KickStarter System Shock 1 Remake by Nightdive Studios

[Maggot]

That's pretty much the long and short of it. Even during the kickstarter there was a lot of noise about making it like SS2, and a lot of the backers didn't seem to have actually played the original, just 2.

I don't think the devs played SS2 either since they seem set on having minecraft ambient music instead of techno.

 

[LESS T_T]

And nicely synced comparison video:

 

[LESS T_T]

Cyberspace:

 

[schru]

Various sorts of ‘energy’ tunnels that pull you in and which you travel through at great speed with that sort of visual effect have been done in other games. The tunnels in the original game had a more interesting and thematically-matching (old computer/cyber stuff) wire-frame look and ‘drifting clumsily down a square hard-to-read wireframe hallway’ at least involved some manual dexterity and dealing with various obstacles. It doesn't follow that the remake has to have the same awkward controls.

But hey, he hasn't even played it.

 

[LESS T_T]

I wonder he at least played Rez or Rez Infinite.

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[Trithne]

Wait, so they've got people working on this that haven't played the original game (which they did a source port of not long ago), and they dont make then play it?

Or is this just some guy?

 

[schru]

Well, he says he is doing it for the remake and Night Dive Studios retweeted those posts.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Wow I can't wait for this to come out in *checks Steam page* December 2017!

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/posts/2509342

May Update

Hey there Hackers, Karlee here with this month’s update!

Now last week we showed some concepts of a few weapons by Robb Waters, including some grenades of various types. Now wouldn’t it be cool to shoot them instead of lobbing them out by hand?

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Are you ready for the Hacker to up his arsenal?

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Let’s look at a few more concepts before moving on, but this time, an enemy! Here is Robb’s concept of the Cyborg Assassin, aka “Former Tri-Op Special Forces”.

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Now, what is under that shroud?

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As you can tell, a lot goes into the creation of any character from concept to 3D model. Remember the Cyborg Drone concept? Check out his model progress.

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Finally, can you figure out what tileset Jonathan is working on?

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Blood: Fresh Supply Out Now

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Brought to you by Nightdive's Samuel Villarreal and the KEX engine team. Originally released in 1997, Blood is a First-Person Shooter that helped redefine the genre and introduced many elements now accepted as commonplace. In the original and the updated Blood: Fresh Supply, players jump into the boots of undead gunslinger Caleb as he seeks revenge against the dark god Chernobog. Caleb’s arsenal features a mix of standard and occult weaponry, which he uses to devastating and gore-filled effect. In the game, players visit a terrifying world populated by hordes of bloodthirsty fiends – including cultists, gargoyles, zombies, hellhounds, and an unholy host of other terrors.

Atari is an interactive entertainment production company. As an iconic brand that transcends generations and audiences, the company is globally recognized for its multi-platform, interactive entertainment and licensed products. Atari owns and/or manages a portfolio of more than 200 games and franchises, including world-renowned brands like Asteroids®, Centipede®, Missile Command®, Pong®, and RollerCoaster Tycoon®. Atari has offices in New York and Paris. Visit online at www.atari.com.

Now with Nightdive's KEX engine to achieve the following:

• Vulkan, DirectX 11 and OpenGL 3.2 support, play with unlocked frame rates!
• Antialiasing, Ambient Occlusion, V-sync and Interpolation support
• Support for high resolutions including 4K monitors
• Fully customizable keyboard and controller pad support
• Extended modding support, including support for already existing mods
• Completely rewritten netcode supports up to 8 players:
• Play online in co-operative mode, kill each other in “Bloodbath” or split the difference in classic 4v4 team-based “Capture The Flag” mayhem
• Battle it out in local split-screen action
• Roll your own soundtrack with full CD and MIDI music support
• Look fully up and down with a new 3D view, or stick with the classic BUILD-engine style!
  

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Pick this title up on:

Steam

GOG

Humble Bundle



See you next time!

Nightdive Twitter

System Shock Twitter

Nightdive Facebook

Nightdive Discord

Nightdive Instagram

 

[Maggot]

That grenade launcher looks awful.

