New release
Well, it’s been a while since the last release, almost 2 months. Various real life stuff happened but here we are, alpha 4 !
New features :
- Music ! (make sure to put the midi.nfs file with your other descent files)
- Press start + select to switch between the hud and keyboard while in-game, can be used to enter cheats. (Switching is a bit tricky, I know)
- You can now move all the games files to the dscent directory (this is optional)
Bug fixes :
- Fixed a crash that happened on the automap
- Fixed the exception screen, now it will display text properly instead of just a red and white screen
- Not tested, but I rewrote the save game writing code for those who were having corrupted save games, please post feed back
There’s probably other stuff I’ve forgotten to write down in my notes
DScent v. alpha 4 Binaries
Sources will be forth coming when I’m done cleaning it up a bit
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Yayyyyy!!!! new update. I’ll go and test it on my MMD.
When do u think you’ll add multiplayer? will it be sooner or later?
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:55 pm
yep works! sound and everything!!
August 3rd, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Great! This is the most polished port I have seen on the DS. This is the game I use to show off the DS to non believers - it really is that good! Now, when are you going to start working on DooM and Marathon!
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:26 pm
There is already a port of Doom for the DS. I’d rather see Descent 2 =)
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
This game is so good, you need to get in touch with the original developers, and sell this game in stores. I’m serious, if I bought this game in stores, not only would I feel like I got a good deal, I think it would be in my top ten of best pro DS games.
(Their company is still in existance somehow, employing a few people and posting quarterly losses for the past decade with apparently no hope of ever reversing that. While they get evicted from their offices and whatnot.
So if you do sell it to them, make sure the check doesnt bounce
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1057232/000117091805000379/0001170918-05-000379.txt there is interplay’s financial statements, it gets pretty funny near the botom (when all their employees stoped showing up to work due to “difficulty meeting our payroll obligations on a timely basis”
Its a shame, Intrplay made some excellent games back in the.
August 3rd, 2007 at 4:09 pm
I’m getting crashes now on this version, the previous one was fine, at least up to level 7. Black screen on loading previous games, and I got a red error screen once (trying to cause it again).
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:28 pm
[…] has released DScent Alpha 4 for the DS. There have been a couple bug fixes that took care of some crashes, as well as other […]
August 4th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Looks like there’s some problems with the savegame stuff you implemented. Up until last night everything was working fine on my DS. The only two things I changed was to add some new snes games to my cartridge, and to switch to the new version of dscent.
This happened after going through a few levels saving along the way. I didn’t notice any problems last night, but when I got up this morning I tried to play some snes games and it wouldn’t list all the games I had in there. I stuck the micro SD card into my laptop and started poking around and eventually found that the file system seems to be corrupt.
It looks like I’ll need to format/copy everything back onto the card. I’d warn anyone who is going to try this out to either backup saves, etc, or use alpha 3.
-Brian
August 4th, 2007 at 11:58 am
I should probably give more details, sorry:
* Classic DS
* Using an R4 w/kingston 2gb micro SD.
* Games:
** SNEmulDS_M3S_R4.nds (patched)
** LemmingsDS
** DScent Alpha 4
I copied all DScent files to the subfolder dscent and ran the game from there.
I’m unsure what other details you might need.
-Brian
August 5th, 2007 at 2:57 am
On my R4 with 1.10 firmware DScent Alpha 4 works slower then Alpha 3.
I get between 10-20 fps before it was between 22-30 fps.
August 5th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Using alpha 4, after I beat level (16?) it crashed: error, cannot open file briefing.tex or briefing.txb.
August 5th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I’ve been running Alpha 4 on a Datel Games ‘n’ Music. First few levels run most of the time, later levels sometimes. Getting lots of exception errors, and whenever you clear a mine the game crashes when attempting to load the next. Framerate is almost always in the upper 20’s - 30 range, with the exception of coming accross new batches of enemies. I was wondering [ knowing nothing of how this code is running on the machine and not being able to do this myself ] how many of these crashes are caused by running out of memory? I find it amazing that with the DS’s 4MB RAM, this game runs at all remembering how terribly it ran on a 4MB PC. If it was an issue perhaps some textures could be downscaled from 64×64 to 32×32 or some larger SFX downsampled. Scaling textures may mean re-applying them to the models though… *sigh* what do I know anyways
One more blab… I know the DS does some nice edge anti-aliasing in hardware… The game looks great as it is but that would be a nice enhancement sometime down the road.
As with a few others, on one crash occasion I did lose my file structure integrity on my micro-SD card, but it only happened once.
You are absolutley the man, kayvenm. I wanted Descent on this machine since the day it came out. Thanks to the moon and back, dude
August 5th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
I have to agree with Randolph there, this kicks some serious butt. You’ve done an awesome job.
I do have some more info on that problem I had earlier. I’ve corrupted the file system on my card again. After that last crash I went to take a nap, when I came back and put the card in my laptop, the file system had been corrupted.
Prior to playing I made a backup of the disk, so if you want I can send you my save files, configuration, etc, and see if you can reproduce the problem.
I’m restoring my backup now, and I will play only Descent (no snes) to see if I can reproduce the corruption. Next, I’m going to put everything back in the root folder to rule out having everything in the dscent subfolder.
-Brian
August 5th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Got a different error this time. Last time I’d finished level 16 and was loading the next level, this time i was exiting the mine from 16:
Data abort exception:
pc: 0205EF98 addr: 807F07BB
r0: 807F07BB r8: 000000E5
r1: 00000000 r9: 00000000
r2: 807F07BB r10: 0208A108
r3: 00000000 r11: 0000001F
r4: 022125FC r12: 00000000
r5: 0000005B sp: 0B003C1C
r6: 00000002 lr: 0205FE7C
r7: 021FD9D8 pc: 0205EFA0
0B003C1C: 00000001 0000005B
0B003C24: 00000002 000000B7
0B003C2C: 0200BECEC 0205FE7C
0B003C34: 020C3830 00000000
0B003C3C: 020BB278 020C3B5C
0B003C44: 00000000 01002D70
0B003C4C: 94F79A94 020DBB60
0B003C54: 00000001 020BB278
0B003C5C: 0208A300 01006D1C
0B003C64: 00000000 020DBB60
August 5th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Sorry, meant to add one more thing before hitting submit. When I tried to start Descent after that crash it said there wasn’t enough strings in some file (didn’t say what), then said I needed the registered descent files, so I believe it corrupted some file when the crash occurred.
Is there some mechanism that occurs during a crash that attempts to write out a minidump or something similar? If so, that may be the cause.
August 9th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
Have another Problem, I have the Descent Venture Pack and can’t locate the midi.nfs File you mention.