DescentBB

Heheh.
Good call krom.

Krom wrote:You know, game development is a lot like fansubbing...

Yup...both parties are the uber-est of uber-nerds.

Top Gun wrote:

Krom wrote:You know, game development is a lot like fansubbing...

Yup...both parties are the uber-est of uber-nerds.

Temae... Oretachi wo baka ni suru na!

IF you adjust the levels on the image at the CD website you get this interesting vechile:



Doesn't look like the hellfire. Looks coool!

It does look like the hellfire to me.

It looks very similar, but wider and flatter?

Actually here are the pictures of the original ship code named HellFire. It is very different. It looks like it was totally redesigned.

Heh, it was prolly too Pyro-GL\\X like so they had to change it, my guess anyway.

so when does this come out ?

Big Flopy Donky Dic wrote:so when does this come out ?

A lot of people want to know this. The official release date is "TBA".

http://www.uplinkstudios.com/coredecision/index.html

\"coming soon\".

SOON /sun/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[soon] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adverb, -er, -est.
1. within a short period after this or that time, event, etc.: We shall know soon after he calls.
2. before long; in the near future; at an early date: Let's leave soon.
3. promptly or quickly: He came as soon as he could.
4. readily or willingly: I would as soon walk as ride.
5. early in a period of time; before the time specified is much advanced: soon at night; soon in the evening.
6. Obsolete. immediately; at once; forthwith.
—Idioms
7. sooner or later, eventually: Sooner or later his luck will run out.
8. would sooner, to prefer to: I would sooner not go to their party. Compare rather (def. .
[Origin: bef. 900; ME; OE sōna; c. OHG sān, Goth suns]

Seems Uplink's definition of \"soon\" conflicts with the official definition. Theirs is \"when we get around to it\" or \"not soon\" or \"at some indefinite point in the future\".

On the date \"15th January\" when a \"coming soon\" announcement is made, ordinary thinking is that this resolves to \"2 weeks or less\". I took a survey of my co-workers (who are mostly web developers) and the consensus is as follows:

1) \"Coming soon\" is 10 to 14 days. Extend this to 21 calendar days for unforeseen circumstances.
2) \"Coming Soon\" announcements which exceed 30 days without activity are calculated to create anger and frustration in users.
3) After 2 calendar months, most users will stop coming and assume the project is dead, and probably rightly so. All other users are thoroughly disillusioned.

It's been 2 months.

Note to Uplink: if you don't want the community bagging you, then do what you say you will: get your sh|t together and launch the web site, and stop being \"creative\" with English word defintiions.

Nobody cares when you do nothing - but when you SAY you are going to do something (and the initimation in a previous post was that it would be \"this weekend or so\") then you absolutely must do it. Children learn this early in life (or should be taught it, at any rate) so as to avoid embarrassment later in life when they lie about what they are going to do and get caught out in the lie.

Please ignore Mister Negativity ^^ , who probably has many skills of his own, but doesn't seem to be a good motivator.

For example (both edited for space and content):

Mobius wrote:... (insert Mobius' entire "Translation" posting, he thought it was supposed to be funny) ...

Mobius wrote:...Seems Uplink's definition of "soon" conflicts with the official definition. Theirs is "when we get around to it" or "not soon" or "at some indefinite point in the future". ...

... Note to Uplink: if you don't want the community bagging you, then do what you say you will: get your sh|t together and launch the web site, and stop being "creative" with English word defintiions. ...

... Nobody cares when you do nothing - but when you SAY you are going to do something (and the initimation in a previous post was that it would be "this weekend or so") then you absolutely must do it. Children learn this early in life (or should be taught it, at any rate) so as to avoid embarrassment later in life when they lie about what they are going to do and get caught out in the lie.

I, will wait patiently for the project to be finished. Keep up the good work. I look forward to seeing the finished product!

I think people are just frustrated that this game is being advertised here on the BB as a real game, as a professionally made game, and with all the bells and whistles a typical game has. You know, like Half-Life, or Quake, or heck even Descent.

I'm not saying it isn't any of these things; I'm the last person that knows. But I can say that this project isn't looking like what they portray it to be. And I think THAT is what's frustrating.

And just so no one is confused by my comments. I am not saying the project looks dumb, or anything that we've seen so far is crap. What I'm saying is that we're being teased a lot. And people can only take so much teasing.

In short, it's frustrating. That's all.

You have to remember too. It's not just the game developers who are putting a lot of their time into this project. The potential fans, the people that frequent these boards are putting a lot of time into it too. And they all just want to know if it's a good investment of their time. No one wants to start making levels, or follow the latest news if the game finally has no interest to them, OR if the game doesn't even launch. Some of these simple items aren't anywhere to be seen (launch date, what the story is, characters, weapons etc).

