I'll just stick to ZIP, I think - that way it's completely cross platform. If I make it a self-extracting thing, people won't be able to install it on Linux or MacOS (if people even play Deus Ex on Mac) - even though it's a bit bigger it just makes it easier for everyone if it's ZIP.

I was under the impression HDR was enabled by default actually. I just tried disabling Classic Lighting but it looked the same to me, not sure why.

Edit: Seems to work on normal DeusEx, but not HDTP. I'm probably just doing something wrong though. The added contrast is awesome - one of the major problems I've noticed is that Deus Ex completely washes out whatever textures I import. The downside is the additional contrast can get a bit extreme (look at the coronas/sky):

The coronas might be on the intense side just a bit, but the red sky is a cool touch to the game as it brings a bit of color.

Kind of makes me wonder what would happen if you added red sky to a modern fps with a grey/brown pallet...

Cliff Bleszinski would show up at your house door and punch you in the nose.

Make sure to use latest version (v27 i believe) as the hdr has been toned down slightly, well the speed at which it darkens/brightens is slower.

Enable "simulatemultipasssomethingorother" in preferences... i forget exact name. It makes sky textures like clouds look uber cool.

In latest versions hdr is disabled by default, cause most people think it's shit lol. I think it's kinda cool but still needs work, i.e. some areas too bright or dark, but i must say NV looks even better with HDR enabled, moreso than vanilla dx does with it enabled.

Made a few basic normal maps. Them + HDR + NV + HDTP = cool as fuck, and that's the technical term!

Shin.

To be honest it's more the contrast it adds that makes it look good. Normal Deus Ex has quite sucky contrast so the blacks don't look very deep, but if you drop the gamma it just makes everything dark. I'll try the latest version, because I think I'm several versions behind at the moment.

I think the skies in general, especially the later maps, are basically going to be redone as part of the NV map pack. They seriously suck. I've only half-done some of the skybox textures, simply because no matter what I do they'll look like shit - Battery Park, for instance, has comically large buildings towering over which just look silly.

I'm thinking some 360° skydomes would work instead of most of the maps' plain panning cloud texture. It should just be a case of grabbing some premade ones from CGTextures and darkening them a bit - it would make the environments look so much better.

Not quite sure what any of that means lol but agreed about battery park, probably the worst one in the game.

The generic high rises in HK kinda suck whilst not strictly being part of the skybox.

I've experimented with MASSIVE skybox textures in DX (like 2048x2048 etc) and they okay, but due to the stupid 8 bit colour thingy, and me not having a clue what the highest quality bmp's UED will accept...

anyhoo, will you be releasing the textures and worrying about map pack later or are you now waiting for map pack to release textures?

I've said before I'm releasing NV first, then additional textures and maybe some updates later on In fact, the download would be available right now had ModDB not just screwed up the file upload. Now I've got to upload 1.5GB all over again.

Skydomes are basically giant meshes of the inside of sphere, so you can have an easy, seamless sky texture. It's better than sky boxes, basically, and the skies should look a hell of a lot more realistic rather than the random dotted stars and panning clouds at the moment.

That said S3TC textures aren't limited to 8 bit, I'm pretty sure they're 24 bit. But they're still heavily compressed, and the dark grey clouds look crap because there isn't many shades of grey between "slightly dark" and "black". A real sky texture would have enough slight colour in it to hide that.