Descent Source Code | Hacker News Reader

Descent Source Code

github.com

92 pointsarayh27 comments

Amazing! That README is great. Here’s a snippet

    Mike: Well, not really, unless they learn that they have to focus on designing a brilliant game, rather than writing brilliant code.

    Matt: Ah, that's a good thing.

    Mike: Yeah, I don't think I understood that until we started working on Descent.  At first all I cared about was writing technically good code.

    Matt: Then we ran out of money and all we cared about was finishing our game.

    Mike: Right.  Our code got ugly, but our game got done.

    Matt: Writing code is easy.  Finishing is hard.

    Q: Is there any code you're particularly proud of?
    Matt: No.
    Mike: No.
    Matt: I'm most ashamed of the vector intersection code.
    Mike: Yeah, that's pretty bad.
    Matt: Mike's AI code is the worst I've ever seen.
    Mike: Only because you program with your eyes closed.

this is gold. I definitely have to explore this repo now.

That brings me way back. I am the one who published the code after Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog reached out to me. The code was loaded with proprietary libraries, and didn't build when I got it because a bunch of stuff had been ripped out.

I was in Germany for work at the time and spent many evenings working on this code, to clean it up and make it compile. I even got the level editor working.

In part because of this work, I ended up getting hired on the Descent 3 team.

There are several projects that stemmed from the original Descent source code, this looks like the originally released code.

Without exaggeration: Playing Descent 3 online was the most fun I have ever had in front of a computer screen. Thanks for a great time. :-)

When I was doing computer graphics research in university, I always hid a secret 6DOF flight mode into my 3D apps, with key controls corresponding to my D3 config. It was the most comfortable way I knew to navigate around in a 3D space.

This is neat, but going up to the org: https://github.com/videogamepreservation -- super-cool. There's so much there!

Descent II felt made to be controlled with the SpaceOrb 360.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceOrb_360

I’m shocked there’ve been no kickstarters to revive the perfect input device for 3D games.

If you’re not familiar with this input device, this calls it the greatest game controller of all time:

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheBestControllerForFPSASpace...

Also happens to be a pretty good hacker (maker) story.

Also potentially relevant, archive.org has the game available to play in your browser: https://archive.org/details/Descent_896

I wonder how much easier it is nowdays to get a game like this up and running with something like Unity. I only do hobbyist 2D game development, but every time I read articles regarding 80s 2D gamedev I come across things like harsh hardware limits and difficult optimization problems - it seems like developers were forced to deal with a lot more complexity back then.

Ask the guys that made Descent. They just basically redid the entire thing from the ground up to make Overload in a modern engine. Pretty damned solid effort, too.

The answer is, of course, in the article:

>Matt: Writing code is easy. Finishing is hard.

Most newer games don't have the same "feel" to it, compared to Descent 1/2.

> to get a game like this

With similar graphics quality it’s only moderately hard. I think I could re-implement that graphic engine in Direct3D 11 within a week or so.

> developers were forced to deal with a lot more complexity back then.

I think modern games are way more complex. Even for graphics: visual quality improved by a huge factor.

Descent authors had to implement these fixed-point math routines, modern games don’t because already implemented in hardware, both CPU and GPU.

However, modern games do a lot more: complex shaders for stuff like skeletal animation and environment mapping, deferred shading incl. ambient occlusion, multiple render passes for stuff like transparency and volumetric lights, multiple post-effect render passes for stuff like HDR and tone mapping…

Here’s an awesome article explaining how GTA5 does that: http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/11/02/gta-v-graphic... And that’s just graphics, other components like animations & particle systems, AI, asset streaming, physics and gameplay are not much simpler in modern games.

Thank you for posting this. This is an old classic that I entirely forgot about. I played the hell out of this thing back in the day.

Didn't icculus distribute this years ago?

Yeah, the d2x-xl project has been around for a super long time.

https://www.dxx-rebirth.com/

Really though this said "Decent" and I was like FINALLY an attainable goal.

Why forbid commercial use? Wouldn't the GPL be enough and keep the software free?

Wouldn't it be possible for a company to take the GPL'd software, change the name, and sell it along with a non-GPL asset pack? In that case, the game being open source is immaterial

I’m pretty sure that’s against the terms of the license.

It'd be against the terms of the Descent source code license, but not the GPL.

GPL states that a derivative work must remain under the same license. IANAL, but I don’t see why an asset pack distributed together with the original game would automatically evade that.

The original game would remain under the same license, but you can distribute any separate additions (i.e. no modifications of the source code) without "infecting" them with GPL.

It's equivalent to selling an Android phone with proprietary apps preinstalled.

I don't think so. I think selling the game together with non-free assets without which the game would be unplayable is a tighter combination than "mere aggregation". It seems to me like that would be derived work.

Maybe there's a big list I'm ignorant of but it's somewhat interesting that it doesn't happen more often. e.g. my favorite PC arena FPS as a teen was Tremulous; it was originally a mod but after Quake 3's engine was released under the GPL they turned the mod into a standalone game with it. Totally free, too, but I bet it could have had some financial success if the store model was as popular and accessible back then. Natural Selection is a similar game that did enjoy commercial success... But for better or worse the GPL seems to increase the likelihood of free as in beer releases, too. Maybe any potential revenue sharing model is just too hard for a lot of projects to set up (or was back then) since the GPL also can attract a wide set of contributors.

GPL allows for commercial use, even if it is rare.

Right, that's what I'm asking. Don't forbid commercial use, just use the GPL so nobody else has an unfair advantage over the source code.

I think a lot of people have an unfounded fear of someone else making money when a share-alike license would assuage most of their fears, without forbidding money.

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