Topic: System Shock Portable - music (and other) issues

So here's the deal. I installed System Shock Portable, enabled the mouselook, higher res textures, and VDM sound. Initially I had some issues with the game crashing when I tried to switch resolutions, but this went away after I disable and then re-enabled the mouselook (this may change, but is working for now).

The problem is that after I fixed that, another issue popped up: wonky music. The music seems to slow and start up at random intervals, play over itself, and just generally sound like it's been run through a drunk filter. I tried uninstalling VDMSound to see if that would fix the issue, but SSP won't launch at all once I do that: I have to have VDM installed just to get to the initial SSP menu. I confirmed that the issue has to do with the resolution switching: sound only gets messed up if I switch away from 320x200.

The good news is that the sound issue isn't present with Dosbox, but since I'm running this on a somewhat underpowered laptop Dosbox lags even at 640x480, so it's not a great option. And on top of THAT, I tried installing the modified Dosbox, only to have it crash on startup. So I switched back to official Doxbox, but launching using Dosbox is no longer an option in the SSP menu.

Any advice on this stuff? Thanks for any help you can provide!

p.s. The "underpowered Dosbox" issue could be solved if I switched to the local powerful desktop, but that's running Windows 7 64-bit. I'm assuming this wouldn't work with that?

DOSBox works just fine under Windows 7 x64.
Unfortunately, you can't run 16-bit applications in a 64-bit operating system, because they don't have NTVDM (the Windows NT Virtual DOS Machine that comes with 32-bit operating systems).  That means that you can't just run the game using NTVDM + VDMSound - DOSBos is your only option on Windows 7.  At least until Malba Tahan finishes his Windows port.

(I fixed your thread title, by the way.)

Thanks! Are there any disavantages to running it in Dosbox other than the performance hit? And does VDMSound offer enhancements other than making it stero?

No, worse performance is the disadvantage of using DOSBox.

VDMSound gives you full support for MPU-401 audio - the best quality midi synthesiser.  Those were actually a midi add-on chip which slotted onto old sound cards, though of course VDMSound uses an emulated one.

Incidentally, DOBox has VDMSound built into it, and it's a newer version than the standalone VDMSound, at that.

Awesome! Got it running great on the Windows 7 machine. Thanks for your help with all this.

p.s. I didn't realize that this project was helmed by TTLGers until today. Figures!

So I switched back to official Doxbox, but launching using Dosbox is no longer an option in the SSP menu.

That's a bug in the SSP launcher which I incidentally noticed yesterday as well.

Description:
After switching to the Gulikoza build of DOSbox and then back to the official DOSbox build, starting in DOSbox is no longer an option.

Fix:
Create an empty file named "dosbox_enabled" in >SYSTEMSHOCK-Portable-v1.0.1\RES\SSP\flags\

EDIT: Fixed with SSP version 1.2

Great! Thanks.

Okay, new issue.

For my paper I'm trying to take a 640 x 480 screenshot of the game with the annotated help on. However, typing alt + o doesn't seem to turn it on, even though its apparently bound to that in the default config file (even with the mouselook mod on). Am I just misreading that? Any idea how to turn that help on? Thanks!

Alt+H is the "Online Help" which you are probably looking for (see ReferenceCard.pdf). It's automatically on in the first medical section and then turns itself off.

Alt+O displays this screen:

(screenshot from the mac version)

That screen is exactly what I'm looking for (sorry if I was unclear). And yeah, alt+o causes exactly nothing to happen. FWIW, I had this issue running it on two different computers, so I don't think it's a bug in the hardware.

Though for the purposes of this non-published project, could just steal that screen!

Go ahead. Notice though that it's from the mac version AND I have doctored in the "Alt" which used to be a mac specific key.
Of course the image was already doctored anyway, since the controls show the character lying down which he clearly is not.

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