System Shock 1 source code released under GPL

https://github.com/NightDiveStudios/shockmac

by jsheard • 8 years ago

568 188 8 years ago

github.com

damck• 8 years ago

Dunno if just mobile problem, but most code has ^M instead of linebreaks; hard to browse oneline source

vmsp• 8 years ago

Same thing on desktop.

jsheard2• 8 years ago

It's because the code was written on classic Mac OS, which used CR newlines rather than the LF or CRLF styles used today.

shmerl2• 8 years ago

Well, they could just apply a minimal cleanup for end lines before posting.

k__2• 8 years ago

lol, I knew LF and CRLF was a thing, but only CR? Interesting :D

defen• 8 years ago

If you click on the "raw" view it will render properly in the browser.

You might also need to force your browser to display with "Western" text encoding (that's what it's called in Firefox, not sure about other browsers).

alexrage• 8 years ago

Viewing the raw file, at least in Chrome on OSX shows line breaks.

tibbon3• 8 years ago

I put in a PR to fix that: https://github.com/NightDiveStudios/shockmac/pull/2

Best thing about GPL code is that we can fix it!

amatecha4• 8 years ago

Changing line endings isn't a "fix"... if you do that, it's unusable on the intended system upon which you would work on this code - System 7 or Mac OS 8.

carussell2• 8 years ago

The fix that needs to be made here is in Git, which fails to process line endings in a sane way (and includes a bunch of insane, poorly documented config options that approach the problem completely sideways).

duskwuff3• 8 years ago

There's a CR->LF conversion at:

https://github.com/chungy/shockmac/

pete23• 8 years ago

I can’t believe Github’s renderer fails on ^M.

diamondo25• 8 years ago

Yea they could emulate the carriage return and only show a mangle of lines...

mrpippy4• 8 years ago

I sent a feature request in 2016 to GitHub to support Mac line endings, it was "passed to the team for future improvements". Not holding my breath.

ClassyJacket• 8 years ago

This doesn't bode well for my wish to list file sizes...

shmerl2• 8 years ago

Very interesting. So native Linux version is possible?

Thanks Nightdive!

fwip• 8 years ago

  // We need a hack for inner bridge.  Inner bridge?  But I just met her!

The best part is always the comments.

maksimum• 8 years ago

    // When we pretend that we're dead (pretend we're dead)

knodi123• 8 years ago

   // woo hoo, watch me pull odds out of my butt

_asummers• 8 years ago

  // Hey Rocky, watch me pull this constant out of my butt!

EvanAnderson• 8 years ago

The comments are awesome!

I love that there's a typedef "Pelvis" (something to do w/ models, I'd assume). In lots of places in the code, then, you can have "Pelvis elvis;". Yay!

davismain• 8 years ago

  // its okay to kill in the name of democracy

  // they're all talking bout, beatles songs
  // written a hundred years before they were born
  // yea they're all talking bout, the round and round
  // but whose got the real, anti-parent culture sound

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtPKO1DHo2w

lots of punk rock references. Neat.

ChoGGi2• 8 years ago

  // Returns whether or not in the humble opinion of the
  // sound system, the sample should be politely obliterated out of existence

  // look around at all my playthings
  // eighteen percent a year, for nothing

  // when all the leaves have fallen and turned to dust
  // will we remain entrenched within our ways
  // indifference, the plague that moves throughout this land

  // not in any way the right way to fix this bug, except
  // that it is the fastest way.  Doug says go.  Ask TJS.

sandov• 8 years ago

How difficukt would it be to port it to linux?

duskwuff3• 8 years ago

Nontrivial. There's a significant amount of Mac-specific code in the application, including some PowerPC assembly.

steinuil3• 8 years ago

Nice! I can only hope the same will be done for Thief 1 and 2 (and SS2) someday.

