cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/18053381

Happy 25th anniversary to System Shock 2 (I'm actually a day late, oops!). One of the original Immersive Sims, and precursor to the BioShock series. This has much more RPG elements than BioShock does, and an inventory grid.

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Wikipeda Synopsis

System Shock 2 is a 1999 action role-playing survival horror video game designed by Ken Levine and co-developed by Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios. Originally intended to be a standalone title, its story was changed during production into a sequel to the 1994 game System Shock. The alterations were made when Electronic Arts—who owned the System Shock franchise rights—signed on as publisher.

The game takes place on board a starship in a cyberpunk depiction of 2114. The player assumes the role of a soldier trying to stem the outbreak of a genetic infection that has devastated the ship. Like System Shock, gameplay consists of first-person combat and exploration. It incorporates role-playing elements, in which the player can develop skills and traits, such as hacking and psionic abilities.

System Shock 2 was originally released in August 1999 for Microsoft Windows. The game received critical acclaim but failed to meet commercial sales expectations. Many critics later determined that the game was highly influential in subsequent game design, particularly on first-person shooters, and considered it far ahead of its time. It has been included in several "greatest games of all time" lists. In 2007, Irrational Games released a spiritual successor to the System Shock series, titled BioShock, to critical acclaim and strong sales.

System Shock 2 had been in intellectual property limbo following the closure of Looking Glass Studios. Nightdive Studios were able to secure the rights to the game and the System Shock franchise in 2013 to release an updated version of System Shock 2 for modern operating systems, including for OS X and Linux, and announced plans to release an Enhanced Edition of the game. OtherSide Entertainment announced in 2015 that they had acquired the rights from Nightdive Studios to produce a sequel, System Shock 3, but as of 2020 the rights have since been transferred to Tencent.

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Videos

MandaloreGaming - System Shock 2 Review

Finntrovert - System Shock 2 - Retrospective / Review

Ramsker - System Shock 2 is Still A Masterpiece

Boulder Punch - System Shock 2 Review | An Immersive Sim Classic

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Links

IGDB Page

MobyGames Page

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About !retrostatus@retrolemmy.com

This community is for big milestone anniversaries of retro games (15 years or older, every multiple of 5 years). See our sidebar for more info and resources for making your own posts here.

Post #1: [Retro Platinum] King's Quest: Quest for the Crown (1984-05-10)

Post #2: [Retro Platinum] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989-05-12)

Post #3: [Retro Silver] Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (1999-05-12)

Post #4: [Retro] Doom 3 (2004-08-03)

Tl;dw: he backported dotnet v2 to windows 95, adding the possibility to port software and games to Win95.

Visual studio still has the option to export to dotnet v2 in the current version.

Someone told me this Community might enjoy this big gal! Got her along with a keyboard and mice for 90€! Check out these specs!

Boi she's also massive, especially compared to my main Gaming PC!

Both Train Simulator and Unreal work lovingly on it, though Stronghold 2 does struggle quite a bit the more I build... also awaiting Half Life 1 with all expansions and a copy of Age Of Empire (which I haven't played a single part before) so thats exciting. Im also considering trying to get HL2 to run on it, but idk if it can handle that, what do you all think?

This has got to be one of the first games that required Win95 and didn't run on DOS or Win3.1, probably the first 3D one cause I think the other bundled games were all 2D

It was included with CD-ROM editions of Win95, but idk if the floppy version came out first? Wikipedia suggests this game came out in the same month as Win95 with no exact date, so maybe they really did release the same day.

I used to play this game quite a bit on Windows 95. It's not much of a game but as a kid I enjoyed it lol.

LGR has a video about the first Dogz (1995) and Catz (1996) games: https://youtu.be/8eqLzcvVpiM

I can't find much about the 2nd game though, this is literally the only video I could find of it.

I also played the 3rd game https://youtu.be/JZqo-a-za4E

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/11057131

Surreal Engine is an ongoing project to reimplement UE1, mainly focused on Unreal Tournament v436 and Unreal Gold v226 at the moment.

