Mobius is back to pimp the Retrovirus game

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 3:38 pm

Yep. It's me. But the DBB won't let me login using my old user name. How are all you lot? Still, bitter, cynical and endlessly disappointed with having to play a shitty 13+ year old game, with massive bugs and no players?

Well, now you don't have to any more - as the new Descent-like 6DOF game Retrovirus has a playable Alpha out right now: http://cadenzainteractive.com/ The full game will be released before Christmas this year. That is carved in stone.

This is a playable Alpha, with mouse control only - and there is no trichording as yet, but joystick and trichording ARE COMING. This small, but very talented team has spent over 2 years working on this 6DOF game, and what they have done so far is looking very good.

Cadenza have strongly implied, without actually coming out and saying so, that this game will have 2 play modes, an FPS mode, and a Descent mode. The D-mode will support trichording, and faster ships, but with rate-limited turning, just like in Descent.

I have assembled a full FAQ of the game, and will continue adding to the FAQ as time goes on: http://cadenzainteractive.com/SolSurviv ... =15&t=1266

Please do take a look at the game: the engine is beautiful, and you can easily see how this game could re-ignite the Descent community, and start a resurgence in 6DOF gaming. The game is designed to allow FPS players who are used to mouse-look, to play in a 6DOF environment, without overwhelming them with the difficulties of joystick control.

The SDK, and level editor will be available some time after the release of the game: and this should excite you greatly, because a "Descent Total Conversion" will not only be possible - but Cadenza have designed the game so that "Descentizing" the game will not be very difficult.

I am very excited about the game so far - even though I am restricted to the mouse. The Multiplayer streams show Retrovirus being much much closer to Descent than any game since D3. I would encourage you to get involved: there will be a small beta testing group, who get to provide the feedback which will let Cadenza "dial in" the ship behaviour so it more closely resembles actual Descent - instead of a 6DOF-enabled shooter.

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 5:19 pm

Hey Mobius,

Are you part of the company?

TigerRaptor · Post by **TigerRaptor** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 5:24 pm

Little late to the punch.

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=19401

Valin Halcyon · Post by **Valin Halcyon** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 5:37 pm

Some topics are so full of fail they don't deserve a reply....except this reply.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 6:20 pm

No Merlin, I'm not! Great to see you are still hanging out here.

I have been providing a lot of feedback though, and am swapping emails with the team.

Valin: as cryptic as ever.

Yes, I know there has been a few topics about the game here

My reason for posting is to make absolutely sure you guys are going to do all you can to help the great people at Cadenza make a game we'll all love to play. I believe, that if the Descent community can provide the right technical input, and feedback in a way which reduces their development time to a minimum, it is highly likely we will end up with a game which allows "Descent Mode" games, where the performance of the Retrovirus "Agent" is exactly the same, as Descent 3 controls.

At the very worst end of the outcome spectrum, the game will have proper JS support, and some support for trichording.

At the "best possible" end, I think we're looking at a game whose ship ("agent") can feel just like Descent as soon as you drop into it and configure it up - right out of the box. It's my understanding that a "total conversion" of Retrovirus into a Descent Clone will be pretty straight forward affair, after the release of the SDK.

After Kickstarter failed to provide the money for a simultaneous release, Cadenza have committed to a "Q4 2012" release date - but unless some additional funding is acquired, the SDK and level editor and tools will not come out at the same time. Those would follow at an undecided date. I think that would be sub-optimal for the prospects of the game in general.

It's my view that everyone here should do everything they can to promote the game, and make a pre-purchase (at least) to give them a good opportunity to release the game complete with tools, and to keep playing the Alpha and providing feedback for the team.

These guys have put over 2 years of time, and by my calculations almost 10 man-years into the Retrovirus project. They are a very small team, with just seven people, and if Retrovirus doesn't work, then they might not survive (I'm speculating: I have no idea what their finances are like - but if they only need 75K to finish the game properly, they obviously don't have a lot!) and it would be a genuine shame to see ANY company trying to make a Descent-based game fold.

This community has been disappointed, let down, and lied to so many times, about games which "might be like Descent" - that I would think now Cadenza have announced that THE GAME WILL DEFINITELY BE RELEASED IN Q4 2012, then it's time for everyone to rally around the game, and do whatever they can - regardless of whether or not they think it's fantastic.

I'd crawl across broken glass to get my copy of Descent 4 - but Interplay are in a state of perpetual financial suicide, and the chances of Descent 4 have long gone I think. At least within the next 5 years.

Right now though, Retrovirus, and the team at Cadenza seem like the only game in town. AND IN MY VIEW, IT IS AN EXTREMELY GOOD GAME, with an absolute ton of potential - even without modding it to be the next Descent game.

