Night Dive Twitch Streams

[675a223b72516icemann]

Zomg the first dev stream in nearly a year.

My notes:

* The marble floors in Exec look excellent. Level looks close to complete. Some areas expanded as they had the space in the level to do it.
* Daniel would like an aquarium added to the level somewhere.    - Wouldn't all the fish be dead from no'one feeding them?
* 8:54 - Get to see Flight Deck. Level is not yet complete as waiting on assets to be finished off. Looks about 90% done.
* Cyborg Assassin's are in the game. You see one briefly. Just missing a texture on top, as is currently a grey untextured model.
* Corpses look far better than in the current demo (released back in February)
* It's looking like enemy placement is fixed, which goes against the ecology style of SS1 and SS2. Maybe that's going to change later?
* Quite a lot of new wall textures and props added
* Some easter eggs are already implemented and in-game. None of them revealed.
* The first Cortex Reaver spot looks completely different to the original. Far larger, more spaced out.
* New ambient sounds in. Hear a humming sound at one point.
* When will the next version of the demo be out - Most likely next week       - Expect a streaming of it from me, when it's out
* New model update of the cyborg enforcer should be in soon.
* Exec Bots are also in. Not textured.
* 44:00 - Stephen joins
* 46:29 - Tencent registered System Shock 3 & 4 websites (even though they don't own the IP for System Shock). Not good. Tencent is a large Chinese Games Dev company.
* 58:00 - Kevin joins
* 1:07:00 - Jump over to Medical
* The player gun holding looks quite twitchy. Noticed the gun shaking a alot. You can see it happening around 1:11:00.
* You now need to activate a switch nearby the wall for the larger doors (in Medical).
* Lighting has definitely been improved
* 1:13:00 - Get to see grenades in action. Looks like the grenades have been saved from removal .
* Still no cyberspace. But it is coming soon apparently according to Stephen.
* The blood effect when you hit a corpse with the pipe looks really fake. Like way over the top. Cartoony.
* Stephen would like for the player to be able to pickup guns, unload the ammo and be able to discard the gun like you can in SS2.    - I fully support this one. Makes sense from a logical standpoint.
* You can lean now. Not sure if that was in earlier.
* Items on shelves are mysteriously falling through onto the ground. A current bug in the game.
* Camera screens now in
* Mutants now have a different eye color. More darker.
* Will you have to wait out for the healing patch animation to play out before you can use another one - For now yes. Still undecided on long term.      - Please get rid of that. You can drink 5 cans in a row without having to wait for an animation.
* 1:33:00 - New enemy type. You don't get a good look at it. Looks mech-like. Called a Cyborg Mantis apparently. It bugs out when killed and it's not textured yet.
* Wire puzzles (in Medical) all on walls now, rather than on the floor.
* Ammo count currently does not update on shooting. Currently being worked on to work correctly.
* 1:43:00 - Daniel shits himself from a surprise enemy attack (even though he placed that enemy there in the level :p).
* More advanced behaviors for the AI's being worked on, so that they can duck to avoid player shots etc.
* 1:48:00 - Get to see a whole heap of enemies spawning in one area. Bugs and chaos ensue. Cool to see some some enemy spawns ingame finally.
* 1:52:46 - Get to see the magpulse in action. Very early days for that weapon. Much work left.
* Is sensearound going to be in the game - No. That's out.           - WHAT!!! Not that I ever used that myself but come on.
* CPU Cores now explode properly
* Reactor Core codes now displayed in CPU Core room
* 2:09:18 - New healing bed animation. You now hop into it. Animations for that still in the works.
* The music is still bugged, and doesn't play most of the time. Around the time of the healing bed use, it suddenly starts working which Daniel remarks on.
* 2:14:22 - Shooting range. Get to see - Shotgun, machine gun (skorpion?), invincible maintenance bot, grenade launcher, magpulse, rail gun, magnum, assault rifle, plasma rifle (not functional)

[675a223b7281dicemann]

Bending the rules of the thread a bit for this one, as it's notes for a stream they did to Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6QXr62mb1g

Notes:

* Daniel, Stephen, Karlee and a few others present in the stream. A play through of Medical.
* This version of the demo, unlike the one streamed a few days earlier has an actual intro of sorts, with some intro text, a system boot up sequence and the player waking up.
* Music present which is completely ambient stuff except when in combat. So yep they ignored the backers on this one.
* Now when you use the medbed you actually hop inside it. Looks kinda cool, except that your legs disappear once you hop in.
* Some new effects when you smash stuff like the cameras.
* 4:50 - Get to see the mini pistol, which is now in, with proper ammo display
* 5:30 - Some of the mutants now have clothes on
* 7:15 - The mutant nesting areas actually have more gore, body parts around
* 7:45 - Some new door opening animations. Very Alien-ish.
* 12:30 - They got the V-Mail's in. Though it's only displayed to a screen on a wall, rather than to the hackers view screen.
* 16:11 - Mag-pulse
* Still no cyberspace. Coming in next update apparently.
* 20:02 - Some good combat and physics at work. Looks like respawning is working properly now. See plenty of it throughout the video. Adds more randomness to things though. Great to see, though they may have it up a bit too high due how often respawns were appearing. It also looks like their not removing dead bodies after a set amount of time which'll be bad for memory after a while in a long level.
* Cyborg Mantis has a skin texture now.
* If you drink a whole heap of soda cans in a row, you burp (in the game). Apparently only happens rarely. 1 out of every thousand times a can is drunk according to Daniel.
* 27:11 - Cyborg Assassins now have a skin
* Emp, frag grenades and gas grenades in

[675a223b72a5dsgupta]

06/01/2020 Dev Stream w/ Daniel (& Stephen later on).

* Since the public demo, they think they've fixed a lot of the performance issues people have been having, which should be in the next update.

* There have been fixes to memory leaks as things weren't being taken out of memory properly when enemies died/finished actions, etc.  Should also fix some weird physics-type glitches when an enemy is dead.

* (This is from Discord, but Saturn is fixed now - I'm assuming this is the bug where the ring is wrong.)

* More loot is being put on corpses, etc.  Balancing with that is tough; early on he was finding he was getting way too much loot too quickly, which is why it was reduced.  Enemies have a random chance of having things on them.

* Game is still on track for release this year so far, but it is possible it could change. 

* He's making tweaks to gore.

* Stephen joins partway into the stream.

* Lights and screens are to be breakable at some point.

[675a223b72dbeicemann]

My notes for it:

* Focus for this stream is on improving loot tables / adding loot tables for corpses and containers
* Much of the view in the stream was super dark, which Daniel commented did not look that way at all on his end, and that he recently bought a new monitor which may be the cause. Was quite laggy as well. He later fixes this up at 20:00, and again at 24:00. Definitely something going funky with his new monitor.
* The "451" blood decal is getting a do-over in the next update. "Readables" should be in by that point".
* 10:00 - Daniel gives a run through of how you add items to containers in the editor
* The glitchy corpses was due to the AI's not being set to "asleep" when killed. Fixed now.
* Apparently enemies do react to sounds caused in-game.    - I'm currently awaiting on discord from Daniel on whether they went with a similar sound based detection system as used in System Shock 2 and Thief
* Will the cyborg medics react to the player killing it's patients - There is a strong possibility of that
* Cortex Reaver is currently at the 3D modelling phase
* 20:50 - Get to see some nice new effects around radiation barrels
* 41:55 - Magpulse finally has a sound effect, and medpatches cause a graphical effect on screen when used now
* 1:23:00 - Stephen states that GoG were the first to preserve old games, with patches etc to get them to work on modern systems    - Well to be technical. Home of the Underdogs were the first that I can recall. Long before GoG came about. Though in a selling sense though sure yes they were.
* 1:26:00 - Get to see cyberspace for the first time in the streams. Looking really good. Some nice visual effects going on.
* Was a remaster of Terra Nova in the works - No. Stephen notes a bit of stuff at the end of SS1 (which I was not aware of) where the hacker hacks into Tetracore's system. Tetracore are the makers of the mechs in Terra Nova. So the 2 games are in the same universe apparently. They would love to do a remaster of Terra Nova someday however.
* 1:28:00 - 1:30:00 - Get to see cyberspace running. Sticks quite closely to SS1's incarnation of it gameplay wise. No collisions setup. Very W.I.P.
* 1:34:00 - New animation for when climbing ladders. You now actually hold onto it, and don't have your weapon out. Glad to see this finally in. And a sound plays as you climb / descend.
* Will there be greater mutant variety - Yes. There will be variations per level, with differences in clothing.
* How is progress on the rest of the levels going - Good, but awaiting quite a few art assets to be able to continue on. Progress for now has been primarily around the demo.  - They REALLY need to expand it to research

