Game News Nightdive Studios' System Shock Remake Kickstarter is live, Chris Avellone onboard

[gromit]

a full pathing obstruction system in 7.1

 

[Darkzone]

I think that The Long Dark proves you wrong and in PoE the engine is/was also not the problem. Firewatch is also good and made in unity and also T:ToN (here i restrain myself from any judgement until i have the finished product in my hand). Every engine has it's pros and cons, but i still have not seen a game that was bad because it used Unity. I admit that the dynamic shodows memory leack was annoying in WL2, but it was definitly not a deal breaker.

Uh, no? Don't you remember how Obsidian reported that getting something as mundane as a save system working was a hurdle for them? I'm sure there were countless other technical difficulties that they had to wrestle with that we aren't aware of that ended up affecting the final product. It's not an OK engine, it's awful. The only reason anyone uses it is because it's cheap. It has nothing to offer as far as technical competence goes. Just because a few games have come out that seem OK does not mean that they did not have to struggle with the awful technical aspects of the engine that may have affected the end product in some negative manner, one way or another.

That proves not that Unity is the problem. As i have tried out the Unity i had no problem with my own (not the modules that you can buy in their unity store) written load and save functions. Bought modules in unity store like the blueprints in epic marketplace can naturally make problems. And just because some games came out, that are good proves that you can make a good game in Unity and in the end every one will struggle at some point with any engine. An engine is a tool and all depends on how you use a tool to which work.

From Copper Dreams to the Stasis Cayne DLC, you may not like Unity, but it what's you have to play. Beggars can't be choosers.

But I'd wait and see how an Unreal engine indie/mid-budget RPG plays like before judging. We haven't really had any yet. I guess the first will be Bard's Tale IV?

I liked the Unity in certain aspects more than UE4 and CryEngine, but at the end the pros of UE4 outweigh the pros of Unity and CryE4.
And after looking on the UE4 released games list, i have to state that i know none of them, besides The vanishing of Ethan Carter and this is a pretty decent game. I don't know the budget that the poles had to make this game, but i assume that it is lower then 2.5 million, because poles are the cheap whores of the computer games industry.

Towards the: Beggars can't be choosers. But they do know that CryEngine is now for free (pay what you want )? And that UE4 only demands 5% from the revenues? And besides that nearly every one can pay some 20 bucks in a month for the use of an engine (CryEngine 4 and 5 and UE4).
So there are other arguments for Unity, besides it is just cheap and we cannot buy other engines.
A pro version of Unity costs $1500 in 2013-2015, while a 'normal' game development may last 2- 4 or 24 - 48 months (48 x $20 (cryengine and unreal) = $960) making it between $480 to $960: So what is cheaper?
But now the Unity has changed the prices and we have the personal edition for free, the plus version for $35 per seat/month, the pro $125 per seat/month. So even now only the free personal version is as cheap than the UE4 and CryEngine 4 or 5.

 

[Aenra]

Some typical 'dexian bitching, but where i'm standing, i find this endeavour a good sign..

- young people, and i mean really fucking young, jeesus, having the right role models and ideals? Professionally speaking anyway
- relatively fresh (and in today's industry at that) developers talking about sound as the n1 pillar?
- an (apparent at least) comprehension of how SS's systems almost made it into an RPG and a desire to build on that further?

What's to dislike about that? If they fuck up, that's in the future, different story. And anyway, the original's controls sucked coon dick, so on a theoretical level, yeah, i would play a remake if faithful and equally captivating, sure.
Contrary to you dumbfucks, my sole complaint is MCA's continuous whoring left and right. Man needs a studio, a steady job and a single game to focus on; for a serious amount of time. This trend of his won't end well, not for us.

 

[Hobo Elf]

That proves not that Unity is the problem. As i have tried out the Unity i had no problem with my own (not the modules that you can buy in their unity store) written load and save functions. Bought modules in unity store like the blueprints in epic marketplace can naturally make problems. And just because some games came out, that are good proves that you can make a good game in Unity and in the end every one will struggle at some point with any engine. An engine is a tool and all depends on how you use a tool to which work.

