HDTP Release #1 Discussion Thread

Post by **DDL** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:02 am

Sweet! Then do that!

And tell me if the elevator works properly, coz that fucker took me ages.

I was determined not to missionscript it (which would've been easy) and use roundrobins and flagtriggers instead.

Also, EXPLORE the demo map.

VodunLoas · Post by **VodunLoas** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:04 am

Yeah, I already checked it all out. Great job on the map!

Jetsetlemming · Post by **Jetsetlemming** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:08 am

The elevator works beautifully. =D I liked setup for the rooms and showcases.

StarWrecker · Post by **StarWrecker** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:42 am

All I can say is..... wow. The vast majority of the textures and models are incredible, but I just wonder about a few ones:

I wasn't sure whether the medkit and lockpick had been re-done.

I also really like the new crates, and the legible warning labels (that have the correct hazard number, too) ar a nice touch.

Also nice how you guys worked your own comments into the drinks - a good way of adding a little of your branding to it.

In short, great work, and I'm sure that the rest of your work will coem out with the same calibre.

giantzucchini · Post by **giantzucchini** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 4:58 am

Clerical tasks first. Your op bonus is split between the Castle Clinton and warehouse objectives, 500 each. You get the full 1000 -- plus 200 for how you handled Agent Hermann. Good work across the board.

Now for the crits. I seem to notice a split down Hermann's head. probably a bit of work on the mirroring and welding should solve that...if it is possible now that animation has been done. Also Gunther is moving a bit stiffly. Another thing is the fragments of the pots. It comes out a certain wierd white/gray colour, definitely not the colour of the pot (red). I guess what gets my goat most is the ship's wheel where Harley is. way too shiny, it needs a bit of dirt and rust. Also agreeing with the crates. A bit cartoony, needs a bit more grain and grit, and possibly a darker wood. It's I'll probably add more crits when I've had a closer look, but so far that's what I see.

EDIT: Had the closer look

Now that I saw the original ship's wheel, it reminded me of how much the original stood out and how much I hated it. Then again, I'm not too sure if it's the same wheel in the dockyard ship, so once again I'll leave it to you guys' discretion. Now, onto other crits. I thought the flaming barrel was a bit bright, especially one of the sides. If that side was as dark as the rest of the sides it would be close to perfect. Also had a closer look at the Ambrosia barrel. Nice touch that you added the Unatco engraving, but it is back to front. An easy fix I guess. Also I agree with the earlier poster about the basket. My final crit is the colour of the valve. Not sure if you wanted that golden brown rusty colour, but it looks a bit off to me. A bit more of the reddish brown of the original would blend in more with the surroundings imo. Then again, as I said, up to your discretion (or majority vote

)

And of course this would not be complete without saying that my waiting has not been in vain. Despite the nitpicking above, I must say that the HDTP so far has exceeded my expectations. Great job guys, keep up the good work! Can't wait for the second release! *drool*

James T · Post by **James T** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 6:44 am

G'day people! I'm new, but I'm full of love, so it's all good.

I eventually got HDTP working (understandably, it doesn't like Shifter), and got the demo map running thanks to advice in this thread (perhaps you could get the installer to put HDTPanim.utx in the 'Deus Ex/Textures' folder? It doesn't overwrite any original file, after all... But what do I know? It would be good to have a 'Read the readme file now' option at the end of the installation, 'cos I didn't know it was there until I came here.)

A lot of the new stuff looks exceptionally good, like the red Hong-Kong couch with the cushions, the small ventilation fan, the new lamp, the subway button, the cardboard boxes, blah blah blah... I don't like to single anything out, because pretty much all the objects are great! And as we all know, Gunther's skin and model are terrific.

But what is valuable in these posts is criticism, so I shall get down to some of that now, divided into little things which only need a small polish, or which aren't seen very often in the game anyway, and... 'important' things which would conceivably put me off using the mod because they're so noticeable. I hope I don't sound imperious with any of this, because, although I'm a dedicated Photoshop monkey, I can't model for shit, so I'm not saying 'I could do better'.

