Someone whisper in ViTi95’s ear that a version of FastDescent would be really cool…

descent doesn't use EMS, it's an extender game like most late DOS games.

the cockpit issue is because it's a 2d asset only made for 320x200, though i do wonder if pixel quadrupling it at 640x400 might have been possible. probably would have clashed with the other graphics being much crisper though. the 3dfx version sidestepped the issue with a new status bar.

probably outside your scope but the playstation ports were the only official releases to have colored lighting, which greatly helps the atmosphere.

None that I know of. Descent has a HMI dependency problem to make a 1:1 DOS port from released sources less possible. There's also very few source ports that doesn't shove in random feature cruft, just ChocolateDescent that I know of. Not for DOS but probably a better place to backport to DJGPP or so than shitcreeped d2x-xl etc.

There's also consideration for playing the Mac version as that's where the hi-res D1 graphics live. DOS Descent never had any meaningful asset upgrades from the floppy release and the planned enhanced CD-ROM version was cancelled (probably would be like the Mac one).

The mac version was basically the same as the PC version when the "-640x480" parameter was used, it had the cockpit mode disabled / didn't have any new graphics assets. Apart from CD audio the only extra "feature" it had was mouse control for the menus.

jmarsh wrote on 2025-04-15, 08:59:

The mac version was basically the same as the PC version when the "-640x480" parameter was used, it had the cockpit mode disabled / didn't have any new graphics assets.