Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex (HELP US)

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ggrotz
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by ggrotz »

Y|yukichigai wrote:So yeah, that's my thinking there. I wouldn't want to make the weapon as heavily powered as it is in Shifter, but even a fractional live-time would be better than what's available now.
I really don't see what it is that is not working correctly with the standard DX pepper spray. Could you care to explain it to me how it is malfunctioning? As was said, the only thing I have ever read in the years I've been around places such as this and PDX is "the pepper spray suxx0rz!". No concrete examples of how it malfunctions. Just like the baton, use it right and it works beautifully. Personally, I find the pepper spray as it is in DX to be a devastating weapon. I would suggest in any "bugfix" effort, that concrete examples of errors along with how to reproduce the error should be present in anything that is directly changed.

And you don't really want a persistent gas cloud, because that wouldn't simulate what the weapon is - you would turn it from a pepper spray gun into a tear gas fogger - which is definitely changing game mechanics.
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by Y|yukichigai »

ggrotz wrote:
Y|yukichigai wrote:So yeah, that's my thinking there. I wouldn't want to make the weapon as heavily powered as it is in Shifter, but even a fractional live-time would be better than what's available now.
I really don't see what it is that is not working correctly with the standard DX pepper spray. Could you care to explain it to me how it is malfunctioning? As was said, the only thing I have ever read in the years I've been around places such as this and PDX is "the pepper spray suxx0rz!". No concrete examples of how it malfunctions. Just like the baton, use it right and it works beautifully. Personally, I find the pepper spray as it is in DX to be a devastating weapon. I would suggest in any "bugfix" effort, that concrete examples of errors along with how to reproduce the error should be present in anything that is directly changed.

And you don't really want a persistent gas cloud, because that wouldn't simulate what the weapon is - you would turn it from a pepper spray gun into a tear gas fogger - which is definitely changing game mechanics.
Okay, so, I had to re-test this whole "Pepper Gun doesn't work" thing, because it's been a while and I'm starting to doubt my sanity on this one. After loading up the game, spawning a Pepper Gun and firing off a few... "rounds?" Anyway, spraying down a trash can and whatnot, I'm pretty sure what I was talking about was, in fact, a v1009 glitch, not v1112 (yes, I started dinking around with code that long ago). The Pepper Gun in vanilla DX works fine. Like DDL indicated, Tear Gas (by inheritance) has a 1.0 live time, more than enough to work. Meh, my bad.

The only thing I can see in the Pepper Gun that needs to be changed is the reference to "AOE_Sphere" for the AreaOfEffect variable, because it's non-implemented code and doesn't do anything. So, yeah, that's coming off the list. Still leaving Throwing Knives on the "maybe" list though; v1112 made them pretty useless for the sake of multiplayer.

However, while I was testing that I found a fun exploit, part of the "Paul kills the NSF" bit, though indirectly: if you shoot a weapon a few times on the main dock BEFORE Alex's first datalink plays Paul will start trying to kill you (he didn't take too kindly to me spraying down that trash can apparently). You can use this to make him run after you and start mowing down NSF, but separate from that I think it's just wrong that your own brother can abruptly decide to start shooting you in the face with an Assault Rifle.
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by Hassat Hunter »

You mean:
# Throwing knife does 17 base damage instead of 25.
Yeah, that seems revisable to me (also, they only do 15 base damage, not 17).

I just noticed TNM Throwing knives are even *MORE* pathetic, only doing 10 damage. Intended, Jonas?
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by DDL »

With the original damage, they (along with sporks and foons) were really really handy as 'lockpicks', and you could pick 'em up again afterwards.

Also, to be honest, fighting a mass of llamas/goats all armed with sporks/foons tended to get stupidly deadly stupidly fast (for much the same reason, I suspect, the assault gun in vanilla DX does rubbish damage).


Yuki: I've tested the bullet spread (I already had code for testing that spawns a laser emitter along each trace of a gunshot) and I'm really not seeing any range dependent variation: it gives me a nice cone of uniform angle no matter what distance I fire at (well, pyramid: as noted the scatter pattern tends to a square, not a circle).

