Talk:Descent (video game)

List of designers is wrong
Eric "Wingman" Peterson is not a designer for the game Descent (1995). He is a designer on Descent Underground (started in 2014). He had nothing to do with Descent, Parallax, or Interplay at the time of Descent's creation. He should not be listed on this page except in reference to Descent Underground.

References: http://www.mobygames.com/game/descent (And the game credits itself) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.209.201.242 (talk) 15:22, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
 * For the record, MobyGames is not a reliable source, since it uses user-generated content. However, the burden of proof is on inclusion, not exclusion, and I see no supporting references for Peterson's involvement, so I'll go ahead and remove him from the infobox.--Martin IIIa (talk) 13:32, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Source

 * http://twvideo01.ubm-us.net/o1/vault/GD_Mag_Archives/GDM_JuneJuly_1995.pdf
 * https://web.archive.org/web/20000306073756/http://headline.gamespot.com/news/98_01/26_descent/index.html

Acorn Archimedes port
The sources provided for the Archimedes port (a couple of articles from Acorn User) never actually mention the Archimedes, and I can't find any other verification of a port for this system; frankly it's hard to imagine the game running even on a high-end, late-model Archimedes. There was a RISC OS version of the game that R-Comp Interactive apparently still sells through their website, but while the Archimedes ran on RISC OS, the minimum CPU required by the Descent port (a StrongARM, or an ARM710 "in a pinch") was never available in the Archimedes range. I've accordingly changed all references to the Archimedes to RISC OS and removed the article from the "Acorn Archimedes games" category. I've done the same for the sequel as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.155.241.98 (talk) 23:04, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Needs a mention of robot AI
One of Descent's most significant features outside of the Six Degrees of Freedom movement and fully-3D environments was the enemy AI. While each robot had a simple set of behaviors, they were capable of basic learning and complex pathfinding. This learning included a basic idea of when their shots were ineffective (e.g. moving to get a better angle), identifying dangerous obstacles (particularly when observing another robot being destroyed), and the ability to dodge player shots. These sorts of AI improvements, while simple, were a primary selling point of the game and the series - the enemies differed in this respect from enemies in most other games of the era, which generally stuck to their pre-programmed behaviors and only showed variety in pre-scripted situations.

I don't currently have a good source for this, but I had spoken to the developers about them (one time praising them when I saw a set of robots figure out that proximity bombs were dangerous and find a way around them to attack me from a different direction). I got a chance to talk to them about it again more recently when playing Overload with them. I'll keep my eye out for sources that discuss this topic, but I'd also like a recommendation on where and how to include this in the Gameplay section once we achieve WP:V for it. Thanks. &mdash; KieferSkunk (talk) &mdash; 22:04, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

linux/descent

 * https://web.archive.org/web/20010224000242/http://www.muppetlabs.com/linux/descent/
 * https://web.archive.org/web/20010221010448/http://www.muppetlabs.com/linux/descent/faq.html
 * https://web.archive.org/web/20010926045938/http://d1x.warpcore.org/
 * http://jjc.freeshell.org/dl/ldescent.html
 * .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 14:45, 24 September 2021 (UTC)