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hguhghuff

For context this is the outcome of a failed Kickstarter.

It’s disappointing that they didn’t stick to the goals of the Kickstarter which was a straight update of the original.

https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.polygon.com/platform/amp...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock...

This is probably the next best thing to completing the Kickstarter since clearly they’ve run out of funds.

I’m not angry that the money is gone but it is s classic software engineering error for scope to blow out and the budget to disappear as a result with inevitable project cancellation.

So it’s my money, and the money of the other Kickstarter backers, that gives you this source. You’re welcome.

To the credit of Nightdive, this is the most likely path through which system shock 1 will be cleaned up and updated, hopefully with usable controls as opposed to the flat out unusable controls of the original.

View on HN

https://www.pcgamer.com/nightdive-talks-system-shock-remakes...

> "Our intention is to ship exactly the game that was promised, with as much of the features that were promised as we can, in a timeframe that will get it out as fast as we can. Our expectation is probably Q1 of 2020."

> Kuperman gave that date with the kind of expression and shrug that conveyed: no, that date isn't what anyone wants to hear. But it's practical. He was unequivocal when I asked if another two years of development would put Nightdive in a financial bind.

> "No it doesn't. We've also had renewed interest from some publishing partners, for whom the more complex and costly game was something of a challenge for them, that this is what they were hoping we would provide and renewed their interest."

With what money? They didn’t raise much in the first place and it’s gone.

Don't forget that Night Dive already has a back catalogue of games rescued from obscurity that they sell on Steam and GOG.

I believe the translation of "renewed interest from some publishing partners" is "they'll give us money, probably".

As I understand it, videogames on kickstarter rarely raise enough money to complete a game. If anything they can use a successful kickstarter to sell the game to publishers or other investors.

I want the original game with just updated graphics and ui:

Caesar III

Sid Meyer's Alpha Centure

MOO 1 & 2

Fallout 1 & 2

Sadly this will never happen because what developer doesn't want to play with the code and have their own spin on a modern take.

You may want to look at https://github.com/falltergeist/falltergeist, though I didn't have the time to try it myself yet.

This does not seem like a graphics and UI update, just like a recreation of the original with FOSS software.

Blizzard recently released Starcraft: Remastered on the 20th anniversary of Starcraft (https://starcraft.com). Because much of the game balance relies on weird/buggy unit behavior, it was critical to keep the game code intact, so the developers only focused on a graphical, UI, and netcode refresh. It worked, and was successful, but it's been months since release and there are still huge bugs and general problems with everything they did touch.

There was some discussion here about the effort it took to emulate a lot of the bugs in order to keep the game the same.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16305769

It's almost like we should take the old assets, take the new assets, run the exact old engine with the old assets, and then ON TOP OF THAT, let a Machine Learning system figure out how to, in real time, make the graphics look better.

Hey, Károly Zsolnai-Fehér (Two-Minute Papers), can you find someone to implement this?!? kthxbai!

For anything you want, it's worth at least taking a look here:

https://osgameclones.com/

I've read elsewhere (https://shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=42010 as linked by another member) that the latest kickstater updates were showing something very different from what they where working on at the start, like they were preparing pitches for a publisher:

So they ask for people's (and your) money to make 'just' a remake with updated graphics and then they blow all that money doing something else, in order to try to get a publishing deal.

Even the switch from Unity to Unreal could be framed as preparing for such a pitch, since Unreal is more appealing to the publishers. They scrapped months of work and had to work even longer to get to the point of what they had during the Kickstarter pitch.

Thanks for the link, that was a very interesting read. The theory brought forward in that post, namely that most of their development decisions make no sense if they were intending to deliver the game their Kickstarter promised, but make a lot of sense if what they were really trying was to find a publisher, is quite intriguing. It's only a guess but it's kinda convincing.

We should probably give Nightdive the benefit of a doubt but if that indeed was their business strategy it would be a very heavy slap in the face of every single backer that put money into their Kickstarter, hoping - no, expecting - to get the remake that was promised in their campaign: a remake of a game beloved by many.

You're welcome. The link was also posted somewhere else on the thread before me, so I'm not the only one who thought about that.

This was a good article that goes over what happened with the Kickstarter project: https://shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=42010

i can not agree more with single one sentence in this article. I missed system shock crowdfunding campaign, but founded pillars of eternity, shadowrun and wasteland - looks like i am lucky then

What makes you say this is the "outcome" of the Kickstarter? It's just the plain old source of the PowerPC Mac version of the game...

I think he means the _release_ of the source code is the outcome, not the code itself.

If a tree in the forest...

It got sidetracked but is still continuing as of Feb 16 2018:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock

(click 'Updates')

The update on 16 Feb 2018 is by the CEO, detailing why they've failed to deliver and are shutting the project down.

They took the money and ran, basically.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock...

I don’t think they took the money and ran at all, and it’s unfair to say so.

I think anyone who backs a Kickstarter without accepting the risk is really of questionable wisdom..... there is now years of evidence that kickstarters fail through lack of skill/competence/experience. Failure does not equate to fraud.

