Vigil on 18/10/2006 at 14:30
It's complete with everything for English, though the movies and sound files for the French and German versions have to be downloaded separately.
Sgt_BFG on 18/10/2006 at 14:36
Cool, downloaded it now, works almost smoothly :thumb: apart from some error about not being able to open com2 port and the intro scene graphics going haywire :(
fitzgerald_ed on 18/10/2006 at 20:34
Grrrr I still can't get it to work for more than 5-10 minutes :(
Screen still corrupts in the same way after trying numerous combinations of resolution packs and VDMS tweaks etc etc etc...
Will keep tinkering and see if anything good comes!
EDIT: May have fixed it thanks to
ripa's post on the SS1 XP FAQ!!
Quote:
You can bypass your hardware's VESA implementation with dgvesa, part of the dgVoodoo glide wrapper. Running System Shock with dgvesa allows it to use the same refresh rates all Windows programs use. System Shock ran perfectly at 800x600 120Hz with doublescanning (no flicker or nasty scanlines!). You can even run it in windowed mode. Also, dgvesa eliminates the need for mouse2kv.
You can get dgVoodoo 1.40+ at (
http://dege.freeweb.hu/) Installing it is quite simple: just extract it to your System Shock directory. You can configure it by running dgVoodooSetup.exe. My settings: Platform: DOS; Global tab: Fullscreen mode, 32-bit, Working in VDD mode, Hide console checked, Set mouse focus to application checked; VESA tab: Use built-in VESA support checked, refresh freq 60Hz (not the same thing as refresh rate), and 4096kb video memory. Finally, to enable dgvesa, you need to run dgvesa.com before cdshock.exe and without mouse2kv. It's simple with a batch file. My cdshock.bat contains just two lines: dgvesa.com and cdshock.exe. Run the batch file with VDMsound for great audio!
If System Shock crashes with dgvesa when starting a new game, try running System Shock without dgvesa, create a new game, set it to high resolution, save the game, and finally restart System Shock with dgvesa, and load the savegame.
Your refresh rate might still be just 60Hz because of Windows XP. In that case you need to force it higher. I've always used RefreshForce, but I think it can also be done with the default ATi and nVidia control panels somehow.
(
http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/5038/ohnoesxb1.jpg)
Vigil on 24/10/2006 at 11:01
DGVoodoo does indeed give good results - although windowed mode is a little finicky on mine, I needed to set the timing to 45hz otherwise the game and sound ran in extremely smooth slow motion. Fullscreen mode didn't care about the timing at all though, and was quick and responsive - after an initial few seconds of super-speed while the timer settled down (but that occurs for me with the regular way of running the game too).
In addition to which, playing the intro movie or the death movie causes the cursor to disappear from the main menu - and any subsequent attempt to load a hi-res saved game will cause the program to crash (quite a big problem when it comes to dying!) Starting a new game afterwards and *then* switching to hi-res mode works fine. There's also some graphical corruption in the movies.
<del>I bumped into these problems with the 1.50beta version though, perhaps 1.40+ is more stable in these regards.</del> Nope, exactly the same results with both versions.
I cannot determine where DGVoodoo keeps the settings you enter in the setup application - there's no ini-file generated in the directory. If we could find some way of providing sensible default settings for SS1 (and had the author's permission) then dgvoodoo could be distributed as part of System Shock Portable.
Edit: Haha ok, according to the readme DGVoodoo stores its settings in the DLL file itself. Those wacky hungarians. But that means, in theory, that a preconfigured version can be packaged with SS:P that should work out of the box with most systems. Assuming, that is, that the VESA timing doesn't need to be tweaked depending on your CPU; and assuming there's a cure for the movies crashing the game.
Edit #2: Right: if you tick "Enable Mode13h" on the VESA tab, then the missing cursor and video crashing bugs go away - this option tells the driver that it should handle regular 320x200 VGA mode as well as the VESA modes so presumably it prevents problems caused by switching handling back and forth. As an added bonus, it also means that the 320x200 screens will appear windowed rather than fullscreen when you have windowed mode selected. AND it also appears to cure the slow-motion problems in windowed mode for me. Win!
