Vapourware System Shock 3 by OtherSide Entertainment - taken over by Tencent!

[Darth Roxor]

Warren Spector about to make you his bitch.

 

[Latelistener]

...and now Technical Director Jason Hughes left Otherside Austin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhughes/

 

[Iznaliu]

Or maybe he enjoys the simplicity and ease of use involved with GMod

Shocking news: not everyone wants to work 24/7!

 

[LESS T_T]

...and now Technical Director Jason Hughes left Otherside Austin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhughes/

Looking forward to whatever comes next. Open to contract engineering work, will consider FT on the right project/company/position. Have a project in trouble or want to move ahead faster? Hit me up.

Technical Director
Jul 2016 – Oct 2017 1 yr 4 mos

Helped design, prototyping, and ultimately architect the foundation for Warren Spector's next game: System Shock 3. I hired and lead the programming team to design and build immersive simulation systems that promoted emergent gameplay.

And wow, see who they hired as the new lead programmer. Mark Allender, former Principal Programmer and Tech Director of Volition: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallender/

Experienced Principal Software Engineer with a long history of working in the computer games industry. Strong programming experience in a variety of higher level gameplay systems and scripting (and scripting systems), combined with experience in management of programming/technical staff.

Lead Programmer
Company Name OtherSide Entertainment
Dates Employed Dec 2017 – Present
Location Austin, Texas Area

He worked at Volition almost 22 years, and worked on games like Descent series, Summoner series, Red Faction: Guerrilla, Saints Row games, and of course Agents of Mayhem: http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,5415/

 

[Latelistener]

This guy was probably fired after Agents of Mayhem.
Deep Silver is going to rape Volition hard. It's a shame it wasn't bought by THQ Nordic along with Red Faction.

 

[anvi]

You guys know a lot about people.

 

[Gimble]

This guy was probably fired after Agents of Mayhem.

Why would they fire a programmer or Tech head if the game failed to meet expectations, unless major technical issues were the cause? More likely he quit given the direction the studio was heading.

I am much more interested in Doug Church's actual involvement with System Shock 3. It is very likely that he was one of the key factors behind Looking Glass pulling off exceptional games,much more than either Spector or Levine and their visions.

 

[LESS T_T]

New job posting for Software Engineer: https://otherside-e.com/wp/jobs/

• Make gameplay interactions and world simulation feel fun and natural
• Make characters look amazing and believable

• Experience working with game engines such as Unity

https://www.facebook.com/OtherSideEntertainment/posts/2026934097518756

How far are you guys on ss3?

OtherSide Entertainment Still in early pre-alpha!

 

[Ash]

• Make gameplay interactions and world simulation feel fun and natural

fun

Oh dear, whoever wrote up that job posting is in serious trouble. Unless WS' "Fun" embargo has been lifted now.

 

[Latelistener]

Unity

Let's see how Underworld Ascendant will look like.
I have a feeling that compared to Ultima Underworld it will be like Shadowrun compared to Arcanum.

 

[Infinitron]

Some hints from OtherSide's community manager about their direction for SS3: https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=1383.msg25174#msg25174

It's still pretty early in development, so I can't say much about what the team officially has planned for SS3.

But, based on the thoughts at OtherSide and the general approach they've been taking, I think the game will lean closer towards "an exploration game" rather than a combat game. There's a lot of great and fun shooter games out there, and System Shock doesn't need to be another one of those. There CAN be combat, if a situation is hostile, but it shouldn't be the main focus. You're not hunting for trouble, you're scouting for clues!

Currently, the UA and SS3 development teams haven't shared too many resources aside from optimization pipelines. It may be interesting to share mechanics or physics-based actions, but I think their worlds are pretty separate, and thus require different things. In the wall-run example, it would make SENSE for the player to be able to run across walls on a space station, but... would the gravity be different? Could you bounce off of the walls instead of constantly running on them? How many areas have a large amount of wall-run space to utilize in SS3? etc.

All right, fair point about the "Exploration Game" term. I was picking it up from Flatfingers' use, but to clarify my point, I was more or less thinking of the narrative aspects of an immersive sim.

In other words, the ability to advance your knowledge of the world by... examining things. Taking a stroll around the area and noticing how life has adapted here, having a friendly (?) conversation with other characters, and overall familiarizing yourself with the environment. I wanted to emphasize how the world's narrative can be explored, and not just lived in. While it may not "further the game progress" by completing mini quests and getting to know other characters and the history of the place you're in, it's a core part of the experience, and I think a lot of that can be boiled down to "exploring." I think the last time I mentioned UA was an immersive sim to someone, they said "oh, like BioShock Infinite?" and I hesitated because the two games' core focuses are vastly different. (I still very much enjoyed Infinite, but in retrospect, a lot of it was riding a rollercoaster to the next fight.)

