heywood on 2/3/2018 at 12:54
Just to be clear, I am not opposed to releasing the source code. That would be kind of absurd. It certainly couldn't hurt anything.
My point is that System Shock Enhanced Edition already has pretty much everything I would want to play SS1:
Native Windows app
Mouse look
WASD movement
Customizable key bindings
Higher resolutions
Support for widescreen ratios
Bug fixes
It's all there and it seems stable and polished. I don't recall hitting any bugs or crashes with the GOG release. It's even on Steam now so the lazy masses can check it out easily.
So I asked the question, have you played that version, and if so, what's missing? voodoo47 mentioned binding mouse buttons and other controllers. I'm not sure why anyone would try to play this game with anything but keyboard and mouse, so I don't know about the value of supporting other controllers, but he's right that the mouse button bindings don't seem to be configurable.
As for hardware rendering, I genuinely don't see any point in trying unless it's in the context of remaking the game in a new engine. Taking low resolution textures and sprites and hardware rendering them at high resolution just makes for a blurry, ugly mess.
icemann on 2/3/2018 at 13:13
Quote Posted by Trance
Yes, and GZDoom went a whole lot further, and is currently the most impressive example of extending the Doom engine that I've found. Which is why I used that, and
not ZDoom. My choice was not an oversight.
Fair enough. All I meant is that much of the great features that you see in GZDoom were introduces in ZDoom, like:
* Support for not just Doom 1 & 2, but also Hexen, Heretic and Strife
* Dynamic lighting
* Particle effects
* Support for much higher screen resolutions
* Custom key layouts and additional player abilities like crouching and jumping
* Support for scripted events + custom screen layouts (to allow for things like player journals, text-based logs like in System Shock minus the audio etc).
To my knowledge (which I'll freely admit is limited as I don't follow the Doom scene to the same extent as I used to after Doomworld.com got rid of their news page) what GZDoom added in was things like:
* Support for 3D models
* Better multiplayer functionality, support for more players etc etc.
And GZDoom, I believe is the continuation of ZDoom. So it's as you say the more current source port.
Feel free to mention any other additions, but that is what I know of.
Quote Posted by heywood
As for hardware rendering, I genuinely don't see any point in trying unless it's in the context of remaking the game in a new engine. Taking low resolution textures and sprites and hardware rendering them at high resolution just makes for a blurry, ugly mess.
A decade ago back when TSSHP was still a thing, that had hardware rendering and looked absolutely beautiful whilst retaining the look of the original. Just nicer. So a source port could do similar things.
voodoo47 on 2/3/2018 at 18:25
ok, lets try to go through everything;
Quote Posted by heywood
Native Windows app
nope, still just a wrapper that's fooling the game into running on windows.
Quote Posted by heywood
Mouse look
it's actually locking the screen and binding it to the mouse cursor, I guess it works well enough, but pretty sure real mouselook would be better.
Quote Posted by heywood
WASD movement
yeah, but it still feels like rolling around a bag of rubber bands.
Quote Posted by heywood
Customizable key bindings
a bit, yeah.
Quote Posted by heywood
Higher resolutions
again, a bit. 800*600 seems to be ok, but go above that, and you can get crashes and very poor performance. also, I don't believe things are actually truly getting rendered at higher resolutions, more like some sort of scaling going on.
Quote Posted by heywood
Support for widescreen ratios
with incorrect FOV and broken text.
Quote Posted by heywood
Bug fixes
a few crash handlers in the wrapper are not the same thing as fixing the actual bugs in the engine.
Quote Posted by heywood
Taking low resolution textures and sprites and hardware rendering them at high resolution just makes for a blurry, ugly mess
I genuinely don't know how to respond to that, because reality says otherwise. check any source port of an old 3D game (Doom, Duke3D, whatever) running in the fullhd resolution (don't use any texture packs and filters to get as close to the original as possible). it's like saying the original DOS version of Duke3D looks better in the 320*240 resolution instead of 800*600 (max the original game supported, if memory serves). hint - it looked better in 800*600, if your had the cpu power for it.
actually, lets have a look at a new game using a source port of an old engine and see how blurry and ugly it is when running in a high resolution;
[video=youtube;QcAwzusZUrQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcAwzusZUrQ[/video]
making a game run in hardware mode is the most important thing of them all - sw rendering always sucked at 3D, and today's computers are very unsuitable for it, which makes things even worse (the very reason why you need an extremely powerful cpu to run SS EE at very high resolutions, and things are still clunky and choppy). switch the engine to hw rendering, and you can run it on your raspberry pi handheld fullspeed until kingdom come.
I'm still half expecting you to go "just kidding", as this is not something that I should be explaining to someone who has been around games for a very, very long time (as far as I can tell).
heywood on 3/3/2018 at 14:34
Quote Posted by voodoo47
nope, still just a wrapper that's fooling the game into running on windows.
The application you run IS a native Windows application. It doesn't run in a DOS emulator like SSP did. That's the important part. Neither of us knows exactly how they implemented the port; which bits of code that required direct hardware access were tricked versus which were modified, where they implemented a translation layer versus where they just changed the original code, and so on. If there is something specific you think they didn't do that should be done, what is it and why does it matter?
