Dev Q&A with MAHK

[674274f08e312mahk]

Hi there.  I was a programmer at LookingGlass from 1992-2000.  I worked on UW2, Shock, Flight, Terra Nova, Thief, Shock 2.  Probably a few others I'm forgetting.

On a different thread someone asked if I would do a Q&A session.  Feel free to ask me your questions here, and I'll monitor this thread as time allows between now and Sunday 9/21.

[674274f08e6ddJoin2]

1. Why did yourself and the team come to the agreement that there should be no standard TTRPG-inspired RPG systems in SS1? The System Shock series pushed the hardest for simulation of the lot and the result was very effective, but I'd have loved TTRPG-inspired systems such as skills and attributes akin to SS2, which you even managed to add semi-convincingly in the game world in the form of cybernetic modules and rig upgrades. Sure, SS1 still had hardware and software upgrades but this was minimal. I get that you likely wanted to focus more on pure skill-based realistic action, but I love the result of combining first person real-time & RPG, especially with everything else that is unique to LG's design principles.
At the very least, minor weapon mods would have been awesome and wouldn't have to hinder simulation nor skill-based gameplay.

2. With Neurath forming Otherside and reviving Ultima Underworld, are there any plans for a System Shock 3 (even if not in name?) . There was rumours of Akane tackling that task but of course one must remain sceptical. Will we witness your true uncompromising talent again one day, only on modern engines, or have most of you moved on?
Of course, I'm not expecting a definite answer, but I'm pushing you for a withheld "It's a likely possibility" type of answer.

3. Do you personally still hold great passion for this type of game? It's difficult to love your own creation to a fanatical degree and experience it as the immersive, content-filled & extremely well-designed games they are, but at least you got to play each other's games that you had no dev role in, worlds which you could enter without knowing exactly what to expect.
You made exceptional experiences, and that's a lot coming from me because I am a fussy SOB.
You guys really understood the potential of design and it's amazing what you achieved even in the early 90s.
 

[674274f08e8aeZylonBane]

Sounds fun. Here's one--

In SS1's sprite sheets all the various corpses are drawn from 8 different angles, but the engine always just draws them from a single angle, no matter what direction you're looking at them from. Do you recall why this is?

[674274f08e9ccZylonBane]

And here's another--

Any thoughts on how the game's combat systems were balanced around the relatively slow, awkward movement system in SS1, and how the availability of the mouselook mod potentially unbalances it?

[674274f08ec61Kolya]

What influenced System Shock's story?

How far did you get with virtual headset support for SS1? Although I heard many times that it was implemented in System Shock the best info I could ever find was some remarks in a Terra Nova readme file.

In today's games the interface almost vanishes, often being integrated with the world in form of lootglint, object highlights, section titles, etc. In System Shock the game interface is a frontal assault on all channels. It not only takes up a large part of the screen, beeping and buzzing, it is complicated yet versatile and even gets expanded upon throughout the game. It can be overwhelming. Did you intend at the time to make System Shock's interface feel like controlling a very complicated machine?

Was SHODAN originally meant to have any gender? In the original log texts SHODAN is variously called he/she/it.

What do you think about cyberpunk these days?

A lot of the audiologs sound like normal office space bitching, transferred to a space station. Genius move as it makes it all so real! But where did that come from? Surely very few of you had ever worked in a regular office? 

[674274f08f079Marvin]

Sweet.

1) Can you explain why the Underworld series was ultimately abandoned in favor of other, sometimes risky projects such as Terra Nova and Dark Camelot/Thief? If the UW3 pitches would have been successful, what would UW3 have been about?

2) In a widely covered SS" postmortem article, Jon Chey both commended and lamented the fact that the Dark engine code Irrational worked with was never truly finished. Can you explain why that was, give your point of view?

3) LG pioneered the use of physics for object simulation which, at least to me, is one of the most charming aspects of those engines, especially in Thief and Thief 2. System Shock 2 is still the only game I can remember where it is actually possible to die by running into a wall at high speed. It'd be great if you could talk about all of that.

4) Lame but I can't resist: What are the most embarrassing bugs you encountered during programming, which where the hardest to track down?

... and most obvious:

5) Do you sometimes "pretend" to be a reclusive french-speaking genius programmer who releases fanpatches to well-liked video game classics every now and then on some obscure forum no one heard of two years ago?


One another note, thank you and everyone at LG, you made most of my absolute favourite games of all times, invented my favourite genre (immersive sim) and innovated more within the scope of one game than other companies do in their lifetime.

[674274f08f8e6mahk]

Why did yourself and the team come to the agreement that there should be no standard TTRPG-inspired RPG systems in SS1?

