fett on 28/8/2007 at 21:44

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Gather round friends and I will share a sad story with you all. The story of a man who played a stunning and brilliant PC game known as System Shock 2 when he was nigh 29 years old. Time stopped. Planets exploded. The Backstreet Boys broke up. It was a good time to be alive.

Alas, the game was uninstalled and re-installed during a period I'll refer to here as 'the plague of XP on all my old games.' The following months can only be described as a dark time of no-CD cracks, re-arranged .ini files, and something known only to me as 'lgntforce'. Whatever.

Finally, with all the classic LGS games re-installed, I fired up SS2 anticipating the mind numbing awesomeness that I had fantasized about daily since 'the plague of XP on all my old games.' It was all I remembered and more.

Until my fucking mouse refused to interact with my inventory screen. If I'd been holding the wrench at the time, I would have soldiered on, but unfortunately, the only thing in my hands was a pistol [poor] with 2 rounds left in it. Unwilling and unable to fight robots with my bare hands, I stopped playing with many tears. After many fixes and losing my religion completely, I tried to play again, only to be met with the same obstacle. Now, Shodan stares at me from the shelf above my desk, taunting me daily. I must play this game again.

The reason I haven't is that, god love you guys, even though there's a great sticky up there concerning how to run SS2 on XP, it's longer than the fucking bible. I've read every page, even come across a few random posts talking about my problem. IIRC the solution involved subverting my sublight engine and re-wiring the air conditioner in the spare bedroom. Or something like that.

Look - I'm an idiot. I can't make heads or tails of most of the fixes in that big, longer than Moses thread up there. So I'm begging someone, anyone. Tell me if there's a way to prevent this cock-up from the outset, or at least explain how to fix it in the middle of a game - and I mean explain it to me like I'm 5 years old. I don't know what a batch file is and I've never coded the algorithms for the config file in the blah blah folder. But if there's a concise, step by step, clear instruction for dealing with this, I promise to bear your children. Or give you one of mine - you pick.

The many is calling - I must answer. The future is in your hands.

D'Arcy on 28/8/2007 at 23:07

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That link will most likely solve your problem. It has come up a number of times already. There are a few threads in here with people complaining about it. As far as I know, they all had a happy ending.

Bjossi on 29/8/2007 at 01:15

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If you got an old computer then it's certainly a good option if you're having unrealistic amounts of problems running it on XP.

fett on 30/8/2007 at 00:26

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Thanks guys. Started it again last night with a little more confidence that I'll actually get to finish it. If not, I'll be back in here whining about it...:p