SSR: System Shock Kickstarter

[674024e647431ZylonBane]

Since apparently the VR version will be a separate product from the Enhanced Edition, I'm meh on the subject. Hurts nothing if it exists.

[674024e64773esarge945]

I guess it depends how much time/resources it takes away from the rest of the EE project.

but I wrote a whole rant and you're focused on a few words?

[674024e64784fZylonBane]

It wasn't a very interesting rant. It neither angered me nor made me headbang in agreement.

[674024e6479d6Nameless Voice]

I'm just going to say that the handful of people here, on the main System Shock fan site, are sadly not "the community".  We're merely a small "group of friends" apparently.

The vast majority of the people playing the remake - the vast majority of their customers - have probably never even posted here or on TTLG.

[674024e647b7bicemann]

SS1 had VR support IIRC also. I too quite enjoy the remake, going by the fact that I've been going to bed past 6am most nights as couldn't pull myself off the game till I finished the level I was on.

It's quite good, but very broken underneath the surface like how Cyberpunk 2077 is. Night Dive is very lucky that this game did not reach the same mass market appeal that Cyberpunk had, otherwise be loads of people putting up bug compilation videos.

I don't actually mind the recycling, vendor machines and weapon upgrades. Their all completely optional and not required to succeed, and combine with the existing elements fine.

[674024e647f3dvoodoo47]

eeeh don't know about listening to your fanbase, more often than not, people don't really know what they want (if a certain guy in US asked people what they wanted some century ago, we would all be riding faster horses instead of cars now). possibly check whether something is universally liked or disliked, and perhaps use that as a general pointer, but random people dropping in ideas they think are cool and you just throwing them into the cauldron sounds like a terrible idea. that said, if there is someone who studied on the subject for literally decades, and that person says you probably should/shouldn't do something, then yeah, maybe, just maybe you should take that advice into consideration. especially if you are inheriting a lore-rich property that follows specific design where every decision that goes against all that will inevitably come under heavy scrutiny. Rings of Power anyone?

We're merely a small "group of friends" apparently.

I'm ok with that.

[674024e648259Nameless Voice]

Night Dive is very lucky that this game did not reach the same mass market appeal that Cyberpunk had, otherwise be loads of people putting up bug compilation videos.

I'm a little surprised that you're finding it so buggy.  I was surprised at how few bugs I encountered during the beta.
I guess I did see the physics go crazy on enemies' bodies once or twice, but very few serious bugs.

[674024e6487e4sarge945]

I don't actually mind the recycling, vendor machines and weapon upgrades. Their all completely optional and not required to succeed

This is a common rebuttal I hear from people who like the recycling mechanic, and it's not really relevant. Usually it goes something like "Well, I can understand people might find it tedious, but it's optional so it's not a problem"

The issue isn't people feeling like they're forced to engage with it, the issue is that if you don't engage with it, you're at a significant disadvantage. Without coins you can't get extra patches, ammo and, most importantly, weapon upgrades. Even if someone engages with it the minimum possible amount in order to get what they need, there will still be a level of FOMO that impacts their experience, as they will know they are missing out on something, and there will be some level of tedious recycling they are required to participate in.

Worse, when players do engage with it, they end up with a huge overabundance of items because the game is balanced around it being optional, which means players who are willing to engage with some tedium are richly rewarded to the point of being extremely overpowered.

If you don't use it enough, it sucks because you miss out on critical upgrades. If you use it too much, it sucks because you become overpowered after wasting a bunch of time doing annoying busywork.

In general, basing mechanics around letting players perform some tedious, boring task for a reward makes for bad gameplay, and keeping it "optional" doesn't really fix the issue. It's probably better that it is optional, because forcing every player to do it would make things significantly more annoying for a lot of players, but the core issue remains.

If they wanted to follow the System Shock 2 model, instead of having junk items be recycled into coins, they would just have coins that you find around the environment. This would change the system from being tedium-based to being exploration and progression based, which would fix a lot of the annoyance of the recycling mechanics. At that point, though, they would be better off replacing the coins with nanites and fitting in with the existing lore much better. I feel like an economy following this model would have gone down a lot better with many players, as it has the same overall result but with less tedium and annoyance.

