System Shock(tm) 2 Demo

Readme includes:
•	Playing the Game:
•	Welcome to the Demo
•	Quick Key Commands
•	Backstory
•	Training/Getting Started
•	How to Play
•	Hints
•	Technical Issues:
•	Gamma Correction
•	Texture Corruption
•	3D Card Memory
•	Memory Constraints
•	Windows Slowdowns
•	Logitech Mouse 
•	Mousewheel / 3rd button
•	Sound Channels
•	3d Sound
•	Swap File
•	Direct X 6 and known incompatible cards

Playing the Game

Welcome to the Demo!
The full System Shock 2 game includes a training area on Earth, a space station in which your character's skills are generated in one of three branches of the military, and over ten decks and other areas of the Von Braun and the UNN Rickenbacker.  This demo is limited to the training area and the Med/Sci deck of the Von Braun, where you start with a pre-generated UNN Navy character. 

The full game also includes over a dozen weapons which can be modified and loaded with several types of ammo each, thirty-five psionic skills, over a hundred logs left by crew members detailing the fate of the Von Braun, a host of strange creature to interact (fight!) with, and a large collection of alien and human-tech objects to research.  The demo includes an introductory subset of each of these - you can't have everything on the first level! 

Look for the full game soon!

Quick Key Commands
By default, the mouse controls your view in the world or the cursor position on the screen. Left mouse button attacks with your current weapon and right mouse uses an object in the world or in your inventory.

Some of your default key bindings are listed below. Look in the Options panel for the full set of keybindings and shortcuts. All the bindings are also fully rebindable via the Options panel. 

Command			Keyboard	Arrows	Keypad	

Movement Commands
Run forward			W				8	
Walk backwards		X		¯		2	
Turn left			A		¬		4	
Turn right			D		®		6	
Crouch				S				5	
Slide left			Z				1	
Slide right			C				3	
Lean left			Q				7	
Lean right			E				9	
Look up			T		PgUp		
Look down			G		PgDn		
Look forward			V			
Jump				Space

Other Commands
Toggle Mode			Tab, I
Reload				R
Change Ammo Type		B, ;
Change Weapon Setting		O
Read Last Log			U
Stop Playing Log		Backspace
Map 				M
Select Weapon			` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = \ 
Query				Ctrl
Split				Alt
Set Nav Marker		N
Compass Toggle		Alt-C
Next Weapon			Y
Previous Weapon		Shift-Y
Use Rad Hypo			P
Use Med Hypo			H

Escape to Metagame		Esc
Message History		L
Quick-Load			Alt-L
Quick-Save			Alt-S
Take Screenshot		Ctrl-F9

Mouse Actions
Use /Shoot modes
Left click: move object / shoot
Right click: use object
Middle click: switch modes
Move mouse left: move cursor left / turn left
Move mouse right: move cursor right / turn right
Move mouse up: move cursor up / look up
Move mouse down: move cursor down / look down

Backstory
It is thirty-five years after the destruction by an unnamed hacker of the TriOptimum-owned Citadel Station, and SHODAN, the rogue AI controlling it.  The Earth is principally governed by the Unified National Nominate (UNN), an  organization which took power after the fall of Citadel, but mega-corporations such as TriOptimum still wield both technological and economic clout. TriOptimum scientists develop the theory for a faster-than-light starship drive, but the UNN is unwilling to allow TriOptimum sole access to the rest of the universe.  After years of bickering and political maneuvering, a compromise is reached: a TriOptimum corporate starship, the Von Braun, is constructed, but on its maiden voyage, it will be accompanied by a UNN heavy destroyer, the Rickenbacker - ostensibly for protection against possibly hostile aliens.  The Rickenbacker is crewed by UNN Navy, but includes a platoon of Marines, the UNN's combat specialists, and representatives of the OSA, experts in psionics and rumored to be the UNN's "black ops" division; the Von Braun's crew is composed of civilian scientists, technical personnel, and corporate pilots.  

Your character is one of the Rickenbacker's soldiers, and, after training, the game starts as you find yourself waking from coldsleep aboard the Von Braun with no memory of the past weeks.  An electronic message from Dr. Janice Polito has just arrived, telling you to come find her on Deck Four, but as you start your journey towards her, all you encounter are scenes of carnage and chaos; the logs of the crew members that you find do not yet explain what has caused things to go so very wrong...

Training/Getting Started
The initial level takes place four years before the events aboard the Von Braun.  After exiting the subway, enter the UNN recruitment building, where you have a choice of Basic Training and Advanced Training.  Basic Training offers you an introduction to the interface, such as inventory, using objects, pushing buttons, and searching containers.  Advanced Training includes three separate training environments: Weapons, which teaches you about ranged weapons, ammunition, and weapon repair; Technical, which lets you practice hacking; and Psionics, which demonstrates two of the beginning (and useful) psionic powers. Although it is not necessary to go through any of the training, we highly recommend that you do so the first time that you play the game.

