Dev Q&A with MAHK

[6742bd211436ficemann]

One question:

Were there originally any plans for possible expansion packs for either SS1 or SS2? Or for enhanced versions, much like how Thief 1 later got the gold edition etc.

[6742bd21145b4Join2]

Who was/is a fan of techno + jungle/drum & bass? In Shock 2 decks 1-5 have a track each consisting of these genres. Great tracks indeed, and suit the game perfectly. However, there had to be someone on the team that liked these genres of music for them to be in the game regardless of how "suitable" they were, unless Irrational/LGS were just pandering to the tastes of people of the times, which I highly doubt.
Imagining Shock 2 being released today with a soundtrack half-consisting of dubstep, the thought is saddening. Though of course I'm open to the possibility of dubstep tracks actually having rhythm, consistency and class, it does happen very rarely.

[6742bd2114a83Valet2]

Who was/is a fan of techno + jungle/drum & bass? In Shock 2 decks 1-5 have a track each consisting of these genres. Great tracks indeed, and suit the game perfectly. However, there had to be someone on the team that liked these genres of music for them to be in the game regardless of how "suitable" they were, unless Irrational/LGS were just pandering to the tastes of people of the times, which I highly doubt.

Here's the story behind the soundtrack of SS2 told by the composer himself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrIhMlPbhqk

[6742bd2114ba3icemann]

I absolutely love the majority of the tracks in SS2. Medsci (both tracks), Recreation and Hydro 2, being my all time favorites.

[6742bd2114f18WhyNott]

It's a nasty grenade launcher that pretty much one-shots the player. See attached map file.

Okay, this is pretty much the first time ever when I see a "custom" SS1 map. It feels kinda weird TBH. Is that some leftover from develpoment that you had lying somewhere on your computer, or do you still have an actual working level editor?

[6742bd2115079hank morgan]

Nothing that advanced. I have a repacking tool for creating decompressed System Shock archive files. I just hacked in some lines to that code that rewrote the bytes for a specific section of the tile-map to change the tile type of a bunch of tiles on Med-Sci to open tiles. Then I just found the byte offset of a certain med-bot from my ascii dump and just changed it's class to a Cortex Reaver.

Thanks for asking the question. I forgot to remove those lines in my last public commit.

[6742bd211515cWhyNott]

Thanks for answering! Although I'm slightly dissapointed

[6742bd2115252Koshirro]

I assume Robb Waters was responsible for this but do you know if there was any HR Giger influence in her look? Bridge level was definitely influenced by the Alien movies though

[6742bd21153d3ToxicFrog]

So I've noticed that some of the maps have items -- tangible items, not just triggers -- embedded in the walls, e.g. the Earthshaker on Deck R.

Why stuff things into the walls when most levels have a blueroom? Conversely, since you can put things in the walls, why bother with a blueroom at all when you can just leave things floating in the void?

[6742bd211553bhank morgan]

Those are usually control points for defining the rectangular area affected by the dynamic lighting system.  The object id on those objects usually match up with the trigger references. Usually a null trigger is used for the control points but there are occasionally cases such as the one you've mentioned.

Here's a pointless tid-bit. On medical  leave the hospital bay through the 451 door. Look at the wall to your left. Now go down the small elevator to the southern wing to where there is a light switch near the maintenance bot. Turn it on and go back and look at the wall. It lights up on that side because the trigger for one of it's control points is on that side of the wall.

[6742bd211568eMako]

I don't know if the Shock devs are still reading this thread, but: Do any of you remember Marathon? It was released just a couple months after SS1 (Dec 1994 vs Sep 1994). People sometimes compare the two even though they're quite different gameplay-wise, with Marathon more closely resembling, say, BioShock.

[6742bd211587dKolya]

I played Marathon years ago. I don't know if it was via emulation (as it's a mac game originally) or if the Marathon open source port to the Aleph One engine was already around. The fact that it wasn't available on PC at the time probably played a role in it never getting as much attention as System Shock. Also being more of a shooter, albeit with an intricate storyline, it didn't age so well in my opinion.

Funny enough, since you're making the Bioshock comparison, Marathon has a third part, named Infinity.

[6742bd21159d9voodoo47]

checked the first game and it looks interesting, but lacks the one thing I require from a decent port - non atrocious mouselook.

[6742bd2115d07ToxicFrog]

checked the first game and it looks interesting, but lacks the one thing I require from a decent port - non atrocious mouselook.

I love Marathon; Marathon 2, in particular, is fantastic and the writing and level design still hold up well today. Unfortunately, as you say, Aleph One is kind of garbage. You can get the mouselook be slightly less terrible by fiddling around with the sensitivity settings a lot, but it's never going to feel as tight as, say, gzDoom.

The lead A1 devs are openly hostile to the idea of fixing this (it keeps the filthy casuals out, you see), so it's not going to get better until someone shows up with the time and knowledge to tear out and replace most of A1's input handling code (a non-trivial task on its own) and the willingness to fork A1 and maintain that fork.

[6742bd2115e96voodoo47]

if they are unable to find a good balance between old and new, they are indeed keeping the games out of reach of the general public, dooming them to obscurity, and failing as preservers of history and art. you are nothing if you can't get Joe the Gamer to put down the game controller, turn off call of duty XIII and marvel at the old, but still shiny and awesome.

arguing that bad controls are an inseparable part of the game is just as stupid as saying that the only way of truly appreciating the Epic of Gilgamesh is to learn Sumerian and read it from the original stone tablets.