Another potential thing they could have done was not add junk items, and instead made a system whereby every item was inherently valuable, and let you recycle them for coins. Then, those coins could be spent at vending machines similar to how they are now. This way, players would essentially have a way to trade various items they aren't interested in for potentially more healing or a weapon upgrade, etc. Even better, there would be no need to artificially limit how many items vending machines sell (as it is now), because the players overall power level would always be maintained - who cares if they buy 100 pistol rounds, they would have had to pay for them by sacrificing something of equal value.

The best part about these two alternate systems is that there's no balance issues in regards to engaging with them vs not engaging with them. The player doesn't have to decide how much of the mechanic they are willing to put up with in order for a reward. Instead, the game can be balanced around the total resource amount, because there's no reason for the player to not use them (in the case of the first system), or the player will have to pay a cost to use them and keep their power level even (in the case of the second system).

The "it's optional just don't use it" argument is silly and largely only exists to excuse bad gameplay. I hope I have explained why.

[674024e648913Nameless Voice]

They definitely shouldn't have nanites, they were invented in 2078 and became currency in 2082, both after Citadel.


And, more specifically, they fit with the setting's shift away from complete corporate dystopia to a more bureaucratic and slightly more "Star Trek" setting between the two games.

[674024e6491e1icemann]

icemannEnviropack from storage doesn't protect from radiation, only from biohazard so its suitable only for groves. For the reactor core you'll need the radiation pack from the room in maintenance, which is opened by Abe Ghiran's head.

Also sensaround unit can highlight contaminated areas on the minimap before you encounter them.

Ah interesting (on the radiation pack). As for sensaround, that's the level 2 version of it. Got that one . Still no upgrades for cyberspace abilities though. By the point in the game I'm at, in the original be level 2 drill and other things.

I'm a little surprised that you're finding it so buggy.  I was surprised at how few bugs I encountered during the beta.
I guess I did see the physics go crazy on enemies' bodies once or twice, but very few serious bugs.

I played through all of the backer demo builds, and whilst there was some floppy dead bodies stuff, there wasn't really any bugs that I noticed. It's not until I started playing the game in larger chunks, where combinations of certain enemies or events started happening more often. That's my theory on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZqgkckKLe0

58:18 - In the above video for that funny exploding security bot bit I mentioned. It's not bugs all the time, which is why I referenced Cyberpunk, as Cyberpunk (for me) ran like a dream the majority of the time, and then randomly would bug out, out of nowhere. That's what this game has been like for me. Totally fine 99% of the time, but hilarious when those random points happen, because when they do their really funny.

[674024e649577sarge945]

They definitely shouldn't have nanites, they were invented in 2078 and became currency in 2082, both after Citadel.

There is a log in the remake about someone inventing prototype nanites, IIRC.

Maybe nanites are not the right choice, but it could be theorised that a primitive version were made before the Shodan incident at Citadel and trialed by TriOptimum as currency.

BUT, I get your point. I still think even something like a "TriOp Card" that holds your balance makes more sense than literal golden coins, but maybe nanites are the wrong answer. Which is a shame because it would link both the games quite nicely.

[674024e649a39JosiahJack]

That's because this was an intentional design choice.

Using any type of filtering is going to make them look worse because the UVs, materials, and textures were not designed for filtering. If you want to have filtered textures that look good, you'll have to redo every texture in the game and do it close to 3x the current resolution of what shipped.

And likely redo the UV maps for models that relied on unfiltered for crisp edges.

And make sure to not filter the ones used for UI that need to stay crisp.

[674024e649b3evoodoo47]

did they really shoehorn nanites in? yeesh.

[674024e649e79JosiahJack]

yes, and as I've said before, what I find puzzling here is that out of all the ways this could have been implemented, they chose one that irreversibly alters the textures and makes modding this out pretty much impossible unless they are recreated from scratch.

welp, it is what it is..

It's a dumb a limitation of modern engines to have precompressed textures in a very very specific format as opposed to doing so on the fly.  It's not that developers can't do that themselves but rather that the dramatic filesize reduction in doing so allowing engines to port to mobile without taking up large amounts of storage caused engine devs to make it that way by default...not that that's a problem anymore since all phones support 1 TB SD cards now right?

