SS1 SHLink - System Shock Windows wrapper (no music)

[6751120711298gaspalorz]

That's because mouselook is used in both SSP and Shlink. Now, I really don't mind the camera panning (except the damn compass!) or torn-off sliders; these are minor issues, and being able to play the game without lag outweights them completely.

Since this project doesn't have an official name yet, pick the one you think that looks better.

I'd vote for "Shlink" (with capital "S") then, as all uppercase would suggest an abbreviation, which it isn't.

(no music)

I've got an idea regarding the sound system. Since there are already remixes of all Shock's soundtracks, how about making a Shlink module which could play custom music in place of original? Eg. trap call to "THM1.XMI" and play "somefolder/THM1.mp3" (or any other matching filename) instead?

[67511207113f3Dax]

This project made me extremely happy when I ran into it.

I hope you keep working on this, I can only show you my appreciation and respect for this task you decided to take on your shoulders.

I do have a question regarding the current build... is there a way to hide the command prompt window when you boot shlink.exe? Just curious, keep the great work =)

[6751120711555gaspalorz]

RIght now you can't hide the console window. You could use SHUI to get rid of it, but that's just a window-for-a-window tradeoff.

I feel bad, it seems like I am always bringing disturbing news to this thread. Anyways, trying to loot empty cabinets causes Shlink to crash when the square frame is about to fit into MFD socket. I've experienced it on Executive level but it will probably happen anywhere else. Savegame is attached.

[6751120711682Malba Tahan]

My classes end in a couple weeks. After that, I'm going to look again into all this stuff and continue the development of both shlink and the mods.

[675112071176cgaspalorz]

One more thing: have you considered calling these mods something different, eg. "modules" so they aren't confused with original game "mods" (Gigaquad's, etc)?

[6751120711842sparklingdark]

Keep it up Malba.  This game badly needs hardware support

[6751120711b62sparklingdark]

Hey Malba,

I just finished System Shock 2.  The game was fantastic, but the ending was HORRIBLE.  I'm sure you guys already know this but Levine said it wasn't in the script he originally wrote and they ran out of development time.  It's a shame...these two games are fantastic and they should be remade without graphical or time constraints.

Anyway, I'd like to play SS1, and my question is do you think your port will be finished anytime soon?  I'd like to wait until it looks decent.  Because SSP doesn't run very well for me.  The highest resolution I can go is 640x480 and even that has a choppy framerate.  Not sure if it's like that for everyone else.  And even if it did the game looks...bad.

But if you finished this, the game would be totally revived and it will open up a LOT of doors.  I'm sure it would eventually support any resolution, widescreen.  Anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, DirectX, OpenGL...AND with Mouselook, custom keybinds, it will feel modern, remastered!

Personally I think the music should be left as the last addition.  I guess people want it for nostalgic purposes but in the mean time just play some drum and bass or something in the background.
Or better yet, just completely ditch the original and later on put in remixes.  From what I hear it's already done.  If people want to hear the awful original MIDI they should play SSP.

Another cool idea would be to remove the portraits of the ugly citadel station members and then draw our own portraits of the characters like in SS2!
And way in the future maybe custom soundtracks 

To be honest I'm surprised a windows port isn't already done for System Shock.  Like look at GZDoom, Doomsday, and the dozen other ports of Doom.  They've done everything mentioned above and more. 
Edit:  I take that back.  I forgot about Doom95 and it was mod friendly.  And SS doesn't have as big of a fan base, but if you look up the greatest games of all time it is on everyone's list.

So thank you very much for doing this Malba.  Very cool.
And thanks to Kolya.  With you and everyone else making these games playable maybe it will revive the world of System Shock.  Like if it's popularity keeps rising there may be a chance for part 3.

[6751120712986gaspalorz]

But if you finished this, the game would be totally revived and it will open up a LOT of doors.  I'm sure it would eventually support any resolution, widescreen.  Anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, DirectX, OpenGL...AND with Mouselook, custom keybinds, it will feel modern, remastered!

Do you REALLY believe in this?

Personally I think the music should be left as the last addition.  I guess people want it for nostalgic purposes but in the mean time just play some drum and bass or something in the background.
Or better yet, just completely ditch the original and later on put in remixes.  From what I hear it's already done.  If people want to hear the awful original MIDI they should play SSP.

Why should essential part of the game be removed, especially if it can be turned off? You can't just "put in remixes", this has to be done by hooking into music sound system, but it must be supported first! After I finish the next-gen SHUI (soon), I will have a look at A/V recording for Shlink and (later) this custom music.

Another cool idea would be to remove the portraits of the ugly citadel station members and then draw our own portraits of the characters like in SS2!

Unlike textures which come in four different sizes, all other SS1's graphics have only one resolution and scaling them up doesn't make them look any better. Perhaps you can draw us some nice oldschool graphics?

To be honest I'm surprised a windows port isn't already done for System Shock.  Like look at GZDoom, Doomsday, and the dozen other ports of Doom.

Doom's source code has been released back in 1997, therefore anyone can create a spin-off project based on it. We don't have this comfort with System Shock so everything is done through reverse-engineering or in-memory hacks.

[6751120712be6Kolya]

Maybe it's just not the right game for you, sparklingdark? Or you just need to give it some time. Either way, I feel with you. I first played SS1 in 2002 or so, after having played SS2, and adapting to its look and sound (and no mouselook back then, arrgh) well that took a bit of work.
But SS1 is a special beast and part of its charme is that it was a pioneer in almost every aspect back in 1994. Now in 2011 its graphics sure look dated and the MIDI sound might be jarring to your ears and the portraits may look ugly to you. Still most people who play(ed) it, like it for what it is and will accept only very conservative upgrades, that don't change the nature of the game.
Of course there's always the possibility of optional upgrades, but generally the ones who are willing to invest the awful amounts of time and work necessary, do it out of adoration for the original game, not in an attempt to "fix" it.

