heywood on 4/8/2018 at 14:21
It's just part of the game design that you'll have to live with. A fair number of goals/objectives are given by infolink, and sometimes other important information. So I don't think you could really skip them without missing something. Instead, you would have to create a voice mail system to store them in a queue for later listening. Having to frequently check your messages might break up the flow of the game more than the infolinks.
Personally, the infolinks don't really bother me through most of the game. They start coming frequently in Trier as additional faction leaders start to want things from you. Then the game mostly leaves you alone in Antarctica, but they get frequent again during your return to Cairo and on Liberty Island.
Acleacius on 4/8/2018 at 15:00
Cool, we just disagree. We automatically get the quest those forced AutoComLinks talk about, I see no reason what so ever why we should be forced to listen to them.
"Oh, look it's that annoying person who I can't block in my com for some reason. Someone who I've never done anything for and refuse to deal with, is still calling me and giving me order?"
Yeah, that's not so real or realistic.
Haha, it would be funny if you constantly accepted 'ALL' spam calls on your mobile and home phones, to prove me wrong! :p
heywood on 6/8/2018 at 16:11
I don't think we disagree completely. No matter what you do in the game, every faction will continue to vie for your help right up to the very end in Alex Jacobsen's old office, where you access the sole remaining Aquinas router and decide which faction to upload the Aquinas spec to. That's not so real or realistic, no matter if the goals are given to you via infolink or other means.
One of the complaints people had with DX1 is the forced allegiances. You were always doing somebody's bidding, but never really had the option of deciding who to work for until the end at A51. Ion Storm responded to this criticism, but went too far in the other direction with Invisible War, where you're almost always independent and never given the chance to fully ally or oppose yourself to any faction. I say almost because you ARE forced to fight the Templars in Trier and revive JC Denton. But outside from those levels you can choose sides at will and change your mind at any time.
Early in the game, you can pick and choose WTO and Order objectives, and the worst that will happen is a brief hostile encounter with Klara (if you try to kill Nassif) or a couple of seekers (if you destroy the greenhouse). You can choose to be favorable to the Templars throughout your first visit to Cairo, and even offer to join them at the recruiting booth, but they will still be hostile in Trier and Antarctica. You can choose to kill Nicolette DuClare in Trier rather than rescue her. She's been Dumier's lover/wife and partner for 20+ years, but if you kill her he'll shrug it off with a minor scolding. On your second visit to Cairo, you are given what seems like a plot-relevant hard choice between the factions, but the only difference it makes is which side's forces are friendly to you when you show up on Liberty Island.
By the end of your second visit to Cairo, you are given opportunities to kill every single faction member you've met except the heads (Saman, Dumier, JC), which the game keeps alive until Liberty Island. Every Templar, every WTO/Order/SSC/Illuminatus, and/or every ApostleCorp member. But you can still choose any side you want at the bottom of UNATCO HQ and each of the faction heads will still plead their case at the end. The purpose of the whole game up to that point is merely to present the player with the relative merits and demerits of each ideology, so as to inform your choice at the end.
The problem with this approach is that you go through the game not being held accountable for your actions, and without much sense of purpose. To me, receiving infolink messages from people you don't want to work with is a relatively minor annoyance in comparison.
Acleacius on 7/8/2018 at 12:40
Thanks for the very detailed info! The problem with forcing comlinks just as cutscences, is they are extremely annoying in the real world after repeated and unwanted play. It makes people literally upset and not want to play the game. I just played DX2 4 or 5 times to near completion in a month. It wasn't because I like the game that much it's because I was trying to help find a bug for the community. It pisses me off that, I had to waste time listening to that crap, even though I care enough to try to help. In the 13+ years of testing Bloodlines, more than 50 times (mostly for Wesp but Dan_Upright too) I've never had that problem.
Secondly and probably more important, is that it breaks the RPing experience of the player. You do not miss anything by skipping a comlink you have been forced to listen to a dozen times before. You still get the pertinent quest info in the logbook. If I'm trying to RP for the WTO, sure other factions can send requests to my log, but wtf why would I take their call? Not only is it more realistic in the gameworld but in the real world too.