So when developers (in this case Obsidian) say that they are having technical issues due to the engine, it's not the engines fault? Obsidian are shit developers so it's not too much of a leap to think that they are just being their usual incompetent selves, but when a good portion of different developers have something to complain about the technical aspects of the engine, one starts to wonder. Even Shadowrun Returns didn't have a real save system in place, and it still doesn't. Dunno if they ever made one for Hong Kong. It's an engine that was originally inteded for mobile apps, not big projects like cRPGs, and it shows. Unity Engine games are pretty consistent with their poor optimization with lots of stuttering and jerkyness even with high end rigs. There's a limit to how much a developer can do before the engine's limitations become too much. Right now I'm playing Subnautica and on recommended settings with a bretty decent rig I get some hic ups when loading new land mass. Caves of Qud is made with Unity and that game has a problem where the save file would snowball in size until it became so big that it would become corrupted and you'd have to start over again because of that. I had a save file that went all the way up to 1 gigs of memory :S. They've fixed it, kinda, by slashing the memory it would eat by 60%. The problem still persists, but to a lesser degree as it takes a while longer before your save file gets corrupted. They keep trying to fix the issue to this day.

 

[Infinitron]

? What's unreal about Shadowrun's save system

 

[Darkzone]

That proves not that Unity is the problem. As i have tried out the Unity i had no problem with my own (not the modules that you can buy in their unity store) written load and save functions. Bought modules in unity store like the blueprints in epic marketplace can naturally make problems. And just because some games came out, that are good proves that you can make a good game in Unity and in the end every one will struggle at some point with any engine. An engine is a tool and all depends on how you use a tool to which work.

So when developers (in this case Obsidian) say that they are having technical issues due to the engine, it's not the engines fault? Obsidian are shit developers so it's not too much of a leap to think that they are just being their usual incompetent selves, but when a good portion of different developers have something to complain about the technical aspects of the engine, one starts to wonder. Even Shadowrun Returns didn't have a real save system in place, and it still doesn't. Dunno if they ever made one for Hong Kong. It's an engine that was originally inteded for mobile apps, not big projects like cRPGs, and it shows. Unity Engine games are pretty consistent with their poor optimization with lots of stuttering and jerkyness even with high end rigs. There's a limit to how much a developer can do before the engine's limitations become too much. Right now I'm playing Subnautica and on recommended settings with a bretty decent rig I get some hic ups when loading new land mass. Caves of Qud is made with Unity and that game has a problem where the save file would snowball in size until it became so big that it would become corrupted and you'd have to start over again because of that. I had a save file that went all the way up to 1 gigs of memory :S. They've fixed it, kinda, by slashing the memory it would eat by 60%. The problem still persists, but to a lesser degree as it takes a while longer before your save file gets corrupted. They keep trying to fix the issue to this day.

The right questions should have been did Obsidian develop their own safe system or did they buy one from the asset store? The same applies to Subnautica and Caves of Qud. I have found around 13 different save system scripts modules in the unity asset store and twice as many json and xml parser.
Here are some from the list:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/768
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/28799
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/39410
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/58448
....
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/19686

As i have mentioned implict before: i usually make my own modules, because i know then what the module does and how to change it so that i get the desired result. If Obsidian developer have bought one, then naturally there could have been problems, which i normally skip due to my desire to know exactly the state of the process.
Patching something together from different developers may seem to be cheap, but at the end it will cost more then you gain. Perhaps Obsidian developer should have integrated the safe system first?

 

[Hobo Elf]

? What's unreal about Shadowrun's save system

The fact that it wasn't (((really))) a save system. It just saved you within the nearest check point, which the game did before anyways. I think they just added more check points when they "updated" the save system.

