Hah, "replaced with the 7.62mm NATO round"

You fools! Those only do 3 damage each!


If we're getting technical, the advantage of the aircraft/antiaircraft mounted 30.06 firing platforms wasn't that they were firing apocalyptic sniper rounds, they were firing 'acceptable' sniper rounds at machinegun speed.

30.06 was used in world war ONE, after all. It'd kill a man, but wouldn't take off his leg and then also wreck the car behind him. It's not like we're into "light 50" territory, here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_.50

(you have to love a sniper rifle that's acquired an urban myth that "the geneva convention won't let you use it on people")

Still, meaty rifle sounds are always good.


(also, I don't actually know very much about guns, so there's probably some uber snipaCannon weapon I could've linked to that's waaaay meaner than the barrett, but I like the barrett, ok?)

I certainly hope there's no meaner sniper weapon than the M82. Unless you count the arsenal mounted on an AC-130 Spectre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC-130H_Spectre

I guess considering the accuracy of its targetting, that's technically a plane with a 105 mm sniper rifle

(Although of course it doesn't matter if you're aiming right between your enemy's eyes or just 20 yards to his left, the effect is pretty much the same.)

And yeah I had a good laugh about the 7.62mm thing as well. You can kinda tell DX's devs weren't weapon buffs (and I actually think that's oddly comforting), because nobody in their right mind would design a near-future assault rifle to use 7.62mm ammo. Or a 10mm pistol for that matter - wtf?

10mm are cool, just aren't very popular. When the .40S&W came out almost all the potential 10mm customers chose it instead. The 10mm is higher velocity than the 40S&W and also has a flatter trajectory, but its harder to shoot because of the sharp bite.

I subscribe.
Also, I don't think the sounds (in any game) can be dated.
The year 2000 had its own magic, and Deus Ex is a part of it.
Of course, any game mod is welcome.
Try to imagine Wolfenstein 3D (1992, DOS) powered by a DX10 3D engine, with high-res textures, high-poly models and 96KHz 24bit sound samples.
Obviously, you'll need a Core 2 Extreme, GTX 280 and X-Fi Titanium in order to get a decent gameplay.

When was the last time you played a game with midi sound?

A couple of months ago: Warcraft 2 (probably the best RTS ever made).
Why do you ask?

Because Warcraft 2 is effin' old.

So can you name any recently released games with midi sound? (Weird art games don't count.) Game sound dates just as much as graphics. If you don't mind, that's fine, that something is dated doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, but Deus Ex's sound effects are missing a lot of technological polish that more modern games have

You missed the main point.
It doesn't matter if it's using MIDI, 8bit 11KHz WAV, or anything else.
Warcraft 2 is immortal.
A masterpiece has no age.

cheers

Sure it does, it is at present 11 years old.

Dated does not mean bad, capiche?

Agreed. The age of a great game in no way diminishes its quality; I don't think any gamer would be crass enough to assert that. However, the existence of HDTP recognises the fact that, even within the technological constraints of the decade-old engine, there's still some room for improvement. At least, that's something I've come to accept from the HDTP effort.

The same goes for the sound. There are some incidental sounds that, while not detrimental to DX as a whole, could do with some work. A few people (me among them) pointed to the Assault Rifle sound. There's a handful of others that might be able to be improved, even if the engine limits us to 16-bit.

Since when is "only" being able to use CD quality a terrible limitation?

Uh, who are you quoting there? I don't think anybody said that it was a terrible limitation to use CD quality sound (44.1 KHz, 16-bit). It is, however, a limitation that one wouldn't have to consider for, say, a film soundtrack.

I've worked in radio and music production though, and - yes, you are quite correct. CD quality sound is perfectly fine and, is most cases, the undiscerning ear will scarcely notice the difference. I perform with software called AudioMulch - again, 16-bit. Again, fine. Now, if somebody could just amend their earlier post to say something to the contrary...

I watched a video about the sound design in Medal of Honor: Airborne yesterday. They actually added layers of sound to their gunshots depending on how far away you are, so you get more details and more "oomph" the closer you get. It created a pretty fantastic effect.

MoHA was a mediocre game, but the sound design was awesome

Really surprised how people like the sound effects in DX. If this were Quake II it wouldn't be an issue, but I found DX's weapon sounds to be laughably bad when it came out and won't even pretend to defend them, regardless of my love for this game. It's almost ear-rape for me to be lobbing LAMs in DX's perfectly bleak, gloomy locales and hearing them go boom like half-baked thunder. If Eidos improves the sfx and rebundles Deus Ex, just like that, hell, I'd pay for it.

It's a little known fact but the Chinese accents are about as authentic as you can get, as they were all performed by real Chinese people the dev team hired from Chinatown to voice act.

Unfortunately, these people were not trained voice actors and could barely speak English, resulting in something that sounds like an offensive imitation. =P

It also resulted in a whole lot of random people in China getting imdb pages, check out the actor section for Deus Ex.

In addition, the French voice actors are French- and sound terrible for the same reason.

The more you know...