KickStarter System Shock 1 Remake by Nightdive Studios

[Latelistener]

I can't imagine children on Citadel Station. Seems to be an extremely bad place to bring your kid to (if that was even allowed).

 

[potatojohn]

I like the new levels visually. It's got that SS2 look.

Although the pace of development seems a bit slow. At this rate they'll be done in 2060 (still before Scam Citizen I guess)

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[ciox]

Best news from the video is that they use the UE4 level streaming to remove loading screens, making them able to do what the Prey team wanted to do, but couldn't because of Cry Engine.

On the other hand that so much time (3 whole minutes?) is spent on the dismember tech demo to pad out the video is hilarious to me, when UE4 natively provides you with this and other tools for breaking a mesh apart https://docs.unrealengine.com/lates...nents/SkeletalMesh/BreakConstraint/index.html

 

[LESS T_T]

Well, it doesn't quite 'look' like System Shock 1 (well, it's a reboot duh) but I approve that they're striving the physicality that was not feasible back in the days. Hopefully it will be meaningful in the context of overarching gameplay. Hope they show more on that front in the future.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Well, it doesn't quite 'look' like System Shock 1 (well, it's a reboot duh) but I approve that they're striving the physicality that was not feasible back in the days. Hopefully it will be meaningful in the context of overarching gameplay. Hope they show more on that front in the future.

Exactly. One thing they need to do, for example, is establish what is the intended role of Citadel Station, like overall. Is it just a habitat in space, is it a mining station or a research lab/testing facility? The SS1 intro says that it's a research station focusing on "Genetic, Pharmacological and Robotic" fields, and the latest backer video reveals that children are supposed to be on the station, which makes some sense, but overall a more defined role is needed. They need to show that.

But this got me thinking, and now I'm wondering... why is there a giant mining laser on Citadel Station?

After a little research I realized that the whole thing with the mining laser needs to be redone, because of a few reasons:

# There's no obvious reason for it to be there, except as a plot device.
# For the laser to even reach Earth it would need to be big and accurate.
# For the laser to be a threat to Earth it would need to be immensely powerful.
# It can't hit the Earth anyway.

Let's go over each of these points.

A research station focusing on the above fields of research should not need to have a mining laser. One can argue that a mining laser could "come in handy" in orbit around Saturn, but all things considered there would need to be a REALLY good reason to have one installed. This needs to be addressed.

Next there's the distance. SHODAN is trying to hit the Earth from a distance of roughly 10 Astronomical Units/1.2 billion kilometers/746 million miles. It would take considerable time just to calculate that shot, taking into account every single celestial object that could block the shot (more on that later) and then, assuming that the laser travels at the speed of light, take into account the 80-minute delay time.

Then there's the power needed just for the laser to reach Earth. I can imagine that firing a laser through space requires less energy than firing it inside an atmosphere, but the energy output would still be astronomical. THEN there's the added factor that the laser must retain enough power after that 80-minute trip to represent a threat to Earth. I don't have all the science data at hand here, but I'm guessing Citadel Station's power output would have to at least equal that of the Death Star, to be able to seriously cut up Earth over that distance. Citadel Station is not a small moon, it's just a research station. I'm going to state that Citadel Station can't power up such a shot, but feel free to correct me on that one.

Not that it matters, because of the biggest problem: System Shock 1 takes place on November 6th 2072. I took a look at an orrery and set it to that exact date. Find Saturn. Now find the Earth. Draw a line between them, or rotate the orrery to eyeball the shot. Oh look, not only is Mercury in the way, but so is THE SUN. Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun at that exact date. It will take at least four weeks for Citadel Station to have a chance at hitting the Earth, and eight weeks to have a clear shot at it. And all that before we even begin to factor in the countless objects in the Asteroid Belt that would at least mess with the shot. This completely destroys the game's option of the player being able to fire the laser themselves, and goes a long way towards making the mining laser irrelevant from a plot perspective.

So what to do? The mining laser only makes sense in-game as an Urgent Threat to the player, and I think I've gone a long way towards debunking that. So if you're a band of developers working on rebooting a game that has such a failed concept as the game's Urgent Threat, you obviously take the time to revisit it (at least I hope they do) and replace the mining laser with something else. But what?