That proves not that Unity is the problem. As i have tried out the Unity i had no problem with my own (not the modules that you can buy in their unity store) written load and save functions. Bought modules in unity store like the blueprints in epic marketplace can naturally make problems. And just because some games came out, that are good proves that you can make a good game in Unity and in the end every one will struggle at some point with any engine. An engine is a tool and all depends on how you use a tool to which work.

So when developers (in this case Obsidian) say that they are having technical issues due to the engine, it's not the engines fault? Obsidian are shit developers so it's not too much of a leap to think that they are just being their usual incompetent selves, but when a good portion of different developers have something to complain about the technical aspects of the engine, one starts to wonder. Even Shadowrun Returns didn't have a real save system in place, and it still doesn't. Dunno if they ever made one for Hong Kong. It's an engine that was originally inteded for mobile apps, not big projects like cRPGs, and it shows. Unity Engine games are pretty consistent with their poor optimization with lots of stuttering and jerkyness even with high end rigs. There's a limit to how much a developer can do before the engine's limitations become too much. Right now I'm playing Subnautica and on recommended settings with a bretty decent rig I get some hic ups when loading new land mass. Caves of Qud is made with Unity and that game has a problem where the save file would snowball in size until it became so big that it would become corrupted and you'd have to start over again because of that. I had a save file that went all the way up to 1 gigs of memory :S. They've fixed it, kinda, by slashing the memory it would eat by 60%. The problem still persists, but to a lesser degree as it takes a while longer before your save file gets corrupted. They keep trying to fix the issue to this day.

The right questions should have been did Obsidian develop their own safe system or did they buy one from the asset store? The same applies to Subnautica and Caves of Qud. I have found around 13 different save system scripts modules in the unity asset store and twice as many json and xml parser.
Here are some from the list:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/768
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/28799
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/39410
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/58448
....
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/19686

As i have mentioned implict before: i usually make my own modules, because i know then what the module does and how to change it so that i get the desired result. If Obsidian developer have bought one, then naturally there could have been problems, which i normally skip due to my desire to know exactly the state of the process.
Patching something together from different developers may seem to be cheap, but at the end it will cost more then you gain. Perhaps Obsidian developer should have integrated the safe system first?

I'd imagine that Obsidian made it themselves since they implied as much.

 

[Infinitron]

The fact that it wasn't (((really))) a save system. It just saved you within the nearest check point, which the game did before anyways. I think they just added more check points when they "updated" the save system.

No, you're wrong. Shadowrun's save system has been "real" since Dragonfall's release.

 

[Hobo Elf]

The fact that it wasn't (((really))) a save system. It just saved you within the nearest check point, which the game did before anyways. I think they just added more check points when they "updated" the save system.

No, you're wrong. Shadowrun's save system has been "real" since Dragonfall's release.

Not in the Dragonfall I played. I went to a club, talked to some people, passed some skill checks, went up the elevator, explored a bit and saved my game. When I loaded my game I was back in the beginning and had to do all that again.

 

[Infinitron]

It sounds like you never actually used it and just assumed it worked the same as the game's auto-saves. Try loading up the game and see for yourself.

 

[Darkzone]

The right questions should have been did Obsidian develop their own safe system or did they buy one from the asset store? The same applies to Subnautica and Caves of Qud. I have found around 13 different save system scripts modules in the unity asset store and twice as many json and xml parser.
Here are some from the list:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/768
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/28799
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/39410
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/58448
....
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/19686

As i have mentioned implict before: i usually make my own modules, because i know then what the module does and how to change it so that i get the desired result. If Obsidian developer have bought one, then naturally there could have been problems, which i normally skip due to my desire to know exactly the state of the process.
Patching something together from different developers may seem to be cheap, but at the end it will cost more then you gain. Perhaps Obsidian developer should have integrated the safe system first?

I'd imagine that Obsidian made it themselves since they implied as much.

