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General discussionIn Development: Descent: Underground(190 posts)(190 posts)
(190 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted December 21, 2016
The ups the downs, and brutal takedowns of mining in space.

<span class="bold">Descent: Underground</span>, the thrilling return of the first-person space shooter with six degrees of freedom, is now available, DRM-free on GOG.com, with GOG Galaxy support for cross-play multiplayer and a 50% launch discount.

The legendary Descent is back and it takes you deep underground! Built on Unreal Engine 4 and improving upon the intoxicating flight mechanics of the originals, it brings the fight to the most perilous corners of space, where only the bravest or most desperate pilots venture in search of lucrative mining opportunities. Customize your ship and team up with friends for some fast-paced arcade action, spinning and swerving freely through twisting corridors as you gun down your opponents.
Descendant Studios, the people committed to bringing back this beloved franchise, are planning on adding a slew of neat features throughout the In Development stage: more ship types, weapons, and gadgets, more ways to interact with your environment, single player story missions, and tons of other cool additions.

Jump into your agile spaceship, calibrate your blasters, and dive into <span class="bold">Descent: Underground</span>, DRM-free on GOG.com.
The 50% discount will last until January 21, 1:59 PM UTC.

Note: This game is currently in development. See the <span class="bold">FAQ</span> to learn more about games in development, and check out the forums to find more information and to stay in touch with the community.


https://www.youtube.com/embed/qbSChGuH7dI
Post edited December 21, 2016 by maladr0Id
Posted December 22, 2016
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SpeedBo: Besides all the DRM stuff.
The main problem is it doesn't feel like descent, and currently it's boring.

GOG really needs to get Overload, a true sequel to Descent.
Yep, Overload looks much more interesting and it's apparently developed by the creators of the original Descent. I'll keep an eye on this one.

http://playoverload.com/
Posted December 22, 2016
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aelana: 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.
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hummer010: Man, what a perfect gaming world that would be! I sure wish more developers / publishers felt that way.

I want to thank everyone from Descendant Studios who have responded here. It's very refreshing to have a developer come in and make honest and open comments about everything. Kudos to you guys/gals. If I hadn't already bought the game, I'd buy it based on this.
Thank YOU for your support!

At this price, D:U would make a great stocking stuffer... ;)
Posted December 22, 2016
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aelana: 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.
Well said, lots of IPs switch hands, Fallout being an excellent example - of an IP switching hands and growing from there, we are aiming to do the same with Descent, moving it forward with lots more game play options, and roles to play, esports, VR, survival modes, just a ton of stuff.

Heck, before we even decided to make a 6Dof game we knew the genre was dormant but were willing to take that challenge on, now others are following - which is really cool - even before us there was Sol Contingency, and a few other small projects - the more 6Dof is accepted as a genre the better for all of us, a rising tide lifts all boats.

And we will be including a "Classic" mode at some point too for those just wanting the same basic arena shooter from days of yore.

WM
Post edited December 22, 2016 by WingmanDU
Posted December 22, 2016
Ok, we are deploying a new build with some new features, so while we launched just yesterday, this is our final build of this year, with some cool new features like the radar extending sentinel and the radar blocking scrambler as well as a little video from us about the game - which you can escape through if you like.

Also, our first "Just the basics" training mission with my horrible voice acting *placeholder for sure*

So enjoy it and help us spread the word, let's bring Six Dof gaming back - and let the new gamers experience the crazy feeling we did in the 90s.

WM

PS. Yes those ships are wearing ugly sweaters go to our forums and vote for which ship has the ugliest sweater. www.descentunderground.com
Post edited December 22, 2016 by WingmanDU
Posted December 23, 2016
I understand the answer made above, but i dont agre on the deffinition.
Online MP where you connect to other players wich dosnt save progression, state or the possibilty to export stats doesnt sound like drm free if you ask me.
Alot of years ago i joined a private server on a game.
When the server shut down because the person felt like doing it, it meant that all the progression i had been made on my character was lost forever.
Meaning i didnt have access to my previous made characters and as such didnt have acess at all time to the product.

