DescentBB

Greetings all. Tomorrow is when you will be able to finally get your sweaty hands on Version 1.0 of Retrovirus! (Less than 20 hours from the time of this post.)

Available via Steam and Desura.

The game has moved on substantially since the Beta version, with many visual upgrades, and a new video-scaling system has been added to allow those with lower system specs (shame on you!) to play the game in blurry low-res. Windowed, or not. Eyefinity is initially supported at resolutions up to 3840x800.

The team have spent a huge amount of time polishing the Single Player experience, and it really shows, too! There's about 5-6 hours of full-on Single Player there.

The Game Editor is not being released concurrently, and we will have to wait a little bit for that. Likewise, the multiplayer game will get updates and improvements over the coming weeks.

The new "Updates" (replacing the word "Upgrades") for the Agent are legion: The number of possible combinations and permutations of weapons and ship capabilities will be close to the number of atoms in the solar system. The way the updates work online is that your selected updates are applied in the order you choose, after you make kills: the more kills you make, the more updates you get.

To whet your appetite, just some of the Agent Updates include: Faster scan pulse, wider scan pulse, +8% damage to scanned enemies, Damaging other players leeches their health and cycles, Hit-scan Dual Strike, Dual Thrash (Miniguns), Taking damage replenishes cycles, Increased gravity well power, Rapidfire Inject (Rifle), to name just a few. Adding different classes of updates increase your ship speed, speed of damage recovery etc

I know you will have a lot fun tinkering with your Agent, put it that way.

Your standard Agent now comes with a cycle-chewing cloaking device too.

Full 8-channel audio is working beautifully, and the sound track is kicka$$!

Cadenza have a couple of dedicated servers up and running, and I will continue hosting a big traditonal Deathmatch server here in NZ. The netcode has been polished, with the antilag code working very well indeed: you do not need to lead your shots to account for your ping. I have tested this to over 200ms, and the Rifle remains accurate at any ping. Don't ask how much math and data the server processes to achieve this.

The netcode has also been optimised, with an improved system which establishes Peer-to-Peer connections with all other players, and then finds the best routes for game data, and sends packets appropriately, accounting for ping and loss of all players. The server still mediates the game, however.

Just how much post-release work is performed for the game will entirely depend on how many sales are made. The game is entirely DRM free, and does not require you to launch Steam to play it. I know a Retrovirus Torrent will appear on TPB tomorrow, and I must tell you, I am a bit conflicted about it. On one hand, I want that torrent to do very well indeed, and on the other, I hope none of you will torrent it, or if you do, to make sure you pimp the game hard, and buy a copy when you can afford it.

Cadenza is a tiny team (Just look at the game credits!) and this is all they have worked on for over 30 months, paying themselves chump change in order to bring you the next-best-thing-to-Descent-4 and I would encourage every single one of you to contact old Descent players, friends and tell everyone you know about the game. If the game is successful we will see a lot of development work yet from Cadenza before they move on to their next project. I dearly hope they will be vindicated in their decision to do a Descent-like game, if only to prove the genre isn't 100% dead. If Retrovirus can turn a decent profit, we will undoubtedly see another Descent-like game, and it won't be 13 years until the next one.

I hope you will enjoy the game hugely. Please join the BB community over at The Retrovirus Forums: http://cadenzainteractive.com/forums/vi ... 8f1487df6e

I'm planning on putting up a US-based dedicated server as well.

Wish I had more time to actually play this!

Same!

I have several other projects on the go, but I will still find time to document the final changes at RetrovirusHelp: http://4sure.co.nz/retrovirushelp/

...and a new video-scaling system has been added to allow those with lower system specs (shame on you!) to play the game in blurry low-res...

This. So excited.
And yes I'm a horrible person for prioritizing my education over new laptops XD. I hope there's more graphics options than just resolution adjustments. I can usually play these more intense games in letterbox mode to retain the crisp-ish picture if I take away the anti-aliasing and reduce the filtering to trilinear... It's a better look than keeping the graphical doohickeys on and reducing the resolution to such crap that even letterbox won't help IMHO. It generally results in better framerates than lowering the resolution even to 800x600, too.

Out of curiosity, why isn't there a Steam storefront page already set up for the game? I'm used to seeing upcoming releases in the "Coming Soon" tab in the Steam store, so I was a bit surprised when Retrovirus was never listed on there, and doing a quick search now didn't turn up any page at all for it.

Not sure about that.

I guess they switch it all on at the same time?

Do you know if the soundtrack will be... made... buyable?
I enjoyed it in the beta most out of everything else, since it was the only part of the game that didn't get affected by my horrid framerate . And those emotions stick with you. Or at least they stick with me. I'm bizzare.

