DescentBB

lol @ phoil. Why not \"Foil\"?

I tried registering as \"Foil\", said it was unavailable. \"Phoil\" (which is my Descent3 Phoenix pilot name) worked. *shrug*

hey... it works. For my BF2 login I had to go \"leet\":d00p3r

One more trailer, showing lots of gameplay. It looks fun, but I still couldn't help noticing the 'no aim while rolling' control restriction.

Foil, I read your whole thread on that site and they don't seem to understand that 1/10 of a second can be death. How many times have we all died in Descent because we couldn't turn or roll fast enough? It is imperative that we can do that. I would buy the game but without a faster PC, I can't. But the game does interest me.

invite them to descent, they will learn to understand.

They said they'll have additional options for roll control in a post-release patch. I'm just going to wait for that before I buy the game.

Foil, the new trailer looks great. And yes, the no-roll issue is very obvious. It is almost like a break in the otherwise quite fluent movement.

Floyd wrote:invite them to descent, they will learn to understand.

Heh! Yeah! Direct them to my videos if they don't want to play. I'm sure they might find something.

Foil wrote:One more trailer, showing lots of gameplay. It looks fun, but I still couldn't help noticing the 'no aim while rolling' control restriction.

Hmm, can you elaborate on that?

Do you mean rolling (left) (right), as if you were to rotate your computer screen?

Spaceboy wrote:Do you mean rolling (left) (right), as if you were to rotate your computer screen?

Yes, they have roll control hard-coded to "right-click + mouse" in the initial release. This means players cannot roll and aim at the same time.

Apparently there won't be any other options for roll control until they do a patch sometime later. Otherwise the game looks great.

That's stupid. Like Merlin said, battles can take place in 1/10 of a second. Every 6DoFs take place in that time period. I can't believe that they don't know that. And a post release update will fix the roll problem? They better shove that out the door right away, or else players will get used to the crappy way of how to roll and they will be getting screwed by Foil and I who have decided to wait untill the patch Maximum control means maximum efficiency, and stopping everything just to roll is not efficient.

I find that the quote from the Descent book is fitting.
\"If you are going to fight a war, do it EFFICIENTLY, unremittingly, or DON'T DO IT AT ALL (until the patch comes out)--I'm not into ethics. I'm into EFFICIENCY.\"-Benjamin St. John

What I can't wait to see is how natural it might come to me... If they have good joystick support.

Oh yeah, and if I take video of it, you will see me trichording reguardless of the no speed increase.

I've only ever played keyboard with descent, so I don't have any descent experience to back me up with this.

NUMBERZero wrote:What I can't wait to see is how natural it might come to me... If they have good joystick support.

Foil wrote:

Foil wrote:4. Will there be options for joystick control?

Joystick control isn't currently planned. We prototyped different input methods earlier in the game's development.

<slight bump>
Well, turns out it didn't take long... they're releasing a patch which adds the independent roll control. They're also Beta-testing some new levels.

I'm going to pick up this game now that it's finally a true 6DoF.

Foil wrote:<slight bump>
Well, turns out it didn't take long... they're releasing a patch which adds the independent roll control. They're also Beta-testing some new levels.

I'm going to pick up this game now that it's finally a true 6DoF.

Thanks for the update Foil - think I'll do the same

CDN_Merlin wrote:What I read on their site was that you won't tumble but you won't have the best accuracy. Sadly it will leave XP users out of the loop as it's only for Vista and Windows 7 and DX 10.

But what if you could have DX10 on windows XP? Wonder if anyone has thought of that yet?

http://www.technospot.net/blogs/downloa ... y-project/

Taken from VE3d.com about the patch A tidbit of plug for Descent.

Shattered Horizon Patched
2:57 AM - Andrew Burnes - 0 Comments
As much as I enjoy Shattered Horizon, it is nigh on impossible to find a populated server during the European day:

Last night Steam rolled out an update for Shattered Horizon which added three popular features requested by our community.
\"ROLL LEFT\" AND \"ROLL RIGHT\" CAN NOW BE ASSIGNED TO INDIVIDUAL KEYS.

Fans of Descent, space-sims, and other six-degrees-of-freedom games now have more options to set up and play Shattered Horizon the way they want.

EACH GRENADE TYPE CAN BE ASSIGNED TO A QUICK SELECT KEY.

A quick-key for each grenade type makes it easier to select and fire the right one when under pressure.

CHANGES TO THE COLOR OF THE EMP GRENADE EFFECT.

The color of the EMP lightning effect on players has been changed from blue to white to better balance the effect on MMC players.

