Noclip YouTube documentarians talk to Night Dive about SS:Remake - by Volitions Advocate
Volitions Advocate on 21/7/2020 at 16:15
So I really like Noclip, especially the Arkane video they just put out. I love how thorough they are and some of the little truths they pull out of the developers.
So I was pretty interested to see this video pop up in my notifications this morning, but after watching it I feel a little bit annoyed. Stephen Kick talks about how important SS2 was to basically getting Night Dive started, but he doesn't mention the community that kept the games alive for years. Really, mostly made up of people on this forum and systemshock.org.
Maybe I'm out of touch. I've enjoyed the community made patches for years before SS2 was available on GOG and I still have my original CD copy that I bought at Electronics Boutique (when it was still called that) out of the 2nd hand PC games basket. I used to play SSP a ton and remember the day when Kick C&D'd everybody and then released the games on GOG with all of the community made enhancements that were claimed as Night Dive's work.
I guess I have no skin in the game, I didn't work on any of this stuff, but I remember how upset people around here were at the time, and in this noclip interview he claims that Night Dive "brought SS back" and implemented things like Mouselook in SS1 when I know it was the community here that did that after years of work.
Am I just being sensitive? This is the comment I left on Youtube:
Quote:
I'm a little upset about how some of this interview went. I don't have a huge bone to pick with Kick or anything, because I really am happy that he was able to put this studio together and bring games like this back. Of course it's awesome that somebody actually owns the System Shock IP and has intentions to do something with it, because fans were left in limbo for a very long time.
BUT
There was a TON of controversy of his acquisition of the IP and how it went with the fans that had actually been keeping the System Shock games alive in all the intervening years. Kick and Night Dive did not "bring back" system shock, they simply acquired the rights. When SS2 first "shipped" on gog it included a ton of fixes that were developed by the community over the years and did so without attribution or permission. That wasn't remedied until the outrage from the system shock community got loud about it. Something similar sort of happened with SS1 when it came out too, it had long been considered abandonware, and the community was the one who implemented things like mouselook. It was already there when Night Dive got the rights. They didn't add it in.
The new versions of the games on Steam and GOG have enhancements developed by the community, not Night Dive, they just packaged it together with some tweaks of their own. I find it disingenuous to claim that they "brought it back" and I think the fandom that worked on this only out of love, rather than expecting compensation still feel incredibly burned by Stephen. I still bought both games again when they came out on GOG, because I want development to continue. But the fact that all of this is a bit glossed over (I'm not blaming you noclip, you always do superb work), really bothers me. Especially if he says that System Shock 2 is basically why his company exists.
[video=youtube;pE97vZLC_fA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE97vZLC_fA[/video]
voodoo47 on 21/7/2020 at 17:32
agreed. the Raven no mention. disappoint.
but they actually did grab the coder who did the mouselook/windows compatibility mod for SSP, and (presumably) paid him to create a more advanced version that the first EE version shipped with. they also allowed systemshock.org to use this version in any future SS1 patchers. the first SS2 release was a bit troubled (NewDark applied via SS2tool, which is meant for an individual user, not mass deployment), but that has been resolved a long time ago.
still, Le Corbeau the riddlemaster should have been mentioned.
Volitions Advocate on 21/7/2020 at 20:19
Well I just got a reply on my comment from Stephen himself. Figured I'd post it here. He mentions everything you just did. It was nice to hear from him.
Quote:
What happened with the initial launch of SS2 was tricky (This is Stephen btw) I had reached out to GOG and provided a patched copy of Shock 2 stating that it was using the recently released New Dark patch and that I had no success getting permission to use or communicate with, "Le Corbeau" who to this day has remained anonymous. At the time I assumed GOG would create their own fix for the game as they sometimes do, but instead they simply released the version I sent despite my reservations. We've been working on reverse engineering the game so we can port it to KEX and provide official support for Multiplayer and OSX and Linux ports respectively.
For Shock 1 we hired the modder who created the mouse look patch, had him develop an update and released that version. We later acquired the source code which he completely rewrote, ported to the KEX engine and that became the Enhanced Edition. I understand many of the Shock community members are still sore about how Shock 2 was handled, but we're doing our best to make amends. One of the things we did was release the original source code to the community, and my plan is to do the same for Shock 2 once it's complete.
Hope that answers some of your questions :)
Starker on 21/7/2020 at 22:34
Well, Stephen Kick may not be perfect, but at least he's reachable and he's taking at least some feedback. Wouldn't be the case if a company like Square Enix had the rights.
Volitions Advocate on 23/7/2020 at 16:37
I have to admit to being uninformed. All I remember is how upset a few people around here were (I remember Kolya being pretty pissed) and I never really found out how it all ended up. Sitting in the dark while the kickstarter ran over it's intended scope didn't help my view of what was going on.
He messaged me a couple times on that youtube comment and I guess you could say we had a chat. I'm a little embarassed I got so uppity about it, but on the other hand if I hadn't I guess I wouldn't have confronted my ignorance of what all happened.
He seems pretty cool. Life lesson learned, let's hope it sticks.
voodoo47 on 23/7/2020 at 17:53
to make the story short, there have been issues, they were resolved, everybody's all good now.
ZylonBane on 23/7/2020 at 19:56
Still want that degradation log.
henke on 24/7/2020 at 08:06
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
I'm a little embarassed I got so uppity about it, but on the other hand if I hadn't I guess I wouldn't have confronted my ignorance of what all happened.
Hey don't feel bad about making ignorant uppity comments, that's what the youtube comments section is for!
Volitions Advocate on 24/7/2020 at 15:32
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Still want that degradation log.
Ow. My spleen!