DescentBB

A lil preview of my Descent spiritual successor in very early development... Wireframes of some of the robot models. This game won't be some D2X-XL-esque "twenty-first century update" of Descent with fancy new graphics, alpha effects, dynamic lighting, hi-res textures, hitbox displays, and other stuff that does nothing but clog up and insult an otherwise classic action game. This will be done the real oldskool way. Many added gameplay features, but NO FANCY GRAPHICS NONSENSE. By the way, if anyone thinks they might be interested in joining the progect, I could use a programmer and a sound designer. Development is in no rush at this point--I have more important life issues to deal with--but eventually it will pick up. The plan is to re-engineer the Descent source code to handle the new features I'm interested in. I'll be writing up a design document shortly, look for that soon. Anyone interested can shoot me a pm. Love, Cheers!

Class A Drone
Class B Drone
Class C Drone
Class D Armored Drone
Lite Driller
Medium Driller
Heavy Driller
Medium Borer
Heavy Borer
Hydrogen Hulk
Ghost
Executioner
Weakener

I think you're being far too harsh on D2X-XL and alienating the part of your audience that likes what it adds to the game.
In fact, most of the people I've talked to who don't like it don't like it for the gameplay changes, and they don't care nearly so much about the graphical updates (that's the most likely reason Rebirth eventually got so many of them!). It's a matter of opinion, don't speak of it in that way unless you want to offend the people who will be the most accepting of your gameplay additions! The people who've already accepted D2X-XL's...

On the other fork of the tail, this looks very interesting and I'll keep my nose to it since I could care less what you think about what I think about particular versions of Descent 2 . As the ultimate reaction to Miner Wars showed, though, some of us here have a peculiar tendency to be offended by things that offend them. It's wierd, I know, but there it is.
I'd offer to help but I'm already very busy doing the story (and some soundtrack) for Sol Contingency, as well as the entire soundtrack to LUX. And another concept album similar to Never Look Down, with a third very different (yet ironically set in Never Look Down's canon, unlike the second concept album) concept album planned to follow that. All while I try to get artwork for Never Look Down and Full Moon so that I can start selling them and finally making some money from my work! So I'm going to have to pass for now. If I find the time and energy for a third simultaneous game -- and seventh project -- to work on, I'll let you know.

Well, my apologies for being harsh, but honestly, I don't care if I alienate the part of my audience that won't appreciate what I'm trying to do. And I don't see how doing it another way, and proudly, can be offensive. Descent is a subject of endless controversy, always will be. I'd just like to do it the way I feel does justice to the series. If people get offended on the way, then so be it.

I'll be keeping an eye on your projects as well. Thanks for the reply.

Umm... actually, if you read my post again, I said the D2X-XL fanbase is the most likely part of Descent's community to appreciate your project. The main controversy with D2X-XL has always been the gameplay changes, not the graphical updates. Those who stayed with D2X-XL anyway, and especially those who saw D2X-XL as an improvement, are those who believe the core gameplay of Descent can be improved, so they'll probably appreciate your gameplay improvements more.

I don't think anybody here really cares about graphical quality one way or the other, if a game is good it's good for the reasons that actually make it fun to play. Graphics are just a nice bonus.

Alter-Fox wrote:I don't think anybody here really cares about graphical quality one way or the other, if a game is good it's good for the reasons that actually make it fun to play. Graphics are just a nice bonus.

I don't personally see it that way. I'm a visual artist with natural affinity toward early 3D graphics/CGI/raytracing, and minimalism. I consider games to be interactive audiovisual works of art. We'll see if the gameplay changes get good feedback. But one of the two most important paradigms for this project is classic mid-nineties look-and-feel. I hope there will be a few who can appreciate that as well.

Personally I tend to think that making things look low-tech and bad just for the sake of doing so is rather silly, but to each their own.

Top Gun wrote:Personally I tend to think that making things look low-tech and bad just for the sake of doing so is rather silly, but to each their own.

"low-tech" and "bad"? I'm sorry but you strike me as someone with absolutely no taste or sense of aesthetics, someone whose been brainwashed by the industry to default to thinking realism is "good" and oldskool graphics are "bad". And that's just the problem with the industry. It's a vaccous pigeonhole of realism and spectacularity (translation: commonality and blandness) that doesn't have the balls to try anything experimental or abstract. And it's all about making profits. Oldskool tech doesn't sell. Realism and sameness sells. That's precisely why a good game hasn't come out since 1999. And you know what? Gameplay has suffered an equally ugly black-hole effect into unoriginality and little-to-no-learning curve.

I was afraid there would be a good deal of people like you among the Descent community, seeing the directions it's gone. Well, if people don't like this game, so be it. It's my vision, my passion, and I'll share it to the few who can appreciate it.

