SS2 LGS Official Patch and readme

[673991ac95355Kolya]

NOTE: Please use the SS2Tool to patch your game. It contains the complete official patch + bugfixes for modern systems.

Patch Features

• Multiplayer capability
• Monster spawning and weapon degradation settings
• fixes several bugs
• updates shock2.exe from 1.15-->2.23

After installing the patch you will find the text below in a file named readmep.wri in your SS2 install dir.

System Shock (tm) 2 Patch

Readme includes:
Multiplayer Information
Configuration Information
List of Bugs Fixed
Known Issues
Errata

Multiplayer Information

Multiplayer Startup
To start a multiplayer game, the host must first set up a game.  The host's IP address will be displayed on the multiplayer menu.  Each client must enter the host's IP on the multiplayer menu, then join the game.  When all players are joined, the host can load a saved multiplayer game, or start a new one.

The players will all arrive separately at the training and character generation.  The players can still use the chat function, which is particularly useful at that point for discussing character class choices.  Save and load are disabled during training because it is essentially the single-player part of a multiplayer game.

The difficulty level in a multiplayer is fixed and equivalent to the "hard" difficulty in the single player game.

Multiplayer Capabilities
To send chat messages to the other players, press the '-key, type your message, and finish the message by pressing Enter or Return.  If you are in the middle of typing a message and want to stop, press Esc to abort the message without sending it.  Some voice-chat programs (such as Roger Wilco) can also be used with the game, allowing you to chat hands-free.

To hand an object to another player, open your inventory and drag the object onto that player.  It will appear in the other player's inventory, unless there is no room for it.  (In which case, it will drop on the floor.)  Note that in the multiplayer game, you can split nanites off of your stack, 10 at a time, and give them to other players.  Upgrade modules are automatically distributed to all players, and cannot be traded.

Minimum Multiplayer Specifications
Host of a multiplayer game:  Pentium (tm)II 266 MHz, 64MB RAM, 56K modem.
Client:  PII 233 MHz, 64MB RAM, 56k modem


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. 

NB: 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:

Code: [Select]

joystick_enablewill 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:

Code: [Select]

net_voiceThis 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 F12, put this line into user.bnd:

Code: [Select]

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:

Code: [Select]

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:

Code: [Select]

lower_spawn_min <n> reduces the defined minimum monster count on all ecologies by <n>.

Code: [Select]

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:

Code: [Select]

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:

Code: [Select]

bind s+alt "shk_save_game 10"
bind l+alt "shk_load_game 10"
Quicksaving will now add a save named crouchhold in slot 10.
Using slot 10 to make regular saves will now, of course, over-write your quick-saves, but making level transitions will not.

Windows NT & 2000
System Shock 2 was developed and tested using Windows 95/98 and is only supported for use under those environments.
If you would like to try System Shock 2 on your Win2000 system, you will need to run the following command (from a DOS window or using the Run Program command):

Code: [Select]

x:/setup.exe -lgntforce Where x is the letter of your CD-Rom drive.
Additionally, there's a .zip file included with the patch which must be extracted to the directory to which you installed System Shock 2.


Bugs Fixed

• Invisible Monsters:  The bug which caused invisible monsters to occasionally spawn is fixed.  The fix also renders visible any invisible monsters in a savegame.
• A potential crash bug when making a level transition while on a ladder has been fixed.
• If you make a level transition while in interface mode with an object on your cursor, it no longer turns that object into a different, random object when you throw it into the world.
• The corpses of your slain enemies now fade out only when off-screen.
• Monsters now only spawn when you're not looking their way.
• If you die with the psi-power Remote Item Detection active, the circle now goes away properly.
• A bug was fixed where binding certain keys in the options panel would only bind them in "shoot" mode, not in "use mode."  The keypad keys are definitely affected by this, but other keys may be as well.  If you have this problem, it will be fixed the next time you go to the options panel in the patched version. 

(SPOILERS follow!)

• The annoying desk in Hydro that was causing difficulties getting through a window into a room with two locked doors has been fixed.
• The tram in Command had a bug with the call button at the second tram stop which when pressed while the tram was at that stop caused the tram never to move again.  Now fixed.
• Many Boss Brain:  In certain cases, at the end of the Body of the Many, one of the three spinning star-shaped thingies orbiting the Many's brain would disappear.  As it is necessary to destroy all 3 of the spinning star thingies to destroy the brain, the result of this bug is that the game gets in an unwinnable state.  The patch fixes both the case in which the bug happens and savegames that are already in the bad state.

Known issues

If you make a level transition with an item on your cursor, you may find your view in a hybrid interface/shoot mode.  If you hit the TAB key, your view will return to normal shoot mode.

If the computer has multiple IP addresses (if, say, it's on an Ethernet directly connected to the Internet, and you then dial into an ISP that gives you another IP address), it is unpredictable which one will show up on the Multiplayer menu when you are starting up a game. If this causes problems connecting, you may need to talk to your system administrator to figure out which address to actually use. (This mostly matters for the host; clients don't need to worry much about it.)

Errata

The following people were mysteriously omitted from the manual:
Multiplayer programmer: Mark "Justin" Waks
High-poly 3d Shodan Head Modeling & Animation, Cover Art: Ryan Lesser, Mammoth Studios
EAX support: David  Bax