SCP Beta 4 Issue Reporting

[67439eaac38e3RoSoDude]

I'm saying that SCP is a huge mod that 99% of users are now stuck with because it has millions of welcomed bug fixes in it that help the player feel that immersion you're talking about.  Now start changing this here and that over there because, "it doesn't make sense" or "looks ugly" and you're stepping into a gray area where people now start to resent using SCP because not everyone can objectively agree on matters of design or aesthetic.

I wouldn't die on the metaphorical hill of the casino stairs (seems like a fine improvement to me, honestly doubt anyone will notice either way), nor any other minor architectural improvements, but I agree with your point more broadly. Where I get irked is with major aesthetic decisions like changing fundamental aspects of the SHODAN reveal:

ops1.mis
Would be much cooler if wall/floor/ceiling faded away instead of just dropping down below. //done

Vanilla:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11saeNQwIC8
SCP beta 4:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_j71V8hhLI

The original scene had the room pulled apart in a mechanistic manner. Walls folding and tiling, hallway sliding away from you, room sections collapsing downward. The world around you is being deconstructed bit by bit -- you're helpless against the all-powerful SHODAN. You're not supposed to suspect that it was all an illusion until she fades to black and you wake up back in Polito's office. It's surreal, it's mysterious, it's cool, and it's iconic.

SCP says nah, fuck that, that makes it seem like SHODAN can warp reality (even though that was clearly the original artistic intent)! We have to make it mega obvious that she's just giving you digital hallucinations by having a bunch of log messages with her accessing to your cyber interface and then having all the walls, ceilings, and floors fly out radially and fade away. The SHODAN reveal cutscene is one of the most recognizable moments in gaming period, why change this? It's not an architectural problem, it's not a gameplay problem, it's certainly not a lore problem (the fade to black clarifies what happened after the fact, and Ken Levine scripted the scene that way himself in DromEd). But it doesn't align with some vague subjective notion of what would be "much cooler", so we're all stuck with the change. I agree with some 98% of SCP's changes (hence why I have used it as the base for virtually all of my mods) but the stated guiding principles of "consistency, polish, and visuals" are clearly non-exhaustive if things like this are making it in.

[67439eaac3a8fvoodoo47]

that.. actually is a pretty good point. maybe this should be rethought for beta6 (also, rethought actually is a word, never would have guessed).

[67439eaac3d67sarge945]

Ehh, SCP is mostly fine. I also appreciate the bug fixes and minor map changes. The only changes I feel tangibly make the game worse are replacing midwives with shotgun hybrids in botm, the adaob grenade rebalance (being reverted in beta 5 afaik) and the unpowered power armor protection.

But none of these are hills I would consider dying on. Worst case, I can just DML revert them (as RSD has already done).

I also like the vanilla laser rapier volume. I know that's not a popular opinion.

[67439eaac4027ZylonBane]

The "SHODAN logging in" messages were actually an ADaOB addition (see adaob_changes.txt, "Explanation for SHODAN's Slideshow"). Nobody's ever complained, so we left them in.

As for it being the original artistic intent that SHODAN could warp reality at this point in the game, if that was ever the case, that idea was abandoned before development started. Looking at the assets for this level, I see that the script on every creature that fades in and out is called "TransluceInOutHolo", the script on all the rumblers is "CS9_HoloRumbler", and the (unused) automap rollover text for this area is...

Code: [Select]

MapText_Ops1_0:"Holographic Projection Theater"The reason SCP changes how the walls pull away is because the vanilla implementation is, without the nostalgia goggles, janky as hell. Most of the walls either fly into terrain and vanish the moment their centerpoint enters solid, or drop down like sacks of potatoes into the bottom of the room, where you can look down and still see them waiting there during the presentation. Like much of SS2, it's a bit of a rushed mess.

That being said, due to multiple requests over the past few years, the current build introduces a delay before the walls fade out, giving them about a second of solidity as they initially pull away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK2btq1qQAc

[67439eaac45ccsarge945]

My understanding of the criticism is that nobody is arguing that SHODAN can literally warp reality. Instead, I think it amounts more to the idea that it looks like she can warp reality, until you "wake up" at the end of the cutscene and realise it's all been a vision or a dream or whatever. SCP (and seemingly adaob) makes it abundantly clear from the start of the cutscene that what you're seeing is not real, whereas vanilla leaves you until it's over to realise what's going on. That said, by sliding all the walls and floors back into place slowly, vanilla really makes it look like she actually CAN manipulate reality (it would have been better if the players vision faded out and back in, and when it faded back in everything was back to normal). I guess this really is more nostalgia than anything.

