System Shock Demo

[673fa23482ee4voodoo47]

eeh, it's US, and nineties are over, so nudity probably ain't happening - remember, source ports (so no enhancements, just higher resolutions and modern os compatibility) of old games are also getting "fixes" if they are showing too much of body colored pixels nowadays.

[673fa234830e6icemann]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy-baGj47M0

And here you go.

Stats for build 3:

Pros:

* Improved lighting
* Improved enemy AI
* Can now see cameras on the map

Cons:

* Enemies can see and attack through walls
* Enemy pathfinding could use improvement. If the player is at a different height level to them, then they spaz out.
* Quite a few rooms still could use better lighting

[673fa2348324avoodoo47]

and most importantly, a framerate boost that makes the demo almost playable on my machine, FPS now sitting between 20-30 most of the time now. anyway;

-text synopsis still not being displayed (can hear the audio in the background)
-loading time still very long
-texture streaming time (UE) is even longer
-there has to be a better way of letting the player know their health is low than making the UI flicker in epileptic spasms
-the human skull is smaller than an actual head of a corpse


the unfinished cyborgs in the med bay agree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Dy5y0caaY

[673fa23483483Hikari]

My thoughts on the demo so far:

- Either i'm missing something or there are only a very few keybinds (Inability to rebind inventory and the log keys stick out.)

- Mutant bobbleheads! Not sure if it should stay in game or not but you should totally sell a mutant bobblehead thing.

- A visual indicator of where damage is coming from would be nice. Maybe there is and i'm not seeing it?

- I like Rebecca's VA, hate that you left the original demo's lines in since originally she already knew you were a collaborator of Diego's and now she's acting like you're a rando survivor? This recontexualizes how and what the hacker is doing and Why perhaps unintentionally making him more heroic. Since originally it was 'I have to clean this up instead of running for the nearest escape pod because they will find me and put me in a hole' vs 'oh crap they're gonna hit earth guess i better do the hero thing.'

- I would like it if you moused over the keypad, if you'd be able to use your keyboards' keypad to hit the numbers. ala how ss2 did it.

- I am also sure everything i'm saying is quite redundant, just 'new to me' observations Will have more to say on replaying the demo tomorrow.

Suggestions from everyone else on how to best prod things with the metaphorical stick to see what breaks? I like the visuals. I'm LARGELY happy with the controls beyond ladder wonkiness, but we haven't' even seen cyberspace yet.

[673fa2348356avoodoo47]

also, I slightly don't like that pretty much everything is modeled in 3D. why? sometimes, a floor or a wall is just a flat surface you know.

[673fa23483650icemann]

That's an Unreal Engine thing. Can't have flat surfaces. Has to be a 3D object with depth.

[673fa23483778ZylonBane]

What.

[673fa234838baKolya]

I guess it was a joke? I'm currently playing Life is Strange 2, created in the Unreal engine and it has lots of flat surfaces.

[673fa234839c0icemann]

Not a joke. Daniel in the NDS streams mentioned about it often. I've never tested it out myself. He was always complaining about all the paper thin walls in the original

[673fa23483ab1Kolya]

I think we're talking about different things: 3d modelled surface structure vs flat surface and walls with or without depth.
Even a wall with depth could have a flat surface. Which voodoo was missing.

[673fa23483da0RocketMan]

One thing I learned pretty quick as a modeller with no texturing skills is if you model detail into otherwise flat surfaces, you don't need any art skills. The texture work just evaporates into simple materials and colors. 

[673fa23483ec9voodoo47]

the room behind the 451 door kinda felt like being inside an inverted sea cucumber. realistically, there should be quite a few simple, very flat surfaces around, and my brain realized that even before I could put my finger on it.

"lets make everything 3D just because we can" is what I'm getting here, and, just like with the pixelated looks, I don't think it's that great of an idea.

[673fa23483fc2icemann]

New build is out. Changes:

* Keyboard number keys can now be used for keypad entry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJt-075CZts

[673fa234840a0Hikari]

Has to be more changes given the downlaod size. Stil, the fact any build happened over the holidays is kinda nice.

[673fa234842ebSimulationUnit]

Very underwhelming due to the lack of VR support, an original SS1 feature. It looks fun and it should be a nice nostalgia trip but I was hoping for a remake that pushed modern hardware as hard as SS1 did. Guess it can't if they want it to work on consoles, a problem the original didn't have to overcome.

[673fa234843fbicemann]

You need to get over your obsession with VR. It's for a niche audience at best.

VR support does not, a profitable game make.

[673fa23484978SimulationUnit]

You need to get over your obsession with VR. It's for a niche audience at best.

VR support does not, a profitable game make.

I wonder what System Shock had been like if they looked at the market and made what was profitable in 1995? System Shock, platformer, get it on SNES today! DW, her voice is just as scary when you imagine it in your head because the ROM chips can't even hold a single line of dialog but that's not important~ Who the hell would want to spend money on a powerful gaming computer with cutting edge hardware to play games that push it to it's limits? Certainly no fan of SS1, right? You need to get over your lack of imagination. The maps look great, the gameplay looks fairly okay but it's 2020 not 1995 or 1999, this isn't even trying to match the original let alone push the game as far as they wanted originally... Instead they tucked their tails between their legs and scaled back to cater to folks who never played the original when it was new and probably watched LetsPlays of it instead of finishing it themselves, let alone fighting through SS2's buggy multiplayer with friends over LAN.