Small Things:

The wicker basket definitely needs more contrast, as someone here said. It could be a very nice texture, but it's hard to tell, as it's so pale it has no depth.
Is there some way to 'reorient' the shine on the datacube in relation to the player? It's a great idea, but the problem is, the shine doesn't show unless you stand on the datacube -- and sure, there are a fair few datacubes on the ground in the game, but much more often, they're on tables and shelves and so on.
I know DX is chiefly set in America, and their beer is like making love in a canoe, but I think the bottle/liquid of the Forty is much too translucent; it could pass for an empty bottle, but obviously it's not, since JC can drink them. I think the label's a little blank and bright, but that's a hangover from the original texture, so I dunno if you'd really want to 'fix' that. It'd probably look quite good against darker brown glass anyway.
(although someone said the wastebasket was too 'cartoony', I thought it was quite good, actually!)
I actually prefer the old valve-wheel to the new one -- I think it's important to keep the 'spokes' approximately as thick as the 'circle', which is not the case with the new one (new spokes're very thin). It strikes me as a little pale too, but that's no biggie, necessarily.
Could the end of the gun-turret's muzzle be sharpened up a bit? The rest of it is polished up nicely, but the end of the muzzle still looks blurry -- and I think the average DX player will inevitably be staring down the barrel of a turret a fair few times throughout the game!

Sorry to edit your post, but this seems the most concise way of doing this: The gun turret ITSELF is not actually HDTPified, yet. Just the base. I put actual turrets in the demo map because otherwise it might be difficult to work out what that deco actually WAS. So compare the bases, not the guns. We'll do the guns soon. Sorry about any confusion! -DDL
All the new barrels look great for the most part, but I think the corrosion is way too heavy on the bottom of the poison barrels, and it doesn't really segue down to a patina at the bottom, it just suddenly gets a lot rustier from the last 'ridge' down -- looks fake. I think a subtler smattering of rust would do the trick. Also, all the 'identifying' labels on the new barrels are stretched super-wide -- compare them to the original barrels side by side, and I'm sure you'll agree. This would probably be a cinch to fix in Photoshop. The warning labels at the bottom are a cool idea, but I don't like the way they're peeling, it doesn't look at all realistic to me. I think that having bits chipping off, and maybe an ultra-subtle drop-shadow in places where the label is lifting off slightly would be a lot more effective than that huge 'peeling over' effect that some of them have right now. That might sound like nitpicking, but I find I crouch by a lot of barrels in DX (the submarine facility and superfreighter, anyone?), so it'd be a good thing to get right.
The water in the old urinals looked a lot better (wow, I never thought I'd be saying that to someone!). Toilets aren't too bad though. And their models are much better.
I really don't like the bright buttons on the telephone -- I don't think I've ever seen a phone with buttons a different colour to the body, and so it jars on this texture. Black buttons with blue or white characters would be more appropriate.
The tall potplant just doesn't compare to the original at the moment. The plant itself is way too bright (could be a lighting problem?), and the pot is absurdly narrow. I don't think I've actually ever seen a pot that looks like that -- too much danger of it falling over, I think...

Ouchie Stuff:

Re: Gunther. Now, I'm not going to criticise his skin and outer model at all -- while the model is quite different to the original, it looks lovely, and so does the texture. But... the animation! Oh! If everyone is going to be moving like Gunther currently does, I honestly don't think I could use the mod. His 'conversational' animation is basically just him swinging both his arms forward occasionally with his fists down, Donkey-Kong style; his mouth might be okay when he's talking, but it's hard to tell, because the teeth (correct me if I'm wrong here) are still a blank white block, like in the original -- it clashes majorly with his bodily texture. His running animation looks like Jaime has installed a four-foot tungsten rod up his mechanically augmented arse as a prank; now, to be fair, he did look like a bit of an 'eager puppy' in his original running animation, but it wasn't nearly as unnatural as this new one. My questions: are Gunther's animations still a WIP? Do characters share animation 'sets', or anything like that (I'm curious as to how much work all the different animation sets require)? And (although I imagine this is highly unlikely), can original animations be ported and rigged to new models, or otherwise viewed in the animator's 3d program to be studied? Because, when you go down to the demo basement and see the two Gunthers wandering around, the difference in movement is plain, and not in a flattering way, I'm sad to confess.
The Baton and Crowbar are way off at the moment. The Crowbar does look like a candy cane, as someone here commented; it's far too glossy and plasticky, which might be why it looks too pale, or that could be down to the texture itself. It should look much darker, with a dull, slightly pockmarked metal sheen.