TigerRaptor · Post by **TigerRaptor** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 6:33 pm

Valin go take it else where, not here.

Mobius if you want your original name back, pm Krom. Shouldn't be that hard to fix.

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 7:11 pm

Ya know I kinda still enjoy D3.
And the alpha kinda runs like crap on my system which I kinda can't upgrade.
And the devs kinda won't let me contribute to the game (though they were very polite about it).
But I'm kinda still watching it. And I was kinda one of the people who actually kinda backed it on kickstarter.

And I will kinda make you tired of that word.

Sergeant Thorne · Post by **Sergeant Thorne** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:13 pm

Good argument(s), Mobius. Thanks. Everyone needs a tactful kick in the pants every now and then.

Sergeant Thorne · Post by **Sergeant Thorne** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:35 pm

Mobius on Cadenza Forums wrote:The ability to export recorded games as an HD AVI, or MPG would be of huge value to the game and the developers: it will permit training videos, a big YouTube presense, and all sorts of bragging rights.

I just had to say, you really nailed it there. Right on. Descent 3 would have gotten so much more exposure, earlier on, if the video recording weren't so inescapably internal. If 6DOF is going to grab market share, that'll be a big part of it. Bravo.

Isaac · Post by **Isaac** » Mon Jul 16, 2012 8:52 pm

Didn't your old account have that pixar bird? Or was it a gargoyle? I'm getting accounts confused...

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 2:01 am

Though honestly, I'd give up on Descent 3 as a bit of a waste of space... D1 seems the most agreeable gameplay to emulate. I guess you could throw in burners if you had to, but keeping it simple...

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 4:00 pm

Currently, the DBB won't send me a password reset to my old email address, even though it is still valid and tested. I've asked Krom to activate the account again somehow. Great memory - yeah - the Pixar For The Birds icon. Io hope to get that account working again shortly.

I just got some very exciting news from Dylan at Cadenza. I have asked him to address the modding community in this week's stream video, and asked ahead of time, some of the issues which modders will want to address in any "total conversion" of Retrovirus into Descent.

Weapon behavior/appearance/speed: Editor does it already.
Trichording: Not in yet, but would be trivial to implement.
Afterburner: Could likely be achieved with current boosting parameters. If not, trivial to add.
Control of "hitbox": Can already be edited.
Control of Health: Could do this already in editor.
Control of Cycles: Could already do this in the editor, plus, could easily add powerups or energy stations to refill with triggers/items.
Ship Models: Trivial to replace in editor, if you have models and an understanding of our content pipeline.
Additional Ship Parameters: How so? Larger ships? Seems doable already, possibly.
Seeking Ability on Weapons: Already configurable mathematically in the editor.
Control over Weapon mount points: Probably needs programmer love. Not sure to what degree.
Ability to have weapons available only as pickups: Can do this already; might require some programmer love to restrict weapons between deaths, etc.
Ability to have players drop current weapons on death: Would require some programmer attention.
Automatic download of a MOD online: We're looking at ways that we might be able to integrate the mod community into our online presence via something like Steam Workshop, but first we have to find a way to get the editor out there!

So, there you have it - straight from the horse's mouth: Retrovirus is about 90% of the way to being Descent already - and the last 10% probably ain't hard.

BUT - before we go total modding on this game - let's concentrate on getting it as good as it possibly can be on release. Is it sacrilege to suggest that Retrovirus online might even be better than Descent gameplay online? 13 years of netcode, and security models have evolved since D3 - and I have a sneaking suspicion that when the game comes out, we can just climb in, and start fragging, and feel right at home.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 4:12 pm

Sirius wrote: I guess you could throw in burners if you had to, but keeping it simple...

It's already in the game. If you engage the boost feature while NOT activating forwards or backwards movement, it pushes you on the vector you were heading - AND YOUR MOUSE/JOY NOW ONLY CHANGES THE DIRECTION YOU POINT, NOT THE DIRECTION YOU ARE TRAVELLING.

It allows you to boost away from an attacker, and spin to face them, and return fire, all while racing on that original vector. As soon as you touch a movement key, or release the boost button, it disengages the vector-thrusting feature.

It's actually damn cool.

The Cadenza guys have put a TON of thought into the game - and there are some very cool behaviours within it.

My biggest problem is that I can't extend my body into a Retrovirus "agent" because of my useless keyboard skills with my destroyed elbow. So it's very hard to give proper feedback about how the ship handles. Joystick support is coming, but until then, I am floundering around badly.

