Deus Ex GMDX: Deus Ex Advancement Mod v9 Released!

[Ash]

And even if you close your eyes to overall visiual cohesion, HDTP is just sloppy. A lot of textures aligned badly to the models and do not fit each other.

Not the worst case i`ve ever seen, but still not a good one.

I get you. I did put some effort into visual consistency such as disabling HDTP's character models, removing that awful HDTP sawed off shotgun, attempts to further New Vision's integration into the maps and general small efforts to work on better consistency across the board, but even then it can look a bit weird as your cat example above, yet other times it looks a lot nicer. Overall they're decent mods, though I can understand some's dislike of them.
Anyhow, you can play GMDX with just HDTP no New Vision, but I guess it stands out even more that way. Those updated weapons are a big plus though as vanilla's are some of the ugliest weapons I've ever seen in a game of that era, and installing weapon mods actually reflects the modification visually.

 

[KlauZ]

Seggestion box:

What if Nanosword was OP, but also used batteries?

There is already a lot of difficulty customization in post-game menu, why not make difficulty fully customizable? Like changing droprates, AI, damage. A lot of stupid complaints would go away.

 

[Serious_Business]

It makes me feel impotent.

You are impotent.

Nice

Playing this, I like it. Can't write a full review, but this seems to me like the definitive DX mod, in so far as by "mod" we mean modification to the original game. The community did a lot of stuff over the years, but never really a satisfying mod to improve the original game... they were some graphics and gameplay mods that did some interesting things, like Shifter if I remember correctly, but they all felt a bit unsatisfying. But this is quite good, I think... very polished experience, I can't find much fault with it.

 

[Ash]

Thank you Codex for being the only place that gives a shit about the "definitive DX mod". No one else hasn't even bothered to try it.

There is a couple of obscure minor things wrong with it you may notice after extended play/replays, nothing that should stop anyone from giving it a go as it's a complete experience as-is, but I'm working them now. Also doing some cool new things which I'll show soon, but the next version won't be released for a long time probably.

What if Nanosword was OP, but also used batteries?

Already considered this exact thing way back. Ideally it'd need an effect where the "eutactic blade" retracts when out of battery. It is OP anyway, strongest weapon in the game barring explosives even with the nerf. But yeah, if I could get that effect I'd almost certainly raise the damage some and add battery functionality.

I guess I could just force the weapon to be holstered when it runs out of battery as that has a "retract" animation, but I'm not sure if that'd be for the best.

There is already a lot of difficulty customization in post-game menu, why not make difficulty fully customizable? Like changing droprates, AI, damage. A lot of stupid complaints would go away.

Nah. I like the old school method of choosing a difficulty mode, and having to scale to the challenge it demands (or doesn't demand) without exception, unless you use console commands/cheats anyway, which is not possible on hardcore mode. Of course, I let the player configure some difficulty options in the menus but it is mostly just options that are off by default that make the game even harder.

 

[Jaedar]

I guess I could just force the weapon to be holstered when it runs out of battery as that has a "retract" animation, but I'm not sure if that'd be for the best.

That would just be really annoying. Only way to do it properly would be a new model for the blade with some scripts that if out of battery, the blade retracts and then when you swing it deals no damage. Probably not doable.

Also I don't think a sword with battery would be interesting anyway.

 

[Dev_Anj]

I'm against the idea of a battery powered sword too. The whole idea of the low tech weapons is that most of them use no ammo and they can be effective, but they require being at close or short ranges. The only three exceptions, the riot prod, the pepper gun and the throwing knifes have some special properties. The riot prod is a powerful stunning weapon that stuns most enemies even if it doesn't knock them out immediately, the pepper gun is a short range stunning spray, and the throwing knifes are (in GMDX anyway) high damage weapons that arc in flight and so have limited range. The Dragon's Tooth on the other hand has nothing so special gameplay wise, it's just a high damage melee weapon.

I do wonder if it's not possible to make the pepper gun benefit more from upgrading the low tech skill though, since the pepper gun does no damage it doesn't benefit from that aspect of the skill, which is what most low tech specialists upgrade the skill for. Perhaps higher levels of the skill could unlock a mode for the pepper spray where a player could use the whole canister to instantly knock out someone? I'm not sure how it would be balanced against the rest of the low tech weapons though.

