Citadel - System Shock Fan Remake

[67416c8389ae8JosiahJack]

I had some work issues so it will be a little bit yet until I can send out test builds.

[67416c8389cc1JosiahJack]

On my vacation as a ridealong, in laws insist on driving which is fine by me thumbsup .
The laptop I'm using is a potato though.  Miss my old one that died.  Horribly slow but the game does run alright at 20+fps at 800x600.

Was able to playtest for a few hours, found some more bugs and oversights.  Also discovered some odd poor performance areas so that's a plus to playtesting on a potato though it is rather painful that these things that were like 0.2s hiccups on my main PC are now 30 to 60s hang ups.  I think I can make a temporary downgraded quality build to make playtesting faster on this thing.  If I can get it to make a build at all.  Makes Nebraska not boring though.

[67416c8389e96Hardkern]

My laptops battery just dies after 10 minutes. If the manufacturer is to be believed, it used to hold up to 16h of charge. 

If you need any help compiling builds, I could compile some for you.

[67416c838a009JosiahJack]

Well...I'm not able to even make and test changes in the editor so it would be a shot in the dark.  Last year this laptop worked, albeit like molasses, but the project has grown to the point that this potato can't handle the memory load.  Or at least, windows 10 *thinks* it can't handle the memory load and pegs it at 100% disk usage from trying to use the pagefile all the time.  Which is stupid because it's only using 200MB of RAM and still has 1gb ram free.  I hate you microsoft.

Thanks for offering though.  I'll probably just resign myself to waiting until I can return to my main rig.

[67416c838a727RoSoDude]

Only have the automap to finish now as far as actual items to work on.  The rest is only bugfixing now.

I made it such that the mission timer on difficulty 3 changes depending on what part of the game you are at.  You only have so much time before the laser fires, then it resets when you destroy the laser and you only have so much time before the download is complete, then only so much time before the station is in range of earth for the bridge antenna relay to reach it (reason for self destruct), then only so much time until the bridge separates, then finally only so much time before the biotoxin is released.  This last one I made up...basically all other timer failures are gameover to menu but once you make it to the bridge SHODAN releases a biotoxin after the timer expires and all areas are contaminated plus harder to see.  If you have enough health items you might still be able to finish if you are fast.

I'm debating whether to tie cyberspace access on the bridge into the neural network of the elite guards requiring you to kill them before you can enter cyberspace.  It would hamper speedrunners, but would make more sense, at least on mission difficulties 2 and 3.

Edit: Note that the bridge's antenna doesnpt have enough power once the bridge is separated from the main reactor so that is why that timer can be reset for the next section.  I dunno, I'm trying to make the times make sense.

Individual timers is a good idea to give players feedback on their progress on each objective, but if they're totally separate and reset between each objective, the player is encouraged to spend any time they have remaining to explore and set up the next objective, which defeats much of the pressure that makes Mission difficulty 3 such a tense, deep, and cohesive experience. Instead, you should have each objective timer running simultaneously from the start (keep it 7 hours for the final objective!), and simply display the next one when the player completes each objective. That way, you still have feedback and a release valve on tension, but retain player incentives to efficiently explore, eliminate threats, and circumvent SHODAN's plans. It also makes sense in the world, because SHODAN is never resting and always working on contingency plans in the background to one-up the Hacker.

Suggested structure (could tweak this):
Must destroy laser before 3:00 hours
Must eject beta grove before 4:00 hours
Must stop satellite transmission before 5:00 hours
Must self-destruct station before 6:00 hours
Must destroy SHODAN before 7:00 hours

[67416c838a8a1JosiahJack]

"Did you fall off a cliff in Utah, Josiah?" -What people might be thinking

I'm still here.  Apparently I broke the save system when I fixed other gamebreaking bugs.  Attempting to wrangle the system back into cooperation.  It did help to notice a few other oversights though.

I thought I had it all fixed this weekend until I tested inter-level loading and all the enemies fell out of the level and died.  I might need to freeze gravity for a few frames during load.

