26. September 2012, 14:40:52

#10

ToxicFrogQuote

Quote by RocketMan:

TTLG members seem to have discovered this on a French forum and a few have tried it but most are just drooling over it and I'm at work so I can't take a deep dive to see how legit or useful it is.  The feature list is full of win but I'm not the most technically inclined so does anyone care to weigh in on what the significance of this package actually is and how we can use it, if at all? 

For players, the main significance is that installing T1/T2/SS2 just got a lot easier. Install base game, install patch, play. The cutscenes just work, widescreen just works, bloom and HDR just work, you can rebind the mousewheel, etc, etc. It runs a lot better, it looks and sounds a bit nicer, and it requires no effort to get working.

For art modders, builtin support for DDS textures and the like makes both creating and installing the mod a lot easier. It also supports DML patches for the missions and gamesys, which should make patches like Straylight's ADAOB patch easier to deploy, and also makes it feasible to have multiple gamesys and map mods that coexist peacefully with each other (without needing to be manually merged in ShockEd). I don't know if that was previously possible with the maps, but it definitely wasn't with the gamesys.

And for FM designers, it's christmas every day. The editor has been massively improved and a lot of built-in limits have been greatly relaxed. The Thief FM designers on TTLG are already talking about reviving old projects that had be scrapped because the Dark engine of the time couldn't handle them - either running unbearably slow, or just crashing outright.  Mappers are reporting factor-of-ten improvements in map compilation times, and the game loading maps that would previously have been impossible to play almost instantly and running them with buttery smoothness.

It's not just T2 DromEd that's gotten the upgrades, either - ShockEd has gotten the same upgrades. A lot of the issues that made making SS2 FMs a pain are just gone.

I suspect we won't start to see the true benefits of this patch until after the modders and mappers have had a while to sink their teeth into it, at which point we'll start seeing maps that would never have been possible in the old engine, and graphical overhauls that look better than ever.

26. September 2012, 22:11:15

#11

MarvinQuote

Quote by ToxicFrog:

For players, the main significance is that installing T1/T2/SS2 just got a lot easier. Install base game, install patch, play. The cutscenes just work, widescreen just works, bloom and HDR just work, you can rebind the mousewheel, etc, etc. It runs a lot better, it looks and sounds a bit nicer, and it requires no effort to get working.

I don't know what all the fuzz is about, the SS2Tool has done that for ages. Sure, this new patch does a lot cleaner job but on the surface it's pretty much the same. I think it's a bit unfair to all the contributors on this site and TTLG to pretend that Shock2 wasn't playable until this new patch came out (i.e. RPS).
 I guess the modders have to realize its new potential, first.


So, any news on the author? Has Arkane got any Irrational/LGS connections left? Most of those things shouldn't be possible without access to the source code.

26. September 2012, 22:39:29

#12

KolyaQuote

Well for an instance the Broken Use/Shoot Mode Problem seems to have gone. And cutscenes play without a hitch for everyone apparently. And EAX should also be possible on Vista/7 without crooks like ALchemy. These were the 3 major problems that I've heard more than enough about. I think we'll have to rewrite a lot of the guides here.
But yeah, the main improvements seem to have made with the editor. Which is awesome, because that will mean more mods and FMs. Good times.

@JDoran: I'm not the author of SS2MM but of the SS2Tool.

26. September 2012, 22:40:03

#13

JDoranQuote

Quote by Marvin:

I don't know what all the fuzz is about, the SS2Tool has done that for ages. Sure, this new patch does a lot cleaner job but on the surface it's pretty much the same. I think it's a bit unfair to all the contributors on this site and TTLG to pretend that Shock2 wasn't playable until this new patch came out (i.e. RPS).
 I guess the modders have to realize its new potential, first.

I totally agree that people have done *fantastic* work on SS2, both altering/modding it, and making it playable on modern systems, but I don't think the release of this patch cheapens that in any way, except (as you say) for the sites who imply that before this patch the games were all but unplayable on non-period machines. I haven't yet tried this patch on SS2 or Thief 2 (first I was at work, then I had to go 'round a mate's new flat, to help him move his stuff in - always happened when there's something you want to do, never when you're bored  ) but from my quick glances on http://www.ttlg.com/forums/forum.php (where they mainly discuss the T2 patch, phiistines  ) it seems that the patch improves loading times, in-game speed, fixes some bugs, allows the mouse wheel to be defined as a control (wheel up, and wheel down, separately!), all of which, I imagine, will apply to SS2,so the patch does have some advantages even for players like us, whose SS2 installation is already fully Windows 7 compatible.

And judging by the way the Thief 2 modders are singing the praises of the patch's editor improvement, it seems like the editor can now support much more complex and details levels than ever before. And the fan made levels that approached the limits of the editor pre-patch, and ran slowly or unplayable in the game, now run perfectly in the (patched) game, so much so that people are talking about re-doing some of their old creations but adding the parts they were forced to miss out, or just building on pre-existing maps. Though no doubt some people will aim to push the new editor as much as possible, especially those who are starting brand new levels.

So, any news on the author? Has Arkane got any Irrational/LGS connections left? Most of those things shouldn't be possible without access to the source code.

)

The speculation is that he/she/they is one or more people who is actually an active member of the Thief and/or SS2 modding community, possibly a regular on http://www.ttlg.com/forums/forum.php (or this site, who knows?), who released this work anonymously in case there are any legal repercussions. It's a pity that (if true) the person feels like this, but if they want to remain anonymous then we have to respect that, so even if I was enough of a regular on SS2/T2 forums to speculate on which posters I think could make something of this quality, which I'm not, I wouldn't.

Apparently the source code of T2/SS2 was discovered a year or two back ( http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132035 ) and perhaps this mysterious person(s) got his hands on it, and reverse engineered it enough to deduce the necessary changes and bug fixes in the Windows versions of the games. Maybe, but it seems a bit of a stretch to me to jump from *possibly* working Dreamcast source code to the quality of the Windows patch we see here. Still, stranger things have happened, and whatever the origin, we have the working patch.

26. September 2012, 22:53:39

#14

ShockyQuote

One thing I always noticed with the DDFix method was FPS drops when there were steam effects around. Like in the intro, when you're crawling through that vent, just before falling down. With this new patch, that doesn't happen. Solid 60 FPS everywhere.

Having the menu in the same resolution as the game is also nice.