Descent (computer game) |
Descent is a . Although old by modern gaming standards, it is still cherished by a strong community of fans and new levels continue to be developed.
=Overview=
The original Descent ran under DOS and was (with some tweaking) playable on Intel 80386-based IBM PC compatible at 33 MHz. With the release of the Pentium, the performance requirements disappeared as an issue. Descent was ported to Apple Computer s Power Macintosh in 1996 and both versions supported multiplayer network play over a variety of protocols. There was also a Descent game produced for the Sony PlayStation. Descent Maximum was a title developed exclusively for the Playstation, but shared much in common with the PC Descent II .
The year Descent was released, 1995, was a year or two after id Software Doom but before Quake computer game . Like those programs, it used a software renderer (3D Accelerator (computing) cards were not yet mainstream on the PC) and shared texturing similarities. Instead of using Binary space partitioning trees, however, Descent s scene graph employed portals. In this scheme, the player progressed from one enclosed chamber to another, and since the chambers were linked by narrow doors or tunnels, it was a straightforward matter for the program to know that other chambers were unnecessary to render.
Perhaps the more significant improvement over Doom was that Descent used bitmap Sprite (computer graphics)s only for powerups and not for opponents. With true 3D enemies, the game introduced a more frightening level of realism.
= Premise =
The premise of Descent was that the player piloted an armed spacecraft charged with purging minings or other colony facilities infested by renegade mining robots that have been infected by an unknown alien virus. The action always takes place in the mineshafts (as necessitated by the portal renderer), although outdoor segments were introduced in Descent 3 . Exiting the mine required the player to locate and detonate the mine s nuclear reactor (primary mission priority), causing the exit doors to open. The player then had between 30 and 50 seconds, depending on the chosen difficulty level, within which to escape the mine. Many of the mines contained PTMC workers held hostage by the robots. It isn t necessary to rescue any hostages (secondary mission priority), but one accquires a bonus if they do.
The interstellar mines (all located within our solar system) are owned by the Post-Terran Minerals Corporation. Pilots known as Material Defenders were sent into the mines by order of Samuel Dravis, a PTMC executive, to undertake the rescue missions and purge the enemy robot infestation. Earlier, the PTMC replaced its human workforce with the robots following the Humans First mining strike. The mystery is that no one knows why the mining robots have become hostile (although the first two games suggest it s some form of alien invasion, no aliens appear anywhere). It is not until Descent 3 that the player learns that Dravis was involved in a huge conspiracy regarding an extremely advanced Nanotechnology computer virus that was able to reprogram the robots in a very quick amount of time. Dravis used the nanotech virus to eliminate Isao Suzuki, president of PTMC, and assume his position.
Eventually, the player confronts Dravis in the final mission of Descent 3 and finally manages to put an end to the robot uprisings once and for all.
= Gameplay =
In the original Descent , there are 27 levels corresponding to 27 different and unique mines (and also three secret levels). The first three begin on the Moon, the fourth on Venus (planet), the sixth on Mercury (planet) and then back out towards Mars (planet) and on towards the moons of the gas giants and finally until Pluto (planet) and Charon (moon).
Descent II focused on systems beyond the solar system. The realms were Zeta Aquilae, Quartzon, Brimspark, Limefrost Spiral, Baloris Prime, Puuma Sphere, and Tycho Brahe.
Each levels starts with the player in his ship materializing in a starting location within the mine. The player must then navigate through the mine destroying enemy robots and picking up powerups if his resources run low. Unlike Doom , where the player apparently never fatigued, the player s spacecraft had a fixed energy budget and required regular pickups of energy powerups to be able to continue firing. Killing opponents, however, often released such powerups. There were also permanent recharging areas available.
In Descent and Descent II , the goal of each level was to find a series of keys, usually in the order of blue, yellow, and red. Each key would correspond with a door of that color. Beyond the red door was the reactor. By shooting at the reactor, it could be detonated, setting off a countdown timer. The player would have to find the route back to the exit tunnel before the countdown expired. An optional objective was also to rescue the trapped PTMC workers in each mine and safely bring them to the exit. Descent II added many puzzles and traps, some which were required to complete the level while others were used to guard valuable powerups. In contrast, Descent 3 s objectives were more diverse, ranging from escort missions to an ironic mission where reactors must be defended.
Like Doom , Descent provided a navigational wireframe map that would display any area of the mine visited or seen by the player. Since it was truly 3D, however, navigating the map could be challenging, especially so in the shareware demo. The commercial release of Descent made map navigation more intuitive. One helpful trick was to use the - and + keys to decrease or increase the scope of the wireframe map.
