KickStarter System Shock 1 Remake by Nightdive Studios

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/482400/view/4104540932632136261

Shodan's Citadel Station Updated In Patch 1.2
Female Hacker, Reworked Final Battle and Cloud Saves among many of Shodan's Update

Citadel Station has never felt so fresh.
After the 1st forays to take Shodan down, she has watched, learnt and optimised her realm. Scurry and survive in her corridors once more if you dare, Hacker!

Shodan is pleased to accommodate all these changes as they have been made based on the feedback of assimilated insects. Indeed, to celebrate and entice new hackers into her lair,
System Shock will be on sale for 55 % less from April 11th to the 25th

Like an elevator lift whose controls have “mysteriously malfunctioned”, let’s dive right into it.

A female Hacker has now been added as a playable character
- Select the Hacker’s appearance from the New Game Configuration screen

Reworked the entire final fight with new mechanics and a unique flow
– Face and defeat (?) Shodan once more in her new cyberspace domain

Cloud Sync support has been added
- you can now pick up and continue your game on whichever machine you find yourself on.

Other major Changes

• Alpha Strain enemies have a new attack
• Avian Mutant enemies have a new attack
• Cyborg Diego has new movement options
• Continued refining enemy AI and behaviors
• Mission waypoints have been implemented for (Easy mission difficulty)
• Better Gamepad handling and implementation
• Major optimizations across the entire game — Steam Deck users rejoice!
• Achievements are properly awarded when completing the requirements
• Some first person Hacker animations have been corrected
• General combat and speed balance adjustments across enemies and weapons
• Credits added to the Title Screen
• Improved quest logic behavior across several areas of the game
• Players can now no longer save over the AutoSave, and the AutoSave will now only appear in the Load Game menu
• Game Over screen can now be skipped
• Recycle Station ‘inventory’ size has increased to 4x3 from 3x3 to allow recycling of bigger junk items. Scrapper rejoice!
• The max payout from a Recycle Station is now 120 Credits
• EMP stun duration has been reduced by 25%
• SHODAN will lock the Research control room door if the player fires the Mining Laser at Earth
• Detox patch now has a 25% protection bonus against environment hazards while active
• Fix a soft lock that could occur when dying while interacting with a Surgery Machine
• Items dropped inside of elevators should no longer disappear
• Pathfinding performance improvements in Flight Deck and Groves
• Fix a case where the player was able to clip through the world by loading games while crouched
• Fix a case where plasma projectile FX would spawn every frame and wouldn’t clean up properly, causing major frame drops

