DescentBB

okay before i start... this was the umpteenth time i had the game crash when i was getting killed by a blackshark missile...
is the missile so powerful that it rips the in-game spacetime fabric and crashes the game?


one thing that i remembered D3 for was the colours... and thinking about it now that i've played through it, its definitely true... especially the last section of the last level, where the tunnels had an average colour of purple but had blue, cyan and red lights , the effect is subtle but it definitely left an impression on me, its as if it was an expensive nightclub or something

and... the final boss.... it seems that a straight up fight against boss robots was never really part of the Descent formula, since every boss fight in D1 and D2 was accompanied by cloaks and invulnerabilities... in D3 the first two boss fights are more conventional, except the final boss , sometimes if i shoot a blackshark missile at it, an invulnerability or a blackshark missile pickup pops up...
and the boss fight was a relative breeze, as per moon's descendarium if you use the antivirus on it, it becomes paralyzed , and youve already won half the match when you unload all your blacksharks and mega missiles, and picked up the invulnerability by the time the antivirus wears off and the boss counterattacks , first by using the long range omega sweep, then creating a blackshark explosion, these attacks happen consecutively and are wasted on you since you have the invulnerability... it completely bypasses the frag missile phase

and if you use the fusion cannon on it, you will defeat the boss and trigger the final cutscene before the invulnerability has run out, or event the antivirus so you can kill the boss without any risk of taking damage... this is much faster than using missiles, although a direct hit with a napalm missile is a quick kill too, and that was how i first killed the boss

i died alot more often fighting the homunculus than the final boss...

i found a thread somewhere which said that to fix the terrain rendering distance dropping back to 40 , you have to reduce the terrain detail to below 26... that thread is on descentbb.com , and the terrain detail was referred to as 'texture slider' , but it fixed it for me... abit of extra roundness on the terrain is not worth losing the view of the rest of the terrain, especially since the actual terrain texture looks so dated up close anyway


im still trying to find a way to get the in-game sounds to play properly in directsound3d , tho... shooting flares and opening doors are silent, and explosions are very quiet

fixing the audio popping on continuous sounds with the high quality audio setting would be nice too



i just realized, arent those earthshaker bomblets that the hellion assault mech was shooting ? dark blue missiles with blue streaks, which also do alot of damage... i suppose the earthshaker missile would be quite redundant in D3 since so many other things shake the level

It seemed like a modified cyclone to me.

The cut scene is kinda fun, huh?

I heard they were super-mega-missiles.

But I think Earthshaker bomblets are a cooler way to interpret it .

whats with D3 and those class 1 drones from D1 anyway? when i first came across them on the homunculus, i thought it was a nice touch... when i got to the moon level, getting into the ruins of the first level as also interesting, somehow there was a surviving class 1 drone which was also turned into a kamikaze drone... but then it seems that there are also kamikaze class 1 drones on the military spaceship for some reason... and then the ending cutscene literally features nothing but empty space , the pyro, and hundreds of class 1 drones doing nothing but wiggling their arms, nevermind all the other robots which existed in D1 or D3 ...


but i suppose that this is an effect of Dravis's modification of the virus, the original virus in D1 caused them to behave like they did in D1, but in D3, the drones in the homunculus and the single drone on the moon have been infected by the modified virus, turning them into silent kamikaze droids... and the virus also corrupted the matcens to keep on spawning class 1 drones

i still dont understand how can anyone write a novel based on the Descent universe... especially when you have basic things like somehow having 'normal' earthlike gravity in a space station orbiting the earth, or being able to visit different planets like flying between different cities... there is a real life experiment simulating a trip to Mars by isolating the test subjects for 520 days, but the custscene between level 4 and 5 was as if it only took an afternoon... or despite being in Seoul in the future and equpped with a sophisticated mapping system, you still needed to physically travel around to get the map data... i guess the future , according to 1999, is when google maps does not exist...

carmatic wrote:i still dont understand how can anyone write a novel based on the Descent universe...