[6751120712d69Moose Pearson]

Hi everybody,

First off, what I've seen this is awesome.  I remember playing SS back when it came out and it creeped the heck outta me as I was something like 10 or 12 when it was released.  This makes the experience of replaying the gave fantastic.  I'm hoping someone can give me a hand! 
So, I've gotten everything put together and working, but I'm running into one issue that may or may not be an issue.  I understand that higher resolutions aren't supported yet, but as I've read it should be able to scale up to full screen.  If I start the game in 640x480 with fullscreen=1 in the ini file, the application runs fine and is indeed fullscreen, but the actual game/videos are still 640x480 in the middle of the screen.  Is there something else that must be done in order to scale it to fit the screen?  And I completely understand this will still be 640x480, just expanded to be bigger.  Or is this how it is for everyone?
Thanks for any help!

[6751120713057Enchantermon]

In the ini file, there are also lines used for setting the resolution; XRes and YRes. Change these to the resolution you want. So if you want 1024x768, XRes would be 1024 and YRes would be 768.

[675112071320cvoodoo47]

this kid of depends on the system you are using. for example, if I want to play in fulscreen on the acer 2350 laptop, I have to set fullscreen to 1, keep the res at 640x480, and enable "panel fit" in the intel control panel. anything other (like setting the resolution to 1024x768) will get me the black bars around the screen..

[6751120713306Enchantermon]

Yeah, you can do that, but then the window is stretched and distorted. If you set the resolution in the ini file, then you prevent that, and you can choose whatever resolution will fit the screen with the minimum use of black bars.

[6751120713419Hodgepodge]

The original music is a very important part of the game to me - largely because of its dynamic nature (The game doesn't just have a bunch of music tracks it plays, the music changes dynamically depending on what's happening in the game. A bit like iMUSE). Because of this it cannot be substituted by just playing a track on the background either. Without it a lot of the atmosphere is lost in my opinion.

[67511207135e4Meat Sack]

OMG OMG OMG!!! IT WURX!!  THANK YOU!!! :~)~~~

I've been trying for over a WEEK! to get System Shock running on XP 'WITHOUT' DosBOX (A last resort option only!  It works, but it bleeds
the speed and playability away to nothing.  Shame a Playstation can be emulated fluidly on my netbook, but a friggin 20+ year old PC title meant to run on very antiquated PC hardware can't be emulated to run at least equally well. DosBox needs a major major overhaul IMO.)
SSP was almost useless for me in terms of a playable SS I'm sad to say.

I even like the default control scheme.  The dual keyboard and mouse setup I was using wasn't working.  Having Mouselook again is great.
I don't care about the music,  turned it off after 5 mins of playing.  It was too painful.

This game really needs to be remade and rereleased. 

Until then thanks again for this.  I'm really looking forward to beating it for the 1st time now.  And maybe again when you get fullscreen support plugged in.

[67511207136dfMeat Sack]

okay...just read the posts above about the fullscreen and resolution .ini edits...*bouncing off the walls* 

[67511207139f2Malba Tahan]

I'm really looking forward to beating it for the 1st time now.

I can't promise that the game won't crash under shlink. It's not fully tested.

By the way, I'm recreating my editing (hacking?) tools under Java, but this language is new to me. Once I've recreated them all, I'll continue improving shlink and the mods. I'll have to learn Swing first, though.

[6751120713b45voodoo47]

had one crash today, I'll just paste the info here:

Code: [Select]

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 1. 12. 2011
Time: 15:40:09
User: N/A
Description:
Faulting application shlink.exe, version 0.0.0.0, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x1028dc92.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74   Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c   ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 73 68 6c   ure  shl
0018: 69 6e 6b 2e 65 78 65 20   ink.exe
0020: 30 2e 30 2e 30 2e 30 20   0.0.0.0
0028: 69 6e 20 75 6e 6b 6e 6f   in unkno
0030: 77 6e 20 30 2e 30 2e 30   wn 0.0.0
0038: 2e 30 20 61 74 20 6f 66   .0 at of
0040: 66 73 65 74 20 31 30 32   fset 102
0048: 38 64 63 39 32 0d 0a      8dc92..

[6751120713c39Malba Tahan]

Thank you! I'm too busy to look at it right now, but I'll do it during my vacation in January.

[6751120713d51Tarvis]

Hey there.

Concerning the texture sizes thing, I noticed that for sprites System Shock seems to do some kind of 2x scale on them when you get close, and the result looks kinda muddy if you ask me. Are these done via actual separate graphics or is it done in code?

I wonder if an option for this could be added, because in my opinion it looks worse this way.

[6751120713edaold_liquid]

Not sure it is game bug or not. On first deck, after door w/ code 451, when I look on the bay door at certain direction(usually to right from center), I can view zombie moving on the other side of the door.

save here (zombie corpse can be observed)
http://www.mediafire.com/?cg5q1tkd4ddbomf

looks like this
Image: http://gyazo.com/53ed83ff97a13cba1da697411ec3a35b.png

[6751120713fbdDav]

An update would be nice

[67511207140ddMalba Tahan]

I'm currently working on an emulator (80186 emulator to be exact). My idea is to get music (MIDI) working through emulation first, and then finally doing it without emulation support. Actually, the emulator is almost done (I've got old Prince of Persia running during my tests).
I'm also rewriting Shlink in C++ .
As soon as I get music working in Shlink, I'll take a look at all these bugs reported in this thread.

[67511207141bavoodoo47]

great news