Map Requests

[flib]

There's no way that the 1112 maps are the "latest and greatest".
The 1110 maps

• Have the Hell's Kitchen music working
• Have the buddha statue working
• Have that extra thing in Queen's Tower as shown on the DXM map patch site
• Are more recently modified

I would believe that they stamped them with an arbitrary date if the dates on all of them were the same, but they're not, so that seems very unlikely to me.

Other than the modified dates, I can't rule out that the 1112 maps be maps older than the 1110 maps with some fixes applied to them.

I think the best way to resolve this is to find a copy of the maps prior to 1110 and compare those ones.

[chris the cynic]

By the way, who wants to do Hong Kong? I've completed the picture-taking stuff for it. Still going through other maps but I think it makes sense to have one person per 'section' of the game rather than have people overlapping.

I can probably do that.

I do have a question since I have noticed that we seem to have people tripping over each other, do want me to finish the maps that I started? In particular it seems like someone else is putting in a lot of work on the hotel.

-

In entirely unrelated news, if you should live with someone and get in your head to clean, don't clean in a way that the other person will be stuck cleaning up your cleaning for days to come. Even if the other person is family.

I've had some trouble keeping up with the conversation what with sudden unexpected house cleaning to do.

[nerdenstein]

Agreed. Need to get some organisation in here.

At the moment, It seems the need for two projects has kinda come to light. One with just bug fixes (Texture alignments, that sort of thing) and one with maps that have bits added; like the third floor on the hotel. Speaking of the hotel, I only did that as an experiment for my myself too see if I could do something with it. If someone can do a better job, Go for it.

We do need somewhere we can store data with an update log. The Googlecode thing that's being used for 2.0 patch seems the sorta thing to go for.

[Hassat Hunter]

Also, Libery Island;

"old" 1110;
2 healing bots hidden behind pickable doors over the Island.

"new" 1112;
1 near the start. Other is gone.

"old" 1110;
Baton at docks for stealth players.

"new" 1112;
No baton

That's what I recall of differences so far...

[nerdenstein]

Oh. I didn't know that. I was initally playing with the GOTY maps but I've just put the other maps over it from that site posted in a previous reply and haven't noticed anything different yet.

Not sure which bloody version I'm using either.

[chris the cynic]

Provided that all of the misalignments and such are identified before it comes time to do a given map it should be fairly simple to create an alignment only version of a map and a visually improved version in a single pass. You just do the alignments first, save, and then do the rest and save to a different location.

-

Something worth noting is that, at least sometimes, the textures used for lit windows aren't actually windows. The lit windows in the Hong Kong maps, for example, are actually sections of metal wall. If possible (and if it isn't too much trouble) it might be a good idea to make actual lit window textures.

-


I'm wondering if it might be worthwhile to replace this thread with multiple new threads of smaller scope. The downside would be clutter. The potential positive would be focusing in on specific areas so that things about them don't get lost in ten pages of everything.

There are too many individual maps to give them each a thread, but breaking it down by section might work. New York, Hong Kong, Paris, Vandenberg so on.

So you'd have a thread called "Changes to X" which would start with all of the changes for the X maps listed in the first post.

The point would be to allow everyone to point out any bugs missed, suggest any changes not yet in there, and state their disagreement with any of the changes they disagree with. (Maybe there's something I'd consider a bug that someone else thinks is a crucial part of the game. Maybe there's something I think has no effect on gameplay, and someone else knows I'm wrong about that.)

In theory this thread allows us to do all of that already, but it's more defuse (we're necessarily discussing every map in the game in this thread) and the name won't necessarially draw people who have strong opinions about what changes should and shouldn't be made to, say, the New York maps the same way a thread called, "Changes to the New York Maps" would.

But then again it might be unnecessary and clutter.

What do others think about that?

[DaveW]

How I imagine it working is that we just do everything in one go, I wasn't really making a distinction between alignment fixes and additional detail. If we do that, go back and play it again to see if there's anything we've missed, and continue until we're happy, I think that's fairly sensible. Plus we can then look at additional detail: new custom textures if we need them, and maybe I could throw together some high detail models to replace brushwork, like the PS2 lightposts:



(Pictures from Kentie)

Assuming someone could help compile them of course. Akerfeldt came up with a way to apply decent smoothing to models in Deus Ex (Unreal Engine 1 lacks smoothing groups) so we could replace some ugly looking brushwork and really improve some of the levels. We'd only need a few things like a bench, one or two lightposts etc.

I don't know if we'll be making enough changes to warrant seperate topics though (despite this one going completely off-the-rails), most of the stuff is going to be fairly minor graphical changes or ones at least out of the playable area. I don't know if there's a way to have different parts of the GoogleCode thing private and public or not, but I'm sure people could pop in and bring up any issues they have with what we're doing.

[nerdenstein]

Provided that all of the misalignments and such are identified before it comes time to do a given map it should be fairly simple to create an alignment only version of a map and a visually improved version in a single pass. You just do the alignments first, save, and then do the rest and save to a different location.