Minor changes

• Easier to see total counts of collected Media items
• Added a button to the entrance of the Security level to ensure you can backtrack to the rest of the Station
• General FX improvements and tweaks
• New artwork on monitors across Citadel Station
• Enemy callouts and vocals are less frequent now
• Better text sizing for all languages
• Jump Jet behavior improved
• The color of some projectiles were tweaked
• Sped up animations of using Dermal Patches
• Enemies who are near Restoration Bays will be teleported to their spawn location to ensure the Hacker doesn’t get softlocked by being killed repeatedly
• Save files are now counted incrementally
• Fix ups of various Cyberspace levels and enemy placements within
• Better handling of Hacker death in unlikely scenarios
• SHODAN now has a surprise for the player when Diego is killed on the Security level
• Total Enemy Reinforcements have been increased across all levels
• Reduced the number of enemies that can bunch up in the same Reinforcement Volume
• Enemies will remember the player for longer on all difficulties
• Enemy line of checks include the projectile collision radius whenever possible so that their attacks fail less often
• Fixed an enemy ambush that wasn’t activating properly in the Medical CPU room if the player comes back later in the game
• Kickstarter corpse tokens added to enemies
• Enemy awareness in the Flight Deck trap room after saving and loading has been fixed
• Diego boss AI adjustments, largely in the first encounter
• Cortex Reavers can now perform a strafe jump to more quickly engage the player
• Mutated Cyborg and Tiger-Gorilla dismemberment has been fixed
• Cyborg Mantis walks faster, will sprint more frequently, and HP increased slightly
• Flier-Bots now have an Autocannon in addition to Gas Grenade attacks
• Striker-Bots now have a Laser Cannon in addition to Homing Missile attacks
• Flier-Bot and Striker-Bot textures have been improved
• Fix for Hoppers and Mobile Lasers not being able to hit the player while leaning behind a wall
• Security-1 Bot now has a rapid fire attack pose
• Cyborg Warrior now has a moving attack similar to the Security-2 Bot
• Cyborg Elite Guard head-mounted laser attack damage increased from 60 to 80
• Alpha Strain long range attack now has a unique animation
• Skorpion default inventory size has been reduced from 4x2 to 3x2
• Assault Rifle damage increased slightly from 24 to 25 per round
• Plasma Rifle now has an animation to unload the active Plasma Core
• Abe Ghiran’s Head inventory size has been increased from 1x1 to 2x2
• Missing character portraits have been added
• Cyberspace I.C.E Shield FX has been improved
• Wire Puzzle has new FX to more clearly indicate the required power level to solve it
• Fix for Circuit Puzzle dead-end nodes filling from the wrong side in some cases
• Fixed holes in the walls in Research tiles,
• Berserk patches now cost 5 Tri-Credits from a dispenser instead of 4
• Shotgun ammo cost in Ammo Depots has been reduced from 15 to 14 credits
• Loot table adjustments to reduce quantity of ammo received from Exec-Bots, Flier-Bots, Striker-Bots and Cyborg Enforcers
• Ammo adjustments in Reactor, Alpha Grove, Delta Grove, Engineering, Security, and Bridge
• Reduced the number of First Aid Kit pickups in Flight Deck, Security and Bridge
• Assigned the correct idle animation to the Cyborg Drones (No more hovering guns while they are charging)
• Jump Jet improvements while in Low Gravity Volumes
• Loading a save while falling will properly restore the player’s velocity
• Barrel dispensers will no longer drop their dispensed barrels when the player leaves and comes back to a level.
• Energy Drain Mines will no longer prepend multiple “Destroyed” strings to their name after being repeatedly destroyed
• Fix for player losing Low-Grav/Repulsor mods when switching to certain weapons
• Improvements to how the enemy AI handles changing Repulsor Lift direction
• Reactor’s Repulsor Lifts have been adjusted slightly to fix potential soft locks
• Fix for the player being able to exit the Diego V1 arena by blocking main doorway
• Doors will more elegantly restore their collision state when loading a save
• Shotgun shell texture has been fixed
• Crack-O’s are now no longer considered Junk
• Fix for certain wall monitors not breaking when attacked
• Fixed small animation issue with the Isolinear Chipset on the Bridge
• Fixed sparking cable issues on Maintenance
• Fix for several achievements not completing properly
• Small text adjustments and spellings
• Music playback adjustments
• Fixed a potential audio component memory leak when concurrency limits were reached
• Added a Controller Vibration accessibility option
• Improved gamepad support on MFD
• Improved automap performance
• Fixed several visual artefacts on the automap
• Automap will always update the map info bar with the data for the currently selected level
• Implant tooltips will no longer display off the edge of the screen on certain display configs
• Fix for the ‘Back’ button on gamepad causing the player to crouch when exiting menus
• Credits updated
• Other minor improvements, adjustments and balance tweaks

As you can see we’ve been hard at work and we would like to thank all insects who contributed feedback to ensure the smoother running of Shodan’s death domain.

We look forward to seeing you insects once more in Citadel Station.
- Your System Shock Team

 

[kangaxx]

Whoa that's a lot of updates. Sounds like the patch isn't out until the 11th, but if this works on existing saves I'll probably dive back in when it's updated.

 

[mindx2]

Patch 1.2 coming...

As well as my boxed edition...

 

[Zlaja]

Console versions probably won't sell much. They've delayed it way too long and the little hype the game had is long gone now.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

I like how in "Minor Fixes" they list a bunch Enemy Design and AI upgrades, like these are simple bug fixes and not a game changing modications

 

[Unkillable Cat]

[*]Recycle Station ‘inventory’ size has increased to 4x3 from 3x3 to allow recycling of bigger junk items. Scrapper rejoice!

Not good enough, moar space is needed! MOAR!

[*]Added a button to the entrance of the Security level to ensure you can backtrack to the rest of the Station

GOOD

[*]Enemy line of checks include the projectile collision radius whenever possible so that their attacks fail less often

wat

[*]Crack-O’s are now no longer considered Junk

Eat your s-s-soyslop, insect!

 

[DJOGamer PT]

[*]Enemy line of checks include the projectile collision radius whenever possible so that their attacks fail less often

wat

Perhaps it's referring to the AoE of explosive projectiles?
The enemy AI might have not accounted that when firing them at the PC

 

[Baron Tahn]

No gamepig variant for me then? The bastards. Nightdive are about the only company 'middle of the road' for me. Right on the razors edge of giving up on them.