Heya.
I am sorry you guys see it as teasing, I will try not to give that impression any more. The fact is we are just slow, grinding this out as we can. I hold a full time job and so does zach. Coming Soon means that we plan to get it up there. Our development is going slowly right now, but steadily. We are still working on the portal and deciding what to do with it. Once we get this demo together we can use it to seek full scale funding at which point all the things we promise will come fast and furious, compared to this. We did not choose to advertise here on the dbb, I felt that since there was a post here on our game that I would love to open some dialog with the real descent community and let people know what we are really all about and where we stand in order to remove the thought that we might be teasing people with content and other various rumours. The state of Core Decision is this: We have network play, weapons have been fully documented and partially implemented, we have gotten permission from some popular descent level authors to use material they created which means there will be some familiar multiplayer layouts, although totally redone, and we have a few volunteers from the community that are contributing to the design process as well, hopefully ensuring a familiar feel to all Descent veterans. Our goal of competition grade multiplayer is looking very solid right now. I will continue to post here and keep the story straight as we continue our work.

All it says to me is that Uplink is severely underresourced. That kind of happens sometimes, but effects on the work may vary (I don't get to observe many studios in similar situations because I don't usually hear of them at that stage, assuming they normally pass through it - which is quite possible, every company starts somewhere).

Take it with a grain of salt if you will, but my opinion holds that most Descent levels were made in map/level design dark-ages, and as such are fairly low quality. Kind of like the (D1/2) artwork, except that owed far more to technical limitations than a general lack of creativity and design.

I remember back awhile ago about a guy who wrote a story when he was on his lunch break at work. Took him something like 10 years to complete the novel. When done and submitted for publication, the critics were all agog and compared his work to Shakespear.
Perhaps we will find such quality here. Follow your dreams guys, take your time and present to us a product worthy of praise.

Sirius wrote:Take it with a grain of salt if you will, but my opinion holds that most Descent levels were made in map/level design dark-ages, and as such are fairly low quality. Kind of like the (D1/2) artwork, except that owed far more to technical limitations than a general lack of creativity and design.

All we are using is the layout ideas from a couple more interesting levels, they will be completely remodeled with much more detail. We have plenty of original layouts as well.

psionik wrote:...we have gotten permission from some popular descent level authors to use material they created which means there will be some familiar multiplayer layouts, although totally redone....

I can just see it: a bunch of noobs flying around in SkyboxCD, AbendCD, and SubwayDancerCD. I'm not saying that you shouldn't remake those specific levels, because it would probably be stupid not to, but maybe rework more than just the visuals, to make sure that there aren't too many unbalanced one-shot-kill locations in the map. (A lot of that will be solved by proper weapon balance.)

if you don't want the community bagging you

Hah! Mobi thinks he's the community! What a maroon.

Have you been able to get hold of the truly classic level designers like Spaz and Sirian? Some of their D1/D2 stuff would be awesome to see rebuilt in CD.

Hey ummm.... Mobi.... you think your pretty smart. So.... why not help them and put your money where your mouth is? Just saying....

I believe he has a job.

Lothar, I have been trying (casually) to get in touch with Spaz to ask him if I can use The Manes.

We currently have plans to use only two levels from previous guys and no they are not subway dancer, halcyon, burning indika, skybox, brain salad, abend, or vveins. We do not plan to make every multiplayer level a port, just wanted a couple in there to pay respect to the hard work these community members have done as well as keep it real with some original faves. It's probably killing some ppl to know which ones I have selected.

Snoop, don't worry bud. All the weapons are one shot kills now. KIDDING :]
Balanced gameplay is the main focus here so you won't find many one shot kills except from the Melter, our charge gun.

[]V[]essenjah wrote:Hey ummm.... Mobi.... you think your pretty smart. So.... why not help them and put your money where your mouth is? Just saying....

What money?

Manes is good. I'd hope for at least a couple more classic levels. Black/White/Faded Rose, something by Vander, and maybe Athena. If you can get permission, of course...

Sirius wrote:I believe he has a job.

Yeah, but apparently he has time to post a bunch of derogative nonsense on this board.

psionik wrote:Balanced gameplay is the main focus here so you won't find many one shot kills except from the Melter, our charge gun.

Mwahaha, I hope it behaves exactly like Fusion in D1. I would never give it up! Especially if it throws your ship around with the same violence while you charge it. As long as the damage caused is worth every bit of it and more like charged Fusion in D1 is.

D1 Fusion is the ultimate because... One: it does tremendous damage and can destroy more then half the enemy types in the game in one shot, even if it is only a glancing blow. Plus it doesn't just kill one if they are lined up it can kill up to SIX of the average enemies with one shot.

