Possible betas of system shock 2 and thief 2 for dreamcast found!

Eh I'm no expert on building a bootable image from WinCE data (nor do I even have GD Workshop on hand to look at this with) but it looks like it's all there and might just be a complete game.

Folders D1S1T1 and D1S1T2 seem to indicate (I'm guessing entirely here just for funsies) Disk 1 Session 1 Track 1/2 going on to Session 2 Track 3/4/5 of which Track 1 looks to have the makings of the low density section of a GD-ROM with the abstract.txt, bibliogr.txt, copyrigh.txt and readme.txt as well as "track2_english.pcm" which is duplicated (the MD5 is identical) in all folders but D1S2T5 which has the high density track data of WinCE (2 different 0winceos.bin files with different hashes. No idea which is which but the folders they reside in are named "CD_Shock2" and "cd". Neither of which do anything but crash NullDC if anyone cares (big shocker).

Can't do much with this now as I know jack squat about DC WinCE titles. Probably pretty obvious with this post...

Oh yes, how rude of me. Thank you for this generous offering! Shame more people don't seem to realize that these are cultural treasures and should be shared before they are lost for good.

 

Thank you for uploading this, Gamer_s. Now here's something for you :

Here's what's known right now:

This build, to the best of my knowledge is at the very beginning of the porting process. When the game starts, you see the loading screen shown below. During this time it tries to load "ops1.mis." The mission file in the directory initially (359KB) does not work. You drop down into the room shown in the second screenshot and nothing else happens. If you replace it with the 858KB version, you enter the corridor in the third screenshot. Here, you can actually move the camera / player, but you are confined to that one area. The framerate is too low to be playable in this build.

The other mission files are not loading at all (My guess is that they weren't converted. They are over 3MB, so that might also be a problem.).

For anyone else that tries this, let me know if the very long loading times are happening for you as well.

 

Awesome, pleased to see something finally come out of this. It's a shame it isn't in a more playable state. SS2 is one of my favourite games of all time, a Dreamcast port would have been amazing.

 

Excellent news, thank you very much gamer_s

 

You are a very generous man! Thank you!

 

That's a great gesture Gamer_S > fingers crossed someone can get something up and running soon. (Edit:: I didn't see the post above! Thanks to APE and Dreamcast as well)

Nice timing! Thanks.

 

This is really great!!! Thank you very much gamer_s that was very generous of you,very few people would do that...

 

I'd wager the size difference might be because of one having actual assets and being an actual, playable level vs what look like tests and demo rooms at best. I don't have access to a copy of SS2 pc to compare it to nor do I know what make up the .MIS files atm but I'm going to go do some digging.

EDIT: Seems the SS2 PC editor of sorts known as DromEd happily loads and plays with sound at full speed the SS2 levels found in this release. Not sure what that means off hand honestly, and I don't recognize the levels. The second OPS1___.MIS file crashes if you try to go through the bulkhead but if you go back there is a body in a chair and a gun to pickup. I can't for the life of me get Windows 7 to take screen caps of this app in action so you'll have to live with the two I did manage to grab.


The test level shown above.

And a shot from the SHODAN.MIS file.

At the very least it is somewhat safe to say these files are loadable by something.

 

Fantastic, cheers!

 

Wow that is fast work Dreamcast!:thumbsup: ray: big thanks to Gamer_S as well ray:

I just wanted to ask if even though the game is not in a 'playable state' if all the required information is in the files provided by Gamer_S could someone get the game working?

or is it a case of, it would still need to be written/programmed from the ground up rather than just linking up the correct files in the correct sequences

sorry to ask basic questions but I am not very tech savvy just excited about a possible new game

Rob

 

The game it a bit more playable now. If you use the EXE found in "SystemShock2GD.7z"'s "retail" folder, the opening SFD movies play (unskippable) and you then go to a real main menu where you can start a game, load a game, change ingame settings, play a multiplayer game and view the help screen which is a picture of a Dreamcast controller with the button assignments (similar to what you see when you play a demo of a game).

The empty corridor now has more textures and switches on the walls, but the actual button mappings don't match the controls, so I've been unable to interact with anything so far.

There's another development kit out there with the same files (but hopefully of a different build) that may be enough to get this working.

I'm not sure if it's the Katana's emulation, the age of the hard drive or the game itself, but the loading times are extremely long and the framerate is still on the low side.

 

WinCE ports aren't exactly known for being speedy early in their development cycle, or hell, even when nearing the end. Half-Life has all kinds of issues with the WinCE build that are supposed to be solved in the Katana build. Can't say as I haven't handled the Katana build personally.

 

Thanks for checking the files, APE. My main concern with the file size was if it was because the assets hadn't been compressed into formats that the Dreamcast prefers (like PVR for the images). Is there any indication in the editor that the switches do anything or do the doors open automatically?

 

Don't forget to download the folder named test. It has some SS2 files in it as well!

 

When you go into game mode you can interact with switches just fine. The .MIS files are basically maps tagged with the various assets like a DOOM wad but look a lot more like (probably due to the editor rather than the format the files are actually in) a Build style map care of Duke3D, Shadow Warrior and such. I'd be curious to see if these files can be loaded into a retail copy of SS2 but that will have to wait a few hours until I can get ahold of my brother who has SS2 on his machine.

If you crack open the EXE's and WinCE binary files there are references to what I was told are source code:

Pathable object.....TPath...TPathInit...E:\TECH\SHOCK2\AI\AIPTHZON.CPP

As well as Visual Studio debugging files:

E:\TECH\SHOCK2\WCESH4Dbg\Shock2.pdb

Neither of which exist in either of the archives that I saw. Been up all night and I'm on a lesser box. Takes forever for Windows to do a basic file search on here.

I figured it was a test to see if uploading a file was working but I pulled it upon your suggestion. Not much in it, the OPS1.MIS file found at \test\D1S2T5\C\TECH\GDROM is a MD5 match to OPS1___.MIS found \SystemShock2\D1S2T5\C\TECH\GDROM.

Though the SYSTEMSHOCK2-S0-0.VDS, SYSTEMSHOCK2-S1-0.VDS and SystemShock2GD-SYSTEMSHOCK2.HCD are unique to test.7z, whatever they are. I don't recognize the format and without a SCSI adapter in this box I can't get GD Workshop to run past an error complaining that a SCSI adapter isn't in the thing.

Grumble grumble...hopefully someone with a devkit and knowledge on making this stuff self-booting will come along shortly.

 

Good work guys so far. Big thanks to gamer_s for getting this release out.

Maybe we should try and set up a dev team for these, to reduce the likelihood of repeated findings and ending up with several versions.

 

VDS and HCD files are created by GD-Workshop when you run the game on the Katana. The HCD file is especially useful because it shows the track structure so, for a game like this where there are multiple versions of the file(s), you can determine which were part of the session run by the developer(s).

The updated EXE appears to just add SFD playback and the main menu. Gameplay is still the same except for the added textures in the corridor and in the previously unplayable 359KB ops1.mis file, you can now move around and there's an enemy throwing green shurikens.

I tried to load rec1.mis (over 6MB) by renaming it "ops1.mis" and it made it about 75%. I let it run for 15 minutes, but it never finished. Those file may have just been placeholders until the optimized versions were ready for the Dreamcast (lower poly counts, etc).

 

Dreamcast , do you run it on Dreamcast ?

 

A Katana is being used for testing the game.

Edit: Runk, someone would need access to the original source to get it working if it's truly as close to the beginning stages of the porting process as it seems.

 

Good to see work is progressing well! Many thanks to gamer s for making this public. Really great release to the DC scene and solves a long mystery of SS 2 on the DC