A Kickstarter outcome is NOT a guarantee, so when it fails, shrug and move on rather than behaving entitled and angry. And if you’re capable only of being angry about failed Kickstarter outcomes, we’ll just don’t back risky ventures that may lose money.

That's a pretty disingenuous way to present what was said:

> I have put the team on a hiatus while we reassess our path so that we can return to our vision. We are taking a break, but NOT ending the project. Please accept my personal assurance that we will be back and stronger than ever. System Shock is going to be completed and all of our promises fulfilled.

Honestly, I read that statement as "we're finished, but if some angel comes down from heaven with a barrel full of cash we would be more than happy to deliver the game."

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is flat ass broke.

"We are taking a break, but NOT ending the project."

Apparently you didn't read the very update you linked to.

Nor did they take the money and run; they just wasted it through mismanagement and unrealistic goals. They deserve plenty of criticism, but just because you're pissed off at them doesn't excuse blatant lying and misrepresentation.

More specificaly, they've wasted it preparing publisher pitches instead of delivering what they asked people's money in the first place.

> I have put the team on a hiatus while we reassess our path so that we can return to our vision. We are taking a break, but NOT ending the project.

Unless he's flat out lying, they're not shutting down.

> For context this is the outcome of a failed Kickstarter.

Not necessarely, they will announce something https://i.imgur.com/1QIgU4Y.png

Is it going to be exclusive to the Ataribox? ;)

> "As the budget grew, we began a long series of conversations with potential publishing partners."

Really? You need a publisher? Sigh. What year is it again?

PC/Mac only you are right. I haven't worked in the industry in a while but I vaguely recall one had to purchase production time and essentially predict your sales for Sony/Nintendo if the system was hot in the marketplace. If you aimed too low, one had customers without product for an extended period (most traditional game sales are in the first weeks), if you aimed too low, you had to eat those DVDs/carts at a loss after the retailers returned them. Also with consoles, the devkits for each were priced ridiculously at something like 3000 for PS3 and more for XBox360 (and those things red-ringed like crazy, went through three in three years), and there were test versions and special development versions one had to use to debug, I remember there was one special PS3 that was I want to say 10000 that was the size of a desktop computer that our resident graphics guru got. So deciding to add on console support for a PC game like they did is a huge commitment for a AAA game, it is not simply a matter of using an engine that works on all the platforms, all the QA has to be repeated and there are different extra steps for every platform but they didn't even get to that step.

$3,000 dev kit is pretty cheap. Just think of the cash a N64 developer had to drop on an SGI...$100k+

True, I remember there was also something of a shortage of Wii kits for a long time at least for my developer shop we were low on the priority list so we only had on Wii developer box for the US branch for at least a year after the Wii came out.

Publishers give game developers money. They need a publisher to fund the project if the budget grows...

Plus provide support with all the non-game-development things involved in a game development project. Just look at Obsidian who partnered with Paradox Interactive for Pillars of Eternity. They didn't need more money, but they wanted their expertise in publishing.

Publishers front money (and having money often leads to needing more money) and provide a lot of expertise to get a game over the finish line.

Cause they overscoped the promised project to something needed a Publisher, wasting months of time with an engine switch which make only sense in the case of preparing for a publisher pitch.

I think this is what I was getting at: they made some bad decisions. If I understand the original project/proposal (maybe I've got this very wrong), but they essentially just had to take an existing concept and build it in a new engine? That shouldn't be too much work, should it? Still a lot of work, but not something from nothing?

You're sure that this is the source of the rebooted game and not a release of the original SS1 code?

I don't understand your question.

Because they've been unsuccessful in completing the reboot, releasing the sources is a way of apologizing.

Since the instructions mention a PPC requirement to build on Mac, I'm assuming these are fairly old.

> Because they've been unsuccessful in completing the reboot, releasing the sources is a way of apologizing.

Where are you getting that this release is an apology for the failed Kickstarter? Can you point to source at Nightdive saying this, or are you just speculating?

Sounds like pure speculation (unless grandparent has more info to share).

As far as I know, the project's scope grew out of control so the project was put on hold for several weeks.

But it is now worked on again, with the initial, smaller scope but the new engine.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock...

Linking this without context suggest it's an answer to the parent's question, which was asking for proof this was an apology.

The post is them stating that they're releasing the source code as a celebration of a big update, not as an apology. The only people saying it's an apology are speculating.

>Because they've been unsuccessful in completing the reboot, releasing the sources is a way of apologizing.

They wanted to publish the original source code from the get go. Here's an article from mid 2016 talking about it: https://www.gamezone.com/news/system-shock-s-original-source...

>Since the instructions mention a PPC requirement to build on Mac, I'm assuming these are fairly old.

The game was released in 1994, so yeah, they are old :-)

This does indeed look like the original code. Given that it has instructions for building it under Code Warrior...

And lots of ^M goodness :)

the controls were not easy or simple, but certainly not unusable. lean out showed up in other games, lie down as well. but it's a shame no other FPS games tried the "mouse aim without mouse look" approach.

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