Two: that is BEFORE YOU CHARGE IT UP! Once it is charged, its like shooting off a supernova in every shot. Excluding the bosses, there are only TWO robots in the game that can survive a clean hit from full charge Fusion (Homing hulk & Fusion hulk). Once it is a full charge shot, all but the most armored enemies in the game go down a half dozen at a time. The amount of damage dished out from a full charge Fusion shot in D1 is pure insanity. It makes D3 TriFusion feel like a child's toy gun that shoots foam balls. Every time I use it I feel like this should be a hack, this is like cheating, it is so powerful I can't believe it.

Finally: its HUGE, impossible to dodge completely in a standard size tunnel. Actually that was part of the challenge of using it and what helped balance it out. You had to really know how to handle the controls to get the ship to fire a shot down a tunnel without hitting the walls. The ship would buck, kick, bump into the walls and turn out of control. At first it was a MAJOR pain to get the ship to do _anything_ you want it to do when you try to charge that beast, let alone fire shot straight down a long hall. But if you do learn how to tame it and quit crashing into the walls it will reward you with a huge pay off every time.

I used to set off robot matcens in D1 till they ran out, and then I would use Fusion to kill all 30 robots in one fight in only a couple seconds. I remember many times when I would have been fighting forever to get past a matcen that spawns those wretched platform bots that fire 500 billion concussion missiles at you per second, but I cleared it in no time flat with just a few Fusion shots. (That was something else about D1 that ruled, just a couple robots together could kill you from max shields almost instantly if you weren't careful.) If this cannon has that same kind of insane power I will definitely love playing this game. But if it ends up being like D2 Fusion, or D3 Fusion, I'll just go cry in the corner...Then eventually get up and work on developing a mod to resurrect the almighty D1 Fusion Cannon. Just make sure that every element, including the ship moving and turning on its own while charging can be implemented, I would be perfectly happy with that option as well.

D1 fusion is the only fusion.

Where'd you get this \"up to 6 enemies\" idea? D1 fusion could kill as many enemies as you could line up. One, two, six, six hundred, whatever... as long as you could line up a single shot, you could take them all out.

Lothar wrote:Where'd you get this "up to 6 enemies" idea? D1 fusion could kill as many enemies as you could line up. One, two, six, six hundred, whatever... as long as you could line up a single shot, you could take them all out.

Odd, in single player from what I remember Fusion always quit after the third robot a blob hit, since each round is two blobs, thats a max of 6 robots per shot. I can remember quite clearly firing charged shots into matcens filled with plasma bots, and it would kill exactly 6 per shot. It definitely didn't kill them all, and given the amount of bots cluttered into one place, it definitely would have if it really was unlimited.

Um, even the Descent manual stated that the fusion bolts would only go until they ran out of energy.

While The Manes weren't the prettiest levels around, they certainly were well-built for gameplay, and you could probably get a fair bit of visual mileage out of them. Plus Spaz is a legend anyway and his levels are well worth adapting (well, perhaps one could give Minerva a miss considering every man and his dog did that already).

D3 levels are harder to adapt well as they leave less to the imagination - and not to mention most of the popular ones kind of ... forgot to have a layout.

It'd be cool to see some of Kruel's single-player missions translated though. Most good D2 stuff was built for the engine, but he had a tendency to build in spite of it.

I just played an awful d1 level I built a long time ago where one guy explodes and drops 127 of those little triangle robots. 5 fusion shots took out the whole pack, which means we're getting at least 26 per shot. But then, their explosions might have helped take each other out...

Also keep in mind that robots in a cluster tend to shoot each other, there is no \"don't shoot if friends are in the way\" in the D1/D2 AI.

the triangle robots don't shoot.

Sirius wrote:D3 levels are harder to adapt well as they leave less to the imagination - and not to mention most of the popular ones kind of ... forgot to have a layout.

We selected the two d3 levels we will be using for their exceptional layouts. To me, The Manes is synonymous with descent 1. I would look into getting more older levels but honestly we want original material in our game, the ones we are using are just to pay repects and possibly rescue them from obscurity. I'm really going to try to get some content out this weekend, we are working hard right now on getting things together for the next set of screenshots and possibly a gameplay movie. And no, I am not going to post 127 screenshots this time.

Good deal, psionik!

Try to get ahold of OtherOne and get his levels in CD..you hardly need to touch them at all!

psionik wrote:And no, I am not going to post 127 screenshots this time.

126 then Just keep some information coming out about it, the natives get restless without it >.>

Still ironing out some code issues before I can take screens, I want the next set to properly represent the large jump forward we have taken in the past few months.

anything new? been a couple days now..

Still no CD web site.
*sigh*