You're spot on regarding the reticle, mind you, but then I've always interpreted that to represent simply a visual cue to how accurate you currently are, rather than an faithful representation of your cone (er..pyramid) of fire. It IS fixable, yes, but it'd be fairly tricky..and possibly annoying to scale with resolution and aspect ratio and shit. Also I'd have to double check this, but for shotguns and shit, I seem to recall the additional traces have a fixed inaccuracy, so there'd be a fixed non-zero minimum for the reticle for those..but that would tend to hide the fact that the first pellet/whatever IS at perfect accuracy (if you have the skills).
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by ggrotz »

DDL wrote:Also, to be honest, fighting a mass of llamas/goats all armed with sporks/foons tended to get stupidly deadly stupidly fast (for much the same reason, I suspect, the assault gun in vanilla DX does rubbish damage).
Yes, I definitely find that true. The damage quantity is another one of those game mechanic issues that need to be watched very closely. Along with item quantity, they can change the game, as much as DDL just posted. As was mentioned, TNM has less damage on its low-tech throwing objects than Deus Ex, but TNM literally spams them throughout the mod - balancing out things.

I can't think there's any live NPC that uses them in DX (the dead NSF on Jaime's table has a variable number), but at the same time, one must watch that they don't get so powerful to turn into a UDK-like weapon (any NPC in one hit, bots in a few, and doors are not a problem!). Keep in mind, as well, that the throwing knives have a certain function and purpose (i.e. there's a "right" way to use them!), too, which is described within its weapon description. The message I get out of it is that you aren't supposed to do a lot of damage with them, unless you're at master level (where one or two to the head take out any NPC you encounter).

It might be a good consideration to do something like make 10 or 15 of them to a pack instead of 5, if the desire is to address the rarity issue. Remember, Eidos changed the value for a reason in both SP and MP (when I'm sure they could have changed it in just one).

Edit: The Cassandra Project made 20 throwing knives to a pack, if that helps in any thinking.
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by Y|yukichigai »

DDL wrote:With the original damage, they (along with sporks and foons) were really really handy as 'lockpicks', and you could pick 'em up again afterwards.

Also, to be honest, fighting a mass of llamas/goats all armed with sporks/foons tended to get stupidly deadly stupidly fast (for much the same reason, I suspect, the assault gun in vanilla DX does rubbish damage).


Yuki: I've tested the bullet spread (I already had code for testing that spawns a laser emitter along each trace of a gunshot) and I'm really not seeing any range dependent variation: it gives me a nice cone of uniform angle no matter what distance I fire at (well, pyramid: as noted the scatter pattern tends to a square, not a circle).

You're spot on regarding the reticle, mind you, but then I've always interpreted that to represent simply a visual cue to how accurate you currently are, rather than an faithful representation of your cone (er..pyramid) of fire. It IS fixable, yes, but it'd be fairly tricky..and possibly annoying to scale with resolution and aspect ratio and shit. Also I'd have to double check this, but for shotguns and shit, I seem to recall the additional traces have a fixed inaccuracy, so there'd be a fixed non-zero minimum for the reticle for those..but that would tend to hide the fact that the first pellet/whatever IS at perfect accuracy (if you have the skills).
Okay, now I'm really starting to question my sanity. I KNOW I was having bullet spread issues within Shifter that I had to correct. This is really weird. I really need to look at my changes and figure out what the hell I fixed.

As far as making the reticle line up with the range exactly, that's just a matter of tweaking the ratio used between accuracy and reticle size, plus a little code to account for shotgun minimum spread, etc. I seem to recall it's some easy exponent-of-two number that needs to be used in place of what's there now, or somethig like that. I'm having a hard time trusting my memory on this given that I'm the only one who's encountered my bullet spread issue (and I'm not even sure of that).

The bulle spread could at least be made round though. THAT I'm sure needs to be done. :P
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by DDL »

'Course, the problem then is whether to calibrate it or not: square area means you currently have a 4xaccuracy^2 space to put bullets in, whereas if you tweaked it to be circular while keeping the same accuracy settings, you'd have a pi*accuracy^2 sized space, making you 4/pi times more accurate! (about 1.27 times, in other words).

So I guess..multiply all incoming accuracy values by the root of 1.27? :D


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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by Y|yukichigai »

Hah, I completely did not think about that aspect of it. Good catch DDL.

All of this discussion is reminding me that I need to set up an SVN somewhere for this so this can actually be a group effort. I can do it when I get home (yay googlecode) or someone is welcome to volunteer space if you're impatient. (I still won't be able to upload what I have until I get home though) One request: if someone does put up an SVN, could you put in a copy of the unmodified DeusEx uc files as the head revision? That way we'll be able to roll back any uc file to v1112 if necessary.
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by DDL »

hah, just found the code I added in my autoturrets:

Code: Select all

		StartTrace = gun.Location;
		//rejig this to give hits in a fucking circular area, not a square. Square == teh dumb.
		//the arbitrary introduction of 1.128 is because a circle needs slightly larger radius to give the same overall area as the square
		//and yes, I calculated that. Oh, fuck you.

		offset = (frand()-0.5); //side to side bit
		//and now hello pythagoras
		upset = Sqrt(0.25 - offset*offset); //max we can go up or down
		upset *= 2;
		EndTrace = StartTrace + gunAccuracy * 1.128*offset*Y*tracerange*0.1 + gunAccuracy * 1.128*upset*(FRand()-0.5)*Z*tracerange*0.1 ;
		EndTrace += tracerange * X;
		hit = Trace(HitLocation, HitNormal, EndTrace, StartTrace, True);
		TraceVect = normal(StartTrace - EndTrace);
(1.128 being the root of 1.27, btw)

I swear I have more fun writing comments sometimes than I do coding... :oops:


EDIT: incidentally, note that they DO factor the tracerange into the Y/Z offsets here, but use an arbitrary value in DeusexWeapon (of 1000), which is a tad odd: it means that for weapons, the longer range your weapon inherently has, the higher your effective accuracy will be even before adjusting for weapon or player accuracy.
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by Y|yukichigai »

Damn, such simple code to fix that, but I bet it took hours to get figured right.

Of course it's only really going to be noticable to OC coders like us, but dammit, I say it's worth it!

Also, I totally understand your enjoyment of writing comments. Shifter is littered with some pretty smart-ass code explanations here and there.
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by ggrotz »

Y|yukichigai wrote:Also, I totally understand your enjoyment of writing comments. Shifter is littered with some pretty smart-ass code explanations here and there.
Comments are great fun (I know I've done lots of stuff - not in DX though...yet)...or completely worthless if the coder didn't put anything useful to explain the code in it. My favorite junk comment I read about was a single line RIPLBV. Of course, the maintainer didn't understand the code and that was no help. Finally the maintainer met the original coder and asked. It turns out, the comment was next to a hex value which represented the death of Ludwig Von Beethoven. :shock: #-o :roll: Indeed.
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by Y|yukichigai »

DDL wrote:EDIT: incidentally, note that they DO factor the tracerange into the Y/Z offsets here, but use an arbitrary value in DeusexWeapon (of 1000), which is a tad odd: it means that for weapons, the longer range your weapon inherently has, the higher your effective accuracy will be even before adjusting for weapon or player accuracy.
Maybe that was what I found really inconsistent. Certainly it would make the reticle differ between weapons for the purposes of establishing where the spread will wind up, which would explain why I would take it out.

Okay, so, what say you (all of you) to replacing the existing bullet spread code with something based on DDL's brilliant code posted above? This would have a few effects:

1) The bullet spread would be circular, not square
2) Accuracy for long range weapons would decrease slightly (as best I can tell, this wouldn't affect shaking while zoomed)

Also, if this were implemented, would anybody have an objection to adjusting the reticle to clearly indicate the edges of the spread?
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by Kee715 »

Y|yukichigai wrote:Okay, so, what say you (all of you) to replacing the existing bullet spread code with something based on DDL's brilliant code posted above? This would have a few effects:

1) The bullet spread would be circular, not square
2) Accuracy for long range weapons would decrease slightly (as best I can tell, this wouldn't affect shaking while zoomed)
+1 vote for this.
Y|yukichigai wrote:Also, if this were implemented, would anybody have an objection to adjusting the reticle to clearly indicate the edges of the spread?
Nope.
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by Morpheus »

"Paul, I know you said no phone messages, but South Street's going up in smoke. We'll have to meet at the subway station."

Plays first visit to Hell's Kitchen.
Didn't know about that either. But that does not seem right for current DX as you start in Battery Park, you don't know about South Street until after that incident and JC couldn't have known before that and he could not have sent Paul that message either as there was no time for him to do so between Liberty Island and NYC mission. Maybe originally the NYC mission 1 was different slightly and why this was in game but now removed?

Also if it has not been mentioned, can you fix it so that if you save Ford Schick in the first NYC mission, he reappears in the last NYC mission (where you talk to Dowd) as they forgot to put him in the map and he has a conversation with JC too.

Is there a fix for the sound issue that the sounds just always play crackly and not playing properly? I have a Creative X-fi sound and sometimes I get this issue with sound not playing right
Unused VOIP conversation between Lebedev and the unknown party
Whats this?

