Thanks, I liked that. I guess head over heels got twisted the same way as have your cake and eat it too. Though I always preferred ass over teakettle. 

esp. derogatory or 'blue' terms. For instance, the 'Blues' came about to describe a sexual or lurid vibe in that style of music (Jelly Roll Morton, Robert Johnson). Only later under the influence of the Chicago Club artist of the fifties did it come to be associated with whining about life circumstance naratives (B B King).

Or take the word 'cracker'. It is used today as a harder edged varient of 'redneck' (which came about to describe sharecropper fieldhands). Since the sociologist-comedien Jeff Foxworthy quantified the meaning of the later word, it has lost its hard edge.

I have heard that the term 'cracker' originally was a derogatory term used by the English to describe the Scots. 'Cracker' referring to cracked oats which the English believed was only good for horsefeed. I don't know the merit of that story, however. 

I always preferred ass over teakettle.

because you couldn't fit your cock down the spout? 

OK, some time back I uninstalled System Shock 2 to make room for another game (cough, Sims, cough.)

Now, that game is history, so I go to reinstall SS2. Everything seems to go fine. I fire it up. Splash screen, screen changes resolution, blinks - and I'm spat back to the desktop. No error messages, no explanation.

Can anyone suggest what's going worng? (BTW - DirectX 8.1, so it's not that.) 

The word wrong is spelled wrong; it should be spelled W-R-O-N-G. 

how helpful you are, smartass 

FC, can't offer anything to help but I had exactly the a similar problem with Thief 2 last night, I can get into menus etc. but it tanks as soon as it gets to a bit that would be using the 3D renderer. I've just tried SS2 after reading your post and it does exactly the same thing as Thief 2. I've never had Thief 2 installed on this PC before, but SS2 ran fine when I replayed it a few months back (with DirectX 9.0a), so a recent driver or Windows patch must buggering up Dark Engine games.

I tried forcing various emulation moded with RivaTuner last night to see if I could get Thief 2 to start but no joy. 

the same engine also used in the first No One Lives Forever. Many of the methods (directdraw, direct3d) have been streamlined in the pipeline in later versions of DirectX. I can see how this could create incompatablilites. Is there an OpenGl option in the set up? If so, try it out. If not, I doubt if you would want to to take out 8.1 or 9.0 for good ol' reliable Direct 6.0 (which made FallOut look so good). 

I mean you are likely to have similar problems with compatabilaty. 

<Shambler> go finish bladm53
<Bal> yes

REJOICE AND BE GLAD! 

Headthump: Looking Glass Studios' Dark Engine (Thief, Thief 2, System Shock 2) is not the same thing as Monolith's Lithtech (Shogo, NOLF, Blood 2, AVP2, etc.). I'm not sure whether that is what you are saying or not.

Fatty: There's a bunch of stuff about our problems in sticky threads on the Through The Looking Glass forums. Apparently it is a driver problem with nvidia's latest... Some people have been able to get it going without downgrading their drivers, although sadly it didn't work for me.

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/ 

yeap, I realized that was poorly worded in #4385. I simply meant both engines used the same generation version of DirectX so the problem would be likely replicated.

Though, your indication that the problem is likely to be with driver support instead of backward incompatabilaty with the software gets my attention.

When playing Deus Ex mods with DirectX 8.1 on my home system (P III 733Mhz, GeForce 2 Mx series) I get a lot of slow down, stutter and ugly pixelated rendering. This is alleviated by switching it to OpenGl. 

http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=382917

Oh God, ZTN, Stop them :)

Or at least I hope it's good 

those shots of ztn3dm1... they really give you a good feeling for the aesthetics of the map. Or at least it's a chance to see what q3a looks like when played in 'over-competitive asshole mode'. 

I've never understood that, I couldn't play with features turned down. Sure, if you've got to cut back for performance issues I guess, but I'd rather go and get a new CPU or vid card or whatever, and keep everything to the max 

to win, win, win. Aesthetics doesn't come in to it. Having a config file that turns off all the graphics and turns your opponent into a glowing red target is fair enough if you're a pro I guess, but if you aren't it just screams TWAT to me. 

I mean turning off all the textures, making all models fullbright blobs of colour - it doesn't strike me as being a million miles away from just using wallhack or something. Again, I second the twat theory. 

guys, just becuase these players don't have awesome systems and have to turn down all the graphics just to play doesn't mean you should call them cheaters! not everyone can afford 5,000 dollar upgrades every year! 

My Q3 config looks like that, although darker. And bright green players. 

The last time I read pro-player opinions on this, the reason they turn the graphics down to near-flat color rendering is not because of their system power, but because it removes superfluous distraction. That's what they said anyway. Not me. So don't shoot the messenger. I play with all the detail I can glut my little peepers on.
ztn3t1 is one of the better utilisations of the Q3 gothic wad - those screenshots make me cry :~( 

1) In Q3 you jump further/higher at different frame rates. maintaining a constant fps above these limits (and then capping the fps) requires turning down a lot of the graphics.

2) It allows players to focus on aim/map control/movement without having to try and spot their opponent through the increasing number of graphical effects. 

Frame rate gains are no excuse for that arse-cantaloupe to post those shots as "reference images" for ztn3dm1. 

A remake is a desperate cry for attention from a mapper out of ideas. 

You've reminded me that I wanted to remake broken1 to Q3. 

Glad I could help.