Descent II

Hey guys, I was browsing the internet a few days back and I came across an article on wikipedia stating that Descent 2 and Descent 1 both had their source codes released a while back. I'm sure someone probably pointed that bit out before, though.

As I was curious about getting Descent II to work on windows XP, (and vista as well if possible), I looked into a project known as D2X-XL, which was an open source port of the old Descent source code. So far it's been ported to Linux, and Mac, and the source code can be found here.

This stuff requires you have the original disk around, which I managed to dig out of one of my old spindles from waaay back. It also needs SDL and some other random stuff to get it running. But I'm sure anyone who's looking at this stuff already should have no real problem getting something like that to work eh?

So, if someone is interested in giving it a try, the official website is right here. You can also get the freeware demo for D2 at that site, which should work fine for testing the engine after you manage to get it ported too. And, if you're interested, I do have a legitimate copy of the original CD (designed for windows 95 btw), which I can rip into an ISO for you to work with as well if you need it.


-- I did manage to compile it and get it to run on Vista Ultimate nearly flawlessly, with minor sound and graphical glitches, probably because OpenGL doesn't work very good in Vista. I got it installed in Linux, on my PS3, but it wouldn't run because it can't open a 640x480x32 window on my particular display... I sorta gave up on that. But this game would rock pretty hard on the PSP, I have to think so.

So, go ahead and give it a try, or if you don't want to, that's cool too. If I knew anything about homebrew coding, I might be tempted to try doing it myself.

~Cheers.