Descent (video game)

Single-player , an enemy missile lock indicator, a colored key inventory, the selected primary weapon, the player ship's shields, the selected secondary weapon, and the score count. Descent is a first-person shooter and shoot 'em up The ship respawns at the start of the level at the cost of a life and the player can return to the area of the demise of their previous ship to recover these power-ups. Players can record and later view their experiences in the form of demos, both in single-player and multiplayer. Descent features 30 levels, 27 (nine tenths or 90%) of which are regular levels and three (one tenth or 10%) of which are secret levels. Each level is based in a mine or military installation in various locations in the Solar System. The game demands that players keep their sense of orientation in a fully 3D environment with a flight model featuring six degrees of freedom in zero-gravity. It also provides a 3-dimensional wire-frame automap that displays any area of the current mine visited or seen by the player. Variously colored lines indicate locked doors and zones such as energy stations and reactor areas. These mines may contain hidden doors or robot generators that spawn enemy robots. Flares and lasers light up dark areas of the mine. Difficulty modes Descent is played in one of five difficulty modes: Trainee (easy), Rookie (normal), Hotshot (hard), Ace (very hard) and Insane (very very hard). As the difficulty increases, robots become smarter and fire more projectiles and more rapidly and face better evasion. With higher difficulties, the player has fewer concussion missiles at the beginning (seven in Trainee, six in Rookie, five in Hotshot, four in Ace and three in Insane). Energy and shield power-ups are worth fewer points with increasing difficulties (18 in Trainee, 15 in Rookie, 12 in Hotshot, nine in Ace and six in Insane). Meltdown countdowns become shorter with higher difficulties (50 seconds in Trainee, 45 seconds in Rookie, 40 seconds in Hotshot, 35 seconds in Ace and 30 seconds in Insane). Beginning with Hotshot, players get skill bonuses at the end of each mine. Robot generators Robot generators debut or first appear in Level 3. They generate robots in a number of waves depending on the difficulty level. Higher difficulties generate more robots, with the Insane difficulty generating an unlimited number of robots. Multiplayer Descent allows online competitive and cooperative multiplayer sessions. The competitive sector consists of "Anarchy", "Team Anarchy", and "Anarchy With Robots", three deathmatch modes whereby players attempt to destroy as many of each other's ships as possible. Team Anarchy assigns players to two opposing teams, and Anarchy With Robots adds hostile robots to the match. In Cooperative, players team up to destroy mines and compete for the highest score. Competitive modes allow a maximum of eight players, with cooperative modes allowing up to four. Players can press a single key to type a message referred to as a taunt, rather than pausing to type in the full message. They can also join same servers across different platforms, particularly MS-DOS and Macintosh. ==Plot==

Descent is set in 2169. The story begins with a briefing between PTMC executive S. Dravis and the player's character, PTMC's best "Material Defender", who is hired on a mercenary basis to eliminate the threat of a mysterious alien computer virus infecting the machines and robots used for off-world mining operations. The PTMC developed numerous mines in the Solar System's planets and moons for a variety of uses, including resource extraction, science research, and military installations. Prior to entering a mine, the player receives an intelligence briefing upon the robots used there, however the computer virus has resulted in some existing robots either modified considerably or even new robots being produced that PTMC is unaware about. The player starts with the mines on the Moon and later shift to Venus and to Mercury, where a boss robot has to be destroyed. Afterward, the mines progress further away from the Sun, as the player visits Mars, then the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and eventually to Pluto and its moon Charon. The player accesses the three secret levels located in the asteroid belt using alternative exit doors hidden in specific levels. After defeating the boss robot on Charon, the Material Defender is informed he cannot return to the PTMC's headquarters in Earth orbit, as there is a chance his ship may be infected with the same virus as the defeated robots. His employer also mentions that PTMC has lost contact with their deep-space installations outside the Solar System, setting the stage for the sequel. ==Development==