I'm so ready for this to work and get it out to you guys for others to test.
I need a Citadel break.

[67416c838abbbKolya]

I might need to freeze gravity for a few frames during load.

Speed-Runners: taking notes

[67416c838accdJosiahJack]

I might have figured it out.  I was assuming certain things were being initialized that weren't.

[67416c838b054JDoran]

I might have figured it out.  I was assuming certain things were being initialized that weren't.

I only found out the other day that you had worked on Duke Nukem: Forever, and have been the lead programmer on Half-Life 3 for the past twelve years...



And now you're going to insert the line:

If user profile = 'JDoran' then format hard drive

into Citadel's main menu code 

[67416c838b16cJosiahJack]

Uhhhh...wut?
No to all the above.

Random.

[67416c838b278Hardkern]

Wait, so you haven't worked on Half Live 3? Like at all?
Do you know how long I've been waiting for that game?

Better start working now!

[67416c838b37aJosiahJack]

Lol.  I can can only attest to Valve's inability to use 3's...sadly.

[67416c838b528JosiahJack]

Ok, I only have one missing collider to add in cyberspace, fix magpulse not damaging anything, and then I'll send out test builds.  I'm really tired or else I'd do it tonight.

Known difficult to track down yet unimportant bugs or just visual oddities:
- If quick item pickup is turned on, when picking up items out of search it flips a bit sokehow making you have to click an extra time to reset the bit, then you can pickup the next search item.  Normal pickup works if quick item pickup is off.
- Occasionally cameras have target ID's applied to them somehow?!?!
- Enemies that throw grenades can kill themselves when they throw grenades too close (feature?)
- Every now and then corpses will jitter instead of simply staying put.
Animations freeze when off camera so death anims don't complete until you come back and look at them...kind of unnerving actually.
- The menu font has a few letters that aren't very legible, needs manually tweaked.
- Frob icons are the originals and thus poor quality

[67416c838b896ZylonBane]

Animations freeze when off camera so death anims don't complete until you come back and look at them...kind of unnerving actually.

Adding "Update when offscreen" to them on death doesn't work?

[67416c838b9e3JosiahJack]

Yeah that works, I just haven't done it yet though.
Trying to get the more egregious bugs out of the way first.

Couldn't sleep.  Fixed some of the previously mentioned bugs. Generating new build now.  Then send out links for all 3 Win64 Mac Linux once it uploads.  Probably have it upload overnight and send links tomorrow. 

[67416c838bca2Grosnus]

Do you have Animator culling set to Cull Completely? The Cull Update Transforms setting should be enough to allow animations to play out without the need of setting "Update when offscreen" (which is going to generate additional overhead), at least when it comes to animation events and so on. Depends of course if you need the actual bone transforms to animate when not visible by anything for some reason.

[67416c838c659JosiahJack]

Alright Althea.  Here is a beta build Citadel 0.93.  Commence testing.  Report bugs.  I have idea how you're going to do all this but good luck.   

Win64.7z (Google Drive Link: 162MB)
Mac64.7z (Google Drive Link: 169MB)
Linux64.7z (Google Drive Link: 178MB)

If you run into any game breaking bugs, please add them to Github or comment here.  Please include a savegame and screenshot if possible.
Github link: https://github.com/JosiahJack/Citadel/issues

Playtester Notes:
Quicksave F6
Quickload F9
Screenshot F12
Console `   (tilda, standard Quake-engine console key - used for entering CHEATS!  )

Screenshots are saved in the following locations:

• Windows builds: Win64/Citadel_Data/Screenshots/
• Mac builds: Mac64.app->Contents->Resources->Data->Screenshots
• Linux builds: Linux64/Citadel_v093_Data/Screenshots

Saved games (seven of them numbered sav0.txt through sav6.txt, quicksave = sav7.txt), configs, and localization files are saved in the following locations:

• Windows builds: Win64/Citadel_Data/StreamingAssets/
• Mac builds: Mac64.app->Contents->Resources->Data->StreamingAssets
• Linux builds: Linux64/Citadel_v093_Data/StreamingAssets

