Greetings Everyone,

This is Stephen Kick from Night Dive Studios and as most of you know we're currently developing a complete remake of the original System Shock. As we get further along we'd like to reach out to you, the Shock community that has kept the franchise alive for so many years for feedback, suggestions, ideas - anything that you'd like to share with us so that we can deliver an experience worthy of the Shock name.

I realize that not everyone here is pleased with how we handled the release and distribution of SS2 almost 3 years ago - "Tech Ninjas" aside, I admit, mistakes were made. We were a brand new studio who had been handed the keys to the castle and we did the best we could. Since then we've secured the rights to the franchise, worked very closely with community member Malba Tahan to finish and release his port of System Shock and are currently collaborating with OtherSide Entertainment to create something many of us never could have imagined: System Shock 3

We've also tracked down the source code to the original game and will be releasing it to the community once it's ready.

We will most likely be seeking crowd funding to complete the game so if you have any ideas for features you'd like to see, rewards, stretch goals, concerns, anything crowd funding related, please don't hesitate to share. This is a dream project for us and working with some of the original LG crew to bring you a faithful Shock experience has been an absolute pleasure - we can't wait to show you what we have in store.

pretty sure we'll figure something out. also just to confirm, the source code to the orig game means SS1 source? now that would be amazing.

and fixed the img link in your post - remember, image links must be https to display properly.

Thank you Voodoo! Yes, SS1 source is a very exciting prospect.

I really like SS2 multiplayer despite how buggy it is (and always was). I play through it with a friend every other year or so. I think cooperative mode be a great stretch goal for a SS1 remake. Maybe some rudimentary deathmatch. I recognize that there are some people on here who are opposed to multiplayer in system shock 2, though I think players should be allowed to decide their own experience.

I'd also like to say that you guys have done great bringing System Shock 2 into the market and to new fans, despite the hiccups.

Other ideas:
Include a level editor add-on
Soundtrack
Retro-mode - unfiltered 32x32 pixel terrain textures and objects replaced with 3d sprites
In the original SS1, Conway's game of life plays on the walls of cyberspace. You know what to do.
Unlockable standalone adventure that takes an hour or so to beat.
Male/female hacker avatars to choose from
In SS2 there's a "Gamepig" handheld console the character can find along with different game cartridges to play mini games. Reimplement this!

Thank you for taking the time to stop by here.

Here are a few things I would like in no real particular order.:

Don't make me have to buy a new rig just to play.
I've got a dual core system with more or less an entry level video card (gforce 720.) Before then it was on intel graphics. It has three gigs of ram. I should be able to play this new game even if I have to crank the settings down and turn the flashy things off. By play I don't mean 'it will sorta work.' I mean have a decent solid 30FPS experiance (yes yes 60 or bust I know, but I'm talking minamum playability here.) I would much rather it actually able to play without me needing to upgrade my box if at all possible. Bit selfish to be honest, but simpler assets also mean you don't have to spend as much time making them (I think. Someone feel free to correct me.) Plus it widens your audience a fair bit.

Please look at linux.
I don't know if you can do linux of any flavor, but it'd be nice if Debian derived things had a bit of love if nothing else (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) WOuld prefer something more universal, but still.

Source Code?
Asking for the moon here really, but it'd be nice if you offered that up, or at the absolute minamum archived it and then let it go public after you feel it's safe, or SOMETHING so we don't have the problem Shock1 and 2 had of 'oops... the sauce is lost. We can't do any bug patches.' Then hope/Pray that future OS's play nice or that some mad genius makes their own patch that obliviates a ton of fan hackery.

Contact Internet Archive/Archive.org
Yes they have publicly accessible things for software, media, and the like. However while i want those publicly accessible used to store things like concept art, the manual, promo material, and the like, I want you to get in touch with them to do a private backup of game source and a functioning copy. I want it so that when the insect overlords show up in twenty years it's not 'oh crap we overwrote the disk that had the source and we're screwed.' Please. Consider working with those guys as they are very insanely serious about information preservation.

Scaling UI
Future Displays will have more pixels. So it would be best if the UI adjusted so it won't look like it was made for ants.

Remappable Controls.
I would say streamlined, but that's a bit of a dirty word around here what with 'cnsolification is killing gaming.' However we dont' need three lean and crouch settings. We don't need eight billion buttons. I could stand to have the controls streamlined a bit so I can focus on the game and not 'how do I do the thing?'

Under this also includes 'weight' of things. Like making sure weapon fire feels weighty, a pipe's swing doens't feel like it has nothing there other than Gibbon Man flailing arms around. It shouldn't feel like we're walking on ice or glass.

Easy to use Mapping/Modding Tools.
This is born out of the fact that DromEd was, for a very long time, buggy, crash happy, and temperamental. It is still somewhat Odd to use but with the Newdark patch it's gotten far better. I rank this so high because with mapping and mod tools you can do things like make new levels, edit existing levels, fix texture alignment, object and enemy placement, and tweak the game over-all to have life once the primary campaign is over and the userbase starts to grow tired of it. Even if some things I list cannot be done given time and money constraints, modders tend to be able to chip away at a thing for years. Just... don't treat it like 'oh the fans will fix it so we can rush.' We need a good solid memorable game as a basis for everything else.

It'd be kinda nice if there were assets included that aren't used in the main game like added portrates, and or an alt computer voice. You can't obviously include a lot that won't be used in some form, but a few new assets, or even templates to make new 2d assets for modders to go by would be nice.