 

[LESS T_T]

It's in line with what Spector said about their direction for environmental storytelling in 2016:

- A bit about his vision for environmental storytelling in SS3: His team is looking at creating much deeper environment that you can explore and interactive with more deeply. He want to enhance the environmental storytelling pioneered in SS1 with most interactive way he has ever trying to create. He thinks it'll be exciting to players in not just narrative standpoint but also in gameplay standpoint.

 

[MuscleSpark]

I think the last time I mentioned UA was an immersive sim to someone, they said "oh, like BioShock Infinite?"

This is usually the point where you stop talking to said person.

 

[ciox]

Don't really like the sound of it because it sounds like an excuse (or reason, if you'd prefer) for pruning the game's tools, weapons, enemies, etc., the stuff that keeps a game going after you've seen the story.

 

[RoSoDude]

Don't really like the sound of it because it sounds like an excuse (or reason, if you'd prefer) for pruning the game's tools, weapons, enemies, etc., the stuff that keeps a game going after you've seen the story.

Pretty much agree. At a high level I think Shock 1 and 2 were fun because they were space dungeon crawlers where you had to figure out how to survive and progress through an increasingly hostile environment laden with traps, ambushes, and minor puzzles. Deeper interactivity and simulation is a good thing, but there was a lot of value in all of the NPCs being dead and the narrative just leading you down a Hole-in-the-Bucket quest structure pushing you to explore and solve problems. If I still feel like I'm deactivating HAL 9000 in 2001 A Space Odyssey or like I'm initiating the self-destruct of the Nostromo in Alien, good, but that requires there to be an actual sense of tension and danger should I fail. Which usually entails enemies, combat, and the like.

 

[Roguey]

having a friendly (?) conversation with other characters,

How very un-SS-like. I recall Spector talking about how Doug Church deliberately made everyone dead because he was unsatisfied with how conversations play out in games (and there's been no major advancements since).

 

[Infinitron]

having a friendly (?) conversation with other characters,

How very un-SS-like. I recall Spector talking about how Doug Church deliberately made everyone dead because he was unsatisfied with how conversations play out in games (and there's been no major advancements since).

SS3 is looking a lot like Warren Spector making a Deus Ex game using the SS setting.

 

[ciox]

I think that's what everyone familiar with Spector is secretly hoping for, it's one of the best possible outcomes vs. all the horrors that could happen.

SS2 was already flirting very heavily with character interaction anyway, all those people that try to reach you and just die, might be a factor in Spector doing this since he's also planning to include as many surviving characters from SS1/SS2 as he can.

 

[cherry blossom]

having a friendly (?) conversation with other characters,

How very un-SS-like. I recall Spector talking about how Doug Church deliberately made everyone dead because he was unsatisfied with how conversations play out in games (and there's been no major advancements since).

I don't think SS necessarily needs to stay that way. A few characters to talk here or there wouldn't hurt, especially if they aren't static, always available and doing nothing and not at all reliable, with their own motivations. As long as they provided an evolving dynamic. The Thing comes to the mind.

However, it might work far better if, for instance, the player had "access" to the dead people's consciousness through some sort of interfacing, most definitely tied to a skill and equipment. You kneel beside a corpse, jack your thingamajig into its head or spinal cord or something, maybe administer a little bit something to stimulate brain functions temporarily and bam. The degree, the depth of interaction could maybe affected by your skill, equipment and your "dialogue" choices. A sort of a retroactive dialogue with the dead, perhaps not too different than talking to the dead in Arcanum but with more uncertainty. The information you might glean from them would be unreliable but could at times be the only thing to go on.

Even better if there were some other survivors and they too can eventually die so you get to "harvest" their mind. Might even be that you are the perp, to gain info, at the cost of instilling mistrust among the other survivors maybe.

 

[Zombra]

I don't think SS necessarily needs to stay that way. A few characters to talk here or there wouldn't hurt, especially if they aren't static, always available and doing nothing and not at all reliable, with their own motivations. As long as they provided an evolving dynamic. The Thing comes to the mind.

I like it, particularly if the supporting cast dwindles to zero through deaths and disappearances by the midpoint of the game. SS without a heavy sense of isolation wouldn't feel right to me. Give me NPCs, then take them all away.

However, it might work far better if, for instance, the player had "access" to the dead people's consciousness through some sort of interfacing, most definitely tied to a skill and equipment.

Very cyberpunk, but I'm not into it. Maybe because I just finished >observer_ and although it was well done there, it wasn't as cool as you might think and it particularly wasn't that cool the 3rd, 4th, 5th, + time. No matter how cool the interface, finding logs everywhere to explain the story is pretty weak. And if they become full blown "conversations" as you suggest, then again you're ruining the sense of isolation. A city of undead is still a city.

 

[toro]

having a friendly (?) conversation with other characters,

How very un-SS-like. I recall Spector talking about how Doug Church deliberately made everyone dead because he was unsatisfied with how conversations play out in games (and there's been no major advancements since).