 

[Ash]

The Dragon's Tooth on the other hand has nothing so special gameplay wise, it's just a high damage melee weapon.

It's the only melee weapon capable of destroying electronic devices like turrets and cameras. With max Combat Speed and LowTech it breaks mostly everything that isn't INF, and puts enemies down real fast. By investing in both those things to the max you earned it, but it's still OP.

I do wonder if it's not possible to make the pepper gun benefit more from upgrading the low tech skill though, since the pepper gun does no damage it doesn't benefit from that aspect of the skill

Nothing really. Just gains reload speed from the skill. It's too good as it is anyway, I think it needs a nerf, somewhere in between the effectiveness it currently has and the near uselessness of vanilla.

 

[Ash]

I added Mankind Divided's Icarus Dash augmentation A.K.A Dishonored's Blink to the original Deus Ex, just because I could/as an experiment. Note this will not be available in any version of GMDX because of the extreme OP nature of the aug that nothing can really be done about.

 

[Ninjerk]

When are you going to make your own game?

 

[bloodlover]

Downloading this as we speak. I'll replay the game with the mod and see how it goes. Any tips for a stealth non-lethal play-style? I remember trying to pew pew my way at first but the recoil was huge and I didn't bother to explore very much so I went for sneaking around and hacking. Also, are consumables still hard to find? If I remember correctly, sometimes I had a hard time finding lockpicks and devices but maybe that was just me sucking at the game.

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Since this is in Uscript, you wouldn't be able to port this to UE4?

 

[Dev_Anj]

because of the extreme OP nature of the aug that nothing can really be done about.

Please do consider putting it up as an optional add on. It could be good to try to break levels using the aug. If you don 't want to put it as an addon, I would appreciate if you could give the code for it.

 

[Sigourn]

Sucks a lot that we need HDTP and New Vision (even though we can make do without, it was designed with it in mind as you mentioned).

But well, at least it's not just a "make things look nicer" mod so I can overlook those.

 

[Ash]

Downloading this as we speak. I'll replay the game with the mod and see how it goes. Any tips for a stealth non-lethal play-style? I remember trying to pew pew my way at first but the recoil was huge and I didn't bother to explore very much so I went for sneaking around and hacking. Also, are consumables still hard to find? If I remember correctly, sometimes I had a hard time finding lockpicks and devices but maybe that was just me sucking at the game.

Explore thoroughly. As with most games, that's when it is most enjoyable. Though it is definitely much less rewarding if you go non-lethal as there's far less ways in which you can be rewarded unfortunately.

Normal difficulty is recommended to most first timers, unless you like to be tested.

Tranquilizer darts now insta-KO low level humans consistently with a headshot due to headshot collision being fixed.

Pay attention to and read all aug/skill/item descriptions, as they all have changed in some form.

Lockpicks are sometimes well hidden.

Don't be afraid to use that multitool on that camera, turret or otherwise. It is a common behavior among Deus Ex players that multitools were used exclusively on keypads and everyone just ran past/destroyed/EMP'd/network hacked cameras and the like. In GMDX, there is generally greater incentive to prioritize shutting down those devices, well...mostly on higher difficulty levels anyway.

Bear in mind hacking Trained level no longer is all that is needed. Hacking now features skill checks, though software you find in the world can temporarily bypass these checks, but those are rare (so also worth keeping a sharp eye for).

Refer to the GMDX options menus and find the TIPS button, which tells must-have basic info like the explaination of new mechanics, such as left clicking objects in the inventory to equip/unequip or use them which saves so, SO much hassle.

Please do consider putting it up as an optional add on. It could be good to try to break levels using the aug. If you don 't want to put it as an addon, I would appreciate if you could give the code for it.

Sure. I'm probably just going to leave the code in, and if someone wants to make the aug available in their Fork/Add-on/GMDX TC, they can by simply placing it in an augmentation cannister in a level.

Since this is in Uscript, you wouldn't be able to port this to UE4?

UE4 uses C++ exclusively, no more UScript.

 

[Ash]

Lol, I just received a threat from codexer Increasing:

CyberP, or CyPig as you were aptly named by some people .
I know how you harassed developers of Deus Ex Revision and I remember your behavior on its ModDB page. And that is not all I know of you. You are one broken child.

