Descent II

Like its predecessor, the player controls a spaceship from the pilot's perspective and must navigate extrasolar underground mines to locate and destroy their reactors and escape being caught in their self-destructions, while engaging and surviving infected robots, which will attempt to destroy the ship. Unlike other first-person shooters, its six-degrees-of-freedom scheme allows the player to move and rotate in any three-dimensional space and direction. II started as a project intended to expand the original using a compact disc's storage, and later became a standalone product, using an upgraded version of its predecessor's graphics engine. The game received very positive reviews from video game critics, who widely lauded the multiplayer mode and the inclusion of the Guide-Bot, a scouting robot that guides the player to their objectives. The PlayStation version's reception was rather mixed, with critics often disagreeing in their evaluations of its frame rate. A sequel, Descent 3, was released in 1999.

• Title — Descent II • Developer — Parallax Software Interplay Productions (Mac) R-Comp Interactive (Risc OS) • Publisher — Interplay Productions Mac Play (Mac) R-Comp Interactive (Risc OS) • Director — * Mike Kulas • Matt Toschlog • Producer — Rusty Buchert • Designer — * Jasen Whiteside • Mark Dinse • Che-Yuan Wang • Programmer — * Matt Toschlog • Mike Kulas • John Slagel • Jason Leighton • Che-Yuan Wang • Artist — * Adam Pletcher • Jasen Whiteside • Doug Brooks • Writer — Ryan Garcia • Composer — * Dan Wentz • Brian Luzietti • Larry Peacock • Leslie Spitzer • Jim Torres • Tim Wiles • Released — MS-DOS Mac OS August 1996PlayStation RISC OS • Genre — First-person shooter • Modes — Single-player, multiplayer • Platforms — * MS-DOS • Mac OS • PlayStation • RISC OS • Windows

• Illustration — After finding and freeing it, the Guide-Bot can then be used to locate and lead the player to many points of the level. In this case, it is directing the player to the blue key, the player's current objective. From top-left counterclockwise, the HUD comprises the extra life counter, a missile lock alarm, an afterburner energy gauge, an energy bar, the primary weapons window, a status indicator of the player ship's shields, the secondary weapons window, a bomb counter, and the current score. Like its predecessor, Descent I, Descent II is a six-degrees-of-freedom shoot 'em up game in which the player pilots a fighter spaceship from a first-person perspective in zero gravity. It differs from standard first-person shooters in that it allows the player to move freely across three-dimensional planes and rotate on three axes, often termed pitch, yaw, and roll. Besides the keyboard, Descent II features a wide range of supported hardware configurations with which to play it, including the Gravis Gamepad and certain brands of joysticks, some of which support force feedback—making it one of the earliest PC games to support force feedback. Virtual reality and stereoscopic graphics are also officially supported. In the game's single-player mode, the player must complete four levels in each of six differently themed star systems where different types of robots attempt to hinder the player's progress. In each level, the player must find and blow up the mine's reactor and then escape the mine through an exit door before the mine self-destructs. The exit door is always open after the blowing up of the reactor and upon the mine meltdown countdown. Every fourth level has a boss robot that replaces the reactor. Each level is composed of rooms separated by doors, most of which can be opened by shooting or bumping into them. Some other doors are colored blue, yellow, or red and require a key of the corresponding color to be opened. In addition to brightening passages by shooting flares or turning on a headlight if the latter has been picked up, at least three measures can be used to prevent getting lost in the mines, two of which are using a wireframe automap that documents all explored areas of the mine and dropping markers in certain locations. The markers are displayed on the automap. Along the way, the player may also find and free a Guide-Bot, a commandable scouting assistant that guides the player to a specified objective or powerup. Additionally, many stages have human hostages that award an additional point bonus if they are rescued before completing the level. Levels may contain energy stations the player can fly through to recharge their ship's energy banks, as well as generators that spawn more robots. Added in Descent II are control panels that, when shot, trigger the following events, such as doors opening, walls removed, or force fields deactivated. The game features 30 levels, 24 (four fifths or 80%) of which are regular levels and six (one fifth or 20%) of which are secret levels. In some levels, behind some hidden doors, there are teleporters that warp the player to the current star system's secret level. The secret levels are not required to complete the game but contain many power-ups, and can be revisited when their reactors are still intact and the teleporters are discovered. Players cannot save the game in the secret level, and have to teleport back to the regular level in order to save their game progress. Within each level, the player may find and collect power-ups scattered throughout the mine or dropped by dying robots. Many of the power-ups expand the ship's weaponry, which is divided into primary and secondary weapons. Primary weapons range from a variety of pulse lasers and plasma bolts, and all of them consume energy in varying increments from the ship's energy banks, except for two rotary cannons whose ammunition consists of explosive shells instead. Secondary weapons include many types of missiles, and mines which are dropped behind the player's ship to slow pursuing enemies. Ten new weapons have been added for Descent II, some of which are upgrades from the original Descent weapons, which are all present as well; new weapons include the Phoenix cannon which fires energy orbs that rebound off walls, the Omega cannon which fires electrostatic discharge, the Flash Missile which blinds robots and players for two seconds and creates a ringing sound, and the Guided Missile which can be remote piloted by the player. The player can also collect equipment items which grant special capabilities. For example, a converter exists for converting the energy in the excess of 100 units into the shield, whereas the afterburner allows the player to temporarily fly forward twice as fast. The player's ship is protected by a shield which decreases when incurring damage from attacks and collisions with force fields, is replenished by picking up shield power-ups, and like energy is limited by a capacity of 200 units. If the shield is fully depleted and the ship takes any additional damage, the ship will explode, costing the player one life and killing any hostages on board, leaving most of its weapons where it was destroyed. A respawning player has to start at the level entrance with a ship having only minimum armaments, so it is often challenging to retrieve their previous ship's weapons. New to Descent II is the ability to drop weapons, so a player can stockpile surplus weaponry in safe locations in the event of a respawn. Being too late to escape the mine during the self-destruct sequence will also cost the player a life, as well as their power-ups and any hostages embarked, and will also give the player no bonus scores, although having destroyed the reactor or boss robot the player will still advance to the next level. If the player loses all lives, the game will end, and their high scores are recorded. Players receive points for defeating robots, rescuing the hostages, and end-of-level bonuses based on the player's performance with score multipliers for escaping the mine; scoring enough points results in an extra life.