Personally, I don't mind the SCP version. I completely understand that the vanilla version is very janky, with walls that just sit there waiting for the cutscene to end. I don't mind the fade out at all. Having the walls just sit there is both distracting and very awkward.

At the same time, I like the "move out of the way mechanically" look of the original, vs the "move outwards and fade out" look of SCP. I would probably prefer them doing their vanilla movement, but fading out when they reach the end of their path. Just moving them out slightly and making them vanish is quite boring in comparison.

If it was up to me, and I wanted to keep the original intent as much as possible while still being mindful of the jank and the adaob/SCP changes, I would probably increase the fade time until the walls are almost at the end of their vanilla movement (so instead of just stopping and disappearing, they instead fade out towards the end), and would also remove the "Ocular data stream override" messages and just have the scene happen as it did in vanilla, leaving players to say "WTF" after it's happened. I would also potentially fade out the players vision (or just make the room really dark for a few seconds) and then bam, everything is back to normal, to really reinforce the "you just saw something that you're not sure was real" vibe. EDIT: The vanilla game DOES do a fade out, but it's too short, so you can still see the room reconstruct. It's clear this was their intent, so SCP should fix it by increasing it's duration slightly.

But I don't really care enough about this particular issue to have a strong opinion on it. I didn't even notice it was different the first time I played SCP, and when someone pointed it out, I was like "huh, neat" and moved on with whatever I was doing.

Since it's relegated to it's own map, how hard would it be for someone to get the vanilla version of that map and make it use the SCP gamesys? Would anyone be missing out on anything by doing that?

that.. actually is a pretty good point. maybe this should be rethought for beta6 (also, rethought actually is a word, never would have guessed).

Beta 6? Does this mean Beta 5 is basically in the finalisation stages?

[67439eaac46f1voodoo47]

yes, it's been 97% done for maybe a year or so, but somehow we are still not quite there. but we fully intent to get it out this year.

also, the botm shotgun hybrid is already reverted.

[67439eaac4e53RoSoDude]

The "SHODAN logging in" messages were actually an ADaOB addition (see adaob_changes.txt, "Explanation for SHODAN's Slideshow"). Nobody's ever complained, so we left them in.

As for it being the original artistic intent that SHODAN could warp reality at this point in the game, if that was ever the case, that idea was abandoned before development started. Looking at the assets for this level, I see that the script on every creature that fades in and out is called "TransluceInOutHolo", the script on all the rumblers is "CS9_HoloRumbler", and the (unused) automap rollover text for this area is...

Code: [Select]

MapText_Ops1_0:"Holographic Projection Theater"The reason SCP changes how the walls pull away is because the vanilla implementation is, without the nostalgia goggles, janky as hell. Most of the walls either fly into terrain and vanish the moment their centerpoint enters solid, or drop down like sacks of potatoes into the bottom of the room, where you can look down and still see them waiting there during the presentation. Like much of SS2, it's a bit of a rushed mess.

That being said, due to multiple requests over the past few years, the current build introduces a delay before the walls fade out, giving them about a second of solidity as they initially pull away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK2btq1qQAc

As @sarge945 noted, I never claimed that what you're seeing isn't a digital hallucination, but rather that it's supposed to be unclear while you're in it. They made specific decisions about how to deconstruct the office and bring in SHODAN's devices that made that intent indisputable. It's only when you wake up back in the office that you are led to suspect it wasn't real. Also, that the objects are named "Holo" doesn't prove anything. Yes, the deconstructed office reveals you're in SHODAN's holographic projection theater. The Rumblers and eggs she shows you are indeed transparent holographic projections, this is obvious. What isn't supposed to be obvious is that the theater itself is an illusion (until you wake up).

That current build is still nearly as problematic. The original motion of the walls/floor/ceiling was much more appealing; each slid and tiled away in a staggered mechanical motion, as compared to the current fashion where each surface moves in an orthogonal direction while (still quickly) fading out. SHODAN's screen at the doorway used to assemble itself -- now it just appears. Every wall in the original finds a slot and stays there, as it should -- the room was mechanically taken apart, so of course the walls and floors have to go somewhere. You describe this deliberate feature as a problem, but it's simply not. I can't find a single wall that vanishes into terrain like you claim, despite watching the original scene ten times from different angles . Everyone can load up ops1.mis in DromEd and check for themselves (and if there is one I missed, that particular wall can be easily fixed). The only things worth fixing are that the parked wall locations on the left/right sides weren't symmetrical and the fade to black at the end doesn't do a good job of covering up the room going back to normal; otherwise the scene was iconic and excellent as it was. No nostalgia goggles, I didn't play the game in 1999 like you all.

