DDL - read this

[anonymous1980]

Don't you dare feel demotivated about what that r00tb33r dude said.

I've ben waiting for 5 years, and ill continue waiting. There's a shitload of people that don't got accounts like me around that gonna wait until you finish this.

I fucking love you, man. God bless you. (and God bless the dude that created TNM, the greatest piece of media i have ever experienced in my entire sad, pathetic life)

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

To all the people saying "The Mod is Dead" or "Fuck these guys"..

TNM (a few HDTP members worked on this)
New Vision (DaveW was apart of HDTP for a long period of time)

both released from this community free of charge.

Funny how quickly people just plain forgot about this.
No one is in a position to demand anything from this community, you have 2 of the most amazing mods ever produced from the Deus Ex modding community available now.

HDTP Beta was released, so it has in some form been released. TNM also utilized a few unreleased models from HDTP that weren't in the beta.

No one is going out of their way to hold up the release.. so stop fucking acting like they are.

[DaveW]

New Vision (DaveW was apart of HDTP for a long period of time)

I am a part of HDTP. A small part, now - admittedly. But I'm still the most readily available artist.

[Agent Pointless]

I actually agree with everything that's been said here. Unless I misread it. But, on the assumption that I read it correctly, I have to say that I'm looking forward whole-heartedly to HDTP, and I don't care if it's released in eighty minutes or eighty years because I'll still have Deus Ex, and I'm still going to play it.

And I think getting DDL DX:HR was a damn good thing to do, and I'm secretly please to have a avatar-thingy on the same forum as people who would be willing to do that.

[revel911]

Taking a break for DX:HR will be good for DDL. Give him a break from HDTP, while also helping re-energize his batteries for the final haul.

[StarWrecker]

You've probably not heard of me in a long time but I've been watching and waiting for this mod ever since I was reasonably active on PDX back in 2005.

The people who impatiently bother about the mod disgust me. You're working your ass off and all they do is go "hurry, hurry hurry"

Well, fuck them. You're doing an amazing job, and you've got many more supporters like myself who are just patiently waiting.

Enjoy HR. HDTP can wait, the true fans will keep patiently waiting.

[r00tb33r]

Don't you dare feel demotivated about what that r00tb33r dude said.

Oh wow now I'm the one to blame for years of delay, great logic man. I merely stated that the most optimal time to release the mod has unfortunately passed, and in that regard I'm indisputably correct.

Can't anyone take fair criticism without getting butthurt nowadays?

[DDL]

I think you might be overestimating both your own relevance and your predictive powers: for example, releasing HDTP just before DX:HR will make everyone go "OOH HDTP is out-HAHAHAFUCKTHATSHIT IMMA PLAY HR". Then maybe they'll get back to it afterwards.

Alternatively, we could release sometime in the next few weeks and people who have finished HR and who have taken advantage of the free copy of DX that came with lots of the offers will have lovely HDTP stuffs to temp them to try it.

For all the people that already have DX, and who have been following HDTP (that's all you lovely peeps), it makes absolutely no difference either way, you're not going to suddenly give up in disgust after having waited this long, right?

Because that would be ridiculous.

Also, your criticism was fucking terrible too. Just fyi.

[Salk]

Since this topic is addressed to DDL, I take the opportunity to ask him a few questions, hoping to not divert too much of his precious time from working on HDTP!

Seriously, I don't know anything about Deus Ex modding but I am a rather curious person and I am sure your answers would be of interest to many other lurkers:

1) What does your HDTP work consist of?

2) Is it you the only one working on HDTP at the moment? If not, who else, and what are their tasks?

3) Once HDTP is released, do you think it will be final or there will be updates to fix possible bugs/errors?

4) Could you estimate how many hours you have spent on this project?

5) Considering your answer to question number 4, do you ever feel regret for even having been involved in HDTP?

6) How has a biochemist ended up working on HDTP?

Again, let me thank you for your hard work. I know it must be really discomforting to bear negative comments and unfair criticism but I hope that won't discourage you overly much because I am also sure you know that there is a strong majority of people who appreciate what you have done so far and wouldn't stop appreciating you even if you decided to stop right now and never release anything more. Simply because we know that you've already put lots of passion and effort, together with many others, trying to instill new life into an old masterpiece.

[revel911]

Since this topic is addressed to DDL, I take the opportunity to ask him a few questions, hoping to not divert too much of his precious time from working on HDTP!

Seriously, I don't know anything about Deus Ex modding but I am a rather curious person and I am sure your answers would be of interest to many other lurkers:

1) What does your HDTP work consist of?

