KickStarter System Shock 1 Remake by Nightdive Studios

[Ash]

All this talk and not one mention of graphics. That is the core driving factor of increased time/labor and costs, and ultimately the decline, objectively.

Also there's no way Nightdive could have accomplished what they have in the same dev time as Looking Glass, mismanaged or not, unless they had a significantly larger team. Early 90s graphics and level of detail was very simple. SS1 is a floor/wall/ceiling texture often repeated, a few sprites thrown in for deco, primitive lighting effects, a few animated textures consisting of up to 5 frames, and that's it. Updating that to the standard they have is a lot of work.
Late 90s/early 00s was the graphical sweet spot to look appealing and show detail; to represent what it is supposed to represent, without going insane on the time and costs (note games here were already multi-million dollar projects), going further than that is why we are in a permanent state of decline, forever relying on indie devs and small studios to feed us new content. Game dev is ridiculously laborious and expensive, exponentially with increasingly higher levels of graphical fidelity.

 

[laclongquan]

Correct. graphic up the workload to at least 3 times in the 90s.

in the old days, say F1/2, when you need to do guns pixel for example. You can afford to skim over much details, and only need to do the mockup (for illustration) in full. This mean graphic complexity is low. But these days the weapons details need to be much higher, and when being rendered they can cause all sort of troubles that need recaliberating. Like 1st person look and 3rd person look. In the old day there's only one look (3rd person if rpg and 1st person if shooters)

And graphic effects that go with said weapon. in the old day maybe : single, burst. But these days each type can be expanded to a full subgroup to go with a variety of ammo: electrical/stun, fiery, frozen, etc... When people shoot a shotgun with dragonbreath bullets they expect something different than shooting normal ones, or slugs.

 

[Tyranicon]

Of course, it's not just graphics but production values across the board: sound, music, voice-acting, celebrity appearances, etc.

All that takes time and money, which is a calculated risk to draw in broader audiences.

 

[Ash]

Of course, it's not just graphics but production values across the board: sound, music, voice-acting, celebrity appearances, etc.

All that takes time and money, which is a calculated risk to draw in broader audiences.

But it is increased graphical fidelity at the core that demands all this.
Picture this: modern almost-human looking NPC, but he has Deus Ex lip syncing and Resident Evil 1 voice acting. It would be super freaky. So they spend more money there. Then, it makes no sense to have super high production values for graphics, but shit-tier sound design, so we go crazy there too. Now we're really spending, so we need to spend a fuckton in marketing and make the game shallow and dumb to ensure it sells. It all circles back to graphics. With old school graphics all this demand goes away, and we can focus on gameplay again, we can have music that isn't generic asf because it might turn people away etc. Imagine SS1R releasing with the original untouched OST and no other option. Imagine all the normie NPC pawn mediocre fuckwits that cant think for themselves it would turn away from the game.

 

[Tyranicon]

Of course, it's not just graphics but production values across the board: sound, music, voice-acting, celebrity appearances, etc.

All that takes time and money, which is a calculated risk to draw in broader audiences.

But it is increased graphical fidelity at the core that demands all this

As a general, broad industry statement? Maybe. But there are some games that have high production value - but lower graphical fidelity. Take for example everybody's favorite dialogue simulator, Disco Elysium. The music, voice, and general appeal of the game? Very high quality. But it's not exactly high-fidelity. A game made in the Infinity Engine 20 years ago could rival it - if it had the same great visual design and direction.

And there are other games I could mention that while look good, can be made on technology from years ago. And maybe that's why they're successful, cause the devs use the resources they have competently and dont overstretch themselves. I personally am affecting a big graphical change (pixel art -> full 3d render) to my games, but it will actually be easier and less time-consuming longterm than my previous methods.

 

[Maggot]

Night Dive standards = copying the same wall textures from the original at the same texture resolution then slapping a bunch of stock UE4 shaders and greebling on the model. They're just making lego blocks that fit the original's grid based level design. It would be way more work if they actually had to do some non-grid level design like Prey.

 

[mkultra]

Night Dive standards = copying the same wall textures from the original at the same texture resolution then slapping a bunch of stock UE4 shaders and greebling on the model. They're just making lego blocks that fit the original's grid based level design. It would be way more work if they actually had to do some non-grid level design like Prey.

Original textures are 128x128 so nah.. i'm fine with them following the original level design, i doubt a lot of people would approve of something completely different for a remake.

 

[Katana1000S]

Unity graphics = disco in space, ergo shit

 

[mkultra]

its not using Unity so...

 

[Katana1000S]

not now.

 

[gerey]

All this talk and not one mention of graphics. That is the core driving factor of increased time/labor and costs, and ultimately the decline, objectively.

Also there's no way Nightdive could have accomplished what they have in the same dev time as Looking Glass, mismanaged or not, unless they had a significantly larger team. Early 90s graphics and level of detail was very simple. SS1 is a floor/wall/ceiling texture often repeated, a few sprites thrown in for deco, primitive lighting effects, a few animated textures consisting of up to 5 frames, and that's it. Updating that to the standard they have is a lot of work.
Late 90s/early 00s was the graphical sweet spot to look appealing and show detail; to represent what it is supposed to represent, without going insane on the time and costs (note games here were already multi-million dollar projects), going further than that is why we are in a permanent state of decline, forever relying on indie devs and small studios to feed us new content. Game dev is ridiculously laborious and expensive, exponentially with increasingly higher levels of graphical fidelity.

But plenty of indies nowadays are successful despite (or even because) they eschew graphical fidelity in favor of retro aesthetics or art direction. Many times this is a deliberate choice by the development team so they can allocate resources to other aspects of the game.

