Descent (video game)

Descent
File:Descentcover.jpg
Developer(s)	Parallax Software
Publisher(s)	Interplay Productions
Engine	Segment (Cube) based
Platform(s)	PC, (MS-DOS), Mac OS, Linux, PlayStation, Acorn Archimedes
Release	March 17, 1995
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single player Multiplayer

Descent is a 3D first-person shooter video game which spawned two direct sequels (Descent II and Descent³). The Descent name was also used for an unrelated space simulator released by Volition, Inc. called Descent: FreeSpace — The Great War due to trademark issues. Descent was developed by Parallax Software and released in 1995. Although unsophisticated by modern gaming standards, it is still cherished by a strong community of fans, particularly for online multiplayer, and new levels continue to be developed.

The series has a strong following due to its unique "six degrees of freedom" gameplay. However, because this gameplay can be challenging and strongly favors the use of a joystick, Descent never gained the popularity of more conventional ground-based 3D first-person shooter games. Being regarded as a Doom clone by casual gamers meant that Descent's unique aspects were often overlooked, confining it to a niche. Limited support for modifications, compared to some competing games such as Doom and Quake, also effectively limited its lasting appeal.

The trademark for Descent was allowed to lapse by Interplay in 2002.

Storyline

The game begins with a briefing between a bald anonymous executive (in later games named Dravis) of the Post Terran Minerals Corporation (PTMC) and the player, a "Material Defender" (revealed as MD1032 in the briefings) hired on a mercenary basis to gather information about a computer virus infecting the robots used for off-world mining operations. The game progresses through the solar system, from the Moon to Pluto's moon Charon. After defeating the boss robot on Charon, the Material Defender is informed he cannot return to the PTMC's headquarters in lunar orbit, as there is a chance his ship may be infected with the same virus as the defeated robots.

Gameplay

Screenshot of Descent

Navigation

Although the keyboard interface for moving and rotating in full 3D space is 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 with their point of view continually upside-down.

The game also supported the use of two joysticks that could be configured freely, which made playing the game easier than using the keyboard.

Like Doom, Descent provides a navigational wireframe map that will display any area of the mine visited or seen by the player. Since it is truly 3D, however, navigating the map can be challenging, especially so in the shareware demo. The commercial release of Descent made map navigation more intuitive. One helpful trick is to use the "-" and "+" keys to decrease or increase the scope of the wireframe map. The flight control keys are used to control the map.

Compared to other 3D shooter games, Descent never became particularly popular; probably due to its increased demand to the player's ability to keep his orientation in a fully 3D environment with a 6dof flight model. Also learning to effectively exploit (tri-) chording - increasing movement speed by simultaneously pressing the acceleration controls for several movement directions - steepened the learning curve. The challenge this poses attracted and still attracts players even 10 years after the first game of the franchise appeared.

Multiplayer

Like Doom, Descent offers competitive multiplayer game play over a LAN. Descent is also touted as being one of the first games that allowed on-the-fly joining of multiplayer games, whereas in many similar games of the era such as Doom it is presumed that all players have to be queued prior to initiating the match.

With the advent of Internet IPX clients such as Kali [1] and Kahn, Descent and Descent II were increasingly played over the Internet. Descent II was especially popular online due to its support for short packets and variable packet rate, which significantly improved quality of play over the slower Internet connections prevalent at the time.

An important element of the online gaming community was the Invitational Descent Ladder [2]. The ladder facilitated one-on-one duels between some of the most skilled Descent players in the world. IDL matches were chiefly played in the original Descent game and to a lesser extent Descent 2; Descent 3 was not as well received and saw little use on the ladder in comparison.

The D1X project significantly improved gameplay for on-line Descent games.

Levels and robots

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 and fifth on Venus, and the sixth and seventh take place on Mercury. These levels also make up the shareware version.

In the commercial release, the path continues out towards Mars and on towards the moons of the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and finally until Pluto and Charon. There are 3 secret levels, located in the Asteroid Belt, which can be accessed by secret exits that are placed as an alternative to the regular exits in certain levels.

