Kolya on 2/7/2007 at 12:37
overthanet, just throwing cdshock.exe at IDA will achieve nothing. It won't just magically spit out the source code. You need to be a programmer in whatever language the program was written in, to interpret it's results and work on it, and even then - from all I've heard SS1 is a hacky piece that gives people with intricate knowledge of the matter a headache.
overthanet on 2/7/2007 at 20:31
Damn, well, yea I understand it's a bit tricky, but it could be done. Does someone know if toxicfrog and the other one are still around? And also, the guy who was making ss1 modding tools, did he get to make a map editor for ss1?
Bjossi on 2/7/2007 at 21:04
If there was a functional map editor available, I think it would be quite obvious here on the SShock forums. ;)
overthanet on 2/7/2007 at 22:31
Well, I meant, is the guy who was working on ss1 modding tools still working on them? The last post on the subject is from 2005.
Bjossi on 2/7/2007 at 22:36
We can always hope so, but 2005 was long time ago. :erm:
Yellow on 3/7/2007 at 06:30
I believe those screen shots are from the System Shock to Half-Life project - a search on TTLG should point you in the right direction. You might also want to check out TSSHP ((
http://tsshp.sourceforge.net/)). They made considerable progress reversing SS1 and have some resources available.
As others have said, IDA Pro does require considerable hand-holding during the disassembly process to identify code segments etc. Best find someone who has already started it, if possible.
overthanet on 4/7/2007 at 00:18
Hello dvwjr,
If your sources are correct, then there is work being done on the ss1 executable, by means of a native win32 pòrt, if Im not mistaken, or unless those screenshots belong to an obscure cdshock.exe or sshock.exe from the original release. I didnt understand when you said, "a modified dos CDSHOCK from 1994", did you mean a current modification of the 1994 original cdshock.exe or another beta-like executable from that time? If it's the former, I would like to contact the team working on that effort. Maybe merging it with the defunct tssh would produce more coherent output? I donwloaded the hack project, it still has bugs and crashes often, but the gl rendering exe works very smoothly, way better than the original exe file.
icemann on 4/7/2007 at 07:04
I recall that someone was reverse engineering the source code via some method a fair while back. Cant recall the name of the person however, and there weren`t many posts made on the issue at the time. I know everyone here would love to see the source code.
You could always download the last version of TSSHP and continue the work they started. Though the kinds of work they had left to do was upto the hardest parts (AI, gravity, weapons implementation etc etc). All other aspects of the game had been finished off pretty much. If only that project hadn`t died. It would have been completed by this stage.
Considering that console roms (super metroid, Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger etc) have been successfully hacked and had level editors released for them I cant see why this couldn`t succeed. Would just need a big time investment.
cosmicnut on 4/7/2007 at 10:00
Quite often you will find some of the text strings used in the game, as text either in a resource file or the main exe. All it takes is a little time to find them.
Maps could be possible but the problem you have are events. Things like destrying CPU node probably have code behind them they would not be simple to modify without the full source. Without these kinds of events, new maps would turn into Doom style shootem ups.
Most of the older ROM games are much simpler. You would only need to write new code when you wanted to create new monsters. Writing a level requires decoding of the map data format (not a simple job) but once its done you can create new levels. With SS1 once you've done a map you then needs to thread some kind of story and event structure. Not easy, even with the official tools
