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Descent (video game)

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Descent
Screenshot
Screenshot
Developer(s)Parallax Software
Publisher(s)Interplay Productions
EnginePortal Rendering System
Platform(s)PC, (MS-DOS), Mac OS, PlayStation, Acorn Archimedes
Release1995
Genre(s)First-person shooter
Mode(s)Single player
Multiplayer
Descent
Descent

Descent is a 3D first-person shooter computer game noted for popularizing the use of portal rendering technology and providing the player with six full degrees of freedom (often abbreviated "6DOF") to move and to look around. Descent spawned two direct sequels (Descent II and Descent 3). The Descent name was used in an unrelated arcade space sim called Descent: FreeSpace. Descent was developed by Parallax Software and released in 1995. 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 386-based PCs at 33 MHz. With the release of the Pentium, the performance requirements disappeared as an issue. Descent was ported to Apple's Power Macintosh in 1996 and both versions supported multiplayer network play over a variety of protocols. A console port of Descent was created for the Sony Playstation, entitled Descent Maximum. The small but significant differences that separate the two were coloured lighting, and a custom single-player level set. The Playstation version also featured a Redbook audio soundtrack, something the original DOS Descent lacked (the soundtrack came as a MIDI score).

Descent was released in 1994, one year after id's Doom. As was typical with those releases, Descent used a software renderer due to the fact that affordable 3D graphics accelerator cards (referred to as add-on videocards) were not mainstream as yet. While DOOM used sprites to render enemies, Descent featured fully-3D-polygonal enemies. Quake followed in the footsteps of Descent by displaying its enemies in 3D. Descent differed from Doom and subsequently Quake by using a portal system instead of BSP trees. In a portal scheme, each room is an enclosed chamber and the player moved from one chamber to another which were linked via narrow doors and tunnels. This method of rendering proved to be quite efficient for its time because the engine did not need to unnecessarily expend energy.

Perhaps the more significant improvement over Doom was that Descent used bitmap sprites only for powerups and not for opponents. With true 3D enemies, the game introduced a more frightening level of realism.

Storyline

Template:Spoiler

Descent

You are one of the Post-Terran Mining Corporation (PTMC)'s Material Defenders. Unfortunately for you, Dravis, an executive at PTMC, is sending you on a mission to destroy PTMC's mines. An alien virus has infected the robots working there, and they've turned into killers. It's now your job to rescue any hostages, and destroy the mine, hopefully taking the robots with it when it explodes.

Descent II

After you've busted all of the mines in the solar system in the original Descent, you stop in the Asteroid belt for refeuling. Dravis then contacts you and forces you to work some more. ("If you had studied chapter 62 paragraph 64 of your standard mercenary agreement, you will notice that PTMC reserves the right to keep you on retainer for up to 72 hours, post-mission.") Your ship is fitted with a warp-core and you are sent to clear out all of PTMC's deep space mines, the last of which seems to be some kind of artificial planet and/or alien spaceship. After completing all of this work, you are ready to go home, but instead your warp-core malfunctions, sending you to an unknown location... to be continued...

Descent 3

After a warp drive malfunction, the Material Defender finds himself barely alive, and falling into a sun. Saved from death by some locals, you discover that Dravis, head of the Post Terran Mining Corporation, deliberately had you killed. Having experimented with the virus that turns robots into killers, you were just a liability. With a new GL-class Pyro, you plan on getting paid, and then kill Dravis, in that order.

Gameplay

Descent's continued success stemmed mostly from multi-player, online play where the ability to "trichord" (sliding in 3 directions at once) made ship movements unique and challenging to predict. The game continued to be popular 10 years after its release in small pockets of online players due to "trichording". The decline of the series with the release of the third, 'Descent 3', is widely considered to be the fault of the loss of "trichording" (which was still possible, but much less effective or necessary). This made the game similar to other flight simulators, and the series never continued into the planned 'Descent IV'.

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, the sixth on Mercury and then back out towards Mars and on towards the moons of the gas giants and finally until Pluto and Charon.

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. The player's spacecraft has a fixed energy budget and requires regular pickups of energy powerups to be able to continue firing. Killing opponents often releases such powerups. There are 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 AI 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.

In the first two games the player had limited lives. When the ship was destroyed, it respawned 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 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 LAN. 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, 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 × 200 resolution. The Macintosh and later PC versions allowed higher resolutions, such as 640x480. The default engine used 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 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 four power levels with corresponding colors, and a 'quad laser' powerup to enable all four cannons)
  • Vulcan cannon (uses ammunition found in packages; can be evaded if done correctly; useful for sniping and finishing off enemies)
  • Spreadfire cannon (a medium ranged weapon with three energy spheres per shot; good at range and devastating up close)
  • Plasma cannon (fires large, green colored plasma spheres in pairs; one of the most versatile and dangerous energy weapons. Referred to as the "Dogfighters' best friend")
  • Fusion cannon (slow-charging but quick-firing. Only devastating when fully charged; 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; medium speed)
  • Homing missile (less powerful but faster than the concussion missile, automatically locks on and follows a target, can be evaded)
  • Proximity bomb (stationary mine that explodes at timeout or on contact; useful for delaying chasers or setting traps)
  • Smart missile (heavy missile that releases a group of five homing plasma spheres on impact or timed self-destruct)
  • 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) (Interesting note: This weapon initially caused much controversy during online play due to a bug that caused the number of bolts fired to be directly proportional to the speed of the weapon user's video-card. This caused the weapon to often be removed from the online arsenal by the host, until a patch fixing the problematic bug was released.)

