Descent was developed by Parallax Software, founded in June, 1993 by
Matt Toschlog and Mike Kulas.  Both of them had substantial experience 
in flight simulators and in arcades during the 1980's.  Their desire
with Descent was to bring together the action from a 1980's arcade 
game with a flight simulator in a very rich environment.
 
The original proposal for what became Descent was written in 1992 and 
was developed into a script in the spring of 1993.  The original name 
for the game was Miner (later Inferno, finally Descent).  It was
designed from the beginning as a shareware game for another
publisher.  This publisher cancelled the project about midway through 
development.  Parallax then signed a development deal with
Interplay.

The capability to support aftermarket levels was not specified in the 
script, nor was it seriously discussed before the final month of the 
project.  Hooks for this support were added in a couple evenings
shortly before release.

The Descent development team consisted of Kulas, Toschlog, John
Slagel, Che-Yuan Wang, Adam Pletcher, Mark Dinse, Jasen Whiteside, 
Mark Allender and Rob Huebner.  With the exception of Kulas and
Toschlog, Descent represents the first game industry experience for 
the team.  We believe the desire to create a game which we found fun 
to play, coupled with a willingness to polish it for months has
yielded something original.  We hope you'll agree. 

The Descent Team

P.S. To all the level designers: Thanks for the great levels! 

