SSR: System Shock Kickstarter

[665ace958b5c9icemann]

Just cleared Research (video uploading as we speak for that level). Sticks to the formula of the original there largely. Small changes only. The 2 main ambushes (at the very beginning on 1st getting there, and the one after destroying the cpu cores) were barely a challenge compared to their original counterparts. Some good cyberspace levels.

Onto Reactor. From what I've already seen of it, no music. Grrr. Music in that level is one of my video game soundtrack tracks I listen to often.

[665ace958b7b7Nameless Voice]

It's a real shame, since that is one of the few tracks that we have Tribe's original CD-quality audio for (from the Mac version.)

I'm sure someone will mod it in later.

[665ace958b915ZylonBane]

I thought all the tracks from the Mac version were CD-quality.

[665ace958bcc5Creamy]

I can imagine Atari telling them "No more delays!" and boom.

I realize it's fashionable to hate on Atari, but for clarification, this release has nothing to do with them whatsoever. I'd definitely like to see the GamePig though!

[665ace958bf79Nameless Voice]

I thought all the tracks from the Mac version were CD-quality.

My bad.  I somehow thought only some of the tracks had CD audio, not sure what gave me that idea.

Edit: No, I'm not misremembering.  The Mac version had three CD audio bonus tracks on it, composed by Greg LoPiccolo:  Intro, Medical, and Reactor.
More explanation in this thread.

[665ace958c21bThiefsieFool]

soundtrack upload just dropped

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtqdabtBdVA

[665ace958c377icemann]

Played through Reactor:

There is actual music in this level, though it's a mixture of ambiance and bits of a remix of the Reactor music, like it's teasing you with a good tune. New music is alright. Less background than that of Medical or Research.

Beyond that, the levels pretty good. Quite challenging. Layout is again very similar to the original, but with little bits added or changed here and there, and the general flow is identical to how you played through it in the original.

[665ace958c530lgs]

Inventory opening sound sounds like muffled voice of a woman that says "Nothing", does anyone get this or am I going crazy?

[665ace958c67bNameless Voice]

So, looked into the music files for the game.  It seems that the main music sequences are dynamically built up out of a lot of smaller files.
There's 83 audio files for Medical's exploration loop alone.

It's not going to be a simple fix to replace these with the original music.

But it's definitely a mod someone is going to have to make, because the new music is mind-numbingly boring.

[665ace958c9a9sarge945]

Is anyone else playing with a controller and having major issues?

Now before you all throw tomatoes at me, please keep in mind I am MOSTLY playing with keyboard and mouse. But I do like to sometimes play on the couch with my housemate because it's a good social time, and when doing so, we use a controller.

The controller support in this game is woefully inadequate.

Some issues I have found so far:

- The game says "Use LB and RB to select healing and explosive items". This is a lie. RB and LB do nothing
- If you do decide you want to use LB and RB for something worthwhile, they break the tab-selection in the Inventory menu
- Navigating the controls menu with the controller randomly jumps around in a disorganised fashion
- Leaning is impossible because the button combination doesn't work

[665ace958caefNameless Voice]

Didn't try it myself, but I was browsing through the negative reviews on Steam and a few of them were complaining about terrible controller support.

Others complained about bugs, many complained about the game being too confusing and maze-like and old-school.

[665ace958cbebicemann]

The cyberspace bits would play wayyyyyyyyyy better on a controller, due to the arcade nature of it.

[665ace958ccfcNameless Voice]

Sorry it's a little quiet.  Turn the volume up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4QXGnR3Uy8

[665ace958ce13ZylonBane]

Sheesh, now I'm wondering how loud the vanilla ambient tracks are natively that they have to forcibly reduce the in-game volume that much.

[665ace958cf47Nameless Voice]

Different from level to level, but it looks like it's playing the music files at 25% volume for Medical.

Edit: I think my audio recording settings are also off, it sounds louder in-game.