I can't find it using the search feature on STEAMs website.

Mobix0r's post on Cadenza's site seemed to indicate that the release would be around 1 PM Eastern time (about 20 minutes from now). Whether that translates to being available on Steam is another question though.

If you just can't wait: http://www.desura.com/games/retrovirus

I imagine Steam will be available very shortly. The final update is live on Steam for key holders: Go to Games option and select "Activate product on Steam" and punch in your Steam Key.

As fate would have it, I have to drive into oblivion for two days, starting in 30 minutes. We're off to the West Coast (Franz Josef) to see the White Herons nesting. You can imagine how excited I am about that. Ah well, husbandly duties sometimes mean not playing games.

Anyway - see you in the mines, err tube thingies!

Next time, do what I did... marry a gamer. ^_^

I've been validated for a steam key but I haven't recieved it yet
And so far the gamestop client hasn't got the update. However, Merlin, I was checking the steam store a few minutes ago and it's up there for $17 US now.
It's too bad I'm too responsible to buy it a second time just because I have to wait a couple more hours.

I bought mine on the Humble Store, and it was updated. Playing through the single player mission.

The update just went live on the Gamestop app. If it asks you for a code from the store go to "change log in" and log in to your account on the app again (without logging out first) and it should work. Crappy platforms...
On the bright side, as soon as this update is done I can uninstall the stupid Gamestop app.
Still waiting on my steam key...

I see it live on Steam:

I'll probably grab it sometime this weekend.

Have it on my Steam wishlist, and I'll go ahead and grab it as soon as the next paycheck comes in.

I just got my Steam key. Looks like they're doing that manually.

I never could get the demo/beta working despite considerable effort. (I didnt see a demo on steam yet....is one coming?)
The video of the gameplay seems kind of cartoonish.

How does this compare to Descent?

It's on STEAM now. 8:45pm EST

No Demo?

Dunno about STEAM demo, but GameStop had demo during Alpha/ Beta release.

It's a pretty neat game. Multiplayer is fast paced, I'd say more fast paced than Descent. Ships feel smaller but more agile.

Weapon and class system is a LOT of fun to play around with in multi. Couple of things are broke with it (mines are way OP, and you can rig it so the ultimate ability is your first upgrade), but the general gameplay seems fast and exciting.

Single player is engaging and at times challenging. One room had 49 things to destroy... some are shooting at you, some are trying to slice you apart. Very fun, I just took down the first boss.

You can tell the developers played Descent. Especially Descent 3. Especially Seoul in Descent 3. There are trains to avoid and travel between, and one of the viruses, the slasher, looks eerily similar to the bots that wander the subway in Seoul.

The game is beautiful, and played pretty flawlessly on my system, although there were times the game just stops for a few seconds at a time... deadly in multiplayer. ^_^

So... before I pick this up, I have some questions for those who have played it.

#1: How does the "ship" handle? What are the main differences from Descent? If you've played enough multiplayer to figure it out, how does this affect multiplayer gaming?

#2: What are the weapons? What do they do, how powerful are they, etc?

#3: Which of the three original Descent games is this most similar to as far as how the gameplay "feels"? Why? (Don't care about graphics, I can tell that from 10 seconds on a trailer; but I can't tell what the game is like without far more time, preferably in the hands of a pro)

#4: Similar to some of the above but I realized I should add it anyway. Dodging-centric (D1 to some extent, and D2) or aiming-centric (D3 and D2 in levels with too much Gauss)?

TIA

I thought Slasher looked more like the Medium Lifters from D1... though now I think about it I can see their resemblance to Old Scratch (and hence BPER and Secondary Lifter).
I still have abysmal framerates when there's a lot of enemies or geometry on-screen but that's rare now and ~20 fps is the norm . Multiplayer runs very smoothly -- though I haven't managed to actually fight anyone who wasn't a bot yet .

I wonder, if AI is still the main framerate problem, could I deal with that by hosting a coop server on a different computer so that it would deal with the AI code...
I'm looking forward to the editor. Who knows, maybe I'll even finish a singleplayer map!

Definitely aim-centric.

I hope the game does well. It would be good for the genre.

Good luck Cadenza Interactive I'm dropping links to your Greenlight page on my travels.

D/ling from Steam. Will give it a try tomorrow

I'm gonna be a little late to this party. my good ol N50's hat switch is on it's last legs. That and there are no drivers for it anymore.

So i'll jump in as soon as I get a new keypad.

