Dateiliste

Everybody who's done or tried it before knows it already: The complete installation of Descent 3 takes at least a few days, and novice computer users have no chance at all.

When the CD installation starts, one of the first misleading things it does is make the wrong suggestions for upgrading DirectX and Flash. This may be the first, but it will by far be the last surprise potential players encounter when installing Descent 3. It's only the beginning of a long journey of outdated information and references. No wonder, the game is 10 years old.

Directly off the CD, it's not even possible to register the game, although it keeps asking for it. There is no easy way to break that circle. The standard patch, which most people are playing, for Descent 3 is the one that upgrades it to version 1.4. It takes a bit of googling, downloading, and trial and error to get it, since some distributions contain a copy of the wrong patch for the wrong localized version of the game. Outrage's online service is dead, hence it's not possible to play Descent 3 online out of the box anymore, although there still is an active online player community - They are only not that easy to find. Users need to know what they have to download and how to install it. Many Descent 3 extensions come without an installation program, and most of the ones that do have a setup that is terribly outdated. Without tweaking it a bit, the game doesn't work on Windows Vista or Windows 7.

We decided to do something about this!

We created an installer for the full version of Descent 3, which installs all required additions, modifications, the level editor, single and multi-player missions, and much much more in one go.

You can now install and configure Retribution, Mercenary, Vortex, Pyromania, Olympia Gold, Basewars, the server tool, about 750 additional missions, and everything else required for single and multi-play, for creating own levels (maps), and chatting with only a few mouse clicks.

We made Descent 3 compatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and also the newer server versions of Windows, without requiring to be logged on as administrator and without any dodgy Microsoft Windows backwards compatibility mode.

It installs about 3 GiB of Descent 3 stuff (but no promo and fan-made game movies). The package is highly compressed, which means you only need to download about 1.1 GiB.

Here's an (incomplete) list of what the Descent 3 package contains:

• Descent 3 version 1.4 in English.
• The Descent 3 1.4 - 1.5 Version Switcher.
• Mercenary add-on.
• No-CD patch.
• Descent 3 mod Pyromania.
• Vortex for playing online.
• Improved reticle.
• Non-working and outdated network protocols/types removed.
• Server tool to host Descent 3 servers.
• Descent 3 level editor D3Edit.
• Tycoon's ship logo tools.
• Around 750 additional single-player and multi-player missions.
• Additional mods like ladder anarchy, Olympia Gold, Basewars, Black Pyro Justice, etc.
• Most recent file with pilot pictures.
• Level development tools.
• Additional software from Dateiliste like StartSP and modified launcher.
• Moon's saved demo games for complicated single-player passages.
• Many links to online resources.
• Startmenu shortcuts for most single-player missions.
• Optional desktop shortcuts for Servertool, Vortex, etc.

Here's what it doesn't contain: Fan-made promo films. The reason for this is that there are simply too many of them around. You can easily find another few gigabytes of fan-made promo films and music videos on the net. Since we doubt that most people would like to download and install several gigabytes of Descent 3 videos and watch them for hours, we decided not to include any in the package. If you really want to download and install them anyway, they are not very hidden on the net. Alone YouTube and Google offer tons of them. A selection of Descent 3 films can be found in the PromoFilms folder here on Dateiliste.

Minimum required Windows operating system for our Descent 3 version is Windows 2000. Sorry, the software can't be installed on Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT, but it runs just fine in Wine under Linux.

"Wow! That's exactly what I was looking for! Where can I buy this package?"

You can't. Sorry. Buy Descent 3 from somewhere else instead, but don't install it. Then come back to download our package and install it on your computer.

We are not entitled to sell downloadable Descent 3 licenses. You need to have a Descent 3 license yourself already before you can download the installer from here. We've compiled some instructions to get you through the process of obtaining your copy of our Descent 3 installer. It's pretty straight forward. It will save you a lot of time, and you can enjoy playing the game right after its installation has been completed, which only takes a few minutes.

Read the frequently asked questions (FAQ) (requires registration) to have some of the most common questions answered.

Download the full version of Descent 3 - Instructions step 1 tells you what you need to do to download a copy of our Descent 3 installer.