The most obvious replacement is a giant tractor beam - or to be more precise, a gigantic gravity gun. Having a heavy-duty tractor beam on a space station makes sense as it can pull (and push) asteroids and other things that could threaten Citadel Station's orbital trajectory and overall integrity. And it's easy to weaponize - just grab a large asteroid, point it at whatever you want annihilated, and push it away with as much force as possible. (This is the basic idea behind what is called a Mass Driver, which is a very VERY powerful weapon.) And if SHODAN wants to cripple the Earth, why not fire a huge asteroid at it? To make the threat even more urgent we can cook up something about how SHODAN has installed some kind of cloaking technology on the asteroid so that it can't be tracked through space en route to Earth, meaning that the only chance to save the planet is from aboard Citadel Station. To sell the idea even better one could claim that SHODAN needs to overload the Mass Driver to pull off this shot, which renders it useless afterwards, meaning that she only has one shot. So the player's goal is to mess up the shot, and loads of options present themselves in that regard... but raising the shields first should NOT be one of them.

 

[Infinitron]

Unkillable Cat Think a giant mining laser is implausible? How about the fact that the station was actually mobile? http://shodan.wikia.com/wiki/Destroying_Citadel_Station

It's really just a general purpose sci-fi/cyberpunk cool stuff station.

 

[Arrowgrab]

With all due respect, U.C., you're being rather silly about this, almost like you're deliberately grasping at flimsy justifications to be offended.

# There's no obvious reason for it to be there, except as a plot device.
# For the laser to even reach Earth it would need to be big and accurate.
# For the laser to be a threat to Earth it would need to be immensely powerful.
# It can't hit the Earth anyway.

Let's go over each of these points.

A research station focusing on the above fields of research should not need to have a mining laser. One can argue that a mining laser could "come in handy" in orbit around Saturn, but all things considered there would need to be a REALLY good reason to have one installed. This needs to be addressed.

It could be a test device for robotic aiming systems or whatnot, trying to hit targets on Saturn's moons accurately with AI guidance, operating as a prototype of a future industrial application.

Or it could be a non-research, totally practical auxiliary asset used to assist manned or unmanned mining expeditions on the same moons. "Genetic, Pharmacological and Robotic Research" is just a quick description, not an exhaustive list of every single damn thing you can find on Citadel. It also has cafeterias, parks and toilets, too, and those aren't mentioned in the intro, either.

Or it could be that Trioptimum is a powerful, corrupt, evil megacorporation engaged in all sorts of super-illegal research, like interplanetary weapon systems, which they'll have to disguise as something.

Or maybe it's because it was added after the initial design as a card in negotiating with the United Earth Miners' Conglomerate over rights to Saturn's moons with subsequent taxing of the shipping lines in the sector. Which, you know, is mentioned in a readable in the game.

Next there's the distance. SHODAN is trying to hit the Earth from a distance of roughly 10 Astronomical Units/1.2 billion kilometers/746 million miles. It would take considerable time just to calculate that shot, taking into account every single celestial object that could block the shot (more on that later) and then, assuming that the laser travels at the speed of light, take into account the 80-minute delay time.

I'm pretty sure we could calculate that shot today, with these magical things called computers. We can already calculate and execute all sorts of crazy slingshot maneuvers for probes, and that's a lot more difficult than pointing a beam of light. Hell, we can point space telescopes at stars over a thousand light years away, that's harder to do than point a camera next to the laser at Earth from Saturn.

Then there's the power needed just for the laser to reach Earth. I can imagine that firing a laser through space requires less energy than firing it inside an atmosphere, but the energy output would still be astronomical. THEN there's the added factor that the laser must retain enough power after that 80-minute trip to represent a threat to Earth. I don't have all the science data at hand here, but I'm guessing Citadel Station's power output would have to at least equal that of the Death Star, to be able to seriously cut up Earth over that distance. Citadel Station is not a small moon, it's just a research station. I'm going to state that Citadel Station can't power up such a shot, but feel free to correct me on that one.

It's not about power, it's about attenuation. Sure, we couldn't do it today, but... science fiction. And it's called a "Tachyon Laser", so we know there's some sort of futuristic technology involved. Also, Death Star power output? Bullshit. Both in-game text and image (when you screw up the mission) refers to the beam hitting a city without destroying the planet or even cracking the planet's mantle. Or even fully destroying the city, possibly. That's so many orders of magnitude less that I don't even know how to calculate it.

Not that it matters, because of the biggest problem: System Shock 1 takes place on November 6th 2072. I took a look at an orrery and set it to that exact date. Find Saturn. Now find the Earth. Draw a line between them, or rotate the orrery to eyeball the shot. Oh look, not only is Mercury in the way, but so is THE SUN. Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun at that exact date. It will take at least four weeks for Citadel Station to have a chance at hitting the Earth, and eight weeks to have a clear shot at it.