Although the keyboard interface for moving and rotating in full 3D space was easily learned, many players initially suffered from nausea and confusion since any viewpoint became possible. With practice, however, most people found the game fluid and very enjoyable. A bigger annoyance for casual players was getting lost in the mines (some of which were very large and complex). Highly experienced players who could memorize the mine layouts became adept enough to play the game continually upside-down.
The enemy Artificial intelligence was touted as quite good for its time since robots could dodge the player s fire, but in practice was easily defeated. Descent II added bots which were extremely small and fast, plus actively roaming bots such as the Thief-Bot which could steal the player s weapons or drain energy/shields. The overall gameplay was enhanced by the wide variety of weapons the player could wield. Descent 3 improved on the AI significantly, leading to robots that effectively worked in teams and went to fetch help if outnumbered.
The player has limited lives. When the ship is destroyed, a new one is spawned at the mine s entrance. However, all the powerups (weapons, etc.) acquired thus far would be strewn about the area of death waiting to be reacquired.
In the first Descent , the seventh level (which was the end of the shareware version) and the final level are cited as the most difficult. Both have large Boss (video games) robots that fire powerful weaponry (the shareware boss fires Smart missiles, the final boss fires Mega Missiles) and have the ability to cloak and teleport. The final boss also gates in other robots. In Descent II , the final boss robot fires Earthshaker missiles and can only be damaged via a small vulnerable spot in the back.
Like Doom , Descent offered excellent competitive multiplayer game play over a local area network. Interestingly enough, Descent is also touted as being one of the first games that allowed on-the-fly joining of multiplayer games, whereas in Doom it is presumed that all players had to be queued prior to initiating the game. With the advent of Internet IPX emulators such as Kali (game protocol), more and more people began to play Descent and Descent II over the Internet. Descent II was especially popular online due to its support for short packets and variable packet rate -- options which were crucial for smooth Internet play. The engine for Descent and Descent II operated on the premise of interconnected cubes. Sides of cubes could be attached to other cubes, or display up to two texture maps. Cubes could be deformed so long as their sides remained planar. Walls could also be placed at the common sides of attached cubes to support effects like doors and see-through grating. Unlike in Doom , doors were flat, the level environments were static, and enemies were polygonal instead of sprite-based. However, power-ups and most weapon effects were sprite-based. Of special note was the lighting, which took on many gradients due to dynamic lighting and looked more natural than that of Doom . Colored lighting was used for Descent 3 . This engine was impressive for its time but eventually id Software released Quake, which was truly 3D and surpassed the Descent engine.
= Graphics =
The original Descent used indexed 8-bit color in DOS s display mode 13h, using 320 Ã? 200 resolution. The Apple Macintosh and later PC versions allowed higher resolutions, such as 640x480. The default engine used a software renderer, and so the textures are drawn using affine texture mapping, causing textures to appear to pop or shift when viewed from certain angles. The software renderer also used nearest-neighbor texture filtering, as opposed to bilinear filtering or trilinear filtering used by modern video cards. Nearest-neighbor texture filtering causes aliasing artifacts, such as blocky or swimming textures.
Descent 3 utilized an indoor and outdoor engine in tandem, collectively called the Fusion Engine . Detailed for its time, the engine allowed dynamic colored lighting, relatively complex environments, and weather effects. Unlike contemporary first-person shooters such as Unreal or Quake, Descent 3 architecture did not rely on brushes. Rather it relied on basic vertex/face modeling. It is said the original levels were mostly developed in 3D Studio Max.
= Weapons =
==Descent==
The original Descent featured ten weapons; five primary weapons and five missiles:
Primary weapons: *Laser (precise weapon with three level-ups and a quad laser mod) *Vulcan cannon (uses special rapid-fire bullets that are nearly impossible to evade; useful for sniping) *Spreadfire cannon (a rarely used low-powered triple gun; useful only in close combat) *Plasma cannon (fires large, fast bolts; one of the most versatile and dangerous energy weapons) *Fusion cannon (slow-charging, slow-firing, yet devastating energy bolt; only energy weapon with radius damage; much maligned in multiplayer; can go through and damage multiple enemies)
Missiles: *Concussion missile (basic dumbfire rocket, area damage) *Homing missile (less powerful than concussion missile, but follows a target) *Proximity bomb (stationary mine that explodes at timeout or on contact; useful to delay chasers) *Smart missile (heavy missile that releases a group of homing plasma bolts on detonation) *Mega missile (homing megaton rocket with huge area effect; a single hit is enough to kill the player, or most robots)
==Descent II==
Descent II uses the same weapons as Descent , but adds upgraded versions of each.