This is green, but... it's a mighty nice crowbar!

...The same applies to the Baton (my favourite weapon!), which currently just looks like a big baby-blue tube, lacking in the original's elegance. While I presume the Baton is plastic on the outside, it's still way too bright and glossy, and should be similar in sheen and brightness to the crowbar. The Crowbar's animation is... adequate, although it looks like JC is simply knocking on his target with the crowbar, rather than slamming the bar down on it in an attempt to break it, which he ought to be doing. I didn't really catch the Baton's animation, as it was very quick, but it didn't seem to have the elegant crossways sweep of the original animation. That might be okay if the model turns out better, however. I consider this a major thing, since a lot of people carry one of these weapons throughout the game, and use it regularly.
The crates, obviously, are a major concern since they are everywhere in DX. Currently, their edges look way too soft, almost round. I'm not sure the model is quite right, but it'd be easier to judge if the crate texture was a bit more dark and grained, less glossy, and had well-defined edges.

Phasmatis · Post by **Phasmatis** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:03 am

Hostile_17 wrote: 1: I would agree about the Crow bar comment a little to shiny and round at the end.

This really worries me. We delayed the release because of problems with the shiny objects (the main object being the crowbar) and I thought it was completely sorted. It looks fine on mine could you take a screenshot?

Btw the shape of the crowbar is exactly the same as the original.

Here's what it should look like.

Solid_Choke · Post by **Solid_Choke** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:16 am

I can't get it to run.
My Specs:
Athlon XP 2100+
768MB 333MHz DDR RAM
nVidia GeForce 6800 GT
Windows XP Pro SP2
Dues Ex GOTY

When I try installing it it says that the directory is wrong but I installed the game in the default location on drive C. It crashes when I try starting a new game. I works fine without crashing when I uninstall HDTP.

James T · Post by **James T** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:26 am

Personally, my man, I consider that too bright. Now that I look at it here, I don't think the gloss is necessarily the problem -- I think the texture just needs to be darker. Actually, I think most of the 'problem' textures are just too bright; detail-wise, they're pretty much all great.

edit: I just looked at the baton again. It reacts really nicely to light, but yeah, I think it's too bright -- when it's in full light, it's a really bright blue. I think the problem with the animation is that it whips out towards the centre, and then comes back -- I think the vertical swipes should be more like the horizontal swipe, which crosses the screen. It'd have more of a 'clubbing' feel to it, like the original.

I just freed Gunther from the cell to watch him work again, and I think I can articulate my crits a bit better.

-I think the 'pole up the arse' problem would be ameliorated if he actually hunched forward while running -- the arms and legs seem to move okay in a running motion, but it's his general stance that needs work. Didn't really get a chance to see him just walking, I'll have to follow him to UNATCO later.

-He also doesn't look at JC in the jailbreak dialogue. You'll notice the original model looked down to make eye contact with JC -- the new Gunther doesn't, and it's... very necessary. Once he does, it'll make a huge difference.

-The mouth animations are actually very good, but they don't match the words very well at all -- I think the simplicity of the originals was helpful in that regard, but because the new animation is more articulate, it's very noticeable that it doesn't match (and that his mouth keeps moving after he's stopped talking). There probably isn't any real fix for that, but maybe simpler, quicker mouth movements would work? The proof would be in the pudding, I guess. The teeth do definitely need work, the blank whiteness clashes very strongly with the outer texture. (hmm, I wonder what the teeth look like on HL2's models?...)