Hell, most of these people wouldn't care if it was a System Shock game and would still buy if you put the word "shock" on it because they played BioShock on Xbox or something and aren't even fans of the core franchise because they either didn't have a good PC, weren't aware of the game or simply not born yet. I'm hoping they do some interesting things and the second it hits shelves I'm stripping it of assets to upload to a privately hosted instance of VRchat outside of VRchat's control to ensure that at least parts of it end up in VR in some way and some fashion. I will do the same with System Shock 3 on release and I can host it all on a box in a country in asia that doesn't give a shit about IP law if I wanted to evade the C&D, if it was issued. I can avoid the problem with System Shock 2 mod assets as the game isn't being remade and this counts as a parody + cosplaying + non-commercial remix where I live if I do it right.

It will be a great nostalgia trip but it will never be the actual remake, it doesn't even match the original feature set and there are developers working/have worked on both games who will admit that to you if you run into them on VRChat like I have. Who will sit in VR and explain to you why they're afraid, why they don't have the courage and why they're catering to folks who didn't play the original with a remake that is feature incomplete instead of going back and doing everything they ever dreamed of doing with SS1 with today far superior hardware with a larger market for VR games than there were people who even bothered to buy either System Shock 1 or 2 on launch and actually play it maxed out on their PCs. But sure, there is no demand for it because you have sour grapes and would rather System Shock stay stuck somewhere between 1999 and 2016 than see it push the same boundaries it did back in the day when it was new and loads of people didn't even have CD roms to hear SHODAN talk for years after it was released or computers capable of running it. Thus the forced floppy release which was inferior in fidelity to the CD release which again was inferior to the CD version played back on a HMD.

System Shock wasn't super profitable back in the day because the game was made to be the best it could be and not the easy sale for people who like Doom and FIFA 1996, this is the easy sale. It's quite simple, either they give me the features I want or I go and do it myself with their own assets in a place that can't be touched or taken down after release and then let people see small snippets of what it might've been like if the stretchgoals had've been reached because not even people on either team, volunteering to make a VR experience on their own time are permitted to even try using the assets that way because of reasons I won't discuss in full here.

[673fa23484b72SimulationUnit]

Does anyone have a newer version of the Unity demo than the common release? Like maybe a review copy? I'm currently getting ready to pull that the abandoned, trashed and thrown out prototype apart and then rebuild it as a ghosthoust/escape room parodying System Shock and the sci-horror genre in general so I can offer a variety of chases through both the System Shock 3 demo maps as recreated as a parody and the SS3 maps as recreated as a parody and easily take a timemachine/portal/hole in SHODAN's memory between the two. I should be able to replicate certain features across both versions of Unity as they are not too far apart in version numbers and the process should be easier than it was to extract the... trying to remember the term, there was like map meshes or some shit back in the day that made it hard to rip certain things from SS2 until some tool was developed. It was when Zylonbane was a personal hero and Koyla was a god to me so... quite a long time ago.

After all SS3 is Unity, SS1 demo was Unity and VRchat is Unity + a VRSDK + an MMO. ^_~

[673fa23484c72voodoo47]

the latest (as far as we are aware) build of the unity demo can be downloaded from here.

[673fa23484d4bSimulationUnit]

Excellent, this will do just fine. I'm gonna check for another source and then use this one if it's the newest. I think it's time to see what Unity can really do.

[673fa234851b4Berathraben]

confirmed on Discord, ALL backers will regain access to the demo (no eta though).

Backers have started getting their keys via Backerkit. However, there is a hiccup there. If you selected GOG then you dont get the Demo key. You will need to change your survey selection from GOG to Steam, wait for the key, then change it back to GOG. If you dont get the key it is because they have run out and more need to be generated.  If you were part of the Adventure Alpha that updates automatically.

 

the latest demo has steam integration, so if it gets removed/disabled by steam, you won't be able to play. you would have to remove the steam checks from the game files you have backed up, and while this is probably doable, it would also be legally questionable, to put it mildly.

I understand it is legally questionable, and Nightdive has it there for obvious reasons (timed demo and limited demo), but how would one go about removing the Steam checks. I am genuinely curious about the process. Apologies if this question violates the rules of this forum.

[673fa234852fdfox]

I doubt that it is worth the effort - for pretty much anyone.

[673fa2348541cvoodoo47]

changing the pledge to steam and back helped some people - those who still didn't get a key should contact their cm on Discord.

as far as removing checks goes, I'd assume it's the standard stuff - hacking exes and dlls to fool the game into thinking it's still running under steam.

[673fa23485537Berathraben]

Fox, you are probably right,  I have read it is very time consuming. Plus as voodoo said. Legally questionable.

Thanks Voodoo47 I thought it was something like that.

Voodoo is right. If any backers here have tried the above mentioned method and not got their keys. DM ing the Night dive CM is best. Just keep in mind she is backlogged so it might take a bit for a response.