SSR: System Shock Kickstarter

[6745175b54772JDoran]

I apreciate the thought behind making games more accessible to those who are deaf.  Colorblindness modes are cool too.

One of the most common forms of colour-blindness (there are apparently several forms of the condition) is the inability to differentiate between red and blue, yet red and blue seems to be the predominant (and un-alterable) colour scheme for the two teams in lots of video games.

[6745175b549e9icemann]

I've got lazy eye which is really damn annoying.

Never heard of it? Neither had I. It's where on occasion your brain ignores what 1 eye views if the other does not catch it. I'd been told I had it as a kid, but it was not until a few scary near accidents later that it's really made me pay attention.

The annoying thing is that 99% of the time it doesn't happen. Just 1 time out of like 1000+ times I drive and only from my left eye. To give an example, I was driving 2 weeks ago. Making sure it was fine to pull out to turn right. I look left and all I see is clear road, no cars. I pull out looking left again as I do, and a car a very similar color to the road nearly hits me from the left side. Gah.

Due to the color similarity my brain merged it, into seeing no car. And yet looking again, saw it fine. I notice when it happens that my eye feels sore. It's a very crappy thing to have. Due to the 99% of the time full functionality. Then just 1 random time it'll happen when my guards down. Has you feeling like a crazy person as it's a difficult thing to explain. Never happens when I'm gaming which makes it double odd. Only when driving.

So I've been driving now for about 17 years. Only had it happen like 3 or 4 times in all those years.

[6745175b54c0dJosiahJack]

I've had a similar experience when laying down on one side reading my phone with one eye for a while and the other was blocked...after getting up it was like the blocked eye had turned off.  But ya I have an astygmatism, slight split vision, and nearly legal blindness from being nearsighted.  Contacts are a wonderful thing.

The issues above are why I dislike things like Motion Blur, Bokeh blur, overused anti-aliasing (except temporal), and depth of field with so much wrathful passion.  It ALREADY is blurred enough!  Don't make it worse.  Especially in games and movies where your eyes can dry out on one side or the other after a long time.  I hope NDS at least provides the option to disable such features.  Unreal engine is blurry enough out of the box.

[6745175b54cf5icemann]

I tend to switch that off in games. Makes everything too blurry.

[6745175b55165RoSoDude]

I apreciate the thought behind making games more accessible to those who are deaf.  Colorblindness modes are cool too.

Yeah, I have the most common form of color "blindness", which is really that I'm just not as great at distinguishing between red and green. I can still read stoplights and the like, but they're not as distinct as they should be. It's really helpful when there are options to turn e.g. team indicators in a multiplayer game from green/red to blue/yellow or something. I don't get any value out of the hardcore colorblind modes (I have deuteranomaly, not deuteranopia) that shift all the in-game colors, but UI stuff can make a big difference. You can't cater to everyone, of course, and I'll frequently complain about accessibility in the realm of making games utterly unchallenging for the lowest common denominator with no meaningful difficulty options to offset it, but when it comes to common "disabilities" (really, it's not that major) like this I appreciate having a simple option.

[6745175b5525aJosiahJack]

Does the black outline around text in System Shock help?  Some games have black outline around the crosshair too.

[6745175b553ecRoSoDude]

The colors in System Shock 1 are fine, though in general I do appreciate black outlines (I think all crosshairs should have both white and black to work with more backgrounds). The weird thing with deuteranomaly, which again is the most common form of color vision impairment, is that you could go through most of your life without knowing you have it. It's a really subtle effect. Green and red are still very different entities in my mind, but somehow they look about as close to me as say, green and yellow or red and purple. So I can read the Shock text without much issue, but put me in a multiplayer match with red and green friendly/enemy indicators against a greenish/yellowish/brownish background and I will accidentally kill my teammates on occasion, since my ability to distinguish them in a fraction of a second is diminished (this has happened twice in the last two days while playing the game Midair). In low light conditions the effect is more pronounced.

[6745175b5554fJDoran]

I tend to put the subtitles on where possible with films or TV programs, and it's amazing that even after all this time, the subtitles are all in white even when they are superimposed over a white object or background, rendering them unreadable.

And on a slightly different subject, why is it that most text in Playstation 4 games is almost sub-atomic in size? The fonts they use can be tiny (and with no option to enlarge the text), but when I play on the PS3 or XBox 360, then the text is a little larger, enough to read clearly. And on the original XBox and PS2 and earlier machines, the text is always large enough to read clearly, though that might partly be because the older consoles had low enough resolutions that tiny fonts weren't possible.

[6745175b556a9JosiahJack]

Subtitles that are white with black outline amd use facial recognition (all cameras have that now right?) so that subtutles get moved to areas of the screen that are NOT ON PEOPLES FACES!

