Citadel - System Shock Fan Remake

[67417ca8287a4Join2]

Ah children, the surefire death of any remaining time for hobbies if combined with wage slavery 9-5 grind. I'm sure he'll find a way to make it happen in this case though. It's been 6 years in development. sunk cost fallacy is too strong.

[67417ca8289afJosiahJack]

Hello all.  Still here.
Was working on other things for a bit, other commitments.
Had a newborn son and he is doing well.  He's pretty chill, except at night.
Then moved for a new job as a software engineer which is a fairly big career change from processing engineer; Citadel was a huge factor in getting the new job apparently.  The fact that my passion in my hobbies was more a factor than my prior engineering experience was quite the surprise to hear in my first week working here.
Just about settled in here.  It's been a whirlwind of craziness.  Should be able to get back in to bugfixing on Citadel soon and finally fix the outstanding gamebreaking bugs in the save system.  And the annoying reversed door animation bug that has bothered me forever.  Unity animator system is a bit of a black box, but I have an idea to correct my door state system now.

[67417ca828b70voodoo47]

yes - was recently asked about this by a (much) younger coworker (he didn't say "what should I do to not end up like you", but I knew all too well), told him to just work on (code) stuff he likes/wants to do, and as soon as he can get things done/makes something of actual value, then that is what he should present to the potential employer.

they are much more likely to take that into account than a bit of paper where some person says you can do whatever, if they are worth their salt.


anyways, congrats, I guess.

[67417ca828e61bigfatfrog605]

voodoo47
Why would he not want to end up like you? voodoo47 is a System Shock legend and all around good guy in my book anyway

cheers man!

[67417ca828f53voodoo47]

let me put it this way - my real life successes are slightly less pronounced.

[67417ca82902cWrench]

This project still on? Seems so near to completion...

[67417ca829160Dark-Star88]

Congrats on the son, my own is due in December!

[67417ca829276JosiahJack]

Back to work.  Been too long.  Life has been crazy this year, just crazy.  Can't believe it's been since February that I've touched this.  Had other commitments though and all the aforementioned events.  Anyhow, all settled now.

I'm ready to do as a SHODAN wannabe once said, Continue Testing.

[67417ca8293a3JosiahJack]

Added set to default button for keybinds.
Added set to legacy button for original System Shock keybinds (mostly, some didn't exist so they match default).

The button labels are:
SET DEFAULT
SET LEGACY

Let me know if that seems obtuse.

Also fixed to allow binding mousewheel, and set this to default for weapon cycling.  Each direction is independently settable.
Also allowed binding capslock.

[67417ca829500JosiahJack]

Fixed door animation not going to correct animation after a save.....AHHHHH!!!! Finally after YEARS ermagoodness.  All I had to do was uncheck 'Has exit time' in the animator to force instant transitions.  Ugh.  Literally the oldest hairpulling bug I've ever had.  Kept coming back to it ever so often to roll up my sleeves and try something else.  Heavy sigh.  Such sweet relief!!  Woohoooo!

Fixed bug with door not pausing.
Improved weapon reload and swap animation to prevent it overtravelling close to the end of its timer.
A few minor performance improvements to remove unnecessary added memory every frame.
Fixed 0.8s added startup time from accidentally reloading the config file for every single line in the config instead of just once.

[67417ca82962bJosiahJack]

Added check for conflicting configs, unbinds and marks the conflict, not the currently changed value.  1 key should only do 1 action.  Ideally multiple keys could be bound to the same action but the system isn't set up for this.  Many to one, not one to many.

[67417ca829766JosiahJack]

Added quest log.

Figured out the last major bug.  The previously used method of cursor detection was unreliable and had edge cases that were not properly handled by the internal Unity EventSystem, leaving many instances of either not being able to fire the weapon at all or of firing the weapon when clicking in the inventory as a result of the pointer entry and exit not properly registering from all mouse entry directions.  The new method is slightly more performance intensive but it's important enough to justify needing it.

[67417ca829ab6ZylonBane]

Added set to default button for keybinds.
Added set to legacy button for original System Shock keybinds (mostly, some didn't exist so they match default).

The button labels are:
SET DEFAULT
SET LEGACY

These seem a bit cryptic. IMHO buttons that overwrite every current keybind should be as explicit as possible. Something like:
- LOAD MODERN KEYBINDS
- LOAD ORIGINAL KEYBINDS

But then, why do these buttons even exist? If you've given users the ability to load/save keybinds, just include the appropriate bind files and don't clutter up the UI with extra buttons. And don't let users save over the included bind files.

[67417ca829c12JosiahJack]

Currently there's only one Config.ini file and any changes are autosaved to it.  The default and original are hardcoded within the game itself and provide a way to reset; there's a confirmation YES/NO popup with different text asking if you want to "Reset all keybinds to defaults?"or "Change all keybinds to legacy?"  Only keybinds are affected, other settings like audio and resolution are untouched; the two set buttons for this are within the input panel to help reinforce this idea.  At present I'm not sure if there's a better way.

[67417ca829cf5ZylonBane]

Yikes. That's not a very modern approach to things, even by the standards of 20 years ago.

[67417ca829ddaSShocker]

I am so relieved that this is being worked on again.

This is the most promising thing happening in System Shock right now.

[67417ca829f1eBloxy]

Is this GZDoom?

[67417ca829fecvoodoo47]

no.

[67417ca82a0beBabypandabear]

I'm so happy this is still being worked on even after all this time . thank you. I'll be following your progress always and wait patiently till its ready

[67417ca82a21dIME]

Hi Josiah,

is there another standalone Build like the beta version you posted earlier?

On GitHub I only find the version which needs Unity to be installed.

Regards

IME

[67417ca82a427JosiahJack]

Not yet.  I've made significant improvements to many areas and fixed all major bugs, but there have been a handful of minor bugs introduced in the process that I'm not happy with at the moment.  I was hoping to have something by this week since it's the anniversary, but so far it's not looking promising.  Keep having random family events crop up too.

I'm attempting to automate some of my testing for critical things since it's a lot to keep track of and it's getting rather annoying having small stuff crop up.  Found and fixed a lot of tiny things this way and also a few glaring things that would be nonobvious until late in the game so that was satisfying.

There's still one performance heavy area, level 8 main atrium, wgere I haven't found a way to keep it from slowing down by half.  If you get around 100fps in most areas it won't be too bad dipping down to 50 or 60fps, but if you barely keep good framerate in most areas then level 8 slogs to a crawl.  I'll likely have to do a one-off solution here for the high number of lights and objects visible.

[67417ca82a539IME]

Hi Josiah,

happy to hear that, time for family has to come first - of course, so don't want to bother.

In software development it's done when it's done, then the bugfixing continues ... 

Regards

[67417ca82a63bJoin2]

Reminder that you have this huge project near completion that you're neglecting.

I'm doing the exact same thing. Have a completed, good quality mod just sitting on my hard drive unreleased.

We should kick each other in the ass.

[67417ca82a91cRocketMan]

He released a playable beta.  I suspect he's waiting on feedback so that any official 1.0 is worth the effort and won't be just another incremental beta.