Topic: D1...Raytraced

[Scyphi]

So some students at Breda University of Applied Sciences, as part of a project for their third study year, have applied raytracing lighting to the original, pretty much vanilla, Descent.

Demo Video of WIP version 0.9

It should be stressed that this is just a school project, and work on it is expected to effectively cease upon the completion of their third year this early July (so at the time of posting, probably any day now) due to the students all having other commitments they need to turn their attention towards following their current semester, so this is by no means a fully polished or fine-tuned project, and likely never will be, at most staying a...proof of concept, if you will. Further, it's been done by adapting Descent's preexisting lighting sources already in the game which obviously was never built with raytracing in mind, so there are places that don't feel properly lit or unusually dark.

That being said though, what they HAVE accomplished is, frankly, astounding, and overall works way better than I would've expected, and the footage linked above is purported to not be the final version they expect to release still (they're currently shooting for a version 1.1 as their final version). It's almost surreal, even, because save for the lighting, the game is otherwise unchanged from vanilla D1, so it feels totally different yet still the same game as always simultaneously.

They have a Reddit thread discussing development and their plans in somewhat more detail, along with links to a Discord thread and a GitHub page where you can download the current build to play for yourself, assuming you have a computer meeting the requisite system specs (it IS raytracing rendering we're talking about here).

The DBB has a thread on this already, but as I had not seen any chatter about this on any of the other usual (and admittedly scant few) Descent sites I still frequent, I'm assuming most of the Descent community is likely unaware of this project's existence, so I'm spreading the word. Granted, doing so on PD, inactive as it has become, may not be the best of choices, but it's my hope others seeing this thread will help spread notice of this on to the other sites I do not have accounts with, especially as I know some of the other users still on here frequent more places than I do.

Anyway...in case this all interests anyone (or they hadn't already heard).