I don't think SS necessarily needs to stay that way. A few characters to talk here or there wouldn't hurt, especially if they aren't static, always available and doing nothing and not at all reliable, with their own motivations. As long as they provided an evolving dynamic. The Thing comes to the mind.

100% this. I don't know why is so hard to do this.

 

[Ash]

I don't think Church argued to exclude interactive friendly human NPCs on the grounds of flawed conversion in games, but rather flawed artificial intelligence in general (that's including conversation methods). Humans are very complex, impossible to simulate behaviourally. Monsters and robots are more acceptable as they are simple hunter killers. In the original Deus Ex, nicely simulated NPC reactions it has as far as games go, NPCs can only react to so many (limited) things. React i.e verbally, facial expression, body language, how that witnessed action changes overall rapport in future interactions. Just way too complex. We don't even understand the human brain yet, and probably millennia from truly simulating it.

If you're placing much emphasis on simulation it is better to have no interactive friendly human NPCs at all than unavoidably poorly done ones. Normally Looking Glass wouldn't be so simulation boner extreme as to remove friendly human NPCs as they are a whole lot of potential interesting plot and gameplay-driving content, yet their removal coincides with the horror and isolation factor of the setting and events in Shock, making it an ingenious design decision. I'm not sure how I feel about System Shock 3 not following that tradition. Sounds like storyfag decline from Spector. Many things point to the decline anyways...

 

[Tacgnol]

I don't think SS necessarily needs to stay that way. A few characters to talk here or there wouldn't hurt, especially if they aren't static, always available and doing nothing and not at all reliable, with their own motivations. As long as they provided an evolving dynamic. The Thing comes to the mind.

I like it, particularly if the supporting cast dwindles to zero through deaths and disappearances by the midpoint of the game. SS without a heavy sense of isolation wouldn't feel right to me. Give me NPCs, then take them all away.

I like these ideas. Dwindling NPCs would keep the player on their toes, also creates a good horror atmosphere.

 

[Roguey]

I don't think Church argued to exclude interactive friendly human NPCs on the grounds of flawed conversion in games, but rather flawed artificial intelligence in general (that's including conversation methods). Humans are very complex, impossible to simulate behaviourally. Monsters and robots are more acceptable as they are simple hunter killers. In the original Deus Ex, nicely simulated NPC reactions it has as far as games go, NPCs can only react to so many (limited) things. React i.e verbally, facial expression, body language, how that witnessed action changes overall rapport in future interactions. Just way too complex. We don't even understand the human brain yet, and probably millennia from truly simulating it.

If you're placing much emphasis on simulation it is better to have no interactive friendly human NPCs at all than unavoidably poorly done ones. Normally Looking Glass wouldn't be so simulation boner extreme as to remove friendly human NPCs as they are a whole lot of potential interesting plot and gameplay-driving content, yet their removal coincides with the horror and isolation factor of the setting and events in Shock, making it an ingenious design decision. I'm not sure how I feel about System Shock 3 not following that tradition. Sounds like storyfag decline from Spector. Many things point to the decline anyways...

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131716/remodeling_rpgs_for_the_new_.php?page=3

The last communication option is simply denial. Back when Doug Church and I first started talking about System Shock, we were dissatisfied with the conversation approach taken in Underworld, traditional and conventional though it may have been. And though it pained us to admit it, even to ourselves, we had no idea how to do any better. So the team designed around the unsolvable problem - we killed everyone off. The inhabitants of Citadel station would exist, for the player, only through e-mail and video logs. It was an elegant solution to an intractable problem: if we can't make you believe you're talking to a real human being, we just won't have any in our game world. (In retrospect, I think we may have gone a little overboard - it was the right decision for that game at that time, but we failed to take into account the power of consistency and convention.)

I should have revisited what Spector said about it, that last sentence telegraphs the intentions he'd have nearly two decades later.

 

[cherry blossom]

I don't think SS necessarily needs to stay that way. A few characters to talk here or there wouldn't hurt, especially if they aren't static, always available and doing nothing and not at all reliable, with their own motivations. As long as they provided an evolving dynamic. The Thing comes to the mind.

I like it, particularly if the supporting cast dwindles to zero through deaths and disappearances by the midpoint of the game. SS without a heavy sense of isolation wouldn't feel right to me. Give me NPCs, then take them all away.

Yeah. There is this scene early in Alien Isolation where you run into a couple of other survivors doing their own thing to survive, same as you, and there is a brief stand off out of mistrust and then they quickly go their own way in a service lift. That was an excellent, very memorable experience in the game. Who were they? They seemed like good people too, did we have to be seperated? Couldn't we work together? I wonder if I will ever run into them again. One of the best moments. The game gave me a brief hope and quickly took it away.

Not too different with other NPCs as well. Everything is temporary and things always sink back into isolation. SS3 could learn a great deal from that game.