The first title to be released under the Alter Ego brand will be System Shock 2 for the Sega® Dreamcast™ console in November 2000. Licensed from Looking Glass Studios and being developed by Marina Games, System Shock 2 will offer all the tension and suspense of the original award winning PC game with a few added surprises. The game will offer a choice of single player RPG, multi-player Internet death match and team-based "capture the flag" modes.

But I guess shit happens in this industry. Why did it have to happen to the best damn game developers in the world I don't know. Why did it have to happen to the people we have come to know and love, I have no idea, yet again. I guess stuff like this happens.

My condolences go to the entire Looking Glass team, I am pretty damn positive that neither Dan nor I will lose contact with any of them. Who knows, perhaps a few of them will team up and create a start-up company of their own, sort of like a spin-off of Looking Glass.

Looking Glass has been my inspiration for quite some time now, as you can see. I'm sure Dan feels the same way as well. I don't know where I would be without these guys, really! One thing is for certain though -- no matter where everyone at LG ends up, you can be sure we'll be right there with them.

"The reason a loader is need is because unlike Thief, which uses a linear sequence of missions, SS2 has its missions all linked together. So when you go thru a bulkhead you are actually loading a new mission.

So let's say you create a new mission, name it miss1.mis and copy it over the original miss1.mis. The game will crash when it tries to load the new mission because the links between the new mission and miss2.mis will be wrong. So just adding a new mission to the existing game won't work.

Shock 2 was never developed with the idea of adding user created missions to it.

Once folks (under NDA) start looking at the way the missions are linked together and read our crappy documentation about how to setup the bulkheads, then the need for some sort of mission loader, or at least a user mission template that has the bulkhead connections, necessary to start the mission, already setup will become more obvious."

We've been talking with Looking Glass recently, and here is the current situation: ShockEd is vastly different than DromEd, mainly because unlike Thief (which is mission-based and linear), System Shock 2 has a lot of missions, all of which are linked to each other, via the bulkhead doors in the game. You can't just create one level and play it -- your level has to know what other level(s) to load when you approach a bulkhead, where to start off in the newly loaded level, etc. Now, Looking Glass doesn't want to spend their time or resources on figuring out a way to insert in user missions into their mission1.mis, mission2.mis, etc files, and linking them in the editor, so they are handing the job to us. Basically, we need to find out a way to create a "mission loader", so they've asked us to gather a group of 4 or 5 people to become involved in this project in order to figure out a way to make the editor actually "useful". If we succeed, then ShockEd will be released to the public. If we don't..then ShockEd is no more. It's as simple as that.

I'm going to be heading up this project, and also note that if you get accepted in this project, you will be under an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), meaning that you cannot share/talk about ShockEd, distribute the editor, etc -- you will have to sign an agreement and give it to me so that I can send it to LG, and then the editor will be yours to do as you wish.

So, if you think you are able to figure out this problem we have with Shock2 and the mission loading situation, then please email me with the following information:

Name:
Email:
Username on the Forums (if you have one):
Age:
Any past DromEd experience:
Any past technical experience (which related to ShockEd or gaming in general):

Remember, I don't want applicants that don't know anything about how Shock2 works, how the files are used, etc.. I need some techie people, folks! :) The sooner we get this project up and running, the sooner we can get the editor out to the public.

So.. start sending those applications right away, I'll be viewing them in the next few days, and if you get selected, you will receive an email from me, giving you further instructions and details on this project.

The site is fully developed with MM experienced through downloads, rather than have the MM embedded in the site. This will allow viewers to download the media rather than have the media on the page causing enormous download times per page.

"This site is intended to be a SS3 primer telling of the rise of the TROIKA GEL-Intelligence system developed from the extracted brain of employee 2406-1."

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