I won't speak for the whole team, but in UW2 I felt like we really struggled to surface all the stats and skills to the player in a meaningful way.  What did one more point in acrobatics get you?  For System Shock I think we really wanted to double down on the stuff that could be done in the 3D world, and have fewer behind-the-scenes numbers and die rolls.  Also, cutting the RPG elements was seen as a way to manage scope.  Shock was supposed to be a less ambitious project than Underworld. 

are there any plans for a System Shock 3 (even if not in name?)

A year or so ago I approached some contacts from EA about the possibility of licensing System Shock in order to kickstart a sequel.  It turns out that the IP is pretty legally entangled; EA owns some, and other entities might have pieces of it from the LookingGlass closure.  So getting all the IP in place would require a lot of legal research, even before the actual deal-making starts.  So a System Shock in name is not likely to happen.

That said, I do think there's room in the space of possibility for a reboot or redux of some kind, but I don't know of any plans to do so.  I'm pretty happy with my current gig doing R&D at Riot Games.

Do you personally still hold great passion for this type of game?

Well, I'm really excited about the new Underworld.  When I first heard about it I started picking Tim's brain for details.  (Can't share them, sorry).  But I like a lot of different kinds of games.  I'm working on a couple board game prototypes in my spare time.  If I had millions to work on whatever games I want, then yes I might do a shock-y open world action-rpg thing.  But I might also do a tablet strategy game.  Or something else.

In SS1's sprite sheets all the various corpses are drawn from 8 different angles, but the engine always just draws them from a single angle, no matter what direction you're looking at them from. Do you recall why this is?

Well, 8-view sprite sheets work best with objects tall, think, radially symmetric objects.  Supine bodies are very much not that.  I recall we had a conversation where we decided that the "popping" between views of the corpses was more weird looking than the alternative, especially when looking down. 

Any thoughts on how the game's combat systems were balanced around the relatively slow, awkward movement system in SS1, and how the availability of the mouselook mod potentially unbalances it?

Yeah, the mouselook makes it easier.  But if what you are looking for is an awesome tactical action shooter, then I would hope that the best example of that wouldn't be some 20-year-old game.  If you're going back to play Shock today, it's probably for something more than just a challenging combat game.  Sure, the difficulty feeds into the demand for resources which feeds into the tension, so it is a problem.  But if I had a friend who had never played Shock, I would probably encourage them to use the mouselook mod, maybe start on Combat difficulty 3. 

Maybe someone should make a difficulty mod.

What influenced System Shock's story?

Well, there are the usual cyberpunk suspects: Snow Crash, Neuromancer, Max Headroom.  Maybe Austin could chime in on this subject.
Also, there were some technical limitations.  We knew we didn't want to do conversation trees because we felt like those were unsatisfying and immersion-breaking, which is why you never meet any live humans.  Also, Origin wanted a floppy disk version, which limited what we could do with rich media.

How far did you get with virtual headset support for SS1? Although I heard many times that it was implemented in System Shock the best info I could ever find was some remarks in a Terra Nova readme file.

We had it at least at a demo stage.  I definitely remember playing shock in stereo 3D on a Forte headset.  It was pretty cool, although stereoscopic sprites gave it kind of a "viewmaster" feel. 

In today's games the interface almost vanishes, often being integrated with the world in form of lootglint, object highlights, section titles, etc. In System Shock the game interface is a frontal assault on all channels. It not only takes up a large part of the screen, beeping and buzzing, it is complicated yet versatile and even gets expanded upon throughout the game. It can be overwhelming. Did you intend at the time to make System Shock's interface feel like controlling a very complicated machine?

Well, we may have been influenced by our "cybernetically modified human" fiction.  I think there were a couple things going on in the UI.  First of all, if you look at UI of the time, there was a lot of emphasis on discoverability.  If you were making a word processor, then every possible function had to be findable on a menu somewhere, so you could learn all the features of the product just by exploring the menus.  Contrast that with iOS.  How do you terminate a running application on an iPad?  Double-click the home button, then pan to the app, then slide it off the screen (in iOS 7).  It's simple and elegant, but not exactly something you're likely to just figure out through experimentation. 

We were really worried that we would put some feature or control in the game and the user would never find it, and that would be the difference between liking the game and not.  That's why every freaking control in the game has an on-screen gadget.  But it turns out that we were just optimizing for the wrong thing; the users who never find a feature are users who never needed it in the first place. 

The other part of it is that there really weren't any other games out there where you could look up and down--in Doom, your eye is pinned to the horizontal plane--never mind crouch and lean.  So there really wasn't a good playbook for how to do that yet.