You're factually wrong. One, that online orrery you linked to represents planets with ridiculously oversized blobs, so any estimates by sight are completely unusable. Two, even with that in mind, I've lined them up, and there is a line of fire on the date you gave.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ITTL4cyL2oqPUafZkW-XSWT-SY_4R429

The blue circle is Earth, the grey one behind it, only visible as a small crescent under Earth, is Saturn. Mercury and the Sun are not in the way, not even with the ridiculously oversized blob representation.

And all that before we even begin to factor in the countless objects in the Asteroid Belt that would at least mess with the shot. This completely destroys the game's option of the player being able to fire the laser themselves, and goes a long way towards making the mining laser irrelevant from a plot perspective.

In real life, the Asteroid Belt is nothing like the asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back. It's empty. Vastly, mind-boggingly, incomprehensibly empty.

What happened, U.C.? Your posts in the Thief thread are always intelligent, thoroughly considered and well-phrased, a joy to read. And now you have... this thing here, where you're making arguments from a position of factual and scientific ignorance so gross one would expect to see it from an American high school student. I'm genuinely shocked.

 

[HansDampf]

Planets and even the Sun are so small compared to the size of the solar system that you are almost guaranteed to have a shot as long as the planet you are orbiting around isn't blocking the path.

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/5-8/features/F_Solar_System_Scale.html

The inner planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars - are about the size of grains of sand on a football field scale. They would be dwarfed by a typical flea, which is about 3 mm long.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

With all due respect, U.C., you're being rather silly about this, almost like you're deliberately grasping at flimsy justifications to be offended.

There's no agenda behind my post except that I was thinking out loud, and maybe get some discussion going on that along the way. At least I managed the last part.

As for the rest of your post - I read it, and I'm grateful for you pointing out my errors, but otherwise I'm not touching it except to say this: I'm not the one that's offended here... you are. I have no idea why that is, but I'm not gonna bother with it.

 

[DraQ]

Unkillable Cat
Good sperg, however given that even something as large as Sun is pretty small compared to interplanetary distances and that planetary orbits don't lie in the same plane, you'd have a line of sight between Earth and Saturn besides Sun (as much as you can trust Space Engine's orrery, you'd get a clean shot, even though it would have to pass close to the Sun), and Mercury is too small to obstruct Earth from something in orbit around Saturn. Asteroid belt being awfully sparse and full of awfully small object wouldn't be much of an issue either.

Of course, laser required to be a threat from this distance is indeed quite preposterous, although most of the alternatives are even worse and it's pretty clear from SS1 and 2 that the devs didn't have the sense of scale anyway.
Nevertheless, if it's going to be full reboot I am all for at least attempting to fix what the originals did wrong before touching anything else.

 

[Melan]

In any case, getting more and more about not backing this thing when it was kickstarted. Remember the initial promises? "We are working on a faithful remake with modern graphics and some comfort functions. To bring a classic to the modern gamer."

Oh, that was all a lie. Every single person who donated to that Kickstarter was robbed of the "System Shock 1 reboot" that was promised. They are not even trying anymore, just rattling off the usual "we know the series DNA" rhetoric. You know where it leads, I know where it leads... same place as always. The frog hasn't been boiled, it has been nuked in a particle accelerator.

Some will like what they will be getting, bubble chairs (LOL) and boss battles (LOL) and included. Maybe the game will be better than average. But it does not change the lie. It's not just the levels. You will never ever get things like System Shock's cyber rollerskates and nitro packs and sensaround modules back. Because that'd break the gameplay, you see. Can't do that in a modern game. Not part of the DNA.

These guys dug up the corpse of one of the best games of all times, and fucked it. What an accomplishment.

 

[nodar]

^You'll get your SS1 with with everything just the same but with better graphics and controls once they release the source code, so that people can mess with source ports and texture/model replacements.

Meanwhile, this looks fucking excellent.

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/leAXJ

Spoiler

Cyborg Drone - System Shock
Had the pleasure to do some contract work for Nightdive Studios' reboot of System Shock.

 

[Alienman]

You can tell he is on facebook.

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[laclongquan]

Let's go over each of these points.

A research station focusing on the above fields of research should not need to have a mining laser. One can argue that a mining laser could "come in handy" in orbit around Saturn, but all things considered there would need to be a REALLY good reason to have one installed. This needs to be addressed.

