Thirith on 23/12/2015 at 23:00
Quote Posted by GMDX Dev
I will be interested to know your thoughts when you get around to it.
Will do.
Manwe on 24/12/2015 at 13:58
I only got to play it for a few hours before I had to leave my PC to go spend the holidays with my family. I got up to the Mole People in the sewers (playing on medium difficulty).
So far, I like the attention to detail. The new sounds (love the binoculars), the changes to the interface, the increased interactivity with the environment, the characters without helmets in the UNATCO headquarters, the added gore, etc...
The new skills and perk system, are interesting but I feel like it might be a bit unbalanced. Like it's just a first pass but needs more fine-tuning (but that's just from taking a quick glance at them). For example, the stealth skill finally makes stealth really fun to play, but almost too easy compared to the original game. Now you can just walk up to an enemy and knock him out in one hit. No need to worry about aiming or bumping into him. It's really forgiving. However, enemies now react as you would expect when throwing an object, which is great: they go and inspect the source of the sound instead of just running in a random direction. This makes all the useless junk lying around really useful.
Here are a few other things I noted:
I like the new taser ammo type for the crossbow. However I was really surprised when an enemy's head exploded after I mistakenly fired a normal dart instead of a poison dart at it. Is that working as intended? If so, that seems to be a tad overkill. Looks like something a shotgun would do (which I haven't tried). Also I suppose the game wasn't intended for enemy body parts to be removed so there's just a hole in the model where their head should be. Is that a technical limitation or a bug on my part?
I also encountered a few graphical glitches, mainly in the Underworld bar, like some weird flashes in the environment. The same thing happened when aiming the flashlight at certain items in the environment (like the closet near Carter's shop). I also had a problem with food and drinks. After a while I couldn't consume them at all anymore (the red "you're full" message stopped appearing). Also with the medbots being limited to two uses only, choosing to unlock the medbot in the Hell's Kitchen clinic seems like a huge ripoff.
Now for the changes to the maps. I'm actually torn on this one after playing Revision. I know you're not gonna like that but I preferred some of their maps over yours (granted I haven't seen the whole game). Some of them simply offered a higher visual fidelity than yours (well the originals really). I like your version of Liberty Island better, theirs was too dark and needlessly bigger. However, I liked their version of UNATCO better. Going back to the original, it just seems really grey and boring. The same goes for the first part of Hell's Kitchen. After playing through Revision, the original feels so tiny, cramped and dull.
These are just my honest first impressions, I'm not trying to be overly critical. I know you had troubles finding beta testers so maybe that explains the glitches. Do you intend to keep working on it or are you satisfied with its current state? Anyway, I'm looking forward to spending more time with it as there's just so much to discover. I'm especially curious to try out the higher difficulties as medium seems a tad too easy.
Dev_Anj on 24/12/2015 at 15:59
The problem with trying to compare Revision's redesigns to GMDX's redesigns is that they have vastly different goals. Revision basically is a re imagining of the original game which takes heavy artistic liberties at times while GMDX just tries to make them look better with subtle details and additions most of the time. Since Revision takes these liberties, it becomes a very controversial affair over whether the changes are good or not. I personally didn't care for most of the changes in Revision from what I played, which was upto Hell's Kitchen rooftops. So I wouldn't expect GMDX's levels to be meaningfully compared to Revision, though I can understand if you prefer one more than the other.
I'm not opposed to changing the levels, but I feel the Revision team still have a lot to learn about level design and this has led to some bad design decisions creeping into their mod. Yes the original levels were minimalistic and barren, but redoing them could have been better handled.
In any case, this is akin to comparing the Thief Gold HD mod with the EP2: they both have different goals and while one can like a pack more than the other not much can be done to make either pack suit the other pack fans' standards.
GMDX Dev on 25/12/2015 at 06:15
Quote Posted by Manwe
The new skills and perk system, are interesting but I feel like it might be a bit unbalanced. Like it's just a first pass but needs more fine-tuning (but that's just from taking a quick glance at them). For example, the stealth skill finally makes stealth really fun to play, but almost too easy compared to the original game. Now you can just walk up to an enemy and knock him out in one hit. No need to worry about aiming or bumping into him. It's really forgiving
Sounds like a higher difficulty may have been for you as AI-related stealth behavior scales based on difficulty level. I'm unsure what you mean by "knock him out in one hit, no need to aim or worry about bumping into him" though. You do still need to aim, but now the back of the head counts as a sneak attack as in Thief, which is just better design and fixes problems with chairs as mentioned earlier in this thread. Bumping into them from behind does nothing as in vanilla (I guess you played Revision with Human Renovation which makes bumping into them result in a reaction).
