JJ Mikkolainen on 22/7/2001 at 17:17

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Are there any plans for upgrading UUW, or even both of them, to a more... ah, contemporary appearance?

I know Arx but I'd still love to explore the Stygian Abyss with Dark engine for example. If someone's planning such thing it certainly hasn't caught my eye.

I just thought how fantastic that would be.

[ July 22, 2001: Message edited by: Outsider ]

JJ Mikkolainen on 22/7/2001 at 17:51

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Thanks a million!

Screenshots look amazing. I actually recognize many of the places. You just sold Unreal Tournament to me.

[ July 22, 2001: Message edited by: Outsider ]

jim the hairy on 23/7/2001 at 17:16

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Hi outsider, and hoping you won't remain so for long :)

There are a few Underworld projects underway at the moment. Brad has already mentioned Zerker's UT maps.

<a href="http://madeira.physiol.ucl.ac.uk/people/jim/games/sshock.html">TSSHP</a> supports Underworld I and II maps up to a point; expect improved object support (decals and 3D models) in the next-but-one version. This is an ongoing project to code a new engine for the Underworlds and System Shock, from scratch. Software-only at the moment, and highly non-optimised at that, so you'll need a fast(ish) machine to get much more than 320x240 out of it. It does do dynamic lighting though ;)

There's some potential for integrating <a href="http://madeira.physiol.ucl.ac.uk/people/jim/games/glen/ss1.html">Glen (Sawyer)'s work</a> for the automatic conversion of System Shock->Shock2 levels into TSSHP proper, and from there proceeding to convert Underworld levels to Thief using DromEd, but that would probably be a lot of work and we haven't got anybody to take it on at the moment.

<a href="http://www.peroxide.dk/">Peroxide</a> have also released an <a href="http://www.peroxide.dk/underworld/">Underworld viewer</a> which uses Direct3D, which is also worth a look. That's not under active development at the moment though.

jim the hairy on 26/7/2001 at 19:15

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Both of those things are definitely slated for future revisions of TSSHP. We haven't yet hammered out the details of the new control system (intended for 0.3.something_or_other) but expect several control styles: classic Underworld (very similar to SS2 inventory mode), classic Shock (for purists and masochists :) ), Thief and Shock2 bimodal, and maybe some others that we think are cool. Plus as much configurability as we can squeeze in, of course.

As you yourself said, TSSHP is not a patch to System Shock but a complete rewrite, so problems with the original renderer don't apply. In fact there are already a couple of hooks to hang hardware acceleration code off; you can in fact compile shack as a GLUT application though it doesn't yet go so far as to actually render anything on the screen ;) When I get round to installing XFree86 4 at home and getting my MesaGL working properly I'll start looking into it in earnest.

Shadowcat on 27/7/2001 at 21:58

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Hey, he went speechless! :)

/me also wishes that TSSHP was Jim's full-time job...