The Thief games still have a very active community that regularly produces high quality fan missions, and one of the original engine developers has started releasing unofficial patches to make the games run on modern systems a few years ago. I'd love to read the games' full source code and to be able to play them on Linux without bothering with Wine

jeffbax• 8 years ago

Sad that this never went anywhere: https://github.com/volca02/openDarkEngine/

Amusingly, a lot of source was found in an old Dreamcast dev kit: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/12/14/shipping-receivi...

Would love to see Dark Engine games get the treatment Quake games got, or something like OpenMW

PyroLagus• 8 years ago

There is a really good Thief clone called The Dark Mod, but unfortunately, it's not compatible with the original games.

http://www.thedarkmod.com/main/

steinuil3• 8 years ago

The community hasn't really warmed up to The Dark Mod as I thought it would. I guess everyone's more comfortable with how the original games look and feel, and I can't say I don't understand it. Thief still plays great thanks to its minimal controls and UI (much unlike System Shock 1, which feels horribly outdated) and looks nice thanks to its amazing art direction (just look at some of the screenshots in here https://twitter.com/thiefbsp), so I don't think people would feel the need to move on to a clone unless it was that much better.

ChoGGi2• 8 years ago

one of the original engine developers has started releasing unofficial patches

I thought it was some random user called Le Corbeau from the french forum Ariane4ever?

The dreamcast code mentioned by jeffbax is the current assumption of how he got his hands on it.

on_and_off2• 8 years ago

The original games are still playable today and oh my, they are still awesome.

We are only starting to see some games like MGS5 surpassing the AI of Thief but most of them try to combine stealth with power fantasy and that's a bad mix.

Thief had it right with its underpowered character lost in a maze like level.

mercer• 8 years ago

Oh man, I'd love a remake for Thief 1 & 2 that doesn't stray too much from the originals. If done in the Unreal Engine we might even get a ThieveryUT with proper Thief assets!

It would also help me forget the crushing disappointment I felt with the Thief games since 2 (with the exception of the Shalebridge Cradle level in Thief 3).

Kristine19756• 8 years ago

The (partial?) source code for Thief 2, SS2 etc. was leaked a few years ago. You can still find it on the Internet.

steinuil3• 8 years ago

I know, but using it is not exactly legal and having to rewrite it all from scratch would be bothersome, even using the original code as reference. There's a set of C++ macros used for "scripting" the AI and the missions which I would immediately tear out if I had to rewrite the engine, and I'm afraid replacing it with something more sane while still retaining compatibility with all the fan missions and so on would take a lot of time. Plus, as you said, not all the code was in the leak (though I don't know exactly how much is missing).

tibbon3• 8 years ago

I wish more older games would have their source released, even if not under the GPL. I worry that for many games the source is simply lost forever. At least put it out there for preservation in some way!

ChrisSD• 8 years ago

A lot of old games have had their source code lost, unfortunately. Much source code of the day only existed on the hard drive of the developers.

Thaxll• 8 years ago

Usually you can't because of third party library ( physics ect ... ). Like many many games rely on Havok, you can't distribute that to the public.

KozmoNau7• 8 years ago

How much work would it be to replace Havok with something like Bullet?

Iv• 8 years ago

And their artwork! Often the code source is released but is more or less useless and obsolete while the images and sounds are still copyrighted.

khedoros16• 8 years ago

The difference there is that you can usually find a way to buy the game itself to get access to the game media.

The source code here will be of limited use until it's heavily reworked to compile on modern systems. It's a lot of work, but not as much work as reverse-engineering the game and building an engine implementation from scratch, and this source seems like it has most of the Mac-specific stuff under a separate directory, which would make it easier than otherwise.

Freaky3• 8 years ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4pbc01/iama_founder_o...

Is there any plan to do a source-code release of any of the games you've re-released?
We have released the source to Strife: Veteran Edition[1] and we are planning on releasing more code in the future.

