Originally released in 1994, System Shock ushered in a new era of action gaming. Combining a compelling storyline with innovative RPG elements, System Shock was a ground-breaking title that would influence numerous other games such as BioShock and DeusEx. Now System Shock is being redone from the ground up for today’s PC and console players.

System Shock was one of the first 3D games that took a methodical approach to exploration while revealing a story driven narrative through audio logs and messages scattered throughout the game world. It was a revolutionary step forward for the medium in a time when developers first began experimenting with interactive story telling.

Players were trapped aboard Citadel Station as they fought to survive against the cyborgs and mutated crew members corrupted by a maniacal A.I. known as SHODAN, one of the most treacherous antagonists ever conceived. System Shock offered an unparalleled experience that would solidify it as one of the greatest games of all time.

Caught during a risky break-in, you become indentured to a greedy TriOptimum executive. After six months in a healing coma, you awaken to discover the surgeons are missing, the station is in disrepair, and the once-prime corporate facility now teems with mindless cyborgs, robots, and mutated beings, all programmed to serve a ruthless A.I.: SHODAN. There's scarcely time to think before it unleashes the first terror...

After some reflection, Nightdive Studios is back, scaling back the scope of the System Shock reboot to its original form, even though Nightdive Studios' CEO hints at a possible delay until 2020.

Hey everyone, it’s Stephen from Nightdive with the latest update. The last few weeks have been challenging, but at the same time it’s been enlightening. As some of you know I’ve been spending more and more time with the community in Discord answering questions and making reassurances that yes, we are still developing the game. I’ve also been speaking and interacting with many of you one on one so as to better understand how the latest news impacted you and your feelings towards the project. The vast majority of you agree that we are doing the right thing and that what you want is a high quality game that adheres closely to the vision of the original System Shock rather than the reinterpretation that we were previously working toward.

We had a brief respite, and took the time necessary to make some tough decisions which included saying goodbye to some of the developers that you’ve come to know through past updates. What we’re left with is a concentrated team that consists of the original developers who worked on the Unity demo. With that said, let’s take a look at the work we’re doing.

So what does this mean?

It means we’ve gone back to the original vision we shared with you at the start of our Kickstarter campaign - this time with more reliable performance and higher fidelity visuals thanks to the Unreal Engine.

Are we starting over, is this all that’s done?

No, we’re not starting over. We have been able to re-use the majority of work we’ve done over the past year and we’re making significant progress in a very short amount of time. With that said we’ll be inviting our highest tier backers to privately test the game beginning in September at which point we estimate that the game will be fully playable, from start to finish. The majority of the art won’t be finished, but we’ll be ready to start high-level testing.

What else is changing?

Along with the return to the previous art style and overall direction, the audio department is also re-re-re-examining their priorities, and drawing new conclusions. I’ll let Jon take it from here...  

Hey folks. I'm very excited to be able to show off this suite of some of the various pieces of music from the medical deck.

Since the beginning of System Shock, it's been my job to take the music from System Shock 1 and figure out how to capture that in a more modern way. I don't think we hit that in the music for the Kickstarter demo, and since then I've been able to more thoroughly explore what a modernization of System Shock 1's music means without losing the heart of the music. Its music, though limited by the technology of MIDI in its original form, was very inspired by the electronic and industrial music of the time. And 1990s electronic/industrial music was characterized by its own technological limitations.

So I have explored what it would mean if those technological limitations of the '90s (low samplerates and bit-depths, shitty DACs, digital skipping) carried over to today. Or even further - if we could exploit those limitations creatively and define music through it. When Stephen told me about the plan for System Shock, he told me to go and grab the essence of what we were trying to do with our Kickstarter build. We decided that I would do a demonstration of Medical's music and base it on the themes from the original SS1 Medical Deck music. I was able to take all of that stylistic definition and apply it back to the original System Shock 1 music. The first half of the track is more 'exploration', using the melodies of the "walking" state of the original game and building a more meandering musical piece from those melodies. And the second half, the original MIDI guitar was changed to a gritty industrial bass synthesizer which is developed and drives the whole 'combat' section.

I'm so excited to be able to apply all of this musical direction back to the System Shock 1 music! All of the gear that I've acquired for the sake of this project was entirely built around the idea of finding the heart of the SS1 music and intentions and extrapolating that past its MIDI limitations. The original music that I have to work with is far beyond its time, and I'm so happy to be able to take it into a modern - but still OH-SO-90s - light.

In an effort to remain transparent throughout development we’re going to begin streaming on a regular basis and inviting the backers to join us.

Head on over to: https://www.twitch.tv/nightdivestudios Click “Follow” and receive updates whenever we go live!

April's coming streams:

11th Gaming with Community Manager Karlee Meow

12th Deving System Shock with Chris Mansell

18th Gaming with Community Manager Karlee Meow

25th Gaming with Community Manager Karlee Meow

26th Deving System Shock with Chris Mansell

27th Gaming/Q&A with CEO Stephen Kick

Is there prospectively more risk of slippage past 2019 (if so, best brace for it nice and early)? What is the exit plan if the project becomes non-viable?

Yes, at this stage the game could slip past 2019. Our only plan is to finish the game and deliver on the promise we made to our Kickstarter backers.

Source Code Release!

This first release is the original, unaltered source code that was discovered by OtherSide Entertainment and graciously shared with us a few months ago. It is Power Mac native so will require an emulation tool which we’ve linked in the repo. We have been hard at work updating this code and plan to release a new version of System Shock: Enhanced Edition as well as the code in the near future.

Here are some interesting facts we dug up while working on the code!  

• The game uses fixed point for all the math instead of floating point. However, some blitting functions, after being optimized in the Macintosh version, use floating point registers and operations to speed up copying stuff.  
• System Shock uses the rendering-with-unique color trick (similar to http://www.opengl-tutorial.org/miscellaneous/clicking-on-objects/picking-with-an-opengl-hack/) to detect object clicks and shooting targets. This same trick is used to show nearby objects when online help is on.  
• In order to draw outline fonts, System Shock draws the same string 10 times. First they are rendered in black with a 1-pixel displacement into each of 9 directions, and then the desired color at the center.  
• There are various pieces of code commented out or disabled (using the preprocessor's conditional compilation) meant to deal with a level editor and play testing.  
• Internally, the game usually treats the screen resolution as if it were 320x200 in order to achieve resolution-independent code.  
• The game is mostly written in C, except for the physics library written by Seamus Blackley (EDMS, the Emetic Dynamics Modeling System) and the fixed-point library it uses, which are written in C++, and some Assembly modules. 

We want this game to be as chilling to players today as the original System Shock was when it was released in 1994. What is most important to us is taking the essence of the original game, and emphasizing that as we present it to gamers today. With the knowledge and technological improvements over the last 22 years since the original, we can communicate the story of Citadel Station more effectively than ever.

System Shock will have a dramatic and modern take on a musical score. Combining its root sci-fi elements with dynamic acoustic elements à la BioShock, we are striving to set System Shock apart from other more action-based shooters as an atmospheric and dark experience.

Though computer music software has improved exponentially in the last decade, there is no equivalent to the breathtaking and visceral sounds that real instruments can produce. We have been working with Videri String Quartet, and we are in talks with Prague's FILMharmonic Orchestra about recording the score for System Shock. They're a very professional orchestra, having recorded scores for Civilization V, Thief, Hostel, Dream Theater, and many more projects. If we can reach the stretch goal required to afford everything that it takes to record a full orchestra, the game's musical experience will be much more expressive and terrifying than would ever be possible without.

Though for a modern game like System Shock, a more restrained and dramatic approach is called for, we are also really excited to bring the old System Shock tunes back to life in an updated way! With a roster of world-class musicians, we have set a stretch goal to release a remixed version of the original soundtrack intact! Please help us to make this a reality so that we cannot only provide a strong modern gameplay experience, but also give the old tunes the love that they deserve!