NewDark original releases: SS2 and Thief2

[673fde4eb9761Dan]

OMG, I drop out of the loop for a while and a dream shows up, I'd even left Windows behind to a full time Linux usage, but since it won't run through Wine I just had to go back, you just had to drag me back! Oh well, awesome patch is awesome by all means. Finally I could just run it, no issue at all with any rendering glitches, control configuration errors, video-crashes or mods making it wonky. And it even includes support for DDfix specific addons.
Trying out some things in the scripts and materials and man, the possibilities with this is beyond what I thought it would be at first glance! Did I just die and go to heaven?

Actually, 2.4 runs very well in wine on Linux - with the OpenAL audio support it even has EAX effects on the audio, and doesn't require a few hacks to make the game work like 2.3 required. I'm using wine 1.5.0 on Ubuntu 12.04.

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Also, for what it's worth, for the powers that be that may be reading this forum, I'd love to see a source diff find it's way out of these changes, as this surely is made using the source code found on the dreamcast development system a while back. If a diff of the source changes and possibly build instructions was included with the patch or even available separately, that would be outstanding to play around with.

With all the secrecy I worry that all the work that went into these changes will be lost at some point for future changes.

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Yes, I noticed it works later. I was a stupid frag trying to start it by terminal from my home directory instead of from the Sshock2 one whereby it refused to find the full path for the Game content. And with OpenAL the sound won't cut out at the start after a while of playing as well like it did when using A3D, And no need to convert the videos to make them play. Even ShockEd works, cool!
Any idea where these orange polygon-esce bugs in the wireframe (top,sides) views when using 32-bit mode come from? If it wasn't for those it would be easier to navigate the levels in the editor.
And I would also be first in line for a native Linux version of this game, esp if the net-code is improved further.

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Oh ok, it worked! Asked a stopid question before. Threw a quick tests together instead of waiting for response. And now it's even more apparent how misaligned some of the textures are originally. xD
Image: http://i.imgur.com/oi5VS.png

My game defenitly dosen't look that good, what am i missing here?

[673fde4eb9b31blaydes99]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this yet, but there is a cool material effect included in this NewDark SS2 package 2.4.

It's under "\doc\ss2-material-mod-sample.7z"

To setup my mods for SS2, I just put everything in a "mods" subfolder and then enable the stuff I want. For example, I have the mods Tacticool guns, SHTUP, etc. extracted into my \mods\ss2mods folder. So, I extracted "ss2-material-mod-sample.7z" into the \mods\envpanels folder.

In my cam_mod.ini file, I have the following at the bottom:

mod_path patch_ext+mods\envpanels+mods\ss2mods

Then, check it out:

[673fde4eb9cafKolya]

Reflective surfaces? :O

[673fde4eb9febvurt]

yeah i've tried those, it's a nice addition indeed

Could this be added to weapons maybe? I'm thinking like the sword in Thief, and maybe some weapons in SS2 too. Would the hand get reflective as well maybe (i havent looked at the textures yet so i dont know if the hand is a separate texture).

If someone wants to try it on a custom or default texture it's very simple.

* find the texture that you want to be reflective
* create a .mtl file for that texture (it can be in the same folder as the texture). It should have the same name as the texture, except for the extension (.mtl).
* Put this into the .mtl:

terrain_scale 256 (this should be same as the original texture size)
env_map 0.20 2 tex\envmaps\name_of_your_cubemap (tex\envmaps is the location, in my case)

0.20 is the intensity of the reflection, 2 is, i believe, how often the cubemap is repeated, higher values will repeat it more often (shrink it), or something like that. You can use either a cubemap or just a normal image file, but a proper cubemap looks better.

This is of course all explained in the docs, in layman's terms.

[673fde4eba104blaydes99]

Nice notes. I'm going to be trying this bundled SS2 cubemap as an env. map on your SS2 water (v3) and see how it looks.

[673fde4eba1f0vurt]

I've added a env map file for the water mod which you can try too. It will work for all versions.

[673fde4eba330DyrverE]

What you are missing are topics like "Four Hundred" in the mod section for instance.
Made some refurbished textures of those by ACC, still not entirely happy about them since they either are too mellow or stick out too much.
Anyone got some idea how to replace FX textures like the ones for explosions? been in both /obj (both as /txt16 and /txt and even /bitmaps, I don't see any difference despite replacing them with simple UV-testmaps and numbers, made sure to do number of two as well. Is it hard-coded or something?

