Trickster

So, who is so super excited as me ? (Sorry, don't know how to post YT vid)

Thanks for reply, freyk. I'm afraid its not my language settings, as i tried to press all the keys on my keyboard and their combinations with Shift. Besides, i am aware of that ttlg thread, and neither Ctrl+P nor binding console to different key in user.cfg works for me, which leads me to believe it may be an issue with Wine. A lot of times, some features in games running through Wine won't work, even if game itself works fine. Thats why i want to hear from Linux users here, who have SS2 installed, if their console is working. Its not even about console anyway, if i can get Psi abilities other way (or later in game), please let me know. I don't plan to cheat, i just don't understand how Psi works in that game, and don't want to start from beginning again, i already started twice due to breaking the game while trying to mod it. Thanks. Ah, silly me. I just found PSI upgrade unit. Problem solved

Strange Attractor. Apoptosis. Exocortex. The Copenhagen Interpretation. But i am good at creating funny band names, too :-) Cloaca Ravioli The Shenanigans The Oxy Morons Jihadi Moses (okay, okay, i know. Forget about this one).

Hi guys, i just decided to replay System Shock 2 again , this time on Linux as this is what i use atm. First, i got troubles making mods work but already figured it out (Blue Mod manager was the answer). What i am having issues with is Psi abilities. On my previous playthroughs, i never used them. But i want to explore this feature now, and this is where i need some guidance. Few questions follow: 1. How do i actually get these abilities when i am already into the game (i have chosen these "courses" at the beginning blindly, because i was simultaneously testing the mods and editing .cfg), so i am a marine IIRC, without any Psi abilities. Does that mean i will not be able to use Psi at all ? Or do i get the chance later on ? 2. If i am left with combat abilities only because being marine, how can i cheat these abilities ? I can't get to the console, no matter what. I have tried every key and combinations with Shift, to no avail. I have also tried setting console to my "0" key with "bind 0 edit_command" in user.cfg, but console doesn't show up. Google didn't helped, so i suspect this being Linux issue. And because this is only forum that has lots of Linux users and SS fans i know of, i thought i may ask here So, Linux users, is your console in SS2 working ? If so, how do you do it ? My relevant specs: LinuxMint 17.3 x64, Latest SS2 v2.1.1.20 (GOG),running though Wine 1.6.2 TIA

well, i myself never experienced spinning sky, but most of FMs never gets past the loading screen... then i get "Doom3 has stopped working" error. Strange thing, this happened with most of FMs, but not all of them. But now everything works fine. Thanks for your research and posting, Dram. I just checked all missions which didn´t worked earlier and they load up properly. For the record, i have Win7 x86, ATI HD5570, Catalyst 10.9

in fact, you can easily disable cat. AI in any ATI card by ATT. Considering those cheap cards, i have HD5570 myself, pretty low performance in TDM. In "Score to settle" i got around 20 fps, in some parts of NHAT it falls below 10, so don't expect smooth gameplay. I suspect that the nVidia of your buddy will do better.

OOps, sorry for misleading. Wasn´t intended to trick you. Exactly what was i trying to say

I had not high expectations for game, created by Eidos Montreal who wrecked Splinter Cell Conviction pretty badly, but decided to give it a try... such a die-hard fan i am. Ran it rather with curiosity than anything else, and i had three hours gaming blast... not happened since TNM. To say it loud and clearly: this game is pretty good. Carries on the original game's franchise, and everything from visuals to gameplay pays hommage to original. Let's set up my personal answers to your probably frquent questions: Q: Hows about that nasty yellow outlining and onscreen dumb instructions ? A: Although on by default, everyting is optional in menu. Q: (this goes to myself :-)) And is there charger prod aka electric BJ for nonlethal takedown ? Or are you forced to go gory way ? A: Yup, its there. Called stun gun here, can be even used as firearm with close range. You can skip bloody killing completely. Q: Hows AI ? A: Not dumb by any means. Where TDM AI would still ask "who's hiding there ?" dx AI is already after you. They have nice animation btw, looks real. Q: Visuals and ambient music ? A: inspired by original game the same way TDM amb. music is inspired by thief, works the same way. Q: what about mistakes from DXIW, like "one ammo type fits all ?" A: Nope, didn't noticed any dumbness so far. Q: Whats story like ? Is it visionary as in DX1 ? A: Not too far into game yet, but so far it's variation on original dx story. Terrorists, corporations... we'll see. Q: what about PC conversion and performance ? A: works just as any PC only game, no consoleness. Performance is pretty good, with my lowend AMD x2 @3000Mhz and HD5570 (50eur VGA) i get 30-40 fps indoors which is playable for stealth gameplay. Outdoors it falls to ~20, but there's no action outdoors, just traveling between locations and such. Those frame rates are better than i get in most TDM missions, so if on your rig you consider TDM playable, you are fine to enjoy DXHR. (note: my settings are 1200x1024 everything high/on except vsync off/shadows medium. Q: most important: stealth. hows that implemented ? A: apart from the very beginning of game where i was thrown into gunfight, i did not killed any AI so far, and i'm pretty enjoying it. this is more stealth game than SCConviction ! Q: Conclusion ? A: there has been only few games that i was able immerse into completely for hours. SystemShock, DeusEx, Thief, TDM, TNM (the nameless mod), DXHR. Go figure. If eidos montreal can make such great hommage to classic game, there's still some hope for Thi4f... and that's some good news, isn't ?