1: https://github.com/svkaiser/strife-ve

khedoros16• 8 years ago

I've got a little bit of an obsession with Ultima Underworld (another Looking Glass game released by Origin). This gives me some hope that the source for that game (and/or its sequel) might someday see release.

krychu2• 8 years ago

Agree, it’s been always surprising to me that companies don’t just release sources after say 10 years.

I wish for Fallout 1 and 2 sources. I think there would be strong community interest in hacking it.

openbasic2• 8 years ago

http://flarerpg.org/

openbasic2• 8 years ago

https://falltergeist.org/

tdsamardzhiev• 8 years ago

Yeah, that reminds me of Ubisoft and Heroes 3 HD.

"Guys, why haven't you done the expansions?"

"Hurr durr we've lost the code."

seany• 8 years ago

Glad to see GPL3

hguhghuff3• 8 years ago

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.

Cau5tik• 8 years ago

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

reificator• 8 years ago

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.

RantyDave• 8 years ago

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

And lots of ^M goodness :)

Freaky3• 8 years ago

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."

hguhghuff3• 8 years ago

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

baldfat• 8 years ago

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.

nailer• 8 years ago

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

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

(click 'Updates')

xanderstrike• 8 years ago

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...

movedx2• 8 years ago

"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?

stevenwoo2• 8 years ago

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.

Jasper_• 8 years ago

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

eropple• 8 years ago

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.

baud1472584• 8 years ago

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.

Deimorz• 8 years ago

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

piahoo• 8 years ago

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

amatecha4• 8 years ago

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...

Nr7• 8 years ago

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

baud1472584• 8 years ago

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.

kleiba• 8 years ago

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.

mariusmg• 8 years ago

For context this is the outcome of a failed Kickstarter.

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

SmellyGeekBoy2• 8 years ago

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

minusf• 8 years ago

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.

elipsey• 8 years ago

Awesome. I've been wanting to finish that, but I scratched my CDROM. True story. Also, I don't have Windows 95 or an optical drive anymore. Is this one of those deals where the art assets are removed?

jsheard2• 8 years ago

Yes, you have to bring your own copy of the assets. They are legally available on GOG: https://www.gog.com/game/system_shock_enhanced_edition

amatecha4• 8 years ago

If you scratch a CD, as long as the scratch didn't scrape off the "label"/data side, you can just buff the surface of the disc with Brasso (brass polish) and a lens cloth. I'm not even joking -- you basically smooth away the scratches. I've done this to restore so many scratched discs. Just make sure it's the clear/thick side of the disc you're buffing, NOT the label (as the data layer is just underneath the label).

khedoros16• 8 years ago

Well, their build instructions are for PPC MacOS 9 (and the game has a bunch of PowerPC assembly code in it). One of their stated requirements is also "The original Mac System Shock data", so it's not clear to me if your CD-ROM would've helped or not.

megaman22• 8 years ago

Is there a particular reason this is only the Mac source code?

MrRadar• 8 years ago

It's quite possible that's the only version of the original source code that still exists. Many game studios didn't use source control even through the 90s and once a game was considered "done" there wasn't much perceived value in keeping the source code or original assets around. Consequently, many games from that period only exist in release form.

Edit: I stand corrected on Starcraft.

duskwuff3• 8 years ago

For example, Blizzard only has the source code to Starcraft because someone found a backup CD on eBay and returned it to them

This is a myth. Blizzard was already well on their way to releasing StarCraft: Remastered when that CD was found -- it's very unlikely that the found CD contained anything unique.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/starcraft/topic/20757605637#...

arnioxux• 8 years ago

I hope http://fabiensanglard.net will do a code review for this!

herogreen• 8 years ago

Thanks for this link.

deaddodo• 8 years ago

I'm not quite the programmer ~fabynou is, but I have been contemplating following his example for awhile. This might be the right project for it.

TheForumTroll• 8 years ago

Yet another reason I'm not backing on Kickstarter any more. Only good thing to say about Kickstarter these days is that at least it isn't fig.co

kelvin02• 8 years ago

Codewarrior => worse IDE I've ever had to use. You literally want to break something/someone once you've used it for any extended period of time (PS2 Game console developement).

hoistbypetard• 8 years ago

Really? I never did PS2 development, but I liked it for Mac stuff in the '90s and Palm stuff a little bit after that.

