How to Run System Shock 1 on Windows 2000/XP FAQ v 1.0

[XenivouS]

---------------------------------------------
As promised, sorry about not getting this out yesterday but better late than never I wanted to add in links to places to get the little programs that make it work in the FAQ.
---------------------------------------------


How to Run System Shock 1
on Windows 2000/XP FAQ
v. 1.0

FAQ written by XenivouS

****************************
INTRODUCTION
****************************

I'm just writing this somewhat simplified FAQ on how to make System Shock 1
run on a Windows 2000 or Windows XP system. I'm not guarenteeing that it will work for
you but if it happens to work for you then your life will be TONS more simple.
If not however you can use what I did as some guidelines and help run this
fantastic game on your system. This FAQ is written to run the game with all
sounds (The Enhanced CD version of SS1), running at a resolution of 640x480
with Max Details, mouse speed that works correctly in 640x480, and hopefully
crash minimally if not at all.

I'm not taking all the credit on all that I did because alot of the info
I gathered was through trolling the TTLG.com and Vorgon's Forums. I thank
all those that have put forth the time to throw out all the bits and pieces
of info that ultimately got me to figure out how to run SS1 on my system.

I have compiled all the bits and pieces of info that helped me get the game to
run right and i am writing this FAQ to make it alot easier for less computer
knowledgeable people and new fans of the System Shock series to run the game
without having to troll all over the place and spend obsene amounts of time
trying to get SS1 to work. Anyway, if I get something wrong or If you have some-
thing to add feel free to email me and I will either add or correct something.
My email address will be at the bottom of this FAQ. Hope this helps someone!



***************************
Contents
***************************

1. What you Need
2. Places to get what you need on the Internet
3. Making System Shock 1 work for you
4. Disclaimer
5. Contacts



***************************
1. What you Need
***************************

Obviously to get the game work correctly you need a copy of the game. I have
the System Shock 1 enhanced CD version of the game, but I'm assuming the same
steps would work if you have the disk version of the game. But as stated earlier
this FAQ's main focus is to run the game with full everything.

A. Copy of System Shock

B. Programs - NOLFB.exe
MOUSE2KV.exe
Dos4gw.exe (1_97)
VDMSound
Mok's modified System Shock XP patch

C. The ability to read and follow directions and a tad bit of patience.


**********************************************
2. Places to get what you Need on the Internet
**********************************************

Here is a list of of links to get what programs you need to make System Shock work.
Over time im sure the links would die out so if your going to do this download and
save all the stuff you need so incase you need a retro fix again you can have the
stuff you need =)

A. Copy of System Shock - go find it on the net or buy it, I reccomend you buy it,
it may be a dated game but a great one. Ebay typically has them all the time for
under $10 US.

B. Programs - NOLFB.exe ----> http://www.advsys.net/ken/build.htm


Mouse2KV.exe--> http://vogons.zetafleet.com/showthre...?threadid=1059
<> The program can be downloaded here just scroll and click the attachment file.

Dos4gw.exe---->http://vogons.zetafleet.com/showthre...7&pagenumber=3
<> The program can be downloaded here just scroll and click the attachment file.

VDMSound ---> http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=2071

Mok's Modified SS1 XP patch-------> http://vogons.zetafleet.com/showthread.php?threadid=726
<> The program can be downloaded here just scroll and click the attachment file.
Can also be got from sshock2.com here


Also, here are two good places to find stuff on the different programs and such just use the "SEARCH" function on the forums.

http://www.ttlg.com
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/index.php


*******************************************
Making System Shock 1 work for you
*******************************************

In this section I will try to symplify how to get SS to work and go into detail.

STEP 1: Take it for what its worth but....breath...calmdown (if your frustrated from trying
to get SS1 to work on your own).

STEP 2: Install VDMSound.

STEP 3: Install the game, I myself have the enhanced CD version.
MY COMPUTER---->SYSTEM SHOCK CD--->INST--->Right Click on INITIAL
and RUN WITH VDMS

STEP 4: A new window will open and from this menu you can select where you want
to install the game to and setup your sound system. I myself am using
Midi sound and for the digital sound using Soundblaster.

STEP 5: After you install the game to your desired directory folder and drive,
place the extracted nolfb.exe, mouse2kv.exe, mok's xp patch in the main
SSHOCK directory.

