, it bumps the version of T2 to 1.20 and SS2 to 2.41, fixes a bunch of bugs, and brings some more features (mostly for the editor). no changes to the multiplayer, apparently.
Overview
--------
This is an unofficial patch for System Shock 2 (SS2) which updates the game from v2.3 to v2.4,
providing improved support for modern hardware and correcting many known bugs. SS2 can be purchased
digitally from GOG (www.gog.com) or can usually be found on Amazon (or similar).
This patch is made available "as is" and without warranty of any kind. It was not developed by
Electronic Arts (EA), Irrational Games, Looking Glass Studios, or Amazon, and is neither supported
nor endorsed by them or anyone else. The aforementioned parties cannot be held responsible for
any problems or damages incurred by this software. If you do not agree with these terms then do
not apply the update.
SS2 and its resources/executables are the property of Star Insurance Company.
Permission is granted to any party that has obtained the legal rights to sell previous versions
of the game to include this update, as long as they also have been granted permission by the same
entity/entities from whom they obtained the original selling rights.
Installation
------------
Requires Windows 2000 or later.
You must have a valid install of either SS2 v2.3 or v2.4. If you have an install that is older than
v2.3 then you have to update to v2.3 first.
Extract the contents of the "new_dark.zip" and "contrib.zip" archives into your SS2 directory, and
you are done.
v2.41 should be able to load savegames made with v2.3, but this is best avoided. Savegames made
with v2.4 are however NOT compatible with v2.3. v2.4 savegames work fine with v2.41.
If OpenAL is available on your system, it can be enabled in the Audio options menu through the option
"Hardware Acceleration", which will toggle between "ON", "OFF" and "OpenAL". If you don't have OpenAL
but you want to use it, you will have to install the OpenAL libraries first (link provided below).
IMPORTANT: The "Visual Studio 2008 SP1 C++" and "DirectX End-User Runtimes (June 2010)" runtime
DLLs are required to run (the DirectX ones are only required when running with DX9,
which is default). While most systems probably already have them installed, by default
or through other applications and games, they can be missing on some. Below are the
official download links.
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 C++ runtimes:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=A5C84275-3B97-4AB7-A40D-3802B2AF5FC2&displaylang=en DirectX End-User Runtimes (June 2010):
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8109 OpenAL Installer:
http://connect.creativelabs.com/openal/Downloads/oalinst.zip Disclaimer
----------
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO
EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,
EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR
SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING
IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Changes and fixes for v2.41
---------------------------
General:
- fixed sky (non-)rendering bug when texture palette contained more than 246 textures
- fixed crash when using movie_disable/fm_movie_disable/movie_crop_exclude/fm_movie_crop_exclude config vars
- fixed bug with game dir write access test (gave false positives if game directory was assigned a custom icon in Windows)
- fixed issue with garbled HUD text on some older video cards
- fixed rare crash when using HUD buttons to change ammo type or reload
- fixed issue with crouching on crates
- fixed alpha calculation bug on scaled bitmap particles
- fixed bug with pendulum tweq stopping for angles larger than 32 degrees
- fixed issue with duplicate receptrons when added by a DML file
- fixed bug with force_ani_settings material flag not having any effect
- fixed crash when Corona property has no texture name specified
- fixed crash bug with "ForceCameraOverlayNormal" config var
- fixed song sound load failure if other format than in specified song file (i.e. if file is ogg but song file has wav)
- fixed crash when song sound file was not found
- fixed bug with display device selection on multi-device systems (probably picked the opposite device than the default/selected)
- fixed occasional crash related to 4096 sized textures
- fixed walk forward bind in options menu, in patch_ext.crf, so walk speed is normal (requires re-bind to take effect)
- changed so horizontal and vertical mouse sensitivity is equal when "mouse_sensitivity_y_scale" is 1
- added "mouse_sensitivity_use_aspect" bind var to enable old behavior where horizontal/vertical mouse sensitivity differ based on resolution aspect ratio
- added support for RLE compressed BMP images (RLE4/RLE8)
- added localization support to FMSel (so FMSel UI can be translated)
- added FM language support to game and updated FMSel to make use of it
- added support for the original indeo5 codec (ir50_32.dll), may improve movie playback on slower CPUs
- added option to use enhanced ray trace for AI body/suspicious obj detection ("enhanced_aidetect_trace")
DromEd:
- fixed rare mono console related bug that caused editor to hang (was remedied by enabling monolog, no longer necessary)
- fixed/changed angle parameters in Gun->"AI Gun Description", Gun->"Player Gun Description" and Gun->"Kickback" properties (IMPORTANT: any exsiting DML files with these params will need to be updated to specify values in degrees)
- fixed a less common crash when compiling rooms, caused by newly created room brushes that were excluded from compile usually by a me-only area brush (crash was preceded by a "Attempt to get room 0 of 0" assert)
- fixed crash bug when selecting sky surface if texture palette contains more than 246 textures and editor is using software rendering
- fixed a couple of crash bugs related to editing the Creature Type property
- fixed bug where loading a stripped mission could result in wrong texture assignments on terrain surfaces
- fixed bug in reconstruct_rooms that it assigned default room instead of reconstructing the original room types
- fixed crash that could occur during extensive UV editing when running editor with HW rendering
- fixed so creating a new stimulus archetype doesn't require editor restart for propagators to work
- fixed sunlight object shadow bug
- fixed crash that under certain circumstances could occur during UV align editing
- fixed crash when loading file at editor startup through "file" config var
- fixed crash with Scaled bitmap particles when invalid bitmap and added mono warnings
- fixed issue with precision select and tiny point sized brushes
- fixed issue with uvmap_cylinder when using non-symmetric textures and rot 90 (and allowed it to be used on pyramid brushes)
- fixed prim_special command to only allow setting valid types, to prevent more or less obvious bad things from happening (even if it appeared to work in previous versions, it could cause memory overwrites which are very bad)
- added prim_cylinder/pyramid/cpyramid commands for quick type set and sides
- added proper support for negative Extra Light property again (worked in T1 but was removed after)
- added "Use Model 5" flag for random model tweqs, so randomization includes Model 5 (2.4 falsely always included it, which could break existing content)
- added support for "Bitmap disk" particles to use the default disk texture if no bitmap name is specified
- added support for mission (and location) defined env maps
- added viewport bg image support
- added lg.ini option to enable word wrapping for Editor Comments property
- added "default_tx_scale" config var for user defined default brush texture scale
- added option to show texture index in texture palette
- added hilight brushes using texture command to texture palette context menu
- added support for user configurable precision of sdesc formatted floats ("sdesc_decimals")
- added extended option for sunlight to allow all shadowed/unshadowed quad/non-quad combinations
- added config option "show_world_limits" to draw world limits in 2D viewports (line color can be changed with "edit_color_grid_lim")
- increased max length for "bitmap\" images (with ani frames) from 6 to 28
- changed room building so room brushes with invalid room types still get used, with the default room type, instead of being ignored
(No changes to multiplayer.)
I assume ss2tool will be updated pretty soon - I would advise everyone to just wait for the tool, but if you really need the fixes, it should be safe enough to use
on your GOG version.