 

[Wunderbar]

Chucking grenades by hand is much more convenient than looking for special launcher to do it.

 

[agentorange]

carbon fiber mesh shroud

 

[RoSoDude]

The Cyborg assassin concept art is awesome. I mostly dig the art style of the weapons with some notable exceptions -- the Magpulse really sticks out to me as just "wrong". I always regarded it as a kind of rifle with a long and cylindrical form factor which I found super memorable, while now it's a stout shotgun looking thing. Bleh.

I'm also not a fan of the fact that they're putting a standard shotgun and grenade launcher in the game, just like every other shooter. Snore. Even if a lot of them just were ultimately just standard tracers or projectile throwers, the weapons in SS1 were more aesthetically and thematically diverse than that. In the cases of the mechanically unique but less useful guns... buff those! Give the stun gun some real utility in the early game, or give the riot gun some special properties. There's an opportunity to think outside the box here, rather than just putting in a standard shotgun because everybody expects one. There was a big conversation about this topic over on the System Shock forum where an Environmental Artist makes the case that the Flechette gun was functionally and thematically interchangeable with a shotgun (and that modern gamers would balk at its absence) to the consternation of many other users. His comments follow:

The Flechette was basically a shotgun, given what it fired and what its magazines looked like. This is a remake, after all. We've never billed it as a 1-1 recreation of the original game and have always mentioned that we would improve on the design where we felt it made sense to do so.

>In no conceivable way was the Flechette anything like a shotgun - sorry dude.

The ammunition types of the Flechette are basically shotgun ammo. Pellets and fragmenting splinters have more in common with shotgun rounds than they do with fully automatic rifles or submachine guns. I don't know about you, but I used the Flechette to burst fire rather than holding it like an automatic. It was way too inaccurate otherwise for my tastes. It functionally changes little for me (and I anticipate most other SS1 players as well) for it to function as a burst weapon rather than an early-game automatic that you simply discard later in the game.

I don't disagree, options are great. Shock didn't have much in the way of options for rifles, though. The Flechette was just a Skorpion that didn't hit very hard. The Skorpion dominated everything you pointed it at. Why even use the Flechette at that point? The Hornet ammo doesn't even damage some enemies in the game, and the Splinter ammo is borderline useless - often requiring up to an entire mag of 60 rounds to destroy one enemy as you progress further.

Something to keep in mind is that we're not just building this game as a 1-1 replica of the original, or simply to cater to existing fans. We also want to bring in new fans and get them excited about the future of this franchise. I get that some of you feel that replacing the AM-27 with the SK-27 isn't the best choice to make, but let's keep a couple of things in mind:

1) The game hasn't shipped yet, and we may yet include the AM-27. It's not likely, but it can happen.

2) Any protests about it being removed aren't considering that many people who play FPS games expect to see a shotgun in some form. Shock 2 had one. It's odd that Shock 1 didn't. Even Doom had a shotgun and it was from the same time period.

If we find that it doesn't play well, we'll likely cut it in favor of redesigning it or bringing back the original weapon.

I don't intend to pillory this guy for his tangential remarks on another team member's work on a different forum where he can't offer a response, so I'll let the other users' replies in that thread speak for themselves... well, other than to note that you get the Skorpion way later in the game than the Flechette and thus comparing it to the the latter would be like comparing the Ion Rifle to the Sparq Beam, and also to point out that the Flechette's needle rounds did double damage to mutants which gave it a unique use case vs. other comparable weapons.

I do think it's dumb to expect a 1:1 remake, since the gameplay of SS1 will absolutely need to be updated in critical ways to account for its modern control scheme and interface at a bare minimum (think AI behaviors beyond hitscan turrets for one), but what sort of deviations will be acceptable to fans and new players alike is a thorny issue. I and other fans apparently have a somewhat different conception of what the weapons in SS1 are "about" and therefore what sort of particular elements would preserve that spirit than the folks at Nightdive, which will make for an interesting conversation when this whole thing eventually comes out.

