Topic: DESCENT FOR WiiWare ANNOUNCED

[karx-elf-erx]

Oh, Scyphi can live with it, so it's ok.

It's ok to have bugs in the Wii port that renders certain levels faultily.

Sure.

[Scyphi]

Well, what can I say? I'm not a perfectionist.

Seriously, though, this see-through wall thing is just a graphical glitch, right? It doesn't really affect gameplay (at least, it shouldn't), and at this point, that's all I'm really interested, so I would likely live with it. Obviously, I shouldn't expect everyone else to live with it too, though.

This isn't to say that it's excusable for Interplay to let this slide, though. Of course they should be professional and fix this glitch. But it's also Interplay. Can't say I'm surprised they're cutting corners. So it's not like I'd hate them forever for it. I'd just be a little...miffed.

And anyway...the port is SOOO long overdue...I'm tired of waiting, I just want to PLAY the darn thing now, at least ONCE.

[SaladBadger]

If v0.99 has it, maybe v1.0 has it, it's kinda ok, but this factor is reduced by the fact that they know about it.

If it starts making it past v1.2 and even into v2.0 though, you might want to start questioning what's up.

[Crash]

I've seen that in other old games. Is not really good enough even if it isn't a total showstopper.
If this official port still isn't ready, I would think this would be pretty high on their 'to fix' list.

[Scyphi]

Well, whatever the case, I guess our best option no matter what is to wait and hope for the best.

As usual.

...

I really am getting tired of waiting for this. Not that I don't want to rush Interplay into getting this out before it's ready, but...we were all hoping they'd have this out by now.

[karx-elf-erx]

I think that the main reason the port is overdue is that the porting team had to use the original code from scratch, chew through it, and make it use a completely different rendering API. I am dealing with the Descent code for over 7 years, and I have said it recently in my forum that in my eyes it is a piece of amateurishly hacked together rubbish. It has no structure, often it is unoptimized - it looks like bloody beginners who just knew their 3D math well and had basic coding knowledge wrote their first big program here. At the time when Descent was conceived, C++ had already been mature, Design Patterns had been around, structured programming was nothing new anymore. You find nothing of that in the Descent code.

In retrospect I could slap myself in the face for having wasted so much time to get some code and engine up to scratch that could never be really fixed instead of doing a complete rewrite.

I have also seen the Quake 1 code (when fixing a crash bug in Nexuiz), and despite it being standard C it is worlds apart from the Descent code in terms of clarity, structure and conciseness.

It also took me a real long time to understand some concepts used in the program that were implemented there w/o any useful comment and often w/o using any useful variable names, like e.g. the visibility culling system. Other code (like collision detection), was flawed because it hadn't been thought through to the end.

Really, that code is a heresy against all doctrines of good programming and should be burnt on the stake.

I can understand that porting it took such a long time. From a legal and marketing point of view I can also understand that the company/people porting it never asked for help from people having a lot of experience with the open source versions of Descent, but from a practical point of view that probably was a folly.

It would have been easy to reduce D2X-XL to a sleeker version with a less heavy data footprint and bring it to the Wii in 6 months. D2X-XL is almost completely OpenGL ES compliant and on top of it has acceptably well coded (imho) shader support. With my help - no big deal. One certainly could have also used Rebirth; but D2X-XL is C++ now and uses a lot of class based code making debugging it much easier. It also has a lot of bug fixes and optimizations under the hood Rebirth hasn't.

Oh well.


Scyphi,

that isn't just a "graphical glitch". It hints to a general problem of the renderer that may crop up in arbitrary other missions.

[Kaiaatzl]

...just knew their 3D math well...

That's better than me!  Whenever I hear the term '3D math' it sounds like a technology from a super-advanced alien society .
And I almost failed 2D vectors in high-school physics (but I enjoyed almost failing it).

My best guess to what 3D math is is 3D vectors... Don't correct me if I'm wrong.  If it's something more complicated than that I'd rather be delusional.

I do agree with you though Karx, if they can fix it then it definitely should be fixed.  And that they should have used the code from one of the ports -- and with all your optimizations and clarifications to the D2X-XL code it would have made the porting a lot easier for them .

To be fair though, we don't know what changes they've made to the code already.  Maybe it is possible to fix.

Personally I'm just glad they can do this port even if Interplay goes under again though.  I do have a kind of personal investment in this port now... which I really want to be able to put on my resume.  Naturally with such a large investment (19 songs!  6 months work at least!) I'd like it to pay off.  Even though I won't actually get to play the port.

[karx-elf-erx]

Well, Scott Hawkins from G1M2 (the company doing the port) has already contacted DarkFlameWolf about talking with me, and I hope I can help to get this bird to finally take off.

[Crash]

>>>Well, Scott Hawkins from G1M2 (the company doing the port) has already contacted DarkFlameWolf about talking with me, and I hope I can help to get this bird to finally take off.

Looks like I'll have to buy a Wii sooner than I thought. You're definitely the best person for them to talk to about it.

@wazzazzle - what you must be feeling is a combination of frustration and legitimate entitlement because you've given without receiving and you want to see the end result. I certainly don't blame you for it.

[Scyphi]

Well, Scott Hawkins from G1M2 (the company doing the port) has already contacted DarkFlameWolf about talking with me, and I hope I can help to get this bird to finally take off.

Cool, I didn't think they'd actually do that, just because they're the alleged "pros" at this sort of thing and have egos to care for, and that I didn't think the Interplay bureaucracy accept outside help like that, even though it would (obviously) be a great help. But if they're actually looking to you for help, Karx, my opinion about them just got bumped up a couple of notches.

[Kaiaatzl]

...But if they're actually looking to you for help, Karx, my opinion about them just got bumped up a couple of notches.

x2

Karx is an extremely skilled coder and he knows the Descent code inside and out.  They'd be fools not to accept his help.
This is definitely good news.  And maybe Interplay is finally toning down their bloated ego (I've felt for a long time that that was their main problem as a company, actually.  Scyphi nailed it).  Or maybe this is just G1M2.

[NUMBERZero]

lol Karx is just going to blow in, fix their game, and blow out like a boss.

[Alieo]

LMAO! Hell yeah. Get it get it!

[karx-elf-erx]

Sorry people,

but I cannot see a bloated ego in professionals being reluctant to reveal their work to non professionals or to get help from them. Things like that have more to do with work processes, team formation and maybe protecting your work. Valve or id Software don't handle this any different. They just have better communication with the fan base and appear more supportive (they have a different financial foundation though). So G1M2 and Interplay would be doing themselves a favor with talking and socializing a bit more with the fans of their games, but you won't get much more from them than that.

[Kaiaatzl]

I didn't mean a bloated ego in this specifically.
I think a lot of Interplay's current and previous problems show a bloated corporate ego (e.g. suing other companies when they really don't have the money to be taking that risk, putting their lawsuits before the games they're trying to publish).
I meant that, if they're asking for your help,then maybe that shows they're toning down their ego a bit, which gives me a bit more faith that they can survive (and don't start misinterpreting the word "Faith" now, this has nothing to do with religion).