Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

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wincenworks
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by wincenworks »

Cybernetic pig wrote:Please don't imply (or state outright) that HDTP and New Vision aren't carefully crafted with respect for the original design, at least not without elaboration.
The elaboration is that simple, they're not crafted with respect to the original design because:
For the most part, the only things that aren't 1:1 high-res updates here are the signs.
Image

Which means that in doing so the design choices in stylization and simplicity to allow for re-using assets are completely thrown out the window - every fine detail that's noteworthy on one item now appears on every single item. Adding more pixels kills the stylization and adjusts the player's expectation. Because I don't have the game to make high definition screenshots to compare to each other - I have the game to play.
Sure, HDTP's character models are uncanny valley inconsistent garbage, New Vision's Chinese signs are inaccurate, and in the case of both artistic liberties are occasionally taken, yet the vast majority of the work done is painstakingly faithful.
No, it's not, it's really not. For starters, Jaime Reyes now has a certificate of award for the construction contract in his office (much authentic) and I couldn't help look at it because it was there in high detail (and it's a real certificate basically lifted from a real company's web site). Orange and Lemon Lime are now nowhere near each other on the vending machine.

Painstakingly faithful would have kept in mind that Anna Navarre had a glow of life in her face, representing her rosey attitude towards the future and her capacity for deception when compared with her grey golem companion Gunther, nor would it have killed the red in Gunther's eyes that made it so easy for them to shift him from threatening to pathetic with a change of the camera angles. Thrown out the window in the name of more pixels and more grimdark.

In 1998 they made a shot for shot remake of Psycho (1960) with the assumption that it would be great because it'd be Hitchcock's genius combined with colour and high definition and clearer sound. The film is considered a complete waste of resources, was considered lackluster by critics and has fallen into relative obscurity. Part of their problem: They never considered that Hitchcock had the option to shoot in colour, but chose black and white deliberately because he wanted to use tricks that work in black and white and don't carry across in colour.

The same sort of considerations need to be made when you reduce the level of stylizing anything - and they haven't been made. This is without going into the problems that occur when you haphazardly mix low-def and high-def and the significance this lends to things when you're playing the game.
I would only take issue with it if we could not disable the character models. I also don't like the new design of the sniper rifle, and some models have LOD issues, but it's a flaw I'm willing to accept. We had to accept many of those when we first played DX prior to the everlasting infatuation.
I don't like the new design of the standard issue pistol - if it was supposed to look like a Glock it would have looked like a Glock in the original. It was supposed to be bulky and shiny to convey that it was the clumsy and brutal alternative to to the crossbow. Now it looks all sleek and stealthy and refined - the opposite of how it's supposed to come across.

I don't like that the flares now have "FLARE" written across them like there's a chance someone is going to mistake them for a suppository. I don't like that every time I point my gun at a model that didn't get the hi-def treatment it looks like I'm about to shoot some pixel-peasant from another world. I do not like that crates no longer read clearly because they're faded stains on wood texture instead of clearly marked. I do not like that now many levels consist of randomly clean and randomly grimey items because asset recycling had to happen so often.

I do not like them on a boat. I do not like them on a goat.

They break the visual narrative, change what draws attention and what seems important and the pace of how you read visual information. That's the part that should be painstakingly worried about first and foremost. Add to that Revision forcing them all in at once makes it such a mess of visual shifts that it's hard to tell which mod does what, why and if I'm supposed to find it significant or just ignore it.

Are they great for people who've played the low-def version to death and want some novelty and something fresh? Probably. I mean lots of people seem to like them. Are they authentic and true to the game? Nope.
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mKaelus
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by mKaelus »

Image

While I have given up on anything related to Revision, I have to agree with the points made about about the textures and models of HDTP, specially the characters.

Example on how HDTP looks out of place, and then my floral coat and the jeans.

