How To Run System Shock 2 on Windows XP/2000

Bio-Wrath on 9/11/2004 at 02:22

No, but I will check it. Maybe it will make a difference. Its anyone's guess.

TheNightTerror on 9/11/2004 at 02:36

I'm not sure it would do you much good, but hey, try everything once. :p

Bio-Wrath on 9/11/2004 at 03:35

I set it, and it works...but the background [desktop] still looks all cruddy. Any advice?

TheNightTerror on 9/11/2004 at 04:00

Well, you shouldn't be able to see it while the game's running, and everything should go back to normal when you close SS2 . . . :erm:

Would you be able to use print screen to get a shot of the desktop looking all cruddy, then post a link to it here, perhaps? Maybe someone will be able to ID the problem when they see it for themselves. :)

Bio-Wrath on 9/11/2004 at 04:19

Not sure how to do that.

TheNightTerror on 9/11/2004 at 04:41

I believe these instructions should get you where you need to go, if you want to try it. :)

Look on your keyboard, there should be a 'print screen' or 'prt sc' key somewhere on there, it's in the top row of keys on both computers I could check. Pressing it will make a copy of the screen as it currently appears. Open paint, (or Irfanview if you have it) and paste the image in it. Save the file as a .jpg file, (resize it to 640x480 with Irfanview if you can) then upload it to a free picture hosting site. Et voila! We will all be able to see just what 'cruddy' looks like. :)

Sir Alex on 9/11/2004 at 11:08

After over a year of trying to track System Shock 2 down, on and off, I finally found a copy and spent three hours getting it to work with XP last night.
Then today I find out that one of my friends here at college had the game all along.
:sweat:
ANYWAYS - I managed to get things working by myself, but figured I should post the problem/solution here that others might be helped.

PROBLEM:
So I'm running Windows XP with Service Packs 1 and 2 installed. My computer is of fairly high quality - it runs Doom 3 and says thank you, so there are no issues with memory or sysreqs. SS2 installed just peachy, patched fine, rand and played fine up to making the class choice (Marines/Navy/OSP), whereupon it crashed to desktop and delivers the error message
"Starport.avi: buff len of 80 exceeded by 82 at (my path to SS2, installed in My Documents)"
Hiding the movie files away in another directory, or deleting them entirely, did not fix this (surprising to me, as I thought the error was in the movie files... but apparently not. As a sidenote starport.avi ran just fine on its own in Windows Media Player). Rebooting did not fix it. Reinstalling the game did not fix it. Reinstalling and running just v1.15 did not fix it. Changing the memory values in the config did nothing. The other tips from this thread that looked remotely of usefulness did nothing.

SOLUTION:
Install SS2 in C:\games\Sshock2. The default directory. Yeeep. All those other reinstalls I did were in a directory in My Documents, alongside my other games, but when I slipped up and hit the default directory, the game worked fine. This was in the midst of me testing other things (patch version, to be precise) so when the game started working I didn't even suspect the directory to be the cause until a few more hours of trial and error narrowed it down. I guess it just really, really likes that default directory. Long live C:\games, or something.

Bio-Wrath on 9/11/2004 at 14:09

Quote Posted by TheNightTerror

Here, hope this works: javascript:window.open('http://tinypic.com/kqi9v','FullView','width=700,height=500,resizable,scrollbars,location'); void(''); ....chances are it won't so here:

(http://tinypic.com/kqi9v)

The "verifcation" the part that lookks red? That shows up clear but how everything else looks...looks like that...cruddy.

David on 9/11/2004 at 14:27

The buff len of 80 exceeded error messaged is caused by the path (including the filenames) exceeding 80 characters in length.

I would suggest that installing games to My Documents is not the best idea.

Bio-Wraith - that looks like it was trying to run in software mode. Open up the file cam.cfg from the Shock2 directory using Notepad and check that the line game_hardware is equal to 1. If it is not set it to 1. In addition ensure that game_screen_depth is set to 16.

TheNightTerror on 9/11/2004 at 14:43

:eek: Yup, that would most definitely be cruddy. To put it mildly. I don't think 256 colors is going to help you, if anything it could be helping to cause that lovely mess. Make sure you uncheck that particular compatibility mode, I highly doubt it's going to help you.

Hopefully David's suggestions get you where you want to go, though! *crosses fingers*