Author Topic: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!  (Read 5115 times)

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Offline Gold Leader

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Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
Hi all  :)

It has been a very long time I have been here, kinda lost trace of this place, but I was happy to find it again :)
It was probably due to that I have Co-Founded a Descent gaming League with a good friend of mine named Descent Task Force, even that the place ran great for like 4 months, after these golden days my friend Celestial got ill and was MIA for 12 weeks, and during these days the activity of the Descent Task Force was bleeding.


So  an other good friend of mine aka PigmyRhino aka PigmyMonoclonius from Red Dragons Squadron, Descent Rangers and I as Tylosaurus have decided to reboot the place with a new forum and 4 Admins, so if a few get ill there shall always be one around.

Our new place can be found here:

Click to Enter!

So hereby we are seeking our old members and many new members too, our mission is to keep the Descent games alive this way.

The games we play use DXX-Rebirth only, this is most commonly used for Descent 1 & 2 multiplayer, Descent 3 players are also welcome, also if you are from a Descent clan or league you are also welcome, the DTF is here to make the Descent universe a happier one and pleasant one for all types of Descent players. D2X-XL can be played for single player, but multiplyer wise we can only accept DXX-Rebirth, since it's more stable and much more to the point when it comes to hosting games and such under various operating systems.

On December 17, 2012 , this year, Descent 1 will meet it's 18th Anniversary, this is the date the game officially launched as the 3.5" FDD Edition.

As Co-Founder of the Descent Task Force, I am planning this event to take place on December 17, 2012 :)

Let's take a walk down Memory Lane shall we  :mrgreen:

Within the EUR it looks like this:


Outside the EUR it looks like this:


This day we shall host and play Descent 1 based games only, other versions of Descent like Descet2 & Descent 3 series shall not be hosted nor played.
That people still play an 18 year old game always surprises me greatly, this day will be seen a major one within the entire Descent community and I will pass this on, in almost every forum I am a part of, to draw the greatest attention to this great day, one many of us shall never forget.

So hereby I am looking forward to see multiple games being hosted on that day and night.

Happy Flying everyone and keep your wings leveled!  8-)
Holder of The World's Largest Descent/Freespace Collection.

 

Offline Klaustrophobia

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
this reminds me, i was attempting to make it all the way through descent and D2 using rebirth a while back.  i think i got stuck and frustrated in one of the levels and forgot about it.  now i need to go revisit it.

never was much for multiplayer in descent though.  i sucked something awful in D3.
I like to stare at the sun.

 

Offline Gold Leader

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
D3 was the worst of the series they also changed the game's physics way too much, the sensitivity of the mouse and the Joystick is way off limits it's either too over sensed or it's too laggy, Outage messed up the controls for a lot of it, the feel of the game it's self is also too different compared to D1 & D2.

D1 is most tactical since you don't have an afterburner  and you don't have a like over 20 weapons to kill your foes, the weapons in D2 are also less deadly, they decreased the hits points of the Quad Level  4's, since they have lvl 5 and lvl6 quad lasers, Quad lvl 6's do even less damage per shot than quad level 4's of Descent 1, Spreadfire cannon in D1 shoots twice as fast as the one of D2, it also does 10 damage points per ball over the 8 per ball D2 had. the Fusion cannon does 160 damage points with a full power shot if both blobs hit the target, in D2 it's only maxed out at 80 damage points.

D2 also has an afterburner this takes away the tactics for using Tri-Chording to gain extra speed, D2 was actually a map pack for D1, but they kind of simplified it with the lower destructive weapons and adding cheap kill guns like the Gauss Cannon, Helix Cannon, Phoenix cannon and the Omega Cannon, Cheap kill missiles like the Earth Shaker Missile, Mercury & Flash missile, all such things kinda ruined the game's good game play, so you'd probably only see me in a D1 game :)

By playing MP in Descent you can only get better by playing it more on the hardest difficulty mode, I always host on insane and here is how much fun we have, just to give you an idea :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjduWYhVvPk&list=UUmjeeuweZTi7VDRt5fgH4vQ&index=2&feature=plcp

Holder of The World's Largest Descent/Freespace Collection.