You would do well to think of your behavior around here, lest certain information be shared and your integrity on this forum be irreparably damaged as a result.

Firstly, I went by the handle CyPig by my own admission, well, because I totally suck with names. That's why I just went with Ash this time

Secondly, I remained 100% professional and courteous during Revision's time in the spotlight and kept my mouth shut despite my strong dislike of how they handled things, and how it completely overshadowed this mod despite anyone with any sense in their noggin will perceive this to be the better designed and executed mod. Since then I've made a butthurt comment or two regarding the situation or what I think of Revision, nothing that would cause the Revision developers any concern as they sit back in corporate HQ smoking a cigar enjoying their Deus Ex mod monopoly on steam. I have made a small handful of comments on their page in the past, from what I remember one was inquiring about the soundtrack (I think the combat music is p. good), one was impressed with one of their shots (I think some of the redisgns are pretty good, but then you have many utterly dumb things like covering Liberty Island in complete darkness), and one was a minor disagreement over mod compatibility.

So, anyway, no I didn't harass the Revision developers, no I didn't spam their moddb page, no I didn't interfere with their time in the spotlight at all.

And the reason this halfwit threatened me? Because I expressed my mild dissatisfaction with a game he likes, Dishonored. Here.

 

[Sigourn]

So, anyway, no I didn't harass the Revision developers, no I didn't spam their moddb page, no I didn't interfere with their time in the spotlight at all.

Anyhow, the reason this halfwit threatened me? Because I expressed my mild dissatisfaction with a game he likes, Dishonored 2. Here.

You should have harassed and spammed them, though, their mod looks and plays like shit.

 

[Ash]

Well, I had a strong dislike of the situation, but I had too much respect for 7 whole years of non-profit development. That's a lot of love for the game and we have that much in common. Shame the love was misplaced in poor design.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Ash]

So, anyway, bullshit drama aside, what do people think about the idea of new augs? I've got some concepts down but adding any augs at all doesn't feel needed. While GMDX kind of adds new augs in the form of an upgradable default aug, and a replacement for a useless old one, I mostly found the assortment of augs available to be just fine, great selection, they just needed tweaks and enhancements which is now fulfilled. However, as RPG gamers you always want more choices as long as they are meaningful and well implemented, right? One odd thing about Deus Ex is it has no directly offensive augs whatsoever; no augs that deal damage on demand. Does anyone know why that may be?

Here's some aug concepts I wrote up, yet I don't think any of them really add anything of real value while also maintaining reasonable balance.

Electrostatic Discharge (from Invisible War and requested by players often)

Function: Adds EMP damage to melee attacks.
Type: Arms or Skeletal (Passive)
Upgrade: greater EMP damage.
Potential Conflicts/Issues: disruption of the current balance between electronic threats/devices and the tools used to bypass them.
Viability and Worth: Moderate-low

Icarus Dash (or Electromagnetic Propulsion for a non-popamole name)

Function: Dash forward on one plane only, no vertical movement as seen as in the video above, for evasive, stealthy or offensive measures, as well as an exploration aid.
Type: Arms or Legs? (Active)
Upgrade: reduced activation time and energy drain.
Energy Drain: High
Potential Conflicts/Issues: notable level/script breaking potential in combination with speed enhancement. Notable balance-breaking potential. This is despite the possible nerf proposed that only lets you dash on one plane.
Viability and Worth: Moderate.

Skeletal Reinforcement (Placeholder Name)

Function: Penalties to accuracy and movement from body part damage is negated, unless the body part is "destroyed" (0 hp)
Type: Skeletal (Passive)
Upgrade: each upgrade reinforces body parts in the following order: arms, legs, torso and head (for reference, damage to arms, head and torso reduce accuracy, damage to legs and torso reduce movement. Penalties come into effect when a body part is < 67% if I remember correctly, and the penalty is greater the less health a part has).
Potential conflicts/Issues: conflicts with the targeting aug as targeting increases accuracy which helps negate any accuracy penalties from the health system already. Other than that it obviously negates said penalties, and those penalties are there in the first place for a reason.
Viability and Worth: moderate

Generic Offensive Aug (Placeholder name)

Function: Your typical projectile, however it has a short-range arc and therefore requires skillful use, and isn't always a viable course of action to take if you have the bioenergy to spare. Moderate damage so as to not be capable of destroying doors or being overly balance-disrupting in general.
Type: Arms (Active)
Upgrade: Range & blast radius.
Energy Drain: High
Potential Conflicts: the original developer's unknown intention when they decided not to include directly offensive augs?
Viability and worth: Low. It's not really up for consideration at this stage.