I think you're completely overreacting... it's not a religion Just because other people have different opinions on what's a good game, doesn't make them brainwashed

I've got some food for your thought, after sleeping on it.
Surrealism is perfectly possible to do with modern-level graphics. Game companies don't do it very much (although, there are some if you look in the right places -- supernatural horror would be a good place to start looking!) and it's a shame, but I've seen dozens of user maps for Half-Life 2 alone that exploit the Source Engine's capacity for realism and use it to create blatantly unreal environments -- which seem all the more believable for it and that makes them even creepier. I don't remember the names of the maps I'm thinking of, but they weren't hard to find last time I looked for surreal maps.
Hell, I've made maps like that in games like Trackmania. And I've started maps like that on Source and the Doom 3 engine, the fact that I've never finished a map on a BSP-based engine really shouldn't enter the equation here...

If surreal minimalism is what you're going for you don't need to sacrifice graphical quality to do it -- and using the graphical technology available to you will let you do so much more with that surreal minimalism, and really let you create the atmosphere that those mid-90s games wanted, but couldn't have because of the limits of technology.

Don't get defensive, I'm not trying to say you have to do this. I'm only trying to give you an idea you might not have considered.

Topgun, I love the idea. Going back to an older style sounds like a bad idea until it's pulled off correctly, like in Street Fighter 4:

This is a game made for a PS3, though this model would run on a PS2. The
Compare this with what the PS3 supports:


Street Fighter 4 has no reason to make their games look like God of War or Mortal Kombat. The style fits. Low polly modeling as a medium fits it better than the high-poly Z-brush models.

Back on OP, DoTheGeek will be making a game that could probably run on a PS1, but target computers that are more powerful than a PS3. Topgun, this isn't a bad choice at all!

Judging the style based on the medium is wrong, topgun. Instead, judge the creativity within the medium. Quake 1 skin looking good:

DoTheGeek wrote:

Top Gun wrote:Personally I tend to think that making things look low-tech and bad just for the sake of doing so is rather silly, but to each their own.

"low-tech" and "bad"? I'm sorry but you strike me as someone with absolutely no taste or sense of aesthetics, someone whose been brainwashed by the industry to default to thinking realism is "good" and oldskool graphics are "bad". And that's just the problem with the industry. It's a vaccous pigeonhole of realism and spectacularity (translation: commonality and blandness) that doesn't have the balls to try anything experimental or abstract. And it's all about making profits. Oldskool tech doesn't sell. Realism and sameness sells. That's precisely why a good game hasn't come out since 1999. And you know what? Gameplay has suffered an equally ugly black-hole effect into unoriginality and little-to-no-learning curve.

I was afraid there would be a good deal of people like you among the Descent community, seeing the directions it's gone. Well, if people don't like this game, so be it. It's my vision, my passion, and I'll share it to the few who can appreciate it.

I do find it amusing that you take my one statement and presume everything about my tastes in gaming from it, because you managed to get things completely wrong, but let's look past that for now. I give a lot of leeway to games of the Descent 1/2 era, and their compatriots like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, because those were literally the first steps of 3D gaming, and in many ways they look and feel like extensions of earlier sprite-based 2D games. However, when you get to the PS1/N64 era, and their PC counterparts of the late 90s/early 00s, 3D games as a rule wind up getting very...ugly. Developers started working with larger environments and modeling more complex shapes, but the hardware and engines weren't really up to snuff to deal with them, and the results were usually aesthetically displeasing, particularly the freaky faces and club-hands of human models. I would place some of my favorite games of all time into this category, and yes, that includes D3. The gameplay itself is usually tons of fun, and it's not as though I don't appreciate the art style, but I can't help thinking how even a quick coat of paint would massively improve the visual experience. It wasn't really until 2003 or 2004 that most 3D games had the improved tech to be truly easy on the eyes, and I'm not sure why anyone would want to intentionally return to the times before that.

(And if you truly think that there have been "no good games" since 1999, I'd love to know what rock you've been hiding under.)

I don't mean any direct offense by this, but when I look at your screenshots in here and your ship model in the other thread, what I see looks like what someone would produce from their very first time trying out 3DS Max or Blender. There's nothing wrong with that at all, because everyone starts out there, but they should be viewed as a stepping-stone to greater things, not as an end unto themselves. Slapping a few primitive shapes together with a vague suggestion of the final form doesn't really get the job done for the player, at least not most of the time. Try taking these base forms and starting to add some detail, and I think you could produce something really nice.

Top Gun's kind of a closed minded idiot.

He is? I never heard that about him.

Well, I think he's on to something.
What he seems to be getting at is when you leave your game with that low-poly, pixellated look the players won't see a mid-90s artistic vision, they'll see a lazy game developer who's behind their time. Telling them what you intended will only go so far towards alleviating that impression, and only works for those players who bother to read what you told them.

Art for art's sake is certainly a valid form of art, but if you do that then you shouldn't expect to get much more appreciation in your time than Vincent Van Gogh. On the other fork of the tail, if you're doing art for art's sake you're doing it for yourself, and all that really matters is that you enjoy doing it, and you enjoy the end product. Other people liking it is really just an unintended bonus .