 

Offline jr2

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
So you should port Descent II's missions to Descent 1?  :nervous:  a retro-port of some type?

 

Offline Nuke

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
yea we had a community d2xxl event awhile back where many of us got online and had some games. problem was when we started playing the die hard descent players, we just got slaughtered.
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Offline Legate Damar

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
So you should port Descent II's missions to Descent 1?  :nervous:  a retro-port of some type?

D2 had many features D1 didn't.

 
Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
@Gold Leader -- My two cents having grown up playing D1/D2 on KALI:

Well, there's some merit to some of the features D2 added, although I can understand why they're controversial.  Gauss Cannon was used like crazy in D2 matches, as were Mercury Missiles.  However, I contend that trichording was NOT useless in D2 at all; in fact the Afterburner + Trichording in combination was THE best way to avoid an Earthshaker missile.  Some pilots (not me though) were so good at doing this that they could evade an Earthshaker blast at point blank range!

I was a "Shaker pilot" (players who exclusively played on maps where the Earthshaker was the only weapon and you had huge open areas to avoid the bomblets).  It was a load of fun.  You either avoided the big blue bombs, or you died.  It turned the game into a sort of strategic mind game where you had to cleverly lay down Earthshakers in the right spots to murder the enemy while simultaneously avoiding them doing the same to you.

I never liked trichording much, but admittedly, only because I struggled to use it properly.  I learned how to use it + the afterburner in D2 to evade shakers, but in D1/D2 standard dogfight matches I was pretty horrible at dogfighting.  I'd be that annoying guy lobbing Smart missiles down a corridor to kill two people already in combat, picking on other people's fights.  In a 1v1, I'd fly suicidally, launching pretty much everything I had before dying.  Occasionally I'd take someone out with me. ;)

It always did seem, similar to Quake 3 Arena bunny hopping, that if you mastered trichording, you suddenly entered into a whole new tier of Descent play.  Since the only Descent players left tend to be the die hards who never stopped dueling, fighting them today is like fighting a bot on God Mode difficulty.  :eek2:

I am very seriously considering attending this!  I don't expect to win, but I'll try to make myself a difficult target to hit  :)

 
Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
Granted, I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I liked D3 the best. It was much more open (D1 was way too claustrophobic for me), and the missions had more objectives. It wasn't just, "go in, blow up the reactor, get out" over and over again. Weapons like the Black Shark were kind of ridiculous, but I do enjoy the variety; let's you pick the right tool for the job.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2012, 12:50:55 pm by SirCumference »

 

Offline watsisname

Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
I think I'll try to attend this, I've been in love with the series since it came out in '95.  (Oh man, the memories.) :)

Lately I've been doing a fair bit of D3 multiplayer, even against the crazies who are always playing on the public servers.  They're insane, yeah, though I've gotten to the point where I can actually hold my own against them.  Almost. :nervous:  But I'll probably get my ass royally kicked in a d1 or d2 match. :V  Should be fun!

In my world of sleepers, everything will be erased.
I'll be your religion, your only endless ideal.
Slowly we crawl in the dark.
Swallowed by the seductive night.

 

Offline jr2

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
I've actually played D1, DII, D3+Mercs, and D2X-XL.  I think I will grab DXX-Rebirth, as D2X-XL has changed so much (in a good way!) that you can actually miss some of the original stuff.  Although there may be a nostalgia mode for -XL, I don't know.

So, I loved the atmosphere of D1 (my first 3D video game; made the hair stand on the back of my head!) -- I played with Descent: Destination Saturn, an OEM variant of Descent that was more than the 5-mission demo, but less than the full 27 levels of Descent, sort of like FS2: Colossus.

DII -- got kind of confusing with all the weapons, and I really missed the original Vauss cannon, that rocked.  And yeah, the lvl4 quads were nerfed.  I remember being frustrated with that, not realizing that my quads weren't up to snuff like they used to be.
My favorite weapon in D1 was the Plasma Cannnon, due to it's high efficiency (1/4 energy per shot) and high rate of fire.  Hmm, Moon's Descendarium (Guide for Descent 1-3) disagrees with me on the energy per shot.  wtf, thought I remembered that crystal clear.