[675a223b72fbficemann]

23.06.2020 - Dev Stream

* Daniel working on adding effects to levels like gore, decals etc
* Starts on flight deck, which still is awaiting assets to be made before it can be fully fleshed out
* Cyborg Warriors now in the game and can be placed but don't yet have an actual model. So for now use the enforcer model
* 27:44 - Grav mutant now in
* 36:28 - Flashflight now in. Temporary. - I assume for the later lantern hardware
* 1:01:00 - Switch to Medical to show changes, new props etc. Then back to Flight Dec.
* 1:15:20 - Exec 1 bots are in. Not textured yet. Has animations.
* 1:18:00 - EMP Grenades in
* Medical is fully done by this stage. Work has moved onto the other levels.
* 2:04:25 - Get to see one of the groves (Alpha) for the first time  - Interesting. Kinda looks like one of the grassy areas in Prey. Nice tree and plant models present. This is the best bit in the video. If you only watch one bit in the video, watch this
* 2:05:35 - Get to see the virus mutant in-game for the first time. Stephen modelled it aagggggeeeeesssssss ago
* Any new weapons implemented - No

[675a223b731ecsgupta]

06/22/2020 - Dev Work w/ Daniel

* Daniel's working on level placement stuff, cleanup, etc.  He starts up on Flight Deck.

* Cyborg Warrior is currently being textured.

* Cortex Reaver is in development and he's seen some animations of that.

* They show the Zero-Gravity Mutant!

* Lots of executive props going in.

* They have a cool idea for TV screens.

* There's a "very British Easter Egg" in the current System Shock Demo, but Daniel doesn't know if anyone will pick up on it.

* He changed an area of Medical early on to give it more walking area despite being the same size overall.

* More props like thermoses, crumpled up wrappers, etc.

* We see an untextured Exec-Bot.

* Some of the assets are set up so you can make them different colors easily.

* They made changes to the loading bay/cargo bay to make the areas more logically sensible.

* He shows off a tease of Alpha Grove (early Work-In-Progress).  Ceiling (dome) and overgrowth looks especially cool.

* Virus mutant is shown.

[675a223b7337esgupta]

06/29/20 Dev Strem w/ Daniel

- He's working on the cutscene area from New Atlanta at the start of the game (which may be playable in this version)!

- He's starting with the apartment first, then building everything else around it (including Hacker's view), based on the art (and concept work by Robb).

- He also showed off some in-progress stuff.  They've revised the shooting gallery quite a bit, though it's not finished yet. 

- Cyborg Enforcer is in now.  Textures are in but not working properly at the moment.

- He demos one of the bigger rifles and sound effects.

[675a223b7352dicemann]

My notes for it:

Daniel has his music down real low for this one. Could barely hear the Spyro music. So lots of silence. Gets louder later on.

* 5:57 - Get to see the concept art for the hackers apartment from Robb

So by the sound of it, their drawing inspiration for this bit (and this is just my assumption, Daniel doesn't say it) from the start of Prey and the start of Silent Hill 4 (except cyberpunk not horror), with the player starting out in their apartment but not being able to leave, and only able to look out windows to the "outside world".

* 9:40 - Get to see the player model for the 1st time. Not complete and has a camera for a head. Kinda Cronenberg-ish (like in Videodrome) in it's current form.

Good video to have running while your doing something else. Not a lot to say about this one.

[675a223b7371bZylonBane]

I don't see any positives to starting the game in the Hacker's apartment. There's no gameplay there, and it's wasting assets on a one-off environment that you never return to. It can't even function as a tutorial level because you don't have your R-grade implant yet. It would just delay getting to the action.