Patch Notes - Shattered Horizon 1.0.2.3

New Control Options


Each grenade type can now be assigned to a separate quick-select key.
\"Roll left\" and \"Roll right\" can now be assigned to individual keys. You can adjust the roll speed when rolling with keys. While you are rolling with keys the mouse is completely free to aim.
Both the mouse and the individual keys can be used to roll in-game, you don't have to choose between them so are free to use different roll methods depending on which you prefer for each situation.
Help screens and FPS-counter controls can now be bound to different keys in the controls menu.
Added mouse wheel support to controls.
Game Changes


The color of the EMP lightning effect on players has been changed from blue to white. This change is to reduce confusion when MCC (yellow) players are EMPed. The EMP particle effect however is still blue and will be changed in a future update.
When typing a message using in-game chat, a history of all in-game chat messages will appear. The text will disappear automatically after a short time.
Bug Fixes


Firing the weapon in silent running mode now plays the correct muffled audio.
Fixed a rare bug that caused rendering to freeze while the game continued running.
Fixed an occasional issue that resulted in a player spawning into a level with too much speed.
Fixed an issue with shadows initializing incorrectly, which could cause aliased sharp edges.
Fixed a bug with in-game chat where lines of text could appear on top of each other.
Fixed a bug that allowed in-game chat to be used while in silent running mode.

Foil, Merlin, any impressions about the game so far? Thanks!

I haven't played it. My system can't handle it.

I haven't been able to play it as much as I'd like, but so far I'm starting to enjoy it!

Graphics:

My 8800GTS G92 is a bit on the lower-end of the requirements, but with a little tweaking it runs fairly smoothly. There's not much \"eye-candy\", and the weapon effects are underwhelming, but the real strength of the DX10 graphics is the lighting; there's ambient light reflected from the Earth, as well as very sharply-defined shadows from the Sun. The level of immersion is really impressive; it feels like being in Earth orbit.

Control:

Being a Descent guy, the 6DoF movement really feels natural, now that they added the roll controls. The primary difference is the inertia/thrust; changing directions seems really sluggish compared to my Pyro.

One thing that's interesting is that many players still move as if it's a ground-pounder, and the newer ones are often thrown off by motion outside their normal WASD controls. You can distinguish the more experienced guys just by the way they make use of the freedom to thrust up/down and roll.

That said, something disappointing to me is that there's very little of the 'tumbling dogfights' I love so much from Descent. I understand it of course; mouselook aiming and slower direction changes don't really allow for dogfights. Thus my attempts at those kind of moves usually get me killed.


Weapons:

A couple of the things that have earned the game a lot of criticism are the fact that there's basically just one gun (a rifle), and the fact that secondaries (grenades) are tactical rather than damaging. I wish the rifle was a bit more accurate; shots seem to 'spray' a lot, but I'm starting to learn how to shoot more accurate bursts. As to the grenades, the EMP (which temporarily slows/disables an opponent) seems the most useful, but there are some advanced moves I've seen people using with the MPR (which \"bounces\" players).

While the single gun seemed a bit odd at first, I'm starting to find that this makes for more team-oriented tactical gameplay. There aren't any powerups or special weapons to hoard, or overpowered one-shot-kill weapons, so there's more focus on control points and such.


Gameplay:

The game clearly emphasizes team-oriented play, so much so that there's no 'Anarchy'-style mode. You're always playing with a team, whether it's just a skirmish or one of the assault-style levels. I know some people don't like that, but personally, I'm starting to enjoy it. Of course, one frustrating thing is the usual: players who are clearly more interested in their own stats than team success.

One thing I'm trying to get used to is that S.H. is a considerably slower-paced game; it's slow enough that my usual super-aggressive style is often getting me killed. Maybe that's a good thing, though...

------------

One more thing is that Shattered Horizon seems to have been affected by some of the same things that gave Descent3 problems: high system requirements, poor reviews and very little marketing.

For a brand-new game, there aren't that many players on a given night. Plus, it's suffering from the same curse of a higher learning-curve - the elite guys just tear the crap out of new players, so they're not retaining many.

Heh. I'm causing all hell over there about the Joystick.

Although, I have recently been playing Descent with the mouse and KB. I did extremely well. I suprised my self, but I will still take the JS over the mouse anyday for a 6DoF game.

...................>.>.........

You know, I may have to break down and go ahead and get it.

I need to try out the key emulation. Now, I can assign \"pitch up\" to, say, Q, but if I pull the JS slightly back, won't it be as if I am just pressing the key completely and I will turn at speed?

Is there a way so that the X,Y,Z, and R-axis are soft and hard when I want them to be? (Don't you let your brain stray \"that way.\")

Thanks for this, Foil, sounds very promising.

Foil wrote:That said, something disappointing to me is that there's very little of the 'tumbling dogfights' I love so much from Descent. I understand it of course; mouselook aiming and slower direction changes don't really allow for dogfights. Thus my attempts at those kind of moves usually get me killed.

heh. But I am with you, would have loved for there to be d3 style dogfights. What would be great if this game was modable --- it seems to be the perfect technology to reinstate Descent on.

NUMBERZero wrote:I need to try out the key emulation. Now, I can assign "pitch up" to, say, Q, but if I pull the JS slightly back, won't it be as if I am just pressing the key completely and I will turn at speed?

Unfortunately, yes, if you do it that way. [I'm assuming you're talking about Joy2Key here.]

You might be able to use a combination of a joystick-to-mouse emulator for the yaw & pitch controls, and Joy2Key for the roll controls...

If you do get something like that working in Shattered Horizon, let me know. I'd like to try it, myself.

*Bump*

If anyone was on the fence about Shattered Horizon, it's available for five bucks today.

I have to say I'm really starting to enjoy this game. Definitely a recommendation.

$5? OK. Now it is worth the trouble.
Thanks for the update.