Descent Source Code Released

Parallax Software, the software developer that created the popular three-dimensional action games Descent and Descent II, has released Descent's source code (version 1.5) to the public domain for noncommercial purposes.

Mike Kulas, Parallax founder and president, stated that, "We figured a lot of people aspiring to work in the game industry would like to see production 'quality' code. There are two reasons for this. One, you can learn a lot by looking at working code. Two, people will see that you can write a decent game without writing beautiful code."

The Descent Developer Resources page, maintained by Kevin Bentley, will host the source code base, with Bentley himself providing technical support for the code, not Parallax Software. It should be noted that besides the noncommercial use restriction, the source code's sound and serial port support will not work when compiled, and the original commercial release of the game's data files are required in order for it to work properly. These data files must be purchased (they are included in the commercial, not the shareware, release) and are not available in the public domain (not legally anyway).