The complete list of levels of the original Descent mission is as follows:

• Level 1: Lunar Outpost
• Level 2: Lunar Scilab
• Level 3: Lunar Military Base
• Level 4: Venus Atmospheric Lab
• Level 5: Venus Nickel-Iron Mine
• Level 6: Mercury Solar Lab
• Level 7: Mercury Core
• Level 8: Mars Processing Station
• Level 9: Mars Military Dig
• Level 10: Mars Military Base
• Level 11: Io Sulfur Mine
• Level 12: Callisto Tower Colony
• Level 13: Europa Mining Colony
• Level 14: Europa CO2 Mine
• Level 15: Titan Mine
• Level 16: Hyperion Methane Mine
• Level 17: Tethys H2O Mine
• Level 18: Miranda Mine
• Level 19: Oberon Mine
• Level 20: Oberon Iron Mine
• Level 21: Oberon Platinum Mine
• Level 22: Neptune Storage Depot
• Level 23: Triton Storage Depot
• Level 24: Nereid Volatile Mine
• Level 25: Pluto Outpost
• Level 26: Pluto Military Base
• Level 27: Charon Volatile Mine
• Secret Level 1: Asteroid Secret Base
• Secret Level 2: Asteroid Military Depot
• Secret Level 3: Asteroid Robot Factory

The enemy AI was quite good for its time, with most robots being able to dodge a player's fire, making for challenging firefights and duels. There are special AI strategies that complement the bots' attacking style, with regular (firing) robots starting in sniping mode and often aggressively pursuing if the player retreated, close-combat robots which are highly maneuverable and charge the player, and certain "cunning" or "lurking" bots that track the player and only attack when it will achieve surprise. As the mission progresses, new, tougher robots begin to appear with more powerful weapons.

The seventh level, which is also the end of the shareware version, and the final level are cited as the most difficult. Both have large boss robots with powerful weaponry (the first boss fires Smart missiles; the second fires Mega Missiles) and have the ability to cloak (become invisible) then teleport to other parts of the room. The second boss also causes other robots to materialize nearby.

Objectives

Each level starts with the player in his ship materializing in a starting location within the mine. The player must then navigate through the mine while destroying enemy robots and picking up powerups if his resources run low. The player's spacecraft has a fixed energy capacity and most weapons and tools require regular pickups of energy powerups to be able to continue firing. Killing opponents often releases such powerups. There are also permanent recharging areas called "energy centers" and players often make it a priority to seek these out first in order to give themselves an unlimited supply of energy. The player's ship also contains a limited supply of shield energy (normally referred to as "shields"), which is reduced when the player is hit. Unlike energy, shields can only be restored by acquiring the appropriate powerups.

The player has limited lives. When the ship is destroyed, it respawns at the mine's entrance. However, all the powerups (weapons, etc.) acquired thus far will be strewn about the area of death waiting to be reacquired. There is also a complementary points system. Players can score points by destroying enemy robots, picking up powerups, and detonating the reactor. The most points will be earned by rescuing the trapped PTMC workers in each mine and safely escaping with them after destroying the reactor. Hostages are lost when the ship is destroyed, so it is often recommended that they be rescued just before blowing the reactor. Accumulating 50000 points will result in an extra life.

In Descent, the goal of each level is to find a series of keys, usually in the order of blue, yellow, and red. Each key will correspond with a door of that color. Beyond the red door is the reactor, which itself will fire back at the player, and the area is also heavily defended by robots. By severely damaging the reactor, it will set off a countdown timer. The player will have to find the route back to the exit tunnel before the countdown expires and the reactor's meltdown vapourizes the entire mine. If the player cannot escape, but has extra lives to spare, he can proceed to the next level and be forced to start with minimal weapons.

In the seventh and twenty-seventh levels, the reactor is replaced by a boss robot, which similarly triggers the countdown after it is destroyed.

Saving

In the shareware version, saving will only record the player data at the start of the level. Saving in the full version can be done at any time (but not on secret levels in Descent II); it stores the exact details of every object's location and data, and a small snapshot of the player's view, at the time of the save.

Weapons and items

The overall gameplay is enhanced by the wide variety of weapons the player can wield. Often, they are used for their novelty and variety instead of tactical considerations. The proximity bomb is designed specifically for multiplayer.

Descent's handling of weapons in multiplayer differs from other first-person shooters. When a player is killed, all the powerups (weapons, etc.) acquired thus far will be strewn about the area of death waiting to be reacquired. Instead of respawning primary weapons, which could potentially allow several players to pick up the same weapon over time, only one player can have it at a time, forcing his opponents to destroy him in order to acquire it.

Descent features ten weapons; five primary weapons and five missiles.

