System Shock 2 Quest Note Notifier/New Quest Notifier v1.2
28 August 2023
by ZylonBane

Requires SS2 NewDark patch v2.46 or higher.
Compatible with the original SS2 campaign, SCP, SecMod, Return to the UNN, and any other SS2 campaigns or missions.

Here are two mods for notifying the player when quest notes are added.

New Quest Notifier
Displays the message "Note added to PDA." when a new quest is assigned. There is no notification of completed quests.

Quest Note Notifier
Displays an onscreen message with the full note text when quest notes are added and completed, and plays a sound when quests are completed.

If the messages disappear faster than you can read them, remember that you can press "L" at any time during gameplay to display a log of the last dozen or so messages.

Be aware that quest notes triggered by logs are added immediately when you pick up the log, rather than when you've actually read it. This is because the scripting system has no way to know when a log has been read. So you may see some quest notifications pop up before it makes sense for them to.

These scripts support localization. See the readme.txt for each mod for details.

NOTE: Since at least one person seems confused about this, this mod does not cause quest notes to be logged in your PDA. The base game already does that. All this mod does is notify you when one is added.

back then, it was more than adequate, but people are too used to all the quest arrows and similar nowadays.

This is so blatantly useful, it should be part of SS2Tool. Would really help a lot of newbies.

You are already told explicitly what to do at almost every opportunity.  You don't need more prompting.
The notes are there so that you can look them up to remember what you were supposed to be doing next in case you forgot.
Having those notifications pop up just seems redundant.  Fine for a mod, but I don't think that should be in the base game.

Great. Gothic did it that way, and that was satisfactory.

When a quest note is added it manually plays the same beep sound as when all status messages are displayed, so it's a little louder than usual because the same sound is being played twice simultaneously.

When a quest note is marked complete it plays the success sound from the hacking minigame.

I haven't found either to be particularly distracting. The UI is already pretty beepy and bloopy.

Email notifications, cybermods awarded, chemicals needed, keys needed, keys used, item pickups... that beep's not uncommon.

Updated the first post. Added a new minimal version of the mod that just displays a generic notification when quest notes are added. Localization support added.

Agreed, this mod should have been in the final game (thanks ZB for all of your hard work). Most games would benefit from having a little more time spent on them, I suppose, and if the already mostly superb SS2 had had another three months of development, then I'd imagine something like this would have been incorporated.

This community (and website) really is great, the fan-modding/bug-fixing/feature-adding/etc that has been done, and that will no doubt be done in the future for the two System Shock games, is very good and always interesting. I just wish that every good game had a community like this.

I have added this mod to the Newbie Modding Guide.

How come I've never seen this?!

Thanks, ZB.