SSR The System Shock demo is OUT!

[674262734b77fTeddy]

Being able to admit you're wrong online is a sign that you're a reasonable person, which is - in my experience - a surprisingly rare thing.

So, good on you.

I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, considering they're a small studio, this is just a 'demo' and not something sold (albeit used as marketing material). I think it's safe to assume that by the time the game releases, they'll have upped to Pro, or moved to another engine.

[674262734bbd3Join2]

Gore is a tad excessive, M rating instead of T, severely restricted target audience

I don't have much a problem with your other complaints, but this one...

Aren't you sick of every game and movie being designed to be teen-approved? And when you stoop that low, why not do the same as everyone else and add in things that will optimally appeal to the common denominator of that demographic too? Throw a bunch of memes in there, add some dubstep & Rihanna, and make sure it is easy so as to not have a "severely restricted target audience".

[674262734c199Kolya]

I certainly hope they don't let grumpy purists stimy our chances for an improvement of a great game - in the name of repeating the past. We already have the enhanced edition for that, and a bunch of community projects.

Thankfully, they seem genuinely interested in doing something new with it. Obviously, that doesn't mean all changes will work - or they're perfect - but I'm more than willing to take a chance. The original game remains untouched, afterall.

I've already braced myself for the inevitable onslaught of whining about how every single change is yet another example of catering to stupid young people - and how everything that looks remotely modern means it's "flashy" and "retarded".

I suggest all who're interested in true evolution do the same

My impression is that a large majority here likes the demo and many have offered very constructive critique on how it could be made even better. This tired cliche you're summoning, of purists who whine about every change just because it's new, mainly seems to serve your own passive aggressive rambling.

[674262734c60bDKDArtagnan]

My impression is that a large majority here likes the demo and many have offered very constructive critique on how it could be made even better. This tired cliche you're summoning, of purists who whine about every change just because it's new, mainly seems to serve your own passive aggressive rambling.

My impression is that there's a very mixed response around here - and that there's plenty of grumpy purists. We could also call them dedicated fans of System Shock who're unusually sensitive to any significant change to their beloved game.

Thankfully, there's also a decent amount of open-minded people looking for something both familiar and new.

I'm pretty sure my "passive aggressive rambling" can be interpreted in more than just one way, and I don't think it's entirely unlikely that you're biased against this kind of criticism - based on some past experiences that have nothing to do with me.

[674262734ca1dZylonBane]

How I imagine Zylonbane when writing this post.

Congratulations, you just outed yourself as being utterly clueless about interface design. It's thanks to people who actually care about these things that people as slack-jawed as yourself are able to operate modern software.

[674262734cef7Learonys]

Congratulations, you just outed yourself as being utterly clueless about interface design. It's thanks to people who actually care about these things that people as slack-jawed as yourself are able to operate modern software.

Your complaint: Waiting for text to appear when staring at objects
Your arguement: waiting for a couple of seconds is not intuitive and if there's no description, you're going to have to wait longer than an exact period of time.

My counter-arguement: What's the difference between clicking and waiting a second, when what you want to do is examine an object? examing an object properly takes time as you're going to have to take time to read either way, so the same requirements are made to properly examine an item for yourself. If you've waited for longer than a second than you should know that there is no description.

Clueluess? Sorry but every time someone doesn't agree with you you have to throw some pathetic insult at them, in the hope that it will distract them from the fact you have no idea what you're talking about. Come on, back up these accusations of yours, debunk my counter-arguement while looking for evidence yourself. Throwing a link at me and making me search for something you should have done... What?

[674262734d091DKDArtagnan]

Well, even though ZylonBane is clearly the, shall we say, pointlessly abrasive type - I have to concede that the old system was superior.

I find waiting a few seconds for something like this quite frustrating.

But the demo is a proof-of-concept. It's essentially NightDive showing the publisher (us) an approximation of what the final game will be.

I find it extremely likely that this kind of thing will change for the better.

[674262734d563Learonys]

Well, even though ZylonBane is clearly the, shall we say, pointlessly abrasive type - I have to concede that the old system was superior.

I find waiting a few seconds for something like this quite frustrating.

But the demo is a proof-of-concept. It's essentially NightDive showing the publisher (us) an approximation of what the final game will be.

I find it extremely likely that this kind of thing will change for the better.

