Configuration Information

The Configuration File
Create a notepad document called "user.cfg". All the configuration variables listed in the readme should be added to the user.cfg (unless otherwise noted) exactly as written, each on a line of its own.

Note: Because of the way the user.bnd file generated by the game is formatted, you may encounter problems if you edit this file using Windows Notepad. If you save this file from Notepad, you will have to re-open it and manually add new line feeds between each line. An easier method is to use the DOS Edit program (or other similar text editor programs). DOS Edit can be started from a MS-DOS prompt or by using the Run command from your Windows start menu.

Joystick Support
Adding the line:
joystick_enable
will allow you to use a joystick instead of your keyboard.

Roger Wilco
If you have Roger Wilco installed on your computer, and you want it to automatically start up when the game starts, use the configuration variable:
net_voice
This enables voice chat in a multiplayer game. (You can also manually start Roger Wilco before starting the game.)

Frequent Messages
If you have particular [multiplayer] chat messages that you like to use a lot, and you want to bind them to hotkeys, open the file "user.bnd" and add "chatsend" commands there. For example, to bind the message "Run Away!!!" to function key 12, put this line into user.bnd:
bind F12 "chatsend Run Away!!!"

The following unsupported configuration variables have been added to the single player game:

Monster Spawning
If you've killed everything in a given area, and you wait around long enough, you'll notice that more monsters are spawned to keep you busy. To minimize respawning, use the configuration variable:
no_spawn

System Shock 2's ecologies look at how many monsters are in a given area. If a defined minimum number of monsters are present, there is a chance that a new monster will spawn. The variable:
lower_spawn_min <n>
reduces the defined minimum monster count on all ecologies by <n>.
raise_spawn_rand <n>
lowers the chance of a monster randomly spawning by changing the random chance from 1/i to 1/(i+<n>).

Gun degradation
The config variable:
gun_degrade_rate <n>
is a multiplier for the rate at which your weapons degrade. For example, to completely eliminate weapon degradation & breakage, set the value to 0. To tone it down, set it somewhere between 1 and 0.

Quick-save and Auto-Save overwrite
System Shock 2's quick-save and quick-load system uses the same save-slot as the autosave system. This slot is also used by the regular save/load system. So quick-saved games are often overwritten by other games (for example, whenever you change a level or load a different save game). In order to avoid this problem, you can rebind the quick-save and load keys (alt-S and alt-L) to save to a different save-slot. For example, to save to slot 10 instead, add the following lines to your user.bnd file:

bind s+alt "shk_save_game 10"
bind l+alt "shk_load_game 10"

Using slot 10 to make regular saves will now, of course, over-write your quick-saves, but making level transitions will not.