HX - A DeusEx Coop Modification

A refuge for those migrating from the fallen DXEditing.com and a place for general discussion relating to Deus Ex editing (coding, mapping, etc).
Hanfling
MJ12
Posts: 406
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2009 6:54 pm

Re: HX - A Deus Ex Coop Modification

Post by Hanfling »

Just thinking about modularization of HX, although it has some interfaces for mod authors in it for the Mutator, it would probably result in having to copy and edit large parts of code, which is not really good, since it might easily brake. I'm thinking of having modular packages for at least the ScriptedPawns and Decorations. e.g. that you just specifiy a Package of which ScriptedPawns / Decorations are taken. However putting things like Security cameras / Computers / ATMs (ATM is a computer now in HX), and such into another package is probably very problematic as those are tied pretty hard to the game code. However it could be a good way to enable support for such things as the HDTP as changing skins/meshes on runtime will not work out well, since they suck up bandwidth and are unreliable replicated to the server, so you will often have things using the old dx skins/meshes or even worse just one of them.

However this might put down compile time, although classes with just defaultproperties set compile rather fast.
I demand my DXE User ID back. Launcher for DeusEx, Rune, Nerf, Unreal & Botpack. HX on Mod DB. Revision on Steam.
Hanfling
MJ12
Posts: 406
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2009 6:54 pm

Re: HX - A Deus Ex Coop Modification (Canceled)

Post by Hanfling »

Long story short:
HX has been canceled in favor of Revision Framework.

Short story Long:
After about 2-3 days in designing/writing Revision Framework it became pretty clear that it's becoming pretty powerful and flexible and that this framework would be a better start for getting a propper made coop into deusex and i get rid of pretty historical junk i have when trying to get into ions shit right, so i'll rather rewrite that piece by piece (with coop in mind) while adding flexibility and new interfaces (how about damagemutators, missionscriptmutators, etc. in deusex?). And with more knowlege i can now make far better design descissions for the long run. I sweared i will not start another rewrite of hx, but i guess thats not called HX this time but RF.

Current state?
Six little files (HX.u/HX.dll/HX.exe/HXDefault.ini/HXDefUser.ini/HX.int), ~800 uc classes, probably ~ 10k lines of C++ code. Time spent for this incarnation? About two years. Playability? It's rather playable now, i guess thats the best description. it still has some client crash issues (shitty ion breaking gargabe collection), but dedicated server seems stable though, so game progress is not lost. The only real spoiler despite countless many smaller issues (and even times more fixed) is the last thing i touched was rewritting the damn buggy and crappy inventory grid system, so i could really seperate what you which you get off player or pawn carcasses and that the server has controll over it.. and not somewhat.. in between with a function "fixing" inventory every player move. However that resulted in that newly picked up items don't land in toolbelt, that whats is in the toolbelt is is lost after map switching (remains in inventory though) and you won't get any inventory right now off conversations (cleanup/rewrite of that messy shitty code of SetupEventTransferObject..).

To get a the glimpse of an idea how much effort it was to get to that point, try starting a singleplayermap on a dedicated server and join. Nothing works, pretty much changed for mp, etc.. Start trying to fix things like not beeing allowed switching maps... crash, etc.

However, if one want to take a look at it to get some sneak peak into what deusex could be in coop, i can send the files in private, but don't want to release it in this unpolished state. But yeah mostly polish is needed. ^^
I demand my DXE User ID back. Launcher for DeusEx, Rune, Nerf, Unreal & Botpack. HX on Mod DB. Revision on Steam.
medzernik
NSF
Posts: 76
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2012 8:37 am
Location: Slovakia

Re: HX - A Deus Ex Coop Modification (Canceled)

Post by medzernik »

Hanfling wrote:Long story short:
HX has been canceled in favor of Revision Framework.

Short story Long:
After about 2-3 days in designing/writing Revision Framework it became pretty clear that it's becoming pretty powerful and flexible and that this framework would be a better start for getting a propper made coop into deusex and i get rid of pretty historical junk i have when trying to get into ions shit right, so i'll rather rewrite that piece by piece (with coop in mind) while adding flexibility and new interfaces (how about damagemutators, missionscriptmutators, etc. in deusex?). And with more knowlege i can now make far better design descissions for the long run. I sweared i will not start another rewrite of hx, but i guess thats not called HX this time but RF.

