Descent IV

Website http://www.descent4.net
Descent IV News Archive

13 May 2002 In an Orbital Bulletin Board message thread, Valin Halcyon announces that Descent IV has been cancelled:

We all know that Interplay owns some of the copyrights to the Descent franchise, and of course, Parallax owns some to D1 and 2, while Outrage owns some of the ones for D3. In order for any further games based on Descent to be made, it would require all copyright holders' approval before being authorized for publishing and production.

What we found when we got involved with these legalities, is that it seems Parallax and Outrage have no interest in dealing with Interplay anymore at all...not even as much as to give them the time of day.

On final evaluation, we determined we got caught in some sort of blood feud between the 3 companies involved, and being it a place no one likes to find oneself, we decided to give it up and focus on other games. Had we continued to persue [sic] the athorization [sic] to continue the Descent series, it probably would have taken a lot more time and effort than it would have been worth...and D4 wouldn't have even been able to get much done in way of production until then...meaning it would have been more likly to expect it in 2010 than 2003.

The bottom of the Infinite Abyss has been found...Descent will go no deeper. The party is over.

20 April 2002 Planet Descent reports that a singleplayer Descent IV demo is "...Only Months Away." "It will include a single player mission with a small selection of bots and the Pyro-GX armed with some of its weapons. Multiplayer is not available as the netcode is still being worked on."
16 March 2002 Planet Descent has posted an interview with Valin Halcyon. A few highlights:
On the storyline:

D4 is in two major divisions. Early on it covers a few events directly after D3 but only for the first few levels. Afterwards it focuses on the main game that takes place two years later.

Current development progress: "15-20%."
New weapons:

The Phase Missiles are a homing class weapon.... ...the concept as it initially came up, was a homing missile that can fade in and out of existence, allowing it to fly through doors, windows, and thin walls.

On ships: "We've dumped the Pyro-ZX to avoid any further agitation and replaced it with the 'Pyro-NX' (name tentative)."
15 February 2002 In a DBB message thread, Valin announces:

I have left the Midnight Squadron, and with me comes Descent IV. Descent IV is now a production of Orbital Design Studios, an independant company not affiliated with the Midnight Squadron.
 
(MS)Bubbalou has left us, taking with him all of the models he worked on...leaving us with no GX, no ZX; and no Tigg-SB or weapon models. We are in DIRE need of 3D Artists if this is to be finished in a timely manner. While I could go to a 3D Artist's page and post in their forum for moddlers, I much rather get Descent Artists.
 
I owe the Descent community an apology, Descent IV should not have placed itself in another's control. We will not allow it to happen again.
 
D4 will continue, it'll be a little harder now unless we can get some help to cover the loss...any willing to lend a hand in Art are welcome.



14 February 2002 Valin Halcyon sends word about the planned mod capability of Descent IV:

1. D4Edit. The Ultra all-in-wonder tool for changing and editing ANYTHING for use in D4. D4Edit will be bascially [sic] a simple framework that uses plugins for everything...and each can be installed or removed according to the user...if they even find a need to.
2. Provision in the Game's license allowing the mod developers to sell their mods commercially without restrictions EXCEPT that they must use D4's publisher...as well as the obvious fact that they must require the full version of D4 to play them.
3. Support for more Genres than just another simple FPS game. In D4, you'll have the capability to make a racing game, an RTS, and MMORPG, FPS, 3D Chess...I don't care, it can be done.)


14 December 2001 Valin discusses weapons loadouts in a DBB message thread:

In D4, There will be more than 10 weapons. Different ships will be able to use different weapons in addition to having more or less armor, shields, and smaller or larger reactor plants. The most weapons ANY ship can have is 10, therefore NONE can use all of the weapons.
 
For example, the lighter ships will carry the MD, but obviously if they meet a heavier ship, they won't last too long. Also, the MD in D4 will be required to be zoomed to at least 2X magnification to be fired. TO get an idea for the zoom capability in D4, take a look at Tribes 1 or 2. Sticky zoom, 20 levels of zoom, hold and release zoom....etc. It's not going to be so simplistic as in D3. NOTE: MD dogfighters can still do it, BUT, you'll have to use sticky zoom at a min of 2X mag, reducing your FoV. Of course, doing that leaves you open for something like a SX with some of the heavier cannons...

