SS2 to appear on GOG.com soon?

SuicideMachine on 16/2/2013 at 21:45

Quote Posted by Simplex

If I am not mistaken, they disabled the intro movie by adding "skip_intro" to cam.cfg.

Or it's like voodoo said:

Quote Posted by voodoo47

the GOG package is the classic game, patched up with ss2tool 4.0, nothing less, nothing more. I might be just a fixer guy, but I know my files well. it looks like they ran the build at least once as the sound options are not set to their defaults, and the intro animation that only plays on the first run is already disabled.

If you remove skip_intro and run a game, it's going to get added at the end of the file after first run. Well, at least that's what happens on ssTool 3.5, so I'm guessing it's the same for any newer version.

Also... first post on the forum!:cheeky: And now I'm going to update my ssTool... bleigh.

Enchantermon on 16/2/2013 at 22:48

Quote Posted by SuicideMachine

That's the game's default function.

MegaBrutal on 16/2/2013 at 23:29

Quote Posted by SuicideMachine

If you remove skip_intro and run a game, it's going to get added at the end of the file after first run.

Yes, it seems the "techninjas" didn't even bother to reset the game to its initial state before packaging it...

Anyway, there's something I'm missing here. Do they have full rights to the game (including modifying the game engine at source code level), or do they only have rights to publish it? I really wouldn't like to paint the Devil on the wall (does this expression exist in English?), but I'm not even sure that they have the necessary rights to publish New Dark. Not like I would be an expert of copyrights or anything...

elwing on 17/2/2013 at 12:23

that's an interesting question, since newdark seems to be an illegal modification based on the leaked sourcecode... do they really have the right to sell that with the game assets? it seems to me that would make newdark "legit" if they use it, no?

MegaBrutal on 17/2/2013 at 14:28

It depends. IANAL, but(t) thinking with pure logic, rights for publishing, repackaging, and modifying the game engine are three different things. The first would only allow to publish the game with the original assets. Repackaging allows them to ship a mod-ready installation (as they did) - as far as I'm concerned, applying mods are nothing more than adding files and modifying some config files. But modifying the game engine at source code level is an entirely different thing which requires different rights. However, if they do have the rights to do that, then - by claiming New Dark is their own work - they just made it legit. (Le Corbeau - assuming he made the modifications and not just published them - has no option to claim any copyrights since he didn't have the rights to modify the game in the first place. From now on, New Dark rightfully belongs to Night Dive.)

Aside from the above problem, there is another. I assume Night Dive doesn't have the modified New Dark source code, which would arise problems in the future, if there will be a need for further improvements of the game engine. What will happen another 10 years later? What if future platforms would require further modifications to the game engine to run flawlessly? Unless they don't reimplement New Dark on their own or reverse engineer the machine code - either would be very hard I guess - there will be no option to further modify the engine. Not having the New Dark source code basically means they can't do anything with it. For example, in my humble opinion it would be nice to port the game to different platforms (such as Linux :p), but they can't do that either. :(

Bjossi on 18/2/2013 at 00:01

Quote Posted by MegaBrutal

Aside from the above problem, there is another. I assume Night Dive doesn't have the modified New Dark source code, which would arise problems in the future, if there will be a need for further improvements of the game engine. What will happen another 10 years later? What if future platforms would require further modifications to the game engine to run flawlessly? Unless they don't reimplement New Dark on their own or reverse engineer the machine code - either would be very hard I guess

The people actually behind NewDark will probably maintain it, and if GOG/Night Dive don't update to new versions on their end players can update their installation themselves.

And yes, disassembling compiled code is extremely time consuming. If you told those "techninjas" to reverse engineer the Dark engine, whether new or old, they would promptly shoot themselves in the head.

Valet2 on 18/2/2013 at 10:55

Quote Posted by Bjossi

If you told those "techninjas" to reverse engineer the Dark engine, whether new or old, they would promptly shoot themselves in the head.

"... I can't change the code. Fans, publishers, sorry..."

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWBQ5HYjuoo)

TheEnigmaticT on 18/2/2013 at 11:37

Hey, all. This is TheEnigmaticT, out from the limbo of mod queue. What we'll do, then, is get the acknowledgements together in the game's readme file as well as on the gamecard. I'll talk to the Product team at GOG and we'll probably get that put in place this week sometime, although I doubt we'll push out an "updated build" notification if all we're doing is changing the readme.txt file.

While I'm on the topic, though, if anyone in the forums has anything else that they think should go in the game--whether it's goodies or a patch/fix recommendation--hit me up and I'll do my best to get the word passed along.

Thanks for being understanding about this, and apologies about how this all launched; based off what we knew from Night Dive, we did not expect that we'd be angering the core community whose work has done so much to keep the game alive over the years.

-TET

voodoo47 on 18/2/2013 at 11:52

there is one incorrect setting in cam_ext.cfg (related to video cropping), and one in cam.cfg (skip_intro is present, that means the irrational logo animation is never shown). these are pretty minor though, and will not really affect the game functionality.

you could readd the (currently missing) binds though - just ask Kolya, pretty sure he will have no problem with sharing them.

//let me be more precise; in cam_ext.cfg, change

Code:

; (thief) list of movies to exclude from cropping (only used if "crop_movies" is enabled)
movie_crop_exclude credits.avi+success.avi+death.avi
; (shock) list of movies to exclude from cropping (only used if "crop_movies" is enabled)
;movie_crop_exclude intro.avi+credits.avi

into

Code:

; (thief) list of movies to exclude from cropping (only used if "crop_movies" is enabled)
;movie_crop_exclude credits.avi+success.avi+death.avi
; (shock) list of movies to exclude from cropping (only used if "crop_movies" is enabled)
movie_crop_exclude intro.avi+credits.avi

and in cam.cfg, delete skip_intro

also, as already mentioned, make sure that "the game has been patched to ver. 2.4 (NewDark)" or something similar is added to the (http://www.gog.com/gamecard/system_shock_2) game card - this will a) clear any potential (http://www.gog.com/forum/system_shock_2/whats_this_i_hear_about_vershion_24/page1) user confusion, b) make sure the mystery modder sees that his work is being used for the benefit of all. and the mention of ss2tool would be nice as well (as the current build is using all the ss2tool settings and file structure).

almost forgot - you might want to remove the "play the multiplayer with up to 3 friends" advertisement, as the multiplayer is quite broken, and while it's not impossible to complete a co-op, it requires a lot of patience (and reloading).

polytourist97 on 18/2/2013 at 13:04

@TheEnigmaticT

I submitted a suggestion to GOG (as username jammonstrald) to include fixed keybinds files, which I happily provided. However, I understand that could get lost in the shuffle, so if you would like to include those in the game, I would be happy to send them again to you or whoever would need them.

Or, you could also just link to/make mention of the latest SS2Tool (currently version 5.0) which has the keybinds, as well as fixes to the issues voodoo47 mentioned (unless I am mistaken).