[673fde4eba504vurt]

I made explosions last year, still havent really found any way to make them smaller though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZMesxOb8UI&feature=plcp

I guess i could just shrink the texture and have a lot of empty space around the explosion, but it would lower the quality quite a bit. Would be interesting to see how it looks with the new patch at a better framerate than what was possible before
 

[673fde4eba627VGA]

Just used SS2tool 4.4 which has the new update integrated, very nice, SS2 seems to work better than ever with no need for tweaking. Well, I'm gonna check out the HUD scaling in a while.

But I see this change in NewDark 2.4:
- Added check to avoid trying to open files with reserved system name like com ports

Doesn't this make one of the bugfixes of SS2tool obsolete ?

[673fde4eba726Kolya]

Mmh, yeah that would make the Command deck fix superflous. You can remove the files from DataPermMods after a fresh installation. Though they will usually get overwritten by SHTUP anyway, if you use that.

[673fde4eba89dSeniorCitizen]

hi!
i love this new patch, however there's one huge glitch i can't overlook, specifically that there are 4 speeds now, which wouldn't be a problem if you could normal walk by single-key held down. by default there is:
creep (run)
walkfast (normal)
forward (slow)

and now there is:
creep (run)
walkfast (normal) = creep + forward
forward (slow)
real damn slow = walkfast + forward

i don't know why the author of the patch changed these functions, but now whenever i want to default-walk, i have to hold down forward and creep, which is not quite comfortable for me. i tried tweaking around in the user bind file by binding 2 functions to one single key to get normal walk, like

bind w +forward +creepon
(and so many variations with +s and whitespaces)
but it wouldn't help (not that i expected it to :p)

i even checked all scripts in the text, ini, cfg files but found nothing there. does anyone have a solution for this? if so, mind sharing with us? thx in advance

[673fde4ebabbfZylonBane]

creep (run)

What. 

[673fde4ebacb2SeniorCitizen]

sry, in user.cfg the run () is called creep

[673fde4ebad8bSeniorCitizen]

any ideas?

[673fde4ebaed2Kolya]

I don't quite understand what the problem is. After installation the settings are as in the attached screenshot. Which seems to be what you want? In user.bnd this shows up as

Code: [Select]

bind w +walkfast
bind w+shift +forwardThere is no file "user.cfg". Instead it seems you were screwing around in shock.bnd. Leave it alone.
I will split off this discussion and move it to the Helpdesk soon, where it belongs.

[673fde4ebb0d9SeniorCitizen]

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140088&page=2
"The patch is marvellous but it has a big issue for me: now it’s imposible set the keys in order to walk by default.
...
This is what I want:

w = Walk
shift+w = run
Ctrl+w = slow walk

I can do that just before the patch but not now. If I set "w" for "walk" the real result is "slow walk"."

same issue as mine.

yeah, it's not .cfg, but user.bnd, sry

[673fde4ebb1c4SeniorCitizen]

in short, 2.4 changed the velocity of Walk Forward

[673fde4ebb2f0Kolya]

Okay, I see what you mean now. And indeed the walkspeed in 2.4 is a lot slower, apparently because it is bound to "+forward" instead of "+creepon" as in 2.3.
This can be fixed in user.bnd by these binds:

Code: [Select]

bind w +walkfast
bind shift +creepon
When setting keybinds from within the game this will be broken again (by "+forward"). Looks like a bug indeed.

[673fde4ebb42aSeniorCitizen]

well yea, that's the binding i also have, but it's more like a workaround than a fix, and it's not as comfy as the previous setup. im wondering in which file may that sneeky script lie in.

[673fde4ebb567Kolya]

Try this for an Always run: Off setting

Code: [Select]

bind shift +runon
bind w +walk

And this for Always run: On

Code: [Select]

bind shift +creepon
bind w +walkfast
...in the file user.bnd.

[673fde4ebb643SeniorCitizen]

you are God. Thank you!

[673fde4ebb75aKolya]

If you add "bind ctrl +creepon" to the Always run: Off setup you should have the three speeds you initially wanted.
There's also a "+walkslow" function which seems to be interchangable with "+creepon".
Note that changing the run/walk binds from within the game will break these of course.

[673fde4ebb83aSeniorCitizen]

copy that! thanks again!

[673fde4ebb929dudroot]

Just tried this via Kolyas 4.4 tool. great stuff. Curious if the "Native FSAA and filtering support" is adjustable?  At a glance it looks comparable to 4xAA & 16xAF which is great.