The little things are what make a game great really.  Subtlety en masse.  The day or two effort to make certain features more fluid, add more readability, reduce mental effort where not needed, that is what I find most satisfying.  Again, not to derail this thread too much, but I hope NDS at least have a small idea what we mean.

[6745175b55b9dunn_atropos]

The little things are what make a game great really.  Subtlety en masse.  [...], but I hope NDS at least have a small idea what we mean.

That was my big surprise playing System Shockfor the first time, coming from System Shock 2: All the amazing details! Minor stuff or really cool features that make the game so much more vibrant (not a good word to describe I guess), to the ironic point that even System Shock 2 seems to be dumped down in comparison.
As for NDS I don't have high hopes that they can get the fine details right. Not after their "Hey look! Body dismemberment!". My impression is that they are rather tone deaf (no pun intended). Something just doesn't feel right.

[6745175b55f46Nameless Voice]

The issues above are why I dislike things like Motion Blur, Bokeh blur, overused anti-aliasing (except temporal), and depth of field with so much wrathful passion.

Does anyone actually like motion blur and depth of field?  And if so, dear gods WHY?

It's basically using your expensive hardware to render a view in high resolution and with great clarity, only to then throw that clarity away again and intentionally make the image quality worse.  I don't understand why that's even a thing.
Further, my eyes already apply depths of field effects to whatever I am not looking at directly, why would I want the game to apply it a second time?

[6745175b561bfJosiahJack]

...
Further, my eyes already apply depths of field effects to whatever I am not looking at directly, why would I want the game to apply it a second time?

This exactly!

[6745175b565baJDoran]

Does anyone actually like motion blur and depth of field?  And if so, dear gods WHY?

It's basically using your expensive hardware to render a view in high resolution and with great clarity, only to then throw that clarity away again and intentionally make the image quality worse.  I don't understand why that's even a thing.
Further, my eyes already apply depths of field effects to whatever I am not looking at directly, why would I want the game to apply it a second time?

Agreed. The depth of field effect looks great the first time you see it in a game, but when you stop being impressed by the technical aspects of it then it just becomes a nuisance. Granted it is realistic, but (a) realism should only be in a game if it enhances, not detracts from, the experience, and (b) it's not that realistic, since in real life you don't tend to notice depth of field as your brain automatically focuses your eyes on whatever you're looking at, so you don't notice the de-focused things in your view.

I mean, in the great first person shooter Black, you get the depth of field effect whenever you reload your weapon, as you focus on the gun, so the background becomes blurred. And it looks great. It's also counter to the game-play, as when reloading your gun (because you've just been in gun-fight and might still be near armed enemies) then you'd surely be constantly looking around for enemies even when reloading your gun. I'd imagine that in real life a skilled gun-man can reload his weapon with barely a brief look at it, his hands would reload the gun whilst his conscious attention was mostly on his surroundings, searching for enemies or possible ambush sites.

[6745175b569ceedx]

June 2018 Update is live:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/posts/2208998

[6745175b56b74lgs]

Dat Game Pig arcade

[6745175b56e5edertseha]

Both Interrupt and I already notified Stephen that they mixed up the credits of our work in the recent update. He recognized it and promised a correction with the next update.

And yes, I was contacted the other day about adding the editor to the bundle. That's extra pressure for me now, as I am working on a rewrite, easing both the users experience (way better UI) and mine (way better code).

[6745175b56fd7Gawain]

They should pay you if you feel pressured.

[6745175b5727adertseha]

They should pay you if you feel pressured.

Heh, it's only my own pressure that I'm generating. While it is plausible to include the current editor to the package, it would be a nightmare for users - and for me for any decent feature additions. Instead of having time for new features, I'd probably be swamped by problem reports/complaints about it.
So, it's in my own interest to push the rewrite forward - this now gives me just a concrete deadline.
As I see it at the moment, the editor is a fan project for fans.

[6745175b573bdicemann]

Time to pressure that library guy to give up his official SS1 level editor files then :p.

[6745175b57579voodoo47]

would be a godsend ten years ago, but not all that important at this point unless he has the source code for it as well.

still kind of puzzled that it seems like he is not obliged to return (a copy of) all the data to NDS - I mean, there is no way he could legally own the files, as I'm pretty sure the beta cd was never available for purchase. so basically, it's a case of him finding someone else's property - and that means he should be obliged to return it to the rightful owner.

[6745175b576b0fox]

Has NDS requested the files yet?

[6745175b5779avoodoo47]

pretty sure they've already contacted him.

[6745175b57886fox]

Maybe they'll say something about it in one of their future streams then.

[6745175b57965icemann]

They attempted to contact him. He hasn't replied, last I heard.