descentchampions.org

To be fair... I have probably tested and bought more mice than anyone. I still have problems with the mouse I just quit talking about it and gave up. G600, G700, Naga, and so on. All of them feel different due to the different hardware (lasers / software.) It is the only thing we have to play which is why I play it. Same goes for the ladder. It is what it is. Deal with it or don't play is where I am at. Which is probably why I retire so much getting tired of always changing the mouse settings in game while playing and so on. Blah! Pointless to talk about it anymore.

I wonder where these issues arise from. I never change my mouse settings. Ever. I leave it at a dpi of 1250 and my mouse settings in Descent are one click to the right of stock or some such minorly adjusted thing. Then again, I recall feeling less maneuverable than some I've witnessed....I attributed that to my kboard setup though and since adding banking to my mouse buttons....I've gotten a lot better at that.

Speaking to Birdseye's mouse issues...perhaps it has more to do with the mouse polling software or whatever it was he was running on top of the usual windows mouse settings. Maybe if he could replicate what that program was doing then perhaps drak could add it as a settings option or something. Just thinkin' outloud

no, I don't believe 200 polling rate compares to 500. or 1000.

EDIT: Quake had cl_mouseaccel, cl_mouseacceloffset, and obviously /sensitivity, just putting it out there, and seeing if anybody has ideas

Polling rate does make a difference from the hours of testing I have done. The lower is better where higher it feels like it skips. Other games higher is better. Not sure if this due to coding or just how to game is compared to newer games (6dof.)

The goals of Retro as a modern source port are the following:

(1) preserve game physics / behavior (ship movement, weapon damage values, etc.) as close to the original design as possible

(2) repair bugs and glitches (such as game physics depending on framerate, bad netcode, and explosives sometimes detecting a collision when there wasn't one and exploding away from the ship)

(3) add meta-game functionality to support pilot desires (weapon restriction/multiplication options, observer mode, auto-demo, ship colors, etc.)

The difficulty with the first goal is that everyone has different expectations as to exactly how the game will behave, based on what prior version and settings they are most used to. We have to make a lot of judgment calls. For example, given that the original homing missiles were framerate-dependent, what behavior are we trying to preserve? 30 FPS homers (probably the fastest anyone in 1995 would have been running), 60 FPS homers (a common d1x framecap), or homers that behave like a physics sim (rebirth)? We went through a lot of discussion and playtesting with the community and decided that 25 FPS homers felt the most like really-early Descent homers, and were useful without being overpowered. As another example, some controllers were actually able to violate Descent's physics, like the spaceorb's 180, so we choose not to replicate that original behavior at all.

When it comes to Birdseye's mouse, we don't have Birdseye's old compy running his preferred version of d1x, his mouse polling software, his actual mouse, etc. We can look at some of those things in isolation, and look at demos and some of the old source code, but we don't really have a good baseline to compare to, and we don't even know if the baseline we'd get would be valid (d1x fixed most, but not all, violations of the originally-designed physics, and I have no idea how the mouse polling software might have affected things.) If we had a really clear baseline, it might be 20 minutes of math and 10 minutes of code to replicate it, but it might be anywhere from a few hours to "never" to actually get such a baseline. Whereas we know that "learn a new controller" or "retrain muscle memory" is actually a viable path for people to get really good -- we've seen quite a few people reach their old levels on a new controller in a month, and we've seen people like Jediluke and Mark392 push the limits of what's even possible. So personally, I don't think it's worth the effort (or the high chance of failure) to go to great lengths to get an old version working, but if other people want to try it, good luck and let us know what you learn.

I think that switching controllers is very valid. I was ALWAYS a joystick player (I tried a few kills on mouse back in the day here and there...never anything serious) I always used the Wingman Warrior unlike most 3dpro ppl.

When I came back to Descent (rebirth) I was nowhere near as good as I used to be. My brain knew what to do but I couldn't seem to do anything about it. I thought it must be this Logitech joystick I'm on. If I'm gonna get good again I need my old joystick. So, I found one on Ebay that had never been used before. Well, no drivers for win7...worthless. Wasted my money.

I went back and forth between the joystick and mouse trying to find settings that would feel like my old setup. I never did. Still haven't. It came to a point where I decided to CHOOSE one of the controllers and just commit to learning all over again.

I chose the mouse just because the logitech had a twist on it that kept screwing me up and the old joystick I used to use...never had that.

I switched controllers. I had my ass handed to me by people that I used to be able to take down fairly easily. I took my lumps but I was determined to keep learning. I knew my game was mostly based on the 'mind game' and that wasn't necessarily controller dependent. So I kept pushing....kept learning...and I'm certain. CERTAIN that I am now far better than I had ever been at any point in my kali career.

Am I better now because of the mouse? I doubt it. It does help with steady aim though.

I'm better because in this era everyone has been very open as it pertains to training. We traded secrets and tricks and skill building practices. We played matches at a furious rate that far outpaced the rate that IDL matches were played. We studied demos together and even held skill building demonstrations and classes via observatory levels. This has been a Renaissance and I am very happy to have been a part of it.

This has been the Shaolin Temple of Descent-fu and it has been my honor to be a part of it. I'm just glad that I'm not one of the pilots who missed out on this awesomeness.

Regarding anti-ghosting keyboards - yeah that's one of the few things I would say you really do want. Otherwise you have to try to make sure you don't need to hit key combinations it won't read properly.

I just use a Sidewinder X4 though (same one I've had for the last 4-5 years I think). It's a rubber dome design, which I know keyboard enthusiasts don't like, but it only cost $50 assuming it's still on sale... most mechanical keyboards go for at least twice that, last I checked.

Mouse doesn't matter that much, as long as it tracks properly. You do get better performance out of a high-DPI mouse versus the $5 junk from the bargain bin, but in a pinch even a $5 mouse will work, it'll just skip a bit if you wind the sensitivity up too far.