Descent (MS-DOS) On Lenovo M75q Ryzen3 3200GE Pro Mini PC (DOSBox-X)(Linux)

#MSDOS #DOSBOX #retrogaming

Descent, the OG true-3D FPS, dropped in 1995. Gameplay: you’re a hired gun, battling an extraterrestrial virus in off-world mines. Your ride? A spaceship with six degrees of freedom – a unique subgenre within the FPS-genre. Pew-pew! Critics loved it, comparing it to Doom. But watch out—motion sickness ahead! If the computer was fast enough to have 60+ fps that was bound to happen. Descent spawned sequels and expansion packs, cementing its place in gaming history.

I remember being mesmerized by the true 3D environments that were later found in Quake which also is true 3D. Doom, Wolfenstein and the likes before these games were semi 3D when you look at the techniques behind it creating what seemed to be a real 3D environment.

Platforms the game was spawned on: MS-DOS, Apple Macintosh, Playstation, RiscOS all starting with MS-DOS in 1994 and the last platform being RiscOS in 1998.

What are the minimum PC specs to run this MS-DOS game on?
Operating System: MS-DOS 5.0, Windows 95
Processor:Intel 386 33 MHz (Intel 486 33 MHz or better a Pentium recommended)
Memory: 4 MB RAM (8 MB recommended)
Graphics Card: VGA graphics, 16-bit color or higher resolution, a fast Tseng ET4000 or other fast VGA/SVGA card that works well with VESA 640×480 in 256 colours.

In this video I used DOS-Box-X a variant of DOS-BOX on Linux Mint running Descent within the standard MS-DOS 5.x compatibilty layer provided within DOS-BOX with the MIDI audio outputting to the FLUID SoundSynth with Roland.sf2 soundfont.
CPU: Max cycles
VGA: S3Virge
SB16, MIDI Roland 330

It is running on a Lenovo Thinkcentre M75Q small form-factor PC
CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 3200GE w/ Radeon Vega Graphics (4) @ 3.300GHz
GPU: AMD ATI Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Vega Mobile Series
Memory: 5674MiB / 15663MiB

Hardware & software used:
OS: Linux Mint 21.3 x86_64
Host: 11A5S19C00 ThinkCentre M75q
Kernel: 5.15.0-107-generic
Shell: bash 5.1.16
Resolution: 1920×1080
DE: Cinnamon 6.0.4
WM: Mutter (Muffin)

Capture cards: HDMI Treaslin Stand alone 720p/1080p 30/60 capture card that records in peak fps MP4 H264 format, trancoding to a constant fps and a constant quality is needed in order for video editing software to be able to use the captures without getting in serious audio desync problems.

The soundtrack at the beginning of the video was licensed from Epidemic Sound. Track is also shown in the first scene of the video, the rather fittingly titled: UNIX 82 by Ben Elson

Chapters:
00:00:00 – Title screen
00:00:07 – Hardware specs with NeoFetch & Screen Fetch
00:00:10 – Starting DOX-Box-X that boots into Norton Commander
00:00:20 – Navigating to the Descent – setup and testing sound
00:00:43 – Running Descent
00:10:11 – End

Enjoy & thanks for watching
– LactobacillusPrime

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