Thinking of a SS "true" port to 2007

Aircraftkiller on 23/4/2007 at 17:33

I don't know what CCP is and if it's for the original Dark engine, unmodified, I have no interest in it. I'm not looking to recreate SS1 on a dated engine that hasn't got any kind of graphical capabilities of today outside of 3D rendering and texture support.

Vigil on 23/4/2007 at 17:59

Quote Posted by AircraftKiller

I'm not looking to change the appearance of anything besides taking it from low-res to high resolution.

Quote Posted by AircraftKiller

I'm not looking to recreate SS1 on a dated engine that hasn't got any kind of graphical capabilities of today outside of 3D rendering and texture support.

So exactly what is it you want to do that can't be done in the System Shock 2 engine yet isn't changing the appearance of the original game? Or is it just that you don't like the smell of content you didn't personally direct, which is to be honest what's shining through between the lines here?

Aircraftkiller on 23/4/2007 at 18:51

First of all, I don't want to work with assets I didn't make in Max or Photoshop. Different art styles from varying levels of skill really don't mix all that well. I've tried "using" someone else's artwork to build a mod from and it's more efficient to make it yourself.

Second, I don't want to use the Dark engine unless it's OPDE. I have no interest in using a dated game engine to make a mod, graphics today support a much wider range of shaders than the current SS2 build can process.

Third, if I assemble a team to work on this; it really isn't your concern whether or not I like "the smell of content I didn't personally direct".

Anyway, what I mean by

Quote:

I'm not looking to change the appearance of anything besides taking it from low-res to high resolution.

is that I don't feel the need to change the artwork, only take what exists and recreate it the way it'd look today.

ZylonBane on 23/4/2007 at 19:10

Quote Posted by Aircraftkiller

Second, I don't want to use the Dark engine unless it's OPDE. I have no interest in using a dated game engine to make a mod, graphics today support a much wider range of shaders than the current SS2 build can process.

Enjoy your cease-and-desist!

JediKorenchkin on 23/4/2007 at 19:59

Yeah, ZB's right. We tried it on Doom 3 a few years ago and got b& by EA. Full story here - (http://mike.thefrayededge.net/temp/dead_letter). All the rumors of EA renewing the license are going to get them to enforce it even more strictly.

Seriously, if you aren't a crazy good modeler or crazy good coder, it's not going to happen. While the idea of bringing Shock to a new engine is a good one, there simply aren't enough people who love the game and have the talents necessary to recreate it in a brand new engine.

Not to mention, bringing either system shock game to a new engine would mean changing the art style, especially if it was System Shock 1. You could get the original artists on your project, and I guarentee that the art will change. You simply can't change a 2d sprite into a huge complex 3d model with thousands of polygons without changing things.

Unless you honestly think that this has enough clarity to be made over without angering any fans:

Inline Image:

http://www.sshock2.com/ss1/citadel/visual/1i;big.jpg

Is that a plate over part of his face with a laser eye? Does he have wires coming out of his head? What sort of raygun is that? There are just so many different things that you'd have to guess on that it wouldn't be the same game by a longshot. It's cool that you like the game enough to want to "renew" it, but you're better off just making a mod of your own origin.

ZylonBane on 23/4/2007 at 20:26

Heh, those guys would actually be relatively easy to extrapolate up, since they're obviously based on Borg drones.

JediKorenchkin on 23/4/2007 at 20:35

Don't ruin my point, it was the first screenshot I found. :p

ZylonBane on 23/4/2007 at 21:14

Too bad the original 3D models are probably long, long lost.

Aircraftkiller on 23/4/2007 at 21:43

My experience with EA has shown that they don't give cease-and-desist letters for mods using games they own based on games they own. I've recreated an EA game using an EA engine before, three years and going strong without a CAD e-mail.

I have to go to class in 15 so I'll make this fast:

Quote:

Unless you honestly think that this has enough clarity to be made over without angering any fans

It does have enough detail to at least make something look very similar to the source material. It's not as if we're working from 12x12 images here.

I wouldn't consider myself "crazy good" as a 3D artist, but I've been working in Max for five years and I can create a lot of good things from bad references.

(http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/39523971/) for example.

I'll probably start working on finding artists at my school that would be interested in helping tonight.

Zygoptera on 23/4/2007 at 23:00

I think I initially advised the CCP people to try and use existing models as much as possible with the idea that if better replacements were created at a later time it would be relatively easy to replace them and that nothing would be more likely to attract a decent modeler than having something completed and ready to go. When I started using NCA's levels years before the CCP started that was the approach I used. Having said that, there were/are three working models of new AI that I knew about for the CCP, including colourless's enforcer, and a lot of custom objects were done.

Quote Posted by JediKorenchkin

Unless you honestly think that this has enough clarity to be made over without angering any fans

Frankly, you can't do anything without angering some of the fans. And I'm not merely talking about things like midwife boobies (which I personally could not care less about but thought the OTMFG!!111!!! teh spirit of teh gaem is teh ruined by teh b00bies!!!111!!111 reaction from some was a bit... over the top), when rebirth came out people complained fervently about utter trivialities. We aren't as bad as Fallout fans, true, but we ain't called fans for nothing.