SSR The System Shock demo is OUT!

[6742590f774a4Synaesthesia]

Pre-Alpha Demo Patch #1 Patch Notes
This patch, which is now live on Steam, contains the following fixes and improvements:
New Things
Texture filtering has been applied. The textures around the station will appear smoother and less pixelated. Let us know what you think about this change as we would like your feedback on it. 
Visual effects have been improved and as well the addition of explosion visual and sound effects.
Fragmentation grenades can now be thrown by the player. Right-click on the grenade from your inventory to throw or assign it to the hotbar and throw with the press of 1, 2, 3 or 4 on the keyboard.
“Staminup” patches, “BeserkBooster” patches, and Battery packs can now be used by the player by right-clicking on them in the inventory.
New melee attacks animations have been added. The Hacker will recoil when hitting a surface with the pipe.
Fixes
Reduced the swing delay of the pipe.
Shortened pickup animations.
Music alterations applied to the backing music around the station.
Fixed a bug with game settings causing controls to lock when reloading the game.
Item descriptions have been improved for the items around the demo.
Various performance improvements.

[6742590f776b5Hikari]

I noticed even with the added filtering my potato could still play... until the thing crashed to desktop (I'm guessing zip and email the error folder to nightdive?)

I like that you are trippin balls when berserk is active.

Shortened pickup animations are good. I know many will find them gratuitous and i personally want them to be on/off togglable, but this is something i can live with.

Pipe animation is good.

I know having 'hacker thoughts' in item descriptions and crate opening is divisive, but I like where they seem to be going here.

Pipe swing is lovely. Right at that sweet spot of weapon weight and actually able to use.

Dislike:
Camera mini explosions.

Noticed the switch flip for elevator turned to a normal wall texture when flipped/the switch on model is invisible.

The game crashed on me before I could do more testing. Will test later on for a more thorough rundown.

[6742590f7781eNameless Voice]

The grenades look cool.

I still hate how your movement is crippled while playing a pickup animation.

[6742590f7794fAurora]

I don't think pickup animations should even be a thing.

[6742590f77a7fDKDArtagnan]

Granted, I'm no programmer - but what is it about Unity that makes texture filtering apply before asset import - and not during run-time?

I mean, in my experience - 95% of all modern games have filtering options in the graphics settings. Why would they need to be applied to textures during creation?

Can someone smarter than I answer that?

[6742590f77de2ThiefsieFool]

Unreal Engine 3 (UDK) works the same way, part of the asset import process is to specify exactly how you're going to use that asset and what fidelity you want out of it, how precise the transparency should be and what quality and LOD settings it should use and so on, the engine wants to compress the asset into a new file and discard the original so it needs to decide how to best optimize it for size/quality.

[6742590f780bdDKDArtagnan]

Unreal Engine 3 (UDK) works the same way, part of the asset import process is to specify exactly how you're going to use that asset and what fidelity you want out of it, how precise the transparency should be and what quality and LOD settings it should use and so on, the engine wants to compress the asset into a new file and discard the original so it needs to decide how to best optimize it for size/quality.

I see, interesting, thanks.

But if the asset is imported using "point-filtering" (like in the original demo) - then shouldn't it be possible to apply run-time filtering and have it affect the appearance of textures, anyway?

[6742590f7821eGawain]

Flipping the elevator switches multiple times still crashes the game. Switches also disappear.

[6742590f7847eunn_atropos]

Uhm, I just added the demo on steam (only used the gog version before) but I can't find the patch. It can't be included because I still have the long pick up animations.
I searched the steam shop but did not find it. Where can I find it?

Already had it. But come on; that's what you call shortened animations??

[6742590f78566Nameless Voice]

The long pickup animations haven't changed?  They were sped up very, very slightly, that's all.

[6742590f78679unn_atropos]

If they are, then it's barely noticeable.
Just looked through the changelist and read about the BeserkBooster. Using them gives me the classic System Shock berserk mode.
As they wern't useable in the first demo, I guess I've the updated version after all. Never mind

[6742590f78765ThiefsieFool]

I think it would be simpler to add a toggle in the menu than messing with the timewarp on the animations or doing new animations.

[6742590f78851Aurora]

I wish they'd just do away with the animation honestly. At best, have your left hand quickly grab the thing, while your right hand can still do whatever. Your movement and aiming should certainly not be affected at all.

[6742590f78b76RocketMan]

Maybe they can use keyboard/mouse duty as a way to truncate the animation.  If the player is doing a lot of stuff, just grab the implant and jam it in your brain.  If you're just sitting their doing nothing, then maybe look at it for a few seconds.  This might be more trouble than it's worth though.

[6742590f78d13Myagi]

Tried the new demo.

My vote is on unfiltered textures, hands down, except that refractive surfaces (such as healing bed window, lamps) should have filtering.

However I think there should be a run-time option for it (for non-refractive surfaces). I'm aware of the current unity issue with that, but IMHO any "serious" project should have full engine source access, so things like this should be solvable eventually.