I got a SpaceNavigator the other day, but it's not a silver bullet which resolves issues of mouse control of a 6DOF game. But I will continue working on it, to see if I can force myself to be a mouser. I don;t want to be excluded from the majority of the online RV gaming - which will, most likely, be limited to mouse-look.

Once the Joystick support comes (I believe it will be in the next Alpha release), then I'll be able to provide some proper feedback as to how the ship actually "feels" - because right now I can't feel anything at all, except excitement!

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 4:14 pm

I have an idea for a singleplayer storyline for a Descent mod. I was going to use it for something else but since I know how easy it will be to create this...

Even though I know you all want multiplayer XD.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 4:41 pm

About the Editor.

Once that stuff was done on our end, we'd release the editor as a beta, taking a wave of bug feedback and suggestions with the early adopters. We'd start incorporating suggestions for features, as well as bug fixes, into patches, just like we do with the main game.

We'd work directly with a mod group too, if one became big and wanted to really do "D4". Ideally, as our Kickstarter got at, we wanted to be able to do the editor at the same time as the game for public release, so we could really build that kind of Descent community content from the beginning. Not sure how it's going to work now, but we're pretty determined to get our tools out there! They're really well built, not just for a team of our size, and they're easy enough that a fairly green level designer like myself can use them

roid · Post by **roid** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 8:53 pm

Mobius wrote:
Sirius wrote: I guess you could throw in burners if you had to, but keeping it simple...
It's already in the game. If you engage the boost feature while NOT activating forwards or backwards movement, it pushes you on the vector you were heading - AND YOUR MOUSE/JOY NOW ONLY CHANGES THE DIRECTION YOU POINT, NOT THE DIRECTION YOU ARE TRAVELLING.

It allows you to boost away from an attacker, and spin to face them, and return fire, all while racing on that original vector. As soon as you touch a movement key, or release the boost button, it disengages the vector-thrusting feature.

It's actually damn cool.

hey that IS pretty interesting.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 11:56 pm

It's a different kind of thing to learn than the Descent tri-chording deal, so it does help to make the game more interesting if it works well. I presume you aren't locked into that if you tap the boost or release/90 turn/press again.

Full-speed turns were possible in the Descent games for skilled pilots, but not while burning. Laying down cover fire is the more important part of that anyway, though.

And anyway, it's nice to have something of some kind in development in the first place.

cydereal · Post by **cydereal** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 4:04 pm

I've had a lot of good conversation with Mobius already! He's not with the team, but we're realizing the more we go on that we need to be very open with our development process. Having conversations about the editor, about Descent features, and about current Retrovirus design is really great. In a way, learning from you guys about Descent is like when I teach new Starcraft 2 fans about Brood War.

If we get our editor out, you could effectively emulate any of the Descent games. Our Kickstarter only got about 40% of what we were looking for, but part of that is that we are bad at PR and we worked in a vacuum for too long. We're going to be fixing that with an alpha release.

The current plan is to release the alpha with some non-campaign single player content, internet and LAN multiplayer, and to do so on a platform that is big enough that we don't have to manage anything outside of patching and community. We're going to be releasing on Gamestop's download service--essentially the same service we did with Stardock's Impulse, except now owned by Gamestop. The game itself will be DRM free. You'll be able to run it without Impulse running at all, for all of our game features, though you will need to use Impulse to download it for the first time. They've made us a sweet deal where they're going to promote us in exchange for being exclusive during part or all of our alpha pre-release phase. Hopefully we get the momentum going with that.

I'm around all day if you guys want to pick my brain. You can also always email me, dbarker at cadenzainteractive dot com.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Thu Jul 19, 2012 8:21 am

Hi Mobman. Glad to see you survived the earthquake in Christchurch area or do you live away from there?

Burlyman · Post by **Burlyman** » Fri Jul 20, 2012 3:21 am

I'll believe it when I see it.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Fri Jul 20, 2012 5:07 pm

woodchip wrote:Hi Mobman. Glad to see you survived the earthquake in Christchurch area or do you live away from there?

Thanks for the Shout Out Woodchip!

Yep, we've had a really rough 2+ years here. Over 10,000 quakes - at least 3 of them greater than 6 on the Richter scale, and one over 7. Over 15,000 homes are either demolished or being pulled down. The central city is still mostly closed, and well over 1,400 major buildings have either been pulled down, or will come down. Out of the high-rises (That's 20 stories in NZ!) only 1 building has survived.

The home I was in at the time of the big quakes was a brand new one, and in a part of town that wasn't badly affected by liquifaction, and there was no damage to the house at all.

Just about every chimney in the area is gone, and just about every brick home lost exterior walls, and many brick buildings either collapsed in the quakes or were promptly destroyed.

