35 replies to this topic

[Vyger]

Hi,

 

I am from Austria (Europe / no kangaroos) and 37 by now, started using computers in 1993 (a 8086 PC back then) for playing games and using office programs, but switched over to fiddling around with the operating system (DOS, yeah ) soon and started programming. I really got hooked, did a master in computer science and now work as a kind of mixture of a software developer and researcher, mostly using Linux now.

 

Regarding computer games I am basically playing them since I am using computers, the game I definitely played most is Civilization 1. Also I played a lot of RTS stuff (Age of Empires, StarCraft) and some car racing games (e.g. Need for Speed). Recently some Skyrim. Nevertheless I am really a casual gamer who plays for "just" for fun and never got "good" at any single game.

 

I came over here from Star Citizen, I love both projects for the amount of information they are providing, because it's really interesting following the process. I have never played Descent, or Wing Commander, but plan to do that soon (GoG to the rescue ), to check out what I have gotten myself into  .

[LotharBot]

check my signature for info on how to get the gog version of Descent working well on a modern system, and with your controller of choice.

[Vyger]

check my signature for info on how to get the gog version of Descent working well on a modern system, and with your controller of choice.

 

Hi, I just tried Descent 2 with the keyboard, worked out of the box. Thanks very much nevertheless. Was a nice experience, but I still need get used to the 6DOF movement. Feels a little bit like Doom for spaceships.

[KillBox]

So many names from SC forums...

 

Anyhow, I'm a 31 year old dad who works in IT (I work in a strange niche in which I'm expected to build networks out of twigs and dust much like MacGuyver could build a cruise missile with a pocketknife, paperclip and bubblegum)

 

First exposure to the PC was when my dad brought home a brand new 80286 with *GASP* a VGA monitor when I was 7.  I tore it down by that same weekend and my dad kicked my ass until I put it back together in a working fashion.  This is also I how I met the command line for the first time - in DOS.  I've dabbled since I started working professionally with both Novell Netware and Linux as the years have rolled along.

 

I played the original Descent on my first own PC, an 80486 DX2 66MHz that I built from working weekends in a Video Rental Store.  My first Pentium hosted Descent 2 and the rest is as they say, history.

 

Such an exciting time to be into Indie Games though - all the good titles are making a comeback and I can't throw money at them fast enough.

[LotharBot]

would love to get you back into Descent (see the link in my signature).  There's even a small 1v1 level named after you: Killbox

[KillBox]

Actually I bought the whole GoG collector's edition - including Descent 3 which I never really got into.  Also, thanks for the invite and the walkthrough on getting my hardware to work on it properly - will have to give it a try.

 

Only problem is time and situation - kind of between two homes at the moment so I'm relying on mobile internet for the moment until we settle into our new home.

 

I'd be more than happy to join afterwards though!

[chirpy]

Im 28 I think, I got into computers when I was a little kid when we found a junk apple computer in the trash, the wires for the monitor were cut but we just put all of the wires back together and got the system working again. It was some crappy old powerpc type one but with it, there was a box of games and the original mac version of descent was in there. I was instantly hooked and pretty much took over the computer after that, lol.

 

After a while, I found descent 2 and descent 3 had just came out at that time, but they were pc based, so couldnt play them, so I ended up digging a bunch of old computers out of the trash and eventually figured out how to piece all of them together to make a working system. I eventually learned how to build a basic computer and barely had enough to run descent 3 but I used it to death anyhow. I believe that it was just a 233Mhz pentium MMX system with 64MB ram, ati rage 3d video card that someone gave me, and an 8gb harddrive that I dug out of the school's trash. That thing kept crashing almost nonstop, and after figuring out how to fix it over and over again, people started asking me to fix thier systems, which I got really good at fixing almost every problem imaginable.

 

Eventually, I started up a computer repair business and worked on computers for years, and got into the networking and would come in and set up servers and all of the networking for various businesses and places for LAN parties for people. I also worked for varous companies as an on call IT guy, but kinda got out of that due to the fact that you can build a perfect network, but there's always people out there that will always find a way to mess it up or just constantly do stupid stuff to drive you nuts.

 

Now I just work on various inventions and work as a codemonkey for a company that makes electronics and small robotic kits. Thats about it for me, I just got into computers and robotics because of descent and wanting to play them, and am still doing just that.

[Balloonknot]

[Custard]

My my, so many people are programmers here. 

