SCP Beta 3 Issue Reporting

[67436daf84593ZylonBane]

Submit all SCP Beta 3 bug reports here (google doc, slightly wip).

v47: Before you report a problem, make triple sure that you have patched up with the latest SS2tool (with no manual tweaks to the cfg and ini files) and are running a clean install of Beta3 - if you want to report an issue you found in Beta1, Beta2, or even vanilla, you can, but you need to make sure it still exists in Beta3 before submitting. Our time is precious - anyone polluting the report sheet with old bugs that have been fixed long ago may find themselves riding the banwagon for a couple of days.

[67436daf84a12Join2]

Difficulty: Impossible
Other mods: everything under the newbie modding guide.
Testing focus: minimal. You've got System Shocked. I want to enjoy the game and mods.
Current location: after BOTM cutscene in engineering B.

-Subtle z-fighting with blood texture on a bed in the room in medsci2 immediately after using the keycard - opposite the room with the broken 'nade launcher.
-Psi hypo on top of stack of crates in medsci 1 turret trap room appears to have a finicky collision (for frobbing). Maybe. Didn't really test much.
-Stepping over the toilet drain that is revealed after smashing toilets drops your height a touch? Probably a good thing really to represent putting your foot in the hole.
-A few low-res/low-poly assets you're likely well aware of, such as the small yellow pipe mesh occasionally encountered around medsci has low res skin.
-Animating/interpolating cargo doors in engB do not block line of sight nor bullets...has no collision. If no solution to hand, perhaps speed up the open/close time a little to better hide the fact.
-Not ripped the weapon reload animation improvements from secmod?

Possibly outside SCP's scope or not possible with no SDK:

-Melee weapons are the only held objects that have no running animation?
-Still thrown about aggressively when spawning into a new level.
-Still floaty player physics, even on the earth level ruling out an excuse of modified gravity.
-New Dark mantling angles seem a bit off sometimes.
-Running Headbob probably too subtle. Crouch bob is fine though.
-Large/heavy fragments should maybe deal minor (1hp) damage to the player if falling from above? Smacked a vent above and a large fragment hit me to no effect.
-AI still running at and not attacking if player is backpedaling. Even if they did their attack probably wouldn't be enough to reach though. I guess that explains Secmod's super hybrids.

Community note: maybe R&R&Rs EMP rifle should be bundled with tacticool or referenced separately in the newbie modding guide, or a link provided on the tacticool page? Sure it's a notable style change but the vanilla model isn't worth much and it's important to have consistency among the weapons in terms of graphical quality.

If by that you mean focus on changing the gameplay, that's the exact opposite of what SCP is about.

Your Tank and Cybernetically-able style balance upgrades and other such tweaks, you'd better remove them in that case...in all seriousness more stuff along those lines would be nice. By the way on impossible Tank 10hp may be a bit much. That's double your default HP. Any way to make Tank scale based on difficulty mode? Say 12-10-8-6 respectively?

Anyhow, good job. Definitely does as advertised, and is pretty much flawless in those goals. I just wish "System Shock 2 but better" also applied to the gameplay.  But I recall mention of a possible SCP+ fork in the future, so maybe I'll get my wish.

Edit: Ah right, this thread for the reports.

[67436daf84f3aDj 127]

By the way on impossible Tank 10hp may be a bit much. That's double your default HP. Any way to make Tank scale based on difficulty mode? Say 12-10-8-6 respectively?

Tank's usefulness always raised with the difficulty level of System Shock 2, so I don't see this as too big a problem. Personally I think Impossible gives you too much low starting health to be honest, you should be able to survive atleast 1 pipe hybrid hit for lord's sake!

[67436daf850baJoin2]

Pretty sure you can survive the occasional hit. Pipe hybrids are not really a threat once you figure them out though. The old fencing step-in-out attack with good timing ensures you pretty much never get hit.

Tank's usefulness always raised with the difficulty level of System Shock 2, so I don't see this as too big a problem.

A problem nonetheless. And double default health on impossible may be too useful. Hard to say though as I haven't invested anything in endurance and the like to see how well health scales on this difficulty yet. (first time running impos).

[67436daf85242voodoo47]

collision might not be perfect on many doors, but pretty sure they do have physics. also, that's pretty much the point with Tank on impossible.

and we need to create a new google doc before System Shocked starts doing his thing.

[67436daf8580bDj 127]

Pretty sure you can survive the occasional hit.

