System Shock 1 with Mac assets?

[673fe5888a284Hogdalen]

Hi!

I just bought System Shock 1 Enhanced Edition, but it's not quite as I remember it. Has anyone attempted to mod it with the hi-res UI and portraits from the Mac version?

[673fe5888a47fvoodoo47]

I think it would have been done long time ago, should it be possible/easy.

[673fe5888a582Hogdalen]

Heh. I think you mean 'should it be easy'. But fair enough. I suppose I should be content that the Mac version is now perfectly playable in SheepShaver. Perhaps it would be easier to hack mouselook into that version.

[673fe5888a844unn_atropos]

There are hi-res portraits?

[673fe5888a990Hogdalen]

Yeah, if you want to call 256-color, 640 x 480 pixels "hi-res". But I think they are twice the resolution of the DOS portraits.

Screen from Mac SS1 running under Sheepshaver.

EDIT: Added an attempt at a comparison shot from the DOS version.

[673fe5888aa9dvoodoo47]

I think hacking the higher resources out would be more viable.

[673fe5888abd6Hogdalen]

Some more comparisons, just to show the cool title screens and a Mac screenshot with correct gamma.
[title.png expired]
[lookingglass.png expired]
[origin.png expired]
[rebecca.png expired]

[673fe5888ad5bGawain]

I looked into this sometime ago. Most of the graphic assets seems to be in .rsrc files. I'm not Mac OS expert, but I think those can be extracted quite easily.
I will have to take another look someday.

[673fe5888af1bZylonBane]

It would be nice to at least have the high-res assets. Perhaps a future revival of Citadel Conversion Project could use them.

Still, it doesn't seem impossible to make the DOS version use them. SS1's GUI code is actually more sophisticated than SS2's, in that it will automatically scale all HUD elements to the same relative size on-screen no matter what the screen resolution is. In low-res modes the log portraits get scaled down, and in high-res modes they get scaled up. It seems likely that if the higher-res Mac log portraits were hacked into the DOS version, a la the high-res object textures, it would properly use them with no further modifications.

Anyone know what tool Gigaquad used to modify the resource files?

[673fe5888b08dJosiahJack]

Ooh, higher res portraits for the log files would be much appreciated for the Citadel Remake project.  If anyone has them available for download, please let me know.

Incidentally, they look washed out on the Mac version.  Is that normal, or just how the screenshots turned out?

[673fe5888b31cZylonBane]

Incidentally, they look washed out on the Mac version.  Is that normal, or just how the screenshots turned out?

I'm trying to figure out how you noticed the log icon being washed out while not noticing the entire screen being washed out.

[673fe5888b41cJosiahJack]

Incidentally, the screenshots look washed out ...sigh...ambiguity.

[673fe5888b58eHikari]

The Mac logs and text are actually cleaner looking even in the gamma corrected shots. you won't get crysis level out of any of it, but I really do hope these assets can be ported into the windows version gog sells.

[673fe5888b6c7Gawain]

I extracted some of the resources using DeRez (comes with Xcode). Next step is to try to convert them to usable formats. Hopefully they are the same as in DOS version (reversed byte order perhaps). I will look into this later.

[673fe5888b7a8Hogdalen]

That is excellent news, Gawain! Looking forward to hearing your progress.

[673fe5888b88dJosiahJack]

Awesome!  It'd be great to use them for the remake.

[673fe5888b9d9icemann]

Am I the only one who thinks the PC's assets look better?

[673fe5888bb2bunn_atropos]

I wouldn't say better, but judging from the two portraits I've seen here, the mac versions look a bit more like they were drawn/painted instead of beeing photographs. Painted portraits may have a stronger association with games in the fantasy setting or the character design of early adventures, so they may seem a bit unfitting in a scifi game. Though I never had an issue with the drawn portraits in System Shock 2. They worked in favour of the cyberpunk style world, in my opinion.

[673fe5888bc5aicemann]

Most definitely in the case of SS2. But in SS1's case, they went for the more realistic, photo approach. Gives the game it's own unique style artistically. Or to be more accurate, in the PC versions case, by the look of it.

[673fe5888bd3dZylonBane]

Whoever was in charge of retouching the Mac version log portraits seemed to believe that all women should wear red lipstick.

[673fe5888be0aCarrot]

That doesn't narrow it down.

[673fe5888bed9ZylonBane]

Uh... what doesn't narrow what down? Were we trying to narrow something down?

[673fe5888c148Yankee Clipper]

Whoever [...]

[673fe5888c298Hogdalen]

This is pure speculation on my part, but if the Mac image resource format is not the same as in DOS , it might be PICT (v2).

Some more information on the PICT format.

Of course it might well be less work to take screenshots of the game running in SheepShaver rather than working out and converting the original format.