As others have said, the primary reason this project is such a shitshow is that the devs are incompetent clowns that have misused the money given to them because they clearly had no idea what they wanted to do with the project, except ride the nostalgia hype.

 

[Nikanuur]

Bah, your indifferent, puny, RPG-less lives are a NO and DISAGREE, you bunch of deluged followers of the Cult of Ultimate-game-that-never-existed-and-everything-else-is-bad

 

[flyingjohn]

All this talk and not one mention of graphics.

I will always remember the some ea gdc presentation where there is a picture of small rocks on a road looking very detailed.
The person was proud they managed to make rocks appear realistic and they spend a week doing this.
Those are just small rocks for fucks sake. I don't want to imagine the time dedication to details that goes into the graphics of anything not indie.

 

[agris]

This is something that always amazes me with old games, how fast they were developed and with way more primitive tools.

Exactely because the tools were more primitive that it took less time to develop

Negative; it's largely the people making games these days vs old. In the old days you had people with technical skills and abilities, engineers and computer scientists, involved in making games. You also people with different interests and varied life experiences. It's very different than the modern culture of "adults" who come out of American universities at 21, having their housing/food taken care of them for their entire life and no concept of what it means to actually work on something to provide for yourself.

It's all been provided for them.

On top of that, you have the fact that the people who get into making games today are *largely* the most ardent fans of Gamer Culture, a repugnant no-skill interest that couldn't be more different from the motivations and interests that led people into making games in the 80s, 90s and even early 2000s.

This is a cultural trend broader than game making, it exists in a lot of artistic / commercial endeavors. Movies, books, music...

 

[DJOGamer PT]

having their housing/food taken care of them for their entire life

Anyone all over the world, that isn't some kind of orphan that grew up on the streets, had their food and roof provided by their families in the first 20 years of their life

 

[agris]

having their housing/food taken care of them for their entire life

Anyone all over the world, that isn't some kind of orphan that grew up on the streets, had their food and roof provided by their families in the first 20 years of their life

Do you hear the sound of that Airbus 340 flying over-head? That's you missing the point :D

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Not so much as missed your point plane, but rather I purposefully ignored it in order to come off as annoyingly pedantic.

What you gonna do about it, huh?

 

[DesolationStone]

FO1 took 3.5 years, engine and everything, small team. Today it would either be seen as "impossible" or it would take 7-8 years, with much, much better tools/engines, then 2-3 years of patching up the mess they created.

Well, I was born after the actual release of Fallout 1, but I've read on the internet that game at the time was a mess with a lot of bugs.
Regarding the faster productions, I believe it's just a technological reason: game at the time were just more easy to produce

 

[agentorange]

FO1 took 3.5 years, engine and everything, small team. Today it would either be seen as "impossible" or it would take 7-8 years, with much, much better tools/engines, then 2-3 years of patching up the mess they created.

Well, I was born after the actual release of Fallout 1, but I've read on the internet that game at the time was a mess with a lot of bugs.

yeah its a good thing this isnt the case with modern games

 

[Ash]

All this talk and not one mention of graphics. That is the core driving factor of increased time/labor and costs, and ultimately the decline, objectively.

Also there's no way Nightdive could have accomplished what they have in the same dev time as Looking Glass, mismanaged or not, unless they had a significantly larger team. Early 90s graphics and level of detail was very simple. SS1 is a floor/wall/ceiling texture often repeated, a few sprites thrown in for deco, primitive lighting effects, a few animated textures consisting of up to 5 frames, and that's it. Updating that to the standard they have is a lot of work.
Late 90s/early 00s was the graphical sweet spot to look appealing and show detail; to represent what it is supposed to represent, without going insane on the time and costs (note games here were already multi-million dollar projects), going further than that is why we are in a permanent state of decline, forever relying on indie devs and small studios to feed us new content. Game dev is ridiculously laborious and expensive, exponentially with increasingly higher levels of graphical fidelity.

But plenty of indies nowadays are successful despite (or even because) they eschew graphical fidelity in favor of retro aesthetics or art direction. Many times this is a deliberate choice by the development team so they can allocate resources to other aspects of the game.

As others have said, the primary reason this project is such a shitshow is that the devs are incompetent clowns that have misused the money given to them because they clearly had no idea what they wanted to do with the project, except ride the nostalgia hype.

Yes and yes. I was just saying, graphics is the primary reason for decline in general, for increased budgets, dev time and selling out. Obviously this game shouldn't have taken 8 years and was a mismanaged project, but it definitely requires more labor and more money than the majority of 90s games, largely because of the graphics whoring. Whoring that in this case is mandatory because it is a remake and there's no point if you're not gonna make it look significantly better. They don't have the liberty to make indie game level of graphics. It is rare to see indie 3D games that look this good (fidelity-wise), unless they're 2 hours long walking sims, or otherwise generally lacking the gameplay complexity of a 90s game.

 

[Nikanuur]

I of course meant the original Prey.

 

[randir14]

Today there was a small update for the demo on Steam. They might be preparing to release a new demo for Steam Next Fest which starts tomorrow.

 

[ciox]

Demo #6 of the Medical level is a GO, baby.

 

[Fronzel Neekburm]

Enemies don't react to you making noise

They're unable to open doors

Don't get me started about pathfinding....

This is on the highest difficulty, by the way...

Literally more barebones AI than 1993's Doom.

Strike that, the AI is worse than in Wolfenstein 3D.

 

[Viata]

This was going to be shit as soon as I learned what dev was making it, mate.