System Shock 2 gets a surprise patch 2.46

Night Dive’s 2013 re-release of System Shock 2 has received a new patch today, several years after its initial launch. Patch 2.46 is available only for the Windows version of the game at present, with Mac and Linux updates due “soon”.

Reading between the lines, it looks like Patch 2.46 is an amalgamation of community fixes. Somebody called ‘Le Corbeau’ is specifically thanked in the notes, and Night Dive reference the fact that “many” of the fixes have come from System Shock 2 players.

So, what are those fixes? You can read the full patch notes below, but in summary; multiple object fixes (collision problems, rotation issues, floating stuff, rogue props), the “almost completely broken” quest ‘Find Delacroix’ should now work, and Disruption Grenades will now be as dangerous as they ought to be.

On the quality of life side of things, System Shock 2 will now default to a WSAD control scheme, the in-game UI should scale better at 1080p and above, and the EXE has been renamed to avoid old Windows compatibilities being applied in error on launch. All in all, some pretty good stuff.

System Shock 2 Patch 2.46

– The EXE has been renamed from Shock2.exe to SS2.exe to avoid old Windows compatibilities being applied on game launch. You will need to restart Steam for the launcher to point to the new executable,
– Fixed the problem with battery not fully charging items sometimes,
– Partially fixed the problem with Pyro field glow effect never going away after saving and loading while active,
– The Recycler will no longer recycle equipped implants, preventing issues,
– Fixed many miscellaneous problems on doors, lights, and eggs,
– Fixed many upside down or badly rotated objects,
– Fixed many cases of rogue props on objects,
– Fixed quite a few cases of script duplication,
– Fixed a few extreme cases of objects floating off walls and floor,
– Fixed the almost completely broken ‘Find Delacroix’ quest,
– Fixed a couple of quests that were starting up or completing in a slightly buggy way
– Fixed all the broken piles of worms in the last few levels,
– Some tweaks to various existing setups to make them work smoother (explore the DML files if interested in details),
– Disruption grenades now actually deadly as per their description,
– Rick turrets now corpse normally,
– Grenade Hybrids now launch grenades from their hands instead of their abdomens,
– The starting controls now use WASD,
– The default music volume level has been lowered slightly,
– Enhanced Precision disabled by default as having it enabled was causing issues with Steam Overlay and Windows 10,
– The default resolution when starting the game is now 800×600,
– The in-game UI is now set at a fixed resolution, and will scale better at high (1920×1080 and above) resolutions. If you wish to disable this change, open cam_ext.cfg in NotePad, and add a semicolon to the beginning of the line ‘d3d_disp_scaled_2d_overlay 800 600’