Don't make any Online Components totally dependant on a Central Server.
Say you want to put Deathmatch in, or some kind of co-op, or... SOMETHING. Cool. What happens when you can't mantain the auth server or the plug gets pulled? That happened to the tribes community, and while workarounds could be made due to how moddable tribes and tribes 2 were they were all workarounds until Tribes Next went and patched T2. I know I'm probably being silly given Shock is a horror game first and foremost, but on the idea that multiplayer is going to be a thing a little future proofing would be good.

Also IF multiplayer is a thing please, for the love of XERXES do not release it unless it actually works on normal connections. If that cannot be done or it would take too much effort to balance. Axe it.

Getting to see more of the setting.
In System Shock  there was a tool marked '?' that when waved over inventory items, your stats, skills, psionics, and so on would give you in-universe background into each. Sue System Shock 1 had a somewhat generic feeling cyberpunk world, but Shock 2 expanded and adapted it to have personality and live, and show that there is actually a lot going on. After all how often does a russian mafiosa get to buy up a once-great corporation with the intent on rebuilding it in a setting where nanites are used both as currency and as to build everything while the hero that stopped a populist uprising in Boston is the son of the man who let the AI Demon out of the bottle?

Please, show us more of this world.

That said, even if it's just concept art I'd like to see a 'before Shodan sunk her claws in and rennovated' version of citadel.

Allow us to tackle problems in our own ways.
I liked that about both prior system shocks. You could do things your own way. Sure there are ways that work BETTER than others, but on the whole you could largely approach your work as you see fit. That way I can have one or two psionic powers, none, go full psionic, or find ways to get through all guns blazing. My fear is tools that completely remove the need for skills. Example being if you played your cards right you didn't need the modify skill because enough auto upgrade devices were around on most difficulties that made you not need it, or auto-hacking tools so you could get one or two things and still have enough to use on the end boss's shield terminals.

I like being able to work around absent or under-used skills, but I want those skills to still have meaning so you can do interesting things. Let's take the auto upgrade tools. Maybe they only do specific mods in order of importance but don't let you go with the really exotic ones unless you already have a high enough rank in maintenance.

Maybe you can either choose to dump organs, or weapons, or random junk into the research machine and have it automagically do a lot of stuff but it's slower, or you can have the thing on you and your implants tell you to do specific things at specific times and it gets done faster but you have to babysit it.

Choices that Matter.
System Shock Infinite did this to great effect especially given the limits of the dark engine and that it was entirely a fan effort. You had several factions and events you could work within but once you made a choice you weren't completely locked out of the other paths in that you could still complete tasks to make them happen. This caused a complex chain of things where you could have up to five separate cut-scenes play as parts of a larger ending, or end the game early because you took a really specialized build to kill SHODAN on Ops when she revealed herself, or even earlier by using the grenade launcher to go back to the start of the game and join SHODAN, or do none of these and oops you think you won but really got brainhosed into being a minion.

That was done by fans who had to beat and hammer the engine to do what they want. These people theoretically can bake these things into their engine so even if they don't, we can later on.

More to the point. What if My iteration of the Hacker wants to accept the triop-offered job? What if shooting the minng laser without raising the shields isn't the end of the game and we have to deal with the mess we made?

Remove the Inventory Tetris, but Keep the character Customizeability.
Take notes from the first game here. There were implants that did things beyond simple stat buffs, skills that improved when other skills also got upgraded, and with the way game design has changed over the past fifteen years more can be explored and done. What I don't want is 'huh huh huh huh they want immersion so you must unload every round, pick up even broken weapons to get at their ammunition, physically drag batteries and other objects to where they need to go.' To that I say No! Those things break flow, bog the player down, break pace and kill story for the sake of some self-important sense of realism. We are allowed to make concessions for the sake of speed and pace. Console-friendliness does not have to be hated nor is it going to inherently make things worse. I want to play a game, not play tetris just to make my inventory have enough space for an item.

Keep the horror house feel and sound.
While we all can agree System Shock 2's graphics did not age well, the sound remains very incredible and tense. At least it does to me and is the reason I hate playing it in the dark (especially with the new lighting from the community patch.) This is what the shock games are at their absolute core. Strip away the details on who and what and just look at the games themselves. You're dropped into a situation more or less alone with maybe a disembodied voice that can sorta at some times offer help and guidance, but you're very much alone against the unknown. Admittedly I didn't like the background music in Shock2, but the ambient noises? Those random announcements by Xerxes that are mundane and generally about this or that droid doing a poetry reading or how long til Christmas, regulations, and so on.

I want that. It is the heart and soul of the Shock Franchise. Even when I personally was very powerful there was always that sense of foreboding because of just how danged creepy the level itself was.

ZERO Micro-Transactions
Do I really need to elaborate here guys? It's bad candy. Don't pick it up.

The big thing though is I want the core gameplay to be solid and focused. I want every feature and corner of the map to serve a purpose. I don't want to be bogged down in side minutia because 'muh immersion.' That said some things are tradition at this point, like the minigames you can load in your implants.

Focus on that core concept above EVERYTHING ELSE and refine it before moving on to anything. The whole place should feel like we're in the belly of shodan's funhouse of doom that she spent the past few months customizing to her tastes.

Lastly:
Friction to one side man. I'm grateful for your studio sorting out the legal wire tangle System Shock was in. there've been ups and downs, but you're giving us stuff we have wanted for awhile. I just want it to end up well and not some half baked pile shoveled out the door. We're a rabidly loyal fanbase but we have to conceed we are not your core market. We are just the guys that've been making noise screaming at everybody. So there will be concessions to people that haven't memorized every single corner and quirk of the original game.

Oh! A manual. Both Shock 1 and 2 had really in depth manuals that didn't just cover gameplay but offered a look at the world including timelines, information about things, and so on. Can we have that, even if you have to pay extra for a physical copy and most people just get a pdf?