Primary weapons

• Laser - precise and efficient energy weapon with four power levels with corresponding colors (red, purple, blue, green), and a 'quad laser' powerup which doubles the player's cannons to four. Its low energy consumption compensates for its moderate speed.
• Vulcan Cannon - non-energy primary weapon that uses ammunition which can be picked up; an instant-impact or hitscan weapon; rapid firing is good for stunning robots but very weak and consequently uses up much ammo to kill enemies; useful for sniping since it leaves no tracers.
• Spreadfire Cannon - a medium-close ranged weapon with three energy spheres per shot, alternates between horizontal and vertical spreads; fairly fast firing and devastating in close quarters.
• Plasma Cannon - rapidly fires large, fast-flying, green colored plasma spheres in pairs; making it one of the most versatile and dangerous energy weapons in spite of its extremely high energy consumption. Very popular due to its visually stunning effects and cool sounds. Referred to as the "Dogfighter's best friend".
• Fusion Cannon - hold down the firing button to charge the cannon, releasing the fire button unleashes a large purple blob. Also notable is that the ship will shudder and move involuntarily when charging, and excessive charging will damage the ship. Nonetheless, this is the most powerful energy weapon in the game, as it can punch through multiple robots. In fact, the shot's power actually increases with the number of enemies it hits through. It has a visual blast radius, but it is purely decorative and causes no splash damage. While this is a difficult weapon to master in multiplayer, as the player using the Fusion cannon must accurately "lead" his shot while charging the weapon, it is extremely potent in the hands of a skilled pilot, who will be able to kill other pilots with just one charged-up hit.

Secondary weapons

• Concussion Missile - basic dumbfire rocket; small splash damage area; medium speed.
• Homing Missile - Slightly more powerful and faster than the concussion missile. It has similar small splash area. Automatically locks on and follows a target within a reasonably wide angle ("fire and forget"); very difficult to evade.
• Proximity Bomb - stationary mine that explodes at timeout or on contact; useful for delaying chasers or setting traps through hallways or on enemy generators.
• Smart Missile - heavy missile that releases a group of five homing plasma spheres. Missile is set to detonate after a set time following release. The plasma bomblets can follow indefinitely, increase in speed, and "lock" on enemies akin to Homing and Mega Missiles.
• Mega Missile - megaton missile equipped with a weak homing ability, but its essence lies in its huge splash damage radius and very high attack power.

All of the secondary weapons can hurt the player at too close a range; the Mega Missile can easily kill a player that has nearly full shields.

Flares

The player is given an unlimited supply of Flares to fire into dark areas for illumination. Flares cost one energy per shot to fire. When energy is completely depleted from the player's ship, they are no longer available. It is common to use the Flare as a weapon to humiliate a near-dead opponent. Since a Flare only causes one unit of damage even at the highest difficulty level, being killed by one is often a humiliating experience.

Other items

• Shield: The trademark electrified blue spheres give 18, 15, 12, 9 and 6 shield units at Trainee, Rookie, Hotshot, Ace, and Insane modes, respectively.
• Energy/energy centers: The flashing yellow stars give the same delineations of energy for each difficulty level as the shield power-ups. Energy centers are generally delineated with textures of yellow-and-gold squares and walls of yellow stars (although they do not have to in a level editor as long as an energy block is specified) and allow the player to power up to 100 energy; they do nothing if the player has more than 100 energy.
• Cloaking device: For about 30 seconds, this purple sphere with a ring inside will make the player almost invisible to enemy fire, turning the Pyro-GX's geometry partly transparent and causing enemy AI to lose track of the player.
• Extra life: Green sphere with a ship inside. Self-explanatory.
• Invulnerability: Cloudy blue sphere with silver rings around it. Self-explanatory; lasts about 30 seconds, although the "God Mode" cheat (racerx) makes it almost infinite.

Technology

The original Descent runs under DOS and is (with some tweaking) playable on 386-based PCs at 33 MHz. With the release of the Pentium, the performance requirements were no longer an issue. Descent was ported to Apple's Power Macintosh in 1996 and both versions support multiplayer network play over a variety of protocols. A console port of Descent was created for the Sony PlayStation. Another console port for the Sega Saturn was also planned, but never released.

