Citadel - System Shock Fan Remake

[6742645ee6ee3Marvin]

I can only reiterate what I've already said on this topic several times: If it's nothing to you, do it. If you have to put in some work for it, don't bother. I wouldn't be following this project if I didn't trust you to pull it off with or without releasing demos.

[6742645ee70dcvoodoo47]

what he said.

[6742645ee72d6JosiahJack]

Safe! 

Was able to save a savegame and then move items around and load it.  No items fell out of the level due to being partway through the floor either!  After including rotation of course...it was raining goodies outside the station at first.  Intersecting colliders don't see each other and pass through.  I should probably add a Mathf.Approximate call to prevent those floating point errors from making a goodie fall through the floor on load.  0.1 annoyances and all.

Save game is a pipe delimited text file contained in streamingasstes so that players can share saved games, hack them, etc.

Code: [Select]

Format:

UniqueInstanceID|activeState|Transformx,y,z|Rotationx,y,z,w|Scalex,y,z

64538|True|0034.56708|0001.00300|etc.etc.numbernumber

[6742645ee74ecJosiahJack]

Considering keeping close to original Cyberspace, but adding more interest to the wireframe walls.  More interest than conway's game of life playing out on the grids.

As an engineer, I've been exposed to various systems in industrial settings that would fit in with the utilitarian, nitty gritty industrial portions of the station.  Behind those systems is a typical PLC ladder logic to robustly control mechanical functions.  I'm thinking of generating some animated ladder logic to replace some of the wireframe walls.

Example (colors need changed to match existing theme):
Image: http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/may97/ladder5.jpg

Before I go through the effort, do you think this would add interest or just clutter up cyberspace with seemingly useful data that players will waste time trying to decipher?

[6742645ee7669ZylonBane]

Electrical circuit diagrams in cyberspace would seem weirdly anachronistic. Abstract is the way to go, like Tron did.

[6742645ee7ccdRocketMan]

PLC ladder logic

Ohhh nooo....   
Thought Allen Bradley and Omron were only real till 5PM.


I don't think you can ever fail by replicating what is already familiar to us as SS1 cyberspace.  You could do something with the rendering, glowy edges or transparency effects or that animated light show on the walls... that would be "the same but better".  My personal hope anyway is that the basic design doesn't change too much.  I think there is much to be improved upon even without changing the aesthetic however.  The colour scheme could suddenly flip for example, when you unlock something or when an area is clear of enemies... just a thought that doesn't have to be taken literally.  Or you could have some little code prompt with a hex address when you enter a new area of memory (although I must admit I ripped that idea from Tron 2.0).  Basically there are ways to jazz up c-space without changing its familiar style.

I also wouldn't mind some of the unused c-space objects becoming usable as the designers intended.  Right now it's a bit sparse in c-space.

[6742645ee8027JosiahJack]

Ohhh nooo....   
Thought Allen Bradley and Omron were only real till 5PM.

Oh no, triop is a 3 shift company.  And we in-house our components.

So yeah, I think I'll keep the charm of original cyberspace.

[6742645ee8184JosiahJack]

Phew, saved games code is loooong.  It goes through each gameobject that needs to be saved and writes its relevant data in a pipe delimited file.  The special cases are where it gets lengthy.

Saving the player data such as inventory takes over 50 lines of code to get all the data, and about 12 of those lines are for loops that parse arrays of weaponAmmo, grenadeAmmo, hasLog[], etc.

Cool thing is, it lets me see how close this is getting.  Exciting stuff really.

Main things left are finishing animating and coding all the enemies and modeling some random useless objects.

[6742645ee8270JosiahJack]

Quite the flurry of code yesterday.  4 commits and 5311 lines of code added.  I'm a little burned out now though.

[6742645ee858eRocketMan]

Main things left are finishing animating and coding all the enemies...

CORTEX REAVERS 

[6742645ee8745JosiahJack]

Should I make the main menu accessible from the Pause Menu?  Or make a separate in-game menu like SS1 did?

