SSR: System Shock Kickstarter

[6810fcf9abf7cicemann]

Not counting modders

[6810fcf9ac16dZylonBane]

Maybe they'll release it as DLC. "Looks Not Terrible" pack, only $4.99.

[6810fcf9ac2dcvoodoo47]

I'd buy that for a dollar!

[6810fcf9ac3f5sysshocker]

I honestly don't see the issue with the pixelation.. meaning, I didn't even notice it... are you all talking about the wall textures?  Weapon/item textures?

[6810fcf9ac508voodoo47]

they are all pixelated, but for some reason, the walls don't seem as bad. but when a humanoid mutant jumps you, and you see its face up close.. ugh.

as mentioned, first time I've seen this (first unreal build?), I thought my old pc was glitching out HARD.

[6810fcf9acaedZylonBane]

I honestly don't see the issue with the pixelation.. meaning, I didn't even notice it...

Did you not see the screenshot I posted on the last page? Are you viewing this forum on a phone or something?

[6810fcf9acc96voodoo47]

attaching a screenshot which makes the pixelation horrifyingly obvious. how can someone take a look at this, and say "I don't see an issue" is beyond my understanding.
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[6810fcf9ad5b5ZylonBane]

Is anyone else bothered by the health and energy bars filling right-to-left? In both SS1 and SS2 the bars fill left-to-right.

[6810fcf9ad7dbKolya]

I think the pixels are supposed to fortify the connection to the original game via an artsy meta commentary:
"Yeah, we're redoing System Shock but we have a lot of respect for the original, so we're keeping it old school."

I agree that this doesn't work, because System Shock was never supposed to look pixelated. It wasn't a design choice.
And it only looks that way today. In 1994 you would see it on a CRT monitor which had built-in anti-aliasing (ie blur).

[6810fcf9ad963voodoo47]

the overall aesthetics are throwback enough, no need for whatever the heck is going on on that last screenshot. similar SS2 in-your-face-mutant screenshot with 22 year old graphics that does NOT look like the gpu just gave up for comparison.
[hybface.jpg expired]

[6810fcf9adea8Synaesthesia]

This game will probably have the dubious honour of being the only game in recent memory that needs a fan-made texture pack made for it the moment it comes out.

This isn't related to texture quality. All the textures produced for the game are using standard techniques. What you're seeing is that texture filtering is disabled per-texture. Changing the textures out wouldn't change this, reloading them with new textures would still sample them as unfiltered.

[6810fcf9adfb6voodoo47]

so it's a switch after all? if it is, why not expose it?

[6810fcf9ae10aSynaesthesia]

I can't speak for the project since I haven't worked on the game in a year, but when I did work on it the consensus was that it's an artistic design choice. The textures were specifically authored to work in this particular style with emphasis put on stylization (edge highlighting, darkening of crevices, un-realistic metallic values) to make things pop more.

Edit: And it's not really a single switch. It's quite literally hundreds or potentially thousands of switches. All of the textures have filtering disabled. I'm not programming-minded enough to know where one would begin with changing that aside from doing it one-by-one or by bulk editing in the engine.

[6810fcf9ae204voodoo47]

sounds weird, but not a coder either, so I guess it is what it is. pixels for everyone forever. yaay -_-

I would seriously be willing to throw a few more bucks at things just to not have to deal with this.

[6810fcf9ae393ZylonBane]

Just throw sufficiently high-res textures at it that the lack of filtering doesn't matter.

Fun fact: The original, pre-EE version of System Shock performs filtering on enemy and corpse sprites. If you look at a dead enemy and slowly approach it, you can clearly see where it switches from the native-resolution sprite to a higher-res, interpolated version of the sprite. So the original System Shock actually performs more filtering on AIs than the remake! Those Looking Glass guys went the extra mile to put this feature in the engine because they understood that people don't like huge blocky pixels.

My head, I am shaking it.

[6810fcf9ae4c8Kolya]

It's the same idea as instagram vintage filters. People like them because they seem to imbue their pictures with an air of authenticity. It doesn't matter to them that people back then didn't choose that style voluntarily.

It's more about harking back to a time when photos (and games) were rare, therefore precious and meaningful and hoping that others will associate these rare qualities with your current picture in today's world, which is flooded with them.

[6810fcf9aebdeSynaesthesia]

>Just throw sufficiently high-res textures at it that the lack of filtering doesn't matter.

This is a great way to destroy performance. I wouldn't recommend it.

[6810fcf9aed4eZylonBane]

Hey, when life gives you lemons, make exploding lemons to burn their house down.

[6810fcf9af68cvoodoo47]

what I find mind boggling is that out of all the ways a retro filter could have been implemented, irreversibly embedding it directly into the engine is what ended up being selected. on what earth does that sound like a good idea.

anyway, no sense in beating this dead horse any further - guess we'll just have to tolerate the filter until someone finds a proper way around. lets wrap it up with this;

Number of players who would have refused to buy the remake because it DIDN'T have pixelated textures: Zero
Number of players who will refuse to buy the remake because it does have this ugly half-assed pixelated aesthetic: Non-zero

[6810fcf9af848ZylonBane]

Stepping back a bit, the Pix-o-Vision is really just the tip of the iceberg of obnoxious graphical effects that the remake has been slathered with. There's also the motion blur, the constant chromatic aberration on the HUD, the heavy use of bloom, and the extreme light and darkness in the lighting. All this adds up to the remake being literally exhausting to look at.

By contrast, the original game is, in a bizarre way, more graphically pleasing than the remake. The levels are well-lit, all HUD elements are clear and use legible-sized fonts, there are no visual corruption effects unless you're being actively damaged, and usable objects are clearly identifiable. Switching back and forth between the original and the remake, when I was playing the original it felt like a weight had been lifted from my eyes.

[6810fcf9afb72Grosnus]

I am not super experienced in this field, but it is definitely possible to change filtering of the texture directly in shader by switching between different sampler states. That would allow to globally control it. But if the textures are made in specific way to take advantage of the disabled filtering then obviously there would still be a problem.

[6810fcf9afc84ZylonBane]

Yeah, the current textures are so low-res that turning on filtering would probably make it look like an N64 game.

[6810fcf9afd70voodoo47]

I'd still take it.

[6810fcf9afe80icemann]

Personally I see the issues with cyberspace as a bigger one than pixilation. Very epileptic, and super easy to get completely disoriented in. I found even when I knew where I wanted to go, I'd get lost anyway.