Well hey, that's your opinion on the matter and i completely accept that. You could even learn from each other.
My opinion on this is if you're the kind of guy that wants to know everything in the game, even all the unnessecary stuff, there's the fact that progressing in the game is going to take longer, if you don't expect this to happen you're only setting yourself up for a bad experience. It's not the game's fault here.

How many objects are there going to be in the game that actually need to be examined to progress, to how many objects there are that you simply can examine? I don't need to examine the same wall texture, light-source or computer a dozen times over in different areas, that already drastically reduces the amount of time i would spend examining items, to (imo) acceptable levels.

I think this could make for a nice game mechanic aswell, as clicking on an item directly examines a specific item only. But what if you put two items right next to each other, and if they have a correlation with each other, you get a different description? What if there are a lot of papers on a table and you need to find out which one you need? You look at it for 10 seconds and find the correct one by it lighting up, or it gets picked up automatically, this saves you the effort of clicking each paper seperately which not only is tedious, it also looks a tad weird because how can you know exactly what a certain item is by clicking on it? Not only looks this "stare-to-examine" better, it has more potential in my eyes.

[674262734db7eDKDArtagnan]

Well hey, that's your opinion on the matter and i completely accept that. You could even learn from each other.
My opinion on this is if you're the kind of guy that wants to know everything in the game, even all the unnessecary stuff, there's the fact that progressing in the game is going to take longer, if you don't expect this to happen you're only setting yourself up for a bad experience. It's not the game's fault here.

How many objects are there going to be in the game that actually need to be examined to progress, to how many objects there are that you simply can examine? I don't need to examine the same wall texture, light-source or computer a dozen times over in different areas, that already drastically reduces the amount of time i would spend examining items, to (imo) acceptable levels.

I think this could make for a nice game mechanic aswell, as clicking on an item directly examines a specific item only. But what if you put two items right next to each other, and if they have a correlation with each other, you get a different description? What if there are a lot of papers on a table and you need to find out which one you need? You look at it for 10 seconds and find the correct one by it lighting up, or it gets picked up automatically, this saves you the effort of clicking each paper seperately which not only is tedious, it also looks a tad weird because how can you know exactly what a certain item is by clicking on it? Not only looks this "stare-to-examine" better, it has more potential in my eyes.

We clearly see this thing in different ways.

Let me try to explain:

I'm an explorer at heart.

In fact, the two most important things, to me, in pretty much every game - and certainly in System Shock - are exploration and immersion.

So, when I go around exploring new rooms - I'm very curious about the things I'm looking at. If I can't immediately identify something from just the graphics - then a description is required to satisfy my curiousity.

Having to wait a few seconds for that description is exactly the same as having a long tooltip delay when you're looking for information in some new piece of software.

Have you ever played Baldur's Gate? The default tooltip delay is infuriating to me - so the first thing I do is reduce it to 0.

I HATE pointless waiting of any kind.

Can't help it, either.

[674262734dda7Gawain]

I wan't to clarify to DKDArtagnan and Teddy who clearly don't know how licenses work.

Nightdive Studios has released close to 50 games. I'm quite sure they make more than 100k (or 200k for "Plus" license) USD in a year.
That means, they can't use (or install) Unity without purchasing the full license.
Unity Technologies want small indie developers to be able to use Unity without paying 120$ a month before they have made significant amount of money with it. Just to give some perspective about real indie developers: median mobile game makes around 3000$ in its full lifetime at Apple Appstore.

And I want to remind you of the license infringement on the fonts. But I quess this is not so suprising considering the SS2 release...

[674262734df04fox]

Maybe it's not a good idea to wake sleeping dogs and instead talk to Nightdive directly about a possible problem.

[674262734e0bbAurora]

I am also a thorough explorer at heart. I enjoy a large world crafted to a high degree of detail, with challenging multi-stage puzzles and secrets to discover, including areas where you do not even have to venture for any other reason than curiosity. I definitely do not want to rush through a game nor skip its challenges.

However, I do not want to be obstructed by the game, and I do not want the game to arbitrarily delay my actions. The gameplay mechanics should feel swift and responsive. Slow movement, sluggish and heavy pipe swings, handicapping animations during player actions, delays for examination messages, vision blurring behind the inventory screen, etc. are annoying and add nothing positive to the game. Where the addition of mouselook is a vast improvement, these game mechanics introduce more flaws just like the lack of mouselook.