Thanks for the replies. As for what Alter-Fox suggested and relating to what Top Gun has said:

I've failed to mention it, but I have been considering using modern-day rendering tech to augment the visual style of this game in a surreal way. I'm very familiar with exploiting realist-oriented tech in this way:



and indeed I've considered this a way of augmenting the the mid-90s visual style in a way that retains its spirit and adds something it wishes it would've had at the time. I think starting with the Descent engine as a basis is the right way to go because I want it to intimately garner the classic look-and-feel, and this just seems like the appropriate choice. But new shader code etc. would be added--this is what I mean by re-engineering it.

So, I consider most of Top Gun's reply inapplicable; correct me if I'm wrong. As for the primative models--sorry mate, I don't think I'm going to compromise on that aspect. I'm very happy with how the models look as they are and I'm not trying to impress people with my modelling skills.

As Alter-Fox mentions, I am mainly doing this for my own enjoyment--art for art's sake. I don't plan on the game being very popular, even among Descent fans. Though if it develops any kind of fan base, I'll be very pleased.

edit: Shader effects I'm considering are Fresnel, face-level dynamic lighting, and enironment map "reflection". Other cool trippy effects I'm considering are motion-blur with few iterations for a kind of "flanging" effect and pseudo-perspective dynamically-drawn sprites using a method of swapping out sprites bases on viewing angle.

If I could have this and my other thread moved to the 6DoF Development forum please..? Sorry for my neglegence.

Just wanted to chime in. DoTheGeek, I think you hurt yourself by being preemptively negative about things you disagree with instead of just focusing on what it is you want this to be, positively. You need to get one thing straight in your mind, and that is that you don't have any enemies until you make them, and if you never offer any provocation, only the sad few will take issue with you. That's how things work in business. Disagreements will likely abound, but keep it positive and keep it professional, and let the "sad few" do what they're going to do anyway, without any ammunition from you.

As an aside I appreciate what you're wanting with the graphics. There is value in nostalgia, and I think the game is something any old-time Descenter would appreciate. At the same time it's important to see games and their visuals for what they are--representations of the state-of-the-art at the time in which they were made. People's imaginations have always made up for any lack, but when a game lands too far behind the state-of-the-art, graphics-wise, I believe it draws attention to the graphics at the expense of the rest of the game. If the game-play is really good, the word will spread, and the shortcoming in graphics will be overlooked in proportion, but recognizing what graphics are in the grand scheme of things, is, I think, important. People play games to see neat things, and interact with them. It's all about the graphics, really. It's just that bad game-play makes getting at those graphics so it's not worth the nuisance. Another way to look at it, of course, is that you sure are simplifying things for yourself by sticking with low-poly models. Just don't put game-play too far above graphics in your mind. This is multimedia, and visuals are everything, but at the same time the whole package is the sum of its parts (this write-up really needs an essay at least twice as long, but maybe you get the gist of what I'm trying to say).

EDIT: Just read your more recent reply; maybe I didn't fully appreciate what you are wanting to do with the graphics--that really sounds interesting.

I kind of disagree, I think the gameplay is what makes the game worth playing and that makes it the most important part.
At the same time I think you're right though. It's complicated.

An aside, I think the audio and soundtrack is tremendously important and people don't give it enough credit, but that's just the sort of thing a professional musician -- who works mostly on video games! -- is likely to say .
I'm hoping this game will at least use a professionally written soundtrack and not midi. Unaltered midi would be a shame. And unnecessary since you can emulate that oldschool sound with modern technology and keep its spirit while making it sound more professional than it could back then. Give it that polish, if you know what I mean.

Alter-Fox wrote:An aside, I think the audio and soundtrack is tremendously important and people don't give it enough credit, but that's just the sort of thing a professional musician -- who works mostly on video games! -- is likely to say .

Are you such an individual?

I'm hoping this game will at least use a professionally written soundtrack and not midi. Unaltered midi would be a shame. And unnecessary since you can emulate that oldschool sound with modern technology and keep its spirit while making it sound more professional than it could back then. Give it that polish, if you know what I mean.

A professional soundtrack it will definitely have. I'm going to try to get in contact with Eric Brosius and Mark Morgan to inquire about contributing. I'm imagining a soundtrack ranging from industrial dub/dub techno (along the lines of Scorn, Atheus), to drum'n'bass, to cinematic suspense music and ambient.

edit: Before I start making more enemies, I'm gonna work on revising this document a bit.

Lower poly definitely has a place these days. While it might not cater to the "washed masses", there are certainly many that have to problem with it. For heaven's sake.. look at mine craft, or WoW. Torchlight. There's a lot of nostalgia projects out there right now that work with pixel.

Low poly is also a wonderful for character design development. Character outline is one of THE most essential elements in visual arts/entertainment. To make your characters (be they bots or organics) they each should have a distinctive and fairly unique profile/outline. That's why graphic artists when starting a new project will use a series of silhouettes to hammer out who looks like what.

TIL nobody in this thread has heard of Minecraft.

I'm one of the guys who consider the retro-ness of Descent part of its appeal. I even play it at 320x240 from time to time. So I fully understand the OP's stance.