So, no, I don't think we were trying to make the interface feel like a complex machine, we were just trying to solve a really hard problem and came up with a suboptimal solution. 

Was SHODAN originally meant to have any gender? In the original log texts SHODAN is variously called he/she/it.

I don't think we really thought about gender. 

What do you think about cyberpunk these days?

Well, alot of it is kind of quaint now.  I re-read Snow Crash recently, and it felt pretty dated--except for the prescient Google Earth reference.  Everyone was supposed to want to live and work in cyberspace, but it turns out that we don't actually want an immersive 3D experience for browsing the web.  What we want are iPads. 

A lot of the audiologs sound like normal office space bitching, transferred to a space station. Genius move as it makes it all so real! But where did that come from? Surely very few of you had ever worked in a regular office? 

Dilbert

[674274f0909b8Join2]

Shock was supposed to be a less ambitious project than Underworld.

Interesting. Well given Underworld 1 was the primary innovator of design and the pioneer of tech in it's engine this is understandable, but you may have been referring to UW2? If so, why was SS less ambitious than UW2?

What did one more point in acrobatics get you? 

Well you didn't have to use the exact same system from Underworld (which I think could have used many improvements itself in general). :p

Well, I'm really excited about the new Underworld.  When I first heard about it I started picking Tim's brain for details.  (Can't share them, sorry).

Curses.

If I had millions to work on whatever games I want, then yes I might do a shock-y open world action-rpg thing

.

And I thought dreams were for rookies like myself...

Well, there are the usual cyberpunk suspects: Snow Crash, Neuromancer, Max Headroom. 

I'm currently reading Neuromancer. Not got far yet, very interesting so far. It's easy to see that you were inspired by great literature and had the idea that you could actually put players in these interesting worlds to play out their own story, to some degree. It goes without saying that this can now be achieved more effectively with more modern engines, so I am very excited for Underworld Ascension.

In the book store it (Neuromancer) was on the shelf next to Assassin's Creed and Halo novels...not to assume anything about the quality of said books, I just think it is interesting to point out, if maybe irrelevant. 

[674274f090f66mahk]

1) Can you explain why the Underworld series was ultimately abandoned in favor of other, sometimes risky projects such as Terra Nova and Dark Camelot/Thief? If the UW3 pitches would have been successful, what would UW3 have been about?

I don't really think that "abandoned" is the right word there.  First of all, Terra Nova was in development for a long time. I'm pretty sure it was started during Underworld 2, so it wasn't really viewed as a replacement for Underworld so much as a second franchise along for it. 

Thief was supposed to be the game whose profits would fund Underworld 3 or something like it.   In our minds, Underworld 3 was the risky project to do, because it was going to be huge in scope.  At the time we started the Dark Project, we were looking at ourselves and looking at Id and it was pretty clear that Id was kicking our butts on the bottom line.  We were looking for something closer to the Id model: something that was more about building out the next gen of tech and doing the simplest game that could use that tech.   But we didn't want to just do a shooter and dive into the red ocean alongside id.  We wanted our own angle.  Unfortunately it took us a really long time to find that angle, and by the time it was Thief it wasn't really a simple game anymore.   

Had LG survived, I think we probably would have tried to release Underworld 3 sometime around 2003, after Thief 3.  I imagine the game would have looked alot like an Elder Scrolls game, but in more of a LookingGlass style. 

2) In a widely covered SS" postmortem article, Jon Chey both commended and lamented the fact that the Dark engine code Irrational worked with was never truly finished. Can you explain why that was, give your point of view?

I don't think you're quite representing what he said accurately.  The point was not that it wasn't "truly finished." (Unreal and Unity aren't truly finished, they keep adding and fixing stuff.)  The point was that our working relationship was such that we wanted them to be on the latest engine code at all times; they didn't have the luxury of saying "Ok, LG, we're going to just freeze our version of the engine and place and go with that."  We just didn't have the bandwidth to support that kind of version skew.  Plus, we had a culture of constant integration.  If you changed some code, everyone took your change immediately.  This gave the Shock 2 team a lot of ability to shape the engine, but also caused them some chaos.

3) LG pioneered the use of physics for object simulation which, at least to me, is one of the most charming aspects of those engines, especially in Thief and Thief 2. System Shock 2 is still the only game I can remember where it is actually possible to die by running into a wall at high speed. It'd be great if you could talk about all of that.

I think this came from our desire for our games to be immersive sims with rich emergent gameplay.  Physics was just an obvious way to get that. 

4) Lame but I can't resist: What are the most embarrassing bugs you encountered during programming, which were the hardest to track down?

