SSR The System Shock demo is OUT!

[66ef2ac61d2f5Gawain]

Can I use Personal for commercial development?
Yes, you can! As long as you have an annual revenue capacity or funds raised capacity of less than $100k per fiscal year, you can create with Personal.

I bet Nightdive makes more than 100k in a year...

[66ef2ac61d92bJosiahJack]

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.

[66ef2ac61dce4Nameless Voice]

That is hilarious. Like they don't have 60$ per month for full license...

Edit: 125$ per month now, used to be lower.

Unity actually still charges per month?  How quaint.

[66ef2ac61e376ZylonBane]

Everything right with System Shock Demo (2016):
Hovering over an object shows description text that is also randomized.

This is not a right thing, this is a horribly wrong thing. In SS1 you could get an item description immediately by clicking. This delay forces you to wait and stare until something appears... or not! Apparently only some surfaces have descriptions.

[66ef2ac61e96eXKILLJOY98]

...

Why would you be bothered by a lot of that stuff?

[66ef2ac61ec78JosiahJack]

This is not a right thing, this is a horribly wrong thing. In SS1 you could get an item description immediately by clicking. This delay forces you to wait and stare until something appears... or not! Apparently only some surfaces have descriptions.

Sorry, ya the delay is poor (and buggy and shows text when you dont want it, and takes too long to scroll out) but the fact they actually still included the showing of information is good.

[66ef2ac61ef84Bioshock]

I guess I don't have to wait for you to act as dumb as a sack of hammers, because you're already done that.

Saying you won't like the reboot makes me unintelligent?  You make sense.

[66ef2ac61fc23Aurora]

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.

This is not a right thing, this is a horribly wrong thing. In SS1 you could get an item description immediately by clicking. This delay forces you to wait and stare until something appears... or not! Apparently only some surfaces have descriptions.

If Night Dive Studios took all of that on board and made the corresponding changes, then I think this could become one of the best remakes. I am not sure if they are following these discussions though. I wonder how we'd get it across to them?

[66ef2ac61fe12DKDArtagnan]

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

[66ef2ac6203eeGawain]

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.

Night Dive has released a lot of games for some time now. They shouldn't have used the personal edition to begin with.

[66ef2ac620a0aThiefsieFool]

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

It's like 2007 all over again.

[66ef2ac620b5dDKDArtagnan]

The demo was just a proof-of-concept. Why on Earth would they use a paid version when it was completely unnecessary?

It's 99.9% certain that the full game will be made with the professional edition, so who cares.

Amazing what people can whine about.

[66ef2ac620f1dDKDArtagnan]

It's like 2007 all over again.

Yes, because the commercial success of Bioshock has nothing to do with the current success of the SS Kickstarter, right?

Bioshock put System Shock and - especially - System Shock 2 on the map in a big way.

There's this thing called economic reality - where artists don't harvest money grown as plants. They should have just forced Take2 to invest millions in a design that would exclusively appeal to a tiny audience, right?

Let's be entitled children with absolutely no financial stake in anything - and whine about how other people must take major risks because we want a faithful System Shock successor that's actually a completely different game called Bioshock.

We're talking about a REMAKE of System Shock. It's plain as day that these guys want to do justice to the original game - and there's no obligation to pledge if you insist on living in the past.

[66ef2ac6211dbGawain]

The demo was just a proof-of-concept. Why on Earth would they use a paid version when it was completely unnecessary?

It's 99.9% certain that the full game will be made with the professional edition, so who cares.

Amazing what people can whine about.

 

[66ef2ac62152cSchuler]

The demo was just a proof-of-concept. Why on Earth would they use a paid version when it was completely unnecessary?

It's 99.9% certain that the full game will be made with the professional edition, so who cares.

Amazing what people can whine about.

Because (and thank you, Gawain, for clearing this up) it was very likely that the full game would have code in it developed for the demo, on the Personal Edition. Now I know it is a commercial licence, just a limited one, there should't be an issue in moving the code to the professional edition for the full release.

EDIT: I was wrong on that.

[66ef2ac621894DKDArtagnan]

Because (and thank you, Gawain, for clearing this up) it was very likely that the full game would have code in it developed for the demo, on the Personal Edition. Now I know it is a commercial licence, just a limited one, there should't be an issue in moving the code to the professional edition for the full release.

