Cynical

[Thread split from -- Mordeth] Great, now there's another project they can badly mismanage while owning the IP and filing takedowns against fan-made "modernization" projects.

Define "every other major studio"; EA owned it for years and didn't.

Again, it wasn't until Walt Disney lobbied Congress in the early 20th century that anyone had to die for copyright to expire. Originally, to claim copyright protection, you had to have filed a bunch of paperwork when the work was first released, and it expired after 14 years even if you were still alive and still selling it. SS wouldn't have been in the public domain, but the fanbase was in a better place under the benign neglect of EA than it is currently.

Copyright wasn't designed to last that long. Term of copyright was 14 years until Walt Disney sent a bunch lobbyists to go bribe Congress to make it longer so he could make more money.

Buying dead IPs as it happens in the US today is a fine example of how copyright laws have been perverted and now do exactly what they originally were supposed to prevent. The goal was to convince people to make new things, not to buy dead properties from obscure owners and then rent-seek on them.

Key difference -- I had no choice in being born. ND made the decision to buy SS knowing that SSP existed. Huge difference. "Knowing they are buying the franchise" -- that's like saying "What should BP have done in the Gulf Coast, knowing they were going to spill billions of gallons of oil there". The correct answer is "they shouldn't have spilled billions of gallons of oil into the ocean". "Moving the franchise forward"; is that what the kids are calling it now? Reminder, their original kickstarter said they needed 18 months to do the SS1 remake; after the "hiatus" and "refocusing", they said they'll need 2 years from the start of the "hiatus", despite also claiming that they'd be able to reuse most of the assets they had made and that it's faster to create assets in UEngine, and the stuff they've shown off doesn't even look as good as the Unity demo. How does this even happen? They've literally made negative progress by every metric possible. (This is assuming that the "Q1 2020" date wasn't named as a date when they'd hope people had forgotten about the whole thing and they could proceed to not deliver, or that the real cause for the new release date is that after firing their 15 experienced devs they've just left it in the hands of a few interns to have "progress" to show without having to spend any real money on it, both of which actually seem like more realistic scenarios.)

Portable version ran WAAAAY better than EE. EE goes to single-digit FPS at 800x600 resolution; SSP runs smoothly up to 1024x768. EE CTDs almost constantly, SSP is stable on every machine I've ever run it on. The widescreen issue literally can't be fixed with a wrapper on SS1 (or with a mod), just because of how the engine works. The aspect ratio is always going to be fucked in widescreen, that's just how it is.

SSP had mod support. Widescreen support is literally broken, the aspect ratio is totally wrong and it breaks the text. Playing SS1 with a controller, lol. Being able to reassign keys is nice, sure, I'll give it that (although you can do key-remappings through DOSBox). In every other way, it's worse.

"Fixes or new features" SSP has had SS1 running well in 1024x768 for years. SSEE shits itself at 800x600. Oh, and they added windowed mode, because playing FPSs in a tiny window is such a great experience compared to fullscreen amirite?

First off, yes, it would have been better for them to buy and re-release SSP than to do what they did with SSEE. Probably not practical for a variety of reasons, but better. But, they did have a choice. SSP existed before ND owned SS. If they saw SSP as being a problem (and there's no way they weren't aware of it, it was how everyone played SS1 for years before ND bought SS), they could have just not bought the SS franchise. Simple solution.

"Any commercial re-release" -- yes, one that was released AFTER SSP was already a thing, and was worse than SSP. It's not like Nightdive was surprised by people releasing something that they owned the IP for; SSP existed before Nightdive bought SS. Nightdive bought the IP knowing that SSP existed, and then takedowned SSP so they could sell a worse version of it. Legal, sure, but it's a pretty clear case of a company ruining a good thing to make money and being able to do so solely because US IP law is broken.

Yes, SSEE "provides everything SSP did", that's why there's a tool to turn the GOG version into SSP. SSEE is basically a crash-to-desktop simulator, it barely works at all, and when it is "working", somehow it runs slowly even in low resolution on modern computers. SSP was bundled with the game data partially because when it was done no one cared about SS, but also partially because it's the best way to do what SSP did; it wasn't just an executable but it actually changed a lot of the other game files, hence why it needs a full patching tool to modify files instead of just being a new executable.

