Night Dive Twitch Streams

[6622c013c2498icemann]

And no Tribe band questions were asked. Gah.

[6622c013c2665sgupta]

Fun stream with a lot of original game devs.  The big thing is that the physical edition of the Big Box Collector's Edition of System Shock: Enhanced Edition (with new cover art by Robb) is coming for preorder October 1st.  Along with that will be coming a an LP release of the soundtrack (on translucent green vinyl). 

[6622c013c2753icemann]

Note - I'm watching / listening to the stream as we speak. Expect some detailed notes later.

[6622c013c2c15icemann]

My notes for the stream:

* It was Warren Spector himself who made the decision to release the floppy disk version of SS1. As documented it was due to pressure from upper management to get the game out.
* Whose idea was it for the difficulty of SS1 being modular, with being able to select the difficulty of the individual elements - Not 100%, sure but likely was Doug Church.
* Development on SS1 began in 1992
* SS1 began life as a two separate games. Alien Commander and Iron Citadel. The two projects got merged.
* Hellraiser and Tron was a large inspiration for the design of many of the enemies in SS1.     - So there was a demonic influence for the design of the game. I stand corrected.
* Was SS1 the same engine as that used in Ultima Underworld - New one. More support for 3D environments, looking up and down etc.
* What are the origins of the "Don't forget to salt the fries" line - The team used to go to MacDonalds often, whilst working on the game as it was the only fast food place open nearby. And back then the fries packets had on the back of them "Don't forget to salt the fries".
* Would Warrren Spector have liked to have been part of the team that worked on SS2 - No, because SS2 turned out great with the team that made it, and if he had been involved then the RPG elements very likely would not have been introduced. He goes on to say, that SS2 being quite different to SS1 (with it's RPG elements etc) is one of it's greatest strengths.
* Warren feels like the exact same way about the Deux Ex sequels.
* What were the inspiration for the Elite Cyborg and Cortex Reaver - Old school 80s heavy metal bands and Star Trek's Borg for the Assassin. Cortex Reaver - Just the general idea of a brain in a jar with legs, and went on from there.
* The Cortex Reaver will be in SS3
* Did Terri know before hand how SS2 was going to end - No
* Tim Stellmach was behind many of the ambushes in SS1    - Very nice work on that Tim
* The stars moving outside the station, was only added in at the last minute of development (for SS1). James Flemming did the work on that.
* If Warren went back in time, would he do anything different in making SS1 - He would change the UI and that's it.
* How would Shodan's lines be recorded - Terri would voice the lines in a a slow clear manner, then Greg LoPiccolo would then alter them up.
* Shodan was thought of as male, until the voice acting started. A male voice actor did do some testing, as a male version.
* Terri recorded all of her lines for SS1 at home, as Looking Glass and Origin had no quiet locations for recording.
* Will any characters from SS1 be in SS3 - Responded with "Some questions will be answered"
* Were there any minigames that did not make it in due to time constraints - No. Many nearly did not make it in, but were finished towards the end of development.
* Looking Glass had no audio department until SS1
* The cyborg assassins were key in the setup of many of the ambushes due to their silence when idle.
* Were vending machines going to be in the game at any stage - In concept art only. It was considered as just wall textures and unusable, but then did not go in since the thinking is that players would want to use them and be frustrated that they could not.
* Similar debates have been going on with SS3, on how much to have interactable.
* What were the design challenges, designing levels in SS1 - The restrictions of the engine, with tiles etc. Required some trickery to get the architecture they wanted in there. Using all of the available space was another.
* Was multiplayer ever considered for SS1 - No. Never. It never factored in. Warren briefly discusses the multplayer in SS2, which he says was tacked on at the last minute, when the main development was completed.
* Warren feels that multiplayer has a place in immersive sims, but that it needs to factor into the design from the beginning.

No set date on the next stream sadly.

[6622c013c2d74ZylonBane]

* Terri Brosius doesn't know who GLaDOS is.

[6622c013c2e91icemann]

But does make a funny remark when advised who she is.

That Shodan would woop her ass. Or something similar.

[6622c013c310fsgupta]

I didn't take formal notes for this one since it wasn't really dev, but:

- Re the interactable objects, Warren doesn't like to include things that aren't interactable, so the debate tends to be whether to put more stuff in than can be practically interactable (making things *look* more real even if you can't always interact), or leave those things out, but have everything that *is* there interactable.  They still debate this to this day.  I found that really interesting. 

- Stephen retweeted a photo of the "Salt the Fries" box:

- Daniel mentioned some original System Shock art from the Looking Glass offices on his wall, and this is that:

Also, here's the promo images for the box set and LP:

[6622c013c3325sgupta]

01/14/2020 - Pre-Alpha Playthrough w/ Daniel, Karlee, Stephen, & Kevin (Props)

* Daniel's rewritten all of the audio logs so they will be different than the original in some ways.  What he tried to do is merge the text versions with the audio versions, as the text can be quite a bit longer, so redoing them gave him this opportunity.

