that are in protected forums are file locations and such.

003 is coming soon and contains some cool surprises. Check it out at http://www.chmodoplusr.com/IntoCerberon/index.php

Thanks again for the kind words!

[Duper]

It's not that we need to hire someone, we'd likely need a license for the Doom 3 engine to make it work. That's ~$100,000,...

Whoa... when was this found out?

[Narfig_Agar]

It's not that we need to hire someone, we'd likely need a license for the Doom 3 engine to make it work. That's ~$100,000,...

Whoa... when was this found out?

That's just my limited audio guy understanding of the situation. Not enough exposed code to make it work. Hexetic would know the details.

[Duper]

yeah, that much I knew. I've talked to Hexetic before about it. Q4 has the support, but I know the guys don't want to use Q4.

[Shadowfury333]

yeah, that much I knew. I've talked to Hexetic before about it. Q4 has the support, but I know the guys don't want to use Q4.

Good thing too, at least for me. Due to the age and make of my video card (ATI RADEON 9200), I have 2 rendering choices: pixel shaders with full-screen green tint, or color without pixel shaders(which makes Q3 look good). Doom 3, on the other hand, works fine.

[Narfig_Agar]

Q4 has the support, but I know the guys don't want to use Q4.

4 - really hoping this doesnt go vapor on us
5 - see #4

We've come this far with Doom 3 and although newer engines might be sexy...an engine change is a bad idea IMHO. I mean, we're still working on .003 here!

[HeXetic]

Joystick support isn't available in Doom 3, but it might be possible to hack it in with DirectX or SDI; I've sort of partially looked into it, but since no-one actually on the team is adamant about integrating it, it's sort of on the back burner. I think what might happen is that we might eventually migrate to Q4 to get the joystick support, the improved lighting, and the facial animation system, but \"eventually\" could be a long time and no-one's making any real push for it.

As for the actual flight mechanics, the only limitation so far encountered is that Doom 3 doesn't allow for spherical bounding boxes, which makes movement a little tricky - for me, the coder - and means maps have to be built giant-scale, but shouldn't be too much of an issue for the player if me and the mappers do our jobs right. Stuff like bobbing and angular/linear acceleration is completely under our control.

Balancing the game requires that we first implement more than just two weapons, so right now I'm sure it's terribly imbalanced, especially since players start with all the guns and pickups behave in a standard FPS fashion. We're focusing on making it just sound and feel cool for the moment.

We're still trying to wrap up some of the to-do items for IC 003; being an amateur production, the flow of work does tend to wax and wane a bit.

If anyone would like to get their hands on internal builds to see where we're at, just register on the IC forums and let me know.

[Grendel]

Check this for stick support -- R could be better but it works.

[Duper]

Really though; it's a whole lot more important to get the main stuff set first.

.. i can wait. : ) I was a mouser to start with anyways.

[Sup]

Joystick support isn't available in Doom 3, but it might be possible to hack it in with DirectX or SDI;

I've sort of partially looked into it, but since no-one actually on the team is adamant about integrating it, it's sort of on the back burner.

Sounds like - from the perspective of most of your potential users, that this is your biggest problem then.

I mean Im sure its going to be a great looking game and an impressive project to finish just to say that you did it.

But what you are saying here tells me you are going to lose a good 75 to 80% of your potential users right off the top.

You might get new people but the existing base of players will take a look around and say "cool ...wait , what? no joystick support!? oh..." and then not play this.

Better: accept this, salvage what you can and port the mod over to Q4 where you can get actual working, flying Pyros that can manuever.

Im not trying to burst your bubble, Im just being
honest here. Why risk doing all this work and having it die for lack of interest

.

[Sup]

dbl

[Sup]

Really though; it's a whole lot more important to get the main stuff set first.

.. i can wait. : ) I was a mouser to start with anyways.

Duper, what Im pointing out is that for the majority of people with Descent games the joystick support (specifically, twist joystick support) IS one of the main things.

- Descent is a competitive multiplayer game

- Control of 6doF was always the biggest obstacle to getting players to learn how to play and stick around long enough to be competitive

- Mouse was always a "second best" method of controlling 6DoF and I knew of very few people who reached competition level skill (Birdseye the most obvious example) and could hang

I hear what you are saying but I guarantee most people are not going to feel the same way. Its not that they wont think its a cool looking mod, they simply wont play it

.

[Duper]

yup, I know.

I also know from reading on their board and posts here that it's something to be worked on yet, just not the highest priority as there are more important matters with the mod at preasent. I was expressing my patience. ; )

[Narfig_Agar]

Well, we're not 100% sure Q4 has actual working joystick code either, unless you're developing for XBox360. Frying pan...meet fire.

Let's face it, few developers expect you to have a joystick hooked up to your PC to play a FPS. I think they were more common back in the pre-mouselook days of D1 and D2. Now there is Doom 3 for Xbox, so someone, somewhere implemented it. But without the source code we are limited. I would guess they just used DirectX to handle it all (as we might be able to).

We hear you, we'd also like to have proper joystick support and it might turn out to be simple. Until then there is this solution.

[Mobius]

IC site is dead.

YEP, I need to beat my dead horse some more about Joystick support.

Without it, the entire mod is a waste of time - if the idea is to produce a Descent-style mod/game. It'd be a bit like making a Star Wars movie, but not having any Jedi in it. I certainly won't even THINK about installing the mod until such time as the JS is fully supported. In fact, I'd be happy to pay some money to have it included. I'm THAT keen to play the game.

Without JS support, the mod becomes little more than a coding exercise for the talented people working on it, rather than a viable game that Descenter players will enjoy. I just can't stress that enough. It should be by far the highest item on the priority list, and all other work should be set aside until it is solved. If it's not solvable, then the project should die, or it should be moved to an engine which DOES have full joystick support. I predict that a cube for a bounding box is also going to prove something of a game-killer. But that is yet to be proved.

Saying this however, I must say, the mod is looking brilliant, with the possible exception of the ridiculously large scale of the Pyro. The published photo would allow about 8 of those guys to stand side-by-side in the cockpit of the Pyro. Imagine a Fighter plane with a cockpit that big? GOOD LORD, someone got their scales a but mixed up there I think.

[Top Gun]

Oh come on, Moby. A joystick isn't utterly vital to playing Descent, and you know it. I'm sure there are any number of players out there who could kick your ass (and obviously mine) with nothing more than a keyboard. And you even acknowledged the fact that there are good mousers out there. I've never played with a mouse for a day in my life, but I'd try it in an instant to play this thing. (Hell, I might even wind up buying Doom 3 because of it, regardless of how crappily my PC would run it.) And, like has been said repeatedly, with a bit of joystick emulation software, it's fully possible to get a stick working in-game. Come off your high horse and enjoy what these guys have been able to accomplish so far.

And I don't know what screenshots you're looking at, but the pic with the Pyro and human looks exactly right to me in terms of scale. We're talking about a friggin' interstellar-capable spaceship here, not a hoverboard. You want bad scale, just look at the hostages in D1/2, or even worse, the human models in D3.

[Narfig_Agar]

Just for fun, here's a pic of an F14



and the Human vs Pyro pic



*shrug* I think the pyro actually looks a little smaller.

Edit: BTW, the site is back up.

[Lothar]

The pyro does look a little smaller... but the F-14 cockpit is the right size for 2 people. The Pyro cockpit looks big enough for 4 people (2 rows of 2) sitting on very tall chairs.

IMO, just narrowing it at the top a bit would make a big difference...