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KickStarter System Shock 1 Remake by Nightdive Studios

agentorange

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The original System Shock 1 was designed and produced in a little under 2 years, including developing a new engine from the ground up. This remake, not even a creative remake but essentially a graphics overhaul, has been in production since 2016, gone through two pre-made engines, Unity and UE4, and they still have only made, barely, one level that looks like some trash indie game on Steam made by two people.

What I'm trying to say is these people are fucking retards and this game is and will be shit.
 

DJOGamer PT

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Played it.
Certaintely has the potential to be a great remake.
The only thing going against it, really is the techincal problems: performance, bugs, the pixelated textures, lack of colision and IMO the shadows and darknes are a bit too harsh on the eyes.
Interestingly I had no crashes but the graphical options didn't seem to change anything and the performance is really fucking bad. That was the whole reason I stopped playing, it gotten so bad (21-25 fps) that the game couldn't be properly enjoyed.

Other than that I would say the AI could be a bit more aware and should respond faster.

Level Design: Original vs Remake said:
WLkt9kT.png

ugh4OU6.png

However if this does indeed come out next year then they better already have all content done because they are going to need this year for thecnical polish.

But if it does come out, the game itself won't be bad (like UA) and can always receive the clean up via patches/mods.
 
Last edited:

MasterLobar

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Vice reviewer is quite positive.

"So far, Nightdive’s demo feels like System Shock, now with more intuitive movement, facilitated HUD navigation, and updated graphics, which is exactly what I think fans of the original, myself included, have been wanting. My hope is that Nightdive’s remake continues to capture the authentic experience of the original, so that gamers everywhere can come to know what it is to fear SHODAN. If this demo is any indicator, I think they might just nail it."

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/...make-demo-looks-good?utm_source=vicetwitterus
 

Venser

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I solved all the wire puzzles but the real puzzle is how to reload a pistol. Dragging a magazine onto it doesn't work. Right clicking the magazine and pressing "use" doesn't do anything either. I tried pressing "R" - nothing. Noticed I was using hollow tip rounds before but now I'm empty and I have a magazine with 12 heavy round slugs so do I need to change ammo type and if so how? Or maybe it's just broken cause there's no reason reloading should be this complicated. Guys?
 

MasterLobar

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Seen the let's plays, and have to say I think it's horrible. That's tough, I really want to like it, but I can't. They had a playable prototype that was really cool years ago. That was much better than what they have now.

Don't want to be too harsh on a pre-alpha, but right now, I have zero interest in playing this, and if I'm honest it doesn't feel like it can get to a point where I might want to play.

But I realize it's a pre-alpha, so let's hope I'm wrong. Godspeed, Nightdive!
 

Venser

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How do I save the game? Can't do it through the menu. Dropped down to average 10 FPS and it's unplayable now but I want to finish it.
 

Swigen

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Heard a lot of good things about this series. Guess I’ll download the demo and see what all the fuss is about.
 

RoSoDude

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Play System Shock: Enhanced Edition and then System Shock 2 (with SS2tool patch to NewDark). Waiting for remakes for any game is foolish, no matter how old the game or how good the potential remake. Remakes should always be thought of as separate entities that neither replace nor obsolete the original work (remasters, source ports, and Gold edition expansions are a different issue). If you want to experience the original game, just play the original game.
 

ironmask

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I find it sad that there are people out there who refuse to play a great game because of outdated graphics or clunky controls and would rather wait years for this to shit to come out.
 

HansDampf

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Extreme bloom lighting everywhere. Yet, it's way too dark. Chromatic aberration and other weird effects in the UI. I can't play this for longer than 15 minutes without getting headaches.
 

DalekFlay

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Played this. I was never a SS1 guy, it was SS2 and Deus Ex that made me love this genre. So I'm not judging it as a remake really, but as an indie "immersive sim." On that level I think there's promise here. It's obviously very rough, but it's also a pre-alpha, so I'm not gonna judge it too harshly on things like enemy AI. The graphics are good for an indie game I think, and I'm guessing the lack of area diversity is a match for the original. The fundamental "immersive sim" grind is there, looking for resources between fights, exploring the station as new avenues open. If a much more polished version of this came out for $30 or whatever I would definitely buy it and play it, as I love the genre.

This is far from a AAA modern re-imagining of System Shock though. I think they originally tried to make that and ran out of money, right? If you want that I highly recommend Alien Isolation. Treating this as a budget indie "immersive sim" though, I'm enthused to play a finished version. *insert missing shrug emoji*
 

JDR13

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Outside the terrible performance, the demo isn't bad. They got the atmosphere right at least. The problem is that this just isn't enough considering how long they've been working on it.
 

passerby

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This is far from a AAA modern re-imagining of System Shock though. I think they originally tried to make that and ran out of money, right?

