System Shock Advanced Edition out on GOG

[Bren]

Stupendous!

http://www.gog.com/game/system_shock_enhanced_edition

[scalliano]

DAMMIT! Thank feck this chair's made of leather ...

[Kombine]

This is great to hear. I love System Shock 2, but could never get into the first game because of the awkward controls.

[Trance]

Well you're in luck, because that's one of the things this version on GOG tackles, with rebindable key controls and the addition of mouselook mode.

I'm a bit miffed, because all the new stuff offered in this version was stolen from the System Shock community. Mouselook, remappable keys, additional resolutions, all that jazz. Fans did the work to make that stuff possible and made it freely available in the form of System Shock Portable. Then Night Dive buys the rights to the game and repackages the fans' hard work to commercial ends, at the same time ordering the takedown of System Shock Portable.

I mean, I like that System Shock is being brought to a wider audience with this GOG distribution, but them taking other people's work that they offered for free and charging money for it is what I've got a problem with. But them's the breaks when you're working with "abandonware": you never have a legal leg to stand on if someone with the actual rights to the game orders your stuff removed.

EDIT: Well nevermind. I was completely misinformed. The enhanced features offered in SSEE were put in with the permission of the community mod authors. They were not stolen. My gripe is nullified.

[leileilol]

GOG has marketed off fan patches and community software as "we fixed game for you're XP we did it we're pro fixer's" since they began. It's nice people are opening their eyes and finding issues with it right now though


especially because

---

the 'enhanced version' is unwinnable

[Gez]

EDIT: Well nevermind. I was completely misinformed. The enhanced features offered in SSEE were put in with the permission of the community mod authors. They were not stolen. My gripe is nullified.

Well yeah. And more than permission, they hired one of the most prominent tech wizards in the System Shock community (Malba Tahan) to finish the work on the Enhanced Edition. This isn't different from when they hired Quasar and Kaiser for the Strife re-release.

[Scripten]

GOG has marketed off fan patches and community software as "we fixed game for you're XP we did it we're pro fixer's" since they began. It's nice people are opening their eyes and finding issues with it right now though


especially because

---

the 'enhanced version' is unwinnable

EDIT: Well nevermind. I was completely misinformed. The enhanced features offered in SSEE were put in with the permission of the community mod authors. They were not stolen. My gripe is nullified.

Well yeah. And more than permission, they hired one of the most prominent tech wizards in the System Shock community (Malba Tahan) to finish the work on the Enhanced Edition. This isn't different from when they hired Quasar and Kaiser for the Strife re-release.

Okay, so these two quotes are mutually exclusive. Is this something GOG is doing or not? I keep hearing conflicting stories about that.

[Trance]

I received the wrong information from someone else yesterday when they told me this was a thing. Immediately after writing my post I decided to check up on what the people over at Systemshock.org were saying about it, and found out that what I was told was wrong. Gez has it right. Night Dive got in touch with people in the community and it's a cooperative effort.

Leileilol is just being Leileilol. Although the "unwinnable" bit pertains to a bug that System Shock has had for ages: the final boss fight runs too fast on modern CPUs.

[Trance]

Btw from 12 noon EST (few minutes ago) 'til probably an hour or two later they've got Paul Neurath from the original Shock team and 2 ppl from Night Dive Studios doing a thing on GOG's official Twitch stream. Check it out if you're interested.

EDIT: Stream event ended 2 hours later; here is the archive.

http://www.twitch.tv/gogcom/v/17387762

[Gez]

I don't think GOG did anything beyond making sure it ran on their various test PCs.

[TheAdmantArchvile]

especially because

---

the 'enhanced version' is unwinnable

Actually, no it's still winnable. I had the same problem when I tried fighting SHODAN in cyberspace. Turns out, turning on VSync actually fixes this problem. For once in my life, Vsync actually helped a game out.

[leileilol]

and steam

[Kinsie]

Apparently native OSX and Linux ports are in the works. Which is... you know... nice.

[Marisa the Magician]

I don't trust their linux porting after what happened to me with veteran edition (is there seriously no developer out there who doesn't know how to use sdl2 for proper multimonitor support?)

[Trance]

So this is happening, apparently.

The classic cyberpunk adventure, which went on to spawn a sequel and inspire Irrational Games' BioShock franchise, received a high-definition makeover, which is now available for purchase. But as Night Dive Studios' CEO Stephen Kick told Fast Company earlier this month, the company's next big project is to take the original game and completely reimagine it.

"We have been in contact with members of the original System Shock team and any future iterations of the System Shock games, and by this I mean both new titles in the series as well as major updates to the existing games, will be very true to the spirit of the originals," Kick told us.

The page contains a few examples of the reimagined visuals they're implementing using the Unity engine, as well as concept art of some of the enemies.

I... actually don't hate this. I quite like this. I never thought I'd see a studio touch SS1 again, to say nothing of actually managing to remake it in a modern engine. And not only that, to handle it relatively faithfully with the artistic liberties NOT trending towards the bland UT3-ish future shooter aesthetic you see everywhere... this is just about the best news I've heard all year.

There's still plenty of time for Night Dive to fuck it up though, so I'm not climbing aboard the hype train yet.

Also I wonder just how far that faithfulness is going to go. In all honesty, I would prefer if they did a bit of creative reimagining of the map geometry. The original engine basically represented maps as tiles, its spaces being either squares or right triangles, with the floor and ceiling of the tiles supporting variable height and slope. They have the ability to transcend that limitation with this remake, if they've got a good enough eye for it. We'll just have to wait and see what they decide to do.