The "What a Shame" Phenomenon

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Cybernetic pig
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Re: The "What a Shame" Phenomenon

Post by Cybernetic pig »

G-flex I have some more for you, hear me out:

I came across a couple of triggers that should have been disabled under certain conditions-

1. Return to NYC, when you go down the ladder from the roof at the start of the map Tong contacts you warning you of troops and sentry bots.
I didnt go down the ladder I started sniping people from the roof and then speed augged to another rooftop to get down(there are a few ways off that starting rooftop). When I was finished in NYC, hostiles dead, I started climbing the ladder to Jock and Tong sent me the message warning me even though everyone was already dead.

2. Superfreighter, lower decks- In the first large room with the two tri-hull welds, one being closed off behind a wall, I threw a lam over and blew it up, then shortly after I climbed over for the goodies and Tong contacted telling me to blow it up when it was already gone.

One for you too DDL: The plasma rifle stopped its shooting audio not long after carrying it around, wont revert. May or may not be HDTP related but worth checking out. Once I noticed I reloaded back to a previous save where I had just obtained the gun (MJ12 secret lab armoury), the shooting sound worked up until unatco floor. The impact sound, reload sound etc still worked.

Also for the record pistol is far more effective than the plasma rifle. The plasma rifle only shows its worth once master skill and has some mods applied to it, only then is it superior. Pistol you can start headshooting everyone in sight easily once you reach around 80% base accuracy.
Pistol= 1 inventory slot. Plasma= 8. It is beyond rediculous. Yeah flamethrower and gep destroy but then you have the assualt rifle which has bullets and grenade launcher + can be silenced, also has effective range.
heavy weapons class is a joke in comparison to rifles and pistols. Also ideally you can only have one if you want some space for anything else.
G-Flex
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Re: The "What a Shame" Phenomenon

Post by G-Flex »

Huh. Didn't expect to see mod requests in this thread.
Cybernetic pig wrote:-Scope (and probably laser too) can be used underwater, not really a big deal though. Laser is probably possible in real life, not scope though.
Eh, probably won't bother, to be honest. It's not a big deal.
-When Laser sight on, crosshair gets turned off please!
The size of the targeting reticle still shows you your accuracy if you turn it off at that time, and the window within which the laser dot will wander, so it's still useful even if the laser is turned on.
- Robot instant recognition of a threat like in 2027, depending on difficulty too maybe? You have probably already done this since since you are focusing on AI. Hope you make it scale with difficulty though because the sentry bots at the airfield would be rediculously difficult if not and poor little noobs would get destroyed. Just something like Hard= reduced time by half, realistic= instant recognition.
I have no idea how it works in 2027 because I haven't played that, but maybe I'll look at it. I think reaction time scales with difficulty for all NPCs anyway, though.
-Please increase Recoil on the pistol, shotguns and plasma rifle. Seriously recoil modding only has use on assualt rifle and snipe.
Might look at it, can't promise anything. Also, for what it's worth, recoil is already more significant in my mod than in the basic game, as it affects your accuracy (your targeting reticle gets wider when you shoot, and to a greater degree with higher recoil).
- Also I am sure you are aware that the weapon skills upgrade description lies about reload speed(it doesn't effect R speed at all).
It does, actually. I just tested to be sure, and it totally does.
Well yesterday I also noticed that it also dramaticly reduces recoil too. Please remove this completely along with the reload speed lie. The skills should effect Accuracy and damage only imo (and movement speed for heavy obviously).
Why shouldn't it affect recoil? "imo" isn't enough reason for me to implement a suggestion.
- Perhaps an auto save feature either every loading screen transition, start of every map, or not at all and just remove that SAVING that briefly appears on the screen. Im fed up with all the LIES!
It says "saving" because it's saving the state of the map when you leave it. I guess this might be misleading if you don't know that, though.

There used to be an autosave feature that I got from Deus Ex 2.0 that kicked in every time you traveled to a new map, but it was causing crashes under some circumstances, so I had to remove it. I couldn't think of a non-problematic way to implement it.
- If you are setting the majority of AI to sniper mode so they react quicker and are more accurate please reduce the % they headshot if you can. Go play 2027 combat playstyle on hard or realistic and see just how insane it is (noticable when you get to Moscow most, and beyond).
I don't really know what you mean by "sniper mode". NPCs do see farther and react more quickly in my mod, and might be more accurate too, but I'm not sure about headshots specifically. Also, again, I haven't played 2027, so I have no idea what "2027 combat playstyle" is.
- Please reduce Heavy weapons inventory size to 6 blocks instead of 8. This is vital imo.
Heavy weapons are good enough (well, except maybe the plasma rifle) that their size seems justified to me. Besides, to edit this, I'd have to create new inventory icons for them as well, which is definitely not within my skillset.
-can you make the value medkits heal scale with difficulty? hard 25, Realistic 20? Medicine skill needs more weight. Perhaps upgrading it also increases torso health capacity by 10 each upgrade? (so master medicine skill torso has 130pts) since you are buffing AI and nerfing Regen aug this would be especially useful, even though its small.
I haven't considered that. It's reasonable enough to have medkits scale with difficulty, I suppose.