My recollection is that it was much nicer to use than Think C, and absolutely blew the doors off Visual C++ 1.5 and 4.0, which were the other IDEs I had to deal with at/around the time I first picked up CodeWarrior.

The Apple Code Fragment Manager (PPC dynamic loader) made me want to break things sometimes, but for its day CodeWarrior was a breath of fresh air, as I recall.

kelvin02• 8 years ago

We were shipping the games on 3 different consoles, shipping on the original XBOX with it's superb integration to Visual Studio was such a breath of fresh air, and allowed you to debug directly and step through your code on the console.

Not so much for PS2 and Code Warrior, which was a pain to use and was integrated as an after thought to the PS2 SDK. So maybe using CW on Mac worked well (at the time), but targeting some other machine than the one running the compiler was painful at best with CW.

Sorry to ruffle any CW fans out there, but until you've used it to do PS game dev, you won't know the atrocities our team went through.

mrpippy4• 8 years ago

Ooh more source code for classic Mac games! Most of the big PC games that have source releases (like the id engines) just came with DOS/Windows source, not the Mac ports.

chimeracoder• 8 years ago

I haven't played System Shock 1, but this sounds like great news - I'm excited to check it out.

System Shock 2 is the precursor to the more recent Bioshock franchise (Bioshock, Bioshock 2, Bioshock Infinite). They're not part of the same universe, but they share some of the same lineage, and the themes of the game are similar.

To be honest, I didn't know there was still interest in System Shock 1. Normally, Bioshock fans say to skip System Shock 1 and go right to System Shock 2, but maybe that's just because the themes of the first wouldn't appeal as much to Bioshock fans.

jandrese3• 8 years ago

The timelines are so different they could be in the same universe. Assume plasmids died out when those sea slugs were harvested to extinction or something.

toufka• 8 years ago

and then the new Prey from last year. It's name really confused its issue, but it's very much in the same theme, if not world.

AimHere• 8 years ago

Not so much the themes but the game interface. SS1's interface predates a lot of modern FPS idioms, so it feels very clunky and difficult to use compared to more modern games.

Thematically, it fights right in with the Bioshock/Prey/Thief/Deus Ex lineage - all of them exploring the theme of megalomania in one way or another.

opencl• 8 years ago

There's also a fan remake that's been in progress since before the kickstarter.

https://github.com/JosiahJack/Citadel

bananarepdev• 8 years ago

"This source release does not contain any game data". Can somebody explain what they mean by that?

DominoTree2• 8 years ago

It doesn't contain art assets or audio and that sort of thing.

khedoros16• 8 years ago

It just has the game engine itself, without any of the images, sounds, maps, etc that make it System Shock.

GOG has a System Shock: Enhanced Edition, which also includes the original version of the game. I have no idea if that version of the data would work with this version of the engine, though. The engine is for the PowerPC Classic Mac OS version of the game.

Kristine19756• 8 years ago

I have no idea if that version of the data would work with this version of the engine, though.

IIRC the Mac version doesn't use the original data files, but converted them to use the Mac's resource file format. And judging from a quick look at the source code it doesn't contain support for the original data files.

So: no, you'll have to use the Mac version's data files.

DominoTree2• 8 years ago

This is probably my favorite game of all time and I really hope somebody does something cool with this!

anonfunction• 8 years ago

Love this comment:

// yeah yeah, goddamn, gotta fix this.....someday....soon....i promise....really

skandl• 8 years ago

Too bad you can't read any of it with the garbled ^M rendering on GitHub.

