zorloff on 3/11/2007 at 21:16
Hi all.
I'm reading through the DX2 "script" right now (All the text messages and npc quips from the game). I've noticed an interesting thing - there's a lot of stuff that didn't make it into the final game. Some dialogs never made it, also a few characters, subquests and whole locations. Dunno if it's normal or they had to cut these because of stumbles in development.
For example, originally Sid Black was in the jail and you had to bail him out or break him free. There's was a janitor guy in Tarsus. There was a whole location in Seattle - Nanotech Museum with a bunch of npcs and subquests inside. Remember the corpse in the basement of the club (that never really made sense) which the Omar wanted to scan? It was originally in the museum. And check out this conversation:
Pawn: "Poor JC. He's so misunderstood. I can't believe that some people actually BLAME him for the Collapse."
StandardPlayer: "Does anyone really know what happened? "
M01MuseumAnnoyingGirl: "I CANNOT understand where they get these ideas. He did disappear right when the Collapse occured, but only to protect himself. "
StandardPlayer: "Actually, I thought he died--"
M01MuseumAnnoyingGirl: "That's just what they want you to think. He's still out there, somewhere. My neighbor's best friend's cat-sitter said she once saw him at a truck stop in Montauk."
StandardPlayer: "Hm. You seem to know a lot about JC."
M01MuseumAnnoyingGirl: "Of course I do, I'm the president of the Seattle Chapter of the JC Appreciation and Promotion Society -- J-CAPS for short. We're trying to piece together his true intentions and legacy. Everyone knows that he worked for UNATCO, then the NSF, but did you know he loved corndogs and despised the color chartreuse? It's also rumored that he was part alien, on his mother's side, we think possibly from Jupiter...."
StandardPlayer: "Um..."
M01MuseumAnnoyingGirl: "I knew it! I could tell you're pro-JC too. You could start coming to meetings with me. It would be great!"
StandardPlayer: "Yeah--"
M01MuseumAnnoyingGirl: "You just missed our big annual event, where the national chapters meet at Liberty Island, where he was first stationed with UNATCO, to celebrate all things JC. As usual, it didn't go quite as planned though, since the area's been cordoned off as a disaster area since the Collapse... But I could sign you up for our newsletter?"
StandardPlayer: "Uh, yeah, I'll think about it."
And these are the girl's quips besides the dialog:
M01MuseumAnnoyingGirl: "Did you know JC is a Gemini? That explains his dual nature and ability to see the other side of any issue. "
M01MuseumAnnoyingGirl: "I'll bet Paul got bent out of shape when JC was getting all the attention. That would be just like him."
M01MuseumAnnoyingGirl: "I heard he once took down an entire battalion of those old military bots, armed with just a multitool and some Monte Bites."
M01MuseumAnnoyingGirl: "You know, JC's vision was augmented."
M01MuseumAnnoyingGirl: "As far as we know, JC never had a girlfriend. He must be SO lonely."
I remember sneaking inside the Mako weapons facility and the receptionist girl was always screaming and calling for guards, so I had to shoot her. Didn't know she could be friendly and let you pass inside right to the doctor and his railgun (Actually, I don't really know - this might be in the actual game).
Fun stuff, I recommend reading if you haven't already :)
Sorry if I made mistakes about some stuff - I played the game half a year ago.
Jeshibu on 3/11/2007 at 23:25
I would have liked to see the JC fangirl. She sounds hilarious.
I especially like "You know, JC's vision was augmented."
Is "I heard he once took down an entire battalion of those old military bots, armed with just a multitool and some Monte Bites." a reference to a boast by Sam Carter?
DaveW on 4/11/2007 at 02:35
Where is said script?
Oh, also, it's usual for stuff to get cut, especially since IW was rushed out of development.
zorloff on 4/11/2007 at 05:05
Quote Posted by DaveW
Where is said script?
Oh, also, it's usual for stuff to get cut, especially since IW was rushed out of development.
The script is in Content/DX2/Conversations/English/ConText.eng file.
Yeah, I know about that, it's just knowing is one thing and reading through the stuff yourself is different :)
I'm reading through Cairo now. I mentioned before about the nanotech museum location in Seattle complete with a bunch of npcs, subquests and some exhibitions - with narrator explaining what does the stuff do, why there are greasels in the sewers etc. And Cairo has a cut location too - there was an office of AnubisBank with some robbers barricading and you having to deal with them. It probably later got transformed into the office level though.
And did I mention about the two Order guys which were caught snooping around by the Templars and are being held in Mako research facility somewhere?
And there's more :)
Actually the more I read it the more I think that it's some "pre-alpha" version. There's much stuff in the final game that isn't in the script.