That's pretty much what I've done, saved the maps into two separate folders. At least then if I miss a misalignment I can go back and just do it in both maps.

I'm playing through the game now and making note of all the bugs etc. I can find. I've only tried updating(?) a couple of maps so far. Maybe we should put a change log into the Description on the GoogleCode page. I've got a change log I've been adding to as I've played through the game so I'll post in on there and you can both add to it.

[Kibou]

This looks somewhat wierd in the market level:

From the start of the level, go to the bottom right (behind the luminous path compound) to see it. I guess it was supposed to look like dusk, but with the purple color it doesn't really look like it's intended that way. If you check it out yourself you'll also notice there are dithering problems.

I know Market_3 and Street_1 have useless corridors, but I like them since they add unnecessary detail...

I totally agree with justanotherfan on this one: those corridors help to give you the impression of being in a real part of a city, with several ways leading to other areas, instead of an isolated level. Just removing them wouldn't fit a mod that's supposed to stay true to the original game.

Imo, it would be a fair solution to add boxes, junk or whatever to stop the player half-way - plus maybe even adding more detail to this corridors (giving the impression they really lead onto another street or something).

At the moment, It seems the need for two projects has kinda come to light. One with just bug fixes (Texture alignments, that sort of thing) and one with maps that have bits added; like the third floor on the hotel.

I'm not involved in anything here, but wouldn't a "adding bits to level" projekt be somewhat redundant given there's already this DX Revision mod being developed? The thing that is really missing, for me at least, is a mod that improves graphics on a map editing-level, to supplement New Vision and HDTP (in case it's ever released), and I thought what you're doing is just that.

[DaveW]

I'm not involved in anything here, but wouldn't a "adding bits to level" projekt be somewhat redundant given there's already this DX Revision mod being developed? The thing that is really missing, for me at least, is a mod that improves graphics on a map editing-level, to supplement New Vision and HDTP (in case it's ever released), and I thought what you're doing is just that.

The aim of this project is to keep the level layouts of Deus Ex, but add extra detail and fix errors, inconsistencies and texture misalignments. This distances it from the Revision mod which is overhauling the entire layout of Deus Ex's maps.

[nerdenstein]

Hey there! Thanks for joining!
All opinions and suggestions are welcome!

The thing with the Revision Mod, this has crossed my mind.
But! The differences between us and the Revision Mod is that the latter physically changes most of the levels, adds new bits etc. Adds new enemies and such. Basically, changes the gameplay on many of the levels. I love the Revision mod and cannot wait until it is released but Our goal isn't to change the maps or the gameplay but just the way it looks. (Under most circumstances, Helibase is an exception at the moment.) For example, adding an unreachable third floor to the 'Ton doesn't change anything and that is the idea we're going for.
In Hells Kitchen for example, most of the builds look aweful, even with NV. Our goal is to make the buildings (and indeed the city in general) more real without altering the gameplay. Adding doors to buildings that don't have doors, breaking up the tiling on some of the buildings, adding ledges and fire escapes, giving windows depth to add detail to the buildings...

Hope that clears things up.

Oh Dave beat me too it.

[DaveW]

Well from the sounds of it the idea with the helibase won't work anyway. No sense doing it if it sets of the guards below deck, because then it ruins the cool gas-pumping tactic. So I'm not against gameplay changes on principle (if people don't like the changes, don't play the mod), but I'm not sure where else it would be necessary.

[nerdenstein]

I agree. We don't want to disturb the guard below decks because as you said, it does ruin the key part of the level.
You prefer Gas bombing the place, I stealth the entire level.

The only other thing I can see around is to set up allience triggers all over the place but that could become messy.


EDIT: To avoid double posting:

I've just noticed something different about the Intro with the older maps: During the Liberty Island scene, instead of the seating being lined straight, they're curved around Manderley. Weird.
I think I'll move them back to lined up straight to stop my OCD bothering me.
Also, flickering floor under Walton and Bob. Fixed.

Finally: I know DDL has said in the past that he won't be updating every character model because it'd take too much time (I don't blame him) and he said that he'd leave out certain NPC's that are never seen or only seen once (Rachal Mead for example). She's only in the Intro so I was considering removing her and placing Janice Reed's Female model there instead. She'll stick out like a sore thumb once HDTP's released and she isn't HD. Thoughts?

[Kibou]

For example, adding an unreachable third floor to the 'Ton doesn't change anything and that is the idea we're going for.

I was confused because I didn't catch the "unreachable" part before, thought it was something like making an half-finished third floor the devs left in the map accessible or something. Sorry for asking stupid questions. I guess the floors of the hotel when viewed from the outside don't match those in the elevator shaft?

Thanks for the welcome! I don't plan to stick around and spam the thread, though, I just registered to post that Hong Kong picture. Of course, if I see anything else, I'll tell you

[nerdenstein]

That's quite alright!
Thanks for the help.
I've not touched Hong Kong yet, I think Chris said he'd do that but I'll check it once I get to Hong Kong in my playthrough.