Not just one novel, but three! They are entertaining too. A lot of embellishment, but ties in perfectly with the Descent framework.

and yeah, if they want to make a throwback level on level 10, at least get the level arrangement right.... unless this isnt actually the same mine that you went through in D1 level 1? just one which just happens to have the same starting room and the downward curving corridor, and what appears to be the same room at the bottom of the corridor, but on the right side of the mine instead of the left....

it is the starting Descent room..... just after the reactor was blown....... thats whats left of it

But the downwards tunnel is on the wrong side. That is readily noticable to all the single-player obsessed Descenters.

and whats the deal with the Red Acropolis way of thinking, anyway...

first you break into a PTMC facility, then you break someone out of a Novak prison, and then you go to the lab you saw in the beginning cutscene and apparently interfere with an active investigation according to the radio dialogue, pretty much wiping out all the robots ,ransacking ammo and resources, making a big mess and leaving the place in a state of alert every time... and then for some reason they decide to send you, in your fully armed ship, to the PTMC headquarters , via the subways where you most likely got killed, just to deliver some data to PTMC, eschewing any formality and convenience for the sake of irony... and you show up in the middle of Seoul, annihilate the robotic police force , and destroy the defences of the people you are supposed to be showing your data cartridge to, even killing the human pilots defending the area

and then they are surprised when they are labelled as terrorists?

how do the novels account for this kind of source material....

carmatic wrote:how do the novels account for this kind of source material....

You're right, the D3 story is pretty wack. The novels handle the whole thing completely different through the introduction of several secondary characters, each with different relationships between Dravis, Suzuki, Harper, and Sweitzer. The relationship between these main characters are explored in more detail, providing more nuance.

I personally love how Suzuki has a daughter who's the lead singer in some crazy punk band.

well on one hand you could call it a poorly written storyline, but i'd rather call it a 'loose' storyline

i do wish that more popular modern games can have loosely written storylines like this and engage players through the interactive elements


question, is it possible to alter gravity in a D3 level? like reduce it when the level is set on a moon , or disable it altogether for microgravity environments so that the debris will scatter D1 and D2 style and napalm blobs will not 'fall' down...
judging by the space station and military spacehip levels, apparently in the future artificial gravity would be quite common, you can actually see people running around on the spaceship, even though for a person accessing some of the areas (especially on the space station) would require some form of personal anti-gravity device.... to cancel out the artifical gravity.... hmm....

but anyway, i guess variable gravity isnt possible in D3 if gravity is constant across all the single player levels, which is a shame gameplay wise since things like the napalm blobs and explosive/goal scoring balls would be affected by gravity differently in different levels, so it adds abit more variety to the strategy and mechanics... like a low gravity monsterball level with a large outdoor area, where players can bounce the ball on their ship to keep it mid air, but it will always fall towards the ground ....

Gravity is constant through the D3 single player level set, but it isn't a constant in the engine. It is possible and also easy to build a level with more or less gravity.

Setting the gravity in the editor to 13.31 gets you maximum chaos. (I think 23 is normal Earth gravity).

And as for Red Acropolis... well... Katelyn Harper watched too many of the bad spy movies from the 2120's.

Alter-Fox wrote:But the downwards tunnel is on the wrong side. That is readily noticable to all the single-player obsessed Descenters.

noted, but to me it looks like the tunnel is where it supposed to be, the left hand tunnel is mostly blocked before it went downwards.. the right hand tunnel is mostly destroyed and looks like the original tunnel size wise

about the gravity...

its strange that in D1, they had a better sense of true zero gravity , since the levels had arbitary up directions which changed between different parts of the level, and yet according to the storyline they are all set on planetary bodies which should cause them to exhibit gravity

and in D3, they have implemented gravity into the game, but they do not change it for any single player levels even though they have a space station level...

is it possible to put terrain above the artificial ceiling? the effect is obvious enough when your ship simply stops ascending above a certain height, but does it have to look so obvious as well... i get that they need to 'wall' the player in somehow but all the outdoor areas look like bowls, the top of the terrain always forms a perfectly flat horizon ...if it is possible to raise little sections of the terrain above the ceiling, then you break the horizon up and it looks alot better, the sections above the ceiling should only look like they are there to break the horizon, and not look interesting enough to make players want to explore it, something pointy so that all sides can be seen from below

speaking of going above the ceiling, you could see things which count as terrain elements on the automap go above the ceiling, such as the PTMC tower and parts of the military spaceship, why isnt this used more often, especially in level 4? does Seoul in the Descent universe have building codes which stipulates that all buildings must be joined adjacently and built to a specific height.. with the exception of the PTMC tower...

It's not possible to raise the terrain farther as far as I know. At least not with how the editor works.

one thing that i still cant get over is how the screens show the cat picture in level 14...

its almost like it is the one thing that the Descent universe gets right about the internet, or something...

