SS2 TF's Secmod 3

[6740b1cbb2793ThiefsieFool]

Camera hacking is very easy to add to a mod or minimod, it's just editing two or three properties. It's based on the turret hacking functionality already in the game.

Also destroying cameras doesn't trigger an alert in this mod, it stimulates the ecologies tied to the camera once, which usually results in one monster being spawned to investigate. This is far more reasonable than a full alert.

[6740b1cbb28f6ramsey sparrow]

I'm sure you did. I was experimenting with SCP, Secmod, Alyamod and few smaller ones and so I got it mixed up.

[6740b1cbb2d8cramsey sparrow]

Camera hacking is very easy to add to a mod or minimod, it's just editing two or three properties. It's based on the turret hacking functionality already in the game.

Also destroying cameras doesn't trigger an alert in this mod, it stimulates the ecologies tied to the camera once, which usually results in one monster being spawned to investigate. This is far more reasonable than a full alert.

Indeed, thanks for clarifying ThiefsieFool, I've worked it all out in the meantime of my original posts and I agree it's a good, balanced system (though it feels to me a destroyed camera should perhaps spawn more than one or two fodder enemies to make it a little more tactically meaningful).

Glad to see you're still around, so using the opportunity I have to say I have not had this much fun with a computer game since the time of The Dark Project and Original System Shock 2 releases. Secmod is terrific and enhances on the original in a subtle, non-canon breaking ways from what I gathered so far, a great job.

I'm about to venture into the additional level in Hydroponics; so far, coupled with some orthodox graphic updates, enemy health randomiser, vague health bars and 'fire the drummer' mods, it's pure joy to re-experience the classic after so many years.


On a side note I think I may have found a bug or two:

1. unless I'm missing something, the tier 4 'invisibility' psi power does not seem to work: creatures (hybrids, midwifes and monkey in hydroponics is what I tested) always spot me. No shots fired, no previous contact, transparent hand/weapon model, even crouching and remaining still -  they still see you as they would without the power being active.

2. got toxin-poisoned, died, got revived in a resurrection machine, the toxin-level hud bar is stuck on the screen.

[6740b1cbb3398ThiefsieFool]

Indeed, thanks for clarifying ThiefsieFool, I've worked it all out in the meantime of my original posts and I agree it's a good, balanced system (though it feels to me a destroyed camera should perhaps spawn more than one or two fodder enemies to make it a little more tactically meaningful).

Glad to see you're still around, so using the opportunity I have to say I have not had this much fun with a computer game since the time of The Dark Project and Original System Shock 2 releases. Secmod is terrific and enhances on the original in a subtle, non-canon breaking ways from what I gathered so far, a great job.

I'm about to venture into the additional level in Hydroponics; so far, coupled with some orthodox graphic updates, enemy health randomiser, vague health bars and 'fire the drummer' mods, it's pure joy to re-experience the classic after so many years.


On a side note I think I may have found a bug or two:

1. unless I'm missing something, the tier 4 'invisibility' psi power does not seem to work: creatures (hybrids, midwifes and monkey in hydroponics is what I tested) always spot me. No shots fired, no previous contact, transparent hand/weapon model, even crouching and remaining still -  they still see you as they would without the power being active.

2. got toxin-poisoned, died, got revived in a resurrection machine, the toxin-level hud bar is stuck on the screen.

Well fodder isn't necessarily what happens since a level's ecologies can spawn droids or assassins or whatever comes to get you during a security alert, you can have a maintenance droid show up in the main hub of Hydroponics for instance, which is rather exciting since they are never seen in that area outside of security alerts.
And thank you, enhancing the original for later playthroughs was what I had in mind all along.

Toxin bug is something from the original I believe? Though it might be fixed by now in SCP.
Invisibility bug seems to be a new script feature getting broken somehow... it was supposed to make invisibility only work against creatures and not against robots, should probably revert that to vanilla behavior (no scripts, invisible to all AIs) until the real issue is found.

[6740b1cbb3525voodoo47]

I think I remember that toxicity fix, should be easy to add.

[6740b1cbb36d2Ramsey sparrow]

Regarding the destroyed camera spawns, sounds good the way you describe it, although admittedly I don’t think I encountered anything but a hybrid or two so far. I’ll keep an eye out.

The toxin bug only appeared once; I could not recreate it, so may be a case of it being a combination with something else, no big deal.
However if there’s anyway to get the invisibility Power fixed, it would be grand as it can be quite essential on higher difficulty playthroughs (I’m on hard, with randomised health leaning gently towards statistical reduction rather than increase and it’s already a fair challenge at times)

Any plans on updating soon? Seeing that  I’m currently midway through the game, wandering if there may be a point to stop and wait before proceeding.

[6740b1cbb37e3voodoo47]

both are gamesys fixes, so compatible with old saves - I could fix this up fairly quickly, as long as TF tells me what needs to be done with the invisibility issue.

[6740b1cbb3ac3Ramsey sparrow]

Also, out of curiosity, how long in combined time would you say it took you to create secmod in its core?

Both Secmod and SCP are fantastic work,, though I do lean towards secmod as a returning player, for that enchanced gameplay elements - you seem to have managed to implement them quite deeply without ruining the feel and balance of the original, so again, hats off to all you guys.

both are gamesys fixes, so compatible with old saves - I could fix this up fairly quickly, as long as TF tells me what needs to be done with the invisibility issue.

That’d be great.

[6740b1cbb3bdbRamsey sparrow]

Perhaps if creatures-only script doesn’t work for whatever reason, a different kind of penalty could be applied to counter, i,e. only invisible when standing still, for less time or something along similar lines.

