So I hear there’s this really cool game called System Shock 2 or something. Apparently windows XP thinks it’s the anti-christ cause it wants SS2 to burn in hell and die. Any wise words from a scarred veteran on how to make this game my little bitch? Or just advice on how to make it work with full sound and no crashes would be nice.
The forums have an awful lot of noise and not a lot of signal.
I found this set of instructions to work pretty well on a MacBook Pro running a vanilla XP SP2 installation. I think it should work well on any modern XP machine.
I just played this game recently and had no problems with it at all. I may have run it in compatibility mode though. Perhaps there was a patch or something…can’t remember, but I know it wasn’t a big hassle to get it running.
I tried the compatibility modes first but no joy. Currently the problems are no sound and crashing after training. I’m currently wading through the ttlg forums while waiting for a patch reccomended by the ‘set of instructins’ to download.
I remember having that problem. There are a TON of things that can go wrong on a modern XP PC. Multi-core processors seem to just be the tip of the barrell. For some reason the game kept thinging my video card wasn’t supported. Eventually, I realized it was easier to hall up my old '98 computer and play it on that then go through all the trouble shooting to get the thing to play on an XP machine.
I used the following files to get it running under XP:
shtup_beta5.zip - System Shock 2 Texture Upgrade Project
SS2Models.zip - modesl upgrade
SystemShock2Patch.exe - the 2.3 patch
shock2_xp_2000_fix.zip - a hack to the .exe to make it work under XP
The last 2 are the key ones though. Everything worked flawlessly for me except for one area transition crash late in the game, where I had to switch it all back to a more raw install and get through it, then repatch everything.
Huh. I’ve never needed this. The game works with the regular EXE and a nocd EXE.
Perhaps that’s the key? Copy protection doesn’t like XP, so try the usual place?
That’s quite unusual. I was almost certain one of those contains a fix for that area transition crash, if it’s the one I remember (A texture file with a filename illegal under XP).