System Shock: Female Hacker - mod release! news

The modification provides the following:

• All three cutscenes, with scenes replaced to show the new protagonist,
• a replaced "grunt" noise, when hacker takes damage,
• changed wording in one log found later in the game.

Download the mod from moddb.com and follow the installation instructions for "System Shock Enhanced Edition".

You can reach the modder, "dertseha", on Nightdive Studio's Discord server, as well as on the systemshock.org forums.

Background info (dev diary)

This mod was the ideal candidate to drive forward my effort to extend the editor for the game to support the cutscenes.
The video codec used for the cutscenes is an elaborate one, and while the decoding algorithm is known for decades now, developing an encoder was tricky.

Starting in March 2019, I made first attempts at creating a compatible encoder. First encoding static, single-color images, then continuing to re-encode the original scenes. With a very limited byte-budget of the codec, and limited time-budget for this hobby project, progress was slow. After succeeding to properly re-encode all the scenes of the original in August, I had the idea for a great showcase: Have a familiar video and replace the protagonist.
Thus the idea was born to bring some diversity to this classic game.

Asking around, I learned that there's a difference between "pixel-art" and "low-poly" art. With the original videos falling into the category of "low-poly" art, I searched on respective Reddit groups and Discrod servers. Earlier in 2020, I made contact with a freelance artist, VintageWarm, who was willing to take on the project.

After some incremental approaches, we settled on a mixture of re-creating some scenes and "splicing" others, where I took the new part and stitched it into the original video, frame by frame.

It was definitely a fun experience and exercise to work on. I'm very happy to have created the first mod showcasing new videos, as well as bringing a new character option to the players.