Like Descent I, Descent II is played in one of five difficulty modes: Trainee (easy), Rookie (normal), Hotshot (hard), Ace (very hard) and Insane (very very hard). As the difficulty increases, robots become smarter and fire more projectiles and more rapidly and face better evasion. With higher difficulties, the player has fewer concussion missiles at the beginning (seven in Trainee, six in Rookie, five in Hotshot, four in Ace and three in Insane). Energy and shield power-ups are worth fewer points with increasing difficulties (27 in Trainee, 15 in Rookie, 12 in Hotshot, nine in Ace and six in Insane). Meltdown countdowns become shorter with higher difficulties (generally 90 seconds in Trainee, 60 seconds in Rookie, 45 seconds in Hotshot, 35 seconds in Ace and 30 seconds in Insane). Beginning with Hotshot, players get skill bonuses at the end of each mine.

Robot generators debut or first appear in Level 2. They generate robots in a number of waves depending on the difficulty level. Higher difficulties generate more robots. In the Insane difficulty, robot generators generate an unlimited number of robots after becoming active.

Descent II also features a multiplayer mode whereby two to eight players can compete against each other in several game types, which include a deathmatch mode called Anarchy and Capture-the-Flag, in which two teams compete against each other to capture opposing flags. Conditions for ending the level such as maximum time limit, how long the reactor will remain invulnerable before it can be destroyed, and the number of kills to reach can be set, as can which power-ups to allow and whether players may drop surveillance cameras. The game also features a co-operative mode that allows up to four players to work together to complete single-player levels. A player can send messages and predefined taunts, handicap their ship's shields they begin with after respawning, and in Capture-the-Flag drop and pass flags to their teammates. Descent IIs multiplayer was designed for modems, null-modems, and local area networks, but an alternative then widely used is to use third-party software such as Kali to play the game on the Internet. It is possible to have DOS and Macintosh versions of the game play on the same server, providing a cross-platform experience. The PlayStation version has a two-player mode that requires a link cable used to connect two consoles running the same game. It contains the same game modes as found in the original DOS version, except for Capture-the-Flag.

The plot is linear and is mostly provided for the introductory and concluding full-motion video cutscenes. After the "Material Defender" (voiced by George DelHoyo) has destroyed all of the Solar System's mines in the original game, he stops in the asteroid belt to dock. He is then contacted by Post-Terran Mining Corporation executive Dravis, who exploits a loophole in a contract to coerce him to accept a new mission or forfeit his reward and face legal action. The Material Defender consents, and as Dravis tries to convince him that he is merely embarking on a reconnaissance mission, his ship is fitted with a prototype warp core. He is then sent to clear out PTMC's deep space mines beyond the Solar System. The Material Defender teleports to Zeta Aquilae and five other, fictional star systems and destroys their mines. In the sixth system, the last mine seems to run all through a planetoid, which is revealed in the final cutscene to be a large spaceship. After the spaceship breaks apart, the Material Defender alerts Dravis to his return home, but his warp drive malfunctions and he teleports to an unknown location. The camera then fades to that location and the ship appears, heavily damaged and crackling with excess radiation drifting towards the camera, ending with the words "to be continued..." being displayed.

Parallax Software began Descent IIs development as an expansion pack for the original Descent game using a CD's storage, but it later evolved into a separate project lasting about one year. Descent IIs graphics were upgraded to operate at Super VGA standards, and can also take advantage of 3D acceleration graphics cards. The MIDI soundtrack was composed by Dan Wentz, whereas the included redbook features industrial metal contributed by notable musicians such as Type O Negative and Ogre of Skinny Puppy. It cost to produce the game. Descent IIs portal engine remained fundamentally unchanged; it operates on the premise of adjacent cubes or polyhedra whose sides connecting them form portals. The scenes that are drawn are the cube the player ship is in and the areas of other cubes the camera can see through their portals, and the process is repeated as the player enters a different polyhedron. Cubes can be deformed so long as they remain convex. Respectively, these prevent overdraw and accelerate portal rendering, making the engine practical to run on even inexpensive personal computers of that time. The preceding Descent introduced a dynamic light-sourcing scheme by which the environment could be lit with flares, while newly added in Descent II is the ability to shoot out sources of light which will darken rooms as well as a headlight powerup which can continuously illuminate the space in front of the player. The game's directors, Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog, explained they upgraded the game's artificial intelligence to contain instructions mimicking the tactics they saw players use in multiplayer mode, such as dodging behind walls and sneaking up from behind. The C-written code composing the AI was expanded to about 4,000 lines, a task the two described as being difficult.