That's good point there. I myself had ATT installed with cat. AI disabled within before installed that latest driver, probably this did the trick. ATT is much more usable tool than CCC, indeed. It has all the settings i was used to with nVidia, plus more.

I´ll second that: how ? There are many young players, which in fact like brutallity and gore in games (and movies), that´s because of their age. They think its "cool". As grownups, we do not need it to be there anymore, ´cause nothing seems so "cool" about it. In fact, we even do not notice it. At least, i dont. Your post rather surprised me. I don´t see nothing "extremely" violent in TDM FMs. All violence falls within acceptable mantinels. When PranQster released his mission, warning about "graphical violence" contained, i asked after playing: where that promised violence was ? i didn´t noticed any. That´s how my "violence threshold" has been raised by playing games. We adapted to violence in games, it´s integral part of game structure. It raises adrenaline, blood pressure, thus helps immersion. Although Thief/TDM franchise isn´t about relieving stress through violence, as FPS are, most of us are perfectly OK with it. I don´t like gory movies. But i don´t think that torture scenes in Pan´s Labyrinth degraded the movie in any way. If the movie is nothing but gore , i dont watch it. If there is some gore, blended well with the story, i can get through it. IMHO. YMMV.

sure. nbohr: thanks for that tip. EDIT: just for the record, most recent driver (Catalyst 11.8 preview driver) works with TDM right out of the box, no disabling needed. And now, just to find out how to boost openGL performance

You´re right, there was hint of red with nVidia too. If it´s game specific i´ll just forget it. Thanks for clarification. What about that TDM crashes... i can reproduce it anytime i get to that point... is it known issue with ATI or is it just me ? Also, there are very few settings within CCC... compared to nVidia control panel. Can anyone recommend some tweaker app ? With nVidia, you had options like: -number of frames to render ahead, "digital vibrance" in color settings, detailed AA/AF settings ...kinda miss those.

Sorry to confuse you, this was meant for Dirt3, so i just wanted to know if such issues are common with ATI... you don´t wanna waste your time trying to solve another game issues, do you ? Back on topic. Just played Score To Settle for a while, in Sykes room, when i got into attic, game crashes to desktop... sadly, i wasn´t there before with nVidia, so i can´t tell if its FM related or my VGA related... looks this way: game freezes, when i hit ESC i get into desktop, there´s that "Doom3.exe has stopped working" window... i suppose this crashing issue was already covered, if so, would someone link me to the thread please ? i´m going to try some different FMs now... will report back then. EDIT: just replayed Winter Harvest v2, everything was fine... will replay another FMs when get some free time

Hi taffers, my old Geforce 8800GTS finally went to silicone heaven, and as i don´t play games anymore (except for THE game itself, TDM ) i decided to purchase some sort of low-profile, low budget, low power consumption, low TDP card. I´ve chosen Sapphire Radeon HD 5570 (GDDR3, 128b) as it fits my 50Eur budget. I was aware that there are issues with catylyst AI, but i learned that disabling catalyst AI solves that. So i just installed the card and drivers, did quick gaming tests to see how much graphic power i did lose compared to g80, and overall i am pretty happy with the card. Its quiet, doesnt make my PSU howl like broken airconditioning while gaming, and while i can´t compare FPS directly, both games i have installed (other one is Dirt3) run pretty playable with the same detail levels i set with gf8800. Exact FPS should be bit lower of course, but if there´s no stuttering i´m ok with it. Anyway, i have original cd´s driver installed, Catalyst 10.7, and it´s easy with disabling catalyst AI. I´ve read, that newer drivers doesn´t have that option, does this means i rather never update ? What´s the best option ? I never had ATI card before (but i an still no fan of either brand, i go with whats best for me at the moment) so maybe some of you ATI users should provide some knowledge base... Little OT: while playing Dirt3 for a while, i noticed two differences: antialiasing seems to look better (i did not touched the settings) than with nVidia, does that means ATI aliasing works better than nVidia´s ? Or does it mean it works better under DX11 ? Also, there are some color issues, i got nasty red fonts and red lightning/speculars within menu screens, are such rendering issues something common ? may be that old driver though...