 

[Ash]

[*]Enemy line of checks include the projectile collision radius whenever possible so that their attacks fail less often

wat

Perhaps it's referring to the AoE of explosive projectiles?
The enemy AI might have not accounted that when firing them at the PC

No it's referring to line of sight trace checks, which is typically (for performance) a 1 pixel-wide line from the enemy to the player. If this line connects we can see the player, time to open fire. But given they never accounted for projectile collision radius (the projectile itself is wider than 1 pixel), then they can for example shoot it right into the wall parallel to them repeatedly if the positioning is right. Quite a standard fail in many games. You'll often see MJ12 commandos blowing themselves and their friends up in Deus Ex for example because the rockets come from each of their shoulders, not the center of their body/head that the line of sight trace check comes from. One of very few major AI blunders I did not fix in that game. Just never got around to it, too much to do.

See my good ol fashioned paint sketch, top-down "plan" view:

The projectile will hit the wall at the corner as it is wider than one unit.

A good way to improve line of sight checking is to stick to a 1 unit wide simple trace as standard, then if connection is found do a more advanced trace (not every frame if performance remains a concern), then set the projectile origin point/angle based off of that, or fail the trace and make the NPC continue moving to a more suitable line of sight. Another good practice is to make the projectile collision size a little smaller than its visible model size, not enough for the player to ever notice but to reduce potential inaccurate collisions with anything that may be oversized, calculated incorrectly, or what have you. More stuff I did for Deus Ex.

 

[ciox]

[*]Enemy line of checks include the projectile collision radius whenever possible so that their attacks fail less often

wat

Perhaps it's referring to the AoE of explosive projectiles?
The enemy AI might have not accounted that when firing them at the PC

No it's referring to line of sight trace checks, which is typically (for performance) a 1 pixel-wide line from the enemy to the player. If this line connects we can see the player, time to open fire. But given they never accounted for projectile collision radius (the projectile itself is wider than 1 pixel), then they can for example shoot it right into the wall parallel to them repeatedly if the positioning is right. Quite a standard fail in many games. You'll often see MJ12 commandos blowing themselves and their friends up in Deus Ex for example because the rockets come from each of their shoulders, not the center of their body/head that the line of sight trace check comes from. One of very few major AI blunders I did not fix in that game. Just never got around to it, too much to do.

See my good ol fashioned paint sketch, top-down "plan" view:

The projectile will hit the wall at the corner as it is wider than one unit.

A good way to improve line of sight checking is to stick to a 1 unit wide simple trace as standard, then if connection is found do a more advanced trace (not every frame if performance remains a concern), then set the projectile origin point/angle based off of that, or fail the trace and make the NPC continue moving to a more suitable line of sight. Another good practice is to make the projectile collision size a little smaller than its visible model size, not enough for the player to ever notice but to reduce potential inaccurate collisions with anything that may be oversized, calculated incorrectly, or what have you. More stuff I did for Deus Ex.

Dark Engine simply handled this by having a checkbox in the physics category called "point vs. terrain", if checked this made it so projectiles don't use their real collision size against terrain brushes, only a point, which means that basic line traces are always accurate and AIs don't need to shuffle around forever to get a good angle.

 

[Ash]

This remake is likely based on ported/replicated code from the original which perhaps had to rely on simple methods. Definitely the case that the original game lacked nuanced line of sight checking given how OP leaning around corners was, making you essentially invincible if I recall. I imagine they fixed that up pretty good here? Still not played the remake, maybe one day.

Dark Engine simply handled this by having a checkbox in the physics category called "point vs. terrain"

Problem with this is it only works against terrain. But I imagine there's other solutions for other situations implemented, such as player hiding behind a deactivated turret that surely does not have a pixel-perfect collision model. A common trait of old engines as you no doubt know.

 

[ciox]

This remake is likely based on ported/replicated code from the original which perhaps had to rely on simple methods. Definitely the case that the original game lacked nuanced line of sight checking given how OP leaning around corners was, making you essentially invincible if I recall. I imagine they fixed that up pretty good here? Still not played the remake, maybe one day.

Dark Engine simply handled this by having a checkbox in the physics category called "point vs. terrain"

Problem with this is it only works against terrain. But I imagine there's other solutions for other situations implemented, such as player hiding behind a deactivated turret that surely does not have a pixel-perfect collision model. A common trait of old engines as you no doubt know.

True enough, there are limitations and you can see some edge cases, but it's a pretty clever idea that could be expanded.

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/482400/view/4185606994277120701

Patch 1.2 & -55% Sale Now Live!
Female Hacker, Reworked Final Battle and Cloud Saves among many of Shodan's Update.

Citadel Station is renewed, Shodan is renewed, and so will you be. Hacker!

