Application Details:
Version: | 1.4 (GOG) |
License: | Retail |
URL: | http://www.descent3.com |
Votes: | 0 |
Latest Rating: | Silver |
Latest Wine Version Tested: | 3.18 |
Maintainers: About Maintainership
What works
Game launcher, main game, videos, config screens, tutorial level, first level.
What does not
I did not test the video settings as they have been flakey in the past.
Workarounds
What was not tested
Play beyond the first level. Joystick play was not tested. Mouse play was not extensively tested though it appeared to register the mouse when I tried configuring it.
Hardware tested
Graphics:
Additional Comments
Seems playable all the way through. The GOG version wraps the Glide API to D3D, so performance was a bit iffy on my admittedly aging laptop. See another individual's comment about OpenGL settings for better performance.
Operating system | Test date | Wine version | Installs? | Runs? | Used Workaround? | Rating | Submitter | ||
Show | Fedora 27 x86_64 | Nov 26 2018 | 3.18 | N/A | Yes | No | Silver | Christopher Thielen | |
Show | Fedora 23 x86_64 | Nov 29 2015 | 1.9.3 | Yes | Yes | Gold | Christopher Thielen | ||
Current | Fedora 22 x86_64 | Sep 13 2015 | 1.7.49 | Yes | Yes | Gold | Christopher Thielen | ||
Show | Mac OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" | Jun 09 2015 | 1.7.44 | Yes | Yes | Gold | an anonymous user | ||
Show | Fedora 20 x86_64 | Jan 02 2014 | 1.7.5 | Yes | Yes | Gold | an anonymous user |
Descent 3 is rather close to working perfectly but is not quite there. While joystick control, movie playback, and other typically "finicky" features work great in Descent 3 under Wine, there are some configuration options which work better than others.
Renderer: Like many games in the late 90s, Descent 3 supported multiple renderers, in this case, Direct3D, OpenGL, and Glide.
The GOG.com version comes with Glide pre-configured and the "nGlide" wrapper, which translates the Glide API into Direct3D calls. This configuration works perfectly but may be rather slow.
You can try the OpenGL renderer but that has exhibited artifacts in many user configurations (namely, certain polygons appearing through walls).
Direct3D is a good option to try but may render textures entirely black (possibly as a result of S3 patented texture compression but this has not been confirmed). Direct3D _does_ work well however if you launch Descent 3 directly (launch main.exe) and give it the option "-nocompress". Note that main.exe will complain you cannot launch it directly -- it's meant to be called from the Descent 3 launch program. To get around this, call it with "-launched", e.g. "wine MAIN.EXE -nocompress -launched".
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. WineHQ is not responsible for what they say.
by juupeli on Tuesday July 12th 2011, 9:29
xinit /usr/bin/wine ~/.wine/drive_c/games/Descent3/main.exe -launched -nointro -width 1600 -height 1200 -himem -nocompress -usesmoothing -z32bit -bumped -opengl -hividmem -subpixelcorrect -- :3 &
to launch the game in a separate X session with preferred settings, but a simple
wine main.exe -launched
seems to work too. (Without the -launched option the game tells you to run it from the launcher 8-) See section 7 in the language/readmes/README.TXT file under the game directory for info about the command line options.
wine v1.2.3 and GOG.com version of the game
by Mclean on Wednesday June 22nd 2011, 17:42
wine v1.2.2