[6742590f78e7fZylonBane]

I don't know what the hell they were thinking with the low-res unfiltered textures. That look can work if it's part of a consistent aesthetic (Minecraft, Devil Daggers), but when you have high-res filtered textures juxtaposed with low-res unfiltered textures, it doesn't look like an intentional choice, it just looks broken and incongruous.

[6742590f78fcavoodoo47]

yeah, definitely not caring about that kind of retro feature. thought it was a bug first time I've seen it, actually.

[6742590f79175JosiahJack]

Some of us love our pixels though.  Anyways, about Unity's point vs filtered limit, it is possible to duplicate all of the textures to have a version imported with filtering and a version imported without filtering and to switch between the two via a setting.  Usually best to stick to one and maintain the same texel density throughout.

[6742590f7929cHikari]

I'm one of those that like the slightly pixilated look. Call it hipster or whatever, but even with the budget they have that's kinda weedy compared to big studios, so I see it as a good compromise on look/detail.

[6742590f793a4ZylonBane]

Except that it's not a compromise, it's something they're doing for no reason other than because they felt like it. Everything else-- the hand, weapon, object, and AI models, all use high-res filtered textures. Having only the wall textures blocky and unfiltered just looks... dumb.

[6742590f7946eHikari]

We'll have to agree to disagree there.

[6742590f7953eJosiahJack]

ZB has a good point....consistency.

[6742590f79675Myagi]

That's not true. With the exception of player hand/weapon model and the mutants and maybe the briefcase interior, which have so high texel density so it's hard to see that filtering is off, everything else visibly has filtering disabled in the first demo. I have both demos installed and can jump back and forth. The texel density on the other things may be a tad higher than the typical wall, but it's still visible and has an effect on the overall look.

It might not be your cup of tea, and that's fine, but I for one appreciate it.

[6742590f79fa9Bioshock]

Here goes...
 
Everything wrong with the System Shock Demo (2016):
Excess bloom usage
Excess reflectivity
Excess saturated lighting (colored lighting should be subtle for main lights)
Poor lighting contrast
Hideous inventory (white squares?), I know it's temporary (let's hope!)
Inventory blocks view
Inventory blurrs view
Inventory is too large (same complaint as original game, oops!)
Inventory is missing slots for 5 more weapons (7 total)
Object info text is too small in the inventory
Movement restricting handrails everywhere
Ladder climbing takes away control
Ladder climbing prevents shooting while on ladders
Ladder handrails are excessively large
Repair bot scale is a little too small
Doors can only be used by tiny buttons instead of whole door
Tiny fiddly usage of keypads
Tiny fiddly usage of puzzle panels
Tiny fiddly buttons
Sparqbeam sounds awful
Sparqbeam beam is too large
Sparqbeam effects are too flashy
Sparqbeam gives no indication of cooldown for overheating
Sparqbeam only has two settings of intensity
Pipe swing is like molasses, even slower than original
Servbot attack distance for short arm swings seems too long
Servbot doesn't fall over
Locational damage difference for humanoid mutant (head hits hurt it more)
Getting hurt creates random rectangles/squares on the screen, what kind of cheap hardware is this cybernetic interface anyway, can't take a little bump? 
Crates look generic and nothing like original crates
Gore is a tad excessive, M rating instead of T, severely restricted target audience
Too much horror theme elements, not enough cyber punk elements
Violin music is just wierd, cliche creepy
Head bob is excessive
No prone (can of worms...opened!)
Generic looking main menu
Title font not very cyberpunk
Point filtering on textures conflicts with style
Fall damage occurs at too low a height
Horrible control stealing sluggish out of character item pickup animations
Sluggish weapon switching
Muffled Rebecca Lansing email
Unnecessary, character-altering changes to critical-to-story dialogue
The System Analyzer DOES NOT MONITOR BIOMETRICS!!  that would be the Biological Systems Monitor, System Analyzer tells you station status

  Everything right with System Shock Demo (2016):
Nice note added to cryogenic incubator screen "Please Proceed to Reception to collect your personal belongings and check out"
Hovering over an object shows description text that is also randomized.
Attempting to use an unuseable object shows a randomized response yet with specific responses for particular objects (shelves, lights, etc).
The light fixtures are neat having a layer of glass in front of the bulb.
Can put objects back in crates
Leaning
The station is rotating (or at least the skybox is)
Other parts of the station are visible through the window
Saturn is visible through the window
The sun is visible through the window
The sun casts shadows through the window that move as the station rotates...questionable that it would be that bright at that distance though
Fall damage exists
Sparqbeam overheats
Sparqbeam has adjustable setting (albeit only 2)
It Runs (not very stable though, pre-alpha no faults there)
It's a start

I'm sure there's more but I figured this was a long enough laundry list of items Night Dive can improve on. I hope they can continue to improve on what they have and make a great game, in spite of some perhaps poor decisions as all of you have been discussing so fervently.  This is just a pre-alpha demo after all.  I'm willing to cut Night Dive some slack even though I may be the biggest old-schooler and purist on here.

P.S. Gawain, they just made several hundered thousand on Kickstarter over the past couple days so yes I'm sure they will upgrade to the professional edition of Unity 5.

You need help if this stupid shit really bothers you. I guess today white squares make a game terrible!