Primary weapons: *Super laser (extra upgrade levels five and six) *Gauss cannon (upgraded Vulcan Cannon that uses less ammunition and does more damage, including radius damage, although it can damage the player at close range) *Helix cannon (fast-firing rotating spread, similar idea to Spreadfire cannon but more energy bursts) *Phoenix cannon (energy bolts that bounce off walls, allowing the player to hit enemies around corners; capable of destroying player if fired carelessly) *Omega cannon (rapid-fire homing bolts, like lightning, that temporarily blinds its targets; uses separate energy bank that charges from main energy)
Missiles: *Flash missile (low-powered missile that temporarily blinds its target) *Guided missile (can be remotely guided or used as a regular homing missile; useful for scouting or sniping) *Smart mine (similar to proximity bomb, but releases homing particles when it explodes) *Mercury missile (fastest of all missiles, similar to vulcan cannon in speed; nearly impossible to dodge) *Earthshaker missile (excessively powerful warhead that fires smaller homing missiles upon impact; likely to destroy player if used carelessly. Capable of disorienting a player even a large distance away from the explosion. True to its name, it shakes the entire level. It also causes any normal light sources within the level to flicker on and off, making navigation temporarily difficult)
==Descent 3==
Descent 3 featured many new weapons but also discarded some while keeping many of the classic Descent weapons, such as the Laser, Plasma Cannon, and Homing Missile.
Primary Weapons: *The vulcan and gauss cannons have been replaced by the vauss cannon . Vauss supposedly took the best aspects of both weapons, but left the weapon with a much-decreased firing rate. (Requires special ammunition) *The mass driver is a powerful but slow-firing sniper weapon (Requires special ammunition) *The napalm cannon shoots a wide spray of napalm that ignites enemies, but also the player if used carelessly *The EMD gun is a fast-firing but weak weapon that has a limited homing ability and also uses a lot of energy; it is considered by many to be the most disappointing weapon in D3 *The microwave cannon is a rapid-firing but slow-moving energy weapon which causes severe disorientation to an enemy, whose view becomes severely distorted on a direct hit *The omega cannon is a very short-ranged weapon that drains an enemy s shields and also recharges the player s shields at the same time. Unfortunately the effect is nowhere near as powerful as it was in D2 and it consumes outrageous amounts of energy. *The spreadfire, helix, and phoenix cannons have been removed from the game.
Secondary weapons: *The frag missile blasts many tiny, explosive projectiles into nearby targets upon impact. The effect, however, is highly random, making the weapon useless in open spaces. *The impact mortar is a powerful bomb that bounces off walls until it is ready to detonate or hits an enemy, and it features tremendous explosive power *The napalm rocket is a missile used to set enemies on fire. This was commonly used to block off an enemy from a certain route. A direct hit from a napalm rocket is almost impossible to survive, as even the fire it leaves behind on impact often results in a kill. *The cyclone missile is essentially a flechette missile. When it detonates, it features a number of projectiles that move towards the nearest targets. In theory, this is good for taking out a small group of enemies in quick order. In practice, the weapon was of very little use, either in single player or multiplayer mode. *The black shark missile is an experimental, extremely powerful missile. When used, it essentially creates a mini Black Hole that sucks in surrounding objects, including yourself if you re not careful. After a few seconds, the missile detonates, destroying all objects caught in the vortex. *The flash, mercury, and earthshaker missiles have been removed from the game while the proximity bomb is now a countermeasure. The smart bomb is MIA.
Countermeasures:
Countermeasures were added in Descent 3 as a third weapon category. The inherent difficulty in managing not two, but three different categories of weapon to be used simultaneously in a given situation results in countermeasures being given litte to no attention in multiplayer.
*The bouncing betty countermeasure is an all-but-useless weapon. When dropped, it falls to the ground and bounces at exponential velocities, gradually flying all over the place in a chaotic fashion. The problem with this weapon is that by the time it began moving fast enough to be useful, the battle was long over or had moved to a different location. Furthermore, it explodes shortly after reaching useful speed. Lastly, it causes very little damage. *The proximity bomb was rarely used in the previous two games and the trend continues in D3. Causes very little damage, even if an opponent is hapless enough to wander into one. Many people expected the D3 proximity bomb would have the attributes of the D2 smart bomb (causing little damage on initial explosion, but spewing powerful mini-warheads akin to the smart missile), since smart bombs became highly popular and were very useful in D2. *The chaff is a droppable packet which would attract any weapons locked-on to the dropping player. Although this theoretically makes it a rather useful tool in combat, it was rarely even available for pickup in most multiplayer maps.
All Descent games have also given the player a flare to fire into dark areas for illumination. In Descent, the flare cost 1 energy per shot to fire and when energy was completely depleted from the player s ship, it was no longer available. In Descent 2, the cost to fire a flare remained the same but could still be fired (at a decreased rate) even if the player no longer had any energy. Finally, in Descent 3 the flare was made a no-energy weapon. Consistent throughout the series however, is the common use of the flare as a weapon used to humiliate a near-dead opponent. Since a flare could only cause one unit of damage even at the highest difficulty level, being killed by a flare is a humiliating experience.