Kristine19756• 8 years ago

Use this fork with changed line endings: https://github.com/ToxicFrog/shockmac

Kristine19756• 8 years ago

https://github.com/ToxicFrog/shockmac/blob/master/ShockMac/G...

    inslwi   r0,r10,16,8
    insrwi   r11,r10,16,8
    rlwimi   r0,r10,16,24,31

How I missed this!

anc84• 8 years ago

dfan4• 8 years ago

This is a trip, seeing code I wrote 25 years ago. It's actually kind of scary how identifiable my style is; in a lot of ways I am still the same coder, although I tend to work at a much higher level of abstraction now. There was a certain craft to weaving all sorts of linked lists back and forth all the time and maintaining invariants that looking at my old code makes me a little nostalgic for, but I can't say I really miss it much.

marvin• 8 years ago

It is so incredibly fascinating to know that people who wrote legendary, old-school software are still hanging around, in this community no less, and contributing to software discussions decades later. Awesome :)

I was barely walking under my own power at the time you worked on this, by the way. Probably the same for many others who have fond memories of old games and get to meet the people behind them.

(Side note: Did anyone on HN happen to work on Jedi Knight? Modding that game was my first under-the-hood exposure to computer software, from modding to hacking around the asset checksums to cheat or do other shennanigans in multiplayer on MSN Gaming Zone).

BlindGod2• 8 years ago

I found this fascinating

https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/03/16/when-coding-style-surviv...

stiGGG• 8 years ago

These are the type of comments I love hn for!

angersock• 8 years ago

What was the EDMS business? Also, any good stories from your origin days?

dfan4• 8 years ago

EDMS = Electronic Document Management System? Like source control? I honestly don't remember. These source files all have rcsid tags so probably we were using CVS? In our previous project (Ultima Underworld) our computers weren't even networked and I would go around grabbing floppies with changes from coworkers and merging their code into the master by hand.

Here are some of my Ultima Underworld stories:

https://dfan.org/blog/2011/02/20/the-dangers-of-self-modifyi...

https://dfan.org/blog/2011/02/21/ultima-underworld-bugs/

https://dfan.org/blog/2011/03/17/one-more-ultima-underworld-...

hacoo• 8 years ago

According to a Kickstarter update from Nightdive, EDMS was the physics system, written by Seamus Blackley. It stands for 'Emetic Dynamics Modeling System'... Possibly a reference to the way discarded items would go flying out the center of the viewport :)

Edit: EDMS/SOLITON.CC confirms above is correct (speculation about origin of the name is still speculation, however)

mankash666• 8 years ago

Hi - many here do not know who you are, and are interested in your bio. Your HN profile doesn't have one. Can you please add one, or link to one.

Thanks

dfan4• 8 years ago

Done.

xedarius• 8 years ago

I like is the fact the game is written in fixed point maths.

It's easy to forget that when this game was written computers either a) didn't have an FPU or b) the FPU was so slow it was useless.

I bet if I searched through the code long enough I'd find a sin/cos lookup table too :)

DINKDINK• 8 years ago

CodeWarrior, now there's something I haven't thought about in ages.

BlindGod2• 8 years ago

Love SS1.

Will never forget the elevator music after relief after being chased by some monsters.

latte• 8 years ago

Wow!

One question I have wanted to ask for a long time - why is the source code for old games often released under a free license, but artwork and other assets are not?

What are the incentives of the publisher in this case and why are they different for the source code and for the asset?

Tloewald2• 8 years ago

I have a copy of _System Shock_ for Mac somewhere. I played it on the PC but never finished it and picked up the Mac version later at a discount. I was very disappointed to discover it had a crashing bug mid-game for which I could find no workaround.

wlesieutre• 8 years ago

Now that the source is published you can go back and fix it! ;)

Tloewald2• 8 years ago

Which sounds like a lot of work.

Oh, … and find an old mac to run it on …

Oh, and a copy of the right version of CodeWarrior.

amatecha4• 8 years ago

Nightdive has posted an update[1] which talks about the source code and clearly says they are back to development. Most notably:

"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."

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

System Shock 1 source code released under GPL

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