Cheats (most are standard FPS cheat codes in the lineage of Quake engine based games such as Half-Life):
"text" - cheat to enter into the console, without quotes of course, cheats should work if entered lowercase or uppercase
"showfps" - displays framerate in bottom right corner
"showlocation" - displays player location in bottom right corner.  Please use for bug screenshots if relevant.
"god" - take no damage
"noclip" - fly through everything (e.g. walls/doors), enemies won't see you either
"notarget" - enemies won't see you (works in cyberspace too)
"ifeelthepower" - no energy usage
"iamshodan" - ignores all security blocks caused by security nodes + cameras
"bottomlessclip" - unlimited ammo and no need to reload
"load#" - load level.  Works for numbers 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 g1 g2 and g4.  Cyberspace not supported.  loads player to the ressurection bay if available or else elevator.  example "load7" would put you in the engineering level's ressurection bay
"loadarsenal#" - dumps a pile of objects based on a somewhat typical loadout assumed to be had when first entering that particular level.  Does not automatically give you the items in inventory, they just spawn in a pile at your feet so you can pick and choose what to pick up.  example "loadarsenal7" gives you scorpion, magnum, flechette, magpulse, some frag and emp grenades, a bunch of keycards you should have at that point, ammo, medkits, etc.  I haven't added specific summons yet ala SS2's summon_obj system.

Oh and you'll need the files CITBARK.RES and CITALOG.RES to be present.  There's a dialogue that you use at game start to find them on your system or else you won't be able to play the game with sound.

[67416c838c843JosiahJack]

Feel free to fill out a quick performance survey if you don't mind.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RS2CTPY

[67416c838ca44ZylonBane]

I submit that the god mode cheat code should be "goddess".

Also, there needs to be a cheat to kill yourself.

[67416c838cb77JosiahJack]

Hah, nice!  Incidentally, there are multiple forms of god mode entries that are acceptable that reference various other games, but I can add that.

[67416c838e989icemann]

If the kill code was "Would you kindly", that'd be very ironic. And yes I know it's from Bioshock not System Shock.

[67416c838ec30IME]

Just finished downloading of beta build, installed audio files and watched intro movie.

everything is looking great, josiah.   

tweaking options and jump into medical level stright away.   

impressions:
weapons somehow working only sporadic (game breaking bug),
console key on german keyboard is "ö" - console key is fine on english/us keyboard
performance varies from smooth (mostly 60fps) to stuttering (up to 30fps),
resolution doesnt matter much perfomance wise (hd/full hd/4k)
every resolution is twice in combobox selection - is there a difference between the two identical entries?

nice: Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Trioptimum Corporation\Citadel

[67416c838ee19voodoo47]

very quick notes;

-rebinding keys is a bit of pita, no way of knowing whether you have just selected the key, or are already rebinding, making me mess up everything gloriously (aargh no I don't wanna bind mouseleft to the lean key). a reset to defaults button would also be nice.
-speaking of leaning, almost jumped out of the chair when I pressed the key for the first time. uhh, it's weird?
-weapon firing when messing around in the inventory sometimes
-no cooldown on the pipe when hitting something
-this was clearly not meant to be run on a decade old computer (not in the native 1920*1200 resolution, anyway)

[67416c838f04aJosiahJack]

What's going on with weapon firing? @IME

Yeah keybinds aren't very clear. I should add a highlight or something. A reset is a good idea.
What happened when you leaned?  Maybe you double bound it to something else...that's possible to do currently.  Heck you can bind all movement keys to the same key at the moment which would be of course terrible.

I can't run it on my decade old computer at much larger than 1366x768.  Currently at least 3GB RAM is required or else it will slow to a crawl during loading/saving.  2.5GB is probably minimum to avoid major freezes.

Must be some missing reference on pipe hit, I'm not noticing it on my end though   Is it when you hit something specific?

Yeah, there are occasonional times where the UI fails to block the weapon.  The cursor should change to the red standard cursor if it is blocking properly.