DescentBB

In what way do you think which version of Descent needs to be changed, and how?

My automatic answer: In D1, swap the music for level 7 and 8, add more bosses to D1, and make D3 have more levels (as hard as it already is).

Descent 3.

remove: mass driver, frag missile, blackshark missile, shield bubble.

change: vauss. slower firing rate, hit harder. Fusion, like it was in D1.

unmake: burning indika 3.

I thought D3 was a disaster. D2 had some interesting improvements over D1, but completely failed in other parts (a little too gimmicky for me).

All of them. Even D1 had some minor gameplay bugs that needed fixing. (Drakona has been finding an awful lot of that...)

It's hard to pinpoint what exactly I'd change about D1 if anything. I really prefer D2, but on a balancing level, D1's all right aside from the Super Hulks seemingly lacking any weaknesses aside from just tossing a Mega at them. In multiplayer, the Spreadfire could probably be weakened slightly, and though I'm actually okay with D2 Spreadfire, it was only nerfed that far to make room for the Helix.

I assume we're talking default mechanics as opposed to the levels themselves, so I'd have to ignore the way the Parallax levels handed out weapory in D2. My only real complaint for D2, then, would be how the Fusion does a measly 15 base damage in multiplayer. Dropping the damage in single player was all right as a way to get people to use other weapons more, but where it was in D1 multiplayer damage-wise was fine. It didn't need to be cut in half again for D2 multiplayer, basically.

As for D3, I did like the weapons choices for the most part, with the only real balancing issues being that the Mass Driver had too much ammo by default (the smaller payout in maps like Bill the Cat and Athena is more spot-on) and the EMD could probably stand to deal more damage as a close-range weapon. I liked where Outrage was trying to go with the idea of an actual storyline even if it was a flawed one, but I don't care for D3 single-player for the frustrating-to-fight robots. While the infinite lives may balance things out, what's the point of even keeping score? I would've preferred to have limited lives with perhaps increased score payouts on the robots if only the robots were less evasive and didn't take quite as long to kill.

D1=Nothing
D2=Nothing
D3= Right-click/delete ;P

D3 single player was a mess, the robots could absorb way too much damage on top of being tiny and really good at dodging. More than half the robots could fly between the spread of your quad lasers without getting hit, what was the point of having quad lasers when at best even against a stationary target you could only get half of the shots to connect? The dodging ability of the robots wouldn't have been anywhere near as much of an issue if they were just big enough to hit with a full spread.

Also the abuse of the screen shaking effect, if you get into a groove pulsing your afterburner and firing the mass driver, your screen shakes so much you can barely see. Practically everything makes your screen shake, I get that it is a inexpensive effect to implement but that isn't a good excuse to use it everywhere all the time, D1 and D2 feel so much "smoother" by comparison.

As for D2, too many weapons meant they had to nurf half of them in order to make players use the others, applies to D3 also. I know when D1 and D2 came out, having "lots of weapons" was all the rage, it took about 10 years before developers finally figured out that having a lot of weapons doesn't necessarily make them good. Quality over quantity in weapons makes a huge difference without limiting things, I'll cite Left 4 Dead 1 as the shining example; there are only 3 weapons in the tier 2 set and they make no compromises in their individual roles.

D1:
-The main thing I would change would be building the engine to be based on a "tic" system, like the doom engine runs on, instead of the frame dependent mish mash we had which makes the original EXE unplayable except in a specifically configured dosbox.
-A way to start a new game in one of the secret levels
-Give the Vulcan cannon a much larger ammo capacity. At least double.

D2:
-Same engine as D1 so the same engine change to tic based instead of frame based.
-Completely re-hash the secret level system so both D1 and D2 type secret levels can be made.
-In co-op make robots behave the same as in singleplayer (retroactively apply this to d1 if it needs to be, never tried co-op in d1)
-Nerf the hell out of the ice boss. Not so much the damage he does but the fact that you get blinded immediately upon entering the room.
-Smart blobs are kinda dumb. I'd get rid of them in favor of just giving a robot more hit points or resistance to specific weapons.
-Un-nerf the Spreadfire
-Un-castrate the Fusion
-Make phoenix bolts do less damage to the ship firing them, or scrap the phoenix completely and give us a new 4/b.
-Include the boss AI for the D1 bosses.
-D1 robots should have d1 sounds.
-Switches should be toggleable as well as one-shot.
-level briefings and better briefing music.
-more than 4 midi tracks.