 

I'm 20 years old, I started on Windows XP with games like Croc and DX Ball. Didn't pay much attention to the computer as a child, but in 2007 I got myself an Xbox 360 and kicked off with titles like Halo 3 and Mass Effect. Over the years I played mostly on the Xbox 360, phasing that out completely only last year in favor of PC games. About the same time as I got into console gaming I found an interest in web development, which I spent the next 6 years working hard to become skilled at.

 

Well.. It'll sound classic in another 40 years, then I'll be the one making people go "What the heck is a Windows XP? What primitive contraption is a Xbox 360?".

[ShoGun]

I'm 42 married and have 3 kids and a long time gamer. 1st games I ever saw was around 1980 on my friends and cousins Atari game machines. Haunted house, Defender, pac man many more. My earliest memory of any game was an arcade pac man machine at a local pizzeria. My dad had to hold me up to even reach the control and all i could do was make go to one side or the other and get killed by the ghosts. 1st computer i saw in person was a computer the school had (1979) that was rolled around on a cart from one class to another. It was a Apple IIe with green screen. I was amused. We would all gather around and look at this thing amazed well they where. I looked at and asked the teacher what does it do? Can you make it go? She looked up from the manual and said. I'm trying figure it out and have no idea if I can get it to go. Lol. Thinking to myself. Don't teachers know everything? That was 1st grade. My next school (2nd,3rd and 4th grades) didn't have one of those carted ones at all. They did have real Ditto machines. It's where the word Ditto for copies comes from. The purple ink (quart sized) and round cylinder machines made mass copies of the homework/quizzes and lesson pages the teacher wanted. It was fun as the teacher would often let me run off the copies for the day. Middle school actually had some computers and our science class had 5 dedicated machines we where taugh a little basic typing and cursor function and very basic coding. The program if entered correctly would display a geometric shape. A friend had an Commodore computer and code a simple program that saved on to a casset tape would make an animated Space Shuttle launch. I eventually bought a c64 (commodore) computer with color display and floppy drive. Real 5'1/5 inch floppy disks. Got a notch tool to "double the disk space by flipping it over and putting a notch on the other side. Played tons of games on that. Street fighter, platoon, others. After that around 1991 I worked at a place that made disk motors for Seagate mass storage drives. These where huge beasts used by banks for mass data storage  and cost 1000s of dollars each. Sabre 6, 7 , 8. Those where in gigabytes and where 1 to 2 feet wide and long.  Eventually they also made smaller physical size but bigger memory 5'1/2 sized Elite and Elite 9 (4G, 9G). and the 3.5 inch real cool Barracuda 7200 rpm 4.5G drive that cost 2k$. Desktop 1TB ones now can be had for around 100$. I laugh now when is see usb drives that have 32gig and such. It's there that some of the engineers there showed me Wolfenstien 3d and taught me all I needed to build out my own pc. Never looked back. Eventual that place lost the work to Niadek . Before that that though I made a cool 386DX40 and stuffed a moby and expensive as #$%^ (1994/95) even at cost 1G drive in it. I still have the 1 gig disk. My friend at the time had a 8 node bbs called DarkStar that we constantly played on with friends. It had a DX 4/100 server that could play doom,II, Hexen, Heratic, Quake at full screen. My 386 DX40 couldn't do it with out shrinking the screen size. After that it was Pentium 90's and up to present day. I also learned to program CNC machines mostly lathes CNC + Computer numeric controlled) in a language called G code and also Mitsubishi g code.  My current setup made for Star Citizen is a 8 core AMD with 32 gig ram and a pair of R9 290's in it with a 240gig SSD and 4TB Seagate disk. I am a Space Marshal level backer for that and where I found out about Descent U. I also have set up for my kids (3) the rigs I had used for mining crypto coins (bitecoin, litecoin). Each machine has a pair of AMD 7970 cards and at least 8 gig ram. They play SC just fine too. My oldest son (10) can't way to play STFU (he calls it that too) Ships that fight underground and never calls it Descent. Laughs every time too as he know the other meaning as well. 

[Rondar]

I might as well jump in pool.  I am 68 and have been playing computer games since I assembled my first computer, the Sinclair ZX81 in 1981.  Learned basic and z80 assembly language on that little machine.  Then I moved on to a Commodore 64, then an Amiga 2000, and finally a Windows PC (been through a bunch of that hardware).  It has been kind of like an addiction.