Quote:
However I was really surprised when an enemy's head exploded after I mistakenly fired a normal dart instead of a poison dart at it. Is that working as intended?
Nope, not intended.
Quote:
I also encountered a few graphical glitches, mainly in the Underworld bar, like some weird flashes in the environment. The same thing happened when aiming the flashlight at certain items in the environment (like the closet near Carter's shop).
Renderer-related. Change renderer if the problems persist.
Quote:
Also with the medbots being limited to two uses only, choosing to unlock the medbot in the Hell's Kitchen clinic seems like a huge ripoff.
It can be a rip-off or it can be a blessing. Depends on your build. For example if you have investments in multitools you can get in there with one multitool, And healing is not the only reward - this is the only place you can install Aqualung/Environ resistance for quite some time, plus there's a multitool to be found in the room.
Quote:
Now for the changes to the maps. I'm actually torn on this one after playing Revision. I know you're not gonna like that but I preferred some of their maps over yours (granted I haven't seen the whole game). Some of them simply offered a higher visual fidelity than yours (well the originals really).
No, that's fine. Just remember there's far more to level design than visuals.
Manwe on 25/12/2015 at 15:56
Quote Posted by GMDX Dev
Bumping into them from behind does nothing as in vanilla (I guess you played Revision with Human Renovation which makes bumping into them result in a reaction).
Ah gotcha, I knew this was pretty weird. Haven't played the original in almost ten years now.
Thirith on 25/12/2015 at 17:41
I'm still early in the game (Liberty Island), and I've got two quick questions:
1) Is it possible there's a bug with respect to ammo? I've got the crossbow with tranq darts, and several times when searching unconscious NSF guys I was told that I picked up some additional darts, yet they don't seem to show up. I've just run out of darts, knocked out a bad guy, searched him, found some darts - yet I still can't reload the crossbow. Or are there different kinds of tranq darts?
2) In the guard room where Gunther is kept, there's a guard sitting on a chair. However, I can't seem to knock him out with my baton - until he gets up. In other words, I have to hit him once, he gets up, and then I hit him again. Is this normal behaviour?
Pyrian on 25/12/2015 at 17:47
Heheh, now you have to answer for all the issues in vanilla DX that you didn't address!
"Darts" are not tranq darts. Check your inventory for "standard"/poison darts.
Sitting guards have always been a problem.
Thirith on 26/12/2015 at 10:48
Ah, gotcha. :-) It's been ages since I last played Deus Ex. (I've always been more into the more focused approach of, say, Thief than into Deus Ex' freedom which lacks that focus by design.)
Edit: Actually, the dart thing seems to be a bug, though I don't know if it was already there in the unmodded game. When I went to my inventory and changed the crossbow ammo away from tranq darts and back again, I suddenly had several clips, where before it showed zero shots, zero clips. Not a biggie, and as I said, it may already have been there in vanilla Deus Ex.
GMDX Dev on 31/12/2015 at 12:39
Quote Posted by Thirith
I'm still early in the game (Liberty Island), and I've got two quick questions:
1) Is it possible there's a bug with respect to ammo?
Shouldn't be. If there was a bug of this order it would have been discovered already. Sounds like a player error/confusion, no offense.
Quote:
2) In the guard room where Gunther is kept, there's a guard sitting on a chair. However, I can't seem to knock him out with my baton - until he gets up. In other words, I have to hit him once, he gets up, and then I hit him again. Is this normal behaviour?
Stand real close, aim for the head or back (by hitting him through the chair as mentioned earlier, if the chair type allows it).
Thirith on 1/1/2016 at 11:01
Thanks. It's possible that I did something wrong re: the darts, though in this particular case I don't think so, because this happened without me doing anything - I picked up the tranq darts but didn't change anything about my weapons or ammo. Anyway, I'll make a note if it happens again, and in the meantime changing the ammo type and then changing it back helped.
I'll try again with other sitting enemies, although I tried several times with this one (reloading afterwards), and no success. In the end I simply lured him from his chair by throwing stuff into the room.