Rendering

Descent was released in February 1995, just over a year after id Software's Doom (December 1993). Like most games of its era, Descent uses a software renderer, because 3D graphics accelerator cards were not widely available or affordable at the time. However, while most of its contemporaries – Doom included – use sprites to render enemies, Descent renders enemies in full 3D using polygon meshes, a technique employed by Quake the following year. Unlike Doom and Quake, Descent does not use BSP trees for visibility culling (to speed up rendering), instead taking advantage of the game's use of collections of cubes to form rooms and tunnels. This system was very efficient, and made possible one of the first true 3D environments in a video game. On lower-end systems, detail levels could be reduced to cut out some of the smaller polygons on robots and render solid color blocks on distant textures instead of mapping the entire texture.

The original Descent uses indexed 8-bit color in DOS's display mode 13h, using 320 × 200 resolution. Unlike its sequel, it uses only one 256-color set during gameplay, rather than a unique set for each level set; these colors tinge red during damage and purple during fusion charging. The Macintosh and later PC versions allow higher resolutions, such as 640 × 480. The default engine uses a software renderer in which the perspective transformation for texture mapping is only performed once every 32 pixels, causing textures to appear to pop or shift when viewed from certain angles. The software renderer also uses 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.

The engine for Descent is a portal rendering engine, operating on the premise of interconnected cube-shaped sectors. Sides of cubes can be attached to other cubes, or display up to two texture maps. Cubes can be deformed so long as they remain convex. To create effects like doors and see-through grating, walls could be placed at the connected sides of two cubes. Descent introduced an elaborate static lighting scheme as well as simple dynamic lighting, where the environment could be lit with flares - another advancement compared to Doom.

Audio

The game uses 8-bit, 11 kHz sound effects, including some vocals. On slower computers, the sound settings could be reduced to allow only one door sound, only one laser sound, only a few enemy sounds, and other simplifications. (It also would make only one sound play per frame, which would potentially slow down things more than it could help them.) The PC version's soundtrack is a MIDI score, while the Macintosh version uses Redbook audio and the Playstation version uses CDXA audio.

Sequels, add-ons and expansions

In chronological order of release:

Descent Mission Builder (1995)

A commercial Descent level editor, created by Brainware. Users can create their own single-player and multi-player levels with the program and then play them. A modernized and enhanced version of DMB2 called DLE-XP has been created by the maintainer of D2X-XL.

Descent: Levels of The World (1995)

A popular add-on for Descent, containing all of the entries from a level design competition held by Interplay in 1995. A viewer is included, allowing the player to see a preview of each map, as well as selecting ones that received a "Top 10" award or an honorable mention.

Descent: Anniversary Edition (1996)

A bundle released on the one-year anniversary of the original game's debut, the Anniversary Edition featured Descent, the Levels Of The World add-on, and several additional levels created by Parallax.

Descent (PlayStation)

A version of Descent was also produced for the PlayStation. It features the same levels as the PC version of Descent, but adds a remixed soundtrack, prerendered cinematics, and colored lighting effects.

Descent II

Main article: Descent II

A sequel to Descent was released in 1996, entitled Descent II. It introduced new weapons, items and enemies, and was based on a version of the same engine upgraded to support higher resolutions, destroyable and flickering lights, and custom robots and textures, among other features.

Descent Maximum

Released in 1997, this PlayStation exclusive is basically Descent II but with different level designs. The cinematics, enemy robots, and goal remain the same.

Descent³

Main article: Descent³

The third instalment in the series, Descent³, was released in 1999. It used an entirely new game engine based on polygonal meshes instead of Descent's cube-based engine; it also touted support for outdoor areas, significantly improved AI and built-in support for Internet multi-player games.

Related titles

Volition had started work on Descent 4 but it was cancelled early in production, owing mostly to disappointing sales of Descent³. An archived copy of the official Descent 4 website started by Volition is available here.

Some fans believed that Volition was working on Descent 4 only to have the decision changed to have the game finished and marketed as the first-person shooter Red Faction.

Descent'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. Other plot points include nanotechnology, an evil faceless corporation, and the virus they are attempting to harness. Descent 4 was planned as a prequel to Descent, and incorporated those elements.

This reportedly served as a basis for Red Faction, although Mike Kulas (president of Volition) noted that Red Faction does not directly relate to Descent. However, he did admit that code that was meant for Descent 4 was being used in Red Faction.

Descent: FreeSpace — The Great War also used 3D acceleration. However, FreeSpace is a space simulator that is an entirely different game from Descent. It is primarily a 3D shooter though without the same "six degrees of freedom" (6DOF), the main difference being 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 — The Great War), though some early drafts of the story have the FreeSpace pilot searching for Descent's Material Defender.

