Cobra on 22/2/2006 at 17:13
In much the same vein as the post on the IW forum:
Is there a way to make deus ex harder? Whilst realistic made you die pretty quickly, as long as you were sneaky you could generally knock everything out pretty fast. I have managed to play through the entire game on realistic with no kills (so prod, baton and tranq.) I have thought about doing the game with even more self imposed restrictions - who knows, I might work up the courage to do the 'no items, no augs, no skills' playthrough which I believe has been done by someone. Despite this, I would prefer the game be 'actually' more difficult, as opposed to the above, as I think it is a mite unrealistic to refrain from using all the goodies availible.
So, the question is, are there any mods which ramp up the difficulty, or are there any simple tweaks I can do to increase the game difficulty?
Thanks.
moop on 23/2/2006 at 17:01
Download Smoke39's mod, or the Shifter mod. You could also use the TNAG replacer (read the TNAG Altfire documentation for that). Challenge yourself in different ways, like not using anything but a crowbar (and only to open crates / smash objects... I had to drop a barrel on Howard Strong), or never saving your game and seeing how far you get. I made it to Versalife on Realistic that way before the game crashed. :(
As for improvements in the A.I. of the enemies... I don't know of any offhand. That would really make things interesting.
Ziemanskye on 23/2/2006 at 17:07
DX was mostly unrealscript. All you have to do is find the right bit to twiddle.
(no, I don't know where it is - it's been far too long and I was in over my head anyway)
Dr. Dumb_lunatic on 23/2/2006 at 18:43
I guess it depends on what you mean by more difficult, really.
I mean, as it stands, difficulty affects the amount of damage you take from basic bullets ('Shot' and 'autoshot').
And that's it.
Doesn't affect any other damage (flamethrowers, plasma rifles etc), and doesn't affect any other variables.
So what would you like? The AI can't really be 'improved' with any degree of ease (you'd probably have to rewrite an awful lot of it, and it's VERY SCARY STUFF), but it can be made more sensitive (better hearing threshold, accuracy, and so on)....alternatively, multitools and lockpicks could be made more scarce, or locks/keypads could be made harder to pick/hack..it all depends on what you want, really.
inselaffe on 25/2/2006 at 13:13
Quote Posted by Dr. Dumb_lunatic
The AI can't really be 'improved' with any degree of ease (you'd probably have to rewrite an awful lot of it, and it's VERY SCARY STUFF),
Really? why :S Everyone seems to say that ai programming is really hard but i've never done it so wouldn't know, but surely it's not THAT hard if you have like a base and then just add lots of clauses and stuff and add enough clauses to make it seem believeable, then obviously test and balance it out and stuff? Sorry for my ignorance, as this is probably complete crap though :D
Ziemanskye on 25/2/2006 at 15:42
Mostly it was hard to programme anything for DX because the code was all over the place, and since it was all in unrealscript, you couldn't add too much to it without it affecting performance (it's interpreted somewhat when the game runs, so isn't as fast as compiled C++ would be). Less of an issue on post-dx computers, naturally.
And AI is mostly just if clauses (well, apart from the navigation stuff, which is a bit icky from what I remember) - the problem is making it react to the right things the right way, without crippling the system with endless "what's going on?" checks.
TheSheep on 25/2/2006 at 21:43
The AI has a lot of native C++ code which you can't change, controlling things like path calculation, target selection, etc. Significant code changes can have bizarre knock-on effects or end up completely ineffective. Realistically you're probably limited to changing configured values such as vision range, hearing, shot accuracy, and the like, and steering clear of actual behavioural modifications.
NoMis on 27/2/2006 at 09:39
Unrealscript is made to integrade with C++ really easy. When the AI has lot of C++ used as I can imagine, then the only way to adjust it would be to replace it completly with some own C++ Code and modify the script to use these instead of the original.
That would be an awesome lot of work to do of course and would need a pretty good understanding in AI and the Unreal Engine.
NoMis
Dr. Dumb_lunatic on 27/2/2006 at 11:57
And I think you'd need all the original native headers and libraries or something, or else it wouldn't compile the new C++ stuff into the package. Or something. I know fuck-all about native code, other than it's SCARY.
TheSheep on 27/2/2006 at 16:23
Nobody knows anything about it, since there's the some total of one brief tutorial in the whole world unless you're an engine licencee. The headers and libraries come with it but you'd have to make a new package so can say goodbye to proper integration with existing maps.