After progressing through the training areas, you reach the point where, in the full game, you would choose to enter the Navy, the Marines, or the OSA; because the demo does not include the character-generation space station area, you will be given a pre-generated Navy character and the other two options are not available.   After three years of training, your character is posted aboard the UNN Rickenbacker, and the game begins. 

How to Play
You have two principal modes of interaction with the world: "shoot mode", and "use mode".  Shoot mode offers a minimal set of extra displays, and mouse movement changes your view of the 3-d world.  Left-clicking in shoot mode shoots (or, more precisely, attacks with your current weapon); right-clicking in shoot mode uses a hilighted object.   Use mode offers a larger number of display windows, and mouse movement moves a cursor around these windows.  In use mode, left-clicking or left-dragging an object moves it, right clicking uses the object (if possible). Holding down the control key before clicking on an object will bring up a query display telling you more detailed information about that object.

The Von Braun is full of items to pick up, computers to reprogram, ship's systems to repair or disable, and other objects to use.  When you are close enough to a usable item to interact with it, the item will be highlighted with square brackets, indicating that it is selected.  The appropriate action will be displayed next to the selected item: "Push button," "Search container," or "Use replicator."  To take this action, right click.  This may bring up action-specific windows, such as the contents of a container or body that you're searching, or a training screen if you are using a trainer.

When you go from Earth to the Med/Sci deck of the Von Braun, or between the two principal areas of Med/Sci, your game will automatically be saved in a "quick save" slot.  You can load this saved game with ALT-L.  Additionally, you can save the game yourself in the quick save slot by hitting ALT-S.   Keep in mind that any quick save overwrites the previous one, including both your own saves and saves upon level transition.  

Hints
•	Examine/use everything you can select. There are many useful objects in the world!
•	Pick up and examine everything that you can. But you can only carry a limited amount of stuff, so don't carry around a lot of junk.
•	Listen to the audio logs you pick up by hitting the "U" key. They will give you valuable information that will guide your exploration.
•	Your MFD (accessed in Use mode by clicking on the little audio-log icon) has a host of useful information in it. It stores all the emails and logs you have received and it also keeps Notes that tell you what your current set of objectives are. These are marked off as you succeed at them.
•	Your map will help you navigate through the world. You can toggle a minimap on by hitting the "M" key and then checking the "Minimap" box. The map displays the location of many useful objects in the world like replicators, recharge stations, med-beds and replicators.
•	Pick up the small cyber-upgrade chips. They can be spent at upgrade stations to improve your character. Experiment with different character types and different ways of soving problems.
•	Nanites are useful for buying objects from replicators, hacking, repairing and modifying weapons and a host of other things. You can never have too many nanites.
•	Most weapons have a minimum skill requirement before you can use them. Buy these skills with cyber-upgrade units.
•	Use different ammo types to fight different monsters. Each ammo type is effective against certain targets.
•	Destroy security cameras before they can see you. If you set off the alarm, find a security computer and use it to shut the alarm off.
•	If you are skilled enough, you can hack into security computers, locked crates, replicators and even turrets! 
•	Try buying and experimenting with the psi-powers.
•	If you have modification skill, you can modify your weapons to vastly increase their effectiveness.
•	Weapons degrade with use. Maintenance skill allows you to use maintenance tools to stop weapons from breaking. Repair skill allows you to repair broken weapons.
•	If you find strange unidentified objects and you have research skills, you can research them to gain valuable information or special items that will help you.
•	Med-beds will heal you, but you may need to attach a med-bed key to them. They also consume nanites each time you use them....
•	Quantum bio-reconstruction stations will rebuild you if you are unfortunate enough to be "deconstructed". But you have to activate them first and they consume nanites.
•	The info-kiosks scattered around the level will give you more useful advice. Read them. Experiment. There are always many different ways of approaching problems in System Shock 2. Rushing blindly into the world will probably just get you into trouble...

Technical Issues

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.

Direct X 6
System Shock 2 uses  Microsoft's DirectX 6.  Note that DirectX is not installed with the demo. 
In order for you to play the game, you must have DX6-compliant drivers for your video card and sound card. If you do not have these you will need to obtain them from you 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.

	Chipset
•	#9 Ticket to Ride
•	Cirrus Logic CL-5465
•	Trident Image 975
•	3D Labs Permedia 2
•	PowerVR PCX1
•	PowerVR PCX2
•	S3 Virge 325
•	S3 Virge GX/DX/VX
•	S3 Virge GX2
•	Rendition V1000
•	Chromatic Research Mpact
•	Matrox Mystique