There's just no excuse for tampering with the original vision so drastically in the self-proclaimed "Shock Community Patch", where one would assume things aren't merely justified by personal preference and hyperbole about "jank" and sacks of potatoes. Make it a separate "Enhanced SHODAN Reveal" mod, argue why it's an improvement there all you like, but it doesn't belong in the mod that every new player is encouraged to install, and which is supposedly going to end up in NewDark's official release.

For anyone who wants to directly compare:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjWZHH6A2go

[67439eaac500dZylonBane]

We're talking about a game that ends with "Nah", and that only has psychic monkeys in it because one of the motion capture guys decided to goof around while they had some extra studio time. You're attributing way too much intentionality to minor details of a sequence that was cobbled together in an engine that, by the dev's own admission, isn't suited to this sort of thing. One can imagine they were going for some "mechanically taking apart" thing, but I say they were going for "this is the simplest solution, ship it". SS2 is full of half-assed hacks like this. Fetishizing them doesn't help anyone.

And let's be honest here, by the time "I AM SHODAN" plays, the player has already forgotten about how exactly the walls disappeared.

[67439eaac512eRoSoDude]

Are you aware that the Laser Rapier double counts the melee STR damage bonus? This is because it a second Incendiary damage stim per ADaOB, and both stims inherit the STR damage bonus. So with STR 4 you're getting +6 damage instead of +3 as with every other melee weapon.

[67439eaac5395Baal]

Hello. I'm replaying Shock 2 at the moment using a couple of mods (including this).
Firstly, thanks for maintaining this game after such a long time. It is much appreciated.

I do run the game on Linux using Wine but I could not run SS2Tool; it broke the installation (it seems to not work correctly on every Wine version). So I installed the mods directly on top of the GOG installation with DMM. That seems to work fine though.

A few issues/questions:
1. Switching psi tiers is buggy when I upgrade a tier without getting any powers from it. For example: I have tiers 1,2,3 and 4. But no powers of 3 (at least one power of the other tiers). Switching from 2 to the next doesn't select 4 but an empty 3 (the tier and power fields are both empty). I also can't switch to the next from this.

2. Is it possible and in the scope of this patch to change the way psi tiers are selected? It would be nice if I could cycle tiers directly with a key press, instead of using the hud.

3. This is probably a Newdark issue. I noticed AI pathfinding problems around objects in my current playthrough of this (and Thief Gold as well).
In the cargo bays, for example, the security bots got stuck on crates, and would see and shoot me through crates I hid behind. Is this a known bug?

[67439eaac54ecvoodoo47]

1. no/out of scope (engine)
2. no/out of scope (engine)
3. should be fixed as much as possible in beta5

[67439eaac5741Baal]

Thank you. That was quick.

3. should be fixed as much as possible in beta5

May I ask what causes this? Because I had similar issues in Thief Gold. I was hiding behind a big barrel but was spotted regardless. That should normaly work, or am I wrong?

[67439eaac5866voodoo47]

the Dark Engine is quirky and weird. AIs sometimes mess up in certain situations, and each place where this tends to happen usually needs to be tweaked manually to fix it.

a large object needs to be set to block AI vision, and if you aren't hiding in shadows as well, you might be spotted regardless. quicksaves should help you out if that happens.

[67439eaac5a7cBaal]

voodoo47Would that be an issue I should report for TFix? If I can find this particular barrel again...

[67439eaac5b56voodoo47]

sure.

[67439eaac5ecasarge945]

2. Is it possible and in the scope of this patch to change the way psi tiers are selected? It would be nice if I could cycle tiers directly with a key press, instead of using the hud.

you can use the F keys, if that's what you're talking about.

[67439eaac62f3sarge945]

No, I think all the points and counter points have been made.  I just hope it wasn't for nothing.

The other important thing to keep in mind is that a "better stairs mod" is not the same as a "move 3 security cameras" or "get rid of a shotgun spawn" mod, map changes can't be done in the same way as the plethora of minimods available on the forum. Modifications to map geometry can't be done with DML, and requires changing the map itself. This has implications for compatibility - it has to use the right gamesys, and has to forward all the other changes from SCP. Map mods like this wouldn't be compatible with each other, since you can only have 1 version of each map and can't combine them, and would generally be a nightmare to maintain.