[Rooster128]

I was gaming since I was around 5. My dad was huge on computers, worked as a damage controlman in the Navy and slowly started doing more computer and IT-oriented things. In Maine it seemed like everyone had a snowmobile, fourwheeler, season tickets to snowboard in the mountains, a speedboat, etc. The only thing I ever had was a computer and a gaming system. It was good though. XD

 

At 5 years of age the game I was playing the most was DOOM. The other games I grew up on were primarily Sonic, Dark Forces: Jedi Knight, and Descent. The last two games I played with my dad and my sister on our local LAN on a regular basis. We'd download different maps and just do team deathmatch and blow each other to bits while yelling at each other from across the house. It drove my mom batty.

 

Years later I got into Neverwinter Nights, and then Tribes. Tribes is what sparked my interest in modding and game development, but of course I've always dreamt of working on a 6dof shooter like Descent too. So many good memories.

[Serif]

I'll just say "30's"

 

I got introduced to computers with my parents' old Commodore... 128?  I think it was the 128.  Loading games on that thing was a pain, it made DOS seem user-friendly.

 

Over time I got more into things when my mom brought home a computer from work.  But it wasn't years later until Middle School that a friend showed me QBasic where you could program stuff or adjust some pre-written programs there.  I was hooked.

 

I took programming classes all through High School, where we would sometimes play (wait for it...) Descent on the room's network.  It was cool.  

 

Anyway, here I am decades later and happy that Descent is being redone, and by some people I grew to know by watching them at their previous venture.  There's a great group of guys who I'm sure will make this game an awesome experience.

[Gallowglass]

I'm in my 30's as well, having started early with games like Aces of the Pacific and Flight Simulator 4. I love the Mechwarrior, Descent: Freespace, and Descent franchises, which I met though techie kids at church. In college, I moved up through the Quakes to CounterStrike, then to Unreal Tournament and Half-Life and the modern FPS's. I never really did get Descent to catch on with other players. After college, I tried to break into the Descent 3 scene, which was almost completely dormant. The players that remained pitched a wicked learning curve, but I was beginning to secure solo kills at the edges of the levels and put up a half-decent score of my own.

 

Today I'm still with PC's, returning from a flirtation with Razer gaming hardware to use a Logitech G-13 keypad and a fairly average mouse. I pack an Extreme3DPro flightstick, but find its control inferior outside of games that really enforce it like Elite: Dangerous.

 

I scoff at the notion of a professional gamer and refuse to deal with the intensely-driven types that push themselves to such performance, but I generally don't feel comfortable unless I can lay down a good performance more often than not. I also seek relaxed "advanced" players similar to myself, because I'm fairly social as gamers come.

[RollOn7]

I am 56, and just started gaming 3 yrs. ago, and it all started while I was on-line looking for R/C aircraft flight simulators. I saw an ad on the side bar that said "World of Tanks". Hmmm "Tanks? I said." What's this? Low and behold. Now keep in mind I was not a gamer of any kind, and the last video game I remember seeing was the original "Donkey Kong"...That's it. Anything else I am completely void of any knowledge of. Now when I saw the "World of Tanks" ad I had to check it out. Man O man I was in heaven. I signed up for closed Beta testing and that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Went on to test in "War Thunders" Closed Beta, then started getting involved in the forums, and chasing the next game to come out, and here I is today checking out "Decent: Underground"....first time even seeing this one but looking outstanding. Bravo Zulu to the team.

[Skeletonbane]

Huh, nobody under 20 yet. I guess I'll be the first when I say I'm 17.

 

Anyway, there have been computers around me for as long as I can remember, though admittedly they didn't have much of an affect on my life when I was young. However, my dad always had his computer, and then there was another computer that the rest of us used. It was on this machine I think I first encountered videogames. It was one of those educational games for pre-schoolers with cartoon characters who always acted like you were an idiot (or at least that was my experience). However, once I was a bit older I started playing games with my brother on our old Sega Genesis, primarily Sonic the Hedgehog. I think that Genesis was what really sparked my interest in videogames, and many an afternoon was spent as Tails, the immortal helicopter.

 

Jumping forward several years, I have my own laptop and my dad's put a DOSBox on it along with several games. Among these games is the original Descent, which was by far my favorite game he included. It was such a unique experience that nothing (that I've played anyway) has come close to yet.

 

And then there's the present day. I've backed Descent: Underground and am eagerly awaiting what I hope will be a wonderful new Descent experience. However, I am by no means a hardcore Descent fan, my interests extend to all of videogaming, but that original Descent just left such an impression on me that I had to get in on this project. Also, as an amateur game designer of sorts (no published games I'm afraid, just as a personal hobby) I find the development and advancement of this game over time, and the chance to participate, an amazing experience.