D3:
-As mentioned above, the robots are just too damned maneuverable and too damned small to make the singleplayer game fun. I've played through D3 on Ace. Killing some robots was a 10 minute dogfight simply because of how good at dodging and keeping distance some robots are. They make green spawn in D2 seem easy to kill. Almost all robots need to be increased in size anywhere from 50-100% and many need to have their reaction times and maneuverability taken down considerably. They're also dumb as a box of rocks. Bring them up to D1 size and make them D1 intelligent.
-The weapon speed is too slow for anything except the vauss and mass driver. Plasma should be sped up to at least the same speed as super lasers. The only weapons you could shoot anything outside with were the vauss and mass driver, otherwise they'd just dodge and outrange your shots. Not enjoyable.
-The Mass driver had a criminally small clip and absurdly high kickback. A pyro can hold tens of thousands of little vauss rounds but only 15 potatoes? Really? As a compromise, give it a huge clip, but make it take 4 units of energy to fire it. Makes sense because it should take a good amount of power to drive the series of magnets that are probably accelerating the potato to hit-scan speed. Nerf its multiplayer damage by 25%.
-Reduce the vauss' target knockback by 95% so we can actually use it to shoot at those god damned bats and not have to tap it cause each hit throws it across the ★■◆●ing room.
-I want a god damned spreadfire cannon.
-Laser upgrade system like in D1 and D2, no need to hit 1 to change to superlaser once you pick it up.
-accessories should stay with you for the duration of the campaign, or at least on the ship that picks them up.
-The guidebot should not be on the useable items rotation. Should have its own assignable key to eject and another assignable key to recall. And let us blow up the damn thing. And make it so that when I have him escort my ship he actually stays with me. Have him follow directly behind perhaps. Maybe give him a limited ability to ghost through stuff so he doesnt get caught all the time.
-Since weve got a damn inventory, let us store cloaks, invulns, and rapid fire powerups for later in the level/campaign. Whenever we run over one, make it the active item in the useable item rotation.
-make the bouncing betty do something besides make old graphics cards cry.
-make the gunboy able to predict target movement like the bots can.
-make all levels in the campaign co-op compatible.
-fix the weapon cycling so it goes in the right direction.

I've probably got tons more for D3 but I'm tired of thinking them up.

Avder wrote:-A way to start a new game in one of the secret levels

Totally agree, that's why I made this special mission file: http://www.enspiar.com/dmdb/viewMission.php?id=586

They should have made the secret levels "unlock-able." After you complete one it should be accessible from the main menu like all the others.

I agree 100% with your assessment Avder.

I really can't say much for D1, because I only really played it after D2, and...well...I've honestly never beaten it legitimately all the way through. >_> I do think it nailed the weapons balance the best out of all of them, with everything having its proper use. (That D1 Fusion is just glorious.) Coming from the later games, I missed not having an afterburner, but the base ship speed was faster, or at least had the perception of being so, which made it not as much of an issue. Though I might find the key progression tiresome now, it was pretty much a shooter standard at that time, and the bosses were both memorable. And that soundtrack...

I think my main problem with D2 is that it didn't really do enough to distinguish itself from its predecessor. The weapon variety was doubled, and things like the Gauss and Helix (and dem Shakers) were great, but some of the additions were more gimmicky than anything else, and the nerfs to the old standbys were a real killer. The Guide-bot was kind of a mixed blessing: it was a great resource, but if you blindly followed it like I usually did, you'd wind up flying by whole chunks of the levels. I never really bothered much with most of the Guided puzzles, since they all seemed too obscure and didn't have great feedback on what was happening. The redbook audio was kicking, but only four MIDI tracks was lame. And the repetition with the keys was even more compounded with the fact that you knew you'd get a boss every four levels. At least the CGI cutscenes were cool.