Alter-Fox wrote:I heard they were super-mega-missiles.

This doesn't have any bearing on the topic, I suppose, but they're normal mega missiles. 200/400 player/object hit damage; 400 player/object impact damage with a 32.5 meter area of effect, and a 125 m/s cruising speed. Only difference is our mega missiles have a 157 degree homing field of view; hellion's have a 147. Don't forget though, that on Ace, mob weapons get a 1.5 dmg increase, and 2.0 on Insane. They also get similar HP boosts. Never did like that. And our gunboys are flagged no scale damage/movement. >_<

Agreeing with most of the topic discussion, though. Wondering why we're in a zero-G fighter and being inserted in the most ridiculous places. The first half of level 1 could have been cut off if we just dropped into the canyon; assuming that was our only way in. Same thing with level 2. Oh, and most of level 3 could have been bypassed by dropping in next to the lab. Next time you guys are on level 4, take a look how close the subway entrance is to the PTMC tower in the automap. How's that for a rat maze? Seriously, just drop me off at the front door, why don't ya? Yeah, we get inserted in the most asinine places. I'm okay with it, though. More stuff for me to blow up.

carmatic wrote:one thing that i still cant get over is how the screens show the cat picture in level 14...

its almost like it is the one thing that the Descent universe gets right about the internet, or something...

Epic screensaver!

Oh, and I explained this on Planetdescent but I'll explain it again here. PTMC (and later Red Acropolis) had to go to the universe's legal department to get an exemption from the law of gravity and various other laws of physics to make their exploits possible. The universe was only willing to do that at a price though. It forced PTMC and Red Acropolis to get exempted from the laws of sanity and common sense as well.

i suppose thats what your operating procedures are going to be like when you are trying to stealthily insert the Pyro without tipping off PTMC ... after all they know full well what happened to Jerry 3 months ago...

Now you've lost me.

What does Jerry have to do with stealthy insertions? Apart from being Harper's motivation (That's not Harpers real motivation though... the real motivation is "The Liberals did it!")

its like the whole 'no one wants to mess with the PTMC' vibe that she introduces in the opening cutscene... but anyway, speaking of Jerry, the scariest thing in the scene with him isnt the Old Scratch or the music , but the eye on the door... did anyone notice that as well?

carmatic wrote:i suppose thats what your operating procedures are going to be like when you are trying to stealthily insert the Pyro without tipping off PTMC ... after all they know full well what happened to Jerry 3 months ago...

Lemme fix that.

carmatic wrote:I suppose that's what your operating procedures are going to be like when you are a ragtag team of scientists trying to conduct an undercover industrial espionage operation against the largest and most ruthless corporate empire in the galaxy. After all, they know full well that PTMC has one of the most efficient internal affairs departments known to man...

Also corrected spelling and grammar, because I'm OCD like that.

"Ruthless corporate bureaucrats on one side, amateur do-gooders on the other..."

Personally I love the way you actually convince the CED that you're not terrorists... by doing some things that one might call acts of terrorism. Blowing up a weapons factory, decimating their army to deliver evidence, destroying one of their allies' most powerful pieces of machinery in the Proving Grounds... all all this convinces them that you're not a terrorist.

But I guess if this is how the CED operates it's at least consistent with their ineptitude throughout the rest of the story.

Alter-Fox wrote:Personally I love the way you actually convince the CED that you're not terrorists... by doing some things that one might call acts of terrorism. Blowing up a weapons factory, decimating their army to deliver evidence, destroying one of their allies' most powerful pieces of machinery in the Proving Grounds... all all this convinces them that you're not a terrorist.

But I guess if this is how the CED operates it's at least consistent with their ineptitude throughout the rest of the story.

to be fair tho, the CED's apparent flagship was infested with a virus and started making rogue robots , and it took you to go in there and clean things up for them...
and in Proving Grounds, im not sure how the CED would approve of kidnap , i would instead think that level was a clandestine operation for PTMC ... whatever its purpose was, it was a sadistic one, and in the end a wasteful one too when you destroyed everything on your way out of that place

and on the moon base when you were delivering the virus data to the CED, at least the Red Acropolis guys had the common sense to do things like jam the CED communications and cloak your ship at the beginning, so at least the story writing has some redeeming factors

The CED's flagship was only infected after they agreed to meet with Red Acropolis ...
PTMC just needed to call off the meeting.