System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition Update & Community Participation

[677ed96e70b69ZylonBane]

He means mods can't add new sound schemas at all.

[677ed96e70cf1dp_flint]

I hope eldrone will provide feedback regarding the sound schema limitations.

[677ed96e70de4ZylonBane]

Oh boy, the pressure is on now!

[677ed96e71078sarge945]

Yeah, I feel like being able to add new sound schemas, strings, and motions dynamically in mods would be sweet.

[677ed96e7132eeldrone]

Yeah, I feel like being able to add new sound schemas, strings, and motions dynamically in mods would be sweet.

They're all being looked into, that's all I can say for now, but no promises.

[677ed96e71487eldrone]

Anyway, here's another theory I tested on how far one could take custom weapon stuff, entirely funny-dumb example. (disregard some broken stuff)

Still just one static model, works with the vanilla assets too, but two of the new viewmodels existing at the same time is no problem, I just mirrored the predefined weapon offset in squirrel for the second viewmodel.

So if someone were to mod in a second equipment slot, it could absolutely be fully possible to do proper dualwielding, or possibly Psi amp + firearm combo in some way.

[677ed96e715fdicemann]

Dual wielding be very cool.

[677ed96e71927JDoran]

[I copied this post from another thread, in case Eldrone is more likely to see it here]


Eldrone, are there any plans to have a definable difficulty mode in System Shock EE? I mean, aside from Easy, Normal, Hard, and Impossible, then a difficulty mode where the player can choose the values for, say:

- Enemy spawning rate

- Damage done by the player to the enemy

- Damage done by the enemies to the player

- The cost of items in vending machines

- How many Cyber Modules do skills cost

- The chance of finding random desired objects

- Hacking difficulty

etc.

All of these values would individually be settable from 0 % to 1,000 %, with 100 % as a setting being equivalent to what it would be in a usual game at the Impossible difficulty level. My two all time favourite games, Goldeneye and Perfect dark, do this and it's great because it allows really skilled players to make more difficult challenges for themselves.

Although perhaps settings such as 'Damage done to by the player to the enemy' and 'Damage done by the enemies to the player' should have 1% as a minimum instead of 0%, otherwise it would be quite literally impossible. 

But if some suicidal lunatic fearless, mighty warrior wants to put 'Damage done by the enemies to the player' to 1,000 %, 'Enemy spawning rate' to 1,000 %, and 'Damage done by the player to the enemy' to 5 %, so as to REALLY have a challenge, then he or she can try it.

[677ed96e71a48ZylonBane]

Are there ANY games with such absurdly granular difficulty customization?

[677ed96e71bb9sarge945]

System Shock 2 already has an extensive system for modifying all of the difficulty settings you mention. It just requires a text editor and knowledge of dml.

It's probably better for them to focus their efforts on things that aren't currently fixable by the community (like the multiplayer, etc) than to implement things the community can already do.

On that note

I would be eternally grateful if the squirrel services were updated to add functions to enable and disable manually saving the game with both the menu and quick save keys, disable or enable autosaves, and a function was added to create a quick save or autosave via script. Finally my "QBRs are actually gave points" mod idea can come to fruition

[677ed96e71c94ZylonBane]

Still fighting that save scumming addiction I see.

[677ed96e720f1JDoran]

Are there ANY games with such absurdly granular difficulty customization?

I don't know of any to that extent, no. But some games do have several definable skill related options, yes. And there is no reason why, if this hasn't been done before, that it can't be done in this new version. And I do think some people would like this feature.

System Shock 2 already has an extensive system for modifying all of the difficulty settings you mention. It just requires a text editor and knowledge of dml.

That's not going to be option for console gamers, though, is it? And not all PC gamers are going to want to have to familiarize themselves with DML, instead of using a few easy to use sliding bars in the New Game difficulty screen, I'd say.

It's probably better for them to focus their efforts on things that aren't currently fixable by the community (like the multiplayer, etc) than to implement things the community can already do.

I'm certainly not saying that the definable skill setting should be a priority for the developers, or that it should take their attention from any other features (though since you mention multiplayer, I doubt many people would miss that), just that it's something I hope that they consider adding to the game. I would find it interesting to try.

[677ed96e72312sarge945]

Who cares about console gamers?

With the state of modern consoles being what they are, anyone who uses one deserves an inferior experience.