[6742bd2116025ToxicFrog]

Oh, it's not that they can't. It's that they don't want to. Keeping it like this, you see, means that it's "true to the original vision" (never mind that this is total bullshit, since they've added or changed other things), and also means that only true fans will bother to play. Call of Duty players? They explicitly don't want them playing Marathon.

The development history of Aleph One is actually pretty depressing. In the initial months after the M2 source code release you can see all kinds of cool proof of concept stuff being posted. Then the project gets effectively hijacked by these terrible grognards with more time and energy than everyone else, and the rest of the developers gradually lose interest as they realize how much of an uphill battle it'll be to get any substantive improvements implemented.

[6742bd21161favoodoo47]

yeah, I get it, that's why I'm saying it's stupid. also, these old classics, no matter how good they might be, are still just pieces of software, with bugs, mistakes, and unfinished or flawed functionality - if you want to keep them alive, you need to fix those problems up so the games will be compatible with current hardware, software, and control systems, because they will only stay alive if they have people playing them.

and why wouldn't you want to have the call of duty Joes have a taste of the good old stuff? is something wrong with showing them that the world of gaming is not just regenerating health and infinite ammo crates? sure, not everybody will like the old craziness, but many will - I was genuinely surprised how well was SS2 received by young gamers after the GOG/steam release, the "game is hard and stupid, I hate it" topics are almost non-existent. and we are talking about today's teenagers, the "unworthy" generation. naah - anyone who plays, and has a good time, is worthy.

if the A1 devs can't see this, then they have failed.

[6742bd211639aToxicFrog]

You are preaching to the choir, my friend.

If I had the free time to work on it and if I didn't find C/++ OpenGL programming completely soul-crushing I would fork it myself.

[6742bd21166afuolmir]

checked the first game and it looks interesting, but lacks the one thing I require from a decent port - non atrocious mouselook.

Hmm... That's funny. I played through the whole Marathon series a year or so ago on Aleph One and I don't remember the mouselook being notably bad. Maybe I've got a higher pain tolerance for that sort of stuff. Regardless, those games are worth some amount of pain to try out because the story is exceptional. They are shooters through and through, however. I played most of it on normal difficulty, but I don't have the twitchy chops to hack anything higher than that (and I had to turn it down to manage a few of the major fights).

[6742bd2116805voodoo47]

it's so bad that it's actually easier (and more precise) to aim via strafing. so yeah, atrocious is pretty accurate.

I have been an avid mouselook user from the very early days, using modified dos mouse drivers to get decent mouse controls for such old games as the original Doom and Wolfenstein, so, as already mentioned, unless the (fps) game can be coerced into usable mouselook, it's a no go for me.

[6742bd2116bb2Mako]

Hmm... That's funny. I played through the whole Marathon series a year or so ago on Aleph One and I don't remember the mouselook being notably bad. Maybe I've got a higher pain tolerance for that sort of stuff.

Nah, these guys are right. The horizontal sensitivity setting is all kinds of messed up. There's a very small "sweet spot" (for me, it's a bit left of center) where you should find it easy to adapt to what it gives you. Anything higher will spin you around fast enough to puke, and anything lower will be so slow it gets you killed. Changing the FOV may also be necessary, because the original camera geometry took the HUD into account, whereas Aleph One renders it as an overlay. But you'll need an MML script to fix that.

[6742bd21170d9icemann]

Whilst nowadays I swear by mouselook, I was an AVID keyboard FPS player up until Quake 1 came out. After that I was converted forever. Still don't mind alittle Wolf3D with pure keyboard style play, also with Heretic.

I remember playing AlephOne ages ago. Be more than 6 years ago. Seemed ok. It's no System Shock, and lacks that spark, but it seemed alright. I only played a few levels before losing interest.

yeah, I get it, that's why I'm saying it's stupid. also, these old classics, no matter how good they might be, are still just pieces of software, with bugs, mistakes, and unfinished or flawed functionality - if you want to keep them alive, you need to fix those problems up so the games will be compatible with current hardware, software, and control systems, because they will only stay alive if they have people playing them.

and why wouldn't you want to have the call of duty Joes have a taste of the good old stuff? is something wrong with showing them that the world of gaming is not just regenerating health and infinite ammo crates? sure, not everybody will like the old craziness, but many will - I was genuinely surprised how well was SS2 received by young gamers after the GOG/steam release, the "game is hard and stupid, I hate it" topics are almost non-existent. and we are talking about today's teenagers, the "unworthy" generation. naah - anyone who plays, and has a good time, is worthy.

As to the above quoted stuff: This is where the Doom source ports succeeded where it appears others for other games have failed miserably. They have, over the years added in some truly awesome stuff that has been to the betterment of the Doom community, and later expanding to include other games that use the same engine (Heretic, Hexen and Strife). That plus added in scripting + allowing for floors above floors which wasn't possible in the original engine. I just absolutely LOVE what has been done (with zdoom in particular) as it has kept the community alive and in particularly the modding / level editing community, which for a game of its age is just fantastic.

A shining example of a community keeping the spirit of a game alive.

It's a shame that the same can't be done for SS2. If there were source ports for that, I think it would result in some great stuff.

[6742bd211759dJoin2]

allowing for floors above floors which wasn't possible in the original engine.

As far as I am aware this is still not possible. I fiddled a little with Doom mapping recently and of all the WADs I've played I have not seen anything of the sort either, but I could be wrong as I am not dedicated to that community/game.

[6742bd2117691OmegaDEATH]

The maps are 2D
The render is 3D.