Unfortunate that engines aren't catered towards PC as well as they should be.

[674024e64a1b6sarge945]

It's a dumb a limitation of modern engines to have precompressed textures in a very very specific format as opposed to doing so on the fly.  It's not that developers can't do that themselves but rather that the dramatic filesize reduction in doing so allowing engines to port to mobile without taking up large amounts of storage caused engine devs to make it that way by default...not that that's a problem anymore since all phones support 1 TB SD cards now right?

Unfortunate that engines aren't catered towards PC as well as they should be.

Yes, I can see how PC-centric developers developing a PC game on a PC engine would precompress their textures to work on mobile.

All that said, I know for a fact Unity allows you to do pretty much anything you want with your textures at runtime, I don't see why Unreal would be any different.

[674024e64a341sarge945]

I was stuck playing this on the couch with my housemate and the default controller configuration SUCKS.

For anyone playing this with a controller (for some reason), I have made a vastly improved controller layout here

steam://controllerconfig/482400/2984842376

The TL;DR is:
- Hold LB and use ABXY to select hardware (as long as you bind the buttons in-game correctly, it's set to use Keypad 1-4), and DPAD Left and Right to lean
- Hold RB and use ABXY, DPAD, LT and LB to select from the quickbar
- Hold LS (the left stick) and use A to transfer items between inventories instantly (this is a total godsend, inventory management SUCKS in the remake with a controller by default, having to drag everything)

[674024e64a739Nameless Voice]

58:18 - In the above video for that funny exploding security bot bit I mentioned.

Okay, that's funny.

I have to admit to wondering why games bother with realistic physics engines, they seem to cause bugs more often than anything else.

[674024e64a942sarge945]

did they really shoehorn nanites in? yeesh.

judge for yourself. This is the log in question
[20230605013541_1.jpg expired]

[674024e64aab8voodoo47]

yeah that's a hard nope as far as I'm concerned. the lore clearly says this didn't happen yet, and no amount of excuses is going to make it right. is it going to destroy the game? no, but still, why do such a thing. just go with credits or whatever was being used in the pre-nanite era if you need to introduce a currency into the game.

just to be clear, I don't really mind if you need to adjust things a bit to make more sense, for example the T1/TG fixed gamesys/map pack bringing the T2 mechanic of apple consumption healing one hitpoint to the first Thief game, or SSR logs NOT referring to Shodan as male, but nuking a fairly important and established bit of lore from orbit is a bit too much.

[674024e64ad58icemann]

Okay, that's funny.

I have to admit to wondering why games bother with realistic physics engines, they seem to cause bugs more often than anything else.

My assumption is what happened there was:

1. Security bot killed (via laser rapier) - It's body drops to the floor
2. Cyborg assassin runs up to the same spot the security bot was killed and drops a landmine, landing on the body
3. The mine causes some attribute on the dead security bot that wasn't switched off to multiply, causing the bot to totally spaz out
4. Security bot body with land mine attached goes in range of me for 1 frame and activates, by which point the body is around the corner, and explodes.

[674024e64b02csarge945]

yeah that's a hard nope as far as I'm concerned. the lore clearly says this didn't happen yet, and no amount of excuses is going to make it right. is it going to destroy the game? no, but still, why do such a thing. just go with credits or whatever was being used in the pre-nanite era if you need to introduce a currency into the game.

Yes. I already retracted the nanite idea (well, changed to TriOp cards) when the lack of nanites was mentioned.

[674024e64b128Nameless Voice]

Ugh, why did they apparently spend the time between the backer beta and the final release adding new badly-written logs instead of fixing the biggest issues we told them about?

[674024e64b230voodoo47]

because they thought it cool.

hmm.. now that I think about it, was even one thing mentioned in this topic taken into consideration? one single suggestion?

[674024e64b5d4sarge945]

Ugh, why did they apparently spend the time between the backer beta and the final release adding new badly-written logs instead of fixing the biggest issues we told them about?

If you're talking about the Kickstarter logs, probably obligation.

But yeah, I hate most of the KS logs.

hmm.. now that I think about it, was even one thing mentioned in this topic taken into consideration? one single suggestion?

I can't think of a single thing.