Descent was a huge part of my childhood (and surprisingly my little kids are now big fans as well)! Unfortunately this seems to stutter pretty badly with audio issues as well for me on Firefox on Linux. As a huge fan of three.js and other past work... I guess I'll blame Claude?
To add, I also loved Fury 3 because it had outdoor environments - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmOtHKZHjxU - though Wikipedia tells me it's a rebrand of Terminal Velocity
I'm a simple man, I see Descent, I make sure to mention Overload. Amazing game, likely the first game ever I got to the end just to see how the story ends (yes there is a story and it's pretty good).
I think the Revival studio didn't quite work out, I'm hoping the team is working on something else, they sure do know how to make good games.
I absolutely LOVED this game when it first came out. I played with a trackball + keyboard, and the 6 degrees of freedom, paired with an environment where there often was no natural sense of "up" or "down" (zero gravity, inside tunnels) really blew my mind. I experienced a sensation I had never before experienced, almost out-of-body.
For example, you approach a "T" junction, and depending on your pitch angle, the branches may be up/down or left/right. But since there's no natural ground or sky, you can either maintain an orientation memory (I usually did automatically), or you can just let all that go and travel with no sense of true orientation.
Occasionally you reach an area with some signs or printed panels, and then you realize what the regional up/down orientation was; but it didn't matter in zero gravity.
I used to consider it a form of flow-state when you’ve played Descent/Overload long enough that up/down stops being a thing.
It always took a while each session to get to that point, but once you were there it all just starting flowed so damn well, and manoeuvring the tunnels became so much faster/easier.
I used a joystick with a four-way hat that allowed simple and intuitive strafing in all directions along with thrust in four directions from the joystick itself. I got devastating with that combo. Spent hours mastering it.
I had a Spaceball Avenger which made it so intuitive to play.
From my old reddit post about it, "The Spaceball Avenger is a gaming peripheral. It has the usual buttons, but the big ball is used for six degrees of freedom movement. With pressure sensors the ball is pushed up/down, left/right, and in/out for X, Y and Z axes. The ball can also be rotated for pitch, yaw and roll.
Plugged into the computer's serial port it came with drivers for games such as Doom, for which it was a good controller, but the Spaceball really shined for the Descent family of games. Descent is a FPS with no gravity, where your ship moves in ALL directions, and controlling with with the Spaceball feels like you're holding the spaceship in your hand and you're just moving it to where you want it to go."
Seeing this kind of games so beloved by the HN greybeards, makes you wonder what will be the equivalent nostalgia games for the next generation. Pokemon red maybe? Perhaps Fortnite?
I was lucky enough to have a flight stick with a hat switch. Absolutely unfair, but I tore up my peers in the dorm because of that. Fantastic memories.
I remember mostly playing the port of this to the PS1, which had a fully animated opening cut scene. When I got the PC port like fifteen years later at a Goodwill, I was disappointed to see that that was a Playstation exclusive.
Descent is good, but I do think the series peaked with Descent II, if for no other reason than the rocking soundtrack. Very awesome, cool, industrial rock; I used to put the game CD in my car to listen to it since it was Red Book audio.
Yes, Descent II OST is on a totally different level compared to the MIDI-only Descent I soundtrack. And by famous musicians to boot - like Type O Negative and Ogre of Skinny Puppy, who created my favorite "Glut" and "Ratzez" tracks. It was the time when games became big enough to bring popular musicians aboard for the soundtrack, Quake with Trent Reznor being a perfect example.
Also, the series was followed by Descent Freespace I/II, leaving a significant impact on the genre of space shooters. Though there are completely different games that have nothing to do with the original series.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 83.9 ms ] threadAnd Quake for web by the same author: https://mrdoob.github.io/three-quake/
He's the creator of three.js, and it looks like this uses that for rendering instead of being a straight port.
And I believe made by some of the people that formerly worked on Descent.
I will have to check out Overload.
I think the Revival studio didn't quite work out, I'm hoping the team is working on something else, they sure do know how to make good games.
WebGL1 WASM version based on https://github.com/dxx-rebirth/dxx-rebirth -> https://midzer.de/wasm/descent1/
For example, you approach a "T" junction, and depending on your pitch angle, the branches may be up/down or left/right. But since there's no natural ground or sky, you can either maintain an orientation memory (I usually did automatically), or you can just let all that go and travel with no sense of true orientation.
Occasionally you reach an area with some signs or printed panels, and then you realize what the regional up/down orientation was; but it didn't matter in zero gravity.
It always took a while each session to get to that point, but once you were there it all just starting flowed so damn well, and manoeuvring the tunnels became so much faster/easier.
Logitech Wingman Extreme Digital: https://ebay.us/m/Hxi8Wh
From my old reddit post about it, "The Spaceball Avenger is a gaming peripheral. It has the usual buttons, but the big ball is used for six degrees of freedom movement. With pressure sensors the ball is pushed up/down, left/right, and in/out for X, Y and Z axes. The ball can also be rotated for pitch, yaw and roll.
Plugged into the computer's serial port it came with drivers for games such as Doom, for which it was a good controller, but the Spaceball really shined for the Descent family of games. Descent is a FPS with no gravity, where your ship moves in ALL directions, and controlling with with the Spaceball feels like you're holding the spaceship in your hand and you're just moving it to where you want it to go."
You can see it here https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/gmusxs...
Descent is good, but I do think the series peaked with Descent II, if for no other reason than the rocking soundtrack. Very awesome, cool, industrial rock; I used to put the game CD in my car to listen to it since it was Red Book audio.
Also, the series was followed by Descent Freespace I/II, leaving a significant impact on the genre of space shooters. Though there are completely different games that have nothing to do with the original series.
However this version uses mouse up/down to do up/down, and that seems so wrong. Can't play it :(
The VGA era was something special.