2) Is it you the only one working on HDTP at the moment? If not, who else, and what are their tasks?

3) Once HDTP is released, do you think it will be final or there will be updates to fix possible bugs/errors?

4) Could you estimate how many hours you have spent on this project?

5) Considering your answer to question number 4, do you ever feel regret for even having been involved in HDTP?

6) How has a biochemist ended up working on HDTP?

Again, let me thank you for your hard work. I know it must be really discomforting to bear negative comments and unfair criticism but I hope that won't discourage you overly much because I am also sure you know that there is a strong majority of people who appreciate what you have done so far and wouldn't stop appreciating you even if you decided to stop right now and never release anything more. Simply because we know that you've already put lots of passion and effort, together with many others, trying to instill new life into an old masterpiece.

I would love to know 3 and I bet DDL is scared of 4.

[DaveW]

Since this topic is addressed to DDL, I take the opportunity to ask him a few questions, hoping to not divert too much of his precious time from working on HDTP!

Seriously, I don't know anything about Deus Ex modding but I am a rather curious person and I am sure your answers would be of interest to many other lurkers:

1) What does your HDTP work consist of?

2) Is it you the only one working on HDTP at the moment? If not, who else, and what are their tasks?

3) Once HDTP is released, do you think it will be final or there will be updates to fix possible bugs/errors?

4) Could you estimate how many hours you have spent on this project?

5) Considering your answer to question number 4, do you ever feel regret for even having been involved in HDTP?

6) How has a biochemist ended up working on HDTP?

Well heck, I could answer some of those.

1) He is importing and coding a lot of the weapons and characters alongside Akerfeldt, which is mostly all that is left to do.

2) Akerfeldt is the other major contributor, especially with his magic animation-ripping program that (from my understanding) analyzes the animations from Deus Ex and converts them into a functional skeletal rig, which can then be applied to the HDTP models to make them match the original game animations. Which are pretty shitty, but it's sure better than animating every unique animation set.

3) Probably not because it's quite easy to test all the models etc. are working by throwing them in a giant room.

6) Because he's fucking smart, basically. I mean, anyone who can program effectively already has to be pretty damn smart.

[justanotherfan]

I merely stated that the most optimal time to release the mod has unfortunately passed, and in that regard I'm indisputably correct

I disagree with this part specifically. Eidos has a lot of promotional money. Any DX1 mod would be drowned out, especially relying on free publicity. DX3 means a resurgence of interest in DX. Releasing HDTP before could have ridden the hype wave, but would have still competed poorly. Releasing after rides DX3's promotional money regardless of the final verdict on DX3.

DX3 being released before HDTP is a fair reason to be frustrated. If the budgets for both projects is disregarded, it's a valid criticism, but not as argued in these several threads.

Personally, I don't like publicity, so I wouldn't be concerned anyway.

6) Because he's fucking smart, basically. I mean, anyone who can program effectively already has to be pretty damn smart.

Cool, I thought biochemistry was TNM backstory. And I can't program, just not my talent. I _could_ program, but it would take all time&effort for a substandard product.

[frosty-theaussie]

Alternatively, we could release sometime in the next few weeks and people who have finished HR and who have taken advantage of the free copy of DX that came with lots of the offers will have lovely HDTP stuffs to temp them to try it.

How did you read my mind?

[EER]

How did you read my mind?

Biochemistry, it's what he does

[DDL]

Since this topic is addressed to DDL, I take the opportunity to ask him a few questions, hoping to not divert too much of his precious time from working on HDTP!

Seriously, I don't know anything about Deus Ex modding but I am a rather curious person and I am sure your answers would be of interest to many other lurkers:

1) What does your HDTP work consist of?

2) Is it you the only one working on HDTP at the moment? If not, who else, and what are their tasks?

3) Once HDTP is released, do you think it will be final or there will be updates to fix possible bugs/errors?

4) Could you estimate how many hours you have spent on this project?

5) Considering your answer to question number 4, do you ever feel regret for even having been involved in HDTP?

6) How has a biochemist ended up working on HDTP?

Dave's answered a lot of these already, and incidentally has also massively underplayed his own involvement (involvement, incidentally, which has been awesome). Christ, some of the stuff he just "magics up" overnight is...fucking incredible. Mind you, he's apparently incapable of making any texture smaller than 1024x1024, so if you ask him to rustle up a texture for a 'plain, red, button', you're gonna end up with one fucking INCREDIBLE button, but your texture caching won't thank you.

