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Incline System Shock 1 Thread

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,226
Yeah ammo isn't much a concern. You get quite a bit as long as you scavenge, though it is still limited enough that you have to make use of all your weapons.

Tips would be return to medbay and energy stations to restore health/energy if needed, switch weapon/ammo type if you are getting "Low Damage" readout, rebind the controls if preferred, all enemies can be defeated by leaning the slightest bit out and shooting the edge of their hitbox (best ignore this info so as to not ruin the experience), keep an eye out for secret doors to click on and reveal some goodies, be careful with grenades as they have quite a large blast radius, and not much else. It's pretty straightforward compared to the sequel or Underworld et al.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,149
There are significantly more weapons in the game than you can carry, if you are like me on my first playthrough and try to conserve ammo by specifically relying on energy weapons 90% of the time (and constantly retreating to charging stations) you'll just end up getting a new gun and dropping the old with hundreds of bullets in it. Make sure to experiment with what the different ammo types do as well.

You'll get better shields eventually, unless you are playing the highest difficulty you can take quite a beating with the highest level ones. You'll also find the laser rapier which destroys everything, if you can get used to the movement of your skates you'll become a cyber-rollerskating-jedi shredding enemies in half as you charge around at Mach 1.
 

Ivan

Arcane
Joined
Jun 22, 2013
Messages
7,471
Location
California
Really enjoying the game. Got the Magnum and it's been my go to for most of the tougher cyber enemies. I haven't found a single other healing bed since the first level. I'm just relying on the revive-bays as of now.
 

Leechmonger

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 30, 2016
Messages
756
Location
Valley of Defilement
Just started playing this as well, game seems great so far. Does leaning around corners help protect you against enemy hitscan weapons? Or do they just shoot any exposed part of you?
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
27,088
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
I honestly can't remember, but I do remember that enemies are less likely to detect you if you lean around corners.
 

Ivan

Arcane
Joined
Jun 22, 2013
Messages
7,471
Location
California
They can still shoot you. You just have to find the right balance of barely being able to see the edge of their hitbox.
 

Ivan

Arcane
Joined
Jun 22, 2013
Messages
7,471
Location
California
So I just finished this, it's not long at all. I enjoyed it very much. I wasn't expecting the game to be an action horror title but it's cool to see the different seeds this game planted that would later bloom in future titles. Music is badass, tons of weapons, tons of ammo. Combat is fine but everything about it aside from shooting is super cumbersome. Reloading and particularly the use of grenades are way too tedious (I never really bothered with nades once I acquired superior weaponry). No stats/character progression but the weapon progression is very nice. Getting wrecked in the early game by hitscan cyborgs was a pain, but thankfully the game gets easier once you pick up rifles/powerful handguns/fuck-you-rapier.
:4/5:
 

Leechmonger

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 30, 2016
Messages
756
Location
Valley of Defilement
So I read that the "on-line help" (which points out secret doors and the like) is supposed to disable itself after I leave medical, but it's still turned on. Should I manually turn it off, or will I be fucking myself over if I do this?

EDIT: the corpse/open door highlights got on my nerves soon after asking my question, so I decided to disable it.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Also, I still think that the original non-mouselook controls are one of the most ingenious and fun to master control schemes out there in gaming history. Suck it, haters.
I think that original controls truly shine when toggleable and complementing standard mouselook. There is no better interface for throwing explosives or pulling off tricky shots around corners, but for normal minute-to-minute running and shooting the original interface is just too cumbersome.

Then you just need rebindable keys and it's more or less perfect.
:love:

The only thing I will never get about SS1 is why some people evidently like the soundtrack.
:prosper:
Even with cyberspace I can see why someone would fall in love with the idea even if the execution is sucky and unfun.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Document of early, early System Shock, when it was a Wing Commander spin-off called "Alien Commander":



DEQxUQ8VoAMIbAJ.jpg


DEQxURAVYAASG8K.jpg


Robot companions could be cool. And outer space exploration a la Prey?
 

Arrowgrab

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 20, 2016
Messages
602
I just learned S1 used the Ultima Underworld engine. Never knew that and just figured they conjured up their own engine for that game. I mean System Shock 2 was better by miles, and maybe I feel that way since I played it first, but what they did with the Ultima engine was neat.

And System Shock 2 uses the Dark Engine from Thief, so both have a great lineage.
 
Last edited:

TheRedSnifit

Educated
Joined
Jul 6, 2017
Messages
55
I haven't seen any actual evidence that System Shock runs on the UU engine, it seems to be something everybody assumes was the case. Interviews from the time say otherwise:

The third thing would be to go to an arbitrary polygon mesh for drawing structures. System Shock still displays surfaces using tiles [small blocks of predrawn graphics], although we can place them at arbitrary angles and locations and parametrize them to get some really outrageous structures. In fact, the design team did a brilliant job of exploiting the renderer. We wrote the engine from scratch for System Shock, but we knew we had time pressure, and I was thinking "Gee, this is too bad, I wish we had another six months" so that the engine would support completely arbitrary surfaces instead of being tile based. Once the designers got their hands on it, though, they started creating some amazing stuff.
http://ttlg.com/articles/SSint2.asp

It's definitely similar in some respects, but it's wildly more advanced in most.
 

Dux

Arcane
Joined
May 26, 2016
Messages
635
Location
Sweden
I've been in a bad mood lately because of some general bullshit that's been happening. So I took refuge in SS. There I get to quietly explore the big spooky station, find goodies and smash mutants with my rusty pipe, while SHODAN occasionally purrs in my ear. It really helps to ease my mind. It's just so goddamn good.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Little bit of context, since this is a new thread.

According to Nightdive Studios they released this code mostly unaltered for preservation purpose. So you can see they even left obsolete Carriage Return line break which Github cannot properly render. If you want to browse the code with proper line breaks on Github, there are already several forks for that including Sean Barrett's: https://github.com/nothings/shockmac

Nightdive will release their own source port based on this "soon", replacing the current Enhanced Edition release. They are going to release the source code of that too.

SS modders are waiting for that code release before committing some serious effort. SS.org already made a subforum for that: https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?board=13.0
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Probably not related to the source code release, but very relevant. The original level editor:





Ddfxq8tU8AAjL4J.jpg


Ddfx6H9V0AAddzs.jpg


Ddf25QYUQAAfh2u.jpg


Nightdive on the case:

 

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