Current state?
Six little files (HX.u/HX.dll/HX.exe/HXDefault.ini/HXDefUser.ini/HX.int), ~800 uc classes, probably ~ 10k lines of C++ code. Time spent for this incarnation? About two years. Playability? It's rather playable now, i guess thats the best description. it still has some client crash issues (shitty ion breaking gargabe collection), but dedicated server seems stable though, so game progress is not lost. The only real spoiler despite countless many smaller issues (and even times more fixed) is the last thing i touched was rewritting the damn buggy and crappy inventory grid system, so i could really seperate what you which you get off player or pawn carcasses and that the server has controll over it.. and not somewhat.. in between with a function "fixing" inventory every player move. However that resulted in that newly picked up items don't land in toolbelt, that whats is in the toolbelt is is lost after map switching (remains in inventory though) and you won't get any inventory right now off conversations (cleanup/rewrite of that messy shitty code of SetupEventTransferObject..).

To get a the glimpse of an idea how much effort it was to get to that point, try starting a singleplayermap on a dedicated server and join. Nothing works, pretty much changed for mp, etc.. Start trying to fix things like not beeing allowed switching maps... crash, etc.

However, if one want to take a look at it to get some sneak peak into what deusex could be in coop, i can send the files in private, but don't want to release it in this unpolished state. But yeah mostly polish is needed. ^^
So if I understand correctly, this means that we will get a better coop mod sometime later? Hopefully? I was really excited so I feel sort of sad now, throwing all that progress away, but if You can make something even more awesome, I cannot wait already! :D
Hanfling
MJ12
Posts: 406
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2009 6:54 pm

Re: HX - A Deus Ex Coop Modification (Canceled)

Post by Hanfling »

medzernik wrote:So if I understand correctly, this means that we will get a better coop mod sometime later?
Right, you get a better coop mod as part of RF.
Hopefully? I was really excited so I feel sort of sad now, throwing all that progress away, but if You can make something even more awesome, I cannot wait already! :D
It's not really thrown away, the most value thing on HX is the knowledge i gathered, and I actually reuse at least some parts of
HX code in RF in some form or another (mostly cleaned up/generalised/restructured). However, kinda feeling like it would be a shame to not release is, but it's somehow like: It's not the quality i want it to be for release, but on the other hand it far more advanced then anything coop related released for DeusEx, so it would still be better then nothing, and somehow i want to clean up some things and release the god damned thing.

However, at least the Launcher is now in a form i want it to be, as i wrote some launcher as part of my launch project (which I'll release once i wrote the documentation for it). It's more like a simple enhanced launcher, based on the vanilla launcher, with more flexibility, some fixes (which are in scope of the launcher!), and some stuff thrown in focused on mod development (use of distinct ini set, logos, etc.). Also (which was really important for me) it uses no stuff like dll injection or other kinds of bad dll hacks. It also includes LCC (a version of UCC) where you can do things like have a same named ini file, where you can specify the ini set to use. So no need for shit like adding INI= option when dealing with ucc at the command prompt, etc..

Oh and some stats for HX:
110k+ lines of code (including Launch project, spaces and comments).
I demand my DXE User ID back. Launcher for DeusEx, Rune, Nerf, Unreal & Botpack. HX on Mod DB. Revision on Steam.
Hanfling
MJ12
Posts: 406
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2009 6:54 pm

Re: HX - A DeusEx Coop Modification (Major development cance

Post by Hanfling »

Okay I've decided to put out a release in a few weeks, after some other time critical stuff is finished.

However, I just created a moddb page for HX, but it's not activated yet.

/edit:
Seems to be live now:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/hx :)
I demand my DXE User ID back. Launcher for DeusEx, Rune, Nerf, Unreal & Botpack. HX on Mod DB. Revision on Steam.
Hanfling
MJ12
Posts: 406
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2009 6:54 pm

Re: HX - A DeusEx Coop Modification

Post by Hanfling »

I have now fixed the most severe remaining issues and started a bit of playtesting. And it is pretty cool to play. I'll probably put out some gameplay videos soon.
I demand my DXE User ID back. Launcher for DeusEx, Rune, Nerf, Unreal & Botpack. HX on Mod DB. Revision on Steam.
Hanfling
MJ12
Posts: 406
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2009 6:54 pm

Re: HX - A DeusEx Coop Modification

Post by Hanfling »

Recorded video of training mission:
Han: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wI8MGG3oRg
Jay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nVEzHEabLQ

Still not quite were i want HX.. but :)

Setup is a dedicated server running on my machine were i joined as a client and Jay located at the other end of the western hemisphere joined over internet.
I demand my DXE User ID back. Launcher for DeusEx, Rune, Nerf, Unreal & Botpack. HX on Mod DB. Revision on Steam.
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