So they (Obsidian developers) have written their own functions that they could not control and then they state that they have problems with it and you conclude that this is the fault of the engine? You do realise now that a load and safe system is not necessary an integral part of the engine and that it is only composed of some functions that read and write files, by saving data to a file from chosen data structures like strings, ints, floats, arrays and lists and also filling this elements that can be executed by any of the engines? (here also add checking and encrypting to the functions)
I think that a safe system is most complex for an rpg, because you have to safe all the states of the state machines that has been reached in the workflow of the game into the safe file. (More complex than any ego shooter or even strategic games, because some state machines can be revisited.)
No the safe systems of a game says nothing about the multi purpose engine that is Unity or UE4 or CryEngine 4 or 5.
The dynamic shadow memory leak on the other hand was a clear problem of the Unity engine, that the geme devs had no influence upon. But it only resulted in the fact that you had to relunch the game after few hours, and that certainly does not make a game bad on Unity.
If you would state, that you prefer UE4 for more visual games like this SS, then i would state that i would also. UE4 handles memory better in my opinion (i have not checked this, but from my expericence with both engines i would guess this) and for some other unknown reason i like the UE4.

So i have to state that i do not know the reasons why they have chosen the Unity as their game engine, but there can be several and price is not a factor now and not 3-4 years ago. Perhaps the reason is the programming languages ( C#, Javascript and Boo ) that can be used in Unity. Or the Rapitd Iteration or the import pipeline or the global illumination or the memory profiling or ??? But on the other hand UE4 and CryEngine can this also.

 

[ArchAngel]

Yea, Dragonfall had real save system. You are just incompetent Hobo Elf

 

[sstacks]

Stephen Kick from Nightdive Studios will be on the show this weekend talking about the System Shock game and kickstarter.

I've reached out to MCA with an invite but no clue if he'll be on or not.

MCA can't make it as he'll be on a plane at the time of the show. But I'll ask Stephen Kick from Night Dive what Avellone's involvement will look like.

 

[grimace]

This discussion of the weaknesses of Unity engine will continue for quite some time.

They do have an asset store that many indie devs use.

Many games on the list
https://madewith.unity.com/games
including

https://madewith.unity.com/games/underworld-ascendant
http://othersidetease.com/sss.php

OtherSide Entertainment seems to be using Unity for all of their games?

https://madewith.unity.com/games/system-shock-remastered

Powered by Unreal Engine 4, and featuring 3D photogrammetry to recreate lush, detailed Scottish architecture and landscapes, The Bard's Tale IV will bring back maze-like dungeons with devious puzzles and riddles, and dynamic phase-based combat against a host of monsters, beasts and brigands.

I should have pledged more to Bard's Tale IV to enjoy Unreal Engine 4.
https://bardstale.inxile-entertainment.com/game

Do we collectively agree Bard's Tale IV is updating it's playstyle more effectively than this System Shock game?

 

[irnnn]

I just created an account so I can participate to that discussion on Unity.


I have to say that I totally agree with Darkzone :

- It's not because there are a lot of shitty games made with Unity that Unity is shit.

- Unity and UE are tools; the results only depends on how we use them. Yes there have been some memory leaks with Unity, but most shit Obsidian had came from their own stuff. It would also have been shit with UE4. And PoE would still have been a shitty game. I mean, there isn't any save system in Unity or UE4, so they are basically saying they can not code properly, or they bought a shitty asset on the store?

- Devs are using an engine that do much stuff for them that they previously had to do themselves, which reduce their cost. So yes there are some bugs but do you know any software without bugs ? It's a trade-off to consider when developing a game: do everything yourself or accept the few bugs of the solution. Maybe they should have made everything from scratch, but they would have cried a lot more because they would have done even more shitty things and would not have anyone to blame. There are bugs in Unity, and there are bugs in Unreal, that's it. (Maybe Unity should go opensource so the developers could contributes to the debug process, but that is an other debate)


I say most of those things by experience because I am developing a game for 2 years -- yes, with Unity, good guess. In fact I started with UE4 for 3 months and I hated it. It was not about pricing; there are a lot to consider when using an engine and UE4. I personally think that UE4 is better made for AAA team with huge budgets a huge team, because it is slow. Moreover there is a complete separation between developer and "artists", their coding pipeline suxx, their blueprint system "visual coding" is shit, their engine is laggy, their code hot reload is slow and fail often, their documentation is poor, etc.