Shodan has learnt from the 1st forays to take her down. Ever watching and optimising her realm of ruin. She invites you to scurry and survive in her corridors once more. Your efforts only serve to prove what an excellent drone you'll make.

We've made many changes based on the feedback of assimilated insects. Indeed, to celebrate and entice new hackers into her lair,
System Shock will be on sale for 55 % less from April 11th to the 25th

Here are three TLDR main additions to the game that revitalise the experience.

A female Hacker has now been added as a playable character
- Select the Hacker’s appearance from the New Game Configuration screen

Reworked the entire final fight with new mechanics and a unique flow
– Face and defeat (?) Shodan once more in her new cyberspace domain

Cloud Sync support has been added
- you can now pick up and continue your game on whichever machine you find yourself on.

There's a huge list of other changes and improvements
We've detailed these previously in the last DevBlog.

Thanks again for the players support and helping us reach the vision we've always had for this classic game. We look forward to seeing you insects once more in Citadel Station.
- Your System Shock Team

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm replaying this just to check out the new additions.

Went with the female hacker... and except for colored fingernails and swapped-out grunts I'm not seeing it. The cutscenes don't seem any different, the in-game character model seems unchanged.

Also, the game won't let me use my monitor's default resolution, I'm stuck with 1920x1080. Anyone know why?

 

[Tweed]

Did they make cyberspace not eat shit?

 

[Trithne]

Did they make cyberspace not eat shit?

Cspace is great imo, but probably not if you had issues.

The final cspace section still looks to be a shit "on-foot", completely invalidating the rules of how cspace works vs meat space.

 

[Tweed]

Did they make cyberspace not eat shit?

Cspace is great imo, but probably not if you had issues.

The final cspace section still looks to be a shit "on-foot", completely invalidating the rules of how cspace works vs meat space.

I thought it was a lousy, boring decent clone and worst of all, absolutely mandatory. Plus, when you die in c-space you have to start over. At least OG Shock had the decency of keeping any solved sections solved. I can't imagine trying to muddle through the remake with trace and burn mechanics in place like the original. In the end I turned the difficulty for c-space down to minimum for the remake because it's just not worth dealing with.

The final battle was so underwhelming. I'd rather have the frenzied "Shoot the silver cone until it dies" final battle than a long, boring slog on foot.

 

[Trithne]

Did they make cyberspace not eat shit?

Cspace is great imo, but probably not if you had issues.

The final cspace section still looks to be a shit "on-foot", completely invalidating the rules of how cspace works vs meat space.

I thought it was a lousy, boring decent clone and worst of all, absolutely mandatory. Plus, when you die in c-space you have to start over. At least OG Shock had the decency of keeping any solved sections solved. I can't imagine trying to muddle through the remake with trace and burn mechanics in place like the original. In the end I turned the difficulty for c-space down to minimum for the remake because it's just not worth dealing with.

The final battle was so underwhelming. I'd rather have the frenzied "Shoot the silver cone until it dies" final battle than a long, boring slog on foot.

I'll admit that my word choice of "great" was not the best, but "a poor Descent clone" was more or less my expectations for it.

Agree that resetting the instance sucks though, but you can't expect 2020s devs to implement that sort of persistence.

 

[randir14]

I'm replaying this just to check out the new additions.

Went with the female hacker... and except for colored fingernails and swapped-out grunts I'm not seeing it. The cutscenes don't seem any different, the in-game character model seems unchanged.

Also, the game won't let me use my monitor's default resolution, I'm stuck with 1920x1080. Anyone know why?

The same thing was happening to me. If I remember right I had to toggle to fullscreen and choose my native res, then switch to borderless windowed.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

For anyone who cares - it seems that the patch also completely bricks old saves.

 

[Trithne]

For anyone who cares - it seems that the patch also completely bricks old saves.

That is rather annoying, because I was going to just load a save in the Throne of God to see the new improved yet somehow still shit final boss. Ah well.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

This might work? The patch respawns everything (cameras, enemies, boss fights) in old saves, but also in a very broken manner (enemies in dead state, but attacking, invisible enemies, non-interactable enemies and so on), so just loading a save directly before the boss might be fine. I did see reports about the game crashing as well, though.

 

[Baron Dupek]

 

[Cross]

The final "boss fight" in the original System Shock obviously wasn't anything to write home about, but the idea was cool, with Shodan's creepy face filling the screen and disorienting the player, like you were being absorbed into cyberspace. They should have developed that idea further, instead of the bland gameplay they went for here.

 

[Tweed]

Dumpster Dive can't into gamedev, they should stick to vulching popular old games that are propped up by coding nerds.