Descent was co-created by programmers Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog. It has origins as far back as 1986, when Toschlog first joined the gaming industry at Sublogic, where he also first met Kulas. There, the pair worked on various simulation titles from Flight Simulator 2 to Jet. Toschlog left the company in 1988 for Looking Glass, where he worked with Ned Lerner to develop Car and Driver. Kulas joined the company in 1990 to develop utilities for Car and Driver. The two had devised an idea of an indoor flight simulator that used shaded polygons. After working on Ultima Underworld however, they realized they could add textures to the polygons for a spectacular effect. By April 1993, they finished a two-page sketch for what would become Descent. Descent took about 21 months to finish. According to Kulas, Deciding that their idea was too good for anyone else to develop it, Kulas and Toschlog left Looking Glass in June 1993 to form Parallax Software. They hired Che-Yuan Wang and John Slagel as their programmers, with Wang also being their level designer. They also hired Adam Pletcher as their artist. They set out to contact publishers, including Scott Miller of Apogee Software, id Software's primary publisher, who was excited about their proposal and signed a contract with them. For the next seven months, Apogee invested in Parallax and shared with them experience they had gained from developing their own 3D shareware titles. Parallax would implement artistic and structural changes that Apogee requested. After those months, Apogee had numerous projects in the works, and Parallax's project became more expensive to create, so Apogee severed its involvement in the project. Left without a publisher, Parallax spent the next three months to develop a mock-up prototype, continuing their coding. The project was originally titled Miner, but Parallax presented their prototype in written letters to 50 game companies as Inferno. Of those letters, three of them received a reply. One of them was from Interplay, who immediately signed the company up. Until the game's full release, Interplay's producer Rusty Buchert would oversee and guide the development of the project. Parallax hired three more people to finish the project: level designers Mark Dinse and Jasen Whiteside and story writer and 3D modeler Josh White. During level design, the idea of simple connected tunnels as the sole component of level architecture expanded to also include rooms and exits. As levels became more complex and confusing, the developers added an automap to address this problem. To design the levels, Descents graphics engine uses portal rendering, which uses collections of cubes to form rooms and tunnels. Within the game, sides of cubes can be attached to other cubes, or display up to two texture maps. Cubes can be deformed so long as they remain convex. To create effects like doors and see-through grating, walls could be placed at the connected sides of two cubes. Robots were drawn as polygonal models; sprites were only used to represent the hostages and power-ups. This system was very efficient, and made possible the first truly 3D textured environment in a video game. uploaded a seven-level shareware demo as Descent both in retail and on the Internet. and in North America on March 17, 1995, followed by a Macintosh port published by MacPlay in December 1995. A modified version of Descent with stereoscopic graphics was released as a bundle with StereoGraphics's SimulEyes VR 3D glasses. A PlayStation port was released in Japan on January 26, 1996, in the United States on March 12, 1996, and in Europe that same month, with SoftBank being the Japanese version's developer. The PlayStation version replaces the still screens and text with full-motion video pre-rendered cutscenes incorporating voice acting. November 22, 1995 also saw the release of Descent: Levels of the World, an add-on containing over 100 winning level submissions from a design competition held by Interplay, plus one level designed by Parallax Software. Also in March 1996, Descent: Anniversary Edition was released, which bundled Descent, Levels of the World, as well as additional exclusive levels. On October 29, 1997, Interplay published Descent I and II: The Definitive Collection, a compilation containing the full versions of Descent, the Levels of the World mission pack, Descent II, and Vertigo mission packs, and a mission editor by Brainware. Besides a choice of the original Descent II levels (subtitled Counterstrike), or the Vertigo Series levels, the first Descent levels (subtitled The First Strike) can be started in the Descent II game UI where robots adopt the Descent II sounds and improved AI. The original Descent program is included for players that prefer the unmodified The First Strike, as well as to run Levels of the World. There is also a preview for the upcoming Descent 3. Descent was later ported to RISC OS by R-Comp Interactive in late 1998, which received a 32-bit update in 2003. Cancelled ports A Sega 32X version of Descent was planned as the first console version, Likewise, a Panasonic M2 version was also announced but never released due to the system's cancellation. A planned Sega Saturn version was cancelled because the programmers found that a straight port of the PlayStation version was not possible, and they did not think it would be worth their while to do a more elaborate port for the Saturn. Interplay had plans dating to mid-1996 to port Descent to Nintendo 64 under the name Ultra Descent. The port was delayed before it was eventually cancelled in 1998 in favor of Descent 3, with Parallax's Jim Boone explaining that it never reached the design phase in development. In April 2010, Interplay partnered with independent developer G1M2 to release a WiiWare version for Fall 2010. It would have featured enhanced textures and a variety of controls, including motion controls of a Wii Remote and Nunchuk with a MotionPlus accessory and possibly a Wii Balance Board. The deadline was missed, and the last time the developer publicly provided an update on its progress was in a response to a news inquiry in 2011, assuring that the project was still underway, before it was ultimately quietly abandoned. Mods Descent uses package files to store and load level data such as level structures, graphics, objects, and sound effects and music—similar to the WAD file format used for Doom. It also allows players to create their own such files containing the data, which can then be loaded and played. Later in 1997 on the end-of-life commercial cycle came the release of the game's source code, excluding the audio code. Parallax released the source code under the license that permits non-commercial uses only. All of this, combined with the game's popularity, has resulted in a number of distributed mods. followed by a Steam release on February 13, 2014. However, the game was withdrawn from Good Old Games in December 2015 along with Descent II and Descent 3, and later from Steam. A representative of Parallax Software responded to speculation on the Good Old Games forums regarding the withdrawal of the titles. Interplay owned the Descent trademark and the publishing rights to those games, but their developers still retained the copyrights to them. The latter pulled their games off because Interplay purportedly had not paid them royalties since 2007. As a result, they had terminated the sales agreement, disallowing Interplay from further selling them. However, in November 2017, Good Old Games announced that the Descent series would be available for sale again on their platform. The game has also since resurfaced on Steam. ==Reception==

