The 'System Shock' remake has switched from Unity to Unreal Engine, Linux still aiming for day-1 release

I don't know system shock at all, but from what I have seen it is an insta-buy ^_^

I prefer Unreal over Unity, since Unity gives no access to tweaking for low end specs, while Unreal often lets me utterly smash the graphics to get smooth frames.

Edit: From a consumer perspective, this is.


Last edited by buenaventura on 2 March 2017 at 9:55 am UTC

Hmm - this doesn't bode well. Also, I think the explanation was a bit odd. The visuals on consoles? Is Unity that much worse on consoles than on PC? Cause what I see there in the video doesn't look like something Unity can't do? Looks pretty basic, actually.

Maybe it was recruitment that was the core thing here - easier to recruit Unreal-competent people?

Edit: This site needs a "comment delete" function. :)


Last edited by Beamboom on 2 March 2017 at 10:06 am UTC

Quite a bit of negative commentary about how the game looks under UE4. More concerned about the Linux support - as you point out, Epic's support for Linux with UE4 is reluctant at best.

Edit: This site needs a "comment delete" function. :)

It does! There's a website that has timed delete, say for an hour or ten minutes or so, so you cannot remove old posts after they generated a discussion. Might be useful.

Unity gives no access to tweaking for low end specs

It's there; it's just a matter of what the game developer chooses to expose.


Apart from the plastic look of the new trailer, I'm cautiously positive about the engine switch. The Unity3D demo had some fairly low frame rates and if Unreal Tournament is any indication, an Unreal Engine version could potentially run like a dream on Linux.

Unity gives no access to tweaking for low end specs

It's there; it's just a matter of what the game developer chooses to expose.


Yes, I guess that's it, while in Unreal you can chance texture sizes to 1 and disable almost all visual effects in the ini, things that developers generally do not expose, altough I wish they would! I would love games to have a "mega rock bottom" setting, even if it was totally unsupported, that removed almost all visual effects and doodads. Who needs them for games like Pillars of eternity or Tyranny, or Torment? Or XCOM2? I would play XCOM2 if it was ASCII art.

Edit: I AM playing XCOM2 with mega tweaked ini that makes it look like a PS1 game, and it is lovely. Still, the loading times are loooong.

Edit: in fact, Tyranny, PoE and Torment are the ones that annoy me the most in their needless graphix wank. I am playing BG1:EE now, and it of course runs FLAWLESSLY on my old laptop, really mega smooth, and literally ZERO loading times - as soon as I click on a transition, I am there - it's so much more immersive and lovely compared to playing laggy PoE with like 20 sec loading screens between every house. And I can hardly see any real visual difference - if anything, BG1 is more charming to me in it's graphics.


Last edited by buenaventura on 2 March 2017 at 12:00 pm UTC

Would be nice to see the demo also updated, so we can be sure they don't run into issues like EVERSPACE has run into.
I'm glad I backed System Shock and looking forward to play this game again. I can't play the original anymore, as the old graphics is really... to old for my eyes ;) But in my memories the game was really awesome with its atmosphere and story. Would really like to get this feeling again, exploring the station and stuff. The soundtrack of the intro still is a catchy song.

Smart guys!!! Unity is playing big role in Linux gaming being bad, their engine is shit, their performance is shit, they have bunch of Linux specific bugs, they are part of .Net foundation and all of their developers gets sexually aroused when they see C# code and .Net & D3D API calls, sick fucks. From F/LOSS perspective anyone who buys Unity based game is a traitor.

Good, I think Unreal is a more polished engine that runs good on a lot of hardware, plus i like how it looks.

Smart guys!!! Unity is playing big role in Linux gaming being bad, their engine is shit, their performance is shit, they have bunch of Linux specific bugs, they are part of .Net foundation and all of their developers gets sexually aroused when they see C# code and .Net & D3D API calls, sick fucks. From F/LOSS perspective anyone who buys Unity based game is a traitor.

. . . This is that guy, isn't it?

Smart guys!!! Unity is playing big role in Linux gaming being bad, their engine is shit, their performance is shit, they have bunch of Linux specific bugs, they are part of .Net foundation and all of their developers gets sexually aroused when they see C# code and .Net & D3D API calls, sick fucks. From F/LOSS perspective anyone who buys Unity based game is a traitor.

And the Unreal-Engine is in fact better with a complete proprietary base of code? Okay, the base may be better, but your arguments are some kind of very negative combined with insults. So everyone buying a game based on the Unity-engine is a "traitor"? What about buying games complete being closed-source instead donating for open projects? Seems like a double-standard! And what about the Steam-client or the complete platform? Using the proprietary driver from NVidia or AMD? That's okay from FLOSS-perspective? I don't think so! :D


Last edited by throgh on 2 March 2017 at 6:11 pm UTC

Would be nice to see the demo also updated, so we can be sure they don't run into issues like EVERSPACE has run into.

Yeah, Unity base demo had unplayable framerate on my mediocre laptop. I would like to test the Unreal Engine 4 demo.

The game will be potentially faster on Unreal engine. But they are annoying the hell out of me with the slow progress with Vulkan. They have been prioritizing mobile version of Vulkan and it seems like one community member submitting patches, testing and submitting bug reports regarding desktop support. Meanwhile DX12 is in much better shape. I hope this all changes by the end of the year.

Unity may have Linux bugs? (Idk) But it seems they've put more effort into Vulkan support at this time. We need to see more engines fully supporting Vulkan tho. The announcement from Bethesda at the AMD event was encouraging specifically mentioning Vulkan.

. . . This is that guy, isn't it?

Yes it is!!!

And the Unreal-Engine is in fact better with a complete proprietary base of code? Okay, the base may be better, but your arguments are some kind of very negative combined with insults. So everyone buying a game based on the Unity-engine is a "traitor"? What about buying games complete being closed-source instead donating for open projects? Seems like a double-standard! And what about the Steam-client or the complete platform? Using the proprietary driver from NVidia or AMD? That's okay from FLOSS-perspective? I don't think so! :D

No insults just observations. M$ is an enemy, if developers made game using C#, .Net, Objective-C and other Apple and M$ slave API-s you are directly financing our enemy and you are a traitor; in case of Unity3D which is part of .Net foundation you are directly syphoning money to M$ cause. Traitor -> Treacherous Developers -> Unity3D -> .Net Foundation -> Steve Ballmer -> Steve Ballmer's cocaine dealer. Also Treacherous Developers are paying for Windows licence, Visual studio, DB's and other M$ shit and Linux users traitors are partialy financing that.

And still there is not a single fucking game that is from bottom up made to be multiplatform (Windows/Mac/Linux;Steam/Origin/uPlay/gog etc.) so that it is optimized to work on all platforms as best as it can, nada, nil, /dev/null. We are afterthought and we are paying for it, pathetic.