Sure i coud start my own server and level up some characters again but it woudnt be my previus made characters.
Or in a car game, it woudnt be my prevous made stats or progression and maybe not even the same cars.
Post edited December 23, 2016 by Lodium
Posted December 23, 2016
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aelana: 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.
I don't think it's all that subjective, if you load up Overload it feels like Descent,.
It's not the hit boxes, or rounded surfaces that make it feel different. It's more how the ships move. D:U feels much more like a standard FPS.

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aelana: 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.
I don't really care which company made the game, just that the game is good.
Also shouldn't there be something about devs not being able to review their own games?

Anyway, carry on I don't expect you to change it at this point. I'm just disappointed that it has the Descent name, but isn't like Descent.
Post edited December 23, 2016 by SpeedBo
Posted December 23, 2016
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hummer010: I want to thank everyone from Descendant Studios who have responded here. [...]
I think everyone from Descendent actually has posted in this thread. =P (Which is cool, no doubt!)
Posted December 23, 2016
...but does it have a badass heavy soundtrack like Descent 2?
Posted December 23, 2016
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ReynardFox: ...but does it have a badass heavy soundtrack like Descent 2?
Why yes it does, and we have users creating music too, and if it is good - it goes in...we are a community driven project.

WM
Posted December 23, 2016
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SpeedBo: I don't really care which company made the game, just that the game is good.
Also shouldn't there be something about devs not being able to review their own games?
Fair enough, not everyone likes every game, we have a lot of people which really enjoy our game, I am sorry you are not among them, isn't a wonderful world we live in where there are options for all of us?

As for the review in question, GOG moderates all reviews for content (it is why when you post a review it doesn't automatically show up) and apparently they had no problem with my review. Keep in mind that in the first paragraph I gave full disclosure of who I am and what my point of view was and then calmly described what I have seen from my admittedly unique perspective. Although I am a member of the team, please remember I am in a unique position of being a long time fan of the game that transitioned to volunteering my time for the project because I loved it and believed in the product. This remains a labor of love, not a day job. I work on the project part-time because I believe in it. So my review gives users a unique point of view of someone who does see the inner workings of the development group and thus shares that point of view to allow people to make a more informed decision based on all the information.

I am sorry you disagree but that is not my problem.

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hummer010: I want to thank everyone from Descendant Studios who have responded here. [...]
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HunchBluntley: I think everyone from Descendent actually has posted in this thread. =P (Which is cool, no doubt!)
Not everyone (I don't think I have seen Jason or Rob post for example), but yes most of us have... it helps that we like talking to fans, we may get busy from time to time but usually at least a few of us are active on our various forums.
Post edited December 23, 2016 by aelana
Posted December 23, 2016
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Lodium: I understand the answer made above, but i dont agre on the deffinition.
Online MP where you connect to other players wich dosnt save progression, state or the possibilty to export stats doesnt sound like drm free if you ask me.
Alot of years ago i joined a private server on a game.
When the server shut down because the person felt like doing it, it meant that all the progression i had been made on my character was lost forever.
Meaning i didnt have access to my previous made characters and as such didnt have acess at all time to the product.

Sure i coud start my own server and level up some characters again but it woudnt be my previus made characters.
Or in a car game, it woudnt be my prevous made stats or progression and maybe not even the same cars.
I assume you are referring to my previous post: (https://www.gog.com/forum/general/in_development_descent_underground_6a426/post145)...

Let me clarify a few things (some of which you talk about, some you don't).

Single player progression will remain as with any other game the purview of the local system (although we may make use of some of the cloud save options that steam and GOG provide, we are not there yet to tell for sure). That wasn't your point, but I wish to include it for completeness.