The only thing UE4 really has is shinny shaders and post fx stuff, but again, it totally depends on the quality of your models and textures, and totally useless if you do not want a "realistic" look.

 

[---]

PS4 version incoming?

We’ve been listening to your requests and have started discussions with Sony regarding a PS4 release – at this stage we can’t confirm System Shock on PS4, but we will follow up with an announcement in the near future with more details.

--- Stephen Kick, CEO of Nightdive Studios and Creative Director on System Shock​

Source: http://segmentnext.com/2016/07/01/system-shock-remake-might-playstation-4/

 

[m_s0]

The question is when, not whether it's coming at all.

 

[Excidium II]

I just created an account so I can participate to that discussion on Unity.


I have to say that I totally agree with Darkzone :

- It's not because there are a lot of shitty games made with Unity that Unity is shit.

- Unity and UE are tools; the results only depends on how we use them. Yes there have been some memory leaks with Unity, but most shit Obsidian had came from their own stuff. It would also have been shit with UE4. And PoE would still have been a shitty game. I mean, there isn't any save system in Unity or UE4, so they are basically saying they can not code properly, or they bought a shitty asset on the store?

- Devs are using an engine that do much stuff for them that they previously had to do themselves, which reduce their cost. So yes there are some bugs but do you know any software without bugs ? It's a trade-off to consider when developing a game: do everything yourself or accept the few bugs of the solution. Maybe they should have made everything from scratch, but they would have cried a lot more because they would have done even more shitty things and would not have anyone to blame. There are bugs in Unity, and there are bugs in Unreal, that's it. (Maybe Unity should go opensource so the developers could contributes to the debug process, but that is an other debate)


I say most of those things by experience because I am developing a game for 2 years -- yes, with Unity, good guess. In fact I started with UE4 for 3 months and I hated it. It was not about pricing; there are a lot to consider when using an engine and UE4. I personally think that UE4 is better made for AAA team with huge budgets a huge team, because it is slow. Moreover there is a complete separation between developer and "artists", their coding pipeline suxx, their blueprint system "visual coding" is shit, their engine is laggy, their code hot reload is slow and fail often, their documentation is poor, etc.

The only thing UE4 really has is shinny shaders and post fx stuff, but again, it totally depends on the quality of your models and textures, and totally useless if you do not want a "realistic" look.

t. dev of yet another shitty unity game.

 

[irnnn]

so your game is probably shit too

Well, I do not know yet, we will see when I release it. But even if it's the case, Unity won't be the one to blame.

 

[Darkzone]

So before i yet again create a seperate thread, i will post more of my feelings towards this reboot:
I kind of like it for several reasons.
Reason 1)
Nightdivestudios have serveral properites and very interesting for Codexers: Darklands! Wizardry 6 + 7 + 8!
If they can manage and pull off an successful SS1 + 2 reboot, then .... ( insert hope, optimism and all this positive feelings).

Reason 2)
If they stay true to the classic and add only minor changes then we have a updated SS1. (i have read somewhere that they want to expand the RPG mechanics.)

Reason 3)
Younger generation will definitely notice it and yes perhaps even play it on consoles.

Reason 4)
It helps to cement the road for Otherside and SS3. And since Nightdive has given the rights OR does not hinder OR even supports Otherside on SS3 then we have to assume that they do care for the RPGs, classics and the old devs overall and that they respect and want to honor them.