I've been thinking about making a dedicated subforum on the index for retrovirus, but I'm not sure where to put it. The "other 6dof" section would be the most obvious, but it is already a bit cluttered and I'd like to have a bit more focus on RV for now. If there is enough interest I'd be willing to entertain putting it right in the main community section (or perhaps even reorganizing the entire index again to fit everything better if it really came down to that).

Is there a way to get rid of the auto-leveling ? Causes some serious "stuttering" w/ my joystick setup

Edit: think I figured out, n/m.

Alter-Fox wrote:Do you know if the soundtrack will be... made... buyable?

http://vgmdb.net/album/37628

Knock yourself out: $7.99 for the entire soundtrack

ReadyMan wrote:...I didnt see a demo on steam yet....is one coming?

There will be no demo.

ReadyMan wrote:How does this compare to Descent?

That depends on who you ask I guess. I would classify it as "The Next Best Thing to Descent 4". Now rush out and buy 10 copies, so that Interplay see the genre isn't dead.

In terms of controls: you can exactly map your D3 config to Retrovirus, and it you want more "drifting" action (this is a setting which ups the mass of the Agent so that it does NOT come to a stop instantly when you stop giving control inputs) just set the Drift setting to a higher value. Descenters will want it on ZERO.

In terms of navigation: exactly the same. I have the mouse sensitivity at ZERO, and that seems to be OK with a Logitech 3D Pro.

In terms of gameplay: not quite - because you are only allowed 2 weapons in Multiplayer (Although I understand Three is being considered) and the weapons interact with the scanner. However, there are some real similarities: The Grenades will make you think "Mortars". The Rifle will make you think "Mass Driver with no zoom" (And it has two fire modes: Pull-and-hold-and-fire-when-you-release-the-trigger, or "Fire when you pull".) and the Missiles may make you think "Homing Fusion with less punch".

The way you can power-up your Agent, and specifiy in what way it gets powered up are unique to RV. It means everyone basically starts a multiplayer game with basic Agents, and each time you make two kills, you get an Agent update/upgrade.

Ferno wrote:I'm gonna be a little late to this party. my good ol N50's hat switch is on it's last legs. That and there are no drivers for it anymore.

So i'll jump in as soon as I get a new keypad.

Ferno, I have an old N50 Speedpad which has had maybe 4 hours total use. It's just gathering dust. Do you want it? I will send it to you. Email me at chris dot h dot davies at gmail dot com.

Thank you for the reply Mobius!

It would be great to see a few current videos of the gameplay (the one posted is a bit underwhelming, and the ones on Youtube are half a year old).

NM, I just went ahead and bought it. $ is tight these days, but I sure would like to see another Descent, so support of the genre is worth it (and it's gotten great reviews across the board).

Just have to decide whether to dig out my 3dpro or use my flight sim SWFF2 to fly with....

--EDIT-- meh. It crashes on startup...crashes on setup too.

Got it working thanks to Grendel and Roncli.
Turns out the permissions were not turned on in some of the obscure files Retrovirus uses.

My 3dpro is working great...RV guns are a bit more twitchy than D3. Gonna take some getting used to.

Well, it's pretty awesome to have some new 6DoF to get used to.

Mobius wrote:

Ferno wrote:I'm gonna be a little late to this party. my good ol N50's hat switch is on it's last legs. That and there are no drivers for it anymore.

So i'll jump in as soon as I get a new keypad.

Ferno, I have an old N50 Speedpad which has had maybe 4 hours total use. It's just gathering dust. Do you want it? I will send it to you. Email me at chris dot h dot davies at gmail dot com.

Much as I appreciate this, I can't take it. Simply because the drivers that support it have just disappeared. I'm sure they're out there somewhere but even Google can't find them.

Ferno wrote:

Mobius wrote:

Ferno wrote:I'm gonna be a little late to this party. my good ol N50's hat switch is on it's last legs. That and there are no drivers for it anymore.

So i'll jump in as soon as I get a new keypad.

Ferno, I have an old N50 Speedpad which has had maybe 4 hours total use. It's just gathering dust. Do you want it? I will send it to you. Email me at chris dot h dot davies at gmail dot com.

Much as I appreciate this, I can't take it. Simply because the drivers that support it have just disappeared. I'm sure they're out there somewhere but even Google can't find them.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/nostromon50onvi/?

Mobius wrote:

ReadyMan wrote:...I didnt see a demo on steam yet....is one coming?

There will be no demo.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Right now, the multiplayer community simply doesn't exist. I've played all of 3 different for longer than 1 match, and most of the time I'm playing bots on Mobi's server. Could a demo grow the game? I don't know the answer to that.

Well I don't buy games that have no demo. Sorry but my money is tight (family) so when i want to buy a game I have to make sure I will spend my money's worth on it.