descentchampions.org

I am all for an end of season town hall, even if there are no pressing issues to bring up. Give people a chance to ask questions and what not in an open forum.

Birds, I think you might find it impossible to replicate your old experience exactly, even with a port of D1x. Rebirth is a port of D1x, or at least it started that way. And I am pretty sure the reason Rebirth changed the library used to read the mouse is that it was an old Windows thing that didn't work anymore. I very much suspect that if you tried to get D1x to run natively on a modern OS, you'd run into the same issue, so you won't be able to use literally the same code anyway. You'd wind up doing literally what Rebirth does now: reading the mouse, using it to move the ship, and any bugs and quirks of the old library, well -- who knows? On top of that, didn't you used to run some sort of mouse supersamping software or something? Between the two, I think replicating your old setup exactly might be rough, and might involve some serious VMs and archeology, and even then . . . I just think the technology might not exist anymore. If you can figure it out and replicate it somehow, we can study it, but I think the amount of work you and I already have put into it is pretty crazy, and we didn't crack it.

I have great respect for the people liking particular pieces of hardware. All the 3D pro guys . . . that's a thing. I'm sure it can be a thing for you, too. And if you can make it work, more power to you. But if you can't, consider the blessings of the modern era: an entire array of button-studded rigorously-studied high-precision-sensor space-age-material gaming mice. Lotharbot had been one of the 3D Pro diehards, but when he embraced the modern technology in joysticks, he was eventually like, "Yeah, this is better." And I think mice are the same way. The modern landscape is awesome, and shouldn't be hastily rejected just because you aren't used to it. I strongly suspect if you give it a chance, you'd like it.

I think the most puzzling thing to me about your case is that mouse control just isn't that mathematically complicated. You move the mouse so far, the ship wants to move so far, Descent enforces some maximum speed and acceleration values. That's it. Sensitivity literally is the only knob you have to turn, and the only knob you have ever had to turn. You get a different ship response in D3 or in Overload, and that's certainly noticeable. It can throw you. An hour in D1 makes me clumsy in Overload for about an hour, and vice versa, but it's hardly insurmountable. I just play single player for an hour. There is no fundamental difference in mouse control style that should reasonably take someone weeks to overcome, or at least if there is, I can't imagine what it would be. I certainly never noticed a difference in mouse control between the D1x and Rebirth; by the time I got my sensitivity dialed in, any clumsiness had disappeared, and I'm far from the only one who had that reaction. I *do* notice D3 handling differently, so D1x and Rebirth have got to be closer to each other than D3 is to either, and that's a difference you and others handle seamlessly. So I find myself completely at a loss as to what could possibly be so different as to be insurmountable for you. It seems to me like there's no room for something that big to be hiding.

I will say this, though. It's something I say a lot, and nobody ever believes me, but I'll say it again anyway. Playing Descent in the modern era has to be a labor of love. There are too many good pilots and not enough glory to go around, and if you're playing for glory, even if you're Jediluke, you starve. There are too many awesome pilots, and too few fans, for glory to keep you flying. If that's what you want, go play some other competitive game, any other competitive game, it's way easier. The only thing that keeps people here is the love of the game.

This is your first time coming back from Kali to the modern era, so you don't know how it works, but you are the fiftieth, the hundredth pilot the rest of us have watched come back, plus we all went through it ourselves. Everyone, literally everyone, thinks they will do better than they do, and feels like they have to explain it or make excuses. We know. And it takes you way longer than you think it will to catch up to where you think you should be, and you think it's you. It's not you. I myself went from about a 90 or 95th percentile pilot in the Kali era to about a 30th percentile pilot in the Rebirth era, after I got everything dialed in and flying smoothly to my satisfaction and had put in a month or two of hard, daily practice. It takes a typical pilot about four months of modern training to become competitive with the average modern pilot, regardless of who they were. That is a rough experience, and the vast majority of people, even people who were once indomitable competitors, give it up.

To make matters worse, the sorts of pilots you will face the ones who did make it through that.

Where am I going with this?

I think you are here because you have something to prove. I think you are here because you don't like people saying they've surpassed you, and you want to prove them wrong. But I know how much pain coming back entails, because I've seen it literally hundreds of times, and I know how much pain competing in the modern community involves, even as one of the best, because I've been there the whole time. And look at the one, and I look at the other, and I just don't think a bruised ego is sufficient motivation to get you through it. For example, I have heard you say you don't have the time to train, and while there's nothing wrong with that, you are going to be competing against people who will take a whole weekend off and fly half way across the country specifically to train. Will you match their dedication out of sheer pride? Is it really that strong in you?

I see a very tough road ahead of you. I see all the disappointment and swallowing pride that Kiln and Tobycat, who owned eras and had trouble competing in this one, faced. I think it will be harder for you than it was for either of them, I think the gap between what your expectations of yourself are and how long it will take you to acheive them and how hard you will have to work for it, will be harder than for anyone. I see you wanting to easily come back on top, without training, without adjusting for changes in technology, everything exactly as it was in 1999 and your former skills to carry you rust free, and I think if you think about it in those terms you'll realize how unrealistic that is, and what you don't know but are finding out right now is that even if you get that, people will not care nearly as much as you want them to. What then?

I have seen many pilots come back, former greats and former nobodies, and the ones who stick aren't necessarily the ones who were the best. They are the ones who are the most hardcore. Jediluke found his joystick didn't work, so he learned mouse. LoNi found the version of the game he wanted to run only worked on Windows, so he installed a Windows VM. Kiln found his opponents wouldn't take him seriously playing on wireless, so he wired his house. I wanted to compete on a ladder and there wasn't one, so I built one. Mark392 competed, at times on a 640x480 screen against opponents running 1080p, at times on keyboard when his mouse broke, without complaint. Rising through the ranks over the last three years has been one of the hardest and most strenuous and competitive things I've ever done in my life. I have put off life goals and career training and dreams that I have waited a decade for, to make it happen. Cyrus skipped work and sleep for months to train hard. These are the ones who stay. These are the people you'll be facing.

I look at that. And I look at you unwilling to put in the time to overcome a difference in mouse control so small that some of us cannot even detect it, and as sympathetic as I am to wanting things to work a certain way, and as daunting as I know the expectations you face must be, and as much as I want to make it right for you if it's technically feasible. . .

I dunno. I just think you should sit down and think hard about what it is you're trying to accomplish, and how hard you're willing to work to get it. I think being so fragile about your controls is a sign that you will be facing people with orders of magnitude more dedication than you currently have, and I think it's unrealistic to expect that to work out well. Maybe if you had the same fire, the same desire for competition that you did in 2000, you would wind up liking it here. But seeing the story of your return that you've written so far, I think you would do well to think hard about what it is you're trying to achieve, and what it's worth to you.

Gotta say, catching up on DCL forum posts today has been exhausting. I'd love to take a break from all the mutual psychoanalysis and just hang out for a while.
Maybe the town hall would be great after all...

Everybody who has a problem with the mouse settings in this current version will come to see that it requires months of training, through diligence.

(ENDLESS SENSITIVITY AND FPS CHANGING DURING A MATCH, NOT SPAWNING FOR 15 MINUTES for "water" aka a full course meal.)

and tweaking windows settings helps too, like running in 640x480;
the drag of the mouse comes with our wingmen and our mousemen, while they play with "gx10kz-2.0" supermice and razer KB with antighost where they can bank without *BEEP*
(yes I use a Ps/2 mouse/kb, 60hz monitor sux)
It's difficult to keep up at times for me, but I know I can make an effort if i so choose.

yeah man, logitech g700s is the way to go