Descent and Descent II do indeed use a quad-based engine, at least for the environments. This allowed the engine to easily determine which quads were visible based on if a connecting quad surface was being rendered or not, and thus which objects to render based on what quads they were presently inside. It was a highly streamlined way to ensure that only visible areas got rendered given an environment that allowed movement and level design in all directions, plus when you use a level editor for Descent or Descent II, once you get used to the quad-based system you'd be surprised how quickly you can put stuff together. ;)

As for the enemy polygon counts, and whether or not they're using quads instead of triangles, I'm not sure. Best guess is that the average enemy has 60 to 100 triangles, or a little more than half of that if quads.

The Descent II engine IS actually slightly modified from the original. The major difference is world-based dynamic light sources, since in Descent II you could change the lighting of the world by destroying light-emitting surfaces. Descent II also added new interactions like the ability to unlock/open doors by shooting switches. The engine is also more optimized in Descent II and can hit higher framerates for the same rendering complexity, especially in SVGA video modes. Other than that, they're almost identical and most level editors for these games can handle both Descent and Descent II levels.

However, while Descent was ahead of its time in terms of rendering quality, Quake did add a lot of tech to the mix that made it much easier to mod among other things, plus let's face it, the Descent games are VERY difficult in comparison to Quake and are more difficult to control, so it's no wonder more people refer to Quake for advancing gaming tech over the Descent series.

While the multiplayer Quake experience is very fun (well, I only played the Darkplaces version of Quake 1 online, but AFAIK it is the same thing except for improved graphics and engine), the Quake singleplayer in my opinion just plan sucks. It is basically a bland version of Doom with less colors (brown everywhere), requires console commands just to get mouselook and the levels do not really use the possibilities of 3D at all. As for hardness, I agree Descent 1 can be a bit confusing sometimes, but Descent 2 basically holds your hand all the time with the guidebot while actually using real 3D for something. I have a severe hand deformity from birth and my father played maybe five 3D games in his life yet we both loved playing Descent 2, and we both found it easy to control. And I was just 10 year old at that time. I also like the Descent games because the enemy choices look far better despite the low polycount (robots look a lot better in low poly than humanoid monsters do) and it actually uses the 256 color palette instead of using just shades of brown.

By the way, anyone knows any modern games like Descent?

If Descent 1 and 2 uses quads, how were the Virge, Rendition and Voodoo versions done?

I love Quake's Singleplayer, especially if you combine it with the mission packs. I don't see why you wouldn't like it, it is quite unique.

Maybe it is just not my cup of tea then. Many period reviews actually share my opinion and prefer Duke and Descent 2 in terms of resolution (anything over 320x200 in Quake was quite slow on any Pentium classic) and overall fun factor.

m1so wrote:

By the way, anyone knows any modern games like Descent?

Retrovirus is the only one I know of.

Never liked Quake that much either. "Brown" is what describes the game best indeed. 😀 Quake 3 had a fairly repulsive color palette too as far as I'm concerned.

For games like Descent 1 and 2, how about trying something like... Descent 3? Forsaken comes to mind as well.

I try to do something about its shortcomings at least 😒

Your engine goes in the right direction, gives the game a bit of much needed color variation.

back then I used to refer to Quake as the "brown game" but nowdays... I just love it!

I like the look of vanilla software quake. I don't know why people hate it so much. It was unique, it has a really dirty and unsettling look to it. GLQuake and other source ports can hardly capture that.

To truly appreciate Quake, you have to look at the development of the game.The fact that the game turned out this good proves that development hell may actually lead to something good. In my opinion, the fact that the levels are so disjointed and artistically different from each other, only puts it that much higher up my list. It definitely is one of my favorite FPS.

As a game, it is also far more accessible than Descent. I love Descent and have no problem navigating through the levels, but you have to remember most people in the 90's couldn't stand 3D games for too long or else they suffered motion sickness. To play Descent, you have to realize that you are free to move in any direction. This in itself is a difficult concept, but also add to that that your craft remains stationary if you do nothing. It's was just plain weird for anyone playing the game back in 1995-1996, whether you were playing FPS games or Flight/Combat Simulators. Also, while Descent has far lower system requirements than Quake, it actually had moderately high requirements when it was first released.
Magic Carpet also had very high system requirements for its time (optimized for Pentium, required a DX/50, basically a DX2/66!!!) but what kept people away from it was its accessibility. It's just far easier to pick and play a game where you collect keys and shoot stuff.

I didn't play many 3D games before Descent 2, so please don't give me this patronizing "but ppl in the 1990s could not handle this stuff". I've never gotten sick from a computer game in my life. Besides, people evolved to see in 3D space, life is not a Doom clone, pilots don't go crazy etc.

And Descent 2 came in 1996, when something like a DX2/66 was already on the way out. Steep requirements? It produced cca 60 fps in 320x200 on AMD K5. That's not what I call "steep requirements".