Still, my texture wasn't made to replace the original and only for my series. Thats why I added a face/lenses/frames mode only to my package. The chest is unreleased though, as its basically taken from a movie character. I am not good at drawing anyway.
Cybernetic pig
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by Cybernetic pig »

wincenworks wrote: The elaboration is that simple, they're not crafted with respect to the original design because:
Well argued. Like I said, there are outliers. With the added texture definition along with DX's reuse of textures indeed the texture patterns become more evident, but this only applies to large, commonly used generic surfaces, especially when the textures were made more gritty in some cases. GMDX has addressed this in some specific places it really stood out. In the case of HDTP objects with higher definition, well frequent reuse of objects is something we accept in every game including modern hi-def ones like, say, Fallout: New Vegas, so we naturally ignore that every weapon model, decorative object and such is a clone of the last of its type. I think that's where the problem lies at its core.

I cannot excuse the other points you made directly beyond that the issues are few and far between.
Visually speaking, Deus Ex was not an artistic masterpiece nor particularly easy on the eye like a Simpsons character. The game also took a photo-realistic approach to level design quite often, which New Vision often complements well (Korean War Memorial and other plaques in Battery Park for instance). HDTP and New Vision can simply really make it look great in some areas. One aspect in which I appreciate no longer having to use my imagination is HDTP's weapon mod attachments.

Edit: wincenworks, I'm impressed by your critical eye and understanding of the vanilla design (not just visually). Would you be willing to play the beta of GMDXv8.0 and "vivisect" it, so that way all noteworthy criticism I can address before release? I have always been very intent on doing this right with respect for the original design, so I think you could be a very valuable asset, even if you are overly critical at times.
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FastGamerr
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by FastGamerr »

Just remember to cover your ground and make sure you won't insult their Holy Game in any way, CyberP. Their one true unquestionable interpretation is backed up with FACTS after all.
Cybernetic pig
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by Cybernetic pig »

I am a big Immersive Sim fanatic and believe the style to be the all-encompassing pinnacle of singleplayer role-playing/player agency-based game design, so I intend to! If there's notable flaws I'd like to get them sorted before release.
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FastGamerr
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by FastGamerr »

So far so good, seeing as your mod is sufficiently popular to get noted by mainstream gaming media but not too popular to get tainted like DXREV was. Of course, a bit more general attention would still bring in more players. ;)

Wish I could have helped you out like you asked a few months back, but I don't edit or even play games anymore, so I hope you'll rock twice the casbah come Dec 8th. :]
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mKaelus
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by mKaelus »

FastGamerr wrote:So far so good, seeing as your mod is sufficiently popular to get noted by mainstream gaming media but not too popular to get tainted like DXREV was. Of course, a bit more general attention would still bring in more players. ;)

Wish I could have helped you out like you asked a few months back, but I don't edit or even play games anymore, so I hope you'll rock twice the casbah come Dec 8th. :]
Are you 12?
Serious question. Because if you aren't, you sure sound like one.

What kind of arguments are these?
People hate random mods because they are popular?
Facts don't count because you say so?
Do you even read any of the stuff here or you just skip everything to type the next endless praise to another fellow modder?
Because so far you haven't brought anything to the table, all you did here was say "no, don't listen to X or Y, they are just jealous".
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FastGamerr
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by FastGamerr »

Yes.
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mKaelus
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by mKaelus »

FastGamerr wrote:Yes.
Alright, at least I know you can read other people's posts, instead of just looking at their name and typing the next big suck up.
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FastGamerr
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by FastGamerr »

If your expectations - or FACTS™ - have been matched without casting even the slightest shadow of a doubt, then I'm content. I'm glad things have worked out your way. :)
Last edited by FastGamerr on Thu Nov 26, 2015 8:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.
ggrotz
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by ggrotz »

Cybernetic pig wrote: I'd imagine it is a bit confusing as to what the mod does based on the descriptions alone, which would explain why people thought HDTP & New Vision were Revision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pRiiIhLnsk
This is indeed a definite problem. I won't say too much about the rest of this thread because right now because the obvious comparisons would be too inevitable. But the biggest things that astound in me in all of the text written and videos record this past the Steam revulsion about Revision are:

1. This in the quote. The Revision team did not communicate very well that a lot of what is in their package is third-party things provided by other developers. This is what resulted in the confusion you illustrated as well as the support questions I've been getting over the new HDTP release regarding "compatibility with Revision". This is making it abundantly clear that in the minds of a great many involved that New Vision and HDTP are Revision when this is not the case.