To get a feeling for the damage - check out these videos:

No one I know was killed, or even injured - but friends have lost houses, and cars, and businesses.

I recently bought an old house with my new wife (Yeah, I got married! To a lovely Korean woman., Jay) and it is very close to one of the Red Zones (Red Zones are areas where entire suburbs are written off, and won't be built on for the foreseeable future. There are cracks in the interior walls of the house, and the driveway is far from flat, but the house itself is fine.

Damage form the quakes is weird: you drive down a street (When I say "drive", what I mean is "carefully navigate the Porsche through the areas that were once roads"!) and there'll be no obvious damage, and then there's a single house totally destroyed. In the bad areas, everyone has left as the homes don't have sewer or water and are largely ruined. In many places you can walk onto a property and walk right up, reach out your hand and grab the gutters on the side of the building: many houses literally sank like leaky boats in the liquified soil close to rivers and streams.

But people are in good spirits. We're still shaking though: we had another 4 point something about 15 minutes ago. There's billions of dollars flowing into the city now, but the rebuild hasn't started yet - and there is a lot of confusion about the process. It will be a painful process - but the city will survive, and with very significant areas of once-suburbs converted to parklands. All the houses will be removed, paths, foundations and fences taken, while all the tree will be left standing, and the areas mowed, to create public parks with streets through them.

So at least in a year or so, I'll be able to make a couple of wicked Disc Golf courses within walking distance from home. Every cloud - right?

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Fri Jul 20, 2012 5:38 pm

Jeez...this is the sort of thing that never makes the news here. I mean, we heard all about the quakes themselves, but not the long-term ramifications and plans.

roid · Post by **roid** » Fri Jul 20, 2012 7:16 pm

Isaac wrote:Didn't your old account have that pixar bird? Or was it a gargoyle? I'm getting accounts confused...

I think the Gargoyle was MD, a while back tho

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 7:54 am

Glad to hear you came out ok Mobius.

I played the freebee part of retrovirus and it certainly has the feel of Descent. What I don't like is the music. Too bland for my tastes. Not enough energy to make one feel like saddling up and moving out to kill bots. Second thing are the gun sounds. Way to wimbly. Most games have this problem tho. More frequent saves might be nice also.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 7:49 pm

Yeah - CHCH is a mess. It will take at least 20 years to recover. Maybe longer. They're spending 4 billion alone on road repairs, but even with just about every roading team in the country working here, it will still be 7 years before the roads alone are repaired.

My feeling about the playable Alpha music is moot. I hate in game music, and always mute it. I'd have no idea what the D3 music sounds like, except that I downloaded it! Although I did not mind the "plink, plonk" sort of sounds, which reminded me of TRON 2.0.

To me though, the ship feels a bit weak: mostly because it can't accelerate in the sliding directions quickly. Then there's the lack of one-hit-kill weapons, which add to the feeling. Part of this may be that I absolutely suck at mousing in a 6DOF game due to my destroyed elbow. I even bought a SpaceNavigator to try out, but the Alpha key mapping makes the slide down control work very poorly, because only shift or ctrl can be used to slide down.

On the plus side, the mouse does seem to make aiming easier. I can't believe I just typed that.

Perhaps once the Joystick is enabled (which I understand will be the Playable Alpha 2, in the second week of August) I will get a much better feeling for how powerful the ship is.

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Sat Jul 21, 2012 10:25 pm

Mobius wrote: My feeling about the playable Alpha music is moot. I hate in game music, and always mute it...

He blasphemes.
HE BLASPHEMES!!!!

Srsly I agree with Woodchip, the music sounds good but it would be nice if it was a little bit heavier -- but I say the same about most game soundtracks today. Apparently the multiplayer soundtrack will be more like Descent.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 8:01 am

Something else game needs is a map, at least showing where you've been. Oh and the lurid colors reminds me of original Forsaken.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 6:31 pm

Cadenza are designing the game in a fairly linear fashion, and they say that a map should not be required, but they are still investigating the option. My belief is that a small map outline constantly displayed in the HUD might help people avoid vertigo.

The "Lurid colours" as you call them, aren't reflected in the multiplayer maps I have seen. Some of the Team game maps actually cause the colours of the rooms to change depending on who controls them, starting out with an off-white colour.

Frankly, I could never ever understand how anyone could play a game with music in the background. And for that reason, I never even understood why games had music at all.

But I despise personal music players too, and the only time I ever tried skiing with a player was when I was instructing, and I just about killed myself. I found that not being able to hear my skis really messed me up.

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 7:30 pm

Yah, it just hurts because I'm working as a game composer, I really like game soundtracks, and no one really likes to hear people say in any number of words that "your job is worthless".

