System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition Update & Community Participation

[67c915e429907JDoran]

Is there a recent preview video of the new System Shock 2, please?

[67c915e429c01Xkilljoy98]

While I do prefer "Enhanced Edition" over "25th Anniversary Remaster" I am at least happy it seems to be releasing this year. Apparently it's going to have the date announced next month. March 20th at GDC from what I've read. Also there is now a switch port coming out.

Besides 25 years after 1999 is 2024 right?

[67c915e429d6fZylonBane]

"System Shock 2 HD: Ultimate Enhanced 25th Anniversary Championship Remaster Platinum Edition Pro Alpha Plus Turbo DX: Nah Memories"

[67c915e429e4dWhyHelloThere]

Don't forget the "& Knuckles"

[67c915e42a27bsarge945]

Electric Boogaloo

[67c915e42a3c6voodoo47]

just rolls off your tongue.

[67c915e42a989ZylonBane]

Bunch of new screenshots and video clips dropped today on the Steam page.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/866570/System_Shock_2_25th_Anniversary_Remaster/

Enhanced model detail is looking good, but seems there's still that issue with desaturated colors.

That's gonna need fixing. There's a reason maintenance droids are painted Safety Yellow, not Bleh Brown.

[67c915e42b0c2voodoo47]

yeah, even the average joes on discord are noticing the colors are off.

[67c915e42bf51tiphares4]

ZylonBane
Nooo, i like it as it is depicted now! The original looked too yellow & cartoonish imo. It blends much more better into the gameworld now. Please leave them be.

This is so great!

The rest of the preview images as well! It seems there are even real time character damage models for the enemies as well oO! :

[67c915e42c2daZylonBane]

The original looked too yellow & cartoonish imo.

Your opinion is wrong.

Bright yellow-orange for potentially hazardous equipment is realistic, not cartoony. And SS2 is a colorful game, so a bright yellow robot never looked out of place.

Your thinking is how we ended up with the "Everything is shit-brown" era of FPS games.

[67c915e42c915tiphares4]

ZylonBane
:l

Photos of some bulldozers & other hazardous equipment on construction sites in broad daylight: notice how they are not in extreme bright yellow & some not even in yellow at all please.

[67c915e42d434tiphares4]

Your thinking is how we ended up with the "Everything is shit-brown" era of FPS games.

Noo, this can't be.. in fact i am even an almost 16 & 24 bit only console player (got a neo geo aes finally last year - saving money for games), or i play 1 or 2 bit games, like world of horror. System shock 2 is a rare exception :l

It is even a rather newish game for my circumstances.

[67c915e42d83cvoodoo47]

and the fun part is that it's perfectly possible to do hires textures without messing up the colors. so they are choosing to do this *cough cough* pixelated SSR textures *cough cough*..

[67c915e42e751sarge945]

I was talking with a professional video-game artist on RPGCodex (at least that's what they claimed, not sure I entirely believe them, but they did seem to understand the internals of the industry) and they seem completely unable, as a profession, to get colour right. The reasoning presented was that they are now trained from day-1 to mute the colours in modern games because all the post-processing effects and other junk will "bring out the highlights". They are also taught that there's no other way to do proper lighting and colour space work without dynamic lighting and bloom, and other false facts about games.

It's gotten so bad that when I suggested someone just make decent quality textures that look good on their own and not waste the time and processing power making ugly bloomy shaders, they thought I was insane. As if it's literally impossible to make something that looks good without slapping very extreme shaders over the top of it.

I feel like VG Artists, as a profession, have lost their way. I blame Unreal Engine personally, especially with how easy UE5 makes it to slap ugly-looking crap all over your screen, and how necessary it is because of how bad deferred rendering looks.

But here, in SS2, it's just literally brainrot taking over and making the colours worse for no reason, since there are no obnoxious UE5 shaders (or at least, I hope not)

[67c915e42eb09Chandlermaki]

Questionable color saturation aside, those new models all look GREAT. That new Rumbler especially.

[67c915e42edcbBrig]

In my opinion the worst part about the desaturated yellow is that gameplay wise, its gonna create a minor nuisance that didn't use to be there. The higher saturation gives the enemy better visibility, meaning that the player would subconsciously recognize it faster + it would be hard to miss from the corner of your eye (which makes actual "in-world" sense because its a piece of heavy duty machinery!)

[67c915e42f13dLivo]

Question about the Cyborg Assassin screenshot: the assault rifle seems to be held sideways. Is that a new animation whenever a weapon jams? Or a "changed firing mode" animation from the default one? As for the damaged protocol droid, I assume it's a nifty damage effect that all enemies can have now? Or is it a special "broken protocol droid" model that spawns from damaged containers?

The new models do indeed look great, especially the Cyborg Assassin, apart from the saturation: can model saturation be changed via the options, or is it a texture mod solution? Personally, I think having dots on the pistol sights (and other weapons) that "glow" in dark areas would be a simple but nice graphical feature, especially with Dark/Kex's lighting effects.

[67c915e42f80celdrone]

ZylonBane
I was hoping I'd earned your trust at this point!


They're slightly more construction yellow than the pure yellowgreen from before, but lighting has always affected the look of things in the game, like when I move it to a brighter lit area in the same map:

[67c915e430371Valet2]

Sorry, concerning all the effort you've made... but could realtime shadows be an option?

[67c915e432406ModdedInstall2]

While the desaturated colors are indeed an issue (I've always been the kind of guy who likes vibrant over mute shades, and it seems I'm not alone), I am very glad for the fact that most of the new models are incredible, and when paired with the enhanced VFX, System Shock 2 looks like it might actually be able to hold its own visually when compared with modern games, just with RTX off (thank goodness).

[67c915e4342dbZylonBane]

eldroneOkay that does look better, but still a bit muted compared to the original.

As long as we're nitpicking, I noticed that the lettering on this and some other models is shaded so it looks like it's been "punched" into the metal, which is somewhat odd. For this sort of thing you'd normally expect lettering to be applied with decals or paint, both for ease of maintenance and for not compromising the strength of the material. For droids and turrets, physically carving out letters is essentially damaging the armor.

[67c915e4370fcsarge945]

In my opinion the worst part about the desaturated yellow is that gameplay wise, its gonna create a minor nuisance that didn't use to be there. The higher saturation gives the enemy better visibility, meaning that the player would subconsciously recognize it faster + it would be hard to miss from the corner of your eye (which makes actual "in-world" sense because its a piece of heavy duty machinery!)

I know this is a common complaint whenever anything comes out with more muted colours, and in most cases it's right, but System Shock 2 is such a dark game, and relies so heavily on dark blues, blacks, dark browns, deep purples, and other "dark" colours for it's atmosphere, I don't think making a bright yellow bot slightly darker yellow is going to really make much of a difference for visibility.

[67c915e437c34ZylonBane]

The fundamental point is that there's no good reason to change the color at all. Maintenance bots aren't that color because of any technical limitation, Irrational made them that color because they wanted them to be that color.

[67c915e437e02sarge945]

Wasn't Irrational forced to use a pretty restricted color palette, as was the standard at the time?