[674262734e366Aurora]

Maybe it's not a good idea to wake sleeping dogs and instead talk to Nightdive directly about a possible problem.

Where do you recommend we do that?

[674262734e43bfox]

nightdivestudios@gmail.com

[674262734e525Aurora]

Shall we compile a list of suggestions, then make a poll thread to see what are the most common ones we agree on? From that I could write a comprehensive letter and send it to their e-mail.

[674262734e60bfox]

While that's certainly a nice idea for general feedback too, I think this is a misunderstanding. I was only refering to the possible copyright conflicts that were brought up by Gawain and Co.

[674262734e79aHikari]

Holy. Shit.

Just... Holy shit. The demo worked! Reinstalled windows, and it worked.

Granted there was noticable chugging and the text did NOT scale down well to lower resolutions (nor did it seem to affect framerate that much.) However it worked.

System Specs:
HP Pavillion a6234x
3Gig ram.
2.4ghz core duo
nvidia gt720
windows 10 64 bit.

Now the important question: What kind of performance change do you guys think will be between demo and full game?

[674262734e8f7voodoo47]

considering the release date, don't get your hopes up - there will be optimizations, but also more demanding stuff implemented, so my guess is the real minimum system requirements are going to be about the same. though by that time, such machines will be considered pretty much entry level.

[674262734ec82DKDArtagnan]

I wan't to clarify to DKDArtagnan and Teddy who clearly don't know how licenses work.

Nightdive Studios has released close to 50 games. I'm quite sure they make more than 100k (or 200k for "Plus" license) USD in a year.
That means, they can't use (or install) Unity without purchasing the full license.
Unity Technologies want small indie developers to be able to use Unity without paying 120$ a month before they have made significant amount of money with it. Just to give some perspective about real indie developers: median mobile game makes around 3000$ in its full lifetime at Apple Appstore.

And I want to remind you of the license infringement on the fonts. But I quess this is not so suprising considering the SS2 release...

Are you saying that the 100K or 200K capacity is for total income - and not revenue based on products sold/funded that was made using the license?

*EDIT*

I see you're right - I didn't know that.

Thank you for clarifying.

I was wrong, and I'm sorry.

I guess that means they have some explaining to do - or maybe we're missing something.

Not that I really care, though. I'm not a policeman.

[674262734eefbLearonys]

I'm not sure where to put this, so i'm just gonna put it here.

Question from Kickstarter:

Forget to mention: Would you consider using UE4 instead of Unity ? It is far better engine to put the game in !

Answer from a collabrator:

Currently we're using Unity, but we've received a lot of feedback from our backers regarding Unreal. Whichever technology we ultimately decide to use, it will be based on the best tool for the job for making a great System Shock game for our backers. That's really all I can say about it right now, but trust us, we'll do things that make sense :-)

Do you think they should still switch engines and go with UE4? I don't know how much work they would have to put switching engines currently, but it honestly doesn't sound like it's worth the hassle. I'm sure many people (including me) don't know enough about both engines to justify them telling to switch over.

[674262734f0e0Synaesthesia]

I'd go with Unreal. It's a significantly better engine than Unity in almost all regards, especially materials.

[674262734f1e4Hikari]

What is the performance difference between unreal and unity? I know sounds like a stupid question but how is unreal better? What makes it good enough to scrap all unity work and essentially start over on importing objects and assets

[674262734f386JosiahJack]

If I've learned anything while making Citadel, it's that you don't want to switch engines.  It slows the project down considerably.  Granted, starting with a good engine is important.  Unreal 4 and Unity 5 can have comparable performance, BUT Unreal 4 is the more mature engine. Unity 5 suffers for its strength...you can do almost anything which is good but has the drawback of people doing things "wrong" such that performance suffers.

If Night Dive sticks with Unity, they should definitely use object pooling, split meshes up into multuple pieces, enable occlusion culling (only works on objects not within hence splitting up objects) and always always keep a balance between fill and transform operations sent to the graphics processor.

[674262734f477Hikari]

I'm simply concerned the people bleating 'durr go with DIS engine' will win out and nightdive hops and they end up losing a ton of time and work and oh hey project delays.