You may want to look in the wikipedia for the Descent computer game. Descent pits you in a battle in underground mines infested with robots whos AI has been messed up by a hostile computer virus. Descent is a mixture between a regular 1st person shooter and a flight sim. Just think of a groundpounder with strafing along the vertical axis added, and allowing you to roll along the ship's longitudinal axis. You will need to practise for a while be able to control the ship and keep your orientation, as often there is no real up and down, or floor and ceiling. In the beginning, enabling "auto levelling" may be helpful, as it aligns your ship along the nearest plane. Once you are more skilled, this feature is rather a hindrance though. As Descent 1/2 are rather old games, all you have to do is to shoot everything that moves (apart from the Guidebot), and pick up everything that floats around (weapons and other stuff). Eventually you will find up to three color coded keys allowing you access to locked areas of the level. Various powerups will help you in the game: You can find invulnerability powerups, cloaking devices, head lights, and ammo racks allowing you to carry more ammunition. There is no inventory system, so Invuls and cloaks are activated when you pick them up and work for a while. To replenish your shields, pick up the blue orbs destroyed robots leave behind. To fill up your energy, pick up the yellow energy sparks or find a fuel center (usually these have golden sparks twinkling inside them). Descent offers several cockpit views. All of them display your remaining shields and energy and currently selected primary and secondary weapons. You can display several types of auxiliary views using the Alt+F2 and Alt+F3 keys (rear view, guidebot view, map view). To finish the level, destroy the reactor hidden somewhere in it and fly through the exit before the mine blows up. Instead of a reactor, you will encounter an especially big, tough and mean boss robot every once in while. It is a good idea to save the big missiles for these encounters. ;) The Guidebot is only available in Descent 2 (and 3). It can guide you to power ups, keys, robots and the reactor or boss robot. Again, for skilled players he's rather a nuisance. ;) Descent 1/2 offer a map in the form of a 3D wireframe to help you orienting in the often maze-like levels. You will need some practise to be able to interpret it though. Special areas like energy centers are colored in the map. Gaps in the walls displayed in the automap often are hint to hidden doors and secret areas. Some levels contain teleports (a floating red appearance) that lead to entire secret levels. Usually these levels rather contain puzzles you need to solve to access all the goodies contained there. You can enter and leave secret levels several times, as long as you don't destroy their reactor. It is not possible to save in a secret level, so may be a good idea to collect some stuff, return from the secret level and make a save game, before entering it again to gather more stuff. Find a manual on D2X-XL configuration here: http://www.descent2.de/d2x-manual-1.html.
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