* Demo text at the beginning is placeholder; it is not to represent what will happen in the final game.

* 1st mutant is scripted to always be at the door.

* Update is coming at the end of next week most likely.

* The pre-alpha demo is going to be continually updated from here on out; Daniel would like to get medical as close to 100% as possible. 

* In the build they're showing off, the station now rotates very slowly.

* Lots of lighting changes and enhancements; no more fully black areas.

* Cyborg assassins are almost done and should be in soon.

* Next update will likely have: properly respawning enemies, new weapons, cyborg assassins.

* System Shock: Enhanced Edition is getting a brand new engine revision version.

* This will coincide with the physical edition from Limited Run (which is DRM free, by the way). 

* One new feature of SS:EE is new artwork for widescreen.

* No final word on SS2:EE.

* Console versions will probably not be simultaneous releases, but they are coming and COULD be.

* Difficulty will be customizable like the original. 

* Dev and game streams will resume at some point but because of deadlines and busyness could be hit or miss.

[6622c013c3521icemann]

14.01.20 - Alpha demo Stream with Daniel, Stephen, Karlee and Kevin (who does work on props)

* First new stream in 12 months
* The demo now shows some starting intro text
* Some extra objects now about the Medical level
* A KS update will be out at the end of the week
* How often will the demo builds be updated - No set schedule. At the end of the week there should be a new one. Next one will be when Medical is close to 100% done.       - They really need to add version numbers to the main menu so that
* Lighting appears to be better in this build
* When a patch is used you see a animation of applying it play out   - I hope they change this, as it would get annoying later on in the game. When you need to use heaps of med patches at a time. They take roughly 5 seconds to use each time, compared to instant in earlier builds and in the original game.
* Loot on corpses is random
* Enemies now react to sound, and will move toward it to investigate
* You can now shoot objects to have them fall on enemies to kill them
* Weapon degradation will not be in the game as that is a SS2 thing
* Improved shooting
* Enemies still shoot through walls / floors. So this new build doesn't have fixes for that in there yet
* Some extra wall decals are in now (eg RESIST on one of the walls)
* At one bit of the stream Daniel is up against 3 mutants, who you can see clip into each other since they don't have physics volumes set to them at this stage
* The cyborg surgeons may get some changes later to attack the player if they attack it's patients
* Will the player be able to add their own notes to the map, like in the original - Maybe

[6622c013c367evoodoo47]

- good to hear that big SS:EE patch is (still) on the way.
- no final word on SS2 in what kind of sense?

[6622c013c377fZylonBane]

Do they acknowledge how much everyone hates the pixelated textures?

[6622c013c38bavoodoo47]

they certainly are aware that some people do (I was very clear about that on Discord).

I'm wondering whether the'll go for those sweet, sweet 16bit banding effects for their SS2 Remake - pretty sure everyone will love those, as nothing says 1999 retro more than 16bit artifacts.

yes, it's been a long day (9 hours of printer support).

[6622c013c3ca9Hikari]

Do they acknowledge how much everyone hates the pixelated textures?

Speak for yourself Zylon. I'm fine with the textures we have. I would like better, but what is there is 'good enough.' So step away from the hatorade, stop acting like a graphics snob, and chill.

Or, y'know. Show up on their discord and bitch at them in person. Nobody's stopping you.

[6622c013c3dcbZylonBane]

You don't get it. This isn't a case of "Well they're doing the best they can." Night Dive is pixelating the textures in SSR on purpose. It's a supremely misguided creative decision.

[6622c013c41a1Chandlermaki]

You don't get it. This isn't a case of "Well they're doing the best they can." Night Dive is pixelating the textures in SSR on purpose. It's a supremely misguided creative decision.

Yep, absolutely terrible design. Whoever thought the low res bilinear filtered textures looked at home with the very much modern looking shading/lighting was on crack.

The fact that it survived into the most recent post Unity build of the game is one of the more baffling things I encountered, and I’m not sure why they’ve decided to stick with it after a pretty vocal outcry the first time.

[6622c013c42cdVRciraptor]

I am a bit ignorant so can you guys elaborate on what about the pixilated texturing you don't like. I like it but I am curious to hear a different perspective about it.

[6622c013c4421ZylonBane]

Reality isn't pixelated. In an immersive sim FPS that's supposed to be putting the player in a (fictional) real-world situation, intentionally pixelating the textures is therefore the opposite of a good idea. It makes a mockery of System Shock, treating it like some quaint "retro" trifle. The original SS wasn't pixelated as some deliberate design decision, it was pixelated because that was as far as they could push the technology of the time.

[6622c013c45afKolya]

A lot of games these days use a filter or some other abstraction layer (eg cartoon style) to hide the fact that they could not invest in photo realistic graphics. Often it's not to their detriment.