STEP 6: When you extract the Dos4gw application you downloaded you will see all
different versions of Dos4gw, the that I personally used was the one
that said 1_97. So, for the time being cut and paste 1_97 to your
desktop and rename it dos4gw.exe, then cut and paste the newly renamed
file to your SSHOCK main directory, the same directory you put the other
programs to. (NOTE: you can if you want play around with the different versions
of Dos4gw by simply renaming them to dos4gw.exe and placing them in you SSHOCK
main directory)

STEP 7: In your Main SSHOCK directory (the place you installed the game to where ever
that may be) Open the CDSHOCK.bat file in note pad and it should look something like this:


*******************************************************************************************
@echo off
E:\Games\sshock\nolfb.exe
E:\Games\sshock\MOUSE2KV.EXE 640 480 8 8 E:\Games\SSHOCK\dos4gw.exe cdshock.exe
*******************************************************************************************

Your .bat file should look something like this the only exception is the Drive letter and
where you installed the game to, everything else should look like the above with out the asteriks
above and below.

STEP 8: Here is where it gets somewhat complicated just remember to read and take your time.
Right click on CDSHOCK.bat and in the pop-out menu you should see "RUNS VDMS" and
"RUN VDMS - but with a musical note graphic infront of it". Click on the one that
has the musical note infront of it.

- Now a window that says VDMSound Configuration wizard should pop up. Select
SETUP A CUSTOM CONFIGURATION and click NEXT.

- Then CREATE A NEW CONFIGURATION FROM SCRATCH, then click NEXT

- Click NEXT again.

- If you like there is a box that says create a desktop shortcut, otherwise click NEXT.

- IT will most likely startup the game but exit because you arent done quite yet =P

STEP 9: Right-Click on the new Shortcut that was created in you SSHOCK main directory and click
Properties. The properties window will open up now and do the following:

- COMPATABILITY: make sure there is a "check" in all three boxes

- MIDI EMULATION: make sure this is "checked" and leave it on General MIDI (GM) or GS.

- Joystick Emulation: "uncheck" this box.

- "check" the box that says "close DOS window on exit", now click on "Advanced"

- In PROGRAM tab:

Program information:---> Program: E:\Games\SSHOCK\CDSHOCK.BAT (your directory maybe different.)
Arguments: (leave Blank)
Run in: E:\Games\SSHOCK (your directory maybe different)

- In Compatability tab:
Change the Expanded Memory (EMS) total to 16384 via the dropdown box.

- Click Apply then OK, then Click Apply then OK again.

STEP 10: Right-click on the CDSHOCK.exe (moks xp patch, the one you put in here earlier) and select
PROPERTIES

- Click on the Memory Tab and make sure you have the following set:

Conventional Memory:
Total: AUTO with protected "checked"
Initial Enviroment: 4086


Expanded (EMS) memory:
Total: 16384

Extended (XMS) memory:
Total: 16384 with USES HMA "checked"

MS-DOS protected-mode (DPMI) memory:
Total: 16384

- Click Apply then OK


STEP 11: Play the GAME!!!! To play the game just click on the CDSHOCK VDMSound shortcut
you created earlier. (The shortcut thats you do lots of configuring to in step 9)


ENJoY!!!!


**************************************************
DISCLAIMER
**************************************************

Just giving props to Through the Looking Glass and Origins for making System Shock,
all copywrites etc blah blah are blah blah.

Thanks for all the people for making this game work and putting thier solutions on TTLG.com
and Vorgons forums, im just writing what worked for me and sort of a compilation of
posts and threads to solve this problem.


**************************************************
Contacts
**************************************************

If you feel something is wrong with my FAQ or want to add something, email me at zeroblaze@hotmail.com

[David]

Cool, I shall add muchos linkage from the FAQ

[XenivouS]

cool I hope this will help people out and answer lots of questions

[dj_ivocha]

Although I'm with win98, I think this is the place for my question - does the game "always" start in 640/480 with the cdshock.bat? How can I check to see that it is really 640 and not 320? In the game, I would rather say that it runs in 320 on my PC. And, with the risk to be blamed for not searching through the forum (and I did search ), can anyone please tell me how can I correct the next problem:

I'm starting the game in win, all is ok, sound/music, I've played 10 mins without crash, but when I quit the game, there is that dos-window "cdshock.bat - finished" - If I just ignore it, win works normal, BUT, as soon as I press the close button, everything freezes, even ctrl+alt+del doesn't work, I must do a cold restart. I've also tried alt+F4, and ctrl+alt+del and then - "close program", but win freezes always. Friends, I'm clueless, can anyone help me?

Another question - in pure dos, not win console I don't have sound, so I run the setup of the game and turn all sounds/music off. Then I start the game, the screen goes black and again nothing happens - it just stays at that point, but ctrl+alt+del works here. So I read through the forum for these memory problems, but I guess that's not my case - because I don't receive ANY messages - just the blank screen.