Anyone else noticed an error with HK maps when you try to go through from WanChi Market to Canals, the teleporter does not always work? (not canal road tunnel)


Fix infinite skill points from where you Save Tiffany Savage at the Gas Station then Proceed with the game (you have to save her first). When you uploaded the UC components, go back to where Jock and Savage are, talk to Savage with full inventory.

He gives you an Augmentation Upgrade Canister, but you can't carry it. You recieve 500 Skill Points. Talk to him again and the same lines are said. You recieve 500 Skill Points again. Repeat this until you have enough, drop some inventory, talk again. You recieve the Canister and get a last 500 Skill Points, go in the Helicopter to proceed with the game.

Lockpicks and Multitools bug. This lets upgrading Lockpicking or Electronics Skills makes you use less Lockpicks or Multitools.
Lockpicking at untrained the lock strength is 60%, you need 6 Picks (1 pick per 10%). Then if you upgrade it to Trained, you will only need 3 Pics.

But, use this does the same. But I see it as cheating, which I DON'T from the
above bug:

- Start picking the lock.
- Press F1 to enter the Inventory Screen.
- After a while, for about 10 seconds, depends on the lock's strength, you
return to the game.
- How great the lock was doesn't matter, you picked the lock with 1 lockpick.
- The same counts for Bypassing.
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Re: Deus Ex v2.0 - An unofficial fan patch for Deus Ex

Post by chris the cynic »

Y|yukichigai wrote:Finally, I have a few ideas for things to go into the patch which may straddle the line between "bugfix" and "changing the game". A good example would be the message you're supposed to hear on Paul's answering machine during your first visit to the 'Ton: should it be added back into the game? Would that disrupt the "established" Deus Ex experience too much? (Ditto for the later unused conversation between Lebedev and someone else) There are going to be some difficult decisions to make, and input would be appreciated.
If it wouldn't be too much work (and maybe it would be, I have no idea) I would recommend making two versions.

One would just be things that are clearly on the bugfix side. If dialogue isn't in the original game, or a character isn't in the original game (Ford Schick in all appearances other than his first, for example) leave it out.

The other version would also incorporate the bugfix stuff but also do the things that straddle the change the game line. In addition to the things you've brought up there, and Ford, I don't think that the red arrow member telling you Maggie and Paul are married conversation is in the released game. Also, there is a conversation for if you rescued Ford before talking to Smuggler even though it is impossible to do this without cheating. A simple way to restore that content would be to hide a sewer key somewhere so that you could get in the sewers before meeting Smuggler.

It isn't just conversations that didn't make the cut into the final game. Some data cubes also didn't. One very useful one explained why there were a bunch of old emails on a computer in Area 51, but it wasn't in the map. (At least I was told it wasn't in the map.)

Here's the text of the one I'm talking about:

Alain, I don't have much time -- I managed to hack into the archives maintained by Helios. It was... amazing. There were files and messages in there going back almost a hundred years, names of things I've only heard people whisper about as rumors. I barely had time to get my bearings before the ice started to come down, and I just managed to snag a few e-mails that had been recently accessed before I was cut off. I don't think anyone noticed, but I've got to go back on shift now or else someone really will be suspicious. If you get a chance, find my machine and see if you can make anything out of what I recovered.

Login: jshears
Password: momerath

Julia


Without which the player really has no idea why there are emails from decades ago pulled up on that computer.
Morpheus wrote:
"Paul, I know you said no phone messages, but South Street's going up in smoke. We'll have to meet at the subway station."

Plays first visit to Hell's Kitchen.
Didn't know about that either. But that does not seem right for current DX as you start in Battery Park, you don't know about South Street until after that incident and JC couldn't have known before that and he could not have sent Paul that message
I'm pretty sure JC wasn't the one sending the message. I haven't heard it, but based on the description and the content I'm guessing it was someone else, presumably an NSF contact.
Unused VOIP conversation between Lebedev and the unknown party
Whats this?
Don't know for sure but my guess would be this (italics indicate the author's comments)

The player overhears this through a speaker. Tong and Lebedev are talking to each other over an encrypted Internet audio connection.
JuanLebedev It's Paul's brother.
TracerTong Kill him. We can't take the chance.
JuanLebedev I can talk to him.
TracerTong Just get out of there. We lost the shipment but you can still bring me a sample. A few milliliters is enough.
JuanLebedev Trust me. He'll come over. UNATCO has a habit of overindoctrinating their agents. It'll backfire, just like with Paul.
TracerTong This socket is being monitored. Signing off.
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