Not sure if this is working here, since it's limited to environment textures iirc, I'd have to look at the demo again. Just saying that it's not unusual and often rather helps with immersion, despite reality not being pixelated or cartoony.

[6622c013c4684icemann]

I hate the pixelation of the textures. Makes the game look amateur.

[6622c013c4783voodoo47]

the part I don't get is that they are apparently doing it in a way that doesn't allow an on/off switch. as I've mentioned on discord (while adding a screenshot of SS2 running in the editor software mode), I don't mind the pixel people, as long as I can have my filtering.

[6622c013c4865ZylonBane]

Yeah, if it was an optional "Retro Mode" that you could toggle, then fine, nice to have options. But forcing it is a real WTF are they thinking.

[6622c013c4948voodoo47]

that sums it up nicely. I mean, it's not a dealbreaker, and I'm pretty sure I'll hardly notice once my brain adjusts, but still, WHY.

[6622c013c4e43JosiahJack]

The epic saga continues...
Pixel crunchy goodness vs blurry just because:

For Unity, it can be a pain.  Textures imported you have to choose either one or the other...per texture!  The "easy" way to have the option you'd have a duplicate of every texture and switch them back and forth - double the install size!  Such a thing can be done by importing all textures via code rather than using the Unity import options.  The downside is that you would lose finer optimizations per texture such as compression type and lower vs higher anisotropic settings for instance (well aniso can be global forced).  Importing without compression can massively increase runtime memory, blanket comprssing all textures can make some detailed textures look worse than intended.  Also, whenever you change the option, you'd have to reimport all the textures again which is a good 30-60% of the memory of the game anyway and can be slow then you'd have a massive spike in memory usage until the garbage collector catches up a short bit later to clear out the old unneeded texture batch.  Unless it's done cleverly, switching the option back and forth might run the PC out of RAM.

The sad part is that in older game engines like Quake GL ports, you can easily switch it globally and does it based on GPU instantly.  Not really sure how to do that nowadays.

Can't speak for Unreal but likely similar to Unity from what I've seen.


Tech TLDR:  It's hard that's why!

Opinion:
Either is fine, the type of filtering is a tool.  Crunchy-pixelly goodness works great with a retro non-realistic style. Pixels also allow for the crispest edges in a texture.  To acheive that with filtered textures is doable but you'll need extra pixels to pad out between panels and extra polygons to slice up the model to make it work where edges don't get near the blur between 2-3 pixels.  This can hurt performance, but depends on the style you're going for.

With crisp pixels you can get jarring motion-sickness-inducing moire patterns unless more expensive aniso is used.

With pixels you lose the ability to achieve photo realism for smaller tecture sizes.

Filtering is a great tool to achieve photorealism because at tiny levels most textures are blurrier unless you focus on them or get a magnifying glass.  I normally don't advocate blur, but it can help smooth any otherwise distracting noise in more realistic looking textures.

I like pixels because they are crisper and sharper for details and give a retro stylized look.  Unless a game has very large resolution textures, I don't wamt any extra blur.
I wear contacts.  Without them my world is only crisp and clear for a distance of about the length of my hand.  Anytime a game does something that blurrs or obstructs my vision, I dislike it.  I have enough battle on my own with my bad eyes.  Sure you can do it for a movie but for the game in first person it needs to provide a view comparable to what normally tries to enter my eyes in real life...clear coherent crisp images at a high framerate.

[6622c013c5066sgupta]

05/18/20 Dev Stream w/ Daniel
Karlee joins a bit in and Stephen and Kevin join later as well.

It's been a while!!!  Honestly, there is SO much new here, if you want to catch up with dev, this one's worth a watch.  They've done a ton of work.  I had to watch this in the background, but these are a few of the highlights I picked up (but I'm sure I missed quite a bit). 

- Daniel is placing assets around Executive level, wood paneling and all.
- He added repulsor lifts to the cargo bay area (Cargo Bay 3) so it made more sense and there was actually a place for the cargo to go.
- Stairs replace ramps in some sections.
- There are easter eggs already, but he's not going to tell you what they are.
- Flight Deck level took about 90 days to do.
- Medical has changed a lot since we last saw it; lots more detail/polish.
- No news on System Shock 2 Enhanced at this time.
- Cyberspace should be shown pretty soon (tm).
- Enemies are making a lot of progress.  For example, if you shoot a cyborg near the alcoves on Medical, they all wake up now.  There are several more enemy types (of various in-progress states) in.
- There are several more weapons in as well.
- Some of the combat music and such are in there/working.
- Several things that were placeholder like CPU nodes now have much cooler looking assets.
- Explosions are in!
- They are NOT getting rid of the Hopper.
- Awesome shooting range showcased at the end!
- HUD has customizable colors.
- Demo coming soon for everybody to try!  (No specific date, but SOON).
- No specific release date either, but it's clear a lot of work has been done and progress made since the last dev stream.