Thanks. Expect more soon :smile: I was playing without Dx2.0 or Shifter too btw so some may have already been fixed (I have read HuRen readme though so I remember most fixes you have implemented so far).
I suppose you wont be doing this then:
CP wrote:
it was meant to be a reaction to Jojo killing old Renton but because they didnt consider the player killing Renton (by recording dialogue for it or just turning sandra hostile)
What am I saying, it's too hilarious to fix really.
I don't think it needs "fixing" because I don't think it's broken. If the player kills Gilbert Renton himself, JC comes off as sarcastic and a complete ass, which is as it should be, really.
Cybernetic pig wrote:1. Return to NYC, when you go down the ladder from the roof at the start of the map Tong contacts you warning you of troops and sentry bots.
I didnt go down the ladder I started sniping people from the roof and then speed augged to another rooftop to get down(there are a few ways off that starting rooftop). When I was finished in NYC, hostiles dead, I started climbing the ladder to Jock and Tong sent me the message warning me even though everyone was already dead.
I could change the collision size of that trigger, I suppose, or place copies of it in other places to make sure the player gets that message. I'll take a look at it, at any rate.
2. Superfreighter, lower decks- In the first large room with the two tri-hull welds, one being closed off behind a wall, I threw a lam over and blew it up, then shortly after I climbed over for the goodies and Tong contacted telling me to blow it up when it was already gone.
Not sure what to do about that. It's plausible the player might blow one up without realizing it, but even in that case, the player should be told what they are and what to do about them. A different line of dialogue in case you've already destroyed it would be nice, but I certainly can't do that.
One for you too DDL: The plasma rifle stopped its shooting audio not long after carrying it around, wont revert. May or may not be HDTP related but worth checking out. Once I noticed I reloaded back to a previous save where I had just obtained the gun (MJ12 secret lab armoury), the shooting sound worked up until unatco floor. The impact sound, reload sound etc still worked.
Was this with my mod? I thought I had fixed that bug.
Also for the record pistol is far more effective than the plasma rifle. The plasma rifle only shows its worth once master skill and has some mods applied to it, only then is it superior. Pistol you can start headshooting everyone in sight easily once you reach around 80% base accuracy.
Pistol= 1 inventory slot. Plasma= 8. It is beyond rediculous. Yeah flamethrower and gep destroy but then you have the assualt rifle which has bullets and grenade launcher + can be silenced, also has effective range.
heavy weapons class is a joke in comparison to rifles and pistols. Also ideally you can only have one if you want some space for anything else.
I agree that the plasma rifle is a little underwhelming, which is why I increased the damage of the plasma bolts by 25%. Maybe it needs more tweaking; I'm not sure.

I don't think many people consider the assault rifle very powerful, though. Hell, I increased the damage that does as well, because a full burst round was only doing about the same damage as a pistol shot. What do you mean by "effective range" though?

For the record, I've made the heavy weapons skill a bit more important in my mod because your walking speed is significantly slowed down if you're unskilled. This is being changed a bit and updated for the upcoming version.

Regarding silencers, I've been toying with the idea of having silencers reduce damage a bit, which is realistic and might counterbalance their (fairly ridiculous) usefulness a bit.
Cybernetic pig
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Re: The "What a Shame" Phenomenon

Post by Cybernetic pig »

G-Flex wrote:

The size of the targeting reticle still shows you your accuracy if you turn it off at that time, and the window within which the laser dot will wander, so it's still useful even if the laser is turned on.
Yeah I edited .user as DDL suggested and noticed that, but I am gonna leave it because it just looks awesome.
G-Flex wrote: I have no idea how it works in 2027 because I haven't played that, but maybe I'll look at it. I think reaction time scales with difficulty for all NPCs anyway, though..
It makes robots a real threat and makes it realistic, but it would have to be for realistic difficulty only because they do become much harder.
G-Flex wrote: Might look at it, can't promise anything. Also, for what it's worth, recoil is already more significant in my mod than in the basic game, as it affects your accuracy (your targeting reticle gets wider when you shoot, and to a greater degree with higher recoil).
..
Great!

G-Flex wrote: Why shouldn't it affect recoil? "imo" isn't enough reason for me to implement a suggestion...
Because it renders the recoil mods almost useless unless you do not focus on the weapons skills.
To test: Have a completely unmodded assualt rifle and upgrade rifles skill to expert Lvl 3, this completely removes all recoil. Therefore no point in the recoil weapon mods unless you are not focusing on weapon skills. This is made worse by recoil mods being the most common in the game alongside accuracy.