2. People are choosing NOW to slam HDTP and New Vision for some reason, which I think ties back to #1. New Vision was released 3 years, 3 days ago. The majority of HDTP (graphics-wise, including those character models) was released 3 years, 11 days ago. Interestingly enough, I've never read any negative reviews of either, barring the HDTP character models until Revision got released.

Indeed, very interesting, how skewed off all of this has been going.

** ducking out and running back to doing other stuff now **
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FastGamerr
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by FastGamerr »

ggrotz wrote: 2. People are choosing NOW to slam HDTP and New Vision for some reason, which I think ties back to #1. New Vision was released 3 years, 3 days ago. The majority of HDTP (graphics-wise, including those character models) was released 3 years, 11 days ago. Interestingly enough, I've never read any negative reviews of either, barring the HDTP character models until Revision got released.

Indeed, very interesting, how skewed off all of this has been going.
Don't forget how there were virtually no complaints about Revision's archi additions back when the first build covering 50% of the game was released in 2011. Intriguing.

Oh, and... does the date when those two recent 1/10 votes were made seem familiar?

Or how about these three? I wonder what the uniting factor could be...

http://www.moddb.com/mods/shifter1/revi ... t&rating=1
http://www.moddb.com/mods/biomod/review ... t&rating=1
http://www.moddb.com/mods/nihilum/revie ... t&rating=1
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by ggrotz »

FastGamerr wrote: Don't forget how there were virtually no complaints about Revision's archi additions back when the first build covering 50% of the game was released in 2011. Intriguing.
TBH, I don't think Revision was that high profile to be known back in those days (Demo 1.31). The main thing I've been looking for is whether they've cleaned up their maps since then (since I'm otherwise occupied with other projects at the moment), to see whether I would change my review I wrote back then (sorry, PlanetDeusEx is bombed out, so no don't have it). By all the videos I've seen of it, I would say the answer is no.

If you remove all the commentary on third-party software that Kim Wincen put in his Revision audios, he covers those deficiencies quite well that I noted in that review.
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mKaelus
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by mKaelus »

FastGamerr wrote:
ggrotz wrote: 2. People are choosing NOW to slam HDTP and New Vision for some reason, which I think ties back to #1. New Vision was released 3 years, 3 days ago. The majority of HDTP (graphics-wise, including those character models) was released 3 years, 11 days ago. Interestingly enough, I've never read any negative reviews of either, barring the HDTP character models until Revision got released.

Indeed, very interesting, how skewed off all of this has been going.
Don't forget how there were virtually no complaints about Revision's archi additions back when the first build covering 50% of the game was released in 2011. Intriguing.

Oh, and... does the date when those two recent 1/10 votes were made seem familiar?

Or how about these three? I wonder what the uniting factor could be...

http://www.moddb.com/mods/shifter1/revi ... t&rating=1
http://www.moddb.com/mods/biomod/review ... t&rating=1
http://www.moddb.com/mods/nihilum/revie ... t&rating=1
I know one of the guys, and my safe bet would be "I hate mods/games that make things easier for the sake of appealing to more people". And "I don't like shit mods".

I also know he dislikes mods that makes things harder for the sake of being harder, not challenging.
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Re: Deus Ex Revision is 2 days away

Post by Trasher »

Hi Jonas, how do you do? Those are some very good questions.
Jonas wrote:In a desperate attempt to get something useful out of this thread, and seeing how we seem to have several members of the actual mod here, a question: what was the original purpose of Revision? My understanding was that it was primarily an attempt to freshen up Deus Ex by modifying the levels, to complement the efforts of other teams to enhance the visuals by updating the models and the textures. Is this correct?

If so, why did you only have one level designer? That seems kinda crazy. If the whole point of the mod is to update all the levels, and you seem to be aware that it's too big a task for one level designer, why not try to recruit more? Perhaps you tried, but nobody was up for it?