My first 3D game was a Novalogic flight simulator. Do people really want 3D that only serves as eye candy instead of adding to the gameplay? And the "youngin, but thats how it was in the 90s" excuse is not valid either as there were more 6 degrees of freedom games in the 90s (Descent series, Forsaken, countless flight sims) than today (Retrovirus). Plus AFAIK many people liked flight sims at that time as they usually were the "cutting edge".

I loved Descent! I remember playing it on our School LAN during the last weeks of school 😀

Coax network and all of that. I was the only one who played with keyboard and mouse and because of that totally dominated 😜

At home I played it with a Joystick however. The main issue for me was the up and down missing with the standard AWSD + mouse. I also found the gameplay very repetitive. Not much happens in the later levels. Still it's a great game with very good Music. The AWE sounds very good with this game.

Glad to see a fellow Descent fan 😀

I played Descent 2 with a keyboard only setup. I never found the controls hard. I actually find games that can be played by keyboard only easier to play because of my disability. This is how I set my controls: Left Shift to accelerate, Ctrl to fire, Right Shift to go backwards, Space to shoot missiles, Insert to go up, Delete to go down, Z to strafe left, X to strafe right - I got through the first 3 levels of Descent 2 in cca 6 minutes last time I played it using these controls 😀 .

For me, getting a decent joystick made Descent a lot more fun and a lot nicer to play, as I could never really get used to playing the game with solely a keyboard, or with a keyboard+mouse combo.

Quake primarily runs on floating-point math, whereas 99% of all games prior ran on integer math, which is why playing Quake on anything less than a Pentium results in a far inferior framerate, even if it's a lightning-fast 486. :P

It's definitely eased in a GL port though and I'm not sure how one would turn the span drawers into integer-only stuff.

Fixed-point math perhaps? I know there's a number of DOS games that go this route, though many DOS games opted instead to just have very large coordinate systems stashed into 32-bit integers. For instance, if memory serves, the Build Engine has 4096 different angles an object can be facing in. Mechwarrior II is also entirely integer driven, the reasoning being to avoid a particular floating-point bug present with very early Pentium chips.

m1so wrote:

I didn't play many 3D games before Descent 2, so please don't give me this patronizing "but ppl in the 1990s could not handle this stuff". I've never gotten sick from a computer game in my life. Besides, people evolved to see in 3D space, life is not a Doom clone, pilots don't go crazy etc.

And Descent 2 came in 1996, when something like a DX2/66 was already on the way out. Steep requirements? It produced cca 60 fps in 320x200 on AMD K5. That's not what I call "steep requirements".

My first 3D game was a Novalogic flight simulator. Do people really want 3D that only serves as eye candy instead of adding to the gameplay? And the "youngin, but thats how it was in the 90s" excuse is not valid either as there were more 6 degrees of freedom games in the 90s (Descent series, Forsaken, countless flight sims) than today (Retrovirus). Plus AFAIK many people liked flight sims at that time as they usually were the "cutting edge".

Talk about selective reading... I'm not trying to patronize you. You were wondering why Quake is much more well known than the Descent series and I tried to give you an answer to the best of my knowledge. The fact that you never got motion sickness (neither did I) doesn't mean everyone didn't (I can't believe I have to even write this...) . You are 19, as am I. We were born around those games, so that's probably why they never affected us. But a lot of teenagers who first played Wolfenstein 3D or Doom at the time of release, were complaining about Motion Sickness.

Again, you are misreading what I write. I was talking about Descent 1 and you are talking about the 2nd one. Descent 2 had very similar requirements to Duke Nukem 3D, both required a DX2/66. Certainly acceptable. I never even used the phrase steep requirements. I was talking about D1 and I said "moderately high".

Again, I never talked down on you by saying you were a " youngin' " . It was like that in the 90's because it was. Doom became so popular that any game using similar mechanics was dubbed a Doom clone. In fact, I think I've seen Descent being referred to as such somewhere!!! Same thing happened with Quake. Forsaken came out in 1998, I had no idea you were even talking about that late in the 90's. Also, you missed my point when I said that Descent was different to flight sims because you remain stationary and can move wherever you want by just pressing a button. It is not a flight simulator.

But in the end, if you say that there were so many games that offered 6 degrees of freedom in the 90's, why did you cry out earlier in the thread that people underestimate their significance? They had their own fans just like other genres. It was peachy!
Just to be clear, I fucking love the Descent games. I even bought a SpaceOrb 360 to try with the games. There is nothing like flying through corridors and turning quickly to blast your enemies when listening to the frenetic music of Descent. And like mau1 said, the AWE cards sound great in this game, electronic music where their strength I guess (System Shock 1 also sounds fantastic 😀 ).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDqknsaX9L4&hd=1

Another reason why I like Descent is the SETUP menu for quickly testing your speech and MIDI sound systems 😀

Although the OPL3 music always plays slowed down. Never been able to figure out why. OPL2 driver plays fine however.

Also supports Ensoniq direct which is pretty cool with an AudioPCI card and Ensoniq drivers 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Although the OPL3 music always plays slowed down. Never been able to figure out why. OPL2 driver plays fine however.

Glad to know it is not a problem with my Dosbox installation then.