Oh boy a variation on NPC meme, how original.

I'd be less annoyed with them not making new games if they hadn't pulled the stunt they did with SSP. They forced a takedown of a better port in order to sell their own worse one. They've been actively bad for the System Shock fanbase, compared to EA's willingness to let the IP rot.

They had to use KD because it has the most visibility, and they were counting on getting a publisher deal. If they get a publisher deal and the whole thing doesn't collapse, they can just keep saying "fans want us to do this" with no citation (as they did when they cited a console port of System Shock 1 as the reason to move to UE4, roflmao), and assume that showing enough "cool stuff" will keep fans happy with the fact that what was pitched isn't at all what they had any intention of doing. They didn't get the publisher deal, the whole thing collapsed, and it became obvious to everyone what they were trying to do from the start. Look at the screenshots I linked earlier in the thread. Look at their trailers. They still aren't even to where they were before they even "started". Here we are, long past the "hiatus", and they've still got a looooong way to go to have produced even literally nothing. I'd be stunned if they're spending any real resources on this at this point (especially since they laid off all 15 of their experienced contractors and handed it off to a "team" of people that, by their own admission, have basically no experience). Their own founder and CEO described the System Shock project as the entire reason the company exists. ND exists solely to do... this. The SS franchise was in better hands when it was being ignored by EA.

Making an AAA game isn't a bad thing unless you take $1.3M of other people's money claiming you're going to make a faithful remake in Unity, complete with a vertical-slice demo you claim is representative, but actually plan to make something completely different, and are just taking the $1.3M to get it started. Then it's fraud. Guess which ND did?

ND's own CEO said that they were trying to get funding from a AAA publisher. The entire idea was "get a million bucks to have some Unreal Engine stuff to show off to publishers, so we can make a AAA game" -- they've openly admitted that fact. No matter how you want to spin it, this means they lied in their kickstarter, and should never be given the benefit of the doubt on any topic. Yes, "other projects they've been involved with", AKA "buying other people's work and repackaging it with DOXBox or building a wrapper for it". So impressive. They're rent-seekers, plain and simple. I'd be willing to bet they go after GDX Blood. It's exactly in accordance to their MO.

Only because their plan to commit fraud fell through LOL. Go read the Sheamus Young article on the whole debacle. Their entire goal was to do a bait and switch -- use the demo to prove interest in the license, then pitch a AAA FPS that has little to do with System Shock to publishers to turn their studio into an AAA "big-boy" with >$1M of money from people who thought they were buying a System Shock remake, not a AAA corridor shooter with "freeze and shatter mechanics".

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/06/underworld-ascendant-world-premiere-hands-on-so-far-its-underwhelm-ascendant/ https://www.pcgamer.com/underworld-ascendant-doesnt-feel-like-the-great-comeback-we-were-hoping-for/ It's basically Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, but in a worse engine somehow lol.

If my first released map couldn't be downloaded anymore and someone necrobumped the thread to ask for it, I'd say I was glad it's gone myself.

My guess is it's lost forever, something that we're all better off for.

As someone who likes Blood, I'm not looking forward to it getting the treatment System Shock has. Also, their treatment of SSP means there's a chance that they're going to go on a crusade against Doom wads that use the Blood resources, which is pretty much every wad ever from the Russian scene. Good times are about to roll!

1. The screenshots they've released of the new Unreal Engine version actually look worse than the old Unity demo, somehow: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148781&p=2388024&viewfull=1#post2388024 2. They gave System Shock 3 to fucking OtherSide. Have you seen the reviews of the recent UA beta from the people who have gotten to play it? System Shock is about all I know them for (I didn't even know they were the folks who did Strife:VE before this thread), and their handling of that franchise continues to be utterly shambolic.

A game per year is a Strife source-port in 2014, a System Shock port in 2015 that was worse than the one that was litigated out of existence, and nothing else? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Dive_Studios#Original_intellectual_property A lot of "IP" owned, and pretty much jack shit listed in terms of development.

NightDive demanded that System Shock Portable be taken down. Meanwhile, their attempt at remaking System Shock continues to go absolutely nowhere because they're not a real game developer, they're just squatters who buy IPs and make kickstarters.