10 December 2001 In a DBB message thread, Valin Halcyon reports on the current status of the project:

Right now D4 is essentially a large collection of models, the CS engine with some experimental code we plugged in, a few tracks of music and a handful of sounds.
 
Robots are all still in conceptual stage... Ships, I think, are pretty much done...still working out initial stats, most of which'll probably change by the time we're done.
 
Storyline is pretty much done, all that's being done to it now is smoothing out the dialog and fixing anything that sounds like it belongs in a cheezy 1950's sci-fi flick, as well as determining what will be put in briefings, what will be put in "slideshow" cutscenes, and what will be put in fully pre-rendered cutscenes.
 
In short, D4 as it's own program does not work. We have a lot of puzzle pieces, but we're missing the important ones...which are the areas we're working on.
 
To get a good idea of what to expect, imagine the finalized GX model we've show [sic] you in say...the nTrap engine, as far as visuals anyway.

26 November 2001 Valin Halcyon talks about ship armor in a D4-BB message thread:


...my plan is to basically give the plr on spawn, 100 shields and 100 Armor points, however, armor points being about 1/2 that in strength of a shield point...for mathematical simplicty. You take damage faster when being hit on the hull, that simple. You can regain shields to the maximum of the ship type you choose, but cannot regain armor points in the same way. In SP there will probably be some kind of repair station, a little different than the energy centers, you'll actually half [sic] to dock with it on the wall and let the station repair your hull. in MP, such a station would be rather useless, but I think we'll leave the option for level builders to use them if they like.
 
Another note about Armor Points, they will vary based on the ship type...the value will equal the number of shield points the ship has. Just remember that each armor point takes 2X the damage of a shield point. Armor is mostly there to keep you alive a wee bit longer to find some shields. I won't recommend counting it into your total shields.


1 November 2001 Wolf on Air posts request for programmers in a D4-BB message thread.
25 October 2001 Valin Halcyon posts in a DBB message thread that Descent IV may feature an InstaReap-style play mode.
24 October 2001 In a D4-BB message thread, Valin Halcyon posts:

1. With the new engine, we can finally have hull integrity. Not sure how to do it without turning the game into too much of a space sim tho...we'll see.
 
2. Energy weapons in Descent are plasma based, not light based, therefore a shield to stop EM band lasers would be useless...not to mention make radio transmissions impossible.
 
3. Craters...hmmm. I DON'T know if that will be possible, but it might. There is a lot about this new engine we don't know yet. Personally I think blocking up a tunnel with napalm by melting down the walls and ceiling would be awesome.



17 October 2001 Valin Halcyon posts about the possibility of using a different engine in a PD forums message thread:

...if D4 doesn't go commercial, it wil be a HUGE download. Should it go commercial and on CD, we're looking at either 2/3 CD-ROMs, or a DVD-ROM.
 
Also note that it's not going to be a D3 conversion much longer...I've been talking to Matt@Outrage and we don't think we will be able to add in all the features we want with the Fusion Engine, sooo...we found a *really* nice open source engine that we're testing out now.
 
Overall, going with the new engine, I'd agree with Tank and say we're about 5% there. Once we get past some of the baseline problems, I believe we'll pick up speed and momentum.



More details posted by Suncho in a D4-BB message thread:

The new engine/development kit is called Crystal Space, is open source, and is protected under the Lesser GNU Public License which means its libraries can be used for proprietary products! This specific license is neccessary to ensure that hackers won't be able to cheat easily in Descent IV. Check out the website: http://crystal.linuxgames.com/
 
The good news is that most of the work that people have been doing using the Fusion Engine is easily transferrable over to Crystal Space!