In shock I remember there was an epic race condition between the physics system and the mouse interrupt handler or something, and I had to find it by incrementally commenting out physics code until it didn't manifest.

The most memorable shock bug for me was the "interpretive dance bug" where the save game UI didn't grab keyboard focus so as you typed in your save game name your character would jerk around because those keystrokes would operate as movement controls.

There were lots of funny Thief bugs.  Probably the most memorable was the one where dead guards would see their own corpse and call for help. 
 

5) Do you sometimes "pretend" to be a reclusive french-speaking genius programmer who releases fanpatches to well-liked video game classics every now and then on some obscure forum no one heard of two years ago?

I'm not actually sure what this is in reference to, but I'm not going to even pretend to "pretend."  I have to say that the fan patches to shock are awesome.  The fact that you can play the game today because there are fans dedicated enough to keep the fire burning for 20 years is deeply humbling.  You guys kick ass. 

[674274f0915f2Carrot]

I'm not actually sure what this is in reference to, but I'm not going to even pretend to "pretend."  I have to say that the fan patches to shock are awesome.  The fact that you can play the game today because there are fans dedicated enough to keep the fire burning for 20 years is deeply humbling.  You guys kick ass. 

Guessing you might already know, but incase you don't: he's referencing NewDark

[674274f09177dNdrake]

In System Shock 2 the fact that weapons degrade greatly adds to the atmosphere of constant pressure and danger..

Was it also a conscious decision to make the guns "feel" clunky and unreliable instead of cool and "satisfying*"?
Or, in other words was making weapon models and sounds appealing to the player a concern during the development?

Personally I love that a gun in Shock 2 is basically an unreliable piece of s**t that my life just happens to depend upon.

(*hate that word in this context, but that's how gamers talk about it.)

[674274f091da9Marvin]

[...] Had LG survived, I think we probably would have tried to release Underworld 3 sometime around 2003, after Thief 3.  I imagine the game would have looked alot like an Elder Scrolls game, but in more of a LookingGlass style. 

Very interesting, that indeed sounds ambitious. Would have loved to see that happen.

There were lots of funny Thief bugs.  Probably the most memorable was the one where dead guards would see their own corpse and call for help. 

He, nice one.
 

I'm not actually sure what this is in reference to, but I'm not going to even pretend to "pretend."  I have to say that the fan patches to shock are awesome.  The fact that you can play the game today because there are fans dedicated enough to keep the fire burning for 20 years is deeply humbling.  You guys kick ass. 

I cannot take any credit for that since I'm not a contributor but thanks, same goes to you.

[674274f091eb8OmegaDEATH]

Firstly thanks for doing this and taking the time.

-SS1's engine was a raycaster right?

-During development on ss2 did you guys ever end up with code that was too cpu hungry?
-if so, what was it for?

[674274f0920aaDenhonator]

Did you already have continuation for the story, as SS2 leaves it quite open? Can you explain how presumably SHODAN could actually appear in some form after the hacker (at least should have) destroyed her, or am I missing something here?. In case you possibly have some, let's say, another way to reveal more about the story, or otherwise can't tell, I understand

System Shock 2 is my all time favorite game. I just want to thank you for all your hard work!

[674274f092424unn_atropos]

1.) System Shock 2: Ken Levine has stated that the ending cinematic didn't turned out as it was planned. Do you know what was supposed to happen in this cutscene originally?

2.) I've read that the von Braun was supposed to have a lot more decks (about 16). Were some of them actually built but eventually scrapped? Could you give us some insight about the mission that was supposed to take place on the outer hull? What's up with the strange rooms on hydroponics (a bridge over a pont, security cameras guarding a room with nothing in it)

3.) System Shock 1: Was the Cyborg drone inspired by cpt. Picard as Locutus?

4.) Do you have any cool stuff left from System Shock 1/2 and the other games you worked on. Like unstripped maps, artworks, scripts etc.?

5.) Your opinion about the monkeys?

[674274f0927d6ZylonBane]

2.) I've read that the von Braun was supposed to have a lot more decks (about 16).

Where did you read that? I've never heard that before. And, the number of decks supported in ShockEd is exactly the number of decks we ended up with.


MAHK, how about the PDA games? There's a great quote from Warren Spector somewhere about how freaked out he was that people were wasting time writing these minigames for SS1. By the time of SS2 I guess you guys felt like it was something you had to do as part of the Shock tradition? It's interesting to get into the editor and enable the unfinished minigames, like the Donkey Kong and Tempest clones. And Overworld Zero genuinely impressed me. If that had been released back in the early 8-bit days it could have been considered a full commercial game.


