On the 20 year anniversary of System Shock, JosiahJack of ModDB announced he was making a remake of that game. That was on September 22, 2014. Now, three and a half years later, Citadel — named after the game’s space station setting — is prepping for beta release.
According to JosiahJack, it’s 80 percent done. The target release is September 22 this year, four years from its announcement.
By contrast, Nightdive Studios began its Kickstarter project for a System Shock remake on June 28, 2016. That remake isn’t coming until 2020, a comparable four year distance, but that’s from a professional game development studio. Nightdive tried to do too much, which caused a hiatus, but JosiahJack and the modders behind Citadel are doing it just right.
In a recent update at ModDB, JosiahJack listed what remains to be done:
- Finish enemies, currently at 50% though most are only modeled
- Finish weapon item models
- Place all doors
- Place all objects
- Place all enemies
- Mission logic
- Some hardware functions (e.g. target ID and sensaround)
- Finish automap behavior (not required for beta release, needs…)
- Finish making enhanced level geometry (not required for beta release)
Further, he noted that there are three general stages to go through before the beta release. One will be to “recreate faithfully” the original System Shock, only adding enhanced controls, 3D objects and enemies, and particle effects. The second stage will add detail to level geometry and modeling, add sound effects and ambiance, and do more that really tweaks the original game. The third stage will be to make documentation, editor scripts, examples and guides so that Citadel will be “mod- and map-maker friendly” upon beta release.
Jack still needs help with modeling, and has a page on Github for project coordination.
This update comes after a long stretch of radio silence. The last update posted to ModDB was on August 23, 2015 to announce that the project had moved from the DarkPlaces engine to the Unity 5 engine. This was the same engine that Nightdive’s remake was being built in until it switch to the Unreal engine.
The original System Shock can still be purchased, and if you have the original game you can already enhance it with the System Shock Portable mod.