[675a223b7389bfox]

Maybe not cost-effective but otherwise a good idea because I feel that this can help the players understanding their role in the story better.

[675a223b7398bZylonBane]

Was the original cutscene at all confusing?

[675a223b73a7cfox]

No, but it was too brief to really make an impression. I think extending this bit of exposition could be a good idea.

[675a223b73c47ZylonBane]

Most cutscenes are too long and boring. Looking Glass was the master of making cutscenes interesting and just the right length.

Besides, presenting everything that happened before Citadel as a cutscene works for putting the player in a state of mind similar to the Hacker, who has just woken up from six months of cryosleep with a hazy, dissociated recall of how he got there. If you played all that in first person, you'd lose that sense of discontinuity. It would just be "I'm playing on Earth. <level load> Now I'm playing on Citadel." Bleh.

[675a223b73d35fox]

I don't feel very passionate about it and go back to my "wait and see"-mode now.

[675a223b7485bThiefsieFool]

Most cutscenes are too long and boring. Looking Glass was the master of making cutscenes interesting and just the right length.

Besides, presenting everything that happened before Citadel as a cutscene works for putting the player in a state of mind similar to the Hacker, who has just woken up from six months of cryosleep with a hazy, dissociated recall of how he got there. If you played all that in first person, you'd lose that sense of discontinuity. It would just be "I'm playing on Earth. <level load> Now I'm playing on Citadel." Bleh.

It seems they're thinking about SS2's earth.mis, which wasn't bad, if something like that is a good fit for this game is another discussion.

[675a223b749a2icemann]

I'm in 2 minds on this one. On one hand I agree with Zylon and on other I want to see it. If it would be a tutorial for anything it would be hacking.

But then if their going to do a prologue level, does this mean that the ending bit (of the hacker hacking into tetracorp) will be in as a level as well?

[675a223b74d16ZylonBane]

It seems they're thinking about SS2's earth.mis, which wasn't bad, if something like that is a good fit for this game is another discussion.

But SS2's Earth (and Station) levels both had a gameplay purpose. I don't see how wandering around the hacker's apartment could accomplish anything gameplay-wise beyond "press spacebar to say apple".

[675a223b74ed2JosiahJack]

If anything it should just be playable as a post credits scene ala Marvel.  Maybe a minigame area, order pizza, hack tetracorp, feed a tiny plant mutant or something.

All good cutscenes are skippable.  Taking a cutscene and then forcing you to interact with it and making it nonskippable is a serious videogame crime punishable by up to 5 yrs of pong followed by community dev service.

[675a223b75115icemann]

Have to say I think I agree overall.

In Silent Hill 4, your apartment is your "cell" which you can't leave. It's done that way intentionally to invoke claustrophobia type emotions. In Prey it's done as a shattering of "reality" it has a solid basis on the game, which is referred back to numerous times (mostly via audio logs) throughout.

With this one I don't see how it benefits the game beyond being a tutorial. Part of the wonder of both SS1 and SS2 is starting out disoriented from cryo sleep. If you start out in your apartment, hack into triop then go straight from there to medical, then that disorientation is lost. Or that's how it sounds in my head when I think about it. Sometimes a cut scene is better.

Now with that said, I remember several years ago being the one who wanted to setup a SS2 FM competition of making short FMs out of all the short training cutscenes you see in SS2 prior to the main game starting (once your on the VB). So meh I dunno. If they do it, I'll play it and then ultimately decide then and there if its good or not.

[675a223b75385sgupta]

07/24/2020 - Dev Work w/ Swin (Daniel, Stephen, Karlee, and Greg [among possibly another voice or two] also present).

* They talk about the new gore and dismemberment system. 

* Swin is new to the team and working on VFX.  He's mainly working on the Cyborg Assassin model and chopping it up to make the gory bits and show how that's done when enemies are dismembered.

* They also show a demo level where they're dismembering a mutant with various weapons (some of which I don't think had been shown before).  Grenades aren't ready for it yet or he would have shown that. Along with gore/gibbs, they show some drool from the mutants too.

* He wants to make it where one of the eye lens pops out when you destroy a mutant's head.

* Cyborg enemies will have wiring/tubes as well as guts when gibbed.