I'm merely interested to hear about how you ended up in this position where you're using your lack of manpower as an excuse for some of the flaws or shortcomings of your mod. Don't get me wrong, lack of manpower is something I sympathise with, even though as you've pointed out, it was rarely a problem on TNM :)

Just curious.
The original idea and well, whole point of the mod is to give Deus Ex veterans another reason to revisit Deus Ex, a game they know better than their own pockets. Some have beaten the game to death to a point where the game doesn't give you anything new. What we want to offer with this mod is a new experience. I'm going to quote some bits of a review here that summarizes our idea quite well:
So. What's the point of all that? I get it - the game is legendary. Despite its age, it can still captivate. And that's just it - how many times have we played it? This conversion does not presume to make the game 'better'. It makes it *different*. And that has been thoroughly enjoyable from what I've played so far. Yeah, the first level is dark. It's a night op. You're a cop. Use your flashlight aug-eyes. But use it smart. There are more enemies and in different places. They *cycle* weapons. I've been getting my ♥♥♥ kicked and I love it. I don't know what's around the corner this time, and it's great. It's making me adopt a new playstyle. I'm having tons of fun.

Alright, one brief note about the music. It goes without saying the original soundtrack is a masterpiece. They give you the option to use it instead of the remixes because they respect the game and its a labor of love. That being said, the remix so far (only on the first level) reminds me of daggerfall, which is pretty cool. Y'know, the rain theme or even the night theme. It's not necessarily better, but it's different. And I'm all for a new Deus Ex experience.
About level designers, that's one of the biggest issues. When all mapping related work is on one persons shoulders there's bound to be issues. Maps were worked over from start to finish. Meaning that first was Liberty Island, then Unatco HQ, Battery Park, Hell's Kitchen and so on. Last was Area 51, well you get the idea. Naturally as you progress towards the end game, you've learned new tricks along your way and when you look back at the first levels and compare it with your latest work - there's a huge difference in terms of quality. I would have wanted to revisit Hell's Kitchen and many of the early levels before the actual release since it's not the best work I've made and well when compared to Paris levels for example, that's a big difference. I have revisited Hell's kitchen twice and the base design of that was finished in 2009. While Paris was wrapped up in 2012. That's 3 years later and in 3 years you learn a lot. Thing is, revisiting a level takes a lot of time + proper time testing it from all bsp errors(ACHTUNG! BSP! ;) ) and time is something we did not have. We had a deadline and it was very important to get to it as the release of the mod was pushed so many times. Even a simple change in geometry, for example, removal of that light post at the basketball court would require a rebuild of the level and lot's of testing through the entire map to make sure no new errors have showed up after a rebuild. Does this sound familiar Jonas? :-) Now, what's the issue of having one level designer? When level designer is focused on one map, the rest of the levels are halted. There's no progress and time keeps rolling.

As for recruiting new people. We did that yes. Only a few persons showed up and let me tell you something about those guys. First guy showed up and did absolutely nothing and vanished shortly after he got access to the content of the mod. Second guy joined in and sticked around for a few days and then faked his own death in order to ditch out(he kept updating his facebook eventhough he was, well "dead"). We did not recruit these people blindly. Each submitted samples of their mapping work and they seemed to be the people we were looking for. Third guy was Henry, he did work on Unatco HQ and a bit of Missile Silo but sadly real life caught him and he couldn't work more on the project. So then again I'm left alone, not the kind of situation where any sane person would want to be in. Also, getting people to work on such an old engine is a very difficult task as the modding community of Deus Ex is close to nonexistent. It's only a handful of people and each are working on their own individual project.

Of course, I do have Björn(more like my right and left hand and maybe even my feet), he's handling the quality assurance. He's also responsible for coding, fixing bugs and keeping editor tools up to date and ton of other things. Having New Vision, HDTP, Shifter, Biomod and HuRen bundled so that they all work fluently together is no easy task. It's all put in one place so that no end user has to go through the problem to change lines of codes to get something to work. Very welcomed feature. Again, all that work for one person to take care of is way, way too much.

After releasing Demo 1.2 many, many years ago I asked myself, what's the point to continue when there's an insane amount of work to be done? I said it out loud, fuck it. If you start something you also end it. Here we are.
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