I'd probably change less about D3 than most people here. I've said before that I found the goal-based levels far preferable to the keys->reactor->exit slog. Some levels were better than others in what they had you doing, but overall I think it was decently-enjoyable, and a needed change for that time. I 100% agree that the enemies were way too small and moved way too fast, which was compounded by the huge outdoor environments. Pretty much all of the weapons needed a 50% speed boost across the board; besides Vauss, MD, and homing missiles, the vast majority of them were nigh-useless in big rooms. The weapons lineup as a whole seemed to rely the most on gimmicks out of the whole series, and there were several that I've pretty much never felt the need to use on a regular basis. I'm glad that there was more of a legitimate story, which was generally at least tolerable, but there were big chunks of the game where there was very little integration with your actual tasks in the levels...you get past level 5 or so, and it's just kind of a random jumble of tasks until right near the end of the game. I will give big props for a far-superior automap, and the on-board Guide-bot.

D1: Leave only 10 songs. (The secret levels would have the same one.)
D2: Only 1 .PIG, add 6 more songs, more D1 enemies and textures, get rid o' the puzzles in the way to clear the game.

D1-Nothing
D2-Nothing
D3-Nothing

I enjoyed the games exactly how they are.

Only allow one pilot per game type in D3.

Did I annoy somebody?

Two words: weapon balance.

Fusion wasn't TOO powerful in D1. It was hax, but that was the point. Halving the damage in D2 was a bad, bad decision and it sucked in D3 also.

If I were the one making the decisions, and were worried about Fusion being so overused that it overshone all the other weapons I wanted so desperately to showcase in the new game, I would decrease the damage by 25% rather than 50%, giving Fusion 45 rather than 30. That way it would be on par with the new weapons, rather than inferior.

I would also NOT nerf the Lasers to make way for the Super Lasers (which are weaker than the original Lasers from D2 anyway). That decision might have been thought through to some degree, but D2 introduced robots that were tougher, hit point-wise, than any robot from D1 - the Red Fatty Junior taking forever to die even from Level 6 Quads. I know that if the increment rate from D1 had been kept for the Super Lasers in D2, a Super Laser level 6 quad burst would do 60 damage rather than 50. Is that such a big deal, though? It's a bare 20% increase compared to as things are now, and a mere 15,38% increase compared to Descent 1's Level 4 Lasers. I, for one, never had the feeling that the D1 L4 Quads were overpowered.

As for Spreadfire - I also don't think its nerf was necessary in order to let Helix shine. Every D1 primary weapon, although generally inferior to its D2 counterpart, has something that makes you at least consider using it instead of the superior equivalent in SOME situations. In D2 Spread is just plain inferior to Helix and the only edge it has over it is manageable energy consumption. But you have weapons with similar energy consumption which are just plain better. Spread in D1 had stronger bolts (10 dmg compared to 9) and had among the fastest flying speeds of all projectiles (200 I believe, which was toned down to 120 in D2, if memory serves). Robot Spread as fired by the Fox robot has apparently kept the fast travelling speed, which is like a slap to the face. Spreadfire deserves better, as it really was a respectable weapon back in D1.

So now for a bit of shameless advertising - the HAM file which will come with the D1,5 mission in the distant future when it's been finished, fixes all of these problems. Ha.

Avder wrote:
D2:
-Same engine as D1 so the same engine change to tic based instead of frame based.
-Completely re-hash the secret level system so both D1 and D2 type secret levels can be made.
-In co-op make robots behave the same as in singleplayer (retroactively apply this to d1 if it needs to be, never tried co-op in d1)
-Nerf the hell out of the ice boss. Not so much the damage he does but the fact that you get blinded immediately upon entering the room.
-Smart blobs are kinda dumb. I'd get rid of them in favor of just giving a robot more hit points or resistance to specific weapons.
-Un-nerf the Spreadfire
-Un-castrate the Fusion
-Make phoenix bolts do less damage to the ship firing them, or scrap the phoenix completely and give us a new 4/b.
-Include the boss AI for the D1 bosses.
-D1 robots should have d1 sounds.
-Switches should be toggleable as well as one-shot.
-level briefings and better briefing music.
-more than 4 midi tracks.

Truer words have never been spoken. Great minds think alike, apparently! Haha.

I would pay a lot of money to be able to play a Descent 2 like this.

