SS1 SHLink - System Shock Windows wrapper (no music)

[665ba8a7c66a1Stingm]

It's not supported yet in this program. He's working on it and will include it in a future update. If you want it now, get System Shock Portable1.2

[665ba8a7c6912voodoo47]

higher resolutions are not supported (yet),but fullscreen mode should work normally (it works for me).

[665ba8a7c6a92Joe]

Look, I'm a newbie, so please try not to take offence at what is for you a basic error, but I can't run this.  I've extracted it, and I've changed the shlink.ini file to run the correct path to the OCDSHOCK.exe program, but when I try to run shlink.exe it opens the cmd box thing and shuts it again, and that's it. Any help?

[665ba8a7c6bfavoodoo47]

1) get SSP,unpack it
2) extract shlink.7z to the RES folder
3) edit GamePath in shlink.ini and type in the location of your shlink.exe (most typical would be GamePath=c:\Games\SSP\RES)

run shlink.exe

[665ba8a7c6d49Joe]

OK, when you said to move shlink, did you mean the entire folder or just shlink.exe?  Also, the cmd thing says it wants the path to OCDSHOCK.exe which I presume I have to put in the .ini GamePath.  But thanks for answering.

[665ba8a7c6f0dvoodoo47]

I did not say anything about moving. let's try it again:

1) get SSP,unpack it (to c:\Games for example)
2) extract shlink.7z to the RES folder (inside the SSP folder)
3) edit GamePath in shlink.ini and type in the location of your shlink.exe (most typical would be GamePath=c:\Games\SSP\RES)

run shlink.exe

[665ba8a7c7015Joe]

Well, I had already extracted the shlink.exe- running it was the problem I posted about.  Unless, do you mean extracting shlink from the 7z file again?

[665ba8a7c70e8Joe]

Oh...

[665ba8a7c71ebJoe]

It works! Thanks!

[665ba8a7c7570voodoo47]

Oh...

yes, I meant extracting the entire shlink.7z archive. anyway, glad it works. and remember, the E key toggles the mouselook on/off.

[665ba8a7c7723Kolya]

Another satisfied customer.

[665ba8a7c7819AhtiPasseli]

Excelent work so far! Any progress on music support? The game feels a bit empty without it.

[665ba8a7c7917Malba Tahan]

I haven't looked into it for some months (too little spare time, too many real-life things to do), but it shouldn't be too difficult to implement. I intend to take a look at it again in a couple months.

[665ba8a7c7a22Kolya]

Meanwhile you could get the music here and play it in the background. (Or play SSP.)

[665ba8a7c7b03Dav]

Desperately awaiting an update (high res/full screen support, music) 

[665ba8a7c7c04voodoo47]

fullscreen is supported, check shlink.ini.

[665ba8a7c7ce8Kyle873]

It's too bad the scaling doesn't work properly. Anything but the default values just crashes.

[665ba8a7c7e99Malba Tahan]

I'm still working on this mod (every weekend at least), but I have too many "real life" stuff to do as well. I can't promise when it will be ready though.
By the way, did you know that System Shock modding is addictive? Yes, I'm addicted to it. I even dream about it sometimes.  :p

[665ba8a7c8269gaspalorz]

I'm still working on this mod (...)

Thanks for your hard work. By the way, I have posted second release candidate version of my GUI for your loader over here. All current features like paths, display mode selection and fullscreen settings are already supported. It might provide easier way for newbies (and generally everyone ) to navigate around shlink.ini.

[665ba8a7c85e9Malba Tahan]

(...) By the way, I have posted second release candidate version of my GUI for your loader (...)

It seems to be very nice and well done, good work! I thought about doing some kind of UI interface using Delphi, but afterwards I abandoned it, because I decided to focus on the loader itself. I haven't tested your GUI yet, though. By the way, I'm developing a new Shlink version under Linux and MacOS X now. Of course it will still work under Windows (it's the mod's primary "target OS").

[665ba8a7c86dcvoodoo47]

great news

[665ba8a7c882cgaspalorz]

I found it easier to code the GUI using some sort of scripting language rather than in C and GTK. Of course, the latter would provide portability but, sadly, also require Windows GTK runtime installation. Methinks it is safe to say that POSIX users won't need any GUI, given how much time they spend in console anyway in the end, they may still run the GUI through WINE

Have you though about adding recording capabilities, similar to what DOSbox does? Eg. have separate thread dump the audio/video output into some MJPEG-like container.

[665ba8a7c8ae8Malba Tahan]

Have you though about adding recording capabilities, similar to what DOSbox does? Eg. have separate thread dump the audio/video output into some MJPEG-like container.

Nice idea, I hadn't thought about it. I'll add it to my to-do list!

[665ba8a7c8cc5gaspalorz]

Don't get me wrong, MJPEG is the video codec, not a container. DOSbox uses own ZMBV encoder - its library should be freely available.

Second, I'd like to report few issues regarding shlink input:
-pressing Caps Lock or / (forward slash) causes it to terminate unconditionally
-pressing ? (shift + /) causes it to permanently freeze with sound repeating in a tight loop (aargh)
-F11/F12 (gamma controls) buttons have their functions switched, eg. when I press F11, HUD will display "gamma raised" message, yet everything gets darker (vice versa with F12)
-Sliders may be "torn off" from their widgets and moved around the screen as mouse pointer images (no idea if this used to happen in the original game too)