Shock2-Beta For Dreamcast Found.

la0s on 11/5/2010 at 22:11

Some guy has recovered a beta of System Shock 2 for Dreamcast, AND what appears to be an alpha of Thief2 for Dreamcast. I don't know if this will ever get released but it sure is interesting, if it's not a hoax:

(http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2047)

RocketMan on 12/5/2010 at 03:38

Awesome find! And good work Kolya for jumping on this one....you never know what they may recover off that HDD. If at any point the source for dark was on there, it may yet be possible to recover it from the disk so long as it has not been overwritten. That would be sweet. I wonder how many other hard drives are floating around in unknown hands.

ZylonBane on 12/5/2010 at 03:47

I didn't see anything that immediately looked like source code files. I did notice several .SFD files... these are apparently the Dreamcast's native video format.

Rainalkar on 13/5/2010 at 17:51

Is this of any relevance:

ops1.mis
OPS1___.MIS

Unrelated, maybe we can hope for unstripped missions :)

SiO2 on 13/5/2010 at 21:15

I took a quick look through the Thief2 directory listing. I did not see anything that suggested source code.

I work as a graphics engineer for a major game studio and develop for PS3/X360/PC (DX9 and DX11). If we do manage to get any source code I'd probably be able to do something with it, though I imagine it would be a lot of work and I don't expect it to be easy.

vorob on 20/5/2010 at 20:07

Still no files uploaded? Incredible...

kidmystik101 on 6/6/2010 at 03:39

So what's the going rate from dreamcasts these days? I'd be very interested in getting my hands on one if this ever sees the light of day.

Christ it's been a while since I've been here :sweat:

Kolya on 6/6/2010 at 13:06

Somewhere between $50 - $100 ((http://www.google.com/products?q=sega+dreamcast+console) link). Why would you want to play it on a DC though?

kidmystik101 on 7/6/2010 at 02:56

Possibility for additional content, content that was cut from the final release of SS2, retro/wank factor, etc.

Plus it'd be nice to own a peice of gaming history.

Kolya on 7/6/2010 at 11:54

Chances for additional game content are slim. I'm quite sure this is a regular PC version, meant to run under WinCE on the Dreamcast. I wrote a bit more about that (http://www.strangebedfellows.de/index.php?topic=1947.msg20093#msg20093) here.
Note that most resource files date to July 1999, just as on any PC install. The files that have a later date (August 2000) are CRF files from the official 2.3 patch, with a ZIP extension.

If this ever gets released and if they get it to run on a DC and if the changes necessary for a DC game controller were ever finished and if the game doesn't lag due to WinCE's incompatibilities with the hardware, THEN you'd have an unmoddable vanilla SS2 on a DC you still need to buy.

Let me start again: If this ever gets released it might be of technical interest.