In-game menu
Pros:
Authentic to original
Arguably a little more immersive (part of the Hud, but still pauses)
Settings saved for each player's savegame

Cons:
More work (yall are patient right, lol)
Redundant features to the main menu

Link To Main Menu:
Pros:
Less work
Already completed
Single location for all in-game options minimizes checking and confusion

Cons:
Global keybinds mean that different players always have to change their settings back on the same computer.
Takes player out of game, though temporarily


Other thoughts:
If I go the main menu only route, I can spruce it up so that graphics changes are obvious.  In-game menu wouldn't need any such extra indicators.  Per player settings could still be saved to each savegame file, though again, more redundancy and chance for confusion.  Also, then the game would need to remember the config from the last player who played.

[6742645ee8846voodoo47]

I wouldn't see the menus as something that needs to be as close to the original as possible, so whatever works and is less work if you ask me.

[6742645ee8962Marvin]

You could do something similar to Deus Ex or the first two Gothic games where the main menu is simply a mostly transparent window overlaid on top of shiny background graphics and the in-game menu is the same minus the backgrounds. So, best of both worlds - little programming effort (New Game would be greyed out in-game or turn into Continue, Exit would be converted to Return to Menu and so on), no new graphics, more immersion in-game.

[6742645ee8aadicemann]

Do it like the original. More authentic is always good.

[6742645ee8ba2JosiahJack]

Well, ask a room with 10 people, get 10 different answers.

Just means my sample size is too low.  Anyone else's thoughts?

[6742645ee8cdcJoin2]

Would say go with the authentic approach, but it's not terribly important in this case and since you already worked on the alternative you may as well stick with it.

[6742645ee8e22hemebond]

Main menu. "Authentic" isn't important.

[6742645ee9012Myagi]

Another vote for authentic not being important in this matter.

On the contrary, like modernizing for usability like mouse look and custom key binding, handling game settings in a more modern way is desirable IMHO. Game settings are typically not saved in savegames, and in some odd cases where they were (even if only partially) I found it annoying with no benefit. SS1 didn't exactly have a lot of configuration since there were no custom key bindings, so it could get away with it (but I remember finding it annoying even then).

If you worry about supporting multiple players using the same install through the same OS user, which will most likely be a tiny percentage of all installs, then I'd add some player profile feature to the game instead.

(In conclusion, even if there was a special in-game menu, I think that game settings should still not be saved in the savegames.)

[6742645ee90fbRocketMan]

While I certainly wouldn't complain if I got an authentic menu, I agree that designing it that way has diminishing returns.

[6742645ee954eJDoran]

Nope, all good.  Just had to hard reset the commits that had too large a file.  In other news, builds work great.  Technically this means I should release a demo.

Hmm...but enemies are no fun and highly unpolished.

Just seen this, and I have to agree with Marvin. We don't need a demo, as such, since we're already convinced of the final products quality, and we all know that we want to play it, so the only reasons left for releasing a demo are to give us an early taster, and to maybe get any early bug-reports or requests.

It's up to you, but as much as I'd like a demo, if it is going to impact on the release date, or give you much trouble, then I think most of us would rather wait for the finished product. It's not like you need to drum up publicity.

Regarding the menus, I'd say do whichever you feel is best. You're not making a 1:1 remake, or just a graphical update, so any changes which are for the better are quite welcome.

[6742645ee9688RocketMan]

I'm already stocking up on diapers for my first playthrough.  I'm stoked!

CORTEX REAVERS!!!11   

[6742645ee97e8JosiahJack]

Ok, no demo.  I don't want to pull a floppy disk flop only to release a CD version later that people ignore/overlook because the floppy version was incomplete.

But, an exclusive beta test may not be unheard of.  I need some people with linux, some people with macs newer than 05, and...I guess someone with a version of windows later than 7.

[6742645ee98c0Marvin]

I'm in for Linux.

[6742645ee9a23JML]

Same here. I'd be honoured to be a closed beta linux tester.