Descent 3 Source Code Release

[Kinsie]

Yep: It's finally out. MIT license, and approved by the rights-holder. Some missing bits for reasons, though, so it'll take a minute to get into a compiling state. In the meantime, you can enjoy all the finely-aged relics of turn-of-the-millennium gamedev, like changelogs and entire-ass conversations being held in code comments.

 

The Descent 1 & 2 code has been out for a good while, resulting in very good source ports that make running the game on modern systems with all the trimmings cake. D3, on the other hand, is a much rougher experience (especially if you wanna run in a window - good luck!) with the best options requiring DLL code injection to iron out as much of the issues as is feasible via such awkward methods. I'm very excited by the possibility of better solutions!

Edited April 20 by Kinsie

[SaladBadger]

I got news of the source dropping around 12:30 AM. by 2 AM I had it building by substituting the missing source from the editor, and went to bed. Now that I'm awake again, I'm starting to roll in my improvements I made for InjectD3, including good windowed mode (the 1.5 source had windowed mode hacked in, but it wasn't particularly usable).

 

Not much to show, but I'm glad this is finally happening.

[Master O]

Never thought I'd see the day.

[taufan99]

Congrats on the release! I'm looking forward to the emergence of Descent 3 source ports in the not-so-distant future.

 

Now what we need to look forward is Red Faction (and all its descendants) source code release...

[Kinsie]

5 hours ago, taufan99 said:

Congrats on the release! I'm looking forward to the emergence of Descent 3 source ports in the not-so-distant future.

 

Now what we need to look forward is Red Faction (and all its descendants) source code release...

Probably considerably less likely, sadly. The Descent games are an odd situation where Interplay only owns the "Descent" trademark and the publishing rights to sell the games, and the actual game code is owned by Parallax Software (which still exists as a legal entity). Later games after the split into Volition and Outrage would be under very different more traditional legal deals (ie. the publisher probably owns it), meaning it would likely be tied up in all the Embracer Group shit.

[jmac]

Not so much related to descent 3, but I feel the need to thank you for introducing me to the source ports for descent 1 & 2. I loved the first game before I had even heard of doom, and somehow didn't know these existed til today.

[Master O]

Descent 3 Editor's source code is also now available at https://github.com/kevinbentley/D3Edit.

[Master O]

https://discord.gg/GNy5CUQ is the Descent Developer Discord.

[Blzut3]

On 4/16/2024 at 9:02 AM, Kinsie said:

especially if you wanna run in a window - good luck!

The Loki Linux release actually works decently in this regard (the dynamically linked binary still works as of Ubuntu 23.10 although it seems to not like the SDL 1.2 to SDL 2 wrapper, so needed to compile real SDL 1.2).  It actually got better with Xwayland due to a combination of not supporting application defined window positioning (so resolution changes don't reposition the window) and now that alt-tab isn't blocked allowing easy repositioning.

 

Still glad to see the source code released in any case since there are still many rough edges to smooth out regardless.

 

Edit: Still working on Ubuntu 24.04 too. Probably should have tried a newer SDL2 wrapper since it's working with SDL2 now too.

Edited April 26 by Blzut3

[ducon]

8 hours ago, Blzut3 said:

The Loki Linux release actually works decently in this regard

Same for Unreal. The executable for Linux still runs.

[Kinsie]

After a brief "Github left a default license in the repo when it was created" kerfuffle, the code license is now GPLv3. There are now also binaries to test for a planned vanilla "what if the v1.5 patch came out back in the day" milestone release. Give 'em a kick around if you're brave enough, and see what trouble you can stir up.

[taufan99]

With the release of Descent 3's source code, there doesn't seem to be any decrease of price on stores. I guess other developers and companies need to learn from this. *smirks*

[SaladBadger]

If anyone's interested, I threw together a quality of life release by rolling in my patches from InjectD3 and adding some new ones. Plays nicely in multiplayer and I've been running the campaign for a while and it seems fine. It's available here.

 

It's still a little rough around the edges, I feel, but hey if you want your Descent 3 fix in ultrawide with expanded fov, I've got you

Edited May 7 by SaladBadger

[Kinsie]

On 5/1/2024 at 9:03 AM, SaladBadger said:

If anyone's interested, I threw together a quality of life release by rolling in my patches from InjectD3 and adding some new ones. Plays nicely in multiplayer and I've been running the campaign for a while and it seems fine. It's available here.

 

It's still a little rough around the edges, I feel, but hey if you want your Descent 3 fix in ultrawide with expanded fov, I've got you

Excellent stuff, thanks for keeping this particular flame alive!

[taufan99]

Piccu Engine just got an update to 1.1. New features are as follows.

Quote

No mouse polling rate limit

Descent 3 normally polled the mouse at 20 hz, regardless of what your mouse was capable of. Piccu Engine will now allow you to poll at your mouse's native rate. Do note that you will have to adjust sensitivity to compensate for this, and this does add some framerate dependence to how fast your mouse polls. If these pose problems, you can restore the 20 hz polling limit by going to Options->Config->Joy/Mouse->Adjust Settings and changing the mouse polling limit to "Original (20hz)"

 

Additional

• Added minidumps on crash. These will be stored in your user directory (where pilots are stored) and stored with the current UTC timestamp. These can be uploaded to help debug crashes.
• Gamma correction now works, using shaders.
• Expanded vclip frame limit, though the overall bitmap limit still applies.
• Raise number of Windows Multimedia Joysticks to 15. The entire joystick needs rewriting.
• Framerate limiter is more precise now.

Bugfixes

• OOF model polygons won't cause stack corruption if a glow is attached and they have more than 30 vertices.
• Fix weird text clipping playing at high resolutions.
• Fix game constantly nagging about portable mode when a piccu_portable file exists.
• Fix some HUD elements (such as the reactor status in D3 level 5) being positioned differently based on resolution.
• Fix Mercenary expansion not being loaded from Steam data files.