Missiles:

  • Flash missile (low-powered missile that temporarily blinds its target; if the player is hit, the blast turns his entire screen white for a moment)
  • Guided missile (can be remotely guided by the player and hitting the firing button will turn it into 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. Two new ships were added. The Phoenix Interceptor (fast and very agile, but also very weak) and the Magnum-AHT (Referred in multiplayer groups as the 'Tank'; Large, heavy and slow, but very tough)

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 stream of napalm that ignites enemies, but also the player if used carelessly (One stream for the Phoenix Interceptor, two streams for the Pyro-GL, and three streams for the Magnum-AHT)
  • 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 that causes the enemy's view to become severely distorted.
  • 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 was never included.

Countermeasures:

Countermeasures were added in Descent 3 as a third weapon category but when the proximity bomb was included in this group, it only marginalized this type of weapon. The inherent difficulty in managing not two, but three different categories of weapon to be used simultaneously in a given situation resulted in countermeasures being given litte to no attention in multiplayer.

  • The Gunboy Is a stationary turret that can be used to cover positions. It uses a laser to attack enemies. When an enemy comes in range, the Gunboy starts attacking it.
  • 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 was lowered to one energy unit per two shots, but it 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

Descent II added more weapon types, different enemy types, different mines, laser-reflecting force field walls, and transporter areas. In response to complaints that Descent's levels were mostly dull and lacked creativity, Descent II's levels were designed with a theme in mind; Level 2 Turnabout Bore lives up to its name since the map resembles a figure-8. 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. Another major improvement was the enemy robot AI with some robots not only being able to dodge fire but also do hit-and-run attacks or lay mines. Most infamous was the Thief-Bot which was a fast-moving and hard-to-kill enemy that attempted to steal the player's weapons and equipment; another similar robot will drain the player's energy and shields.

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 patch (also from Parallax) 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's Nivek Ogre. An expansion pack featured remixes of some tracks from the original score.

While the first Descent had been released as shareware with 7 levels, Descent II was released as a shorter 3 level demo. Another truncated version of Descent II was "Destination Quartzon" which featured the first 8 levels and was bundled with the Logitech Wingman Extreme joystick.

Descent 3

Descent 3 switched to natively use accelerated 3D graphics hardware and improved the rendering engine to support outdoor environments with an 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, more colourful and brighter than its predecessors. Although reviewers praised and lauded it, gamers failed to take note, perhaps because of the high system requirements at the time, with badly timed and themed 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 not as successful as the developers were hoping for.

Descent (PlayStation)

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

Descent Maximum (PlayStation)

Descent Maximum is the spiritual counterpart of Descent 2 on the PlayStation. Unlike the first PlayStation Descent, Descent Maximum contained 30 entirely new levels. These maps had similar themes to those in Descent 2, but were generally smaller than their PC cousins.

It is widely 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. 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: [1]

Descent: FreeSpace 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 (without "Descent"), but like Descent 3, it was not very successful despite positive reviews.

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 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.

Source code

D2X
D2X

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 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, 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 virtually all of the issues D2X still had and adding a lot of new features, such as the ability to play Descent 1 missions in Descent 2. Originally, this branch went by the name D2X-W32. It was ported to Linux and Mac OS X later on, and its name was changed to D2X-XL to reflect both the broader scope and greatly enhanced feature set of the project.

Descent technology vs. Star Trek technology

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A major plot hole in Descent 1 might be that the ship is able to continue flying even when it has run out of energy, unless the "energy" the player collects is only intended for weapons, which would mean that propulsion is run by a separate system within the ship. However, if this is the case, one wonders why the pilot is unable to utilize that propulsion energy when the weapons energy is depleted in a manner similar to other sci-fi technologies such as those of the Star Trek universe, where "rerouting power" from propulsion to weapons is a common maneuver.

The instruction manual for Descent I indicates that using propulsion energy as a weapon is possible by causing the ship to physically ram objects the pilot wishes to damage. This can be taken to indicate that, in the Descent universe, the amount of energy required for propulsion is dramatically less than that required for the ship's projectile weapons.

This line of reasoning also causes one to wonder about the ship's shields - whether the "floating blue orbs" that recharge shields (such as the one featured on the original cover for Descent I) are made up of matter or energy. If they are matter, the ship would collect the material its shields are made of from the orbs and spread it out over the ship. Firing at or ramming the ship would scrape off this material, leaving the ship unprotected when removed. If energy, then that would mean that their basic concept is presumably similar to shields in the Star Trek universe, which again leaves one to wonder why "shield energy" cannot be converted to weapons energy, and why the weapons-energy-recharging areas weren't designed to transfer shield energy as well.

The "blue orbs" that the player collects to recharge shields were once described to be blinding to human miners. One wonders what they are, where they come from and why they are necessary. It is possible that they were intended to be an enigma by the creators of the games.

The hardware contained in the Material Defender's ship is described in the opening cut-scene of Descent I to be "illegally modified, just the way those hardware junkies like them", so presumably any "safety feature" preventing the pilot from converting shields or propulsion energy to weapons energy would obviously been disabled at that point. Unless the propulsion, shields and weapons energies are in forms that are somehow completely incompatible, it is unfortunate that the player is unable to utilize these extra defensive capabilities implied by the existing ones in the Material Defender's ship.

It should be noted that the conversion from one energy source to another is touched upon marginally in the first two games. Descent 1's 'Fusion' cannon is described to draw energy directly from the ship's fusion core, which results in damage to the ship if the cannon is overloaded. The game does not explain what the ship's "fusion core" is normally used for.

Descent 2 added an optional tool to be at the player’s disposal; a 'conversion' device that converted weapon-energy to shield-energy, albeit at a ratio less than 1 to 1. Additionally, the device could only be used when the player's weapon-energy was greater than 100 (this restriction meant that recharging stations couldn't be used to recharge shields).

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