

Descent: Underground - moreati
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/descendentstudios/descent-underground

======
dfan
It doesn't seem to me that any of these guys have anything to do with the
original title besides getting the license. Not that necessarily means
anything bad for the game, of course.

Trivia: The original Descent was written in assembly language, probably one of
the last major PC games not to be written in a high-level language.

~~~
daveloyall
Parallax eventually released the source for Descent 1 and 2, you know. It was
C. (At least the majority of it?)

Edit: I can't access this domain from work, but perhaps somebody else can
confirm this.
[http://descent2.com/ddn/sources/descent1/](http://descent2.com/ddn/sources/descent1/)

Originally it built with some Borland product, and some folks put a lot of
time and effort into porting it to MingW32.

Eventually, it gained SDL support, then OpenGL support... These days, you can
apt-get install d1x-rebirth and d2x-rebirth. :)

~~~
dfan
Those links lead to 404s, but it looks like it's all on Github as well:
[https://github.com/drguildo/Descent](https://github.com/drguildo/Descent)

Indeed I was wrong that it's all assembler. There is lots of assembler but
plenty of C too.

~~~
daveloyall
Thanks for checking! That repo appears to be the original source release,
unaltered. IIRC there are some non-free bits in there that Parallax missed.
(They discuss this in the interview in README.TXT.)

Anybody remember DEVIL, the 3rd party Descent Level Editor? :)

Descent was my first exposure to hacking. I'd hex edit save-game files and
give myself 255 shield-value.. ;)

------
biot

      > Descent’s frenetic and pulse-pounding action were 
      > light-years ahead of its 1995 release date.
    

That's about 10^16 meters ahead of 1995.

------
outworlder
What's this? Capture the asteroids? Multiple playable ships? Corporation
logos?

This is not Descent. Descent is a dark, gloomy space shooter, that makes you
feel miserable, disoriented, lonely and afraid of the damn robots with their
not so bad AI.

And then you invite friends to play cooperatively to make it a little less
horrifying.

That is Descent.

~~~
daveloyall
Descent 3 had multiple ships, logos, etc. CTF existed in Descent 2. ...And
maybe D1? ... I can't remember! :)

------
jsight
I'd prefer a new Descent Freespace. The story line and gameplay in that game
were fantastic.

------
kleer001
Never played the game, never had the computing power as a kid.

Hmmm, I wonder what the completion rate for high cost games on Kickstarter
is... (some googling later)... It's near 30% apparently...

[http://gamerant.com/kickstarter-video-game-failure-
rate/](http://gamerant.com/kickstarter-video-game-failure-rate/)

The staff seems to have a hearty pedigree, the goals seem attainable, there
are some smart statements about limitations. They might just pull it off.
Might. I wouldn't bet on it. Why? Just feeling grumpy.

------
omgitstom
Wow - blast from the past, I loved descent 1 and 2. I thought this was going
to be a new / digital version of the board game descent though.

Don't know which I would be more excited about.

------
BrianHutch
My favorite PC game by far. I'm hoping this happens.

~~~
gone35
Also my favorite PC game by far, but I _really_ hope it doesn't happen... It
seems the devs are going for yet another 'monetized'/pay-to-win travesty _à
la_ Dungeon Keeper redux, sadly. Thanks but no thanks.

~~~
sandyarmstrong
Where are you seeing that it's pay-to-win?

From the page: "All copies of Descent: Underground start with the WASP
unlocked. Some pledge tiers unlock additional ships. All ships can be unlocked
through game play."

As long as you can unlock ships without paying, it seems okay.

------
kokey
I remember the bad VR helmets that were around during the first Descent, it's
probably a good time to bring it back during a time of Oculus Rift.

------
andersthue
Descent - made me fail half my exams one year in uni :)

~~~
arethuza
Only video game to have made me feel ill - happy times!

------
CompanyLaser
there better be a cute little guide-bot who shoots flares at bad guys

------
canayozel
When I search where I live
:[http://caniwearshorts.today/?location=Kad%C4%B1k%C3%B6y](http://caniwearshorts.today/?location=Kad%C4%B1k%C3%B6y)

UnicodeEncodeError at /

'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u0131' in position 107: ordinal not in
range(128)

Request Method: GET Request URL:
[http://127.0.0.1:8002/?location=Kad%C4%B1k%C3%B6y](http://127.0.0.1:8002/?location=Kad%C4%B1k%C3%B6y)
Django Version: 1.7.6 Exception Type: UnicodeEncodeError Exception Value:

'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u0131' in position 107: ordinal not in
range(128)

Exception Location: /usr/lib/python2.7/urllib.py in urlencode, line 1332
Python Executable: /opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts/env/bin/python Python Version:
2.7.6 Python Path:

['/opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts', '/opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts/env/bin',
'/opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts/env/lib/python2.7', '/opt/apps/can-i-wear-
shorts/env/lib/python2.7/plat-x86_64-linux-gnu', '/opt/apps/can-i-wear-
shorts/env/lib/python2.7/lib-tk', '/opt/apps/can-i-wear-
shorts/env/lib/python2.7/lib-old', '/opt/apps/can-i-wear-
shorts/env/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload', '/usr/lib/python2.7',
'/usr/lib/python2.7/plat-x86_64-linux-gnu', '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk',
'/opt/apps/can-i-wear-shorts/env/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages']

Server time: Cum, 20 Mar 2015 17:31:09 +0000

~~~
michaelmior
Wrong post
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238237](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238237)