 

[Tweed]

These statements make me more worried about this game all the time, it's like they didn't even play the game.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

2) Any protests about it being removed aren't considering that many people who play FPS games expect to see a shotgun in some form. Shock 2 had one. It's odd that Shock 1 didn't. Even Doom had a shotgun and it was from the same time period.

Riot Gun is pump action and shoots slugs, if that isn't a shotgun then I'd like to know what it is.
They should worry more about making guns like it and the rail gun something more than a complete waste of inventory space rather than scrapping things that have their purpose.

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[Infinitron]

That's the message you get when you help Shodan fry Earth!



I wonder if they'll visualize that more elaborately here.

 

[Grotesque]

Chucking grenades by hand is much more convenient than looking for special launcher to do it.

grenade launchers are for range and more importantly, accuracy and use in offensive.
I would choose to use one even if I have to throw at 15 m.


and as for the chucking grenades part, a human will never have the throw rate of a grenade launcher and still retain a semblance of accuracy.

 

[unfairlight]

That's indeed true, but I think it's more about the gameplay purpose of a grenade launcher here. Never played SS1, but SS2 was a pretty tight-quarters game most of the time, where just hand chucking grenades would be totally adequate.

 

[boobio]

Who would be a more frightening end boss, social justice shodan or AOC?

 

[darthaegis]

what the fuck

 

[LESS T_T]

Story of cyborgs: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/posts/2529352

June Update

Happy E3 and let's show some more System Shock!

Now I would like to start this update with showing a character from start to finish. Say hello to the Cyborg Drone!

Examples of the lowres sprites of the cyborg drone from the original System Shock.

Robb Waters's modern update of his original design. A guiding principle of the concepts for the remake is the idea that Shodan is repurposing already existing tech throughout the station for the creation of her cybernetic minions, giving them a brutal, improvised, function-over-form appearance. In the case of the drones, security cameras have been unceremoniously grafted to the heads of Citadel's security detail.

To start the 3d process of creating the drone, a mannequin based on our generic male corpse body is brought into the clothing simulation software Marvelous Designer. Here the character's clothing is roughed out and tailored to the body, creating a base for the folds and wrinkles of the drone's jumpsuit.

Inorganic and more tight-fitting elements of the drone are created using more traditional box-modeling techniques in 3d Studio Max. Edges are chamfered and bevelled to help them retain their shape when subdivided into higher polygon counts.

All the elements of the character are brought together as different subtools within Zbrush, where the clothing and skin elements receive additional hand-sculpted details and tweaks.

The subtool elements of Zbrush are exported back into 3d studio max and traced over with new, lower poly topology to create a game-ready mesh.

The lowpoly mesh is quickly autorigged in Adobe Mixamo to get a sense of how it looks in motion and check for any obvious proportional issues.

The ingame mesh is UV-mapped in 3d Studio Max with a texel density of 256 pixels per meter.

The disparate parts of the hipoly and lowpoly meshes are brought into texture baking software Knald to generate the normal, AO, height, curvature, and transmission maps.

The mesh and projected textures are brought into Substance Painter to paint final physically based textures.

...and that is that!

Now are you excited for the Cyborg Warrior?

Moving on to some new stuff!

Our artists have been working hard and have some stuff to show off, starting with the new and improved MedBed prop.

How do you feel about puzzles?

Bang bang, watch out we have a Mini Pistol on Citadel Station now.

Last but not least, we are starting to build out and populate Research level. Those who tuned in to the last dev stream got to see a sneak peak, but I have some more to share here.



Would you be interested in seeing more of this built on future streams?


Nightdive Studios General News
You may have heard this exciting E3 news already but... *drumroll* Turok and Turok 2 are getting a physical release on Switch with Limited Run Games!!!

Keep an eye out for future updates.


See you next time!

Nightdive Twitter

System Shock Twitter

Nightdive Facebook

Nightdive Discord

Nightdive Instagram

 

[Love]

The puzzles look arduous.

 

[LESS T_T]

Call for a grid-based, turn-based System Shock RPG: