Deus Ex GMDX: Deus Ex Advancement Mod v9 Released!

[AW8]

Was Paul Denton nerfed in GDMX? I vaguely remember that he was a semi-God killing everything in his path in vanilla Deus Ex when UNATCO storms his apartment, now it takes just 1 of the agent in black to kill him.

Yes, GMDX nerfs Paul substantially. Now the player has to work to keep him alive instead of hiding in the closet and let him clean house.

Ash's reasoning for nerfing him also includes the fact that he says he's too weak to climb the stairs. If his condition is that bad he shouldn't be able to mow down an army of enemies without breaking a sweat.

 

[KlauZ]

Another hypothetical block in Versalab for dumb JC.
Password for getting ROM code is behind 50 dam door, low on lockpicks, new dragontooth is too weak to break it. Wat do?

 

[Ash]

p. sure you can get the mchow damocles login from a number of locations.
All else fails there are explosives and lockpicks to be found on the level.

 

[Black]

Or use one of mibs as explosive.

 

[Dev_Anj]

p. sure you can get the mchow damocles login from a number of locations.

Pretty sure you can't, the only thing giving you the password for all the Versalife member accounts in that level is the datacube locked in the meeting room. As for lockpicks and explosives, someone needs to check if they're in the open or not. MIB/WIB explosions aren't really viable most of the time and so should not be considered.

 

[Ash]

Nobody needs to do anything. There's a LAM in the Gray chamber.

 

[Black]

What's the obsession with "well if you have no lockpicks, no explosives, no skills, no nothing" then you can't progress?
Yeah, you fucked up big time, how is it wrong for a game to give you the finger if none of the multiple options aren't to your liking?

 

[KlauZ]

Because you still could progress in vanilla with sword. Gray LAM is good tho.

 

[Ash]

Deus Ex was designed to (almost) always have a non-skilled method of progression. Primarily because the player could have any variation of build at any given time. Yet the few instances where you cannot progress are under very rare circumstances and you've got to be utterly incompetent (e.g the vanilla forced radiation damage in Paris as discussed before) that I have no problem telling them to reload an earlier save and do better next time, or use cheats.

In other words this:

Yeah, you fucked up big time, how is it wrong for a game to give you the finger if none of the multiple options aren't to your liking?

 

[Ash]

Because you still could progress in vanilla with sword. Gray LAM is good tho.

GMDX's Tooth sword does more damage to doors than it did vanilla, not less.

Vanilla's tooth sword did 20 damage in five separate traces, like a shotgun. Primarily to prevent the player from breaking absolutely everything in sight.
GMDX's does 25 damage flat. Slightly more effective at breaking things, notably less effective at killing things (unless headshot or combat strength and/or lowtech).
Of course this was done so that the weapon doesn't laugh in the face of low-tech/combat strength investors and make combat a joke. And as a bonus the damage it displays in the inventory is accurate when compared to door damage threshold. Despite the nerf vs enemies, it's still an incredibly powerful weapon, and is the most powerful non-explosive weapon in the game if you have both low-tech and combat strength maxed. It's all just much more sensible.

 

[KlauZ]

Strange, only 1 soldier aggroed to explosion - even femcyborg in that room only aggroed when i started to fight that guy.

 

[RoSoDude]

Because you still could progress in vanilla with sword. Gray LAM is good tho.

GMDX's Tooth sword does more damage to doors than it did vanilla, not less.

Vanilla's tooth sword did 20 damage in five separate traces, like a shotgun. Primarily to prevent the player from breaking absolutely everything in sight.
GMDX's does 25 damage flat. Slightly more effective at breaking things, notably less effective at killing things (unless headshot or combat strength and/or lowtech).
Of course this was done so that the weapon doesn't laugh in the face of low-tech/combat strength investors and make combat a joke. And as a bonus the damage it displays in the inventory is accurate when compared to door damage threshold. Despite the nerf vs enemies, it's still an incredibly powerful weapon, and is the most powerful non-explosive weapon in the game if you have both low-tech and combat strength maxed. It's all just much more sensible.

My favorite nerf to the DTS was that drawing it actually makes sound, so you have to (somewhat) plan how you engage enemies. Also that you need the Master perk to wield it as a secondary weapon, but that's a new mechanic not a nerf.

By the way, is there much use to the Crowbar? I never really bothered with it personally, and always took the knife or baton for lethal or nonlethal respectively just because they need less inventory space. My thought was that it should do bonus damage to inanimate objects like crates or doors, but that could be dumb.

 

[Jazz_]

Man, this mod is teh hard. I couldn't keep alive Paul and I have tried many times, rip brotha.

 

[Black]

Keeping autistic Paul alive is when WP rockets come in handy. Just don't set yourself on fire.
Paul is gotta be one of the most useless brothers in video james by the way.

 

[Latelistener]

Just barricade him in his room. Worked for me. Managed to take down all of the enemies non-lethally, and save Paul.

Spoiler

 

[Ash]

Man, this mod is teh hard. I couldn't keep alive Paul and I have tried many times, rip brotha.

Perhaps I should only make Paul vulnerable on realistic and above? It's not meant to be hard on lower difficulties, although I don't know what difficulty you're on. Probably realistic. Anyhow some further changes to the difficulty system are implemented in v9.0, namely yet another prompt informing players. Should hear about less players picking realistic by default due to vanilla expectations.

By the way, is there much use to the Crowbar? I never really bothered with it personally, and always took the knife or baton for lethal or nonlethal respectively just because they need less inventory space. My thought was that it should do bonus damage to inanimate objects like crates or doors, but that could be dumb.

It's pretty reliable as the starting melee if playing lethal. Knife is viable too due to its speed and size but if you want to prioritize damage output crowbar is the one.

 

[Jaedar]

Man, this mod is teh hard. I couldn't keep alive Paul and I have tried many times, rip brotha.

Perhaps I should only make Paul vulnerable on realistic and above? It's not meant to be hard on lower difficulties, although I don't know what difficulty you're on. Probably realistic. Anyhow some further changes to the difficulty system are implemented in v9.0, namely a prompt. Should hear about less players picking realistic by default due to vanilla expectations.

By the way, is there much use to the Crowbar? I never really bothered with it personally, and always took the knife or baton for lethal or nonlethal respectively just because they need less inventory space. My thought was that it should do bonus damage to inanimate objects like crates or doors, but that could be dumb.

It's pretty reliable as the starting melee if playing lethal. Knife is viable too due to its speed and size but if you want to prioritize damage output crowbar is the one.

Doesn't paul live as long as JC "dies" first during the escape?

 

[Ash]

No. The scripting has been edited.

 

[Ash]

In other news, that recent news post was a success. One modeler has offered up their services as a result of it, bringing the total to three. Maybe now I can achieve some of the things I thought were previously out of reach. Still need an animator though.

 

[ghostdog]

Just barricade him in his room. Worked for me. Managed to take down all of the enemies non-lethally, and save Paul.

Hide Spoiler

I had forgotten the actual number of troops in the 'ton hotel. MJ12 sent a goddamned battalion after Paul.

 

[Ash]

I asked KlauZ to write up a guide on the model import process for another modeler. I'm making it public because I've never seen anything simplified on the topic, along with it having a reputation for being a "nightmarish process":

Its better to read http://www.offtopicproductions.com/tacks/3ds2de/ImportingModels.html to fully understand the whole process but here the basics

Preparations

AngrealHeal.3ds is an example name.


Models must be made up of a single 3D Studio object, which lives within the 256x256x256 coordinate space centered on the origin. (Setting the grid extents to –128..128 and turning on the grid is helpful here.) The model itself should be centered on the origin (0,0,0) because of how Unreal specifies the collision cylinders used to determine when objects are touching.

