Descent

[Jaybot]

I don't think I've ever even heard of the original, but judging from the title, I can understand that it's just a decent game, not a blockbuster; maybe thats why I haven't heard of it.  Now, if someone could port Indecent, that would be nice.<br><br>Or did you mean Descent?

[RwGast]

Heh im sorry heh i ment descent, heh . Where was my brain at?

[RwGast]

Has anyone thought of porting decent 1 or 2 they have both had the source coode released. I would like to this but i dont think i know enough about gapi and stuff to figure it out.<br>

[Moose or Chuck]

We already discussed it, but I forget where we got. I had the source for Descent 1 on my computer somewhere, at sometime.<br>I forget, is Descent closer to Quake or Doom (refering to the method of 3D used). I remember that being a point of interest.

[Moose or Chuck]

Yup, I've got the source for the original Descent and the drop in files for WinDescent. Someone should really ask me for it so they could get started coding it.

[Paul]

if you check the old thread on porting games people submitted source code urls and stuff. its all there.<br><br>hmm, i think it was closer to quake in that you could look around you (its that 6 degrees of freedom thing isnt it?). i dont know much about the engine though.

[Phantom]

Hi,<br><br>They used a simple portal engine. Descent levels are build of convex polyhedra (simply put, simple shapes like cubes) that are connected via 'transparent polygons', called portals. The rendering starts in the polyhedron that the camera is in (wich can be easily determined with a brute force approach for the first frame, and a neighbour check for subsequent frames); the polygons of this polyhedron are drawn and when a portal is encountered, the 2D view frustum is replaced by the 2D outline of the portal polygon and rendering is recursively continued in the polyhedron behind the portal.<br><br>The algorithm should require little floating point math, and it is quite a bit simpler than the Quake PVS. I saw a 4Kb PC demo once that had the entire first level of Descent in it. Textures where generated by the demo itself, and it ran really smooth. Quite an achievement. <br><br>Problem will be controlling the craft, as usual. It should be pretty cool though. If someone could mail me the sources at Jacco.Bikker@Davilex.nl, I would certainly like to have a look.<br><br>- Jacco.

[suchiaruzu]

That gives your signature an entire new definition! Woooohoooo!!!<br>:)

[Phantom]

Ehm, yes, that sig originated from my 3D coding days. I used to say to the artists 'give me some good data and I will give you the world' - But they refused. <br><br>Anyway, the PocketPC doesn't have 3D accelerators yet, so I might give 3D coding a shot again once The Nutcracker is on the shelves.<br><br>About descent: I just want to have a look at it, I can't promise a port. If it's not too much work I'll consider it.<br><br>- Jacco.

[RwGast]

I would really love to port it my self i just dont really know how, Is the concept to go through there code and like leave all the functions names the same but like for instance take there blitting function leave the name and params the same and rewrite the acuall function using gapi instead of there code?

[Phantom]

If you're lucky, that's indeed what you do. Descent looks like a mode 13h game to me, so that's simply 320x200 / 256 color mode, wich is of course very easy to emulate on the PocketPC. So you need to replace their palette code, their mode13h stuff needs to replaced by EasyCE , you need to fix the controls, rewrite the sound stuff and then you're basically done. If it's too slow at that stage, you rip out the floating point stuff and replace it by fixed point stuff.<br><br>If you're not lucky, the platform specific stuff (palette, sound, controls) are all over the program instead of nicely isolated, wich means that you need to do an unrealistic amount of work to get the game going.

[jongjungbu]

Didn't Descent use a bit of asm in its core?

[Phantom]

Good point. I'll need to look at the source to be sure. But I expect the asm to be limited to matrix calculus and rasterization. I'm not afraid of rasterization, I can tell you.

[Matt Keys]

Jacco,<br>Has anyone sent you the source? if not, moose fork it over;)

[Paul]

bah, i already said all the links are on another thread in here.<br><br>*2 minutes later*<br><br>here it is you fools... http://www.descent2.com/ddn/sources/descent1/