At the very least reduce the amount recoil weapons skills reduce.

To unneccesarily bring in realism- recoil can be controlled by a skiled marksman, but only by altering the gun itself can you remove recoil completely.
G-Flex wrote: I haven't considered that. It's reasonable enough to have medkits scale with difficulty, I suppose.
I hope you consider the small torso max health increase too. As I said- better AI & Regen aug nerf will be a real challenge especially on the harder settings, medicine skill would become much more appealing and a worthy choice amoung the better skills (computer, athletics and weapons).
G-Flex wrote: I don't think it needs "fixing" because I don't think it's broken. If the player kills Gilbert Renton himself, JC comes off as sarcastic and a complete ass, which is as it should be, really.
It's Sandra's dialogue why it doesn't quite fit imo. But it shouldnt be fixed because it's too damn funny and iconic to DX.
G-Flex wrote: I could change the collision size of that trigger, I suppose, or place copies of it in other places to make sure the player gets that message. I'll take a look at it, at any rate.
You could move the trigger to exactly where JC spawns into the level, so it will trigger right away but make it only activate and send the transmission after a delay (some few seconds after jock's transmission) ....I assume you could anyway.
G-Flex wrote: Was this with my mod? I thought I had fixed that bug.
Ahh so it's a vanilla issue then. No I haven't been using Huren yet because it is not compatable with HDTP yet. I am looking forward to it alot though.
G-Flex wrote: I agree that the plasma rifle is a little underwhelming, which is why I increased the damage of the plasma bolts by 25%. Maybe it needs more tweaking; I'm not sure.
Needs to be 6 inv slots imo. Would it be possible to do that but just leave the inventory icon as is? Would the picture overlap others or would the 2 squares-worth be cropped out? Sorry for going on about it but 8 slots, damn...That is the same as carrying around 10 of every grenade type plus a pistol and mini crossbow.
The only one that justifies it's size is the GEP in my opinion.
G-Flex wrote: I don't think many people consider the assault rifle very powerful, though. Hell, I increased the damage that does as well, because a full burst round was only doing about the same damage as a pistol shot. What do you mean by "effective range" though?
assualt rifle is a beast. By Effective range I mean it is basically a weak but automatic sniper rifle, I have never noticed it losing accuracy at longer ranges when base accuracy is 100%, on that note range modification needs more value to it too.
plasma rifle the projectiles move slow, so shooting long range targets is not ideal. That could be a buff for it too; faster projectile speed caused by the range mods :)
G-Flex wrote: Regarding silencers, I've been toying with the idea of having silencers reduce damage a bit, which is realistic and might counterbalance their (fairly ridiculous) usefulness a bit.
Makes sense to me, or reduce "accurate range" a bit (not max range).
Which in turn would add more value to the range mods there too.
G-Flex
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Re: The "What a Shame" Phenomenon

Post by G-Flex »

Cybernetic pig wrote:Because it renders the recoil mods almost useless unless you do not focus on the weapons skills.
To test: Have a completely unmodded assualt rifle and upgrade rifles skill to expert Lvl 3, this completely removes all recoil. Therefore no point in the recoil weapon mods unless you are not focusing on weapon skills. This is made worse by recoil mods being the most common in the game alongside accuracy.
You're right, the recoil mods don't do anything... if you have Master skill. You probably won't, for most weapons and for most of the game.
At the very least reduce the amount recoil weapons skills reduce.
I might. I don't really like that all weapons become equal in terms of recoil at Master skill level.

In fact, since I haven't really looked at recoil before, I'll do so right now!

The relevant line of code is:

Code: Select all

recoil = recoilStrength + GetWeaponSkill() * 2.0;
The Assault Shotgun has the highest recoil of the game, at 0.7. Well, okay, the GEP gun and LAW have 1.0, but recoil doesn't matter much for them, so whatever, let's assume 0.7.

GetWeaponSkill() returns, with increasing skill level: 0.0 (untrained), -0.1 (trained), -0.25 (advanced), -0.5 (master). In the formula above, this is multiplied by 2 (so 0, -0.2, -0.5, -1.0), and the recoil strength is reduced by that. This means that even at Advanced, recoil is totally eliminated for all but the most high-recoil weapons.