Descent 3 I liked the awesome (for the day) visuals, and the more interesting mission types (instead of grab 3 keys, hostages if you have a heart, blow the reactor, get out in time, rinse, repeat x27).  I didn't like that some of the missions (esp in Mercs) stretched out for an eternity

The one thing I really didn't like in all the editions of Descent: getting lost in a huge level and trying to figure out from the automap where to go.  I wish there was a way to pick a spot on the automap, mark it in the automap, switch to normal view and turn on an overlay that has a line with arrows flowing drawn towards where you painted your spot on the automap.

EDIT:
http://descent2.de/

Quote
Although D2X-XL contains a lot of enhancements and new features, it is still fully backwards compatible to every other Descent 2 version and particularly to D2_Win98 and d2_3dfx (which constitute the reference for every other D2 version). As many fixes simply restore features of the original Descent 2 that were missing in D2X (like availability of all cockpit views, or working mouse steering), it is even closer to them than D2X itself. Keeping full backwards compatibility is my concern, and where I break it, it happens accidentally and will be fixed as soon as I notice it, or get notified of it.

In multiplayer games, all game-relevant features of D2X-XL (e.g. mouselook, dual missile launch, or the cockpit window 'radar') are completely turned off if the game host does not use D2X-XL. If the game host uses D2X-XL, he has full control over these features and can turn them on or off at his free disposal.

So, if you notice something wrong with D2X-XL in playing correctly, perhaps a bug report would be in order.  It looks from that snippet that if DXX-Rebirth is compatible with D2, then D2X-XL is compatible with DXX-Rebirth, as D2X-XL is compatible with D2.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2012, 11:43:41 pm by jr2 »

 

Offline Nuke

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
my main issue with d2xxl is that it has become rather unstable for me. though its probibly been a year or two since ive bothered keeping my copy up to date.
I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

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Offline jr2

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
Yeah, get the latest version.  It's always good to keep the copy that you're currently working with until you know the new one works perfect.  I used to keep 5 or 6 revisions around just in case.  Same with FS2Open - you never know when a mod is going to stall out because of a change.

 

Offline Gold Leader

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
I avoid shakers without the burner, it's quite simple, just chord around the warheads of the mini missiles that pop out, fly towards them and chord around them ;)

D1 requires far more skill that D2, it's by far the best ever, I have that with many games sequels always are less good than the first, the Afterburner, like many new weapons in D2 only simplified the game and this also resulted lesser skilled pilots, most skilled pilots I know and I still fly with are main D1 players.

As playing the series goes I was rather late with this, from where I am from, to be honest I never heard of Kali.net back in the day it was a major thing, just never played online, it was mostly too expensive and I only played on lans and computer clubs,  but Descent it's self was mainly played in Singleplayer or I was just collecting it. The game it's self like Freespace  was for me far more interesting to collect than just play it.

D2 was nice, but it's a simplified version of D1 and it's packed with cheap kill guns and primaries with reduced accuracy and hits per shot, sorry not my kind of thing, it will never be either, forget it xD  :D
Freespace2 over Freespace1 is a different story, because as rare occasions goes this is certainly one of them, it was Freespace The Great War Done right, well the storyline is still brilliant and to me it's by far one of it's kind.

And yes I still have high hopes for a Freespace3 , what about you guys?  :cool:

As D2X-XL goes it's okay fro Singleplayer, but if multiplayer is your thing please use DXX-Rebirth, it's simple and to the point, it also retains the game's original looks and feel, well for many people I play and communicate with it is like this.

The Descent Task Force, well we only use DXX-Rebirth as multiplayer goes, simply multiplayer wise, it's near to flawless and it's deadstable.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2012, 03:52:09 am by Gold Leader »
Holder of The World's Largest Descent/Freespace Collection.

 

Offline Enzo03

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
Oh hey Tylo/Obi/Gold Leader :)

Fancy seeing you around here.