28 September 2001 Suncho reports "The Descent 4 Ships and Weapons have been finalized."
26 September 2001 In a D4-BB message thread, Valin Halcyon posts that "The D4 team is now part of the D3 1.5 closed BETA for the D3 1.5 patch!"
16 September 2001 Valin Halcyon posts in a D4-BB message thread that there are still open positions: "We need help! We've been at this for 3 1/2 months. We have maybe 1/16th of the models done, we've just gotten started on the levels after the story has pretty much been completed. We want to be done by 2003, but at this rate, we're going to be pushing 2005!"
1 September 2001 In a DBB message thread, Valin Halcyon mentions that Unreal Tournament-style Assault is planned as a play mode.
29 August 2001 Valin Halcyon posts image of near-complete Pyro ZX in D4-BB message thread. In another message thread, he states "I think BETA will be around by maybe late next spring, early summer, but don't go marking your calendars, you know what happens with games that set dates..." Sample soundtrack released in another message thread; "Keep in mind we're using dynamic music, and different parts of this one track could be playing at different times in a level depending on what you are doing and what's going on around you...it's not made to be a linear repeating song."
15 August 2001 In a DBB message thread, Valin Halcyon posts "...we may very well release a track for show soon. We'll be using dynamic music, like D3, but using a different format that'll allow us better quality sound."
12 August 2001 As anticipated, Valin Halcyon had Eagle's 3-D model of the Pyro GX with him at Suncoast II, but it was not yet in playable form. With some assistance from Papacat, he was able to have it ready Sunday morning for testing. Everything looks good so far, and I received permission from Valin Halcyon to distribute the Pyro GX, which is utilized in two levels, Apparition and Paranoia. This is definitely an early beta version, but still looks very good. The ship physics are a straight copy of the Pyro GX of Pyromania, but plans are to modify this. Another planned modification is to enable wing-mounted missiles to actually fire from the upper wings, and there may even be some sort of visual weapons identification in-game, depicting which missile is currently armed. Another possible weapons feature would be a centerline bomb-bay with opening doors for center-shot missiles.
11 August 2001 Eagle reveals his motivation for making Descent IV in a DBB message thread.
9 August 2001 Wolf on Air posts in-game image of the Pyro GX in what appears to be Apparition, in a D4-BB message thread; it seems that Valin Halcyon will be bringing this to the Suncoast LAN this weekend for testing.
7 August 2001 Eagle posts what appears to be the final version of the in-game model of the Pyro GX in a DBB message thread.
6 August 2001 In a D4-BB message thread, mention is made of a planned 'D4Edit' level editor and Descent 3 - to - Descent IV level converter (also mentioned in another message thread).
4 August 2001 In a DBB message thread, Valin Halcyon reveals that Descent IV's singleplayer plotline will continue from the end of Descent 3's.
3 August 2001 Image of revised Pyro GX, almost identical to the one in Descent 2's cutscene movies, posted by Valin Halcyon in DBB message thread.
1 August 2001 Several newsworthy items posted in D4-BB message thread by Valin Halcyon:

• Planned system requirements:

  Minimum System Requirements:
  Pentium III class CPU @ 733 Mhz or better
  Windows 98 with Direct X 6.1 or better
  64MB RAM
  500MB Hard Drive Space
  6X CD-ROM or faster
  Nvidia TNT2 based chipset or equivalent /32MB RAM
   
  Recommended:
  128MB RAM
  Directx 8.0 or better
  Nvidia GeForce 2 based chipset or equivalent, or better w/32MB RAM
   
  --------------------------------------
   
  Minimal 3Dfx Glide Support incuded
   
  

• Status of Glide support:

  Very well, the masses have spoken.
   
  Glide support will be left in, BUT, as a command line option instead of being able to be selected in the launcher. The reason being is we'll leave it as a "secret" feature for you diehards out there.
   
  The reason we will not outright support Glide is two-fold.
  1) Perfomance. You're just not going to get decent framerates as you have been, unless you LIKE playing at 640x480 with min details.
  2) Everytime a cutscene comes up in the Single Player compaign, D3 will crash...if you use Glide. So if you use it, consider it for Multiplayer only.
  

• Projected release date: 2003
Defender will be contributing one of his 3-D robot designs to the project (image posted above), as revealed in a D4-BB message thread.
31 July 2001 In a DBB message thread, Valin Halcyon elaborates further on the decision to drop Glide support:

We pretty much have to. With just the GX in, we don't notice much of a performance hit, but as the hires powerup models get put in, your FPS is gonna die if you use Voodoos. There will never be another new Voodoo card made, it's just a fact of life in the gaming industry. The old standard dies, we move on. To put it as plain as possible: THE VOODOO CARDS WILL NOT BE CAPABLE OF RUNNING D4 TO A SATISFACTORY LEVEL. So we removed it.