Please note that the inventory screen in my mod is apparently lying by pretending that it reduces recoil by a percentage instead of a flat amount. In all likelihood, I'll change it to something percentage-based that caps around 80-90 percent at Master level. The recoil mods also apply a flat bonus, so I guess I'll apply those first. Of course, the max amount of weapon mods still reduces recoil by 0.5, which eliminates it entirely for most guns anyway, but I don't know how likely it is to find 5 of them and apply them all to the same weapon.
No I haven't been using Huren yet because it is not compatable with HDTP yet. I am looking forward to it alot though.
Just so you know, it's compatible with the older HDTP release. I have no plans on making it compatible with the new beta version, since it's too much work for something that will likely change in the near future anyway.
Needs to be 6 inv slots imo. Would it be possible to do that but just leave the inventory icon as is? Would the picture overlap others or would the 2 squares-worth be cropped out? Sorry for going on about it but 8 slots, damn...That is the same as carrying around 10 of every grenade type plus a pistol and mini crossbow.
The only one that justifies it's size is the GEP in my opinion.
The flamethrower is a bit better than you're giving it credit for, I think. A single hit from it neutralizes any enemy who can actually burn. I don't know if the plasma rifle being lackluster is an artifact of the weird explosion damage code, or what. I'll look into it, I think.

I'm not sure how the images would respond to having to fit into a smaller space; my guess is that they'd overlap, but I'm not sure. At any rate, it would look too weird for my tastes.
assualt rifle is a beast. By Effective range I mean it is basically a weak but automatic sniper rifle, I have never noticed it losing accuracy at longer ranges when base accuracy is 100%
This is true of all weapons, though, aside from the shotguns and plasma rifle in my mod. With the above recoil changes, though, using the assault rifle as some kind of wacky across-the-room sniper thing might not work as well.
plasma rifle the projectiles move slow, so shooting long range targets is not ideal. That could be a buff for it too; faster projectile speed caused by the range mods :)
My mod already does this, actually. I guess I didn't make that very clear in the readme, though.
Cybernetic pig
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Re: The "What a Shame" Phenomenon

Post by Cybernetic pig »

G-Flex wrote: This means that even at Advanced, recoil is totally eliminated for all but the most high-recoil weapons.
Exactly. Needs fixing.
G-Flex wrote: but I don't know how likely it is to find 5 of them and apply them all to the same weapon. .
Very likely. There are about 12-15 recoil mods to be found.

G-Flex wrote: Just so you know, it's compatible with the older HDTP release. I have no plans on making it compatible with the new beta version, since it's too much work for something that will likely change in the near future anyway..
You do plan to make it compatable with the final version, right? [-o<
G-Flex wrote: The flamethrower is a bit better than you're giving it credit for, I think. A single hit from it neutralizes any enemy who can actually burn...
Yeah I've done a all heavy weapons only playthrough before (on the PS2 this is possible) and fully upgraded them all. Flamethrower is useless vs MIBs, Commandos, turrets and Bots though, but yes very effective vs standard enemies, drains ammo fast though. Only worth 6 inv. slots imo.

(was a while ago when I did the playthrough, might work against MiBs).
G-Flex wrote: I'm not sure how the images would respond to having to fit into a smaller space; my guess is that they'd overlap, but I'm not sure. At any rate, it would look too weird for my tastes.
:cry:
G-Flex wrote: With the above recoil changes, though, using the assault rifle as some kind of wacky across-the-room sniper thing might not work as well.
I am going to have fun trying! this is excellent news.
plasma rifle the projectiles move slow, so shooting long range targets is not ideal. That could be a buff for it too; faster projectile speed caused by the range mods :)
My mod already does this, actually. I guess I didn't make that very clear in the readme, though.
I want this mod!

Another thing I dont like with skills reducing recoil is that I see weapon skills as a neccesity since I play as a shooter therefore I want accuracy and damage so naturally I am going to focus on the skills, but then I have to put up with all the guns having no damn recoil!
I like recoil, it's fun because it adds extra player skill trying to control it, and just makes the guns feel more.... real.
With the shotguns especially the skills are a must because they are the only way to increase accuracy, but by the time you get to actually use them properly at all they have no recoil, which sucks.
Please remove the skills affecting recoil BS, should be mods only. Up to you of course.

Can you read that above paragraph fine? My brain is malfunctioning for some reason.

System Shock 2 has a similar problem, I always focus on agility for the faster movement speed but agility also removes recoil. It's a damn shame.
DDL
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Re: The "What a Shame" Phenomenon

Post by DDL »

Flamethrower is a room-cleaning machine: you only need to graze a person with a single fireball and they're DONE. One cannister of napalm can kill pretty much every MJ12 troop you will ever encounter in the entire game, if you're careful.

I agree the plasma rifle is shit, but I always thought that was fitting: it's an experimental weapon after all. It's pretty damn effective against YOU, (because of the vision-blinding) so if I were to improve it at all, I'd just have something like make it temporarily reduce the baseaccuracy of NPCs hit by it.
G-Flex
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Re: The "What a Shame" Phenomenon

Post by G-Flex »

I've decided that this discussion would make more sense in the thread for my mod, so I've replied there instead of here:
viewtopic.php?p=104938#p104938
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