Please explain to me how that would be a problem.

What would be wrong with taking code from the personal edition and implementing it in the professional edition, even if it wasn't a commercial license.

I trust you understand that the language used for developing scripts in Unity is almost entirely separate from Unity itself, right?

[66ef2ac621bf4Schuler]

Please explain to me how that would be a problem.

What would be wrong with taking code from the personal edition and implementing it in the professional edition, even if it wasn't a commercial license.

I trust you understand that the language used for developing scripts in Unity is almost entirely separate from Unity itself, right?

Because the whole reason there're separate editions, is so Unity makes money on games developed on it. If developers just use the Personal Edition and only move to Professional just before release, they're screwing Unity out of their fees for the time spent in dev.

[66ef2ac62203aDKDArtagnan]

Because the whole reason there're separate editions, is so Unity makes money on games developed on it. If developers just use the Personal Edition and only move to Professional just before release, they're screwing Unity out of their fees for the time spent in dev.

I don't understand.

If you pay for the PRO version of Unity - you gain access to a host of features that you can't reap the benefits of "just before release."

It's a subscription - not a one-time purchase.

Essentially, you're paying for these features that are only helpful DURING development - not after development.

Here: https://store.unity.com/

So, unless you actually need the features to help you out - there'd be no reason at all to pay for them, unless you just want to donate money out of your limited budget.

Are you saying they're obligated to pay for something they don't need?

[66ef2ac62238aicemann]

Ok finally got around to playing the demo. Going to jot down my positives and negatives as I play it:

The Good:
* I like the dark look to everything
* Medbay effect when you use it looks awesome, but it takes too long.
* Robots look good
* I like how if you leave your mouse over an object, after a few seconds it tells you what that is.
* Melee combat seems good
* I like the stats shown of weapons when your your in the MFD

The Bad:
* Change in music over to a more Dead-Space sounding style.
* The medbays are wayyyyyyyyyyyyy too small now.
* There needs to be the ability to right-click items to auto-add them to your inventory, rather than having to pickup the items you want, one by one and placing them. Very cumbersome.
* Now to use/fix a circuit you need to physically position yourself infront of it and get as close as possible. What was wrong with just right clicking and having the interface pop up?
* They ditched the old audio logs and went with new voice actors. Grrrr.
* Some of the textures look very low resolution
* Game crashed on me 10 minutes in.
* On 2 occasions I've had the small crawling robots fly off into the sky when I've shot them.
* Player moves very slow.
* Data reader doesn't work
* Audio log character portraits new look I'm not a fan of.
* The mutant enemies look and attack exactly like the head-crab zombies from Half-Life. Nigh on identical attack style. In the original SS1 the mutants would lounge at you endlessly which was better and more original imo.

[66ef2ac6224e7Schuler]

You can right-click objects to pick them up, but only if they're lying around (not in a container/body).

DKDArtagnan, I'm going to acknowledge being wrong about Unity's business model. However, that same website lists a Revenue Capacity for each edition. For as long as Night Dive are making above $100k per year, they can't use Personal Edition at any stage of development.

[66ef2ac62284dLearonys]

This is not a right thing, this is a horribly wrong thing. In SS1 you could get an item description immediately by clicking. This delay forces you to wait and stare until something appears... or not! Apparently only some surfaces have descriptions.

How I imagine Zylonbane when writing this post. It's as if you're acting as rambo and have never leant what being behind cover is, or don't have the patience to wait a second. Nobody is forcing you to examine each and every wall texture out there! I think this could actually make for a nice gameplay mechanic instead.

[66ef2ac622b4cDKDArtagnan]

You can right-click objects to pick them up, but only if they're lying around (not in a container/body).

DKDArtagnan, I'm going to acknowledge being wrong about Unity's business model. However, that same website lists a Revenue Capacity for each edition. For as long as Night Dive are making above $100k per year, they can't use Personal Edition at any stage of development.

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.

[66ef2ac622c7dSchuler]

Not immediately attacking your opponent for being wrong is rarer, which is unfortunately what leads to avoiding apology.  Have a .

[66ef2ac622f15DKDArtagnan]

Not immediately attacking your opponent for being wrong is rarer, which is unfortunately what leads to avoiding apology.  Have a .

We're all wrong on a daily basis - so attacking someone for that reason would be something akin to self-destruction

Which, of course, would be very human too.