Hope to see some others here in the mines too.
21:20:19   SpardaSon21: "hey baby, want to get a good look at my AC/20?
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Offline Nuke

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
so i updated d2xxl and the improvements are huge. it used to run really slow with all the effects but its much better now. will need to play with it more.
I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

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Offline Hawkins

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
Good to see an overlap of FS with Descent after 18 years to the games' release. It's not easy keeping an active community of players, aside from the community related to the two main source ports as aforementioned.

Hey there, Obi and Enzo. All the good fellas in all the good places. :)
Live & explore...

 

Offline Gold Leader

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
Graphics does not interest people that play old games like Descent 1 & 2. Gameplay is the main thing that drives people's minds to play them.

At the Descent Task Force people don't care much about the graphics to be very honest and around D2X-XL there are not many good stories multiplayer & community wise, it's that I prefer to stay away from that even if my life would depend on it  :nervous:

DXX-Rebirth is the better overall solution hosting games is simpel and requires little efforts.

Sorry, but I am no major fan of D2X-XL and I never will be, forget it. I fan the games for what they are and Rebirth is a neat modification and fix so we can play it on various OS'es without stability issues and Multiplayer it's the best thing that happened to Descent 1 & 2.

Descent with DXX-Rebirth retains it's original look, XL is like a new Descent 3, and the thing is we already have a Descent 3 :rolleyes: Sorry my opinion there and that is what it will remain.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2012, 01:57:28 pm by Gold Leader »
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Offline Nuke

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
my main interest in d2xxl is mod support and sp, not multi. to be frank ive never seen its multiplayer facilities work very well. it was always crash prone and the tracker never worked, we always just posted an ip addy for whoever was hosting. im not sure if these issues have been fixed or not. dxx on the other hand, i had heard of but due to dwindling interest in descent i never bothered checking it out, but if we can have another community wide event id gladly participate.

actually i was more impressed with the doom 3 descent mod, had epic atmosphere, kinda like what mwll did for battletech fanatics. it just never went very far and as far as i know is mostly dead. i even attempted a descent freespace mod tech demonstration. i took some d3 ships that somone ported over, wrote some tables for descent-style weapons. i attempted to create some levels. since it was just a tech demo i used some old quake maps i did, converted them to pof files, to serve as the level geometry (this makes me the only fs modder to convert a quake map to a pof file in an attempt to make a descent mod for fs2, dont ask how i did it i used to smoke a lot of dope back then). it kinda worked, but it mostly didnt. this was done way before we had scripting, or improved graphics quality, and back then i came to the conclusion that it wouldnt work very well. might be more likely in the near future, with differed lighting and scripting.

« Last Edit: July 16, 2012, 02:45:46 pm by Nuke »
I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

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Offline CP5670

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
I'll have to keep this in mind. I have been playing these games since D1 came out and still play D2X-XL fairly regularly in singleplayer. There are a lot of good singleplayer map packs for it. The version I have is a few years out of date now but works well enough, and has a couple of minor changes I made. I would play D3 more but there isn't nearly as much user-made content for it available.

As far as weapon balance goes, all three games had their issues. D3 was probably the most balanced game overall, but it did have a quite different feel and movement mechanics from the earlier games. I played it a lot online back when it came out and occasionally join the current games, but they don't play the maps or game modes I like anymore. D2 had a lot of overpowered weapons, which are fun in singleplayer but mess up multiplayer balance. On the other hand, I don't like the lack of an afterburner in D1 since you need too much space to dodge homing and mega missiles without it. Trichording is essential in all three games. For keyboard players, many keyboards actually have trouble keeping up with all the keypresses you need to make that work correctly, while still firing weapons.

We had weekly games going on around here at one point 5 or 6 years ago. That might be fun to start up again.

  

Offline Nuke

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Re: Descent Task Force Rebooted & D1 18th Anniversary!
id like to get in some d1 practice if anyone else is up to it, so il start a d1x-rebirth host. should come up if the tracker works.

it works, had some games with some old vets that reallt pewnd mah pyro.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2012, 07:40:25 pm by Nuke »
I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

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