Descent: FreeSpace — The Great War had a sequel in the form of FreeSpace 2 (without "Descent"), but like Descent³, it was not very successful despite positive reviews.

However, a 6DOF game similar to Descent is in development. Core Decision, developed by High Octane Software, is highly anticipated by many Descent fans. It's schedule for release has been delayed, but the developers maintain indications of progress on their website.

Another notable project involving Descent is the Into Cerberon total-conversion mod for Doom 3. This project aims to recreate the experience of Descent using a modern game engine.

Descent novels

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 very well received.

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.

One thing that lends credence to this Descent movie is a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office of a 2000 abandoned trademark filing of Descent with the "Goods and/or Services" being listed as:

International Class: 041 entertainment services, namely, production and distribution of live action theatrical, motion pictures and television motion pictures and animated and live action television series featuring action, adventure and science fiction stories.

Another thing that lends credence to this Descent movie is a April 15th, 1998 Variety article mentioning the announcement of Tom Reed as president of Interplay Films, the division of Interplay Productions set up to produce movies based upon their popular IP. Variety reported that Reed's strategy for Interplay Films was to have "feature adaptations of Interplay's most popular computer game titles -- such as Fallout, Descent, Stonekeep, Carmageddon, Earthworm Jim and Redneck Rampage." and quoted Reed as saying:

I don't want this company to become pigeonholed ... A lot of games are action, adventure or fantasy based, and we have great product in those areas." But the company also will pursue spec scripts, books, articles and other idea sources.

Third-party development

The source code to the original Descent (minus the audio code, which was replaced with the Allegro project) was released in 1997. The source code to Descent II was subsequently released in 1999.

Numerous open source projects based on these source releases have appeared on the Internet. The most popular early project was D1X, which added many new features such as the ability to change resolution, customizable primary and secondary weapon priority, and many other features that were previously only available in Descent II.

Following the release of the Descent II source code, the D1X project sparked another project called D2X, which went on to enhance the gameplay and compatibility of Descent II. D1X and D2X also made it possible to play the games on different platforms like Linux. However, eventually, work on the D1X and D2X projects became stagnant. The latest version, D1X 1.43, added support for OpenGL and Direct3D graphics as well as TCP/IP multiplayer, and runs under Windows XP with few problems.

Descent has also been unofficially ported to the Xbox and as homebrew for the Nintendo DS and the Playstation Portable

Rebirth

DXX-Rebirth is a Source Port of the original Descent & Descent2 engines and provides classical Gameplay combined with OpenGL graphics and effects and a few new features. This gives the user the ability to play a classic game on current operating system without losing the original feel and purpose of the games.

It's Open Source - DXX-Rebirth is available for Linux, Mac (D2) and Windows.

D2X-XL

D2X

D2X

A Windows-specific development branch was spawned from the D2X project, fixing all of the issues D2X still had and adding a lot of new features, such as the ability to play Descent missions in Descent 2. This branch was originally titled D2X-W32 but was ported to Linux and Mac OS X later on, and renamed to D2X-XL to reflect both the broader scope and greatly enhanced feature set of the project.

It offers many features like colored lighting, smoke, real-time shadowing, new weapon effects and new game modes that enhance the single-player experience and give new twists to multi-player games. As most ports, it retains full compatibility with the original game and can be switched in appearance between a graphically updated version, and the original look and feel of Descent.

Popular culture

• The self destruct sequence voice clip is featured in a song called "Tight Rope" by Lacuna Coil

See also

• Descent II — the sequel to this game
• Descent³
• Interplay Entertainment
• Straferunning — known as trichording to Descent players
• Fury3
• Hellbender (computer game)

External links

• General Sites
  • Descent Mission Builder Official Site
  • Descent³ Official Site
  • The Descent Bulletin Boards - DescentBB.net and DescentBB.com
  • Moon's Descendarium - THE Single Player Guide to Descent 1-3
• Online Gaming Groups
  • Descent Rangers
• Source Code
  • Descent II and FreeSpace 2's engine source code
• Game Archive and Review Sites
  • Descent at MobyGames
  • Descent series at MobyGames
• Open Source Projects
  • The D1X project
  • The D2X project
  • The DXX-Rebirth project
  • The D2X-XL project - this site also offers a lot of complementary info and a huge level archive, as well as DLE-XP, a level editor for Descent 1 and 2

• Other Projects
  • The Into Cerberon Mod for Doom 3