Also add the option to have in-game animated level exiting sequences like in D1 and the Interactive Demo, but that would require some graphics work (Quartzon and Baloris Prime would be particularly hard I think)

Also add the option to have in-game animated level exiting sequences like in D1 and the Interactive Demo, but that would require some graphics work (Quartzon and Baloris Prime would be particularly hard I think)

this can already be done, escape sequences for Zeta Aquilae already exist from the demo, just different color graphics need to be made for the other planets. the addon package can be in DXA form.

ThugsRook wrote:

Also add the option to have in-game animated level exiting sequences like in D1 and the Interactive Demo, but that would require some graphics work (Quartzon and Baloris Prime would be particularly hard I think)

this can already be done, escape sequences for Zeta Aquilae already exist from the demo, just different color graphics need to be made for the other planets. the addon package can be in DXA form.

Oh, but you know it would be tricky to make other planets look convincing, especially with Quartzon's plant life etc. It would take a lot of work and talent.

^ actually i think its nothing more then a planet texture and a moon hanging in the background, thats it.

ive got the escape sequences for Zeta Aquilea packed into a DXA addon file for Rebirth, they work perfectly. if someone knows how and is interested in completing the other 5 planets textures ill be glad to offer it up

ThugsRook wrote:^ actually i think its nothing more then a planet texture and a moon hanging in the background, thats it.

ive got the escape sequences for Zeta Aquilea packed into a DXA addon file for Rebirth, they work perfectly. if someone knows how and is interested in completing the other 5 planets textures ill be glad to offer it up

Hear that, guys? Get to work

But seriously, even the sequences from D1 had different backgrounds and relief for levels even on the same planet. The Lunar levels, for example, had the Earth located differently between the levels. That would also have to be taken into account.

Covering original games only:

D1 changes: Not much to be honest, between FS, CS, and Retribution, it's already my favorite.

D2 changes: Go with maps like Maximum instead except perhaps expanded slightly. Shorter levels and more texture semi-freedom go a long way here. Vertigo like would definitely have been better too though.

D3 changes: Preserve the core gameplay mechanics of D1 and D2 better.

MegaDescent wrote:Covering original games only:
D2 changes: Go with maps like Maximum instead except perhaps expanded slightly. Shorter levels and more texture semi-freedom go a long way here. Vertigo like would definitely have been better too though.

actually, Maximum was made from the Vertigo levels. (mostly)

ThugsRook wrote:

MegaDescent wrote:Covering original games only:
D2 changes: Go with maps like Maximum instead except perhaps expanded slightly. Shorter levels and more texture semi-freedom go a long way here. Vertigo like would definitely have been better too though.

actually, Maximum was made from the Vertigo levels. (mostly)

Yeah, the influence is unmistakable. Some blocks were cut straight out of those levels, too. Vertigo is soooo good, dammit.

Is Maximum really just nothing but ripped fragments from Vertigo levels?

MegaDescent wrote:Is Maximum really just nothing but ripped fragments from Vertigo levels?

No, not only that. There are some alright, but ones that I recognize are only in like 2 or 3 levels.

BTW why are you even asking that question instead of playing the pack and seeing for yourself? Maximum is actually a pretty sweet level pack.

It's not about the quality of Maximum, I just don't want to then move to Vertigo and be playing the same thing over again 50% of the time.

its not the same, you might not even be able to tell they are similar until youve become familiar with both campaigns.

the D2 Maximum explaination...
D2 was much too difficult to play on a PSX with a PSX controller. the levels needed to be smaller and remain on a 2D plane way more often. Dan Wentz made the new levels with some (small) sections ripped straight out of Vertigo levels.

So it's (Maximum) not even close to being just a 'rehash' of Vertigo split into smaller levels?

no its not rehashed Vertigo levels, Maximum is completely different.

go play the campaign and youll see how my explaination makes sense ~ mostly very small simple fun levels to blast thru. crank up the difficulty

Ferno wrote:unmake: burning indika 3.

++
x7

Did not see this before.

Hey Thugsrook, mind providing that DXA with the exit sequences? I think I could do some color changes to them and make the sequences for all six systems. Shouldn't be too hard either. But I have no idea how to program background planets and objects, which should be present in many of the sequences.