With pipe hybrids on Impossible and default Endurance you can't, no. Not until you get atleast light combat armor or use the first level Psi shield.

Pipe hybrids are not really a threat once you figure them out though. The old fencing step-in-out attack with good timing ensures you pretty much never get hit.

I'm very familiar with how the AI of every enemy works, and no it's not as reliable as you're making it out to be. There are instances where a pipe hybrid can easily back you into a corner and get a guaranteed hit at you. One good example is the Engineering corridors.

Hard to say though as I haven't invested anything in endurance and the like to see how well health scales on this difficulty yet. (first time running impos).

Every point of Endurance gives you only 3 health points. So yeah, Tank has always been supposed to be a big HP boost for the higher difficulties, because on Normal and especially Easy 10 or 5 HP doesn't make much of a difference at all.

[67436daf85ba8Join2]

I'm very familiar with how the AI of every enemy works, and no it's not as reliable as you're making it out to be. There are instances where a pipe hybrid can easily back you into a corner and get a guaranteed hit at you. One good example is the Engineering corridors.

solution: don't get yourself backed into a corner, else suffer the consequences.

Every point of Endurance gives you only 3 health points. So yeah, Tank has always been supposed to be a big HP boost for the higher difficulties, because on Normal and especially Easy 10 or 5 HP doesn't make much of a difference at all.

Hence make it scale based on difficulty if possible. 10hp is probably too much on impos. if endurance boosts by 3 as you say.

collision might not be perfect on many doors, but pretty sure they do have physics.

I gunned down a hybrid through an opening cargo door, four single shot pistol shots throughout its lengthy opening animation, each bullet passing through it to the highlighted hybrid on the other side.

[67436daf86139Djant]

solution: don't get yourself backed into a corner, else suffer the consequences.

Easy to say, not always possible to do.

Besides, the whole point of having a health mechanic is to be able to make a few mistakes and still survive. Having the vast majority of early game attacks you face be insta kills goes counter to that.

Hence make it scale based on difficulty if possible. 10hp is probably too much on impos. if endurance boosts by 3 as you say.

Meh, you're wasting an OS upgrade just to be able to take 2 or so hits more, 10 HP sounds right to me. Especially since that 10 HP goes down like a blaze with later enemies.

[67436daf8664aZylonBane]

Making fundamental changes to how gameplay systems work is out of scope for SCP. We tweak the numbers on existing systems, and even then only where the default numbers are useless or nonsensical.

I really don't understand why some people have such a hard time grasping this.

-Animating/interpolating cargo doors in engB do not block line of sight nor bullets...has no collision.

I just ran through and checked all the cargo bay doors, and they all have correctly sized and configured physics models and block bullets just fine.

[67436daf867a7chickenhead]

You guys are so awesome.

EDIT:
wrong board. dang it.

[67436daf86a71Join2]

I just ran through and checked all the cargo bay doors, and they all have correctly sized and configured physics models and block bullets just fine.

Yeah, after further testing it seems it's just the protruding lock part of the door that has no collision, which you probably can do nothing about. Still annoying when you get blasted by a laser turret through one though.

[67436daf86b78voodoo47]

theoretically fixable, but I ain't getting paid enough to run around the game attaching extra markers with physics to every door that doesn't have perfectly rectangular shape. did it on the recreation kool-aid wall, that ought to be enough.

[67436daf86c6cJoin2]

It is a problem for those doors in particular because there's so many + laser turrets + slow open/close speed. But I can imagine the tedium involved in fixing it.

[67436daf86e07voodoo47]

Dark supports only very limited set of physics shapes. anything more intricate requires you to create invisible objects with extra physics and tack them onto the primary object.
[koolaid.jpg expired]

[67436daf86f0eZylonBane]

I can't even imagine how much more irritating those cargo bay doors would be to get through if you couldn't walk through those tabs.

[67436daf87150Join2]

I can't even imagine how much more irritating those cargo bay doors would be to get through if you couldn't walk through those tabs.

Add the collision, then increase the open/close speed by 25% seems sensible. It's a rather notable problem from both a gameplay and an immersion standpoint. Pretty sure every playthrough of mine something or other has happened with those doors.

Resuming my playthrough...

[67436daf87250ZylonBane]

There's also the issue with pathfinding. AIs know how to deal with sliding doors. Sliding doors with chest-high physics nubs glued onto them? Not so much.