Hope you don't get bored from my newb questions

[David]

For problem 2 you must reneter the game (just to the menu I think) and then quit again. You can then close the dos prompt

[XenivouS]

when you start the game its not 640x480 when you start a new game and go into options (by pressing escape) then video options select 640x480 it should change over to the new rez. Now save your game and whenever you resume your saved game you will retain the resoultion you set it to when you created the new game, however, you wont notice the rez change until you load up your saved game. But you can try to go through the steps in my FAQ to setup the game but just adjust the steps to fit your needs. Honestly I havent had win9x for about 3 years now so ive forgotten alot of the technical aspects of it. Im just a Tech Controller in the USAF, I work with cisco routers so I was amazed at myself that I could figure out how to run it in win2k

[dj_ivocha]

David - thanks for the tip , but unfortunately it doesn't work. Or maybe I didn't express myself right, I don't know... In win98 - I'm starting the game by double clicking on the cdshock.pif, and on exit, the dos-window from the game is Finished - it's in that state, where if you try to type anything in the window, it says - "this msdos program has terminated..." - so the only thing I can do with this window is either just ignore it, or try to close it (and bring my system to crash). I tried just to ignore the window and start the game again by clicking on the pif - file, but then the game didn't start at all, the window was blank, just as in pure dos mode (see my previous post here) and windows crashed again.

XenivouS - thanks, it worked . But I didn't have to load the saved game, just as I clicked in the video options on "640x480", it changed the resolution at once . WOW

the game looks SUPER now, I just don't understand how one can complain about it for 1994 I think it was more than super

And my system crashes every time . I tried the things in the FAQ from Daxim - I set the DPMI to 16 kb, but nothing happened.

[tripwood]

nice FAQ, i did everything but it still crashed immediatly to desktop as soon as i hit spacebar to play, except this time the Midis were playing uber slowly, ahahah.

you also mention NOLFB.EXE, all i ever found on that page was NOLFB.COM is that what you meant?

[XenivouS]

yeah but in the .bat file use what i wrote in the FAQ, i just copied and pasted what my .bat file looked like. As for the crashing, im at a loss, mine doesnt crash, I just played for about an hour and a half or so untill i got lost and fed up

Whats your system setup and OS by chance?

[tripwood]

you can see what i've posted about here..

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthrea...5&pagenumber=3

frankly, i think my only hope would be to install win 98SE.

[XenivouS]

is your .bat file still look like this?


@echo off
D:\SSHOCK\NoLFB.com
D:\SSHOCK\MOUSECTL.COM 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
D:\SSHOCK\dos4gw.exe
D:\SSHOCK\CDSHOCK.exe


if so, I had mine similar to that before I trolled for about 3 more hours and figured stuff out. Try setting up the .bat file something similar like i did. Such as the dos4gw.exe part. It should look like:

\SSHOCK\dos4gw.exe CDSHOCK.exe

I know for certain that is how that should look for dos4gw to work with out crashing because when I had it like yours above I would crap out when I hit space to start the new game.

Dont worry you'll get it!

EDIT: I actually had problems getting MOUSECTL to work properly with out the game crapping out as well you may want to try mouse2kv. Also you can try the different versions of dos4gw and see which one works best. It took me a couple tries to figure out which one worked best.

[tripwood]

actually i had tried it as you suggest, and the only change was that the midis were slow, as said before.

i've tried a lot of combinations, all at the same end. well, some wouldn't even start up at all.
if people were to post their BAT files so i could compare, it'd be nice.

[XenivouS]

hmm, the only way i could help you troubleshoot this problem is if I load up win98SE, well, im actually moving the end of this week then im going out of town, but I actually have an old ibm thinkpad with win98SE on it. While im away ill probably tinker with it and see if I come up with anything. Hopefully you can figure something out before I get back in a few weeks but if not I should be able to give some kind of help (if I can actually figure it out)

It's wierd because I thought it would actually be alot easier on a win9x system as opposed to a NT system. Also, im assuming your on a FAT32 format right? (cant remember if you can do NTFS on win9x, dont think you can though) If I can figure it out ill write another FAQ on how to do it on a win9x system since Daxim's FAQ is a bit confusing and doesnt really cover much on SS1.

I'll be around till about Thursdayish or so, so if I come up with something off the top of my head Ill spit it out. Best of luck to you until then!

[tripwood]

err.. i'm not on 98. i said 'my only hope would be to install win98'..

i have xp. that's why i posted in the thread about not running Ss1 on XP.

[The Brain]

dj_ivocha, you should run SShock via MS-DOS prompt, not directly via cdshock.pif.
After you have finished your playing with SShock, run cdshock.bat again. And voilá!
No crash anymore! This kind re-starting works on my Windows 98 (not SE).

[XenivouS]

I thought you had win98SE opps my mistake. Hmm, well, my wife has a pc with xp on it I could troubleshoot on that later then Ill see what I come up with, until then Dont give up!

[dj_ivocha]

The Brain - thanks for the tip, it worked . But I was wondering, why does win98 crash always when ss1 hasn't been started twice from msdos prompt? I've never seen anything like this, and I have played plenty of dos games on my machine.