This one has been discussed in the other linux_gaming community before, more than two years ago. Since then there were numerous improvements:

• It can now run UT99 maps and Unreal Gold botmatch maps (whereas it was limited to only UT before), and boot up onto the intro flyby of Deus Ex.
• Colission handling is much better (but not perfect yet).
• Can utilize SDL2 on Linux for windowing and native Wayland support (previously it'd use pure X11, and actually still does if you don't have SDL2 installed).
• The menus mostly work now.
• Initial works for the AI (they will move around sometimes, and retaliate if attacked).
• Game detection system based on the SHA1 sum of the game executable. This allows us to detect many versions of UT and U1/UGold, as well as Deus Ex, Klingon Honor Guard, NERF Arena Blast, and more!
• A launcher has been added to select the game you want to play on startup. And lots of other improvements!

There is still a lot of work to do to implement everything though, and contributions are always welcome!

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/Emulation/t/547700

Emulator of x86-based machines based on PCem.

Gravis UltraSound fixes by @lemondrops in #3664
Fix GDB stub builds due to undeclared symbol by @Theldus in #3655
Update language module by @kzmidze in #3649
GDB stub small fixes: out-of-bounds and wrong packet reply in 'qfThreadInfo' by @Theldus in #3666
Update actions/checkout to v4 by @jriwanek in #3677
Add new 4.0 dependencies to RPM spec file by @rderooy in #3672
Disable the softfloat checkbox when no FPU is selected by @lemondrops in #3694
Assorted fixes by @lemondrops in #3695
Machine table fixes by @lemondrops in #3702
Init LPT before Network to fix PLIP mode. by @yishayv in #3706
SCSI changes and fixes: by @TC1995 in #3698
fix flags for serial passthrough on unix by @adh in #3691
Video, Storage and MCA changes/fixes. by @TC1995 in #3713
Fix compilation. by @TC1995 in #3714
GHA changes by @jriwanek in #3720
Assorted fixes by @jriwanek in #3719
qt: Add a warning when cpu_override is enabled by @lemondrops in #3724
Assorted Cleanups and fixes by @jriwanek in #3722
Updated Simp. Chinese and Japanese translations by @EmpyreusX in #3725
Remove several unused variables by @jriwanek in #3730
Fix Japanese translation (Win32 and Qt) by @EmpyreusX in #3729
GHA: Enable mac builds, homebrew fixes by @cold-brewed in #3731
Revert a testing change that shouldn't have been there by @lemondrops in #3735
Update the bug report template by @dhrdlicka in #3741
More video fixes: by @TC1995 in #3745
README update: Remove unmaintained managers by @cold-brewed in #3738
Issue template tweaks by @lemondrops in #3752
Future support for higher clocked CPU's + A little more lint by @jriwanek in #3753
Remove the C/C++ standard flags from the toolchain files by @lemondrops in #3754
Compaq Plasma fixes: by @TC1995 in #3756
VGA/XGA memory fix. by @TC1995 in #3761

Here eXo (of eXoDOS fame) talks about the problems of 9x emulation, and why it's currently not feasible.

This is a game I really want to have back in my collection. This game is amazing. A great RTS set in the Dune universe.

I remember the first time seeing the sandworm. It was such an amazing sight because they are huge! I didn't expect that after dune 2/2000.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/3777/emperor-battle-for-dune/

Anyone remembers this one?

Shiny have made many unique and creative games, but this must be their magnum opus. Amazing and original take on the RTS genre.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/2861/sacrifice/

The sequel to Star Wars: Dark Forces

This game was great. The first real way to feel how it would be like to be a Jedi.

The game was followed up by the brilliant Star Wars: Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy both on my personal list of favorite games ever.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/372/star-wars-jedi-knight-dark-forces-ii/

It's still available to buy on places like steam and GoG.

I used to play the demo of this. I dreamt of the full version and how I would make an awesome movie. The full version is now basically abandonware, but I never made that movie.

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/3d-movie-maker-l5s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Movie_Maker

A cannon fodder clone with a lemmings skin

https://www.mobygames.com/game/2614/lemmings-paintball/

A community-based project recently went live, providing access to the long-lost Windows Update pages, which work with classic versions of Windows to enable updating the OS. The Windows Update Restored site enables updating some classic versions of Windows, and the team members are busy getting their update locations ready. The team eventually hopes to provide service to those installing and updating systems with Windows 95, NT 4.0, 98, Me, 2000, and XP. The site's compatibility pages also have Windows Server 2003, plus Windows "Vista and Newer" entries, indicating they could eventually be part of the roadmap.