Next there's the distance. SHODAN is trying to hit the Earth from a distance of roughly 10 Astronomical Units/1.2 billion kilometers/746 million miles. It would take considerable time just to calculate that shot, taking into account every single celestial object that could block the shot (more on that later) and then, assuming that the laser travels at the speed of light, take into account the 80-minute delay time.

Then there's the power needed just for the laser to reach Earth. I can imagine that firing a laser through space requires less energy than firing it inside an atmosphere, but the energy output would still be astronomical. THEN there's the added factor that the laser must retain enough power after that 80-minute trip to represent a threat to Earth. I don't have all the science data at hand here, but I'm guessing Citadel Station's power output would have to at least equal that of the Death Star, to be able to seriously cut up Earth over that distance. Citadel Station is not a small moon, it's just a research station. I'm going to state that Citadel Station can't power up such a shot, but feel free to correct me on that one.

Not that it matters, because of the biggest problem: System Shock 1 takes place on November 6th 2072. I took a look at an orrery and set it to that exact date. Find Saturn. Now find the Earth. Draw a line between them, or rotate the orrery to eyeball the shot. Oh look, not only is Mercury in the way, but so is THE SUN. Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun at that exact date. It will take at least four weeks for Citadel Station to have a chance at hitting the Earth, and eight weeks to have a clear shot at it. And all that before we even begin to factor in the countless objects in the Asteroid Belt that would at least mess with the shot. This completely destroys the game's option of the player being able to fire the laser themselves, and goes a long way towards making the mining laser irrelevant from a plot perspective.

So what to do? The mining laser only makes sense in-game as an Urgent Threat to the player, and I think I've gone a long way towards debunking that. So if you're a band of developers working on rebooting a game that has such a failed concept as the game's Urgent Threat, you obviously take the time to revisit it (at least I hope they do) and replace the mining laser with something else. But what?

The most obvious replacement is a giant tractor beam - or to be more precise, a gigantic gravity gun. Having a heavy-duty tractor beam on a space station makes sense as it can pull (and push) asteroids and other things that could threaten Citadel Station's orbital trajectory and overall integrity. And it's easy to weaponize - just grab a large asteroid, point it at whatever you want annihilated, and push it away with as much force as possible. (This is the basic idea behind what is called a Mass Driver, which is a very VERY powerful weapon.) And if SHODAN wants to cripple the Earth, why not fire a huge asteroid at it? To make the threat even more urgent we can cook up something about how SHODAN has installed some kind of cloaking technology on the asteroid so that it can't be tracked through space en route to Earth, meaning that the only chance to save the planet is from aboard Citadel Station. To sell the idea even better one could claim that SHODAN needs to overload the Mass Driver to pull off this shot, which renders it useless afterwards, meaning that she only has one shot. So the player's goal is to mess up the shot, and loads of options present themselves in that regard... but raising the shields first should NOT be one of them.

[/QUOTE]

I will note that there's method of metal extraction using laser in zero gravity.

1. Spin the target, be it a metallic asteroid or just a big chunk of metal. Since it's zerogee, it's easy. The purpose is to have heat spread, not concentrated (thus breaking the target).

2. Lasering that sucker to melting point.

3. Due to spinning, you can do centrifugal separation. materials of different density gather at different places. You got a ball with different layers, like an onion.

4. Use laser to cut those layers. Viola! chunk of materials.

5. profit.

It is necessary because you dont want to do smelting on your station (heat). You can have cheap raw materials from asteroid mining.

Of course, this presuppose a big need for raw metals in stations.

Also, with that, you can smelt big chunk of iron, aka kinetic warhead. Get an asteroid to the station, melt it into warheads. Drop them onto the gravity well and viola! Rain of random destruction and cheap at the price.

If you want to guide those suckers you will need to graft sophisticated directional rocket engines on them, with communication suite.

 

[ciox]

Nobody's looked at cyberspace until now, impressive.
It's still in there at least, but chances are it will be reduced to more of a minigame status without specialized software that only works in cyberspace and so on.

 

[LESS T_T]

Familiarity:



I guess they scrapped what's made in the Unity prototype?

 

[Infinitron]

Familiarity:

 

[Jasede]

Screenshot looks really bad, like Unity-grade textures.

 

[Infinitron]

That's probably why it's still "gray box"!

 

[ciox]

 

[Lyric Suite]

You can tell he is on facebook.

Pictured, what he is seeing inside that VR set:

 

[LESS T_T]

The future is now.

Spoiler