So yeah, Dave's been doing lots of textures and modelling and UVmapping (not, of course, normally in that order).

Akerfeldt, as noted, has been doing a fuckton of stuff, and he's very much at the magical coding end of the spectrum: where I am reasonably proficient at making the shitty unreal engine play ball, he seems able to write his own software that can then do things to super-high-def-uber-models which will A)animate them with vastly less fuss than one normally encounters, and B)make them STILL appear to be super-high-def-uber-models when in-game, rather than "super-high-def-uber-models regrettably mangled by the unreal engine".

Metche, who has (understandably) been fairly distracted recently what with various job moves, and (I believe) getting married, and getting basically worn down by massive accumulated HDTP fatigue, has done tons of organising, some textures, more organising, and has essentially acted as the central focal coordinator of HDTP efforts for god knows how long (and also a source of collective motivational guilt: "you can run away and just try to pretend HDTP isn't happening and you don't have to do anything, but Metche will fiiiiind you....and ask you nicely to do some stuff").

Myself, ultimately....well: I'll answer 1 and 6 together: modding the unreal engine and biochemistry research are actually very similar, in that both are essentially (on a day to day basis) composed of mindless, mindless, fucking mindless, repetitive tasks. A child of like...10 could do my job (both in HDTP and biochemistry...though admittedly on the biochem side I don't currently have a job..but you get my point). The catch is, they could do so only if everything actually worked according to plan.

Things NEVER go according to plan. Much like biochem, where you hire a postdoc not to do northern blots every fucking day, but to be able to do northern blots (or suitable alternative) even in the face of major obstacles, and to know why something when wrong when it did, and what to do to fix it.

For HDTP this could be things like rearranging texture order to fix muzzleflash wiping, or if that's not possible, recoding the weapon to use different texnums for muzzleflashes. Or making sure a given texture has the right flags on a mesh. Or reUVmapping it slightly if it turns out it has conflicting texflag requirements on the same multiskin. Or readjusting the UVmap to avoid texture shearing. Or even adding a muzzleflash if one isn't on the model, and THEN doing all the above. Or in fact making a muzzleflash myself, UVmapping it, adding it, and then doing all the above.

And that's just for muzzleflashes.

There's also the fact that HDTP has taken many contributions from many different people, many of whom did not perhaps totally understand the brief, so I've also spent a lot of time taking essentially unusable stuff and working out how we can use it.

My work on HDTP is basically being willing, able, and inventive enough to get everything imported in the first place (which is actually fairly easy, but tedious as FUCK: I've kinda got that role because most people can't be fucked learning how to do it, and the others can't bring themselves to confront the tedium), then get the code references written, and account for all the clever stuff like weaponmods magically appearing on weapons when you add them, and then to fix the myriad number of tiny irritating bugs that can crop up, which really means I need to be capable of doing a lot of things (textures, modelling, UVmapping, fucking tweaking import lines...*shudders*) to a...reasonable standard. Jack of all trades, master of none.

Incidentally, this is also pretty much what my academic CV looks like, which is not helping me much: you wouldn't THINK it'd be possible to have 'too broad' a focus in a subject as inherently niche as biochemistry, but apparently it is.


2) has been answered by both me (above) and Dave (higher above), so I'll move onto...

3) probably. I can't guarantee it'll be prompt, but I don't think I'll be leaving this forum anytime soon, so I should be able to read through lists of bugs and tackle those I can. Akerfeldt and Dave will also hopefully be around to do those I can't. Admittedly some of them might be "slightly gippy animation in model X during reload while under obscure situation Y", which I reserve the right to respond to with "ah well. Still looks better, eh?", because animation fixing is (even with Akerfeldt's magic program) still quite an arse.

4) I really really shudder to think. What gets me is how much of that time is tedium. Not OOH LOVELY LOVELY MODELS, but
"fucksake: it's offcentre by about 3 uunits"
10*delete package*
20*adjust import code offset by arbitrary number (because import code offsets and in-game offsets do not correspond in any convenient fashion)*
30*recompile*
40*reload UEd*
50*check model*
"ok, so that's gone about 5 uunits over, so if x=1500 was 8, then 3 would be..X=562"
60*GOTO 10*

...but then, fuck: I spent a year and a half doing NOTHING BUT radiolabelled RNA stuff, so I think I'm reasonably good at handling tedium.

5) Hah! I'll tell you in about a month's time.
I'm still proud of our first release, so hopefully that'll carry over.

And for the record, we're definitely on the home stretch now.