They started with this remaster, got an investor and started from scratch with a remake, investor dropped the project, they went back to remaster, but they don't have the funds to put a real team on it.
Seems like they work in spare time and continue pitching it to investors, looks like an Epic deal could be their best bet :lol:
 

Max Heap

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I'm not having that. Right now this *new* demo is even worse than the original demo, and this release looks to be a disaster on par with Underworld: Ascendant.
Good Day, sirs.

I'm not saying this is a high quality demo but it is nowhere near as bad as UA was in its retail (!) version. That game was literally broken with fucked up wall collision, holes in the world that let you drop into an endless void and so on. That AND the performance was bad. In fact, everything beyond the Underswamp was basically unplayable in v1.0 (especially Titan's Reach). And I know that, because I tortured myself through it. You can read about that fun journey in the UA thread.

Here the only really crucial problems I see are (seemingly random) crashes, performance and maybe AI. Though I'm not completely sure what they wanna do with the latter. AI capabilities often coincide with level design choices (back in the day, Thief illustrated this perfectly, but its true for pretty much any other game, from System Shock to Uncharted). Since level design is almost a 1:1 copy from the original System Shock, I'm not sure where they wanna go with this.

Either way, there are a couple issues even with the most basic AI perception in this demo and that definitely needs to be fixed. I stood in front of a mutant and it wouldn't attack me. Stuff like that really breaks immersion. They gotta adress that. My assumption here is that they are using the basic UE4 AI perception system, which isn't properly exposed to the blueprint level and has an update problem (in other words, the AI "perceives" you, but doesn't react, because the player is e.g., too far away, and when the player then approaches the AI the perception system doesn't update (because it already "saw" you) and re-trigger the proper reaction-sequences -> therefore, no reaction/no attack/etc - this is a very common problem I've seen a couple times, but it can be fixed)

Performance is this demo's main issue. That's a really bad one and they have to do something about that. Whatever the reason may be. The fact that it starts lagging 30 minutes in suggests that this is a clean-up problem (like spawned/killed AI isn't properly removed and keeps running through its routines). That, or some sorta memory leak. But this can be debugged with UE4s profiler front end. Unless its in customly made components.

The crashes are weird. I've had one on starting a new game, but only once. No idea what that could be.

The rest - of what I saw - is really just due to laziness (or tight schedules) and could be fixed with proper polish.
Like the healing animation, the strange textures (which I hope are engine scaled - otherwise that's gonna be a problem), some funky animations, the phaser thingy that isn't attached properly to the cyborgs hand etc. etc. Missing content like implants is to be expected in an alpha demo.

The only thing that really puzzles me is the lack of cyberspace. Cyberspace was such a simple mini-game in the original, setting up the system for it is relatively easy. Even for a hobby programmer. It's basically just a free floating camera shooting different types of ammo at almost static enemies in a mostly untextured environment.

I'm really not trying to play devil's advocate here, but a lot of these things can be relatively quickly adressed.
If they have their content pipeline down they can probably do a release in September 2020. November maybe if they need extra time (which is normally the case). System Shock 2 was made in like 9 months.

So all in all:

Meh....

It has its fair share of problems, but for an alpha (and I mean a real alpha, not a "marketing" alpha) these issues don't seem too dramatic. Of course they gotta get their shit together. Nightdive has been moving in circles for a while now and the only competent move since the original demo was the switch from Unity to Unreal.

With that in mind, we gotta see how they handle the situation - but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
At least - in comparison to UA - they (now) have a relatively clear idea where they wanna go with this project.
UA in its retail version still didn't really know what kinda game it wanted to be. Mind that. That was deadly for the whole project.
 

conan_edw

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Pathfinder: Wrath
Is it still available? I downloaded it on Thursday but tried to access it today and nothing launches for some reason
 

Bad Sector

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.


I still maintain that the 2016 demo was better.

EDIT: according to pripyat_beat on Reddit:

The Unity demo we created was much smaller in scope so we had time to polish many of the secondary features for weapons and animations as well as lighting and optimization. Many of those are missing from the Unreal demo as we've focused on completing all the levels, basic mechanics and puzzles first. We were given the opportunity to participate in the VGA/Steam promotion so we used a number of work in progress elements to make it playable. Thanks for taking the time to put this together and share your feedback, the final version will include many of the things you've mentioned missing from the Unity demo.
 

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