Citadel - System Shock Fan Remake

[674112e9736dfJosiahJack]

Pacmikey
They're all there in an ok form at the moment.  If you wanted to improve the ones that are there you are welcome to take a look, but I'm happy enough with the stylized ones I have...at least for an initial release.  They're in Assets/Models/, v_*.blend for the view models and w_*.blend for the item pickup models.

Anyone is more than welcome to contribute such things.  At the moment all 3D models have been made and are in a "good enough" state, though that doesn't mean they are as good as I'd like them....such as....

[674112e973983JosiahJack]

ZylonBane
Oh gosh, I can't unsee that now.  How did I miss both kerning the health ticks and making them half thickness by mistake 

[674112e973af0Pacmikey]

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[674112e973d7bJosiahJack]

Any help is appreciated though arguably the most important is getting everything working.

Are these requests or offers?

View bobbing should be optional.  It's a fairly universally hated feature.  At the very least, it should be subtle and should move in a sideways figure 8, bent like a smiley face, path of motion to mimic reality...well, at least that's what my view does with my gait on straightways.  I chose not to have it since I felt that your normal real head motion just from playing was more than enough. I implemented it at one point then removed it.

Footsteps would need to account for doing barefoot sounds (recall the intro video and its oh so subtle nod to Die Hard) until you get jump boots, then sound like some hefty boots with those.  Arguably would need to regulate the volume based on player speed and stance and some minor pitch variation would be good too like I did for object impact sounds.  Not sure how to foley the jumpboots since they would *not* sound like normal shoes.  Also would need to take into account the material of the object underneath you, especially in the groves which could make use of the extant check for "grounded" I'm already doing to avoid any extra performance overhead (though foot positioned raytraces would be best and alternate which per "step").  Not sure if footsteps should be optional or not.  I eschewed against it for the time being given the complications above and also since I thought my interpretation of some of the floor panelling as plastic might be considered wrong by some and feel off to them.

Reverb would be great, I haven't looked into it yet.  Would need to be subtle though.

AI is intentionally not that smart.  It mimics older games of the era, though I believe I added some navigational hinting using the world's navmesh.  The one thing that really needs done is to allow non-mutants to open doors.

Sounds are a hard thing to get right in my opinion.  The original sounds are a huge part of the tone and mood that I'd like to preserve.  Plus they are what I'm using to require people have the original game installed.

[674112e973e62Pacmikey]

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[674112e974166JosiahJack]

Savegame system is still work in progress.  It's a real test of my patience to be sure.

Getting close to having it ready to save out all the dynamic objects to a separate file (a text based moddable data file that serves as the fresh game data), then on scene reload, if loading a new game do nothing and if loading a save game, delete the existing dynamic objects for each level and then repopulate one by one when reading from the savegame file line by line.  This to ensure:
- New games, even after deaths, are truly fresh and no different than if game was first started
- Removed objects aren't still present after loading a save (e,g, items, destructables)
- That I don't end up with loading data to items within the scene that is unloading instead of the newly loaded scene since the unique id's are identical in both scenes and my method of finding all objects to load data too seems to get everything starting with the partially unloaded scene (forced to be asyncronously unloaded by Unity).
- That newly created items are in fact created, such as anything dropped by the player or spawned in by cheat summon_obj command, etc.

In the 2.5 previous iterations of save architecture, at least 1 or more of the above was broken in such a way as to require rearchitecting.  All things that for whatever reason seem to be hard for me to see until after I've put in a few weeks of rearchitecting.  I keep running into engine gotchas with how it handles data.

This last method involves the most work and is the most straightforward.  If it gets saved, on new game do nothing; on load delete all saved objects and then only spawn in ones that are defined by the save file.  It requires that I carefully extract all saveable objects in the game to a separate text file (arguably better since it lets modders mod it, huzzah!) and very carefully change necessary objects such that only the top level object of an instantiated prefab is marked as a saveable object...this means all the nested gibs and auch on enemies will need to be painstakingly saved and loaded by hand rather than relying on them all existing ahead of time with their own individually marked class that in previous architectures could handle such things for me.  Probably actually less data to save this way though and might save faster.

[674112e97427eJosiahJack]

There is the alternative where I binary serialize the whole scene as a 70mb save file.  That's the "nuclear option" that I'm saving as a last ditch effort.  It's also the least debuggable being 101010's.

[674112e9746eaZylonBane]

View bobbing ... It's a fairly universally hated feature.

It is not. It's just that the people who are too weak to handle it tend to be the most vocal about it.

Without head bob, FPS games feel like you're on rollerskates. Thief 1/2, SS1/2, DX1/HR, Dishonored, Prey, all have head bob. So the immersive sims are in favor of it.

[674112e97492dJosiahJack]

Pacmikey
You can already turn hud portions off.  It already doesn't include the full UI version the original had.

I already implemented a Quick Item Pickup.  It can be toggled in the options.

Mocap would be nice though a simple ik would be pretty sufficient for a lot.  I'm bothered by arms ghosting through walls at the moment.  As for pathing, the navmesh might have been wiped.  I'll have to check.

 

[674112e974a23Pacmikey]

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[674112e974b09WaitThisIsntSkyrim]

Nice to see this in full swing!

[674112e974c22JosiahJack]

Savegame system refactor complete.
Now successfully loads in build.
Now succcessfully loads from main menu after death on level that doesn't have restoration bay set yet.

Found a few small things I forgot to add to the save and will hopefully have another test build ready for playtesting in a couple days here.

[674112e974f52JosiahJack]

Fixed enemies setup to act as turrets sliding off their pedestals.
Fixed cyberspace being nonsolid in some areas due to world bounds set too low.
Fixed npc corpses being indestructable due to raycast API compound colliders behavior returning the parent instead of actually traced corpse.
Fixed sprinting not applying in half of the movement directions due to directionality indicators cancelling out: 1 + -1 = 0 (facepalm).
Fixed all movement not applying correct max speed value due to fighting ground friction algorithm.
Fixed inadvertant view bob from player hopping up slightly on transitions between modular floor panels by changing player rigidbody back from speculative to normal continuous physics mode.
Fixed sprinting not working in noclip
Fixed noclip culling most of the world away due to leaving known regions.
Fixed lean not being preserved when returning from cyberspace.
Fixed not ignoring body stance commands in cyberspace.
Fixed cyberspace projectiles not dying on impact.
Fixed all weapons having huge knockback instead of just riotgun.
Fixed npc physics such that player bumping into them no longer flings them away like they're balloons.
Fixed npc physics such that player rubbing by them no longer sets them spinning like a top (it was so fun though!).
Productive evening I'd say.

Almost done fixing known bugs to have clean slate before providing next build as these are all things that have bothered me for a while but didn't really look into while fixing save load system, which took a ridiculous amount of time.

The only ones left now are cyberspace forward drift only applying to vertical axis, and destroying a searchable while it is being searched fails to drop searchables.

I also developed a system yesterday whereby objects that fall through the floor (dumb rare physics bugs) are "caught" by a catch tray underneath the whole world and returned straight up to the nearest floor using manhattan distance in the horizontal.  Seems to work ok.  Done out of an abundance of caution as I exploded a keycard into oblivion once breaking the game.  Granted there is also summon_obj cheat created for precisely that reason.  And iamshodan cheat to let you bypass all locks and security blocks.  Redundancy.  Attempting to never get someone stuck without an out.  Savefiles are also text based meaning one could cheat things to be unlocked or in different positions.  With gamebreaking failures like this it's not particularly easy to just start the game over, heh.

Anyways, full steam ahead

[674112e97507fJosiahJack]

Ran into some core issues with mouse cursor behavior depending on the OS.  Working through that.

Basically, the hidden system cursor doesn't stay put in the center in Shoot Mode.  And alternatives to have a fake cursor end up allowing for clicking on two things at once.  It gets weirder too with screen edges.

[674112e9751daJoin2]

Game dev is hard. REALLY fucking hard. And you're so close to finishing. Respect.

[674112e97538eJosiahJack]

Thanks!

Yeah it can be very involved.  I figured out how to manually set cursor position back to the center of the screen in shoot mode using interop native xlib library calls so that Linux will behave since it does not respect the cursor lock mode in builds unlike Windows or the Linux Unity Editor which work fine.

Need to test Mac at some point but I have none.  Might end up doing a VM but I don't trust that as much as a real machine for critical input behavior.

Also need to see how Wayland behaves.  This fix will only apply to Linux systems and is only supported by distros using X like Gnome, Gtk, KDE/Qt, and such that are all built on/ontop X11 so covers most Linux scenarios (not most users though, maybe) but will cover fewer and fewer as many are transitioning to Wayland apparently.

[674112e97563dXkilljoy98]

IDK if I am doing something wrong, but I tried to try this out again via what's on github, and while I see you've made a lot of progress over the years via the videos and screenshots you've done, what I loaded in unity seems to be only level 1 and incomplete (few textures, some missing stuff, some glitchy enemies, etc).

I assume cause the current version isn't there yet but idk

Unless I somehow loaded it wrong

[674112e977286Join2]

IDK if I am doing something wrong, but I tried to try this out again via what's on github, and while I see you've made a lot of progress over the years via the videos and screenshots you've done, what I loaded in unity seems to be only level 1 and incomplete (few textures, some missing stuff, some glitchy enemies, etc).

I assume cause the current version isn't there yet but idk

Unless I somehow loaded it wrong

You downloaded Nightdive's remake instead  🤣

[674112e9773fdJoin2]

Fan Theory: Nightdive gave JJ a reasonable lump sum to cease Citadel temporarily & not release until after SSR release, and also keep this hush.

This would be a much more honorable approach than the usual cease and desist or we'll sue your ass to oblivion.

[674112e9777bfJDoran]

Fan Theory: Nightdive gave JJ a reasonable lump sum to cease Citadel temporarily & not release until after SSR release, and also keep this hush.

This would be a much more honorable approach than the usual cease and desist or we'll sue your ass to oblivion.

If that is what's happened, then I don't blame JJ for agreeing. It would be great if he could legally get some cash for his hard work, and we (eventually!) get another version of SS1 to play. And I don't doubt that JJ would be happy to advise potential modders pn how to make changes to his version, for fan-made missions, weapon mods, etc, which is brilliant!

And yes, if NDS have done this, then it is much more commendable than how most other companies would have 'handled' a similar and potentially competing remake/port.

[674112e97791dJoin2]

Eh he probably just got standard C&D, but with permission to continue after SSR.

He mentioned kids and such yeah, but he is so close to the end and just...stops? I did the same but on a relatively small mod project (5 months dev time), but this is different. Making this game from scratch, slavishly to the original without much room to be creative, getting close to the end after years and then just stopping? Surely the sunk cost fallacy would be too deep by that point to just sit on it.

[674112e977c02Twist]

Am I missing something? According to very recent commits on Github, he still seems to be working on it.

https://github.com/JosiahJack/Citadel/commits/master

[674112e977d3bJoin2]

Well, I remember a release deadline given...8 years ago haha. Most likely just a gross overestimation on JJ's part.
Well, good to see it's still going.

Fan theory alteration #2: he can do whatever he wants, just not release until after SSR. So he just takes his sweet time, not that he has a real life, job and a family or anything. /s

OK, I'll shut up now.

[674112e977ea3JosiahJack]

The real answer is that, upon a few long playtesting sessions, 107 bugs were found some of which gamebreaking and now I'm sitting at 51.  All I wanted to do was spot check that most things were playable....that was probably around early Feb.

My time these days for Citadel is at its thinnest.  I'm getting maybe 4hrs a week sometimes less; early on in the project I was single getting 22hrs a week of availability.  Some of these bugs have revealed systematic errors so I've been fixing those.

It's one of those balance things.  There will be bugs when I'm done, I just have to figure out which ones I can live with.  Not there yet