Thank you!

I don't know in terms of numbers, but it is sad and frustrating when people review "IN DEV" like it's a finished game from EA. But we've stuck together and we have some great players that are helping us push through and make the game better. Thank you for your empathy around this.

A number of tools, but Reason is among them. We plan to do another music and sound pass as we get closer to the release of single-player, so keep your ears open!

Because we support cross-play between numerous sources (GOG, descendentstudios.com, Steam, and hopefully others), we need to be able to quickly update the multiplayer authenticator as their systems change and we add new options. Separating it out into a separate launcher let us do that with a small, fast download instead of a large, slow one.

If you have linked a descendentstudios.com forum account to a store account that owns the game, you can use that to log in. We have this working with Steam, but there have been some technical hurdles to getting it working here on GOG. If we can solve those, you'll be able to link your GOG account to our forums.

We are working on tools to support private, player-hosted servers as part of our mod tools. We want to get those out as soon as we can, but since we're focused on the single-player campaign right now it will most likely be after the initial release of that.

We do want to broaden our support for modding, but because it requires a special, custom-built UE4 editor and some complicated stuff to comply with licenses we've bought... well, it takes time.

However, we do offer our basic map kit to users and several of the maps in game are based on designs by our players. If you hunt around, you might find the plaques in the maps with their names!

If you are interested, the information is on our forums:
https://descendentstudios.com/community/forum/16-maps-environments/

Thank you!
Thank you!

Sounds like it could be fun! I know our guys have some practice with Anarchy (deathmatch), but I wonder how they'd do in Corporate War or Miner Mayhem... :)

Yes, we are working on an automated system, but we can do it manually in the meantime.

If you haven't already, please take the time to link your Kickstarter account to our site here:
Backer Portal

Once you have your account linked, you can log a support request from your account:
Submission Form

Thank you for your support!

You are 100% right - a lot of our mixed reviews are for folks wanting single player first, and we chose to do MP first to help us balance that correctly, if you only have 1 ship and limited weapons it is pretty easy to balance, we have 9 ships and multiple weapons and roles....so had to go the MP route first. Once the game launches, those reviews will go away, as you launch with a new product (gold master) and start over.

Also, we have a demo planned with a small taste a few weeks before the launch.

Re: Music, that we leave up to our composers, and there is music in the game created by fans/mods already.

We chose the authentication method that helps us get it on multiple platforms and does not tie us to only one.

MP WILL be available on users servers, when we get around to creating a server client with UI - just after launch.

Mod friendly - HELL YES, we already have several user created maps in our game now, if you find a plaque on the wall in a map, it is the designer of the map. Mods make them in gray box, we let our proving grounds members try them out and play them in gray box, and vote, if it is good enough it goes in the game.

WM
Yes, just hit us up through the support ticket system on our website.

WM
We agree, and it is on the schedule.

WM
Yep, if you want Linux, you can get it on our website as well. www.descentunderground.com

WM

I'm sorry, I forgot to include this. If you go to https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/backings and click the blue + sign button. Your backer number should be down near the bottom of the popup window.

Thank you!

We still hope to do that with GOG as well but there are technical hurdles that need to be explored. And as anything with such a small team it is a matter of time and priorities.

My personal dream is the idea of buy once play on any service (steam, GOG, local site, oculus store, XBOX, PS4, etc) but due to the ways a lot of these stores are set up it is difficult to figure out how to do that. In fact some of the platforms (can't name names due to NDAs) actually explicitly forbid it.

Any way, thanks for being so positive about the project and hope to see you in the mines :)

Lots of people interested in this, for those who haven't been following the project I am the API guy :)

Let me see if I can answer some of these.

Galaxy does support it's own matchmaking "without DRM" basically as a form of meshwith servers run on individual's PCs... however if we were to implement that our matchmaking would be made very complex by having to support the specific matchmaking calls for Steam, Galaxy as well as other services without matchmaking APIs (Oculus, etc). And all the players would be locked into the specific service they were running under. By using our own API and matchmaking we bypass that complexity and allow all our users to play in the same field.

MP without effective DRM is actually a possibility as others have pointed out through LAN play (or even WAN where you would trade IP addresses amongst each other and connect to a specific user's server bypassing the API matchmaking). This is actually on our roadmap but as we are a small team, we always have to prioritize what to get done when. Since that kind of implicit matchmaking is very specific (you have to have a bunch of people who know each other, etc) it had to take second seat to the more centralized MP world... but we still plan on providing it.

MP with player run servers but with online matchmaking. This too is on our roadmap. See the previous paragraph for the challenges that cause it not to be there yet.

"Galaxy Only" MP is a side effect of having to authenticate the user to the API for online matchmaking. When the time comes that we are able to provide MP outside of our API (lan gaming) it might not be necessary and it isn't our intention to "flip the switch" and keep it galaxy only just for the sake of achievements and whatnot... if / when it makes sense to remove that limitation we will. We are all gamers, in fact I started out as a kickstarter backer (backer #1 ;)) who volunteered to help and got sucked in. My personal background in the gaming industry is actually only as a gamer, my primary focus before this point was in other industries. So trust me when I say, we hear, understand and often even share your concerns but as anyone who has worked on a game before can testify, making a game is a huge juggling act and sometimes you have to choose what to work on first.

Whether it feels like descent to you is often an extremely subjective thing... to get into the technical details, our flight model fits descent 1 completely down to turn rates and the like (verified numerically and extensively). Our "space" and general bot and ship sizes are also patterned after Descent 1. Where we differ from Descent are in things like variable hit-box sizing (smaller ships have smaller hit boxes), multiple ship-types, asymmetric gameplay and configurable field of view. For some users those features break the "feeling", for others they do not, however in our opinions they are critical functions of a modern game. Just as any other game franchise grows and adds features and changes things as sequels occur, so to has Descent.

Don't get me wrong, many of us on the team are Overload fans and backers... Gaming isn't a zero-sum game. You can be a fan of Descent: Underground without it being a betrayal to Overload and vica versa. Sometimes we as gamers fall into the trap of thinking that game creation is a battle ground where you have to support your favorite games to the exclusion of other games. It really isn't like that, we have nothing but love for the Overload project.

As for "GOG really needs to get Overload", that is something that is entirely in the hands of the Overload team, GOG was very open when we approached them about including our title and I have no doubt they would feel the same way when/if approached for Overload. Again, gaming isn't a zero-sum game, GOG can have both, gamers can enjoy both, we are all gamers at heart.

Downloading directly from us just has the launcher ask for your descendentstudios.com username and password.