[jr2]

If you own Descent 3 (if not, gog.com can help you with that), check out Dateilist.com's Descent 3 section.  Basically, they do D3 mods and such, and I hear there's multiplayer to be had.   Sort of like D2X-XL and SCP, except D3's source wasn't ever released to my knowledge.

So...   If you liked Descent, hopefully this is right up your alley.

EDIT:

FWIW, my keyboard layout:

WASD Forward/Slide Left/Reverse/Slide Right
R - Slide Up
V - Slide Down

T - Rear view

G - Afterburner

Bank L/R
Q/E   (Default)

Pitch U/D/L/R
Mouse (Default)

EDIT:

(Note: they do not give you access to the resources below unless you have a D3 license - you have to be registered & approved)

Everybody who's done or tried it before knows it already: The complete installation of Descent 3 takes at least a few days, and novice computer users have no chance at all.

When the CD installation starts, one of the first misleading things it does is make the wrong suggestions for upgrading DirectX and Flash. This may be the first, but it will by far be the last surprise potential players encounter when installing Descent 3. It's only the beginning of a long journey of outdated information and references. No wonder, the game is 10 years old.


Directly off the CD, it's not even possible to register the game, although it keeps asking for it. There is no easy way to break that circle. The standard patch, which most people are playing, for Descent 3 is the one that upgrades it to version 1.4. It takes a bit of googling, downloading, and trial and error to get it, since some distributions contain a copy of the wrong patch for the wrong localized version of the game. Outrage's online service is dead, hence it's not possible to play Descent 3 online out of the box anymore, although there still is an active online player community - They are only not that easy to find. Users need to know what they have to download and how to install it. Many Descent 3 extensions come without an installation program, and most of the ones that do have a setup that is terribly outdated. Without tweaking it a bit, the game doesn't work on Windows Vista or Windows 7.


We decided to do something about this!

We created an installer for the full version of Descent 3, which installs all required additions, modifications, the level editor, single and multi-player missions, and much much more in one go.

You can now install and configure Retribution, Mercenary, Vortex, Pyromania, Olympia Gold, Basewars, the server tool, about 750 additional missions, and everything else required for single and multi-play, for creating own levels (maps), and chatting with only a few mouse clicks.

We made Descent 3 compatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and also the newer server versions of Windows, without requiring to be logged on as administrator and without any dodgy Microsoft Windows backwards compatibility mode.

It installs about 3 GiB of Descent 3 stuff (but no promo and fan-made game movies). The package is highly compressed, which means you only need to download about 1.1 GiB.

Here's an (incomplete) list of what the Descent 3 package contains:

• Descent 3 version 1.4 in English.
• The Descent 3 1.4 - 1.5 Version Switcher.
• Mercenary add-on.
• No-CD patch.
• Descent 3 mod Pyromania.
• Vortex for playing online.
• Improved reticle.
• Non-working and outdated network protocols/types removed.
• Server tool to host Descent 3 servers.
• Descent 3 level editor D3Edit.
• Tycoon's ship logo tools.
• Around 750 additional single-player and multi-player missions.
• Additional mods like ladder anarchy, Olympia Gold, Basewars, Black Pyro Justice, etc.
• Most recent file with pilot pictures.
• Level development tools.
• Additional software from Dateiliste like StartSP and modified launcher.
• Moon's saved demo games for complicated single-player passages.
• Many links to online resources.
• Startmenu shortcuts for most single-player missions.
• Optional desktop shortcuts for Servertool, Vortex, etc.

Here's what it doesn't contain: Fan-made promo films. The reason for this is that there are simply too many of them around. You can easily find another few gigabytes of fan-made promo films and music videos on the net. Since we doubt that most people would like to download and install several gigabytes of Descent 3 videos and watch them for hours, we decided not to include any in the package. If you really want to download and install them anyway, they are not very hidden on the net. Alone YouTube and Google offer tons of them. A selection of Descent 3 films can be found in the PromoFilms folder here on Dateiliste.

Minimum required Windows operating system for our Descent 3 version is Windows 2000. Sorry, the software can't be installed on Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT, but it runs just fine in Wine under Linux.

[Klaustrophobia]

i got severely asswhooped the few times i jumped on D3 PXO.  i try to play it as an arcade flyer using a joystick, not a 3d FPS.  the results are something like mouse/keyboard vs. a gamepad. 

[Nuke]

as far as descent goes, seems a lot of hard core decent players exist out there. and unless youve played the game continuously for 10 years there is really no way to compete with them. though you might be able to compete with the other cannon fodder to see who can die less.

[jr2]

i got severely asswhooped the few times i jumped on D3 PXO.  i try to play it as an arcade flyer using a joystick, not a 3d FPS.  the results are something like mouse/keyboard vs. a gamepad. 

No u do it rong.

xD

I use WASD + Mouse.  Works awesome.  (I originally used Descent's original settings, and was very comfortable with them, but one good thing Halo taught me was that WASD + mouse pretty much rules, at least for now.

EDIT: as far as experienced players go, the same thing can pretty much be said of any FPS.

[watsisname]

Keyboard only, yo.

as far as descent goes, seems a lot of hard core decent players exist out there. and unless youve played the game continuously for 10 years there is really no way to compete with them. though you might be able to compete with the other cannon fodder to see who can die less.

