ZylonBane on 26/2/2013 at 18:14
On the System Shock 2 main menu screen, amongst the scrolling sea of binary digits, there is a tiny non-binary sequence of letters, tucked away in a dark corner, that flashes briefly in and out of existence.
Inline Image:
http://shtupmod.net/images/menu_der.png"DER". I have not been able to figure out what this means or might be a reference to. So, any guesses?
terrannova on 27/2/2013 at 14:55
I think I've seen that before way back, perhaps the initials of one of the developers? Check the credit screen! :D
Nameless Voice on 1/3/2013 at 00:05
... I think I saw a 2!
jtr7 on 1/3/2013 at 06:41
Man, I can't pin it down to anything, either. If it is someone's initials, they aren't credited anywhere official as having worked or tested the game. Unless it's a dare or a bet and someone put in someone else's initials. If it's "RED" backwards, that also doesn't mean much on our end. I don't have a copy of the game (I know!), but I assume the background images are in interface.crf? I'd like to look at 'em. If the YouTube uploads of the game weren't compressed badly, even on 720px, I'd just look there. There is no person named in the credits with corresponding first and last names, and while "der" coincidentally appears a few times within names, that also means nothing. It'll nag at me, but I don't mind. Is anyone in contact with Michael Swiderek?
miko508 on 3/3/2013 at 21:31
DER files are bits of binary code that are used for security certificates and private keys.
More information can be found here (fourth paragraph down):
(
https://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-converter.html)
Within the BEGIN/END statements of a DER binary file, the characters "DER" would appear. It seems to me that the programmers of System Shock 2 used a DER binary file as the menu background.
Mystery solved?