[67436daf8746aJoin2]

-Z-fighting with ceiling grates in ops bulkhead 2, immediately next to the hanging dude that has a load of annelid worms slither out of him and fall to the floor.
-Laser Rapier "humm". Can hardly hear it even with headphones on. I find this to be a disappointment as a rapier lover. I thought it was perfect volume vanilla and I enjoyed the sound.
-After the ops reveal Shodan's transmission does not play until you approach the bulkhead. Most players naturally will press the bulkhead button and enter the loading screen, inadvertently killing the transmission. Could you either make the bulkhead switch red/inactive while the transmission plays out (it's pretty long though), or at the very least trigger her audio transmission a couple seconds after you spawn after the reveal scene so you're not waiting at the bulkhead for ages, or probably best of all, trigger it after passing through the bulkhead load screen.
-Persistent subtle audio crackling in the dorm areas of ops first level after having played the piano (multiple right clicks). Persisted until passing through a bulkhead. Was using headphones which probably helped me notice it. There's a chance it's not related to the piano, but I'll be sure to test in Rec.
-Nice job with the power armor having battery-less protection. Nobody is going to complain if there is more sensible tweaking along these lines. Involve the community if in doubt as you did with the two OS upgrades.
-The restoration of previously removed Auto-Repair/ICE/Epsteins. Perhaps make that exclusive to easy/normal as I do not need to take modify past 3, and other such balancing issues. Damn I miss secmod's mod system. 
-Pathfinding issues with the spiders in Hydro A. Perhaps make them able to pass through the corpses of their kind?

Out of scope/no SDK stuff:

-Assassins still running around like 'tards.
-So many objects research-able at skill lvl 1. Midwife organ I'd bump up to lvl 3 at least.

[67436daf8788aDj 127]

-Laser Rapier "humm". Can hardly hear it even with headphones on. I find this to be a disappointment as a rapier lover. I thought it was perfect volume vanilla and I enjoyed the sound.

This was most likely done since many people found the hum annoying, it was frequently complained about on this forum and elsewhere. I found it grating at first too, though I sorta got used to it over time.

[67436daf879ccJoin2]

I've always loved it. It's a really cool sound. It's somewhat subtle too, so I find it odd that many people took issue with it.

[67436daf87b25Join2]

Regarding power armor, could 20% battery-less defense be a bit much? It's an exceptionally good armor now with very low requirement to use. Sure somewhere down the line I'm going to have to put the occasional portable battery into it, but currently it seems to have become the de-facto best armor, unless the annelid armor is notably better. Vanilla I'd just stick with the medium armor mostly out of choice, but now it seems power is go-to.
Anyway I was thinking 10 or 15% battery-less defense may be better, so that it has more notable downside and therefore raising the relevance of medium armor and annelid armor.

I'd better play some more and experiment with all the armor types first before giving any opinion, actually.

[67436daf87e7aDjant]

I'd better play some more and experiment with all the armor types first before giving any opinion, actually.

Yeah,  power armor giving 20% damage reduction uncharged doesn't really unbalance the game. The "basic" armors, Light, Medium and Heavy, are all supposed to give increasingly higher and reliable protection for a rising Strength cost. Light armor is the most basic form of armor and only meant to help you out a little early on. Medium armor gives more protection, 30% reduction, and heavy armor gives the most you can get reliably without using power, 40%. Power armor gives 50% protection and also minor resistance to radiation and toxin, 10% reduction, but consumes energy very fast. Hazard suits give 80% protection from toxins and radiation but have no other benefits, they're clearly meant to be used only for the highly irradiated areas. The wormskin armor is not exactly notable for its protection as it is for its huge boost to PSI. At a PSI of 6, it basically gives you a free overcharge on all your abilities. I know that it gives decent protection against toxins and radiation though, probably around 40% reduction or something.

[67436daf87fb6voodoo47]

-currently, wormskin is basically medium armor plus half the rad suit with the psi boost on top. a significant boost vs vanilla, but something found so late in the game shouldn't be as weak.
-pretty sure those ops3 grates were fixed a million years ago.
-the rapier humming sound has been toned down intentionally as it was annoying. ANNOYING. A.N.N.O.Y.I.N.G!
-spiders kind of suck sometimes.
-bumping up item requirements is out of scope.

[67436daf88120Kolya]

How about a mini mod to reduce the rapier volume?