Pre-release Customer reception of the shareware version of Descent was very positive, with players praising the fully 3D environment and commentators noting perceived "loyalty and goodwill" that both Parallax and Interplay fostered. However, it also garnered player complaints about a technical bug that would recharge each robot's shields whenever the player ship was destroyed (the problem was exacerbated on the last level of the shareware, where the power reactor is replaced with a boss and the gameplay thus becomes extremely difficult). It also received complaints for lacking the ability to save in-game, instead saving the player's progress between levels. Parallax recognized the bug and the popularity of the save feature, so they released patches to address the issues. The game first appeared on PC Zones charts of the top-selling games in May 1995, landing on Nos. 4 and 2 on the top full price and CD-ROM titles, respectively. The shareware version appeared as No. 3 on the top budget games. In June 1995, the CD-ROM version dropped off, and the shareware version fell to No. 6 of the budget games and the full game to No. 9 of the full price games before dropping off next month. The full game rose back up in August 1995 to No. 19 of the top full price games, while the shareware version fell down to No. 7 of the top commercial titles. The game dropped off PC Zones charts altogether the next month. The Macintosh port also landed on No. 10 of the top Macintosh games in December 1995. Interplay estimated in March 1995 before Descents full release that shareware copies of Descent were distributed 900,000 times via online services, on the Internet, or at retail. Official global sales of the game, together with its sequel, surpassed 1.1 million copies as of June 1998, while VentureBeat estimated in 2015 that the actual sales figure of the original was as high as 25 million copies. Computer versions The computer versions of Descent received near-universal acclaim, with reviewers widely comparing it to Doom and noting its unique use of free motion, as well as a fully three-dimensional environment. The multiplayer aspect received equal acclaim. Michael Ryan of PC Magazine enthusiastically attributed the attention the game received to its unique gameplay and found no similar alternatives. Common complaints tended to focus on Descents ability to disorient players, as well as potentially induce motion sickness. Next Generation particularly praised the graphics and animation, intelligent enemies, and wide array of power-ups, all of which it said would "keep most gamers glued to the screen for hours". They were however disappointed by the game's delayed release, asserting it led to the game being overshadowed by id Software's then-newly released Heretic. Nevertheless, they rated it the fourth-best virtual reality game in September 1995 due to its 3D environment and graphics. In its third-highest-rated review, PC Player also praised the intelligent enemies, as well as the lighting effects, the use of various graphical textures, and "genuine" 3D graphics. GamesTM rated it No. 4 on their retrospective "Top Five FPS" list for its truly 3D environment combined with the six degrees of freedom, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun ranked it No. 13 on its list of "The best space games on PC", citing the game's numerous innovations, speed, labyrinthine level structures, and the free range of motion. Accolades PlayStation version The PlayStation port of Descent also received praise, which was often directed to the port's use of impressive lighting effects. Like its computer versions, criticism commonly centered on the player's disorientation. K. Lee of GameFan praised the sound and music and noted the game's difficulty due to the ubiquitous doors on walls, ceilings, and floors. He thought the automap was useful, though still found it too easy to become disoriented. ==Legacy==

Descent is credited with starting a subgenre of six-degrees-of-freedom first-person shooters, and remains an icon of the subgenre. It holds a Guinness World Record for being the first fully 3D first-person shooter, and its popularity spawned two sequels: Descent II in 1996 and Descent 3 in 1999. It also led to a 1999 trilogy of Peter Telep novels based on the series, comprising Descent, Descent: Stealing Thunder, and Descent: Equinox. It brought about a handful of similar "Descent clones", most notably Forsaken, which was released by Acclaim Entertainment in 1998 and had similar graphics and almost identical gameplay to Descent. In 1997, Interplay released Descent to Undermountain, a role-playing video game that used a modified version of the Descent graphics engine. Since Descent 3, there had been plans and considerations to work on another game in the series. Those were either cancelled or abandoned in favor of other projects. Volition, the developer of the FreeSpace series, began work on Descent 4. Again, development was cancelled, as most of the company was interested in developing a fantasy role-playing game instead. It would have been a prequel to Descent, and reportedly served as the basis for the 2001 first-person shooter Red Faction. Similarities would have included plot points such as an evil faceless corporation and the mysterious "Plague" they are attempting to harness. President of Volition Mike Kulas stated in an interview that the Red Faction and Descent universes are strictly separate, but also that the technology intended for Descent 4 had been used in Red Faction. A series revival was planned in the late 2010s when development of another Descent title was confirmed. On Kickstarter in March 2015, Descendent Studios announced a prequel to the original game, partnering with Interplay and using their intellectual property rights to develop it. Titled simply Descent, it would have been the first game since Descent 3 to be released in the series. However, after a settlement in 2022, the game was renamed to Ships That Fight Underground, dropping the Descent title altogether. Another game, Overload, was announced on Kickstarter by Revival Productions and successfully crowdfunded in 2016. It included many of the former employees of Parallax Software, including co-founders Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog. It is a six-degrees-of-freedom tunnel shooter and a spiritual successor to the Descent games that released in 2018. ==Notes==