<del>The only problem remaining is that the driver does not like alt-tabbing very much at all - when you tab back to System Shock it stops receiving keyboard input. Haven't worked out how to fix this one yet, and it makes windowed mode a wee bit pointless.</del> Hey I know, how about I try things before typing. Turning the "Enable Ctrl-Alt" option on fixes this problem entirely.
Vigil on 24/10/2006 at 12:57
* <a href="http://www.strangebedfellows.de/index.php/topic,211.0.html">Download System Shock Portable 0.5 from this thread</a> and install it wherever you want it.
* <a href="http://dege.freeweb.hu/">Download DGVoodoo 1.40+ from this site</a> and extract it to your System Shock directory.*
* Run DGVoodooSetup.exe:
* At the top of the panel, switch the Platform from "Windows" to "DOS". (This will make a new VESA tab appear and enable a bunch of options on the global tab.)
*
On the Global tab:* Tick "Set mouse focus to application".
* Tick "Enable Ctrl+Alt".
* Toggle Windowed Mode if you would prefer to run System Shock in a window, otherwise leave it as fullscreen.
*
On the VESA tab:* Tick "Use built-in VESA support"
* Tick "Mode 0x13 support"
* Increase refresh frequency to 70hz (as high as it will go) for maximum smoothness.
* Set emulated video memory to 4096.
* Create a new System Shock.bat file that contains the following:
Code:
@echo off
dgvesa
cdshock
* Run the batch file.
* Enjoy the game!
*1.40+ seems to give much better performance than 1.50beta.
There's only a few files that are actually required from the dgvoodoo package (dgvoodoosetup.exe, dgvesa.com, glide2x.dll and glide2x.ovl as far as I can make out), so this can be cleaned up a lot if an SS:P version is put together using it.
Crion on 25/10/2006 at 21:54
omgomgomgomg
:o
words... failing....
Kolya... love... long time!
Vigil... less so!
It works. It fucking works. I've tried getting it to work before so this is just wonderful. Seriously. <3 x bajillion
0.5 works fantastic but when I added DGVoodoo, the music started skipping and it just ran worse overall. The music did sound better but the framerate was irritating (but not unplayable). It wasn't Vsync'd either but I don't know if that could be fix any. Using the mouse was... odd. Without DGVoodoo, it was really slow. With, it was really fast. Any tips to adjust it?
fitzgerald_ed on 25/10/2006 at 22:07
Hey all,
Crion - Had the same problem myself initially but I found that I could fix this by setting the VESA refresh frequency to 60Hz and NOT 70Hz as suggested by Vigil. I found that 70Hz gave me choppy performance and a skippy-jumpy mouse. 60Hz is fine however. Try that :)
On another note I still get random errorless crashes to Windows but these are now few and far between since adding dgVoodoo into the mix and so I definately think that this is a worthwhile inclusion to SS-Portable :thumb:
Crion on 25/10/2006 at 22:29
Hmm. Doesn't seem to help but I think it's something else. The settings don't seem to be saving for DGVoodoo.
Something was read-only in the directory but I changed that, tried changing the settings, gave it another go. Might be resolution bound. I tried 320x200 and it ran much better.
Anyway, I can run it fine without DGVoodoo. Maybe have multiple .bat files to choose from. Some with dgvesa on, some without.
Specs for whatever... 1.3Ghz AMD Duron, 768 MB SDRAM, NVIDIA GeForce 6600 (driver "ForceWare" 81.95).
Vigil on 25/10/2006 at 22:59
Quote Posted by fitzgerald_ed
Crion - Had the same problem myself initially but I found that I could fix this by setting the VESA refresh frequency to 60Hz and NOT 70Hz as suggested by Vigil. I found that 70Hz gave me choppy performance and a skippy-jumpy mouse. 60Hz is fine however. Try that :)
Ah ok, I guess that does have a significant effect - I only had performance trouble with the setting when using dgvoodoo 1.50 (and had to keep it at 45hz to be playable), but when I reverted to 1.40+ it ran smooth as silk. What are your computer specs, by the way? For what it's worth I'm running an Athlon 1700+ with a GFTi4200.
Quote Posted by Crion
The settings don't seem to be saving for DGVoodoo.
The settings do save...somewhat... it's just they appear like they revert when you start up dgvoodoosetup.exe because it starts up with the Windows mode selected rather than DOS mode (thereby hiding all of the settings you changed). All of your previous settings are still preserved though.