[Elsidar]

After following your FAQ and getting everything working, I tried turning the volume of the music up, and suddenly, the game slows to an absolute crawl. I'm running it at 640x480, my mouse is working fine, digital sound is fine too. If the volume for the music is all the way down, the game runs okay. However, if it's playing, the music is jerky/stuttering/halting, etc, and the control of my character becomes sluggish.

Anyone else run into this, or am I doing something wrong?

[XenivouS]

hmm that hasnt happened on my system, but you may want to try the different "sound cards" in the config, the place where you setup a soundblaster, soundblaster 16, soundblaster AWE 32,...etc. And try the different cards for the emulation. Also you can try different dos4gw's instead of 1_97. Just delete the one you renamed to dos4gw.exe (make sure you have them all still in a zip or whatever).

Im starting to come to the conclusion that possibly that even though what worked for me might not work for someone else, reason being that everyone has a different computer setup and such. But I can keep thowing out possible ideas and possible fix actions to help you guys get SS to work properly

[Hardcore-Evil]

Originally posted by XenivouS
How to Run System Shock 1 on Windows 2000/XP FAQ v. 1.0
...
1. What you Need
...
B. Programs - NOLFB.exe
MOUSE2KV.exe
Dos4gw.exe (1_97)
VDMSound
VDMSound 2.0.4 Update 2
VDMS Launch Pad 1.0.1.1
Mok's modified System Shock XP patch
...

Once again: big THX! Now i can play System Shock 1 again (under WinXP & with a P4 3GHz). Best Game forever for me (System Shock 2, too)! Last time i've played SS1 without any problems was on my 486DX-133 ...

I think (i'm not 100% sure) i've just only needed the Dos4gw.exe and the Mok's modified System Shock XP patch, because i've deinstalled later all the VDM-Files and dll's, cause it doesn't works with it. I just run the cdshock.exe (no batch-file) and it runs very fine.

[Darkfire]

Cheers for the guide...finally I can play one of the best games ever written again!

Only one problem though is that it's awefully choppy. The intro movie stutters a lot, and the game does so as well. Interestingly the higher the res, the less stuttering...

My system spec is as follows:

XP1800+
Epox Mobo
512Mb
Geforce 3
SB Audigy

Any ideas?

[tyler]

Hey, dj_ivocha, did you get the whole thing running with sound? Ive finally managed to run it and avoid the after-end freeze, but still troubles with sound. Do you run any other programs than that dosdrv.bat in vdmsound? When I launch it with vdm the game freezes right after filling in my name and clicking on "start". Do you have any other support programs?

[dj_ivocha]

tyler, what soundcard do you have? Are you using win98 or xp? I have SBLive Value, Win98SE and don't use any program for the sound like vdmsound. It works fine with the SB16 Emulation, that SBLive has.

I don't know for sure, but I think vdmsound should only be used in WinXP or with cards that don't support dos sound any more. And from what I have read here on the forums, only the Audigy cards don't support it. So if you have anything older than Audigy, I suppose you don't have to use vdm.

[tyler]

I use W98SE, but the soundcard is some onboard shit, i dont understand it very well, but what I think is that the soundchip is a part of a VIA 686b south bridge, working with some AC 97 codec I usually have troubles with it when running old DOS games. I used the vdm and I had sound at least for the intro (no sound without the vdm), but then the comp freezes. I have no clue what to do.

[dj_ivocha]

Hmm, first take a look in your BIOS, and see if everything related to the onboard audio is enabled (MPU401 must be enabled too, in order to hear the music).

Here are to files that will almost sure help you resolve your problem:

Dos driver for AC97

Additional file that you need

If you understand german, you may look into this site, and if not, I'm writing some of the info here in english:

First, when you go in BIOS, note down the settings of your soundchip (IRQ, DMA etc.)

Then, download the two files that I mentioned above, and extract them (for example in c:\dos or anywhere you want)

Edit your Autoexec.bat file and paste the following lines into it:

LOADHIGH C:\DOS\VIA\VIAUDIO.COM
LOADHIGH C:\DOS\VIA\VIAFMTSR.COM
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P330

but don't forget to change the path so that it points to the folder where you extracted the files.

And, if needed, change the settings here: SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P330 so that they match your bios settings. (A - address; I - interrupt or IRQ; D - dma channel; P330 is your MPU401 setting, but I'm not 100 % sure about that, but try it anyway )

After all that is done, restart the PC, and try to run the install of the game once again, to alter the Sound- and music card settings there. Music should be MPU401, but feel free to try the other, some may work and they sound differently, too . For sound first try SB16, autodetect, if that doesn't work try to manually enter the values from the BIOS/autoexec.bat, if it doesn't work again, try the other SB cards that are listed.