Individual character progression in multiplayer is a difficult thing. It is a balancing act between preventing gross manipulation (people padding stats), providing users the tools to monitor their own stats, first party servers, third party servers, etc. My only suggestion is that there are two things mitigating your concern:

1. Once we create the user run server experience, we are going to be looking for feedback like you have given but within the context of what we provided and we are /extremely/ open to changing and adding functionality that the community wants. So in other words, keep an eye on us and when we do finally release the user run server we will be able to have a more open communication of our goals and your goals and see if we can come to an agreement on those. In other words, stay tuned.

2. One other piece on the roadmap is user API access to both granular and aggregate statistics. So provided that a user was dedicated to the idea of preserving the community even if say we get hit by a meteor and can't continue to pay our google compute bill, they may be able to retrieve and archive statistics and set up their own "persistance" if we are ever gone. The details of how this will all work out have yet to be determined but as the API guy, I am a strong proponent of open API data exposure to users, I have always loved the community of sites around EVE online's API (and for a while even ran a few that utilized their API) and have always felt that EVE's is even too restrictive. Although my voice is not the only one in this decision, I feel that in the end we will have something that users like you will appreciate and be able to utilize. Part of our motivation in this is to be able to expose enough data for e-sports enthusiasts and competative players to be able to create analysis tools to help their game. We are a long way away from being there, but it is on our roadmap for the future. There will of course be a discussion of privacy controls and the like but I just wanted to highlight my personal hopes and goals.

One other thing I just realized on re-reading your post, your experience with a private server disappearing may be handled by our intent of providing the option to run a private server in our "ecosystem" and matchmaking... in that instance progression and stats would be saved on our servers and would survive the loss of the private server. Now to some people that would count as DRM because of the authentication that will be necessary to run a private server connected to our ecosystem and to connect to a private server connected to our eco system but as several gamers have pointed out in the past, DRM is often in the eye of the beholder.

The final thing I will say and I say this as un-offically as I can. In the event we ever disappear, there are ways to analyze the API traffic between the client and the API and the server and the API and while our API while designed to be secure is not designed to obfuscate what it is doing... I suspect some interested party would end up being able to create an alternate API and it would be trivial to run the game pointed to that alternate API (we already do this for test purposes). How much of the API flow between the game and our back end we decide to openly publish is a question for the far distant future, but it has been my experience that gamers find a way.
Post edited December 23, 2016 by aelana
Posted December 23, 2016
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aelana: [. . .] we may make use of some of the cloud save options that steam and GOG provide [. . .]
Huh? As far as I know, GOG doesn’t support cloud‐saving—at least, it has not been officially announced. So, do you have any insights on that, or did you mention GOG just out of habit? :P
Posted December 23, 2016
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aelana: [. . .] we may make use of some of the cloud save options that steam and GOG provide [. . .]
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Tyrrhia: Huh? As far as I know, GOG doesn’t support cloud‐saving—at least, it has not been officially announced. So, do you have any insights on that, or did you mention GOG just out of habit? :P
I probably can't comment details of the Galaxy API calls due to NDA but I was not just mentioning out of habit.
Posted December 23, 2016
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Tyrrhia: Huh? As far as I know, GOG doesn’t support cloud‐saving—at least, it has not been officially announced. So, do you have any insights on that, or did you mention GOG just out of habit? :P
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aelana: I probably can't comment details of the Galaxy API calls due to NDA but I was not just mentioning out of habit.
Thanks for the long interesting answer above on my post.
I guess it does answer a few problematic areas around online multiplayer.
I think i woud have to read up more about persistance and the other stuff you mentioned and how this is handled
and perhaps test out a few games more using this to experience more how this works.
Post edited December 23, 2016 by Lodium
Posted December 23, 2016
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Tyrrhia: Huh? As far as I know, GOG doesn’t support cloud‐saving—at least, it has not been officially announced. So, do you have any insights on that, or did you mention GOG just out of habit? :P
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aelana: I probably can't comment details of the Galaxy API calls due to NDA but I was not just mentioning out of habit.
Nice! I understand you can’t really comment on it, though. Thank you for the answer!
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionIn Development: Descent: Underground(190 posts)(190 posts)
(190 posts)