I don't really understand how anyone could play a game without music in the background... to me it would feel boring in the same way as watching a movie without the soundtrack -- but at the same time game soundtracks offer more freedom for experimentation and new ideas, which is really what makes them better than movie soundtracks in my opinion.

More to the point I feel that playing a game without the music is, not getting the full emotional experience, the same reason you wouldn't watch a movie without the soundtrack. But that isn't my whole story, I even play Descent 3's multiplayer with Foobar playing music in the background and I don't care if it makes me a worse player.

To change the subject back to the topic that you want it to be, I've tried to try the alpha, but my laptop kind of doesn't like it just yet. It's been too pampered with all this "release-ready software" I guess, and it just can't handle a game that isn't optimized. That said the game looks like one my laptop will be able to play once it has been finished and, this is kind of important, can run at graphical settings other than max. Also kind of important is an options menu that doesn't crash.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 8:40 pm

Plenty of games wouldn't be anywhere near as good without a soundtrack so don't worry about that Alter-Fox. Although I must admit I did always disable music when playing Descent multiplayer (except for co-op) games, mostly because even if it was playing I would be so focused on the visual and audio cues from the regular sound effects that I wouldn't even hear the music, and also because on the occasions when I did hear the music it only distracted me. But Descent is definitely a fringe case, MP Descent is so demanding of focus that there simply wasn't room for music.

I do however pretty much universally leave music playing during Descent and all other single player games (and some multiplayer exceptions like Left 4 Dead, which its pretty much required it since the music is also an audio cue to when the AI Director is about to screw your party over). In most single player / linear co-op games the music helps complete the atmosphere, so it is definitely useful and an important part of game design.

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Sun Jul 22, 2012 9:48 pm

Yeah, I couldn't even dream of playing most singleplayer games without their accompanying soundtracks, especially since there's so much great music out there. Multiplayer's a bit of a different story, at least if you're trying to play seriously instead of just goofing off.

*hums the start of the L4D Tank theme*

Burlyman · Post by **Burlyman** » Wed Jul 25, 2012 2:58 am

What a silly thing to say, but understandable considering the source. I only play games for the gameplay, not the soundtrack.

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Wed Jul 25, 2012 6:13 am

Well I'm not going to pay attention to someone who's trying to tick me off.
Good attempt, though, Neo.

Gekko71 · Post by **Gekko71** » Fri Jul 27, 2012 1:28 am

Good to have you back Mobius.

The thing I like about this game is the pacing. It's been a long time since I felt like I was *sneaking* around a 6DOF map. While the AI of the bots in the time I've played so far isn't nearly as intimidating as it as in D1-3 was, I'm still finding myself *expecting* an ambush and being cautious.

The old "tunnel rat" vibe was definitely present for me, something I haven't really felt since I last played D1 regularly (which is a bloody long time).

Thank you Retrovirus for scratching that itch!

Looking forward to seeing (and playing) more as free time allows.

Avder · Post by **Avder** » Mon Aug 06, 2012 8:05 pm

Downloaded the alpha and tried it out last night, and I'm impressed. It looks like a modern Descent game should. The only thing lacking was the controls, and that's apparently going to be fixed in a release sometime around September, so I can wait for them to implement the ability to set your own key mappings and whatnot.

Will be very interested to see what the final version of this game looks like.

MaxT · Post by **MaxT** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 11:15 am

Has anyone else seen Mobius bragging about hik 100k killes on the youtube page? :p

Burlyman · Post by **Burlyman** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 5:42 pm

Alter-Fox wrote:Well I'm not going to pay attention to someone who's trying to tick me off.
Good attempt, though, Neo.

I wasn't trying to tick you off.

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 5:45 am

That's what they all say

I'd like to believe you're being honest but... well, chiming into a dead discussion to offer a point of view that's counter to what the rest of the people discussing it expressed, even if it is honestly your own opinion -- and knowing from previous posts that some of these people do feel strongly about it. Complete with a snide, aloof comment about who these people are.
The point is, even if the main intent of your post was harmless you presumably read the previous posts and you knew it would be likely to not be perceived as harmless because you're not an idiot

.

Besides, let's be honest, your reputation precedes you. (You're like our pet troll.)

Sergeant Thorne · Post by **Sergeant Thorne** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 6:12 pm

Alter-Fox wrote:Besides, let's be honest, your reputation precedes you. (You're like our pet troll.)

LOL! DBB's Pet Troll

MaxT! Heya.

TigerRaptor · Post by **TigerRaptor** » Wed Aug 08, 2012 6:45 pm

That pet troll isn't potty trained you know.