Still fighting that save scumming addiction I see.

It's an addictive and destructive drug which has destroyed countless communities.

[677ed96e725a1ZylonBane]

And there is no reason why, if this hasn't been done before, that it can't be done in this new version.

Such a feature would technically be very easy. The reason games don't do this is because games are supposed to present a balanced out-of-the-box experience. That's why the sort of OCD tweakery you seem to be unironically requesting is usually hidden in debug menus or left to mods.

Even the original System Shock's level of customization is unusual.

[677ed96e726ccicemann]

And something other games cover more a broad range of range of. Like in OG Silent Hill 2, upping the difficulty not only increases enemy counts + damage you receive but only also increases puzzle difficulty and how many of them you encounter. Some like Thief have additional objectives at higher difficulties.

[677ed96e727bbeldrone]

Another little extra made possible now via the new viewmodel scripts:

[677ed96e72931eldrone]

And essentially the setup for making animations as it is now would be adding a .nut with this in it:

Code: [Select]

// Add the 'Shotgun' category
g_weaponAnimations["Shotgun"] <- {};

//============================================================================================================
// shoot
//============================================================================================================
g_weaponAnimations["Shotgun"]["shoot"] <- NDPointRigAnimation("shoot", 30, 100, {
   // Weapon
   "weaponModel" : [
      { "frame":0, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":2, "pos":[-1.5, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, -4.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":16, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":22, "pos":[-0.3, 0.3, 0.0], "rot":[20.0, -15.0, -30.0] },
      { "frame":28, "pos":[-0.3, 0.3, 0.0], "rot":[18.0, -15.0, -30.0] },
      { "frame":48, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
   ],

   // shotgun pump
   "joint1" : [
      { "frame":0, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":20, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":23, "pos":[-0.6, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":26, "pos":[-0.6, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":29, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
      { "frame":99, "pos":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0], "rot":[0.0, 0.0, 0.0] },
   ],   
});

[677ed96e72b3adp_flint_4]

eldrone
Are you going to make a Blender plugin for making animations? Like exporting .nut file with animation coordinates? Also would it be possible to edit interpolations between frames?

[677ed96e72c5eZylonBane]

I am somewhat concerned about the performance impact of invoking a scripting language to perform real-time animation effects, especially things like reloading that are likely to happen in the middle of combat. Yes SCP uses scripting for animation too, but since it's an optional mod we can get away with just warning people that it has higher system requirements than the base game.

[677ed96e72f72eldrone]

I am somewhat concerned about the performance impact of invoking a scripting language to perform real-time animation effects, especially things like reloading that are likely to happen in the middle of combat. Yes SCP uses scripting for animation too, but since it's an optional mod we can get away with just warning people that it has higher system requirements than the base game.

Essentially a non issue,

And it's way more things behind the scenes, there's an entire rig system there, calculating the rotations of interconnected points every frame and some raytests as well. So it's not just when an animation happens, but it's all the time, it's every frame for every single idle movement and camera based lerping going on with the viewmodel.
But out of every performance related thing that's come up, squirrel has never been brought up, squirrel is fast enough.

We're even implementing some per-frame entry points instead of having to rely on high-speed timers.

It's such a small part of the picture these days, there's a ton of overhead.


If anything I want to encourage the community to go more crazy with squirrel, there's a ton of space to do more system like scripts instead of just small things on stuff, and you can do much of the very same things that are done in the actual sourcecode of dark engine.

[677ed96e7325feldrone]

eldrone
Are you going to make a Blender plugin for making animations? Like exporting .nut file with animation coordinates? Also would it be possible to edit interpolations between frames?

Can absolutely be done, but not sure if I'll have enough time for that.

[677ed96e73343eldrone]

...

[677ed96e7342bZylonBane]

Does Night Dive have an official stance yet on fans taking upgraded SS2EE assets and making them available for use in vanilla SS2?

[677ed96e73695eldrone]

Does Night Dive have an official stance yet on fans taking upgraded SS2EE assets and making them available for use in vanilla SS2?

Quite a bit not my area so can't really say anything about that, it's legal-zone. But I'd guess it's the distributing the files that'll be the problem.

But disregarding that, half of the stuff will be problematic to get to work in newdark, but absolutely possible, but once someone has this new version of the game there's really no big reason to move back to newdark, it's a much more optimized thing that supports anything newdark.