31 July 2001 Images of full map and ammo rack power-ups posted at D4-BB.
30 July 2001 In-game image posted of Pyro GX and request for more graphics artists posted in DBB message thread; in a D4-BB message thread, Valin Halcyon reveals that "Glide has been removed from D4. GeForce2 will be considered our min sys requirments..."
27 July 2001 Thirty single-player levels, plus an undetermined number of secret levels, are being planned, per this D4-BB message thread; several new images, including the Pyro SX and ZX, posted in another message thread.
25 July 2001 Valin Halcyon posts list of current project members, along with remaining open positions, in DBB message thread.
23 July 2001 Valin Halcyon posts in a D4-BB message thread that the Ammo Rack from Descent 2 will be brought back, and that "D4 Multiplayer AND Single Player modes will ROCK! Hands down, no questions asked. Period. End of story."
17 July 2001 Full name of mod revealed in D4-BB message thread - Descent: Invasion; blue, yellow and red keys posted in another message thread.
13 July 2001 In a DBB message thread, Valin Halcyon announces that a movie format has been created; in another message thread, he posts "...we've thought of using [multiplayer] bots..."
12 July 2001 According to a D4-BB message thread, [MAC]Akuma will be leading an effort to convert Descent IV to the Mac once the Windows version is complete; in another message thread, images of concussion missile models were posted.
11 July 2001 According to a DBB message thread, the EMD and Blackshark will not be retained in Descent IV.
8 July 2001 More images of Eagle's Pyro GX posted by Valin Halcyon on both the D4-BB and DBB.
4 July 2001 Eagle posts images of revised 3DS Max Pyro GX model in D4-BB message thread.
28 June 2001 Valin Halcyon posts on the D4-BB a planned revision of the ship and weapons layouts:

Each ship will have 20 weapon slots, 10 for primaries, 10 for secondaries.
Certain ships will only be able to pick up certain weapons. For example, the Tigg-SB won't be able
to lug around a massive Fusion Cannon, as its frame is too small, whereas it can travel considerably
faster.


But at the other end of the scales, the Pyro-SX won't be able to upgrade it's lasers past level 1,
and the quad upgrade won't effect the lasers.


This is what I call the "Ship Spectrum," it goes from lightest and fastest to heaviest and slowest.


Tigg-SB
Pyro-GL
Pyro-SE
Pyro-GX
Aggressor Prime
Pyro-SX


On the heavier ships, you'll see heavier weapons, but slower speed and manuverability, as well as a
handicap on the lower end of the weapons.


On the lighter ships, you'll see the opposite, incredibly fast, but really lightly armed.


Using this system, I believe I'll be able to reuse nearly every weapon ever used in Descent, perhaps
with 1 or 2 new ones to boot.


22 June 2001 Valin Halcyon posts on the D4-BB that the Descent 3 Fusion engine will be used instead of Red Faction:

After reviewing all possible alternatives, we've decided that D4 will be built upon the Fusion Engine. This will not be just another D3 mod, Once again I will state that we are pulling everything out and rebuilding. Programmers are desperately needed. We need to squeeze everything we can out of this aging engine. We will be trying to negotiate with Outrage about some kind of agreement to loan us the source for this project. How possible it is, I don't know. But it's worth trying.


16 June 2001 Valin Halcyon posts a screenshot of deformable terrain in Descent 3, in a D4-BB message thread.
15 June 2001 Valin Halcyon posts list of planned ships in D4 forum message thread.
13 June 2001 Eagle posts two pics of his 3D model of the Pyro GX.
10 June 2001 Descent IV BB opens; more ship details released: Phoenix and Magnum will probably not be used, Pyro GL and Black Pyro may be used.
9 June 2001 More planned features posted to DBB thread.
4 June 2001 Valin Halcyon states in a DBB message thread: 'We're stripping Red Faction of everything, and totaly redoing how it handles switching between FPS and Ship modes.'
3 June 2001 Job openings posted; name changed from 'Descent 4' to 'Descent IV'.
2 June 2001 Project announced in a DBB message thread; website launched.

Descent, Descent ][ © 1997 Parallax Software.
Descent³ © 1999 Outrage Entertainment.
© 2000, 2001, 2002 Outbound Gaming Network
Modified: 04/11/2008