[665ace958d31bChandlermaki]

Currently having to re-type all of this because of a blue screen caused by an unstable CPU overclock (well, undervolt, curve optimizer is weird), so that's fun, but anyway:

I haven't had a whole lot of time to play, so I'm just now finishing Medical, but here are my thoughts so far:

As someone who loves SS1's music in its own right, but isn't the biggest fan of its implementation in-game, I'm okay with the switch to a more ambient soundtrack. This kind of makes it inherently more forgettable, and I really wish the tracks resembled part of the original music more, but I don't hate it.

Still really dislike the low-res textures. I don't necessarily notice them in game all the time, but when I do, it's legitimately immersion breaking for me. It doesn't gel with the other assets at all in my opinion. The game would look much, much better without them, or at least the option to filter them. Otherwise, I actually like the visuals quite a bit. I'm a fan of the darker look for everything, and the actual model and animation quality is surprisingly high. Performance seems just fine (though it should be on a 5900X/3090), which isn't a given in 2023 especially in UE4 titles.

Good GOD, can we PLEASE get an option to turn the incessant first person animations off? One time is enough! Your animations aren't impressive enough for me to want to watch myself hope into a medbed multiple times. This is one of the most annoying aspects for sure.

The AI is completely brain-dead. Enemies seem less aggressive than the original to me, and pretty much everything can be cheesed with corner leaning. I didn't necessarily want the 1994 AI, guys. It's actually not a deal breaker for me, I guess I just enjoy SS2s Thief derived AI more.

Overall atmosphere, I like. That's subjective and hard to quantify, but this is a spooky space station I like to be in.

The entire interface needs work, especially on controllers. As it sits, this is absolutely not going to fly on consoles without major changes.

I strongly dislike the recycling mechanics. That's a bit of shame, because I actually really liked them in Prey. They feel completely tacked on, clunky, and unnecessary here. Part of it is the aforementioned interface.

...and that's about all I have for now. The experience is overall positive for me, with some glaring issues keeping the game from being actually great. We'll see how I feel once I'm actually done with the game.

[665ace958d648Autz]

Nameless Voice
IMO the music is there but the volume is low in comparison to everything else. What I did was to set everything to 75% except for Music and Master Volume, and is more noticeable now.

[665ace958d7acNameless Voice]

I made a small mod that doubles the speed of all of the pickup animations.

It also triples the speed of the animation for using the recharging station.

It doesn't change the time it takes to use a surgical bed because that didn't work.
It also doesn't change the keycard-swipe animation, because speeding it up somehow made it no longer unlock doors.

To use, go to "System Shock Remake\SystemShock\Content\Paks\", create a subdirectory named "~mods", and drop the pak in there.
[NVFastPickups_P.pak expired]

[665ace958da94Chandlermaki]

I made a small mod that doubles the speed of all of the pickup animations.

It also triples the speed of the animation for using the recharging station.

It doesn't change the time it takes to use a surgical bed because that didn't work.
It also doesn't change the keycard-swipe animation, because speeding it up somehow made it no longer unlock doors.

I love you.

[665ace958dc0avoodoo47]

SHTUP-SSR when?

[665ace958dd54Nameless Voice]

It looks like they seriously tagged. Every. Single. Texture asset as "texture filtering: nearest neighbour."

The prospect of editing every single texture file (which includes BaseColour, Normal, AO/Roughness/Metal, and Emmisive maps) in the entire game to change that setting is a bit daunting.

Perhaps a smaller-scale test on some of the Medical textures?

[665ace958de5fvoodoo47]

so that's what they meant by hundreds of small switches. anyway, I wasn't serious, but sure, why not.

[665ace958e133sarge945]

It looks like they seriously tagged. Every. Single. Texture asset as "texture filtering: nearest neighbour."

The prospect of editing every single texture file (which includes BaseColour, Normal, AO/Roughness/Metal, and Emmisive maps) in the entire game to change that setting is a bit daunting.

Perhaps a smaller-scale test on some of the Medical textures?

This sounds exactly like sort of thing that would be possible with a script of some sort

How moddable is this game exactly? I would like to make some pretty major changes to it to really make it work well.

[665ace958e235ZylonBane]

Most of the textures are so low-res that with filtering enabled they'd still look bad, just in a different way.