There is a limit of 9 textures on a single model, they should be square and multitude of 2 (128, 256 etc)
Limit is 512, you can use bigger textures, but they will be compressed to 512 (its a problem if you want to mask your texture)


Before saving model in 3ds format you should mirror it from left to right.


The conversion tool will only convert objects with sequence numbers in their names (Obj01, Obj02, ...). The object name itself is meaningless; it’s the sequence numbers that count. They must begin at 01 (even if that’s the only frame!) and you can’t have any “holes” in the sequence. (Under 3D Studio 4, it was easiest to use the “Snapshot” option; I’m not sure how 3DS MAX handles this.)


You’ll need a copy of the 3ds2de.exe conversion program, plus some way (Photoshop, Debabylizer, etc.) of converting files to PCX format.
http://www.offtopicproductions.com/tacks/3ds2de/3ds2de.zip


The conversion program expects an Deus Ex-like directory structure to exist before it will run. Specifically, you need:
1. a main Deus Ex directory (mine is c:\DeusEx), below which is a

2. project-specific directory (for example, c:\DeusEx\MyPackage), below which are

3. two directories, Models and Classes (e.g. c:\DeusEx\MyPackage\Models and c:\DeusEx\MyPackage\Classes)


This directory tree is what Deus Ex itself expects, so it may already be set up. If it isn’t, you’ll have to make it yourself before doing any conversions.



Converting

Place AngrealHeal.3ds and 3ds2de.exe in \MyPackage\

Create 3ds2de shortcut.

Open shortcut properties and after at the end of Target property add AngrealHeal.3ds

Doubleclick.

If everything went well, AngrealHeal files appeared in models and script folders. If not, there was a mistake so doublecheck everything. If you cant find error then read proper instructions and do it through console, so you can read error message.



Textures

First, you need 8-bit PCX versions of all of the textures that you used in the model – use Photoshop, etc.

You then need to examine the .uc file in a text editor that can handle straight ASCII text – Notepad is fine. Look for the lines that begin with #exec TEXTURE IMPORT and note that each such line ends with a material name after a pair of slashes:

#exec TEXTURE IMPORT NAME=JSpider1 FILE=MODELS\Spider1.PCX GROUP=Skins // SpiderSkin


Notice the reference to a Spider1.PCX file. Both Deus Ex and MeshViewer will need this file to properly display your model. It corresponds to whatever file you used in the given material, SpiderSkin. You need to have this file name match the name of the material’s 8-bit PCX file, renaming your PCX file to correspond with the name in the .uc file.

Using the above example, say that the SpiderSkin material was made with a SpiderSkin.TGA texture map. You’d convert that TGA file to and 8-bit SpiderSkin.PCX file. You could then either rename that file to Spider1.PCX (because that’s what the script is expecting)*

*You can also change names in script file, but that method is much more error-prone.


Make a package! http://www.offtopicproductions.com/tacks/HowToAddCustomPackages.html

 

[Salk]

Perhaps I should only make Paul vulnerable on realistic and above?

I would definitely suggest to make Paul way less vulnerable on Normal and even less at Easy so that the challenge would be consistent throughout the game. On Realistic, he should be pretty vulnerable, considering his poor physical condition. On the other hand, he is supposed to be extremely strong so I'd reserve the highest vulnerability to Hardcore mode only.

On the same note, I'd make keeping Lebedev alive easy for Easy level and moderately easy on Normal.

 

[KlauZ]

Aug codes in UC were changed?

 

[Latelistener]

The only real problem with Paul is that he is acting like a dumbfuck. If I was in his condition, I would have stayed in the room, as it has a good chokepoint.
What he does instead? Tries to leave the room, and go to the first floor only to be swarmed by the UNATCO operatives.

 

[Black]

If you confine Paul to his room then he can be vulnerable on all difficulties.