And then there's System Shock 2 Gold, which barely any information has ever been released about. Supposedly it was going to include a side mission where you played as Delacroix, or something like that. I'm guessing it didn't get much beyond initial planning.

[674274f092989Marvin]

Thought of a couple more ...

1) How did the SS1 cyberspace come about and what were the reasons, besides time restrictions, that it was changed so drastically in the sequel? Can you share some rejected ideas? If you could change the implementations in both games, what would you do (if you wanted to)?

2) During the years, fans have invented some pretty interesting and difficult playstyles for LG games such as PSI-only in Shock 2 or supreme ghosting in Thief. To what degree did the team take care of designing around these? Did you get a lot of strange ideas from the QA department or was this a conscious choice from the beginning?

3) As you mentioned id Software, how were you influenced by them, other than on a technical level? System Shock was years ahead of its time but lost commercially to its contemporary "simpler" ego shooters. Did you guys ever wanted to, or were you ever pressured into sacrificing elements of the game in order to cater to pure shooter fans?

[674274f092b6avoodoo47]

speaking of stuff that got left out, Rickenbacker has a lot of unfinished rooms and other things - looks like Rick levels were originally planned to be much more complex (a good part of the Rick1 level is already built, but empty and sealed off, Rick2 looks like something that has been thrown in at the very last moment, Rick3 is set up to play a non existent animation/cutscene displaying the giant worm wrapping around the ships, maybe more). same goes for Body of the Many - I imagine having to go damage some vital organs before being let into the brain chamber would be much more fun than jumping around giant teeth.

[674274f0931beJoin2]

3) As you mentioned id Software, how were you influenced by them, other than on a technical level? System Shock was years ahead of its time but lost commercially to its contemporary "simpler" ego shooters. Did you guys ever wanted to, or were you ever pressured into sacrificing elements of the game in order to cater to pure shooter fans?

No compromise. They went down with honour. It wasn't until LG fell, and Invisible War & Bioshock happened that they clearly gave up that fight, not that I blame them for doing so. What the fuck was going on in that 10 year time frame for gamers not to have embraced LG, marketing be damned, I'll never know.
However, Thief seems to have been an attempt for something much simpler yet still innovative and sticking to the core principles of the Immersive Sim. Perhaps not coincidentally it seems to have to biggest fan base of the LG Im Sims. EDIT: MAHK already mentioned Thief and it's narrower scope above, missed it somehow.

But hey, this is just my perspective on this, it's likely not entirely accurate and I wasn't even a teenager back then. I guess that's part of the problem: half the gaming audience are children, LG games are complex & mature.
Anyway, it seems as though they never compromised thier vision. When it was business, it was business (Destruction Derby port to the N64 for example), when it was LG time, nothing was going to interfere with their vision (Shock 2, Underworld etc). At least this is how it seemed to me. Just look at the gamepig thing ZB was talking about for example.

I imagine having to go damage some vital organs before being let into the brain chamber would be much more fun than jumping around giant teeth.

 

Shhh you, the teeth is a lovely platforming challenge...though just a touch more platforming earlier in the game would have prepared platforming-shy players for it is perhaps a valid criticism.

[674274f093452ZylonBane]

speaking of stuff that got left out, Rickenbacker has a lot of unfinished rooms and other things

Yeah, the main unused areas are the empty nacelle (pretty much just a mirrored clone of the populated nacelle), and a large forward area surrounding the torpedo launch "puzzle". I've always assumed launching the radiation-spewing torpedo was originally planned to be more complicated than just pushing a button.

[674274f09355cvoodoo47]

very likely - I think I also saw references to some nonexistent Rick quests somewhere in the resources.


also, any idea what piles of disgusting worms are supposed to be?

[674274f09374bZylonBane]

also, any idea what piles of disgusting worms are supposed to be?

What do you mean? They're piles of disgusting worms. That's what they are.

[674274f09385cJoin2]

I think he perhaps means why are they hazardous to touch, and used as ammunition in exotic weaponry?
We are given backstory to nearly every Many monster type, the worms seem to be exempt from the details if I am not mistaken.
Perhaps they are just the larvae of the bigger annelid worms...

[674274f093980voodoo47]

exactly, no backstory anywhere.

I was thinking maybe there was some deeper meaning to them, not just "let's throw in weird wormy puddles that toxify the player when he steps on them, and oh you can also eat them to gain health when proper implant is equipped, and with a right weapon, fire them as explosive organic rockets at your enemies as well". I mean, you don't just put something like that into a game unless there is some deeper meaning, now do you?