System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition Update & Community Participation

[66eea05d7a35avoodoo47]

I'm thinking the development must be going real well if they have time for funsies.


// https://twitter.com/NightdiveStudio/status/1409203678859337730

[66eea05d7a4d2icemann]

Be nice if we heard how the SS1 remake was going. Radio silent since the last demo release.

[66eea05d7a7e1ZylonBane]

I'm thinking the development must be going real well if they have time for funsies.


// https://twitter.com/NightdiveStudio/status/1409203678859337730

Is that the tweet you meant to link to? That one's just showing off the updated Midwife model. Pretty good work actually.

[66eea05d7a931voodoo47]

yeah, I was reacting to the previous posts, then added the (new) link to the midwife tweet (making my post look weird. ah well).

anyway, yeah, the midwife is pretty good, but as mentioned on discord, the face is looking a bit dried up, the hand blaster and fingernails are missing, and the color scheme is slightly off.

[66eea05d7aa47ZylonBane]

I'm not super concerned about the texturing being perfect on these new models. The hard part is the geometry, so as long as they get that right, we can easily tweak the textures.

[66eea05d7ad87Join2]

Looks really good, however...

voodoo47
I'll also add a mention of the distinct lack of blood and/or bruising. Of the skin, but also important that the cybernetics are blood-covered in places too, implying a brutal forced surgery. I see a little of that in the new version, but it's extremely subtle by comparison.

These things aside it's pretty good and like ZB said, can all be fixed with a reskin.

Edit: the metallic breast plate inserts are way too cleanly implemented too. Some more subtle blood/bruising there perhaps would be good too (where the plates are visibly fused to the skin/breast).

[66eea05d7aef3Kolya]

The original midwife has metal fingernails. You know, to tear out your spine.
The new one just has large hands.

[66eea05d7afeavoodoo47]

such a merry band we are.

[66eea05d7b253kraken]

I must say, while I love how close it is to the original, I must agree her hands look a bit weird. She needs her metal and pointy fingertips.

[66eea05d7b3e8JDoran]

Are there any more updates on NDS's remakes of SS1 and 2, please?

[66eea05d7b4c4ZylonBane]

Remake of SS2? What??

[66eea05d7b684JDoran]

ZylonBane
Sorry, I meant the enhanced edition, though I suspect you realised that...

[66eea05d7b8e9sarge945]

Keep in mind, if the models are decent but the textures aren't, we are far more likely to get a good looking texture mod after release than a good model mod, which is a lot more effort

[66eea05d7b9dcicemann]

SHTUP would likely work with it, or would work after some extra modding.

[66eea05d7bac8sarge945]

Yeah. My point is bad textures are preferable to bad models

[66eea05d7bc07icemann]

Agreed

[66eea05d7bd34voodoo47]

let me refresh everyone's memory - SS2EE should be capable of loading all the popular mods out of the box (especially SHTUP/400/SCP). not being able to do that would pretty much defeat the purpose.

[66eea05d7be32ZylonBane]

To even more refresh memories, it will actually include SHTUP and 400.

[66eea05d7bf8cBloxy]

I'm a big fan of SS2 And I'd love to play it on Oculus Quest untethered because my PC sucks, Will Enhanced Edition have Quest support in any way?

[66eea05d7c22bZylonBane]

Looking at some of the gameplay videos of Quake: Enhanced, I noticed that it supports dynamic shadows. E.g., when a rocket goes flying past someone it'll cast a dynamic shadow on the wall behind them. This is relevant to SS2:EE because they both use the Kex engine. So I'm wondering if we'll finally be seeing dynamic shadows in SS2.

Now, even if the engine supports it, adding dynamic shadows to games that weren't originally created with them in mind can be a challenge. The problem is that even modern engines are severely limited in the number of simultaneous light sources that can cast dynamic shadows. They might only support two or three or even just one. So mappers need to be selective about where they place the shadow-casting light sources in a level so they don't overlap too much.

SS2, of course, was created with no such constraints in mind. There are point light sources freaking everywhere. Not only on actual light fixtures, but scattered around to compensate for the lack of radiosity in the lightmap generator or just to highlight certain things. For example, the medsci1 map has 379 lights. So if the engine attempted to naively cast shadows from the nearest light source, they would constantly be snapping all over the place as things moved around. It would look terrible.

So to fix this problem, you have to pick which lights actually cast shadows. There are two potential ways to do this. The least labor-intensive would be to automate the process. You could have an algorithm that pre-scans each map and selects shadowing light sources based on factors like brightness, distance from other light sources, whether to favor animated lights, spotlights, etc. Well-tuned, such a system could probably provide mostly satisfactory results.

The other fix, which would provide superior results but be very labor-intensive, would be to go through the entire game and manually tag which light sources cast shadows.

Or they could just do what they did with Quake Enhanced: Have only dynamic light sources like projectiles and explosions cast shadows. That would be disappointing.

[66eea05d7c379icemann]

It does very much depend on the game and how it's done. I remember when the source ports introduced dynamic lighting and particle effects to Doom (90's Doom). Looked great. Then the more openGL oriented source ports put in things like flickering torches etc. I don't think it broke the experience. Guess it depends on your level of purism.

[66eea05d7c474ZylonBane]

*cough* Dynamic shadows, not dynamic lights. SS2 already has dynamic lights.

[66eea05d7c595icemann]

Just speaking generally about adding tech / features into games which did not have it before. Whether it be dynamic shadows, particle effects, ray tracing or whatever.

[66eea05d7c6d8ZylonBane]

Okay. Even so, you seem to be talking about aesthetics. I'm talking about the effects straight up not working correctly. When a single dynamic shadow snaps between different light sources as the entity casting it moves around, I consider that a technical failing, not an aesthetic one.