Personally in this case, I don't care what Ion (or eidos if they made the call) wanted, because they were wrong. Just as they have been many wrong many times before. It's annoying, completely unnecessary and breaks gameplay. That's the difference between excellence in RPG design, player choice and control. Black Isle and Troika have been the best because they recognize it and built it.
So, if your saying it's ok to force players to watch unwanted comlinks for any reason, then no offense personally but we absolutely disagree on this point. :p
Whopper on 10/8/2018 at 15:21
Hi, I want to thank you for your efforts to get Deus Ex 2 into a playable state. I only just installed it for the first time and in comparison to Deus Ex which I was able to play through (after some modding) without issue, I was disappointed to find Deus Ex 2 in a sorry state.
Running a vanilla installation I was met with the mouse issue (mouse unresponsive in menus) and no way to set the game to my native resolution. After using the Windows display scaler set at 149% rather than 150% to workaround the mouse issue and I tried to persevere through it for a while. The game minimising to desktop every time you transitioned to a new map would have been tolerable if it happened in Deus Ex as it's levels were quite large. Sadly the issue is extremely annoying for DE2 as due to the console requirements for the game, the levels were small and so transitions/loading were more frequent and so was this white screen/minimise to desktop every 2 minutes. The final straw was a crash as I was entering a nightclub and but when it crashed my desktop resolution was set to the game's resolution! I found this situation untenable so I searched for solutions and came across this mod.
The Visible Upgrade fixed the resolution, mouse and the level transition issue as well as increased the visual fidelity to more than satisfactory standards. Unfortunately I appear to have an issue that I don't see documented elsewhere. It seems that at random intervals, sometimes 5 seconds or as much as 12 seconds, the game freezes for about 1-3 seconds and then continues. During the freeze the mouse and sound will also freeze/stutter and then go back to playing as normal. It happens regardless of mouse movement, when it's in the main menu, when you're playing, in video cutscenes or in conversations - it's literally the entire game application.
I reinstalled the game and VU mod but without the texture pack this time but it still exhibited this behaviour. I uninstalled the VU mod and then the stuttering disappeared but of course that's unplayable for the original reasons again.
My system is an i7-6700K, 16GB 3000Mhz DDR4, SM951 256GB M.2, Geforce GTX 980Ti (Driver version 388.13), Windows 10 version 1803 build 17134.165.
I'm hoping that there is a solution or that a future version of this mod will solve all issues so I'll be able to return to playing Deus Ex 2.
Thank you for you efforts in maintaining games that should not be forgotten.
snobel on 11/8/2018 at 06:41
Hmm... I wonder if it could be due to very high frame rates? Is it less prominent if you set a very high resolution and add a lot of processing in the graphics driver settings?
I assume you don't have anything running that could starve the game of CPU? Maybe it's worth a try using Task Manager to set the priority for the DeusEx2.exe process to "high".
Also, try if using (
http://dege.freeweb.hu/) dgVoodoo makes a difference.
Whopper on 11/8/2018 at 11:55
Aha. Yes the first suggestion was correct. I turned on a frame-counter and it was showing anything up to thousands of fps in the menus and hundreds in the game. I capped it to 60fps as I have a 60Hz monitor anyway and that seems to have eliminated the issue.
I'm glad it was something so simple. Many thanks.
snobel on 11/8/2018 at 12:43
You're welcome. Porting the frame rate limiter from Thief 3 should be fairly easy (and it's been requested before). Can you test a beta version if I get it out sometime tomorrow?
Whopper on 11/8/2018 at 13:32
Yes of course. No problem.
snobel on 11/8/2018 at 13:35
Turns out it's already implemented - but not exposed in the tweak tool. :weird: If you don't mind, disable your current fix, go to Start Menu > Deus Ex 2 Visible Upgrade > Options, open VisibleOptions.ini and set MaxFrameRate=90. (That value works for Thief 3.) Then see if this also fixes the issue.