Citadel - System Shock Fan Remake

[6743cb16304ceJosiahJack]

Yeah...I had missed a null check for the Hopper and had accidentally left the Pause on Error enabled.....the anticipation is tense though lol

[6743cb163062fZylonBane]

Ah, the rare Boss Autobomb.

[6743cb1630767hemebond]

 

[6743cb163085aJosiahJack]

No work all next week for me now.  You know what this might mean right!   

[6743cb1630d52RocketMan]

No work all next week for me now.  You know what this might mean right!   

I'll finally get the nude patch I requested?

[6743cb1630eedJML]

Hopefully it's not pixelated!

[6743cb1630fd8JosiahJack]

Oh my people.  just no

[6743cb16310f1JosiahJack]

I'm up to level 6 on testing the critical path.  For every minute of playtesting I found about 1 bug...usually simple crap like light switches not working and such.  Gettin er knocked out!


Also, kind of humbling to think that with every bug fixed, even just typos, Citadel becomes yet again the System Shock remake project with the most progress.  Afaik anyway

[6743cb163125aicemann]

Not wrong.

Though much of NDS's remake progress is behind the curtain / not shown to the backers, which I don't like one bit. Only game I've backed which has taken that choice in approach.

Now sure they show a lot of concept art, but not much in the way of in-game content.

[6743cb1631378JosiahJack]

Said no one ever

[6743cb16314baRocketMan]

Sounds like that car commercial:

"I just love trecherous winter driving.  The danger, the uncertainty... it makes me feel so alive!"  -  said no one ever.

... at which point I shouted at the radio in protest because that's exactly how I feel and they didn't fucking ask me!

[6743cb1631623voodoo47]

I've actually had it happen a few times when writing some (fairly complex) dml code. it always confuses the hell out of me - "it works? that can't be right, need to triple check. it does. wow".

[6743cb16317adJosiahJack]

I've had those moments.

Said everyone who's ever programmed.


Fixed a ton more bugs.  I keep playing, logging bugs as I go until I get to a point where there's a gamebreaking bug or can't continue because of a bug.  Then I sort my list into bugs that are important, fix those, squeeze in a few super easy noncritical bugs until my wall of text that was my bug list is a mere paragraph.  Lather rinse repeat.  Gets a bit discouraging when I fimish a test session and have over 100 bugs in my list.  Then after a quick sort I realize only a handful are critical.  Still it's a brutal cycle.

Also, vmail is working now...oh so satisfying.

[6743cb163198cJosiahJack]

Hrmmm....quick poll.  Have a balance/improvement question/suggestion...

Energy adjustment on energy weapons...keep?
Or change to 3 settings only: Low, Normal, Overload, and scale linearly to have same energy/damage ratio?
Or just a normal and overload? ("But then I can't vaporize my corpses on low!" What does this look like Viscera Cleanup Detail?)

For Keeping slider
Pros:
Authentic
Adds depth
Able to fine balance energy consumption along with hardware
You keep from overheating (or as quickly)

Cons:
The lowest settings scale the damage to worse than dartgun (for sparq at least)
The energy usage per damage dealt is good on high setting and terrible on low setting....you waste energy using low setting to do the same damage.
Most players set it just the once ever to max anyways so having the slider present just adds to the overdraw and draw calls a little as a performance hit.


Also, I'm having a hair-pulling-out bug where I can't keep the weapon from firing while dragging the slider and still be ablt to click and drag the slider...probably have to handcode my own slider instead of using Unity's UnityEngine.UI.Slider class.  So just having normal UI buttons would be nice and save me some time.

[6743cb1631af9JosiahJack]

 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KD3KzDB_IM

[6743cb1631ce7RocketMan]

I vote to keep the slider.  There's so much this project is doing right that ND is not.  To have it drift here and then there, it stacks up and eventually detracts from the look and feel of the game.  My novice programming skills tell me that a slider bar isn't a big deal to code and the performance hit should not devastate anybody's machines nowadays so why not.  The energy inefficiency is one of those quirky things I like about the game, like the riot gun.  The fact that not EVERYTHING in the game has a precise use for beating the game is more realistic and immersive, not less.  The fact that people set it to high is fine.  It just means they are not stupid.  But having a high only setting is breaking the 4th wall or whatever because it tells the player that the programmers knew it'd be useless to adjust the power levels.  Good to have useless features in a game once in a while.

EDIT:  Also LOL Diego took off like a rocket ship and the hopper spent most of its time infighting like a Doom Imp

[6743cb1632168JosiahJack]

There's so much this project is doing right that ND is not.

Seal of approval right there.  Thanks!


Testing progress is now past the groves and up until the point where you have to go fix the relay....and the elevator buttons for both elevators on Level 6 aren't working.  There's not much else left on the critical path actually.  After I get the grove jettisoning mission knocked out with it's multilevel sprawl and backtracking (so much testing time even on noclip!), there's not much left in terms of complex logic.  Then I just have to fix this long long list of minor bugs and cosmetic fixes (like flying diegos).

I'll keep the slider

[6743cb1632271JosiahJack]

Testing complete through level 7.

[6743cb16323c5JosiahJack]

Now off from work until 5/4/2020.  On level 9 testing.  Got some weird bugs with puzzles, triggers, and UI...also corpses sometimes ghost through the floor and fall out of the level.  Seem to be the only critical bugs atm along with the veritable hoard of annoying but not critical bugs.


  Aargh no wonder the force doors on lev 9 didn't open.  I forgot to give them targetnames. 

[6743cb1632561JosiahJack]

Who wants a buggy test build??

Seriously though.  I need guinea pigs to run through and break and find things and give harsh feedback.  While the current state of affairs isn't exactly polished yet of course, I think it's at the point where it more or less works.  I think.  Maybe.  At least the main sequence works.

I don't want to give a bad first impression though even if it's just to the handful of test players who've messaged saying they'll be my test subjects.  What do you guys think?  Give it another week of polish first?  Or send out an as is test build.  Please note that saving is not yet fully working so I don't expect it to be enjoyable if you die.

[6743cb16328a6dertseha]

What's your expectation for this test stage? I'm asking both about effort and level of detail.
You write "break things and give harsh feedback". I interpret this can range from "this tile makes you fall through the floor - that's bad" to "I don't like the color of the laser the camera emits - unplayable!"

I am considering to help out, though my time budget is limited. I'm thinking 1-3 hours per week.

[6743cb1632a69JosiahJack]

As detailed as you want to be.  While it'd be great if you pointed out tiny little nitpicky bits like texture misaligned by 1 pixel, or when you pickup the isolinear chipset then try to pick up any other object it gives you a paper wad instead (known bug actually), and those are nice, I'm fine if you only report back the more broad items like the such n such lift doesn't move, or flipping the switch here or here activates the thing but not the vox message or the message but not the thing.

Also, 20 or 30min here or there is helpful.  Any bit of help.

Cheats:
Press `   to open console (tilda)
Type the following as desired
noclip (fly and also they can't see you, c swims up, v swims down)
notarget (just can't see you)
god (no damage)
ifeelthepower (no energy usage)
iamshodan (no locks or security blocks, careful, tends to break logic sequences that rely on certain things to be locked)
bottomlessclip (what it says on the tin)
There are others and the cheats are super forgiving if e.g. you have caps lock on.

[6743cb1632b8bJosiahJack]

Found some gamebreaking bugs.  Basically the elevator buttons don't work on level 5 and you get stuck there.  I'll get this fixed before sending out a build.  On the good news, I played for like 2hrs before finding anything.

[6743cb1632c7bJML]

It might be that you are blind to your own mistakes, but 2 hours is impressive!