Oh god, those guys...  They certainly will kick your ass 10 ways from Sunday.  I played with them a bit and learned a few nice tricks.  And obtained tons of hilarious audio taunts. <3

[jr2]

Keyboard only, yo.

I meant the original Descent 1 controls... the mouse didn't work 'cause I didn't know how to configure the DOS mouse driver back when I started playing.   I switched to WASD + mouse after getting Descent 3, having played Halo by then.

[Dragon]

I've played 2 and 3 (including Mercenary) with a joystick. I couldn't get it to work in D1, so I played with keyboard.

[Sushi]

Wow, it's been forever since I played this. Polaris CTF forever!

[Nuke]

Keyboard only, yo.

i used to do that. now i cant anymore, after a half an hour its excruciatingly painful. getting old sucks. i also never got good in the game using a joystick, probibly cause i didnt have one early on and never got used to it in that game. ibe been using wasd + mouse lately, though some game pads are ok.

[jr2]

FWIW, my keyboard layout:

WASD Forward/Slide Left/Reverse/Slide Right
R - Slide Up
V - Slide Down

T - Rear view

G - Afterburner

Bank L/R
Q/E   (Default)

Pitch U/D/L/R
Mouse (Default)

[Nuke]

mine was

thust (f,b) = w,s
slide (l,r,u,d,) = a,d,shift, control
roll (l,r) = q,e
yaw,pitch mouse x,y
guns, missiles = mouse l,r
afterburner = space
rearview = x
flare = f

last i played.

[CP5670]

Keyboard only, yo.

I use a mix of the numpad, arrow keys and a few others. The mouse is less useful in games with finite turning speeds. The Descent and FS games have influenced the keyboard bindings I use everywhere else, including conventional FPSs.

as far as descent goes, seems a lot of hard core decent players exist out there. and unless youve played the game continuously for 10 years there is really no way to compete with them. though you might be able to compete with the other cannon fodder to see who can die less.

This is common in many old games that are still played online. I used to play D3 a lot when it came out and could hold my own back then, but get owned by the regulars now. It's still fun to join in every now and then, although I wish they played a greater variety of maps and game types. Seems like nobody plays the stuff I did back in the day.

How many of those 750 maps are actually singleplayer? There were very few good ones ever made, and only one substantial campaign (Army of Haloon).

[Sushi]

FWIW, my keyboard layout:

WASD Forward/Slide Left/Reverse/Slide Right
R - Slide Up
V - Slide Down

T - Rear view

G - Afterburner

Bank L/R
Q/E   (Default)

Pitch U/D/L/R
Mouse (Default)

I played with a joystick back in the day, but if I played again I'd use my current "6DOF space sim" scheme. It's pretty similar to yours, but W and S give up and down while Z and X do forward and back (Shift-Z for full throttle, Shift-X for none). Tab for afterburner.

Diaspora should give you some good exercise of your control schemes.

[jr2]

Hmm, I forgot about cruise.. I gotta set that; that will definitely help some. 

[Nuke]

im considering a keyboard mod to make certain keys pressure sensitive. there is a type of pressure sensitive potentiometer, typically used in cnc applications (like for aligning actuators), its esentially a flat cirgular membrane with a ribbon connector. you would put this between the membrane and the rubber thing (im not sure what they call it), and rout the conductors out between the nodes in the key matrix. you would read them with an adc on a microcontroller. to communicate with the computer, you simply tap into the usb bus on the keyboard, making essentially a passive hub. you can use an mcu that has usb support built in, or you can use a software approach (like vusb). the device would then just use an hid class.

i would probibly position 4 of these devices on wasd, possibly qe, and perhaps the num pad and/or arrow keys. the pots only have 2 leads, so you could wire the pots in series for an axis pair from ground to 5v, and read the center (basic voltage divider), thats assuming they have at least some intrinsic resistance when not under pressure, this would mean only one adc channel is required per axis pair. though it is possible to use an analog multiplexer ic to allow multiple axes to share an adc channel (most mcus have between 4 and 8). you would then have some degree of analog control entirely with the keyboard.

[jr2]

I'd take that, the customizeable joystick I mentioned, and the toggleable mousejoy script all together for happy win-win goodness.  xD

[watsisname]

Since folk's are sharing keyboard layouts, here's my inane one I've used since D1:

A/Z                 Thrust Forward/back
C/V/S/X          Slide Left/Right/Up/Down
Q/E                Bank Left/Right
Arrow Keys    Turning
W                  Afterburner
Tab                Automap
F                   Flare
, . /               Cruise Control for Cool

Nothing was more hilarious than the time I spent 6 hours playing minecraft and then switched to d3 multiplayer

* watsisname keeps afterburning into the ceiling

WHAT THE **** AM I DOING AHHHHHHHHHH

[CP5670]

This has always been my setup:
2/4/6/8: turning
7/9: banking
arrows: sliding
enter/apostrophe/slash: forward/backward/AB
0/right ctrl/1/3: primary/secondary firing and switching.
5: flare
keypad enter: rear view

I'm sort of ambidextrous with the numpad since I use many of the same keys in conventional FPSs, but with the other hand.