SS1 mod/fan mission format

[673f9203e8f01JDoran]

First RPS, now Kotaku

Yes. To quote from Kotaku's article:


"But why [has the first fan mission been released] now, 24 years after the game originally came out? It's because Night Dive Studios, which is currently working to finish a remaster of the game that it successfully Kickstarted in 2016, released the source code for System Shock in April of this year, finally giving Lansing and others the tools they needed to start creating more content for the retro PC classic.

This allowed programmer Christian Haas to create a level editor for the game, which Lansing than used to craft ReWired."

Good to see they checked the facts beforehand 

1. is already there and working.

also, we need to make a clear distinction between fan missions and mods - mods do not need separate save folders, why would you need extra saves if you enable hires sprites mod, for example. so mods - stuff that updates vanilla resources, fan missions - new levels you can play. what currently is available in the SP beta is technically a fan mission loader - I'm hoping for a separate mechanism/tool that would load mods in the future.

as mentioned, the current SS2 system is a good example of how this should work - basically, you activate the desired (graphics, audio) mods, and then you either run the vanilla game, or a fan mission, and all the mods will be active in both cases.

not a big deal at the moment, as the number of audio/graphics mods for SS1 is pretty much zero, but it's definitely something we want to have working in the future.

I see, yes. And it is a little ironic that there are curently no mods for System Shock, but there are currently five versions of the game (the DOS floppy disc version, the DOS CD version, System Shock Portable, System Shock Enhanced, and the Mac version of the game), with three new versions on the way (System Shock Remastered, JosihaJack's Citadel, and the official port of the source code), plus probably a few fan-made forks of the source code will appear sooner or later. Maybe the loader you're making should instead auto-load the mission, and instead allow the user to choose the game engine? 

[673f9203e90afvoodoo47]

ideally, any 3rdparty SS1 port (it's just Shockolate at the moment, afaik) would support the finalized SS1 mod/fm format - in case of Shockolate, it's assuming Interrupt would be willing to expand beyond vanilla functionality (my understanding is that at least for the moment, he just wants the game to run natively in modern environments, no extras).

[673f9203e91e8icemann]

Everyone does seem to be forgetting that inkyblackness was out LONG before the source code was out.

[673f9203e92f5voodoo47]

yeah, RPS didn't get it quite right, and since everyone else is just copying the article around..

[673f9203e969b3RDplayer]

yeah, RPS didn't get it quite right, and since everyone else is just copying the article around..

I have made my answers to the questions to Kotaku public on the mod db page.
News
Maybe I was not clear enough that the SC had nothing to do with it.
I also wrote a mail to RPS and PCMag, and they updated them but it's still not right. And I at least made them namedrop Interrupt and Dertseha. So my conscience is clear. Because I hate nothing more as when people are not properly credited.

[673f9203e978ficemann]

Conscience.

[673f9203e988cvoodoo47]

anyway, I think the current FM loader does what it should (maybe apart from indicating than an FM is active in the new  game menu, that would surely be nice), so maybe it's time to focus on mods - maybe a mod loader could also be squeezed into the menu?