Quote:
it's actually locking the screen and binding it to the mouse cursor, I guess it works well enough, but pretty sure real mouselook would be better.
That's what mouselook IS.
Quote:
yeah, but it still feels like rolling around a bag of rubber bands.
The game is trying to simulate your momentum. It's a feature, not a bug. I agree that it's not well implemented, because sometimes it feels like momentum, and sometimes it feels like sliding on ice. It doesn't bother me as much as the melee combat, which has always felt very clunky. But these are part of the System Shock gameplay and I'm not sure I'd want to change them.
Quote:
again, a bit. 800*600 seems to be ok, but go above that, and you can get crashes and very poor performance. also, I don't believe things are actually truly getting rendered at higher resolutions, more like some sort of scaling going on.
1024x768 is ideal, and it was supported from beginning in the original game. I ran the game at up to 1920x1200, but there's really no advantage given the low-res interface, textures and sprites. Everything in the interface is definitely just scaled up to the higher resolutions. Same for the sprites. I'm not entirely sure about the textures, sometimes it looks like there is more detail in the distance than at 1024x768, sometimes not. There are different scaling options (closest, linear, best), but they only seem to affect the splash screens and interface, not the texture mapping.
But I think it's kind of a moot point to argue. The game assets are relatively low resolution, so they are going to be scaled one way or another, either by your monitor if you're running the game at a lower resolution, or by the software renderer if you're running it at a higher resolution. Even if you implement hardware rendering you're still just scaling low res graphics up to resolutions they weren't designed for.
Quote:
with incorrect FOV and broken text.
Correct about the FOV. But I don't know what broken text you're talking about.
Quote:
a few crash handlers in the wrapper are not the same thing as fixing the actual bugs in the engine.
There were no game bugs that I encountered. As far as crashes go, I got different results on different computers. On one of them (running Win 10, not sure if that matters), I could run any resolution I wanted. On my other computer (Win 7) it would hang when reading emails if you ran a custom resolution.
Quote:
making a game run in hardware mode is the most important thing of them all - sw rendering always sucked at 3D, and today's computers are very unsuitable for it, which makes things even worse (the very reason why you need an extremely powerful cpu to run SS EE at very high resolutions, and things are still clunky and choppy). switch the engine to hw rendering, and you can run it on your raspberry pi handheld fullspeed until kingdom come.
Extremely powerful CPU to run SS EE at high resolution? What are you talking about? My desktop runs an i5-4670K - not exactly the latest and greatest CPU. Laptop is i7-7500U. Both run the game smooth as butter at any resolution, which is a big improvement over SSP in DOSBox which could get laggy at 1024x768 on my older computer.
Quote:
I'm still half expecting you to go "just kidding", as this is not something that I should be explaining to someone who has been around games for a very, very long time (as far as I can tell).
And I'm beginning to seriously doubt you've ever even played this version of the game.
ZylonBane on 3/3/2018 at 15:58
Heywood is obviously just trolling at this point.
voodoo47 on 3/3/2018 at 16:38
Quote Posted by heywood
1024x768 is ideal, and it was supported from beginning in the original game.
no it isn't, and the original game (cd version) is limited to 640*480. and yeah, I believe he is (trolling), so I think we are done here for the time being - though I'll probably edit this post once a windows port is available and add a bunch of screenshots, maybe a video and/or some performance comparisons. just so that more people can have a little laugh.
heywood on 3/3/2018 at 17:46
Supposedly, support for 800x600 and 1024x768 were built into the original CD-ROM version of the game, but disabled for performance reasons. Sheesh.
voodoo47 on 3/3/2018 at 18:12
that still means the max was 640*480 - we will know this (and many other things) for sure once the code is out. also, maybe you should consider stopping, because the more of this you post, the funnier you'll look once that happens.
or don't - I really don't care about people making fools of themselves. anyway, I'm outta here for now.
Starker on 12/3/2018 at 10:44
Anyway, on Discord, Stephen Kick said there would be an update at the end of the month. Also, says that the project is fine, financially. Some of his recent comments:
Quote:
We're actually talking about releasing some of the physical rewards early as a "thank you" for everyones patience and understanding.
We have some other tricks up our sleeves as well.
At this point, if we can get a discount on rewards due to volume, i don't see why we wouldn't give extra goods to higher tiers. Don't quote me on that just yet, but I would like to do that.
When Doublefine did their KS the backers received some physical goods a few years before the game shipped. I'm just considering doing something similar.
Also, we're financially sound and development is going better than ever.
We will be doing a Kickstarter update at the end of the month, we're preparing for GDC and will have news to share.
The original Polygon article was a result of an ex contractor, who has been off the project for over a year going to the press with rumors that aren't true.
We had to make some substantial changes to the team to begin with and the timing of the contactor going to the press was really unfortunate.
Thanks for your continued patience and understanding, I think when you all see what we're working on you'll be not only relieved but thrilled at the direction we're going.
We've been doing this for over 5 years now and this is our flagship title. It's going to be the greatest example of what we're capable of and we're going to do it right.
We're doing this for our backers, you guys and gals deserve the game you backed.
icemann on 12/3/2018 at 12:08
Soon to be done - The game is turned into a top down action shooting game. People lose their minds.