The following changes were made to the game too late to put in the manual. Please take note.
Localized Pyrokinesis has been changed from from 5 seconds + 2 per PSI to 15 seconds + 8 per PSI.
Resurrection at an activated Quantum Bio-Reconstruction Machine costs 10 nanites. If you don't have enough nanites when you are killed, then you will die normally. This cost is waived on "Easy" difficulty.
The hardest difficulty is called Impossible for a reason. It is intended to provide a VERY serious challenge for the experienced gamer. It is possible to complete the game at Impossible, but if you find yourself unable to survive, especially without extensive practice at easier levels, well, don't say we didn't warn you.
Gamma Correction
System Shock 2 supports in game Gamma correction, for cards whose drivers also support this. The Voodoo1 and Voodoo2 based pass through cards do not support this feature. We have attempted to make the default brightness a reasonable one, but this is also dependent on the monitor and may not be ideal for all users.
Shock 2's world should be full of shadows. Many owners with 3d cards will have individual settings that might be brighter than Shock 2 should ideally look. Be sure to set your own gamma accordingly, so that shadows are clearly dark and evident in the game world; if your card does not support in-game gamma correction, then adjust your gamma in the Windows control panel.
Texture Corruption
Some Voodoo 1 based 3d card owners may experience serious graphics glitches affecting textures and colored lighting. All examples of these glitches that we have experienced can be fixed by making a clean installation of current drivers from http://www.3dfx.com
3d Card Memory
System Shock 2 requires a 4M 3D card. The game is not supported for use with 2M 3D cards. In some cases, Shock will still run on a machine with such a card, but in our experience, the game will crash frequently and the graphics will look terrible.
Memory Constraints
Mode transitions (including loading and saving games) are fairly slow on 32M systems.
Windows Slowdowns
If the game crashes for some reason, you may find that your computer begins to slow down. This is due to a bug in Microsoft's DirectPlay drivers, and causes no actual harm -- there is simply a system process that gets confused. Rebooting the computer will make the slowdown go away.
Logitech Mouse
Logitech mouse drivers version 8.2 may cause corruption of the pointer in game; updating the drivers to version 8.32 has been found to fix this.
Mouse Wheel/ 3rd Button
The third mouse button / mouse wheel can be bound in Shock (by default, it toggles between shoot and use mode), but if you have assigned this button a Windows function (double click, copy, etc), then it cannot be assigned or used in game.
Sound Channels
The default number of sound channels is 8. While you can set this number to 4, it will not significantly increase the frame rate, and if you need to do so, we strongly recomend that you set the music volume to 0 so that it will not take up one of the channels. Playing with only four music channels may result in your missing important game information, such as camera noises or nearby creature noises.
3d Sound
Different 3d sound cards mix positional (3d) sounds at different levels relative to non-positional sounds. The "positional sound bias" slider on the audio options panel can be used to adjust that mix. As the slider moves further to the right, non-positional sounds become softer. As the slider moves to the left, positional (3d) sounds become softer.
Swap File
System Shock 2 uses a local swap file of about 35 megabytes. You will need to have 35M free on the same drive on which Shock is installed in order to play.
Autorun Incompatibilities
Some CD-ROM drives do not have manufacturer-written Windows 95/98 drivers, and must use the default Windows drivers. These drives will not display the System Shock 2 autorun panel upon insertion of the CD, and installation must be done manually. We have encountered this problem with the TEAC CD-524EA CD drive.
Direct X 6
System Shock 2 uses Microsoft's DirectX 6. In order for you to play the game, you must have DX6-compliant drivers for your video card and sound card. Please note that although DirectX 6.1 is installed with the game, your video and sound card drivers will not be upgraded to DirectX 6 drivers. You will need to obtain the latest DX6 drivers from your card manufacturer.
The following is a list of 3D video cards that have been verified to work with Shock under DX6 at the time of this writing:
3Dfx Voodoo, Voodoo Rush, Voodoo2, Banshee
nVidia RIVA 128, RIVA ZX, RIVA TNT
Matrox G200
Intel/Real 3D i740
S3 Savage 3D
ATI Rage Pro
ATI Rage 128
If you have a video card that uses the 3Dfx Voodoo2 chipset, and you are using older DX5 drivers, you may experience the occasional black screen or crash. Please visit your card manufacturer's web site to check if there are new DX6 drivers for your card, or the 3dfx web site.
Here is a list of 3D cards that are known not to have drivers that are compliant with DX6, at the time of this writing (June 20, 1999), and as a result, will not run Shock properly. You may want to contact your card manufacturer to see if up-to-date DX6 drivers have recently been made available.