[6740b1cbb3cdeThiefsieFool]

Restoring the metaprops Inviso and Invisible to the vanilla defaults should fix it. These should be the defaults I think.


[inviso1.png expired]
[inviso2.png expired]

[6740b1cbb3e15ThiefsieFool]

So I've edited the last shocksec.gam to restore invisibility to vanilla mechanics, it works fine and the transparent hand models are still there probably because playerscript handles them, so that's nice. This should be usable for fixing runs in progress.

Buuuuuuut I've noticed the "invisibility activated/deactivated" voiceover sounds don't play, so that needs to be fixed. I think it's some kind of sound schema limit issue, was there a fix for that?
[shocksec.GAM expired]

[6740b1cbb3ee7voodoo47]

there definitely is a limit, 256 I think?

[6740b1cbb402fThiefsieFool]

If that's still an issue in newdark then we might have to cut out some unused sounds in order to make room for the psi voiceover sounds, but let's figure out first if that is really why the sounds won't play.

[6740b1cbb410bvoodoo47]

I'm very sure it is, ZB had to work around it in the Community Patch if memory serves.

[6740b1cbb4284ZylonBane]

Yes, SCP replaces several device schemas that are only used a few places in the entire game (like the telephone use schema) with script controlled sounds to free up schema slots.

reload_schemas will tell you if you've exceeded the available slots.

[6740b1cbb4364ThiefsieFool]

Well I've got 264 schemas going on so that's gonna take some work to fix.

[6740b1cbb4482ZylonBane]

Glancing over the SCP change list, looks like I've deleted the following schemas and replaced them with sound traps or other script-played sounds:
- ShodanDoor, ShodanDoor2 (set on the walls/floors/etc that fall away during the SHODAN meeting)
- act_cheese (cheeseborger consume sound; never used in vanilla)
- Telephone
- CmptrNacelle (engine nacelle activation)
- SpaceShield (shield deactivation)

[6740b1cbb4571Ramsey sparrow]

Perhaps freeing up a slot by removing the slightly out of place orgasmic food porn sigh the character gives our when consuming food?

[6740b1cbb4883Ramsey sparrow]

So I've edited the last shocksec.gam to restore invisibility to vanilla mechanics, it works fine and the transparent hand models are still there probably because playerscript handles them, so that's nice. This should be usable for fixing runs in progress.

Buuuuuuut I've noticed the "invisibility activated/deactivated" voiceover sounds don't play, so that needs to be fixed. I think it's some kind of sound schema limit issue, was there a fix for that?

Thanks TF!

[6740b1cbb4bd7ThiefsieFool]

Glancing over the SCP change list, looks like I've deleted the following schemas and replaced them with sound traps or other script-played sounds:
- ShodanDoor, ShodanDoor2 (set on the walls/floors/etc that fall away during the SHODAN meeting)
- act_cheese (cheeseborger consume sound; never used in vanilla)
- Telephone
- CmptrNacelle (engine nacelle activation)
- SpaceShield (shield deactivation)

Thanks, that's a good start. I was also looking at TestVoic.sch and if that would free up much.
But there's a weird error when doing reload_schemas with my schema files, it prevents all voices from being created for AIs.
Not sure what it is, possibly something broken with the schema files I have, possibly Newdark just doesn't like them.
Can throw them up here if someone wants to have a look.

[6740b1cbb4d02ZylonBane]

No idea, I never had that happen. The schema syntax is still pretty much black magic to me.

I don't know how much SecMod has changed the schemas, but it might be easiest to start over with the vanilla schemas and re-implement all the changes.

[6740b1cbb4e7bVamp]

Hi there,

I recently found this community/mod after years of playing SS2 vanilla. I have spent the last week or so stuck into Secmod and I just wanted to post and say I absolutely adore this mod. The altered / amped up encounters are really fun, every time I died by getting mobbed or ninja'd from a cheeky spawn point it put a massive grin on my face. 

Every time I thought I had a bug I just hadn't explored enough - you did a great job sticking to the spirit of the original game with the new objectives and the wire puzzles provided a much needed break from hacking every now and again. It's awesome as well that you and the other modders on this site are still active and tweaking your mods all these years after release.

No crashes, no complaints, no notes!

Thanks for putting this out into the world.

[6740b1cbb51bbThiefsieFool]

Hi there,

I recently found this community/mod after years of playing SS2 vanilla. I have spent the last week or so stuck into Secmod and I just wanted to post and say I absolutely adore this mod. The altered / amped up encounters are really fun, every time I died by getting mobbed or ninja'd from a cheeky spawn point it put a massive grin on my face. 

Every time I thought I had a bug I just hadn't explored enough - you did a great job sticking to the spirit of the original game with the new objectives and the wire puzzles provided a much needed break from hacking every now and again. It's awesome as well that you and the other modders on this site are still active and tweaking your mods all these years after release.

No crashes, no complaints, no notes!

Thanks for putting this out into the world.

Hey, thank you for sticking through a quite dense mod, a fun ride with lots of hand-picked additions is what I had in mind.

[6740b1cbb5302ThiefsieFool]

Well I'm not gonna mess around with the schemas yet, but I will mess around with the disruption grenade mechanics, the discussion in another thread reminded me to check on them, and what do you know, while they are much stronger and rarer in Secmod, they don't gain any damage bonuses from skill/mods like in vanilla.

Gamesys that enables damage scaling (changes to Green Core, Disruption Burst)



[shocksec.GAM expired]