I get your point. It's important to make sure changes actually benefit the game and don't cause unnecessary issues for players. But in this case, we're effectively stuck between a rock and a hard place - either these changes get included, which may upset some people, or they don't, which may also upset some people. Unless there was a single "SCP5 more advanced map changes" mod (which would automatically double the workload as everything would have to be ported across), people wouldn't have any real ability to pick and choose what they want - that's just a technical limitation of the game.

You argue that we should leave the stairs as is. Others argue that we should change them. There's not much we can do to rectify this, we just have to pick a decision and stick with it.

On an unrelated note, I have seen stairs built like that in real life, with the weird double-height step. I saw it because of a lack of space - they obviously wanted to go for a better design but settled on this one because of area limitations. Those steps were always horrible to use and I constantly saw signs up saying "watch the stairs" or similar. It's kind of ironic that they have plenty of space and yet have gone with the same horrid step design in the Von Braun.

[67439eaac6c1cRocketMan]

After RoSoDude properly articulated what I was trying to say in a broader sense, and after multiple people chimed in saying the stairs didn't bother them, I realized that I fell victim to another case of waking up from a coma to see some random change that was but a single poor example of a more systemic problem, yet I short-sightedly decided to fight that battle and build my case on a shoddy foundation... because it was there.  I still think map geometry changes that don't fix anything that's strictly broken should be omitted due to the sheer size of SCP but indeed there are bigger fish to fry.  The point of contention that didn't come out properly until others gleaned what I was getting at and re-iterated it properly, was that SCP is a behemoth of a mod that people don't decide on anymore.  Pretty much everybody just uses it.  So obviously it's going to take a lot to dissuade someone from using it just because there are a few things that people didn't want or didn't need in there.  It then becomes a problem that you have wheat and chaff mixed together whether you like it or not.  No doubt it's difficult to keep such a big thing so clean and tidy as it continues to grow but there are plenty of additions that just don't need to be there and are no-brainers to migrate somewhere else. 

You argue that we should leave the stairs as is. Others argue that we should change them. There's not much we can do to rectify this, we just have to pick a decision and stick with it.

Absolutely.  It's one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't.  But as a thought experiment consider this.  Once something has been changed... such as these stairs, and a guy like me says it should have been omitted, and a bunch of other ppl say they are either indifferent or they like the change, this is all based on something that has already taken place and in this case, it's so far clear that it should remain.  But how many people asked for the stairs to be changed?  Precisely zero.  So, you and I both both agree that there will always be people on both sides of the fence and that doesn't help one to decide which way to go.  But what we do know is, if someone says they want something changed, you now have a reason to do it.  If nobody says anything, you have no reason to do it.  So if it's just a coin flip and you're asked to pick heads or tails, I'd say heads if someone requested a change and tails if nobody requested it.  Doesn't change the aftermath but it's a reasonable way to decide on something that isn't self-evidently necessary, if it's merely a convenience to wrap it into your mod due to game design limitations.

[67439eaac6d76ZylonBane]

[67439eaac6eb8RoSoDude]

Is an InfoComp terminal not possible to display the text? Would help make translation/mod updates easier.

Briefly forgot there's no MFD, ignore me. Looks pretty nice, probably an improvement to character creation in the eyes of most.

[67439eaac6fd8ZylonBane]

The best solution for mods would probably be to just hide it. This thing is pretty much only useful for first-time players.

[67439eaac72a4sarge945]

The best solution for mods would probably be to just hide it. This thing is pretty much only useful for first-time players.

I disagree. If a mod changes something, it might actually be useful to articulate the change, especially since not everyone reads changelogs. Although if they don't read changelogs, it's doubtful they will read info comps...

But hiding it is a good choice too.

On an unrelated note, is this infocomp tied to the newbie flag? Some could argue that it's immersion breaking, and it's likely that if someone skips the training they probably already know what the abilities do.

[67439eaac7602ZylonBane]

I disagree. If a mod changes something, it might actually be useful to articulate the change, especially since not everyone reads changelogs.

If someone downloads and installs a mod without even reading what the mod does, there's no helping them.

On an unrelated note, is this infocomp tied to the newbie flag? Some could argue that it's immersion breaking, and it's likely that if someone skips the training they probably already know what the abilities do.

It's not currently, but it could be. All the text is copied directly from the PDA rollover help text, so that immersion already got broke.

[67439eaac7910RocketMan]

If someone downloads and installs a mod without even reading what the mod does, there's no helping them.

Ohhh man you've got a lot to learn.