Electromagnetic Attraction (Placeholder name)

Function: increases frob (interaction/grab) distance
Type: Arms (Passive)
Upgrade: greater distance (up to +100% increase maximum)
Potential Conflicts: Possibly immersion if players aren't convinced by the lack of animation: the movement of the object being magnetically attracted to you to be able to frob it in the first place (which should probably be skipped to make the aug worthwhile without it being full-blown telekenisis).
Viability and Worth: Moderate

So as you can see, nothing really seems suitable, at least I don't think so.

 

[Dev_Anj]

I would say Electrostatic Discharge and the frob distance increase augs are most viable to code. But Electrostatic Discharge would have to conflict with Combat Speed to work, as with combat speed you get overall higher damage and faster attacks and can take out some turrets and small robots while Electrostatic Discharge would only make it good against robots. It's risky to charge towards a robot shooting machineguns or rockets at you anyway so I don't think it would be too unbalanced.

As for the offensive aug, what would be the point of using it when you can use lots of ranged weapons? Would it have exceptional accuracy or something? From the description it just sounds like a mediocre attack I would be wasting bioenergy on.

Regarding Revision: I've made it clear multiple times that I think it's an ambitious but poorly done mod. I never denied that a lot of hard work went into it, but sadly the results are less than impressive. I was mostly pissed at the attitude of the modders rather than at the mod itself though. No use pondering over it anyway, and there are people who have critiqued it better and more elegantly than me.

 

[Ash]

They're all shit. If it works, don't fuck with it has always been the philosophy, so there probably won't be any new augs aside from the current "light gem" and hazard detection aug, which are just some optional aids that some may find handy and don't really conflict with anything.

If anyone has any ideas I'd like to hear them, but it all has to be based in realism to some degree as well as balanced with the overall design and for that reason there's not a lot of options.

They're all really easy to code, don't worry about that. By viability I just meant do they have a place in the game at all.

 

[AW8]

Do you fix incredibly minor bugs, Ash? On the return to Battery Park, there's an older bum near the subway entrance that sells you 30.06 ammunition. He sells you two clips for 300 credits each. Buying a clip for 300 credits twice works as intended, but the option to buy both at once for the price of 600 credits only gives you a single clip.

Here's the guy

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

When are you going to make your own game?

 

[Ash]

Do you fix incredibly minor bugs, Ash? On the return to Battery Park, there's an older bum near the subway entrance that sells you 30.06 ammunition. He sells you two clips for 300 credits each. Buying a clip for 300 credits twice works as intended, but the option to buy both at once for the price of 600 credits only gives you a single clip.

Here's the guy

Yes, I have fixed tons of minor bugs. Will take a look.

"When are you going to make your own game?"

Probably not any time soon. Game dev requires incredible willpower, finances and a team. I have neither, and the way things work these days...well the indie market is just as bad as AAA, where the most successful games are often those with a gimmick, and the fate of indies is primarily determined by minimal effort Youtubers that "REACT" to your game, or act exaggeratedly scared to it, or some controversial topic is born from it that makes it go viral. Quality is secondary just as it is in AAA and modding. I'm better off continually improving one of the greatest games there is.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

Well, I didn't like it that much, so I tried Revision as well, and though it sucks that it is for Steam only, Kentie's launcher fixed that easily enough.

And I have to say: that's what I wanted. They expanded everything greatly (the command center below UNATCO HQ and Hong Kong are so far my favorites, as that's how far I got) and offered a bunch more options. They doubled the size of most maps and made them look much more alive. While some things are easier, key points are a lot harder now. Not by limiting things, but simply by increasing the amount of enemies and giving them better weapons at the choke points, or offering more routes but putting some roadblocks on them (like new doors which you need a code for).

But I might be a minority on this board, so many Codexers probably prefer your mod. So I'll hope you continue building it.