I just created an account so I can participate to that discussion on Unity.
I have to say that I totally agree with Darkzone :

We both come from a dev perspective and i assume we both have used different development systems before and therefore we know what we talk about.
I was oscillating between Unity and UE4 and at the end UE4 was the winner just because of the price. If i get $0 for the android / IOS app that i want to write then i pay $0 fees to epic. I also didn't get the blueprints first, but then i understood the concept and since then i support it.

so your game is probably shit too

Well, I do not know yet, we will see when I release it. But even if it's the case, Unity won't be the one to blame.

A very good statement. What kind of game is it that you make?

 

[sstacks]

Going live with Stephen Kick of Night Dive re: System Shock remake in a couple of minutes
http://saleminteractivemedia.com/ListenLive/player/KHTEFM

 

[vean]

That's a lot of fail from Unity developers if they can't manage a save/load system, one of the most straighforward elements of a game engine.

Literally from my first game

void Item::save(ostream &os) {
    os << pos.x1 << ' ' << pos.y1 << ' ' << pos.x2 << ' ' << pos.y2 << ' ';
    os << info_index << ' ' << cur_stack << ' ' << rotated << ' ';
    os << condition << ' ' << last_updated << ' ';
    if(storage != NULL) {
        os << true << ' ';
        storage->save(os);
    } else {
        os << false << ' ';
    }
}

void Item::load(istream &is) {
    is >> pos.x1 >> pos.y1 >> pos.x2 >> pos.y2;
    is >> info_index >> cur_stack >> rotated;
    is >> condition >> last_updated;
    bool has_storage;
    is >> has_storage;
    if(has_storage == true) {
        storage = new Grid;
        storage->load(is);
    } else {
        storage = NULL;
    }
}

 

[Hirato]

just going to leave this here

 

[DraQ]

That's a lot of fail from Unity developers if they can't manage a save/load system, one of the most straighforward elements of a game engine.

Literally from my first game

void Item::save(ostream &os) {
    os << pos.x1 << ' ' << pos.y1 << ' ' << pos.x2 << ' ' << pos.y2 << ' ';
    os << info_index << ' ' << cur_stack << ' ' << rotated << ' ';
    os << condition << ' ' << last_updated << ' ';
    if(storage != NULL) {
        os << true << ' ';
        storage->save(os);
    } else {
        os << false << ' ';
    }
}

void Item::load(istream &is) {
    is >> pos.x1 >> pos.y1 >> pos.x2 >> pos.y2;
    is >> info_index >> cur_stack >> rotated;
    is >> condition >> last_updated;
    bool has_storage;
    is >> has_storage;
    if(has_storage == true) {
        storage = new Grid;
        storage->load(is);
    } else {
        storage = NULL;
    }
}

Save system is problem domain specific, not engine specific.
By itself engine doesn't know of everything that needs to be serialized, at best it knows of physical stuff and that's assuming you don't want to recreate some things on load rather than storing them in save file (and engine alone generally won't know what data needs to persist between sessions, so it may not know what to serialize in the first place).

Anyway, blaming anything on engine is shit excuse of shit developers. As long as the engine isn't a complete wreck leaking resources everywhere and as long as it's suitable for the game (which it usually is unless you want to do something extravagant) - both of which can be blamed on dev team not doing their fucking homework - it won't break a good game even if it's shit.

Well, maybe if you work for a massive corp and have a massive moron in an expensive suit tell you how to do your job you can legitimately whine that they saddled you with tech that's just not going to do what you need it to.

 

[Lurker King]

I say most of those things by experience because I am developing a game for 2 years -- yes, with Unity, good guess. In fact I started with UE4 for 3 months and I hated it. It was not about pricing; there are a lot to consider when using an engine and UE4. I personally think that UE4 is better made for AAA team with huge budgets a huge team, because it is slow. Moreover there is a complete separation between developer and "artists", their coding pipeline suxx, their blueprint system "visual coding" is shit, their engine is laggy, their code hot reload is slow and fail often, their documentation is poor, etc.

The only thing UE4 really has is shinny shaders and post fx stuff, but again, it totally depends on the quality of your models and textures, and totally useless if you do not want a "realistic" look.

Kos_Koa Elhoim