Congrats on release, and thanks ! I had great fun with this, no complaints.

Season is clear. Gameplay . Aesthetics . Obvious reasons. Thanks, b1k3r ! Best contest entry IMHO.

Thanks, Diego ! Thats cool ! (and expensive : -) ) i will give that demo a try ***no more off-topic i promise***

Congrats on release, and thanks ! Season is well defined. / Three stars. / Three stars. Sad that you hadn´t time needed to make it work flawlessly, experienced all the bugs others mentioned plus some. I tried dropping bodies into hatch, but they allways get stuck across opening and didn´t fall down. Get killed many times up there. When i tried to shoulder them and noclip down to tunnels, objective wasn´t completed. When i appeared in maze with bodies after winter scene, there was some tourist nearby and i haven´t time to clean them, so get instantly hunted. When i put a ring in bedroom to accuse lady, objective was checked, then i return to pick body, get the ring again, objective unchecked. When i pulled the lever down in tunnels, went up by the corridor towards the ladder, then boom, i was lying dead without noticeable reason. Or was there any ? And so on. Bugs, boredom. This killed the mood for me. I blame contest deadline for it, i´m sure it would work if you had enough time. Had some good fun moments though, i enjoyed the beginning, to have no shadows to hide was super tense. Tunnels were scary, so i enjoyed this part too. Thus three stars. Aesthetics three stars, b/c TDM (d3) just doesn´t look good brightly lit without shadows. Not your fault, but big empty outside areas should profit from some more foliage, trees, decals and stuff to not seem so empty. I gave higher rating for season capturing, to reward you at least for trying the hardest "season" (daylight), as winter seems most forgiving, and have most contestants. Best luck with next FMs.

Congratulations on release, and thanks ! Four stars everything from me. Nice season capturing, though nothing special. Gameplay-wise, almost player nirvana, seems your best FM to date. Liked that map seems huge, but gameplay flows without chance being stuck, that´s big plus. Nice visuals at some places, i am especially digging your ambient music choice, worked great, and i am kinda "ambient freak" I don´t look for bugs, but i noticed easter egg objective was completed before i got all of them (5 @ easy). Very enjoyable mission, didn´t played all contest entries yet, but so far this is my personal No. 1. I mostly loved ambient theme that played at big open area with bridge, sort of generic dark noise with symphonic orchestra at top of it. Never noticed this theme in previous FMs, it was gorgeous blend. Now bit off-topic: Hope that author of music i´m talking about wanders around here, if so, can i ask something ? I suppose that "symphonic" part wasn´t ripped from some commercial cd, and i believe he (or she) has not access to whole orchestra, so what the hell it was created ? Is it possible to create such living orchestra sound using plugins or some software ?

Bingo. I´m dying to rob high-security complex. Voting with both my hands.

just can´t resist... not being sarcastic, but it´s funny moment indeed.

Congrats on release. Thanks.

Wow ! Now that was fun ! As all of your work, Melan, this greatly reminds me of Calendra´s Cistern, b/c of city design. I must admit that i liked it maybe more than RTTC, because never get stuck. A speedbuild test ? Hmm, seems more polished and well designed than many past small FMs, so i advise you to only make speedbuild from now on (just a joke, i know others will appreciate more complex FM better) I was forced to rise gamma / brightness levels to see a thing, is ambient light level that deep ? You dont want a poll for this one, but let me throw in my own score: Gameplay: 4 out of 5 (rather simple, but great fun...like it that way) Visuals: 5 out of 5 (because i like the architecture) Story:4 out of 5 (nothing unusual but works well) Thanks !

ok, thanks everybody for clarification, i wasn´t aware its a common payment method, just felt unsafe to typing it all into browser, however it says "https"... i´m being a bit too cautious. So i´m gonna order that bagpipe chanter, god save the neighbours