= Sequels =
Descent II added more weapon types, different enemy types, different mines, laser-reflecting force field walls, and transporter areas. There is the inclusion of difficult puzzles; most to hide valuable powerups but some are required to complete the level. A notable addition was the Guide-Bot, a companion robot the player could use to aid in navigation and other tasks, and the Thief-Bot, a fast-moving, hard-to-kill enemy that attempted to steal the player s equipment. Graphics were still 8-bit, but multiple resolutions were supported, and it was ported to the Macintosh. After its release a patch was issued to add support for early 3D accelerators running the S3 Virge chipset. A fanmade patch added 3Dfx Voodoo support further down the line. The soundtrack was composed by range of musicians, from Type O Negative to Mark Walk and Skinny Puppy Nivek Ogre. An expansion pack featured remixes of some tracks from the original score.
Descent 3 switched to natively use accelerated 3D graphics hardware and improved the rendering engine to support outdoor environments with a nice automatic LOD (level-of-detail) terrain system. The higher resolution and renderer change makes the textures appear flatter, however, and thus the game seems less ominous than its predecessors. Although reviewers praised and lauded it, gamers failed to take note, perhaps because of the high system requirements at the time, and a lack of advertising. Many people also point out that the most common control scheme at the time - mouse+keyboard - was disabled by default in multiplayer modes, in order to appease joystick users. Regardless of the reasons, Descent 3 was a commercial flop.
A debate exists as to whether or not Volition ever seriously considered doing a Descent 4 . It is widely believed that Descent 4 was the working title for what became the popular first-person shooter Red Faction . Observant Descent fans may have noticed that Descent I s opening briefing made a reference to the Humans First strike (see the Premise section above) where the miners rebelled against the new robot technology. This reportedly served as a basis for Red Faction , although Red Faction does not directly relate to Descent . An archived copy of the official Descent 4 website started by Volition is here: [http://web.archive.org/web/20000301165215/http://www.descent4.com/]
also used 3D acceleration. Because FreeSpace was a flight simulator, a main difference was that no player-controlled ships could strafe (though some enemy-controlled ships could), requiring the player to adopt a different strategy for dodging enemy weapons fire. As the action took place entirely in deep space, it was harder to judge one s velocity since there were fewer frames of reference. FreeSpace has no direct connection to the Descent series, and was given the Descent prefix to avoid trademark issues (in Europe, it was released as Conflict: FreeSpace ).
It is rumored that FreeSpace originally had missions involving the search for the Material Defender s ship from the Descent series.
FreeSpace had a sequel in the form of FreeSpace 2 , but like Descent 3 , it was a commercial flop.
=Descent Novels=
On a side note, the Descent series also spawned a trilogy of novels written by Peter Telep and sold at several major booksellers. The titles are Descent , Descent: Stealing Thunder , and Descent: Equinox . The novels did not follow the games to the word, but expanded on the basic premise, and were generally received well.
=Descent Movie=
There were rumors of a Descent movie. NBC commissioned a script for a TV movie but then decided to be adapted for movie theaters. Interplay Productions, the owner and publisher of the Descent games, created a division called Interplay Movies that was going to develop the popular Interplay franchises of the time into movies, one of which was Descent . The last known update was in 1999, so the plans are considered dead. Interplay Movies reportedly successfully got Redneck Rampage made into a film, although it was never released.
=Source code=
The source code to the original Descent (minus the networking code) was released in 1997. The source code to Descent II and FreeSpace 2 has also been released. Open source projects have sprung up around these source releases and can be found on the Internet, the most popular project being D1X. D1X was a modified executable file of Descent , which added many new features such as the ability to change resolution and detail levels, higher mouse and joystick sensitivites, customizable primary and secondary weapon priority, and many other features that could be found in Descent II. After the release of the Descent II source code, the D1X project sparked another project called D2X, which went on to enhance the gameplay of Descent II. D1X and D2X also made it possible to play the games on different platforms like Linux.
Since work on the D1X and D2X projects became stagnant, an MS Windows specific development branch was spawned from the D2X project fixing most of the issues D2X still had and adding a lot of new features.
=External links=
*General Sites **[http://www.planetdescent.com PlanetDescent] **[http://www.descentbb.net Descent Bulletin Board] **[http://www.descent-3.com/faq/ The Official Descent 3 FAQ] **[http://moon.descent-3.com Moon s Descendarium - THE single player guide to Descent 1-3] *Source Code **[http://www.descent-network.com Descent II and Descent: FreeSpace source code] *Open Source Projects|
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