It's nice to read and guess what parts did transform into what or got cut out totally. It's shame really we don't have something like that from the DX1.
It would be an interesting read.
AxTng1 on 4/11/2007 at 19:47
How much of the cut content media survived? Just the scripts, or is there level data?
If Team Gizka can do it, so can we!
zorloff on 4/11/2007 at 20:00
Quote Posted by AxTng1
How much of the cut content media survived? Just the scripts, or is there level data?
If Team Gizka can do it, so can we!
Um, no idea really. I haven't looked that up and I don't know how.
Muzman on 7/11/2007 at 03:31
I still can't work out how they planned and apparently built really massive levels (as seen in some of the old screenshots and evidenced in the cut dialogue and some of the remaining dialogue) and then later discovered that the damn things couldn't run. The game crawled on a decent PC when it came out, never mind the X-box. How did anyone not notice the big maps wouldn't cut it a lot sooner?
The only thing I can come up with is that they got the real time shadowing renderer really late in the game, after the big maps were built. But then surely they could just scrap the idea and stay with whatever vanilla Unreal version they were working with before.
Even if I knew the whole story I suspect it wouldn't make sense.
demagogue on 7/11/2007 at 06:19
Some devs have already been pretty straight-forward about big chunks of the story. Yes, they were planning on getting real-time shadows in. And one dev, instead of hacking it into the version of the Unreal Engine they had, just built an entirely new engine to do the job. And apparently that was still pretty early on (after the Unreal screenshots, though). I gather you already knew that much.
As for what you're wondering about ... the way some of them (at least Krypt) talked about it, the impression I got anyway, at first they were sort of star-struck that they got the RT shadows in, and they really didn't realize how limited it was in the process of really tailoring the engine for the game. It was only after they started mapping in Flesh, when the limitations really started showing themselves, then it was past the point of no return; and they really took deadline pressure to heart, they weren't going to re-tailor another engine all over again. I think that was their business model from the start, like there really was a point of no return.
What baffles me a little is that they still went with the already-humbled Flesh Engine going into TDS ... and then the way they talked about that, it's almost as if they thought that they had really started to crack the engine's secrets, and took some pride in TDS getting more out of it than DXIW, as if they could really get away with it and still capitalize on all that work that went into developing and the learning-curve for Flesh. But at its root, I think that was part of a business model decision from early on, too. All the decision-making around what to do with this engine once they had it, the way I read it, is more about the business of it than the merit. I guess it explains why the first thing Irrational wanted with Bioshock, like first priority, was an engine with awesome performance right from the beginning ... and then that kind of model worked for them.
zorloff on 7/11/2007 at 09:31
Quote Posted by demagogue
Some devs have already been pretty straight-forward about big chunks of the story. Yes, they were planning on getting real-time shadows in. And one dev, instead of hacking it into the version of the Unreal Engine they had, just built an entirely new engine to do the job. And apparently that was still pretty early on (after the Unreal screenshots, though). I gather you already knew that much.
Can you post a link for those early screenshots?
Muzman on 7/11/2007 at 12:53
Quote Posted by demagogue
Some devs have already been pretty straight-forward about big chunks of the story. Yes, they were planning on getting real-time shadows in. And one dev, instead of hacking it into the version of the Unreal Engine they had, just built an entirely new engine to do the job. And apparently that was still pretty early on (after the Unreal screenshots, though). I gather you already knew that much.
Yeah, apparently they fired the guy before he could optimise it too, or something. Then the next lucky person(s) had to sift undocumented code to make it work.
Quote:
As for what you're wondering about ... the way some of them (at least Krypt) talked about it, the impression I got anyway, at first they were sort of star-struck that they got the RT shadows in, and they really
didn't realize how limited it was in the process of really tailoring the engine for the game. It was only after they started mapping in Flesh, when the limitations really started showing themselves,
then it was past the point of no return
This is the bit I don't get. We saw those old shots of Lower Seattle and the Cairo Medina and they looked to be big complex places; lots of streets and buildings (like everyone expected from something called Deus Ex), big vistas, lots of people.
I don't know which version of the engine they made those maps in (and I don't know how faked up they were for publicity purposes) but surely they would have seen a slideshow, or at least genuinely worrying framrates, the moment they even loaded them up, bare bones, into Flesh.
Did they see said slideshow and say "Well it'll be alright come release. Add it to the action item list for monday's meeting", then all manner of other shit happened and it never worked out? I appreciate to some degree the delicate nature of developing content and engine/platform/keep-up-with-the-joneses machine simultaneously; plus the publishers, costs, human error etc. It kind of boggles my mind how many of them must have gone awry for this game to become as...compressed as it did.
