CTD: Elevator from deck 5 to deck 6

[67510f5003ceaknochensack]

Hi everyone,


after I finally got ss2 to run under xp with the many helpful hints from this site I'm facing a problem: When I use the elevator that leads from deck 5 to deck 6 the game loads - but then crashes to desktop. Maybe someone has experienced the same and found a solution?

[67510f5003ebcKolya]

That sounds very much like the common command deck error. Simple and nice fix: Install SHTUP.

[67510f5003fc9knochensack]

Thanks a lot! 

[67510f500415cfox]

Alright... I have the same problem and I know that it's the result of using a reserved word under XP and I know that it got fixed in SHTUP... the thing is that I can't use it (most likely) because of the incompatibility with the 169.-driver for my 8800GTS. Is there another way for me to fix it?

[67510f500429emiracle.flame]

If nothing else, you may upload your save and ask someone to ride the elevator for you and save after the critical point, then return the file.

EDIT: Or does this happen on loading any command.mis save?

[67510f5004390fox]

Yeah, that may work but I hope there's also a real fix for it. Someone at TTLG mentioned a file called CommandFix.zip but I can't seem to find it. Thanks for the quick reply though.

[67510f500446aKolya]

Just zip up the folder "obj" and change the zip extension to crf.

[67510f5004628ZylonBane]

He's right though, there used to be a mini-mod floating around somewhere that just fixed this. The problem is caused by the elevator screen for deck six, which is named COM6.PCX. This causes a crash because Win2k-core systems see this as a reference to COM port 6. Under Win95-core systems (which Irrational used to develop SS2) this problem doesn't surface because those OSs only recognize up to COM2 (or possibly COM3... it's been a while).

This crash only occurs on mod-ready installs because SS2 normally goes directly to the CRFs for all its resources. When SS2 is made mod-ready, it instead asks the local filesystem for resources first, then only goes to the CRFs when it can't find them there.

The command fix mod would be easy enough to reproduce. Just hex-edit ELECOM.BIN to load a different texture than COM6.PCX (for example, SHTUP currently uses COMM6.PCX), then extract COM6.PCX from OBJ.CRF and save it as whatever you told ELECOM.BIN to use.

[67510f5004778fox]

Hm, I am trying to do this but I am just wondering if it's actually possible to extract the critically named file COM6.PCX under XP.  Thought that's part of the problem.

Also I am wondering why I have elecom.bin in my HOTU-version of the game, manually mod-readied a long time ago but not in my German retail version, mod-readied by the SS2Tool. The HOTU-version of elecom.bin contains a reference to KOM6.pcx but nothing to COM6.pcx. Is this the result of an earlier SHTUP-version maybe? I think I am a bit too stupid for that kind of stuff... 

[67510f500485fZylonBane]

The texture can be named anything (other than COM6, of course). This is nothing to spazz out about.

[67510f5004953Kolya]

https://www.systemshock.org/index.php/topic,893.0.html

[67510f5004a71ZylonBane]

Hmm, try this one too--

https://www.systemshock.org/index.php/topic,894.0.html

[67510f5004b4eKolya]

"Zylo" Command Deck Fix? lol
I guess I can take the other one down then.

[67510f5004c2eZylonBane]

Well, I wouldn't do that. The Zygo fix may address a completely unrelated crash issue. I can't remember what though.

[67510f5004d0cZygo]

I'm pretty sure my fix only addresses the com# issue, and it sure wasn't elegant (it just removed or changed the effected models).