-His gunshot animation is great! He looks seriously formidable when he encounters an NSF and -- blam! -- takes him down with one good shot.

(Meanwhile, I'm having the same 'weapon-changing' problem that other people are having; not sure why. If I drop my current weapon, it mysteriously stays in my hand while a duplicate falls to the ground, and then it lets me change weapons, but yeah.)

VodunLoas · Post by **VodunLoas** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:22 am

About the shiny crowbar, there seems to be a different shine on the one in the 00_HDTP_Demo map. Here is a shot:

Phasmatis · Post by **Phasmatis** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:24 am

Gunther:
This isn't an excuse but just to let you know what I had to do. 69 sequences in total all had to be reanimated by myself, the walk sequence alone took around a week if not longer to do and when you work on the same thing for that amount of time you begin to loose sight of how good it is. Now that I have stepped back from the animations for a while I will take another look and tweak them.

His mouth animation is a tough one. The lip-syncing it awful in DX, I really wish there was a way to correct it but unfortunately we can't. Originally the mouth sequences only had 1 frame. I put 2 in to try and make his mouth a little more animated, however it doesn't show.

The raising of his arms during a speech is straight from the original I made it a little different by tipping his head when he raises both arms in a kind of shrug motion.

I can't use the original animations because the models are not boned. I don't know the correct term for it but each frame is a different mesh and the engine tweens between these meshes to produce the animation, so like I said above I needed to reanimate him completely. I will be looking in to the animations again.

The teeth do in fact have a proper texture, he even has gums, I can post the texture if you like. The engine blurs textures a lot and unless you are up close to his face you can't see the definition.

The Crowbar:
This is very annoying. Yesterday we delayed the release because the shine texture wasn't showing up correctly on a lot of the models, the shine on the crowbar right now is a default dragon head sprite used in the game when it can't find a texture. I tested the install yesterday and it was fine so I really have no idea what happened, you were never supposed to see the shiny crowbar.

The shape is exactly the same as the original as it was used as a reference when modelling.

The brightness of the texture I don't agree with, personally I think it looks fine, the screenshot may have made it look brighter but it looks fine in game.

The Baton:
Pretty much the same concerns as the crowbar, the shine texture isn't working, it is using the default dragon head sprite texture, the correct shine texture is a little more subtle.

The Crates:
To make these less smooth I would have to put more polys in. DX can't use smoothgroups if it could all of these models would look a hell of a lot better trust me on that. So if the general consensus is to make them look less smooth then sure I'll do it.

VodunLoas · Post by **VodunLoas** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:36 am

Well the crowbar shows the right one in single player, just the wrong one in the demo map.

BTW, the right crowbar is perfect imo, no need to change model.

Post by **DDL** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:56 am

Ok, cool: the crowbar in the demo map is actually a new custom crowbar class I built just so you could use both crowbars in that map for comparison: I fixed the texture issue on the one in the main game (which is essentially the original with the model references changed), but possibly I've forgotten that demo one.

Luckily, the demo package is only about 65k, so I'll upload a fix for that in a sec.

Post by **DDL** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:58 am

Oh ffs. I was SURE I had changed it in the demo map, and yes, yes I had.

But I spelled texture as tetxure. I need to be shot, methinks.

Smoke39 · Post by **Smoke39** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 9:01 am

Phasmatis wrote:The Crates:
To make these less smooth I would have to put more polys in. DX can't use smoothgroups if it could all of these models would look a hell of a lot better trust me on that. So if the general consensus is to make them look less smooth then sure I'll do it.

Polies whose vertices aren't welded together won't be smoothed by the lighting. See the errors I mentioned with the mailbox and pot. The problem is that if you do leave some purposefully unwelded to make a sharp edge, the lighting can end up looking inconsistent and weird. Might be worth a try just as an experiment, though.