System Shock - Modern Level Design

HiddenX

The Elder Spy
Staff Member
Original Sin Donor
Original Sin 2 Donor
Joined
October 18, 2006
Messages
19,813
Location
Germany
Farflame spotted this article about the new System Shock on PCGamesN - some things will change:

System Shock remaster will have "modern level design principles" and other changes

Developers Nightdive Studios want the System Shock remake to be as faithful as possible, but they're not planning on ignoring the past two decades of progress in the craft of making videogames.

The team has been talking to some of the original Looking Glass Studios developers, and one of the biggest takeaways was that, if they made the game now, there are a bunch of things they would do differently.



"Whenever we look at the design, or art, or audio even, we ask ourselves “What would LGS do?” say Nightdive in a Kickstarter update. "The answer becomes clear after understanding LGS was about innovation, trying new things and bringing together concepts unheard of in games before them. We see ourselves as maintaining that tradition, and chat with the LGS guys to ensure what we’re doing holds up to their expectations."

Other than plugging plot holes and refining dialogue, the story will remain untouched. The original voice actress for Shodan is returning and they're letting her give input. Gameplay will also see a refresh, with combat given more depth and systems becoming more reactive.

"Levels will harken back to the original game thematically, but the layout will see a pretty big change to apply modern level design principles for pacing and exploration," say Nightdive. "We’re not going to dumb things down, but we also don’t want to ignore the last 20 years of progress level design has made."

[...]
More information.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
19,813
Location
Germany
Levels will harken back to the original game thematically, but the layout will see a pretty big change to apply modern level design principles for pacing and exploration

Let's wait and see what does that mean exactly. I hope it's good. Some old games have had very good level design. Quake I, Quake II, Half-Life came to my mind.
 
Joined
Mar 9, 2015
Messages
2,714
Yeah, but they referred to "modern" level design principles. Quake I, Quake II and Half-Life are in no way "modern" games. I'd like to know exactly what these so-called modern principles are, and which games they think best exemplify them.
 
Joined
Nov 30, 2009
Messages
421
Location
California
I'm hoping for all sorts of quick-time events. I love those!

Just kidding of course. Hopefully the modern design principles are the good ones and not including the un-fun ones.
 
Joined
Oct 23, 2006
Messages
840
Whooohoo.
This remaster gets more and more ambitious.

My only problem is that messing with the levels gets the development time veeery long.
 
Joined
Mar 3, 2008
Messages
820
I hope they find a better voice for Shodan.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
8,821
First they show an awesome looking pixelated demo in slow Unity. Then they switch to fast UE4 and show us a sub-par, wretched, forgettable junk-heap and now are trying to explain their certificate..
 
Joined
Mar 21, 2013
Messages
3,453
First they show an awesome looking pixelated demo in slow Unity. Then they switch to fast UE4 and show us a sub-par, wretched, forgettable junk-heap and now are trying to explain their certificate..

Speak for yourself. I think the UE versions looks just as good if not better.
 
Joined
Oct 21, 2006
Messages
39,133
Location
Florida, US
They said both the original look and the new look are fluid - they're still trying things out. All else being equal, though, choosing between Unity and Unreal for a game like this is a no-brainer.
 
Joined
Nov 8, 2014
Messages
12,085
Evidently the backers didn't, hence the Q and A…

I assume there would be a Q&A anytime there's a major change like this. I doubt the backers had anything to do with it.


All else being equal, though, choosing between Unity and Unreal for a game like this is a no-brainer.

Absolutely. Unity runs like ass compared to the Unreal Engine. There's no other way to put it.
 
Joined
Oct 21, 2006
Messages
39,133
Location
Florida, US
Unity runs like ass compared to every other engine that ever existed
Sorry, but that statement needed a bit of "enhancement". ;)
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
Unity runs like ass compared to every other engine that ever existed

Sorry, but that statement needed a bit of "enhancement". ;)

Well that's not really accurate or even fair. Unity has had it's problems, unquestionably, though in the games where it performs like "ass" it's virtually always the developers fault.

You can't just go throwing in a bunch of meshes etc and expect the engine to do all the work of optimisation. This applies to any modern engine, they require the developer to have some expertise if they want to throw lots of things around at a good framerate.

There are many games based on Unity which run just fine, there are games on other engines which run like crap while there are ones that run flawlessly, nothing about this is unique to Unity.
 
Joined
Jan 6, 2014
Messages
147
While I agree that Unity gets too much of a bad rap, and it is often the fault of poor developers, it does seem to perform considerably below Unreal when rendering the same scenes. They're improving pretty rapidly, and I hope they'll lose that reputation in time.
 
Joined
Nov 8, 2014
Messages
12,085
Back
Top Bottom