Earlier this month I paid a visit to the offices of Outrage Entertainment and got a sneak peak at how things are coming along with Descent 3. I also got to wander around and meet most of the developers and learn quite a lot about the game.

I would like to first off thank everyone at Outrage for being so great while I poked around the office. Although everyone I met with showed me tons of cool stuff, for size sake, I have opted to write about my visits with the three developers that stuck out in my mind the most.

Matt Long
Matt started out my tour by showing me several of the Robots in Descent 3. You could tell by the enthusiasm in his voice how proud he was of the robots and for good reason. The robots he showed me are so lifelike it is scary. Most robots have lengthy animations that can be scripted giving them the ability to have two robots of the same type totally different personalities and body language.

On the subject of personalities Matt also explained that some robots would possibly run away during a battle to find a more opportune time to fight. The robot might seek out a medical droid that would repair it back to full health.

Matt also explained that D3's collision detection system uses polygon contact as opposed bounding box detection which means that ships will be able to fly and/or shoot between the larger robots legs and thus making the robots more of a challenge to kill.
Descent 3 will feature 38 different robots in all and each individual robot has the potential to have its own distinct personality. The robots in Descent 3 guarantee not to disappoint, and from what I have seen, will certainly be one of the highlights of the game.

Luke Schneider
Luke was working on a level when I got around to his desk so I just sat and watched while he finished texturing the room he was working on before he took a break and showed me some of his favorite things about Descent 3.

One thing that really caught my eye was the mammoth levels these guys have been hard at work creating. The levels go from outside surface areas to vast deep underground areas seamlessly. It is unbelievable how many polygons they have crammed into some of these levels.

One of the coolest things that Luke showed me was the camera-activated cannons that are scattered throughout the levels. The way they work is simple. There are cameras mounted on the wall and if the camera can see you then a cannon located somewhere else in the room can and will give you something to think about. You can however shoot the camera and disable the cannon allthough it is not always advisable. Luke showed me a few areas where it you can use the cameras and cannons to your advantage and can actually block your way to some goodies by eliminating the camera.

Jason Leighton
Jason showed me Descent 3 running on a Pentium III with a Voodoo3 card installed in his machine. The combination looked good and pumped out some impressive frame rates. When pressed about the card of choice for Descent 3, Jason said that for frame rates it was the Voodoo2 or Voodoo3 and for Visual Quality the Riva TNT.

Jason also gave a guided tour of the weapons both old and new. One of the coolest weapons I saw was the guided missile, which allows you to control the missile right up 'til the point of detonation. The missile is so maneuverable you can launch it into a room and turn it around and hit yourself head on.

Seeing as I am such a big fan of multi-player games and run a lot of game servers for internet games as well as LAN parties I cornered Jason on some details about the D3 Dedicated server. One of the most important things to me is remote administration. Jason explained that the dedicated server can be remotely controlled/administered via telnet allowing you to change any of the server's settings. You can also kick and ban obnoxious players, which inevitably always show up in multi-player games.

Another Feature that I had been hoping for was a way to gather stats so you could keep track of players on a server. Once again it is built right in to the game. The dedicated server keeps track of the stats for as long as the server is running. At the end of every level it displays the cumulative stats for the server along with the outcome of the match as well as writes the info to a text file located in the netgames folder.

The old familiar guide bots are more functional in Descent 3 and are sometimes needed to go into small areas that your ship won't fit into to activate a switch. The guide bot can also be deployed when your ship is on fire from contact with the napalm cannon, which will help prolong your life. You can also deploy the guide bot to attack an opponent or his guide bot.

The last thing we discussed was the different variations on multi-player game play. According to Jason the game will ship with several variations such as deathmatch, and Capture the Flag though there was no official list or count at the time.

I have always been a big fan of the Descent Series so this trip was really exciting for me. In my opinion Descent 3 is going to give the gaming community a long deserved break from the First Person shooter genre that will redefine that 360 degree madness Descent fans have come to love. If you haven't yet tried the demo I recommend it highly especially if you are new to the Descent series. Thanks again to the guys at Outrage for a really cool day.

Also see Our Descent 3 Preview and our interview with Matt Tochlog.