31 replies to this topic

[Soulstorm]

I had heard that Descent 3 was ported to OS X by someone.... What happened?

[StopDropBurn]

That was Descent 2... And I would give a lot for a Descent 3 OS X, sadly I doubt it will happen.

[Endymion]

Duane Johnson, the man who ported all three games to the Mac with OpenGL, RAVE and Glide functionality, has been working on a port of Descent 3 in his spare time. Last year he announced he was still working on this, after a long silence on the topic. (He is a member of this board although hasn't posted for a while.) For this reason alone I'm certain we will see it eventually.

[Soulstorm]

Endymion, on October 9th 2005, 10:16 PM, said:

Duane Johnson, the man who ported all three games to the Mac with OpenGL, RAVE and Glide functionality, has been working on a port of Descent 3 in his spare time. Last year he announced he was still working on this, after a long silence on the topic. (He is a member of this board although hasn't posted for a while.) For this reason alone I'm certain we will see it eventually.

I know about that, but what happened to him?

I hope he didn't give up!

[The iMac Man]

I believe Duane works for Aspyr now, so he's probably pretty busy.

[Arenzera]

Ryan Gordon has the port of Descent 3 for Mac OS X (I've seen it at WWDC). There's no telling how long it will be before he finishes that - we'll just let him get it done in his own time.

Kiel :-)

[dj phat 2000]

how about an early alpha beta linky would be great.    Had that game years ago, and never really played it do to poor performance on my Mac at the time.  Which had more then enough power for the game but, didn't play well enough for me.  I'd love to play it now on my system

[Arenzera]

There is a problem with the design of the game engine that makes it perform poorly in outdoor scenarios - Ryan explained it to me but I can't remember now and he knew how to fix it - it just means re-writing a part of it.

I'm not sure if the carbon version of Descent 3 for Mac OS X will ever see the light of day - however Ryan is a big Descent fan and he may very well finish it out of his love for the game. But don't hold your breath.

Kiel :-)

[Endymion]

It's been a while since I even had Descent 3 installed, but didn't it use OpenGL? It would be nice to have a MOSX native version of course, but if a MOS9 game has an OpenGL renderer that works properly then it should work properly in Classic mode, it is really only the old RAVE games that bug out in Classic mode. I sure seem to remember it working perfectly for me the last time I tried it in Classic mode.

[Eric5h5]

Endymion, on October 12th 2005, 09:12 AM, said:

It's been a while since I even had Descent 3 installed, but didn't it use OpenGL? It would be nice to have a MOSX native version of course, but if a MOS9 game has an OpenGL renderer that works properly then it should work properly in Classic mode, it is really only the old RAVE games that bug out in Classic mode. I sure seem to remember it working perfectly for me the last time I tried it in Classic mode.

It does work in Classic, though you need to patch it to version 1.4.2.  Otherwise it crashes.  Most RAVE games work in Classic too...they just look lousy.  It's not perfect though; the sound suffers from a .5 second delay, but that's not too uncommon with games running under Classic.  I think it might have something to do with SoundSprocket.

--Eric

[Arenzera]

You may have noticed it gets really choppy in outdoor environments - especially in level 1 when you fly outside for the first time. This is the engine bug Ryan has identified and knows how to eliminate - but doesn't have the time.

I really want D3 to go open source. Shame none of the companies that produced/published it exist anymore - I wonder who owns the rights to it...

Kiel :-)

[Eric5h5]

Arenzera, on October 12th 2005, 09:34 PM, said:

You may have noticed it gets really choppy in outdoor environments - especially in level 1 when you fly outside for the first time.

Actually, no, I don't see anything like that.  Just spent 10 minutes playing around...it couldn't be smoother, inside or out.  (The resolution could be higher though...1024x768 is the max, and no FSAA in Classic OpenGL, alas.)  Maybe because my Mac is so far beyond the spec of Macs when this game was released?  Also, the sound delay isn't as bad as I remembered...maybe .25 second if that (still a bit noticeable to me though).  The only real bug I can find is that putting the sound quality on "high" results in VERY loud and not very stable sound effects.  "Medium" seems to work best.

Hang on, the "readme" mentions a Glide version...did I delete that?  Maybe I should re-install...if there's a Glide version, and it works with OpenGLide, then hello high resolutions and FSAA!

--Eric

[The iMac Man]

Arenzera, on October 12th 2005, 09:34 PM, said:

Shame none of the companies that produced/published it exist anymore - I wonder who owns the rights to it...

Hey, yeah we are... well, sorta.

Interplay owns the rights I believe, and they are still hanging on for dear life.

Outrage Entertainment developed Descent 3.  

There was once a company called Parallax Software which split into two sister companies back in 1997;  Volition, Inc. and Outrage Entertainment.

I don't know what Outrage is up to these days, but us here at Volition certainly are still alive and kicking.    

[Arenzera]

Outrage are gone - at least their website is. I thought Interplay vanished into the abyss quite some time ago.

Suppose you can't slip a memo to someone who may be know something about this that could get it  released as open source? I'd love to tinker away at the source for Descent 3.

Kiel :-)

[Arenzera]

Eric5h5, on October 13th 2005, 03:17 PM, said:

Actually, no, I don't see anything like that.  Just spent 10 minutes playing around...it couldn't be smoother, inside or out.

This is very strange... when Ryan ran Descent 3 for OS X we both noticed it slowed down significantly (on 10.4), it did on my machine (back in the 10.3 days) but I haven't got it installed to see. But from past experience, it has always slowed down and the last time I saw Descent 3 running on a Mac, it did. What's the specs on your rig?

Kiel :-)

[Arenzera]

Just went to Interplay's website. Faaaaaar out. I remember the days when it took *ages* to load their graphics-intensive web page. Poor Interplay, good they were. Shame they chose the worst game market to focus on...

Kiel :-)

[Eric5h5]

Arenzera, on October 14th 2005, 06:48 AM, said:

This is very strange... when Ryan ran Descent 3 for OS X we both noticed it slowed down significantly (on 10.4), it did on my machine (back in the 10.3 days) but I haven't got it installed to see. But from past experience, it has always slowed down and the last time I saw Descent 3 running on a Mac, it did. What's the specs on your rig?

2.5GHz G5, X800 graphics card.  I can see the textures in outdoor areas warp a bit when I get closer to the polygons, but I definitely can't see any slowdown or choppiness.

--Eric

[Arenzera]

Maybe it's the uber advanced hardware you're running... good to hear!

Kiel :-)

[Soulstorm]

Endymion, on October 12th 2005, 02:12 PM, said:

It's been a while since I even had Descent 3 installed, but didn't it use OpenGL? It would be nice to have a MOSX native version of course, but if a MOS9 game has an OpenGL renderer that works properly then it should work properly in Classic mode, it is really only the old RAVE games that bug out in Classic mode. I sure seem to remember it working perfectly for me the last time I tried it in Classic mode.

Actually, Descent 3 work fine for me in classic mode, but the only thing that doesn't work is the key F2, which would allow me to save my game. If only I knew how to fix that....

[mattw]

Just read today that an Intel OS X version may actually arrive one day See the video http://www.descent3.com/