* Laser rapier will indeed still be in.  They'd like to do cutting/dismemberment with that too, but will have to work on implementing it.

* They're saving a few surprises they're not disclosing at this time.

* They're not going to be using the frozen mutant tech they showed early on in the project, though they were amused one of the new XBOX games shown (Destiny something I believe) was showing similar tech. 

* Greg is also new to the team and speaks briefly.

* System Shock: Enhanced Edition got an update to fix a few things, including allowing map notes again.

[675a223b756fasgupta]

07/31/2020 - Dev Work w/ Swin

* Working on more dismemberment tech, this time the ShockBot

* Machines will work differently than organics; part swaps for damaged pieces (to show progressive damage), and then they will come off. 

* Showed undamaged ShockBot model all lit up and animated (looks really cool IMO).

* ShockBot replaces the Sec2-Bot and Flier-Bot - they've been melded into one (with the top part able to take off and fly).

* Watching the stream late, and unfortunately some is muted because of copyright, but it seems only a somewhat short section near the beginning. 

* There's going to be a ton of wiring and such on the bots.

* Karlee joins a bit in (30+ minutes).  Stephen and Daniel also join a bit later.

* There's probably not going to be an option to switch between new and old soundtrack because of the systems involved in the original music vs. the new stuff.

* He set up a bowling alley of mutants to mow down and show the gore system (with the berserk patch effects too). 

* They show a new rifle-type weapon.  It has a scope-looking thing but apparently doesn't zoom?  It's going to be an ammo readout eventually. 

* Also shows shotgun and other weapons.  Grenades are still not ready for dismemberment damage.  But, he does use them to actually bowl =oP.  He seems to be having a giddy amount of fun.  ^.^

* Swin works on the ShockBot screen "face" and cracking damage.

* Robb Water joins in as well and talks a bit about enemy design (for BioShock as well).

* Robb's original concept for SHODAN was androgynous upon being asked about SHODAN being called both "her and him" in logs - once Terri was cast to voice her, that's when it became more defined.  There was also some art at some point where SHODAN looked a bit more male (that Daniel points out).

* Apparently in a Bioshock: Infinite DLC, there's a model of Citadel Station in the game files according to Daniel.  Robb thought it was something else (perhaps something just similar shaped), but upon looking at it, thought it was definitely Citadel.

* Apparently there was a Shock3 bot in the original game that was cut (but the HUD image was still there).

* They are working on getting the difficulty system into the game with roughly the same amount of control as the original game.  It may not be 0, 1, 2, 3 etc. for each section and instead be like Easy, Medium, Hard, etc., but the different sections will still be there.

[675a223b75804ZylonBane]

Merging the Sec-2 bot and the Flier is dumb and I hate it. Seems like change for the sake of change.

[675a223b75ba0sarge945]

From my experience when game developers change or add features, they do it through one of two methodologies

Methodology 1: they find a problem with the design and address it
Methodology 2: they think of an idea that seems cool and implement it

The former frequently results in games with a lot of depth and good balancing. The latter frequently results in games that are full of "stuff", which may or may not work well together.

Companies like Rockstar use the second methodology. In games like GTA V there's a lot of stuff you can do. It's just a shame the gameplay itself is so boring.

Night Dive seem like they are using the second methodology. They should be using the first.

Obviously this is a generalization, there are many ways developers like to do things, but personally I see these two approaches a lot

[675a223b75d73icemann]

My notes for the 1st dismemberment stream (07/24/2020), as finally got the time to watch it. Noting things not stated earlier:

* 37:00 - Stephen states that the plan for System Shock 2 enhanced edition is for it to be cross platform and provide the source code to that on release. The plan is for it to be given away for free to anyone who pre-orders the SS remake.
* Will the freezing system from the earlier incarnation of the remake be making a come back - No
* Will there be different dismemberments / effects visible depending on weapon used - Yes and no. If the sparc is used on level 3 it will create a burn mark on the target
* Will there be security camera gibs - Unknown
* 1:28:00 - Get to some gibbing done on a mutant via various weapons - Reminds me of Dead Space
* Will the player be able to sit on chairs - Unknown
* Has there been any talk of a SS movie - Stephen: He's been approached by a ton of companies about doing one